The El Niño Peril No One Is Talking About

THIS UPCOMING WINTER has a lot of people really nervous.

Emergency managers up and down the state are braced for the possibility of torrential rains and their disastrous aftermaths: floods, mudslides, and sinkholes. This month brought a flurry of stories about a new scary phenomenon: the so-called coastal-trapped Kelvin wave, which raises sea levels along the coast, potentially inundating low-lying real estate from San Clemente to Malibu and beyond. Hammerhead sharks have been spotted circling off some of Southern California's beloved beach towns. On Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency across the entirety of California and ordered all state agencies to step up preparations.

But there is another danger, one about which emergency operations professionals and even the climate scientists have so far been silent: the increased perils of talking about any of this at a party. Weather, after all, is the go-to conversational refuge when you have nothing to say. But just as El Niño can disrupt the jet stream and send more storms hurtling toward Southern California, it also ups the chances that you'll have to discourse knowledgeably about a Kelvin wave, even if you have never so much as taken a physics class.

L.A. Material asked three California-based scientists for some tips on how to speak knowledgeably — and how to avoid sounding stupid.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources and the closest thing California media has to a climate influencer, advised that the most important aspect of El Niño discourse to get right is the thing many people struggle with most: what it is and is not.

"It seems like it's a basic thing but I would say the majority of people… get it significantly wrong," Swain said.