Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! And by my personal standards, Happy Halloween. It’s October. It’s Halloween all month. For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to our weekly science news roundup.

Let’s start with some environmental news. An ocean phenomenon known as a Kelvin wave could soon put coastal towns in California at risk. These waves span thousands of miles across, sloshing slowly through the ocean and causing sudden surges in sea level.

Here to tell us more about where these waves come from and what we can expect is Andrea Thompson, Scientific American’s senior desk editor for life sciences. Thanks for coming on to chat with us, Andrea.

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Andrea Thompson: Thanks for having me.

Feltman: So let’s start with the basic question of what a Kelvin wave is and how it differs from the waves most of us are used to seeing.

Thompson: So, you know, the waves most of us think about when we think of the word “wave” are waves at the beach that crest over and wash onto shore. And those are fairly, you know, small scale. They happen fairly quickly. Kelvin waves are one of a type of what’s called planetary waves, and there are several of these that happen in the ocean and the atmosphere. They are much, much bigger, so they’re the scale of thousands of miles. They travel much more slowly, over the course of several months. And they don’t crest over the way that, you know, waves at the beach do.

Feltman: Well, and I think, you know, when people hear about a planetary-scale wave, you know, they might think of something that approaches the land like a tsunami or, like, I’m just realizing, those waves on that weird planet in Interstellar. And I do just wanna make sure we get out of the way: that is not what will approach the coast in any fashion.

Thompson: No. So these are, because they are such a massive scale, this is more of, in terms of how it changes the height of the ocean, it’s fairly distributed over a large area. So, this Kelvin wave that is approaching California could cause some problems with coastal flooding, but we’re not talking about anything like a tsunami, no.

Feltman: There’s no wall of water?

Thompson: No. No, this is like a, a pulse of, sort of, you know, slightly elevated water coming.

Feltman: Yeah. No, I think that’s a great way to put it. But then, of course, the counterpoint to that is slow pulse of very moving water, though not scary to look at to our lizard brain, still potentially pretty dangerous. [Laughs.] I think maybe gets at the heart of what’s hard for us to wrap our head arounds about climate change and other planetary-scale things. So let’s talk about the actual risks and dangers here.

Thompson: So I’m gonna back up a little bit because this wave has to do with El Niño, which we’re going to be hearing a lot about this year.

Feltman: Yes. Could you briefly remind us what El Niño actually is?

Thompson: So El Niño is basically just where we see a shift in where warm water is in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Normally, it’s sort of piled up toward the western half of that basin. In El Niño, it moves towards the eastern half to varying degrees, depending on the El Niño. What that does is: it changes where heat is released from the ocean into the atmosphere, and that heat release governs a lot of the big, atmospheric circulation patterns that affect the weather all over the world. So it’s one reason why we have had a very quiet Atlantic hurricane season—because it causes downward moving air over the Atlantic basin and also air that has what we call wind shear. So you kinda have cross-cutting winds where you maybe have it going in one direction at one part of the atmosphere and another direction at the other. Both of those just really quash any developing storms. Also raises global temperatures during an El Niño, and this one is looking to be possibly the strongest in living memory.

Feltman: Tell us more about, you know, how El Niño then creates these Kelvin waves.

Thompson: So in the tropical Pacific, winds typically blow from east to west, and they sort of pile water up toward the western part of the tropical Pacific. And in El Niño, those winds relax, and sometimes you can even get a wind burst going in the opposite direction. That’s part of what causes the shift in warm water from the western toward the eastern Pacific. And it happens in this form of a Kelvin wave where, you know, this pulse of warm water over the course of two to three months works its way across the equatorial Pacific.

And when it gets towards the eastern Pacific, it hits South America. It can’t go any further in that direction. So some of it starts moving north. What’s north? Mexico, California. So this pulse is coming up along the coast, and what that means is that it’s going to elevate, sort of, the average sea level along those areas for a time. That’s particularly a concern if you get it coinciding with a very high tide, you know, when you have a full moon. If you get it coinciding with a storm that brings in storm surge, it’s going to elevate both of those things. And it’s particularly going to be a concern in areas that maybe are already kind of low lying or vulnerable to erosion.

So it’s not like, oh, this arrives sometime in October, and we’re flooded for months. That won’t necessarily be the case. It’s just that, you know, if you were already concerned about some kind of coastal flooding, this is going to be adding to that.

Feltman: So practically speaking for folks who are in these coastal areas, Mexico, California, what is gonna happen? How will this actually impact the sea level and flooding for them this year?

Thompson: The biggest thing for people that are in these areas is to pay attention to weather forecasts, pay attention to your local municipal governments, to emergency managers. They are all going to be watching this very closely. You’ll particularly be wanting to pay attention if there’s some kind of storm happening, which does tend to happen more for California during an El Niño, especially in the winter.

I know that some places have already, sort of, started putting out sandbags in vulnerable areas, so there are, sort of, efforts happening to protect particular areas. But basically, if it’s a high tide or there’s a storm or something where it’s already gonna elevate, you’d be facing some kind of flooding anyway, you particularly need to take care this year.

Feltman: Well, thanks so much for, uh, coming on to explain this for us.

Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Feltman: Now let’s move on to health news. Just over a year ago, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced the state’s plan to remove all school vaccine mandates. Over the summer the Florida Department of Health proposed dropping hepatitis B, chickenpox, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) and pneumococcal conjugate vaccine requirements for kids in pre-K through grade 12. While the law technically still requires children to receive vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus to attend school in Florida, religious exemptions are already higher there than the national average. And the newly proposed vaccine rule makes exemptions even easier to obtain, parents will now be able to opt their kids out of vaccination based on “sincerely held moral or ethical belief(s).” Parents would also be able to keep a child’s vaccination records, or lack thereof, from being tracked by the state’s immunization registry.

In a study published last Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, researchers used computer modeling to assess what would happen if Florida were to drop its MMR vaccine mandate. According to their projections, a dropped mandate in Florida could trigger the largest measles epidemic seen in the United States in nearly half a century.

Even without a completely dropped mandate, a decrease in childhood vaccination due to more individual exemptions will leave Florida more vulnerable to outbreaks. The researchers found that vaccinating a child against measles is three times more effective in reducing disease transmission than vaccinating one adult. That’s because measles is really contagious under scenarios of close contact. And kids together in school spend a lot of time in close contact with one another.

While we’re on the topic of jabs, on a lighter note, don’t forget that fall is the perfect time to go get an annual flu shot and COVID booster. Not to brag but I just got mine this past weekend.

Also speaking of cold and flu season: If you spend a lot of time on TikTok, you may have seen some recipes for garlic fermented in honey floating around. Now, full disclosure, I actually love mashing up raw garlic in honey to eat when I have a cold brewing—both foods have proven antimicrobial properties, and I personally find the combo of pungent, sinus-clearing garlic and sweet, soothing honey really satisfying when I’ve got the sniffles. But this combo is no substitute for, say, antibiotics if you’ve got a sinus infection or strep throat, or for antivirals if you’ve got COVID. And the current social media trend for combining these ingredients into a fermented home remedy actually carries some really serious risks.

Here to tell us more is Adam Kovac, a breaking news reporter at Scientific American. Thanks for being here, Adam.

Adam Kovac: Thanks for having me, Rachel.

So when you go on TikTok, you find that there are just tons and tons and tons of wellness influencers. And wellness is fine. Like, we all wanna be well, right? The problem comes when wellness interacts with really serious medical issues. You know, people distrust the medical establishment right now, especially after COVID.

And so they’re looking for all-natural ways to treat themselves, you know, how to prevent getting sick, how to treat yourself once you actually do get ill. And so a lot of these recipes can really spread very quickly. Some of the recipes that I found had hundreds of thousands of likes. They had thousands of comments, people asking for more specifics without realizing the dangers that can come from doing home fermentation of honey and garlic.

So the serious risk comes from the fact that both honey and garlic can contain small amounts of a bacteria called Clostridium botulinum, and so that’s the bacteria that can actually lead to developing botulism.

And botulism is really rare, so people might not know, but it’s really no joke. When it infiltrates a human body, it can paralyze muscle tissues. It can cause really, really serious symptoms like shortness of breath, blurry vision, really, really intense nausea. It can stop you from breathing. Basically, if you don’t get treated and you come down with botulism, you will probably die.

So, when you actually do get sick, you should obviously go see your doctor, listen to what they tell you. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with doing home remedies. Honey and garlic both do have antimicrobial properties. They can actually be really good for you to use when you’re sick.

The problem comes with the fermentation. One of the experts I spoke to said, “Eat some raw garlic. Eat some raw honey. There’s nothing wrong with that. It might taste bad, but it could actually have some small effects on keeping you healthy.”

And also the best treatment is actually prevention. So with flu season here, you know, go get your flu shot, go get your COVID shot. It’s better just to not get sick in the first place.

Feltman: Thanks for that, Adam! And listeners, remember, if this is bumming you out ’cause you were really excited to try this witchy combo of natural antimicrobials, having honey and raw garlic together is fine. Just don’t let them sit around and ferment.

Other options include having some delicious chicken soup with fresh garlic thrown in right at the last minute, personal favorite of mine, and then you can have some hot lemonade with some gorgeous honey inside.

The possibilities are really endless, and you don’t gotta wait around to ferment something. So honestly, this is great news.

That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to talk about rogue AI agents.

But while I have you, I do have one more thing to mention. If you enjoy Science Quickly, which I hope you do ’cause you’re listening to it, the best way to support us and keep us in your feed is to subscribe to Scientific American

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Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Allison Rodgers and Jeff DelViscio. Marielle Issa and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.

For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!