IT’S not every day that a scientific paper refers to a John Steinbeck novel. But one study published this week does just that, citing Cannery Row, the American author’s chronicle of a Californian fish-canning community.
Why? Because Steinbeck’s novel, which depicts the sardine glut of the 1940s, turns out to be a salient text in a radical new interpretation of the workings of the world’s climate.
Researchers have uncovered the importance and influence of an ocean cycle that dominates the Pacific every 25 years or so, a discovery that threatens to fundamentally change our understanding of El Niño, global warming…
