Press Release 06-097 A Link Between Rainfall and Magnetism They
are nothing alike--except for their underlying mathematics June
29, 2006 Proving yet again that nature pays no attention to
academic boundaries, two scientists at UCLA and the Santa Fe
Institute have gained a deeper insight into rainfall patterns
and atmospheric dynamics by using techniques originally
developed for magnetic materials. Writing in the June issue of
the journal Nature Physics, physicist Ole Peters of the Santa Fe
Institute and UCLA, and climatologist J. David Neelin of UCLA,
argue that the onset of intense tropical rain can be described
by the same mathematics as a piece of iron that's making the
transition from unmagnetized to magnetized. To illustrate the
principle, explain the two scientists, whose work was funded by
the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy
and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, imagine
that you're dribbling rice grains onto a steadily accumulating
mound of rice. Adding on