Green Group discussion
Climate Change
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Flooding
Mod
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/cl...
At the same time, Bangladesh next door to India (to the northeast) is sitting on a delta and recently a third of the nation was under water. (River deltas are fertile land but flat.) This populous nation is likely to form a major influx of climate refugees, so India is building defences against them already.
When I was growing up, Bangladesh regularly had drought-caused famines and we were all 'required' by the nuns to donate our pocket money.
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At this time of year the ground would be baked hard, so unable to absorb water. Helicopters have been helping to evacuate 1600 people.
https://www.independent.ie/world-news...
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https://www.independent.ie/videos/wor...
The weather has gone from a mere annoyance to a force capable of radically changing daily life. The TV weather reports now include warnings, today's storms might be hazardous to your health.People are thinking 500 year weather events are happening more often when in reality they are the same old day to day storms only bigger than they used to be from the extra global heat energy and moisture provided by melting ice. The melting process does use up some of the extra heat, but as the ice disappears, that insulating factor will also disappear.
The real problem will be when 500 and 1000 year storms do show up, as how big they will be is anybody's guess at this point in time.
Over the past week several locations in eastern US coastal region are reporting rainfalls at the rate of 4 or 5 inches an hour. While not lasting long, or covering wide areas, where it did hit, it did make for instant flooding. The common response was "never seen anything like this before." Unfortunately it has nothing to do with historical records.The incessant development of shopping plazas, wide road networks, building new communities while letting older communities run down, has created immense virtual flood plains composed of anything that adds to the runoff streams that can appear in an hour or less. Add in all the dysfunctional wildlands, which adds more to the instant run off rivers, and what is considered normal rainfall for today's weather patterns creates micro flood zones that disappear as fast as they are created. The destruction left behind is long lasting. Places that flood insurance was never considered to be an option are now likely to be blocked from being covered.
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https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
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Surface Urban Density or SUDS is what we called that in hydrology class. You are right that the manmade hard surfaces create flash flooding. I always advise my clients not to get their garden paved, especially if it slopes down to the house....
Here is a document from UK which is a bit technical, as follows, but if you tease out the sense of each part you can see they are talking about trees and shrubs, green roofs, permeable and earth surfaces, rain barrels and rainwater storage, plus open to air stream and river corridors.
"The approach is based on the integrated planning implementation of street ‘greening’, with optimisation of existing biofiltration SUDS solutions, together with green roofs, downspout disconnection and sub-catchment riparian corridors to achieve a minimum 25–30% canopy cover level."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...
Worst flooding in 100 years in South India. It started 9 days ago. Rain should be subsiding now.https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/hu...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/wo...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...
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Now a project reimburses homeowners who plant rain-absorbing gardens, particularly using native plants.
As we know, gardens have many ecological benefits beyond absorbing rain, so this seems like a win-win.
http://nationswell.com/urban-conserva...
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"A different type of evacuation took place on Oahu.
Officials with Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources transferred about 2,000 rare Hawaiian snails from a mountain marsh to offices in Honolulu.
Some of the snails are literally the last of their kind."
https://www.independent.ie/world-news...
Storm activity is changing, causing storms to linger, creating greater opportunities for more rainfall. When the extra moisture in the atmosphere doesn't come out in one place, it will come out somewhere else.Suggested correlation between atmospheric events in Atlantic and Pacific oceans. If one gets less rain and stormy weather the other will get stormier weather.
The hurricane season in the Atlantic zone has been relatively quiet and parameters for those events are lower than normal. The same parameters are twice the normal values in the Pacific, where the storm activity has been greater than normal.
For unknown reasons, the Pacific waters are warmer than normal, creating unstable weather patterns and some of the extra heat is being transferred to the Arctic.
The east coast has been spared hurricanes but has seen a marked increase in rainfall activity during the past year. This has distributed what is normally centralized hurricane caused damage over a much wider area, in a more spread out fashion, causing severe damage in areas far apart from each other.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/alien-...
https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-chan...
Toxic water contamination from 3 waste water pump stations over run by flood waters.https://www.wunderground.com/news/saf...
Slow motion flooding: Jakarta, the fastest-sinking city in the worldhttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-4...
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Good way to look at it, thanks.
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The after effects are getting bigger than the initial events. In Puerto Rico where it is loss of life, or Indonesia where the rivers dam up with plastic debris, the situations will force a change in the way we respond.The red cross is going to have to hand out mini portable generators and phones that will create their own networks along with food and water if they want to stay relevant.
We are going to need an international plastic depository to handle the increasing loads as the plastic continues to wash free from increased rainfall on the land it is left on. It naturally floats, it doesn't conveniently wash under the carpet.
Medical personnel are going to have to arrive in mass, do everything that needs to be done at once, then leave, so they aren't still dribbling into areas a year later. Health issues can't be put on a schedule that doesn't take life into account. It can be done for rebuilding carports but some things can't wait.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/death-toll-...
The Laos flooding reached into surrounding countries. From the lack of news, the after effects either didn't happen, got taken care of, or its not considered newsworthy.
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Laos and Cambodia as of August 20. Quite a bit of the public infrastructure was damaged in the flooded areas and also downstream. It is still raining off and on in the affected areas.https://reliefweb.int/disaster/ff-201...
A more complete description is found on the UN website. Where things are working there is progress being made. There is still incomplete access to all areas, some are only by helicopter. In areas where there is no communication the situation is not considered good.
So far only 5 or 6 million dollars has been requested for infrastructure repair. The solution seems to be to set up camps with clean water and sanitation facilities. Shelters set up on the sides of functional roads are prone to minor flooding every time it rains from the water running off the roads.
http://www.la.one.un.org/
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"On 7 August, the Humanitarian Country Team launched a Disaster Response Plan to provide life-saving assistance to 13,100 people affected by the flash floods and re-establish their basic livelihoods. The Plan asks for US$5.6 million in humanitarian relief and recovery support across eight clusters: Education, Food Security and Nutrition, Health, Protection, including Child Protection and Gender-Based Violence, Shelter, including camp management, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Early Recovery and Coordination."
In any disaster zone, women are far more likely to be assaulted, whether Asia or New Orleans. In some countries, like India, women may have little or no societal protection.
While the requests for aid seem comparatively modest, in Asia a little money goes a long way. Wages are low and food basic. The Irish Red Cross was criticised some years ago for a policy to buy Irish made blankets and bring them to a place requiring relief, when they could perhaps have spent a tenth as much on blankets in the stricken country.
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I found a graphic of the UN Sustainable Development Goals on their Laos page, so I went to get an all-English version. Which is here.
http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/h...
But this does not have the 18th goal on the Laos page.
For comparison:
http://www.la.one.un.org/sdgs
The 18th goal there is 'a life free from uxo' which is illustrated by an armed person stalking a chicken. So no warfare or armed intimidation of civilians I gather.
This shows that you need to look at a few sites for even something standard like the UN goals.
Having checked what this would actually mean for Laos I found this definitely scary article. UXO there means unexploded ordnance, and the country is still cluttered with it. Imagine this on top of the flash floods and dam breaches.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world...
Another dam has problems with heavy rainfall in Asia. The spillway on a dam in Myanmar broke allowing uncontrolled overflow, damaging homes and farmlands, 63,000 people affected. Few details. Heavy monsoon rains a few weeks ago in Myanmar caused damage, causing 150,000 people to flee their homes. That rain damaged the major roadway between the two biggest cities. The monsoon season runs from June until November. Residents say the rainfalls are heavier than normal.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/201...
Northeast Japan experiences local flooding, mudslides, from heavy rainfall. Second time for this area in two weeks. Transportation systems disrupted. Rain is expected to continue another day. Next week, super typhoon Jebi could be affecting parts of Japan.https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/201...
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The storm activity has been more severe in the Pacific thus year. It is warmer than it should be for the known heat activity drivers. Meanwhile the Atlantic storms are not appearing. There is more dust than normal crossing the Atlantic from Africa which is dampening storm development. Everything in the dust makes the trip across the ocean including microbes and whatever chemical pollutants are in it. The dust is bad for coral trying to grow in the Caribbean. New theories say that the increased moisture in the sky has to come down somewhere as rain, which means if it's not raining in Atlantic it has to rain in the Pacific.https://abc13.com/weather/the-dust-is...
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Excellent mystery about dust from Africa arriving in Florida, as you say, with all the rubbish and dung burnt among it.
This dust does however fertilise the Amazon rainforest.
Typhoon Jebi damages Japan's airport that was built on an artificial island. The bridge to airport is closed due to damage from a ship that was knocked into it and underground parts of the airport are flooded. The airport, one of Japan's largest, has been closed until further notice.https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/ty...
A lesson that will not be learned by anyone because there is nothing that can be done about it. The buildings are already built, they can't be rebuilt. Nobody is going to rebuild your house or your apartment building.
The building can't continue in areas prone to flooding but that will continue as long as people are convinced it is profitable to do so. If people thought it wasn't profitable the building would cease overnight. Someday people will find out that using profit and loss to chart a course of action is based on luck and nothing else when dealing with the weather. A prudent course of action is the best bet.
The Japanese airport claimed it could withstand a tsunami, but it couldn't withstand a typhoon that was the most powerful in 25 years. That's not a long time in the weather world. It's practically nothing. In 1959 a typhoon hit Japan with landfall winds of 160 miles per hour. The airport's tsunami preparation was based on the the idea that the airport, built in the ocean on an artificial island would not be submerged in the event of a tsunami.
It was claimed the typhoon was stronger than expected. Again, the record for that was only 25 years ago. The winds when it made landfall were around 100 miles per hour. There is a lot of talk of how powerful it was but very little information about how strong it actually was when it made landfall. It took a lot of searching to find the numbers. Lots of numbers quoted when it was out in the ocean. Much higher numbers. Instead it gets described as the most powerful typhoon in 25 years when it experiences landfall.
This wasn't even the most powerful storm on record, as many headlines are proclaiming after each major event record shattering event that seems to be happening more and more often. Could today's hurricanes and typhoons with the same wind speeds as storms of the past be more powerful because they are pushing more water around?
So much of the global infrastructure needs to be rebuilt or moved. Neither of those options is going to happen.
From now on where and what we build needs to be reconsidered in a different light, one that is not based on the optimism that something isn't going to happen only because it wasn't never considered in the planning. Looking back only 25 years is a recipe for disaster. The size of the weather events is naturally increasing on a daily basis from the extra water in the atmosphere. It's like some one keeps putting extra money in your bank account. There is going to be more to spend and ironically you have no control over it.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ2...
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Heavy rainfall, slow-moving clouds, storm surges and already saturated ground are combining to create flood conditions.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13...
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https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-world...
A compliation, with running updates, of Florence hitting the Carolinas. Look especially for the eye wall seen from inside the eye, plus record flood height already even at ebbing tide, and a scary demo by a meterologist of how the different levels of flood would look on your street. In the next office, the weather presenter was evacuated live on air.
Plus of course the obligatory look at the hurricane from the ISS.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/hurricane...
Last night I heard even Washington DC was under emergency alert.
The storm is moving 2 miles per hour. While there might be a maximum wind speed a hurricane can have, there also might be no limit as to how much water the storm can move from one place to another."Meteorologist Ryan Maue of weathermodels.com calculated that Florence could dump a staggering 18 trillion gallons (68 trillion liters) of rain over a week on North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Maryland. That's enough to fill the Chesapeake Bay, or cover the entire state of Texas with nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters) of water."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nearly-sta...
There are 41 superfund toxic sites in the projected flood areas. There are also a large number of agricultural operations that pen up the waste products. Large quantities of coal ash from past energy operations are also stored in facilities that are not protected from flood waters. A lot of the towns in North Carolina have sewage treatment operations that empty into rivers, none of them empty into the ocean directly.
Even if the hurricane doesn't go directly over these locations, the water will collect from the entire region, emptying into rivers that go by a lot of these places.
https://apnews.com/71fa50739ae84e59a7...
Philippines death toll rises as Typhoon Mangkhut passes Hong Kong on its way towards China.The typhoon is considered to be the strongest to hit the Philippines this year. Yangjiang, on China's south coast is not often hit by major typhoons. The city of 2.4 million people are bracing for a direct hit.
On average 20 typhoons hit the Philippine islands every year, leaving millions of people in poverty.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/philippine...
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We were told that Mangkhut is the most powerful storm on the planet this year.
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https://earther.gizmodo.com/aerial-ph...
Floods use to redistribute soil and nutrients for the land, now they redistribute the various pollutants that make our lives possible so that every one gets a taste of it.
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https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2018/...
Mostly wind so far but floods could well follow.
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https://earther.gizmodo.com/1-7-milli...
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The reports show that causes of the growing problems seem to be known.
https://www.ecowatch.com/nigeria-heav...
North Carolina is still experiencing flooding as the waters recede from inland areas. They have not repaired all the damage done from flooding and storms in 2015. It is highly unlikely that North Carolina will get another 3 years to repair the damage from Florence. This type of cycle is common in areas of the world that have been recipients of storm flooding events on a yearly basis. Our lack of understanding of what other people have been going through on a regular basis is being reflected by our inability to understand what's at stake. Building in the wrong areas allows for repeat building instead of building structures that will remain intact for the duration.
The National Flood Insurance Program will repeatedly pay for the same house to be repaired instead of moving the people to a new location, an option they almost never use but people would prefer after multiple extensive floodings.
Lumberton, NC, a small that gets flooded out, has a leevee system built in the 1970s that has a big problem. The leevee system has a permanent opening in it for a railway line to travel under the highway instead of going over it. The water gets through underpass, even with sandbags piled up to block the water.
Supposedly half the world is going to be redeveloped. I have seen some pictures of zero carbon planning and development for the future but it doesn't seem to take into account that large developments need to be decentralized and spread out over areas of land that offer protection from the weather. I don't think we can continue to fight the weather to make our ideas work, we are not in a winning position.
A development plan that alternates equal amounts of open space with equal amounts of developed space might be more suitable. Leaving the lower areas open would be taking into account that that is where the water goes. The other option is mega developments with nothing around them for say ten or twenty miles. We are doing both methods at the same time in the same place which leaves no open space.
Then again, building on high elevations could have a setback if the wind doesn't stay confined within manageable parameters. Imagine if the jet stream came down to the surface from time to time. Does the global weather affect the elevation of the jet streams, might they go higher instead of lower or staying where they are? The most powerful jet streams are in the polar regions which are undergoing profound regional changes. Is there such a thing as wind flooding or wind droughts instead of flooding caused by wind and droughts caused by wind?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/florence-e...
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Mexico City has been badly affected, with over 2,000 people evacuated.
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/heav...
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-lat...
Film clip where a river burst its banks:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-lat...
In July 2011 tropical storm Arlene had brought a similar flooding.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-lat...
So it seems you are right Robert, these occurrences are becoming more frequent, powerful and affecting more people - in the same areas.
In the river breach, an official describes the area where houses are 2 metres deep in water, as a lagoon. Maybe it should be grassed over and left as a flood plain.
June 2018. Here is what Business Insider is saying:"---Thunderstorms are getting stronger and dumping more water on us as the atmosphere heats up.
---Conservative scientific models predict a 300% increase in heavy rainfall across the US by the end of this century.
---"Water bomb" storms that bring huge amounts of wind and water are becoming more frequent too, which means we could see more costly property damage."
By saying 300% is a conservative estimate this clearly shows that business is becoming very aware of the weather as a cost factor in doing business. Water bomb is an appropriate description.
We won't have to wait till the end of the century to see such increases, Florence, only one of several storms this year, has confirmed this fact. Florence was not a one time occurrence that won't be seen for another hundred years. All the storms labeled as biggest ever this year are not the exception, they are fast becoming the rule. Florence was a water pump of global proportions, not epic proportions. It moved the equivalent of Chesapeake Bay in a few days. Anything besides natural things in low lying areas can't take this type of rainfall every three years. Even less time between events is a complete disaster.
Damaging water events. Hail size is increasing, and falling more frequently causing greater damage. Storm surge volumes have measurably increased over the last few years.
The water hangs around for a period of time before disappearing, this makes the water component easy to measure.
The wind is another story. If it doesn't break anything it is hard to tell it was even there. Once the wind speed is over 57 mph it enters a different type of classification. Below that it is called wind. There is some discussion about what is happening to wind events over 57 mph.
Hurricanes have topped out at around 200 mph. Hurricanes that have wind speeds of 165 -175 mph out on the water have been making landfall at around 100 mph. If a new hurricane category is created, Category 6, it would be 175 - 196 mph.
There is some question as to whether hurricanes can have sustained wind speeds above 200 mph. The storm's physical structure may not support such high speeds. After Florence it doesn't matter if hurricanes can have sustained winds over 175 mph. Storms with lower wind speeds that stall out with access to ocean water have to the ability to wash everything off the land. The stall time and the closeness to the ocean ultimately marks the most impact of the storm. In North Carolina it's a week later and all the water that fell inland hasn't reached the shore yet.
As the size of the hurricane increases the inner core wind speeds can become very large, but it also looks like the bigger storms are prone to moving very slowly, with the forward motion stalling out.
The midwest has a history of flooding after very heavy sustained rainfall but the resulting water flow is pretty predictable as to where it will go. It follows the rivers. Rainfall from hurricanes are blanketing increasingly larger sized areas which causes flooding in areas that would never flood. After the storm has gone by the run off water seeks out the predictable lower laying areas.
Wind damage from rain storms might be limited by the factors that have caused the storms to become so big in the first place. In rain storms the severe wind source is deceptive. It starts out as cold air flowing downward from up in the sky. When the downward flowing air reaches the ground it then travels parallel to the ground. This is called straight line winds and the damage from these winds can easily be confused with a tornado. When the straight line wind is 58 mph or greater it is called a derencho. This is actually a line of wind parallel to the front of the oncoming storm that can be hundreds of miles long. They are not common nor are they increasing in frequency like everything else. There are various explanations why, but it is generally thought the warmer temperatures and higher atmospheric moisture content don't contribute to the formation of these winds. The patterns of the cold air falling are usually rectangular in length and shaped like a bow with the fastest wind at the center of the bow. Embedded near the storm front there can also be much smaller circular patterns trailing the main front.
What has been increasing is the damage caused by the winds at the front of the rain storm. The winds are typically less than 58 mph so they don't get labeled. But as the size of the rain storms have been increasing the wind at the front of the storms have been increasing, growing in strength from a mild 10 to 20 mph to 35 to 50 mph on a regular basis. This is probably why the number of tree branches coming down has increased during normal rain storms. They will continue to come down until all the weaker branches have been weeded out as well as the poorly rooted trees. This is happening because the wind that naturally trims the trees has increased in speed. The trees will respond by growing stronger branches and more thin flexible branches.
https://weatherology.com/articles/160...
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDere...
POTTER: I honestly believe this is going to be the new normal. I mean, I don't know if it's going to be every other year, but I think it's going to be more frequent, and the storms are going to be more intense.https://www.npr.org/2018/09/22/650795...
Travel is still difficult in North Carolina and South Carolina, 500 roads are still closed, and new areas are being flooded while in others places the water recedes. Parts of interstates 40 and 95 that were under water are now open again. Fema is starting to move people into hotels. Initial damage estimates are 40 billion dollars.
https://www.cleveland.com/nation/inde...
Mod
This occurrence also mixes upper atmosphere air which has a different composition, with close to ground air.
This sounds like the feature in 'The Day After Tomorrow' where huge storm cells formed and drew down cold upper atmosphere air. I had not seen that described anywhere else - and I have seen the concept scoffed at, maybe because it was exaggerated for the film.
Many pollutants are aerosol-fine, and stay adrift up high for long periods. This dropping air will bring them down to surface level again.
The Day After Tomorrow
Mod
As a tree surgeon I look out for developing fissures in my clients' trees and warn them accordingly. I would suggest to reduce the spread and weight of the tree's limbs in order that the strain put on them would not cause a snap. Council trees do not get inspected as regularly as we'd like, budgets being stretched, and this defect might only have been visible from up in the tree, not the ground.
We didn't get much flooding, just the wind.
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I had to go watch that myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEUkJ...
https://www.irishexaminer.com/examvir...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...
Tremendously big and tremendously wet, he said before the storm hit. He likes his wet.
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You have to keep shifting through the numbers, no article ever seems to have everything in it. There were 6 trillion trees, now there are 3 trillion. Droughts in some areas are being traced back to declining tree numbers.
10 billion trees harvested, or die, or disappear every year. 5 billion new trees start growing every year. Does this mean that sustainable forestry is a myth until the entire tree population is restored to a functional level? It probably isn't 6 trillion and I don't know what date that number is from yet. You can figure that the 10 billion trees that disappear are probably bigger than smaller, although little trees are having a tough time. Something kills little oak trees in my yard after they have been growing a couple of years before they reach 2-3 feet. Probably something living in the dirt.
Then the 5 billion new trees each year, those have to be little trees and it takes a long time before they can do the work of big trees. The bigger rainfalls mean that the soil needs bigger anchors, trees, not plants to hold the soil in place.
In a twist on claiming a country is greener because of less industrial activity because of increased imports from other countries, countries claim to be practicing self sustaining forestry while importing wood from countries that can't afford to lose any more trees but continue to sell the wood for the profit it creates while clearing the land for new development, the dream of every country.