The big picture for today shows a broad swathe of the North Western Hemisphere. Here in Europe we have rainclouds over most of Western Europe now. And more wet weather heading in from the West.
In the East the monsoon is still strengthening and we have #ArabianStorms yet again.
This morning we had a lovely clear view of the #HornOfAfrica from space courtesy of @NASA. The big cloud mass bottom right is mostly over Kenya.
This zoomed in version shows Ethiopia reunited following its 1st ever free and fair elections, which appear to have gone extremely well.
As nightfall approaches we can see here that it was another big day for Arabian Storms. And the more ambitious forecasts for rain there from the CMC model are continuing to prove to be the most reliable.
And here zooming out a bit we can see that it was a strong day for the monsoon across Africa. Forecasts show rains continuing to push north over the 15 degrees north line into the Sahara Desert in coming days.
Today's North Africa 10-Day rainfall forecasts for June 22nd. While the 21st is true solstice the day lengths will remain roughly the same for another six days.
48-Hour North Africa/Sahara rainfall forecasts from the same four models.
And finally a16-day GFS forecast as well as the 12-day KMA forecast, providing a longer view forward (including for Ethiopia).
The models are now mostly in agreement about significant #DesertRain in Northern Mali in the coming fortnight.
Here are some more visuals showing the source of the airborn moisture which arrives in Eastern Africa over the Arabian Sea. Here we see the Indian Monsoon having a spectacular day.
This image is from immediately south of the image above and shows storms forming over the eastern coastlines and seas west of South East Asia, specifically Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
And finally here we can see those rain-bearing winds coming ashore on the Horn of Africa here we see Kenya and Somalia.
It is impossible to tell how strong the West African Monsoon will get but this image shows you how much water there is over the full weather system. Water is flowing in a clockwise direction starting in India and then moving up and across the Atlantic and then through Europe.
This image is from 18.15hours this evening as night is falling and shows the clouds over the #EthiopiaHighlands, #ArabianStorms along the Red Sea, as well as rain clouds over the west of Sudan.
We also had some clouds over Israel today. While Israel has had a very dry June so far over the past week there has been a little rain in Jerusalem. As you can see here the average rainfall in Jerusalem in June, as in Mecca, is zero. [Src: 02ws.co.il/station.php?se…]
48 Hour June 22nd (today and tomorrow), accumulated rain forecasts for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, CMC & KMA weather models.
I attended the Bonn climate talks. They were very disappointing to everyone. The elephant in the room was (of course) the U.S. decision to withdraw from the talks altogether.
Unfortunately.. perhaps intentionally in advance of the continuation of climate talks regardless of #US_Disintigration the talks were also very sparsely attended particularly by activists and NGOs. The reason for this was @elonmusk destroying @-USAID.
@elonmusk As you can see the USAID Twitter account is now dead - deleted which is an appalling act of vandalism executed by Elon and his tech-bro team of teenagers.
This article is deeply depressing. For my part at Scoop.co.nz it is clear to me that:
1. The Govt has a deliberate strategy - probably not official but nevertheless operative to destroy NZ media. 2. This is not going to change any time soon. thespinoff.co.nz/politics/02-07…
& Sadly from what I discerned last year the @nzlabour opposition is both apathetic and indifferent to the plight of media. Also the @NZGreens. And have always been so for as long as I can remember.
This is extremely disappointing
@nzlabour @NZGreens I will be returning to NZ in August to ensure continues to function in these very difficult times for NZ media. We have faced numerous big challenges recently and thank our supporters and readers for their support.Scoop.co.nz
Ok so this is a bit weird, but in a kinda chill way so do bare with me and and I will be happy to answer questions afterwards. It’s about a castle on a virtual island in a massive online role playing game called Evony and it involves a possible but speculative discussion about @elonmusk and @X.
All will be revealed but first a picture or four actually from the game. More will come.
Ok. So here’s what I think is going on in a nutshell. I think elonmusk has invested in a MMORPG: a “Massive Multimedia Online Role Playing Game” which is a bit of a mouthful, called EVONY.
I liked its Twitter ads and finally clicked. It’s huge. Someone else can do the business story here which I am sure is interesting too.
But the this bit is weird.
The mysterious knight on the red horse arrived this morning beside my castle and he had some treasure.
I hadn’t a clue who it was so I grabbed the treasure and tried to kill the horse and rider as that’s what you do. But we got smashed badly.
This interview with working class Uk financial markets savant Gary Stevenson - who has just published an autobiography - is seriously terrifying. He now has a @YouTube channel it seems and I’ll post a link shortly.
James O'Brien meets Gary Stevenson | LBC via @YouTube
His prognosis for the collapse of social democratic nation state finances due to the very sharp rise in income distribution inequality in the UK is horrific.
The consequences of unfettered transfers of money over decades due to neoliberal economics initially and more recently quantitative easing driven transfers of wealth from the middle class to the top 5% of the population is the cause of his concern.
It’s very hard to imagine what can be done politically to rebalance this.
Thomas Piketty’s thesis which among other things warned about all of this based on long term historical analysis of wealth inequality appears to be colliding with Western Civilisation in a manner that threatens the very foundations of that civilisation.
Gary’s YouTube channel which addresses all this is here.
Well this was actually pretty good… very little crazy right wing stuff - none in fact - some light criticism of wokeness and a consensus that Hitler was a socialist or communist dictator not a rightwing liberal fascist - mercifully no discussion of Greenland Panama or Canada
The bit at the end was actually quite nice and agreement about ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Importantly and probably deliberately there was very little to zero overt electioneering - a little bit of criticism of Weidel’s Spitzencandidat competition from Weidle but nothing extreme.
So nothing imo that could be seen as being election interference IMO - nor any reason for the DSA to be concerned or to get involved.
I didn’t even hear any particularly overt endorsement that went beyond that you might hear in passing in a podcast interview.
It ended with a discussion of mars - Elon’s favourite subject of conversation - which was quite interesting including a reference to the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy series and Douglas Adams.
From Weidel’s point of view though there was a lot of positive moderate exposure of her party and probably around 200k + listeners. Which may give her a bounce in the polls.
Also the final segment talking about space was quite delightful and genuine and portrayed the AFD Leader in a positive light.
And I’d say the two of them have both found a new friend.