Green Group discussion
Climate Change
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Flooding
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"Footage from Pyongyang's state-run KCTV showed homes flooded up to their roofs, as well as what appeared to be damaged bridges.
The report said "hundreds of hectares of farmland" were also submerged or lost in South Hamgyong Province, on top of the severely affected homes and roads, as river levees collapsed.
With the soil already saturated, further rains could cause more damage, Ri Yong Nam, the deputy head of the North's meteorological agency, told the broadcaster.
"We expect heavy rain until 10 August in various regions, centering around the east coast area," Mr Ri said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stressed "all sectors and units" must take measures to prevent "natural disasters in advance", the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported this morning.
Natural disasters tend to have a greater impact on the isolated country due to its weak infrastructure, while deforestation has left it vulnerable to flooding.
A series of typhoons last summer also triggered floods that damaged farmland and destroyed thousands of homes."
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2021/08...
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...
"Families of those missing after Turkey’s worst floods in years anxiously watched rescue teams search buildings on Saturday, fearing the death toll from the raging torrents could rise further.
At least 44 people have died from the floods in the northern Black Sea region, the second natural disaster to strike the country this month.
Drone footage by Reuters showed massive damage in the flood-hit Black Sea town of Bozkurt, where emergency workers were searching demolished buildings.
Thirty-six people died as a result of floods in the Kastamonu district, which includes Bozkurt, and another seven people died in Sinop and one in Bartin, the disaster and emergency management directorate said."
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"One month after huge storms battered northwestern Europe and forced an unprecedented wave of floodwater through densely populated valleys, Belgian residents are still in shock.
The government of Wallonia has collected 155,000 tonnes of debris but red-brick industrial villages are still cluttered by smashed cars, uprooted trees and furniture ruined by mud and heating oil.
Around the world, July was the hottest month since records began, according to US government scientists, and the latest UN report on the climate crisis predicts heavier rains for northern Europe.
What this means for many communities can already be seen in the valley of the Vesdre where, a month after the deluge, soldiers are still feeding dozens of devastated residents from a field kitchen.
Municipal crews and contractors are shoring up river banks and railway embankments and the heavy trucks clearing tangled waste queue along the narrow roads. Gangs of volunteers have given up summer holidays to help out.
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"Charles Clessens, retired telecoms worker, saw the road in front of his riverfront house collapse into the Vesdre and a three metre wall of water pour into his cellar and rise midway up his ground floor walls.
His family escaped through the back garden and part swam to a neighbour, who helped them up a ladder to safety. Mr Clessens is now home, but his dogs are traumatised, his walls covered in mould spores and much of his furniture ruined.
He was overwhelmed by the sympathy of the volunteers who stopped by to help him clear up, and treasures the photos he took with groups from across the country.
The 74-year-old insists he will be okay, but admits to trouble sleeping.
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"The now deceptively gentle river flows by the scene, but Robert Serrurier, a school organising committee member who was himself a pupil four decades ago has never seen a flood like it.
"An enormous amount of work has already been done, but the problem is the deadline of September 1. And there's still a lot left to do. It's not going to be simple," he said.
Behind him, a huge stack of wet timber is the remains of the floorboards pulled out of a ruined classroom. He remembers the scene when school organisers turned up after flood reports.
"It was the 15th, of course, when we learnt that there was flooding, but we did not realise how much," he said.
"So we arrived here with a squeegee and a bucket and then you realise you're ridiculous, because you need a bulldozer.""
https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2021...
The water quality of flood water is absolutely horrible. It has major pollutants from a hundred different sources.
As mudslides become more common, will they become part of the potential damage warnings that accompany severe weather alerts. The increased rain fall amounts have made the possibility of mudslides that much more likely over the past 10 years. Mudslides can take time to develop as a land based geological occurrence or they can develop rapidly, from overwhelming rainfall in a area that could have naturally poor stability conditions, land impacted by development, or land recovering after a fire. This is where the rapid flow of unchecked water is able to push the land past its normal stability point.
Elevated land pushes straight down and pushes out from its base. The land around it pushes back to keep the situation stable. When that land is removed or negatively impacted it stops supporting the higher up lands being pulled down by gravity all the time. It becomes the straw that breaks the camels back situation.
Japan has had 1500 mudslides over the past 10 years, which is twice as many as the previous 10 years. Part of that is from construction in areas where no construction should have ever taken place, but all the triggering is caused by the everyday increased rain fall amounts. The current storm front in Japan that is causing mudslides has dropped as much as 37 inches of rain over a couple of days in some areas and is expected to last a few more days. 1.5 million people have been advised to evacuate the area they are in.
The US has had many land areas changed by large fires that also get heavy rainfall. But the expected damage is far less than in Japan. It is projected for Southern California there will be minor mudslides every year now and a major mudslide involving over 40 structures would happen once every 10 years. Those statistics seem overly optimistic.
One difference between US and Japan is that in Japan the water starts at higher elevations and works its way down to the coast, collecting energy as it goes down hill. The water can't stop flowing downhill heading for denser population areas. Possibly in the US the water is probably going to dissipate as it flows out from the source, making the damage more localized.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/03/asia/j...
https://news.sky.com/story/japan-floo...
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The storm, earlier downgraded from a Category 1 Hurricane, hit land near the town of Westerly at approximately 12.15pm, the National Weather Service said.
Henri is a rare tropical storm to strike America's north-eastern seaboard and comes as the surface layer of oceans warms due to climate change.
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"Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee said there was "significant flooding" in areas. There were no immediate reports of any casualties.
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"In Newark, New Jersey, flash flooding caused havoc with emergency services rescuing 86 people, including 16 children, from submerged vehicles.
In Helmetta, 30 miles south, volunteer firefighters waded through water waist deep to help evacuate residents from waterlines rising dangerously close to their homes.
"Rain late last night forced New York to halt a star-studded Central Park concert billed as a "homecoming" for a metropolis hard hit by the pandemic.
An announcer cut off pop legend Barry Manilow mid-song to urge revellers to proceed swiftly but calmly to the nearest exit.
The National Weather Service said 1.94 inches of rain fell in the park between 10pm and 11pm Saturday, the wettest hour on record in the city of eight million people.
By the time it blows out, Henri is expected to have produced three to six inches of rain across the region, with isolated maximum totals near 12 inches, the NHC said."
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2021/08...
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How many were trapped?
A new set of reports from survivors allege that thousands, up to three thousand, cars were trapped.
Here is the news story from July. Hoses pumping out water can be seen in the photo as the six-lane tunnel dips under the city roads. The streets are still awash, but we can see where the dip begins and accumulates water.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/20210...
"Rescue efforts including large-scale drainage operations are still under way on Friday at Jingguang Tunnel - a flooded 2-km-long underpass, where numerous vehicles had been trapped since Tuesday in Zhengzhou, Central China's Henan Province.
Two deaths from the tunnel have been reported as of Friday morning and a total of 51 fatalities have been reported in the unprecedented floods.
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"The man named Hou Wenchao recalled that he was stuck in traffic for over an hour at the underpass around 4 pm Tuesday, when there was a heavy rain. "Within five minutes, the water level rose rapidly and submerged half our car," Hou told the Global Times in Zhengzhou on Friday.
Personally, having experienced a heavy rainfall in Beijing in 2012, Hou thought he and other people trapped in cars must leave as soon as possible, or they could be in mortal danger.
"So I jumped out of my car, hit on doors of the cars around and persuaded dozens of people to escape from the car," Hou said.
"When we left the underpass some 20 minutes later, the water was completely over the car roofs; we could barely see our cars in the floods," he told the Global Times.
In another video uploaded by Zhengzhou-based media platform Zhengguan, a retired special forces soldier named Yang Junkui jumped into the muddy water at the underpass and saved five trapped people.
An ex-soldier, Yang said it was his instinctive reaction to save lives. "If I didn't help, [they] might be flooded by water within seconds," he recalls in the video, which has had more than 6.6 million views on Weibo as of Friday afternoon.
Videos circulating online also show hundreds of vehicles piling up along the length of the tunnel. Uniformed soldiers and other rescue personnel are seen busy with pumping and recovery efforts. Local people with family members losing contact in Zhengzhou are seen waiting near the tunnel."
Weibo is China's version of Twitter.
Anyone who wishes to provide their name and email can continue reading on this site, which contains video footage of alleged survivors. China has been said to be stifling reports on this matter. And sure enough, a month has passed and we have not seen or heard a final tally.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-man...
Asking Google images for china road tunnel flood cars brought up this set of photos.
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1...
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https://www.rte.ie/news/us/2021/0830/...
"The hurricane was packing maximum sustained winds of 153km/h at one point, and the powerful storm knocked out power for all of New Orleans.
Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast as a Category 4 storm but had weakened to a Category 1 by last night.
"@EntergyNOLA has confirmed that New Orleans has no power," tweeted NOLA Ready, the city's emergency preparedness programme, referring to the area's electricity provider.
"The only power in the city is coming from generators."
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"Storm surges flooded the town of Grand Isle, on a barrier island south of New Orleans, and low-lying highways in the area were covered in water.
Most residents had heeded warnings of catastrophic damage and authorities' instructions to flee.
Roads leading out of New Orleans had bumper-to-bumper traffic in the days preceding Ida's arrival.
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"In St. Bernard Parish, a large ferry boat broke free of its moorings and was being blown up the Mississippi River, according to local TV channel WWL.
Governor Edwards warned yesterday that Ida would be "a very serious test for our levee systems", an extensive network of pumps, gates and earthen and concrete berms that was expanded after Katrina.
He told CNN that hundreds of thousands of residents were believed to have evacuated.
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"Rainfall of 25 to 46 centimetres is expected in parts of southern Louisiana through today, with up to 24 inches in some areas.
The storm is expected to continue weakening as it moves over land, with a predicted track taking it north over the central United States before veering eastward, reaching the mid-Atlantic region by Wednesday."
Last night I was watching footage of people filling cars and containers with petrol, so they could run generators. I guess you would not know when filling stations would re-open, and you could siphon from the car to keep the generator going. In the other thread, we also saw that the oil industry had shut down in the region, and consequently fuel prices had risen - at this time when it would be needed.
There are a million people without power in New Orleans. Besides the street poles, the high power transmission towers are also down. There was also a power station built to withstand a category 4 storm, that ended up pretty much water logged.The power is expected to be out for a long time.
Communications are not working either.
A lot of people who need medical care, from minor to major situations, will be needing immediate support.
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https://gizmodo.com/ida-reversed-the-...
"The incredible power of Hurricane Ida was on display on Sunday as the storm reversed the course of the mighty Mississippi River.
The river temporarily flowed from south to north on Sunday afternoon after Ida made landfall as a Category 4 storm that underwent rapid intensification. Data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows that a river gauge at Belle Chasse, just southeast of New Orleans, recorded the stunning about-face of the Mississippi River.
The Mississippi was discharging roughly 350,000 cubic feet (9,910 cubic meters) of water per second in the days prior to Ida’s arrival. Water moved upstream at a rate of 40,000 cubic feet (1,132 cubic meters) per second. That’s a staggering amount of water to turn around. Ida is expected to push 16 feet (about 5 meters) of storm surge inland, with the highest inundation covering an area from the petrochemical hub of Port Fourchon to the mouth of the Mississippi. The turnaround of the river is indicative of how powerful that surge has been.
It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen with other storms, notably Hurricane Florence in 2018. That contributed to what’s known as compound flooding, in which storm surge pushes water inland where rain is falling. With water pushing ashore, there’s nowhere for the rain to drain."
Our rainfall total for the next 48 hours, like it was some kind of murder mystery, went from 3 to maybe 5 inches, to perhaps 8 inches. Sounds like snow fall totals. Hope it falls back down again.
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It is a lot of water. It is being described as once in a hundred year event. The heavy rain started after rush hour. There was the normal amount of heavy traffic on the roads today. There will undoubtably be flooding in unexpected places. In NYC, the space at the bottom of the steps of the entranceways to the subway platforms got flooded by the rain coming down the stairs while the platforms remain relatively accessible. If this type of flooding continues they might have to put roofs over the entrances and shallow barriers around the perimeter of the entranceways of everything leading underground.
In the comment section of the Gizmo article about the energy company spending time and money refuting climate change instead of shoring up it's equipment, it had one comment which asked instead of talking about rebuilding the power plant, why aren't we talking about not rebuilding any property along the shore. It also said this was the 16th 100 year storm event to hit the Louisiana area.
29 people died in the northeast from the leftover remnants of Ida. Some where people who drowned in basement apartments. It has become apparent that the habit of saving money by keeping the roadway level with itself instead of raising it to cross over streets and highways has created a situation where thousands and perhaps more situations exist where the roadway underneath will become impassable after a rainstorm. No use saying major rainstorm as that becomes an ever more likely situation. This is probably true for the entire world. They are all water pits. Storm drains get clogged or overloaded. How can this be fixed? Or do we just give up traveling during storms as any roadway that dips below the ground level becomes a water trap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayEJO...
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We can see how fast this came on, from the way that cars are having to be hastily abandoned and traffic is backed up behind the dip.
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"Flash flooding has killed at least 44 people in four northeastern US states as remnants of Storm Ida brought torrential rains that swept away cars, submerged New York City subway lines and grounded flights.
Across large parts of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, residents spent the day coping with water-logged basements, power outages, damaged roofs and calls for help from friends and family members stranded by flooding.
At least 13 people died in New York City, along with three in suburban Westchester County.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said at least 23 people from that state had died in the storm.
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"The National Weather Service confirmed two tornadoes also struck Maryland on Wednesday, in the areas of Annapolis and Baltimore.
The damage came three days after Ida, one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to strike the US Gulf Coast, made landfall on Sunday in Louisiana, killing nine people.
New York officials blamed much of flooding on the high volume of rainfall in a short span of time, rather than the daily total, which was within predictions.
"Because of climate change, unfortunately, this is something we're going to have to deal with great regularity," said Kathy Hochul, New York's newly inaugurated governor."
https://www.rte.ie/news/us/2021/0903/...
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My front garden is about two-thirds concrete and one-third soil, that's how it was when I arrived. I took up the grass and planted shrubs and understory flowers. Right now the cyclamen are flowering under the quince and cotinus and pheasant berry. Small birds are in my garden every day, for shelter, shade, insects and right now, cotinus (smoke bush) berries. All this soaks up water.
Across the road, a garden is in the process of being turned completely to concrete. The surface slopes towards the road, sensibly, not towards the house. We don't get heavy traffic and there is no charge for street parking. The concrete is likely more about garden maintenance.
I suggested in an SF book that a tax would be brought in on completely hard surfaced front gardens.
The Council took up a big patch of tarmac on the footpath near shops and put down a triangle of grass instead, but as fast as they do this, the space is being covered, in private gardens. And every time a corner plot is given permission for a new house, more area is compressed and hardened.
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"Alicante province escaped the worst of the storms caused by the cut off low pressure weather system (DANA or gota fría), which hit the north of the Valencia region, Cataluña and central Spain.
The regional emergency services headquarters in Valencia reported that they had received 945 calls from the public between 11.00 on Wednesday and 07.00 this morning (Thursday) and attended to 671 incidents caused by the torrential rain, ‘most of which were trapped vehicles and flooded basement garages’."
https://www.costa-news.com/costa-blan...
There were 5 tornadoes in New Jersey from Ida's remnants. Two of them were EF3 tornadoes, that is winds at least 150 mph.The record for tornadoes is 17 from 1989. So far there have been 13 tornadoes, and maybe 1 more. Severe damage from tornadoes was rare, but the F3s did a lot of destruction of houses. The news photos look more like something from the south or the midwest.
On July 29 there were 5 tornadoes reported in New Jersey.
The Philadelphia suburbs had several reports of possible, less powerful suspected tornadoes, the damage is still being checked out. The tornadoes have stayed out of major east coast cities so far.
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https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2021/09...
"The Pratt Center is part of a coalition of groups trying to help increase the number of legally-recognised below-ground units under a campaign called BASE, which stands for Basement Apartments Safe for Everyone.
They estimate that there is the potential for the creation of 200,000 safe and affordable basement apartments to boost New York's housing stock.
On Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that extreme weather caused by climate change meant New York required a "new set of ground rules" for those living below ground.
"We need a plan to evacuate folks who live in basements when we have extreme rain and flooding, he told MSNBC, announcing he would set up a task force to study the issue."
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"With local garbage and recycling depots quickly saturated, INTRADEL designated three temporary sites to store the 160,000 tonnes that were trucked away - more than half of it going to the disused motorway, in a mostly rural area.
After an initial screening by police to ensure no human remains were hidden in the stacks of garbage, the regional government stepped in.
Joine explained that the road surface prevented pollution seeping into the topsoil, and tarpaulins shielded visible parts of the trash highway from nearby houses while guards were posted around the clock to stop trespassers.
Pest control workers also regularly pass by to get rid of rats, and trucks spraying water suppress rising dust and odours.
Authorities, though, are aware that the road-dump solution is a short-term fix.
The plan is to clear the site by recycling up to 60% of the debris and incinerating the rest, but the scale of the task means the operation will take at least nine months."
https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2021...
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Photo of a suburban road going into a dip, which is blocked off due to a flood and stranded cars.
"I am stuck on a highway in New York! Check this out:
Oops, we have to turn around! We kept looking for ways to move forward but we were surrounded by images like this.
So I am writing this from the car, where I’ve been sitting in traffic for—wait for it—FIVE HOURS—and all of my plans to write this newsletter have been messed up. But it’s nothing compared to what so many people have been through over the past week.
If you have been affected by Hurricane Ida, I am thinking of you. I have never seen rain and wind like this in my life. I know many people down south are still without power, and the flooding in the mid-Atlantic has led to casualties—my heart goes out to you."
The plan is to clear the site by recycling up to 60% of the debris and incinerating the rest, but the scale of the task means the operation will take at least nine months."What happens if it happens again before 9 months is up. Do they find a new spot or add to it.
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https://eos.org/articles/when-rivers-...
"A new perspective paper in Journal of Hazardous Materials calls attention to an understudied area: the remobilization of pollutants buried in riverbeds. Chemicals have a knack for binding to sediments, meaning chemical spills in rivers frequently seep into sediments instead of flowing downstream. Future layers of silt bury the pollutants and hide the problem.
But persistent chemicals in riverbeds are “ticking time bombs,” warned Sarah Crawford, an environmental toxicologist at Goethe University Frankfurt and lead author of the paper. The buried chemicals can easily be remobilized. “It just takes one flood event,” she said.
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"When the riverbed fails, the turbulent water fills with sediment. That churning water can spread toxins widely. After Germany’s Elbe river flooded in 2002, for example, hexachlorocyclohexane concentrations in fish were 20 times higher than they were before the floods. In another example from 2017, Hurricane Harvey flooded or damaged at least 13 Superfund sites in the United States and sent cancer-causing compounds flowing into Galveston Bay in Texas.
“Little pockets of contamination are really easily dispersed by flood events,” Brinkmann said.
The location of these little pockets is uncertain, complicating the problem. Urban areas and agricultural hot spots are obvious starting points for research and remediation, “but we just can’t pinpoint all of them,” said Crawford. “Maybe a farmer in the ’60s was spraying DDT. We don’t have records of that.”"
Citation: Besl, J. (2021), When rivers are contaminated, floods are only the first problem, Eos, 102, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EO163034. Published on 10 September 2021.
Text © 2021. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
More than likely every stream or river that had some kind of industrial activity on it during the past 200 years has pockets or layers of polluted sediment hidden in it. When the sediment layers or pockets are sufficiently buried the river is declared to be clean. Technically the river or stream is clean, it is the land under the river that is still polluted. Rivers and streams can also meander, which means the river bottom is no longer the original river bottom, which is now lying underground away from the current position of the river. This land is still in a low land area and can be easily exposed again by flooding.
Another cold front coming through, another storm, another flash flood warning. Seems like flash flood warnings have become a weekly occurrence. It just a bit more rain than normally happens, 1 to 2 inches, but enough to create increased runoff because the ground is already saturated from previous storms.
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"Around a small lake in Co Roscommon, six families are waiting in dread. Lough Funshinagh has flooded every year for the last five. Since January, two families have been forced out. Now others fear they will be next.
In times of crisis, it falls to the Government to protect communities.
Patrick O'Donovan TD, the Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works, may have the position, the resources, and a budget of €1bn. And his party may have been in power for 10 years. But he says he is powerless.
Unless Ireland changes tack, cities and towns will be in precarious position from increased rainfall and climate change, without the defences to protect them, he warned.
He says he too lies awake in dread at what the weather will bring. "I can’t get their faces out of my head," he told Prime Time of the Lough Funshinagh dwellers.
"Bear in mind, it might be six houses in south Roscommon today; it could be 600 houses in Dublin tomorrow", he said.
The minister says that it is taking up to 20 years to install urgent flood defences, with most of the time spent on design and planning and, as he sees it, crossing every 'i' and dotting every 't' in planning and environmental law.
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""As minister, I want to be really honest with people. We are in serious trouble in terms of delivering that level of defences to that volume of people over that period of time. It is just not a sustainable process", he told Prime Time.
As Lough Funshinagh waits for winter, water levels there are already over half a metre higher than this time last year – and the rains are coming.
Tom Carney lives by the lough. He can trace his family’s roots there back to the 1700s.
"I honestly don't think my mind could cope with another winter of this", he said, describing the dire situation his family found themselves in between late January and the end of July as water overspilled from the lough onto his road, blocking access to his house and farm.
With two large pumps provided by Roscommon County Council, it was a constant struggle to keep the water out.
On a number of occasions, when the wind blew towards his home, the water overpowered the pumps and the level rose to just below the windows of his house.
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"Lough Funshinagh is a "disappearing lake" – like turloughs, these loughs are virtually unique to Ireland in Europe.
In the past, occasionally the lough has emptied quickly in dry season. The last time that happened was in 1996.
Usually, though, it drains slowly, through swallow holes. But since 2016, while Geological Survey of Ireland data shows outflow rates have remained consistent, it also shows there has been a build-up of water.
The cause is not a change to natural drainage or a blockage of drainage outlets. Rather, extra rainfall has simply overburdened the lough, with nowhere to go but over its sides.
This is climate change."
https://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/202...
I don't know what to say to people who have been on their land for 300 years. In America, for the rich, it has become quite popular to put their houses up high on stilts. People who are not rich have to rely on grants and their own ingenuity to raise their houses above projected flood levels. Or they don't they do it. To people who just moved in to area now prone to flooding, whether it was known or not, the advice is simple, move out. Its not worth the money to erect defenses against flooding when it would just as easy as not to live there. Its also probably not worth your life. The problem is who will pay good money for property that can suddenly get flooded.
The Great Lakes in the US are filling up with extra water from all the rain, which is bad news for all the development that has been done around the Great Lakes. There are vast areas of reclaimed swamp land around the lakes that will go back to being swamp land if the water levels in the great lakes continue to rise. The water levels in the lakes set the water tables in the lands around them. The deeper the lakes get, the closer to the surface the water under the land around the lakes gets. Big cities like Chicago are right in the middle of it.
At the same time, the Colorado River is running out of water. Its all down hill from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, no major rivers cut across from the midwest to the southwest, no easy connection. People in the midwest also don't want to send their extra water to California, the idea being California can get its own water from somewhere else.
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Divergent
If it can get worse, it will get worse.Global deterioration seems to be the general pattern.
Mitigating the dark impacts of our advanced technologies looks like mission impossible.
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Global deterioration seems to be the general pattern.
Mitigating the dark impacts of our advanced technologies looks like mission impossible."
Much work is being done in the area of rewilding, Yuval, so it may mean returning Dutch polders to marsh, and planting mixed forests instead of timber plantations, but this can be done and shows immediate benefits.
Take heart.
I definitely think that planting a very large number of trees will make a difference. Unfortunately it will take a few years for the benefits to show up. The trees shaded the Earth, get that shade back and at least the surface won't be soaking up the direct sunlight. Perhaps bushes and ground could used as a stop gap measure to shade the ground. This could also provide jobs for people who want a agricultural job instead of a digitalized job but don't want to harvest crops or cut down trees. The current tree harvesting industry could also help with this. After clearing land off they could immediately replant the bare land with plants and trees. The growth would have to be maintained to minimize fires and fix areas where growth is not doing so well. While large scale clear cutting is generally prohibited, you can see logging efforts where the area is divided up into big squares, with one square completely cleared, next to another square left alone. If logging was treated as strip mining, it might easier to get things replanted in the bare areas.
Ground covered with vegetation also helps with the water runoff situation. It might also trap carbon, though if the dead leaves and branches decompose that can add greenhouse gasses back into the air.
There are some geoengineering plans for shading the Earth, such as putting something in the upper reaches of the atmosphere to shade the Earth. Mimicking sulfur plumes from active volcanoes is one plan. The trees would be much easier and fit into the Natural World, instead of trying to shoe horn another thing into an already complicated situation. Trees and ground cover would also fit in with the Natural energy flowing in the hydrosphere, something geoengineered efforts might not do.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
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Tom Standage also believes people should be put to work on the land, but he stopped at food growing. Orchards are probably as good at shading as are needed.
The orchard scenario works when there are other plants, bushes growing in the shade. First, the tree leaves shade the ground and plants, reducing water requirements, and the mixture of plants and trees promotes all kinds of biodiversity. There are combinations of plants which grow better than other combinations. The better combinations are more likely natural combinations. Everything involved is promoting the growth of everything around it.
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"More than 100 people have died in several days of massive flooding and devastating landslides that swept away roads and houses in India and Nepal, officials have said, with scores more missing.
In Uttarakhand in northern India, officials said that 46 people had died in recent days with 11 missing. In Kerala in the south, officials said the death toll had risen to 39.
At least 30 of those in Uttarakhand were killed in seven separate incidents in the Nainital region early yesterday after cloudbursts - an ultra-intense deluge of rain - triggered a series of landslides and destroyed several structures.
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"In Nepal, 31 people have died and 43 others are missing following floods and landslides triggered by heavy post-monsoon rainfalls across the country.
Landslides are a regular danger in the Himalayan region, but experts say they are becoming more common as rains become increasingly erratic and glaciers melt.
Experts also blame construction work on hydroelectric dams and deforestation.
In February, a flash flood hurtled down a remote valley in Uttarakhand, killing around 200 people. At least 5,700 people perished there in 2013.
Forecasters have also warned of more downpours in the coming days in Kerala.
Many dams in the state were nearing the danger mark and authorities were evacuating thousands to safer locations as major rivers overflowed.
India's weather office said heavy rains will again lash the state over the next two days."
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2021/10...
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"Nearly 200 people have died in floods and landslides in India and Nepal, officials said, with whole families buried in their homes and two young girls swept away as forecasters warned of yet more heavy rain.
Experts said they were victims of the ever-more unpredictable and extreme weather that hit South Asia in recent years caused by climate change and exacerbated by deforestation, damming and excessive development.
Nepal recorded the sharpest rise in casualties, with officials saying that 88 people have died, among them a family of six including three children whose house was obliterated by a sudden avalanche of soil and debris.
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"State Disaster Secretary SA Murugeshan said that the death toll may rise further, with a number of people still missing including 20 tourists who went trekking on a glacier.
Five people were killed in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, including two girls aged eight and 10 from the same family swept away as heavy rains pounded the hills of Darjeeling and other districts.
"Mud, rocks and water tumbling down the hills of Darjeeling damaged nearly 400 houses and several thousand people were evacuated away from the swollen rivers on the foothills," disaster management minister Javed Amhed Khan said.
"Several hundred tourists are stranded in the hill resort of Darjeeling," he said.
The Met office issued a red alert for the state, warning that extremely heavy rainfall would continue in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Alipurdur today."
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2021/10...
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https://www.rte.ie/news/us/2021/1025/...
"A powerful storm has drenched wildfire-scarred northern California, triggering mudslides and flooding, while heavy winds toppled utility poles and downed trees in what meteorologists called a "bomb cyclone".
Up to 25cm of rain were expected to fall over the west coast, said meteorologist Marc Chenard of the Weather Prediction Center at the National Weather Service.
"It's an atmospheric river already moving through northern California," he added, describing the storm as a "bomb cyclone," an intense weather event when the barometric pressure drops quickly.
The storm follows the busiest wildfire season in California history and heightens threats of flash flooding.
Much of the region is in severe, extreme or exceptional drought, as classified by the US Drought Monitor.
"Burn scars, that's the area where the water tends to runoff quicker, so that's where the biggest flash-flood risks are," Mr Chenard said.
"Warnings are of life-threatening flash flooding in and around the burn scars."
Multiple mudslides were already reported in some of the 230,670 hectares blackened by the Dixie Fire in the Sierra Nevada mountains northeast of San Francisco, the second-largest wildfire recorded in state history, he said."
A New Jersey shore line condo complex, composed of 7 buildings with 52 units, is being put on stilts at a cost of 3 million dollars. Residents will have to live somewhere else for a year. Some of the units are secondary homes used for recreational purposes. A federal grant is paying for the work. The units are located in an area that floods out regularly without bad weather. The last day the residents could be there the parking lot was flooded.There are 19,000 known buildings in the New Jersey shoreline that need to be put on stilts. The other choice is to move them. These condo units are only 2 stories tall so they can be put on stilts. While this works for buildings buildings a couple of stories tall, it becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to raise taller buildings.
This comes from all the data collected after several years of flooding. At first it was just the coastal flooding from severe storm surges, then nuisance flooding from higher than average high tides started adding to the frequency of flooding occurrences, and that has always been limited to the coastal areas. Now the flooding can happen far inland in areas that simply have water flowing through them.
None of the new inland areas are on the list of buildings that need to be put on stilts to be flood proof. One can only wonder how many more buildings will be added to the list of buildings that need stilts.
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Officials said downpours in British Columbia this week trapped motorists in mudslides that left at least one dead and four missing, forced thousands of residents to flee their homes, and cut off Vancouver and its port.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in Washington ahead of meeting with his US and Mexican counterparts, said the heavy rains caused "historical and terrible flooding that has disrupted the lives and taken lives of people across BC".
...
"British Columbia Premier John Horgan declared a state of emergency and imposed a travel ban, telling reporters "catastrophic" rains, winds and flooding "have devastated entire communities of our province".
"We expect to confirm even more fatalities in the coming days," he added.
This week's extreme weather comes after British Columbia suffered record-high summer temperatures that killed more than 500 people, as well as wildfires that destroyed a town.
"These events are increasing in regularity because of the effects of human-caused climate change," Mr Horgan commented
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"Motorist Kathie Rennie told public broadcaster CBC she witnessed "the whole side of the mountain coming down and taking out these cars... everything just being swept away. Just complete panic."
Canadian police, Staff Sergeant Janelle Shoihet said late yesterday, "have received a fourth missing person report related to the Lillooet mudslide".
As the season's first snow flurries started falling over inland towns covered in mud and partially inundated, residents scrambled for food, heat and water."
https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/1118/126...
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"Emergency crews are still trying to reach 18,000 people left stranded after floods and mudslides destroyed roads, houses and bridges in British Columbia, in what could be the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history.
Receding floodwaters helped rescue efforts, but the downpour blocked off entire towns in the Pacific Coast province and cut access to the country's largest port in Vancouver, disrupting already strained global supply chains.
Premier John Horgan declared a state of emergency and said the death toll would rise from the one confirmed fatality. Police say four more people are missing.
Many of the affected towns are in mountainous areas to the east and northeast of Vancouver with limited access.
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"In Ottawa, the federal minister for emergency preparedness, Bill Blair, said river flows were beginning to drop as the rain lightened.
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"The flooding also hit the US state of Washington, as President Joe Biden noted before a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
"We've been good friends for a while... We're both keeping our minds close to the families affected by the storms, flooding in the British Columbia area and the Pacific Northwest," he said in the Oval Office.
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"At one point, the city of Abbotsford, east of Vancouver, feared the waters would overwhelm the pumping station and force the evacuation of all 160,000 residents.
Mayor Henry Braun said there had been no change in the status of the station and water was receding "at a pretty good clip" in some parts.
"We continue to move toward the recovery phase of this emergency," he said, noting more heavy rain was forecast for next week."
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2021/11...
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"By analyzing satellite imagery and rainfall data, researchers were able to establish a clear pattern between the strength of the monsoon season and the amount of landsliding over a 30-year period between 1988 and 2018.
This revealed that extreme "cloud outburst" storms in 1993 and 2002 led to around four times as many landslides as would be expected in an average monsoon season.
Similarly, landscape damage caused by the April 2015 Gorkha earthquake was found to have caused around six times as many rainfall-triggered landslides during the 2015 monsoon season as would be expected. This landscape damage also caused an increase in the expected numbers of landslides in the 2016 monsoon season, with conditions returning to nearer the average by 2017."
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-earthqu...
More information: 30-year record of Himalaya mass-wasting reveals landscape perturbations by extreme events, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26964-8
Journal information: Nature Communications
Provided by University of Plymouth
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Photos in this article from RTE.
https://www.rte.ie/news/galleries/202...
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https://www.rte.ie/news/weather/2021/...
"Further inland, the flooding caused a landslide in the Pyrenees village of Itxassou, with one resident, who gave his name as Jean-Claude, said his home was swamped in 40 centimetres of water - for the second time in seven years.
"In 2014, they said it was once-in-a-century flooding, and now it's already happening again," the 37-year-old said."
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We've been seeing this pattern in many other places.
https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/1227/126...
""I don't remember something of this dimension in Bahia's recent history.
"The number of homes, streets and towns completely under water is truly terrifying."
Amid incessant torrents of rain, Bahia firefighters confirmed the death of a 60-year-old man who drowned in a river in the south of the state on Sunday.
A total of 19,580 have been displaced and another 16,001 forced to seek shelter which brought the number of people driven from their homes to 35,000, the Bahia civil protection agency Sudec said."
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Here, we see a road and bridge collapse.
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2021/...
"Minister Patrick O'Donovan travelled to Wexford today to view the damage and meet with council officials.
He said: "My heart goes out to those communities, families, and businesses that have been subjected to the widespread and devastating flooding across Wexford County this Christmas, including in and around Enniscorthy, but also in other communities such as Bridgetown, resulting from in excess of 90mm of rainfall falling over the county in less than 24 hours.
"The Office of Public Works and Wexford County Council have worked closely over many years to develop a robust flood relief scheme for Enniscorthy.
"When complete, this scheme will protect over 230 properties, including in areas of the town that have been flooded over this Christmas, at a budgeted project cost of over €50m."
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https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2022/02...
"The death toll from torrential rains that triggered flash floods and landslides in the scenic Brazilian city of Petropolis has risen to 152, authorities have said.
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"Tuesday's was the latest in a series of deadly storms to hit Brazil, which experts say are made worse by climate change.
In the past three months, more than 200 people have died in severe rainstorms, mainly in the southeastern state of Sao Paulo and the northeastern state of Bahia, as well as Petropolis.
he latest storm turned streets in Petropolis into violent rivers that swept away trees, cars and buses, and triggered deadly landslides in poor hillside neighborhoods that ring the city of 300,000 people.
Petropolis sits about 60 kilometres north of Rio de Janeiro.
The city has so far recovered more than 300 cars washed away in the floods that were "strewn around the city, blocking streets and sidewalks or dumped in rivers," the mayor's office said.
The storm dumped a month's worth of rain in several hours on Petropolis, a picturesque tourist town that was the 19th-century summer capital of the Brazilian empire."
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"Homes, roads and underground stations in London have been flooded while two hospitals in the city asked patients to stay away after thunderstorms battered the south of England.
The Environment Agency has six flood warnings in place across the country's southeast, while there are 19 alerts for potential flooding active throughout England and Wales.
The wettest part of the country was St James's Park in London, where 41.6mm of rain fell.
Residents in northeast London used buckets, brooms and wooden boards to create makeshift flood defences for their homes, while water gushing from an Underground station was caught on video."
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"Londoner Eddie Elliott, 28, said the flooding was the worst he had ever seen it, after he cycled past Queenstown Road station where the road had been "totally shut down".
He said: "Having been born and raised in London, I have never seen anything quite like it.
"It stands out as the worst I've experienced personally ... totally shut down the whole road with buses stood broken down in the water.""
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2021/07...
Other areas of England have been getting spot showers of hail, some hailstones as large as golfballs.