The Horn of Africa this morning @NASA worldview, got a great view and more pictures will be included in today's rainfall forecast thread for #Ethiopia#HoA and the #MiddleEast.
Today's forecasts follow.
Here's the first. A view mostly of #Sudan, capturing both the #WhiteNile and #BlueNile as well as part of the Nile below Sudan on its way to Egypt. On the right hand side Lake Tana can be seen through the clouds.
If you look very carefully you may be able to see #GERD.
This view which captures the area below that in the previous image has borders on it to make it easier to see where the abundant green in the firsy image in this thread is located. The rains of the past few weeks appear to be doing God's work in the region.
Here you see an animated forecast of the precipitable water in this years extremely active #WestAfricanMonsoon . It shows the next 10 days.
This images shows a 10 day forecast of rain across North Africa from the same CMC model.
While it is unusual to see so much rain forecast in the Sahara there are many things which appear to be unusual about the weather we are experiencing this year across the entire hemisphere.
Finally before the forecasts here is an animation from 10am to 1pm today of winds & storms across the #HornOfAfrica and the Southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.
These winds have been causing chaos in #Oman and helping bring welcome rains to the #UAE.
May 5th, 10-day accumulated rain forecasts, for Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa from the @ECMWF , GFS and KMA weather models.
May 5th, 3-day accumulated rain forecasts, to Midnight Saturday, for Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, again from the @ECMWF , GFS and KMA weather models.
Last night the winds shown in the earlier animation above caused spectacular #ArabianStorms in #Oman some of which caused a lot of damage and flooding.
You can follow @Arab_Storms for eyewitness reports.
And here are today's May 4th, 3 day accumulated rain forecasts (to Saturday at Midnight), for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, ECMWF, CMC & KMA weather models.
Also last night, there was for I think the fourth time (but please correct me if I am wrong) rain in the Holy City of Mecca on the #HolyKaaba, a relic of the shared ancestor in faith of all the Abrahamic religions, Abraham of Ur.
And the final forecast for tonight is also for the #MiddleEast and includes forecasts from the two ultra-long range computer model forecasts, NOAA's 16-Day GFS (of which the GEFS is the Ensemble version - averaging out many model runs) and Korea's 12 day KMA model.
And to end today's rainfall forecast thread here is another Satellite picture of the the source of the Nile - Lake Victoria in Uganda.
And I would like to make a shout out to a friend who is presently visiting there. @anacascao.
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If you listen/watch you will doubtless come to the conclusion that nobody knows for sure:
1. What exactly has happened in Syria, who backed who…
2. nor what the end game in this HTS launched renewed Civil War in Syria will look like.
3. But there are a lot of interesting theories.
Domino effect? Assad's allies stretched thin as Syrian rebels pounce • F... youtu.be/ZZN1nek4aTg?si… via @YouTube
From my perspective a useful rubric to analyse this is who benefits from this.
The penultimate French speaker - before the American who closed (presumably with a conventional foggy bottom perspective - I.E pro Israel when asked by Picard who is responsible gave I think the clearest answer.
“Ask the Americans” then pointed out that this development comes hot on top of the ceasefire in Lebanon which is far from secure.
The debate is exactly that and all speakers are experts in different aspects of the Syrian Question and the players. Which include.
- the rebel group whose lightning speed taking of Aleppo HTS/formerly Al Nusra over the last 4 days initiated this new crisis currently in the north of Syria but which HTS and other anti Assad forces in Syria appear to be intent on heading to Damascus to displace Assad.
Note: As you can see here (map) Damascus is just north of due east of the Israel-Lebanon border south east of Beirut & very close to Israel. (Check out the 1967 war & Angolan Heights to find out why)
The war crimes attorney, French, based in Lyon, who lodged the first war crimes complaint against Netanyahu was Giles Devers.
He recently died.
The complaint was based on the #GreatMarchOfReturn IDF operations during which 223 Palestinians were shot
The protests:
30 March 2018 – 27 December 2019
(1 year, 8 months, 3 weeks and 6 days)
…. peaceful. Young people gathered on the border and threw stones at snipers on defensive mounds above the protest area. A varying number of protestors were shot each day. including medics and members of the media.
The protests reached their zenith when Trump was present in Jerusalem for the opening of a U.S. embassy there during his first term as President.
Forensic evidence was collected for the prosecution case by a team from Gaza’s Ministry of Health - and supervised by my colleague, Kiwi Journalist Julie Webb Pullman.
And this evidence and formed the substance of the first complaint laid by Advocat Giles Devers of “War Crimes” against Israel’s Govt and the IDF.
This is a must listen to @intifada podcast episode especially the first section off the top about the Lebanon ceasefire and the French pirouette wrt the meaning of the Rome statute. I.E declaring that it does not apply to Israel at least with respect to France’s obligation to Arrest Netanyahu being not the same as France’s obligation to arrest Vladimir Putin over war crimes in Ukraine.
That said the willingness of France to deploy boots on the ground into a theatre in which it suffered casualties in 1982 to a terror bombing does perhaps provide a small counter balance.
The analysis suggests that the concession by France was a Netanyahu condition for The ceasefire. Which is messy for sure and was - “euphemistically perhaps” - simultaneously brave and practical in achieving the ceasefire.
Knowing the propensity for people to go off the deep end with respect to hypocrisy, at sometimes. It can also be the right thing to do and in this occasion it arguably is.
It’s certainly spectacularly less hypocritical to the U.S. policy position here, in which it is effectively using the Israeli Genocide as a backdoor stalking horse to try to destroy the ICC and ICJ altogether. As this is its view long stated - American exceptionalism.
A wise head here in the media center just made a compelling counter argument to the practicality of the G77 and China walking away from the talks here.
And it’s essentially based in the recognition of rising geo-strategic entropy and the phenomena arising out of a lack any coherent global order. /1
The loud activist refrain here is “no deal is better than a bad deal.” But the question is what will the mean. in another conversation a person involved in finance talks just suggested that it’s looking very unlikely that there will be any agreement here simply because there is no strong leadership here. And in particular minimal representation here of strong G7 leadership. /2
By strong here I mean “financially strong.”
So the most likely outcome here now looks to almost certainly be no agreement on an NCQG and as a result it’s feeling rather gloomy now. /3
It’s a gray day here at #COP29Azerbaijan as the 29th Meeting of Nations to address what is now a #ClimateCrisis enters extra time, day one. THREAD.
Civil Society is preparing for a big day in the COP29 venue till the Closing Plenary is convened most likely fairly late Saturday. Here are letters sent to the largest Developing block of COP Nations G77+ China and several developed world nations last night.
This came after new texts were released on the Core remaining issues in this Climate Summit:
Finance - specifically the NCQG - the draft text contained the first number placed on the table 250 Billion, which is not even an inflation adjusted upgrade on the 100 Billion a year in finance agreed in Copenhagen in 2009.
The city is remarkably like Wellington weather wise swinging from day to day and occasionally lovely on a good day.
But the NCQG negotiations are still pretty much deadlocked on the most important issue here, Finance, with no numbers on the table yet. And talks still stuck on many of the same issues they were stuck on at the beginning.
I had an opportunity to speak the Egyptian Ambassador as I was leaving who is in a “Pair” appointed by the Presidency with the Australian Ambassador takes to try to get an agreement on the NCQG. He was optimistic about a realistic NCQG figure being eventually offered by Developed Nations to Developing Nations. But did not expect this to come until the very end.
And Negotiations will therefore continue today. This video was at the venue last night - Birds seem to have a commute past the venue to where they sleep.
Developed Nations want some nations that have developed since the process begun, Annex 2 Nations, to be part of the contributor base. The two most prominent of these China and Saudi Arabia say they are already contributing voluntarily and apparently not keen to be brought into the official NCQG base - and this remains an obstacle.
The Ambassador did not think their position on this will change.