Congratulations to Ethiopia and Ethiopians everywhere on today's completion of the 2nd filling of the #GERD. It has been a great honour to follow along during this moment.
In honour of the #GERD we will change up the order of today's bulletin and get right to the most important issue, rain over the #Abbay basin, which due to its great quantity and consistency made this possible over such a short time period.
But first a brief explanation, as when it comes to the GERD not all rainfall counts. The first image here shows the path of the #BlueNile / #Abbay from Lake Tana to Khartoum where it meets the White Nile and becomes "The Nile".
This map shows the major watersheds of the Nile. The #BlueNile is the most important & provides 59% of all Nile flow.It is also the most consistent. While there are three rivers flowing out of the basin, the other two are minor compared to the #Abbay.
As today is a day for history, it is also worth referencing the history of the dam which can be found here. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Eth…
The dam's construction began in 2011 under then Ethiopian PM Meles Zenawi, but it is an idea which goes back a lot longer. It's a long long story.
Purple areas are receiving on average a little under an inch of rain each day. The area of the basin inside Ethiopia is approximately 160,000 square kms.
On this basis I reckon rainfall over the area is somewhere around 3 BCM (billion m2) per day.
Which is definitely one of mother natures greatest miracles. And ideal for generating electricity. [Note: This is a process which does not consume any water.]
48 Hour forecasts (today and tomorrow) from the same three models. (= Aprox 0.6BCM in the #Abbay)
And today we have an additional 4-day forecast from the three models. (= approx 1.2BCM in the #Abbay)
These daily forecast bulletins address weather in an explanatory manner. For several ays we have been following an #ArabianMonsoonBurst which has seen very unusual weather over the Arabian Peninsula. This is ongoing. Here's a region wide picture from this morning.
Yesterday's bulletin is in the quoted thread for those who are interested >>
Today's story begins where last night's one finished. With a remarkable storm centered over the Saudi Red Sea Coast near Mecca. This animation finishes around midnight local time.
With this one following through the night till the morning.
Picking up from above we zoom out. And at the bottom we can see the monsoon rains picking up over the Ethiopian highlands as they do each day in the afternoon during the big rainy season a.k.a. the #EastAfricanMonsoon
Moving to the east across the Arabian sea (at the same time up to around 2pm EAT) we see the engine which is powering this. The Indian Monsoon, another miracle of nature.
And this view joins it all up. The flows of water between the regions are remarkably complex. Early in the Indian Monsoon this year we saw significant atmospheric water flow from Africa over Yemen and Oman to India. And if you look closely you can see that this process continues.
Here we see a rain trace view from @Meteoblue this afternoon showing its estimate of the rainfall from satellite data.
While this still image from this morning provides a clearer view of the water baring clouds, many of which disappear once the sun comes up. The best cloud views from satellite can be seen as the sun is rising or setting.
Now in case you are wondering there is a point to all this.
The unusual weather we are seeing is caused by climate change, models for which predict more rainfall in this region as the planet warms. We have been seeing this play out spectacularly all year.
Today my attention has moved even further east to the West Pacific where a particularly spectacular show of the power of tropical monsoons is unfolding.
But my primary focus is Africa, &specifically in the Sahara. In March I was looking for #DesertRain. I found it Algeria and got hooked. After shifting my attention to Ethiopia and discovered the #GERD. And as the weather continued to get weirder I have learned more about it.
^^ the plot above and this one are now my hunting ground looking for weather anomalies (they show atmospheric moisture) which as we discovered in the recent floods in Europe can give rise to catastrophes at massive scale.
They are forecasts, in this case for 5 days, and produced by super-computer global weather models. And they are I think the beginning of what will become a global weather warning system for impending disasters.
The first one shows PWAT anomaly, compared with a 1981-2010 climate data set. I.E. when water is in places that it is not supposed to be. And WRT to the Sahara right now it is exceptionally interesting.
This is the picture now with water levels 2-3x normal in the #MiddleEast.
This image shows the Sahara in four days, and I am very curious as to how much #DesertRain this will bring. [Animation tweet also quoted for reference.]
Here's a live picture over the Sahara from @zoom_earth [a free service which I would strongly recommend to anyone curious about these things.]
This is before the forecast much higher levels of - out of place - atmospheric water has arrived.
And on that note we return to the regular forecast part of this bulletin beginning with #NorthAfrica where you will see the latest model rainfall forecasts for the Sahara.
Today's 10-Day Rainfall forecasts for North Africa from July 18th through July 29th.
You will see here that the models have different views. Over a shorter time period (here we see 48 hour forecasts for #NorthAfrica) the differences become more obvious. But there is also a lot they agree on, especially at close range timewise.
Finally for #NorthAfrica we have the long-range 16-day (GFS) and 12-day (KMA) forecasts - which (as always) remain remarkably well aligned in spite of the 4 days difference. The KMA is consitently more bullish on #DesertRain.
Introducing the final section of the Bulletin, which relates the #MiddleEast we have a three hour animation of storms at the end of the day.
And in the #MiddleEast we also have a source of eyewitness reports to help inform us about what is happening beneath the clouds. The wonderful @Arab_Storms twitter account which hails from the #UAE.
For some reason he has chosen with a couple of exceptions to mainly post comedy tweets about rain and flooding which are pretty good.
This guy was particularly foolhardy. I presume he survived. In NZ we are taught not to do this a lot. Partly because no matter how good a swimmer you are you never have any idea about what else is in the river with you. A log can easily kill you.
THREAD: Some thoughts on October 7th and the importance of their being global transparency over what we know about what really happened on that terrible day.
1/ This (see screenshots in the first few posts in this thread) is one of the most important pieces of conflict related journalism published in recent years.
It relates to the orders given to soldiers on October 7th to fire on any vehicle seeking to return to the Gaza Strip to prevent the taking of hostages and was published on July 7th, 10 months later in Haaretz.
2/ As @IsraeliPM Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to address congress it is vital that the public in the US, Israel and globally is fully aware of what exactly happened on October 7th in Gaza.
3/ The account in this story published by Haaretz is at this time still behind a paywall and it has therefore not been read by the very large number of people who ought to have done so. I have not seen very many reports containing the detail of this report elsewhere though I presume there are many.
OK so clearly #HurricaneBeryl is not the same as #HurricaneHarvey. But there are some striking similarities in terms of what has made it so much more persistent than either forecast or as modeled.
This thread is going to look at this issue a bit more deeply.
- The overall cloud mass of the #HurricaneBeryl thunderstorm complex proved much more resilient than expected once it came over land. Why?
- Also Like #Harvey Beryl did slow down after making landfall and continued to spin over land. Why?
- I think the answer to both questions relates to the very warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Like Harvey back in 2017, Beryl has been fueled by a constant stream of warm wet atmospheric flows of energy off of the Gulf of Mexico.
- This is obvious in part simply from observing the astonishing expansion of the cloud field after #Beryl made landfall early this morning.
A clue to understanding this can be found in looking at the the astonishing growth progression of #HurricaneBeryl's cloud field over landafter Beryl strengthened and formed itself into a Hurricane in the period after making landfall south of Houston.
Over the course of the rest of the morning you can see in these images how much the wind field expanded.
Like Harvey #Beryl also grew and strengthened itself by feeding off of the gulf of mexico, specifically the area between the Texas coastline and what looks like the outer boundary of the convection field which expanded extremely strongly to the north.
The only source for all this additional atmospheric moisture can be the oceanic convection which took place in what is a fairly clearly bounded 136,000 km2 area of ocean which as you can see in this animation is very closely bound to the rest of the circulation.
This is a much much larger area than the area of active rainfall which settled over the city and metropolis of Houston for the morning and which is finally starting to move off to the north now.
This version of the graphic shows the comparative sizes of the area of water which is responsible for the astonitising growth of post landfall #HurricaneBeryl - and the area of the storm that remained over the ocean and which is almost certainly responsible for both why this storm was so persistent and why it (like Harvey) slowed down after coming ashore.
#HurricaneBerylis not expected to give up lightly as it moves onshore and turns north eastward over Texas and then heads north east across the great planes towards the great lakes.
Typically we expect hurricanes to weaken rapidly over land - especially wind wise. But #Berylis not forecast to behave as normal - probably because like Harvey, its tail over the Gulf is keeping it fueled. - the currently forecast pattern from Fox News's exclusive model shown in these images was present in some of the simulations of Beryl after it crossed the Yucutan a couple of days ago.
To my mind questions ought to be asked about the accuracy of the forecasting for this storm, as - like the last super destructive Texas Hurricane, Harvey in 2017 [] Beryl is proving to be a LOT more destructive in its impacts than initially forecast.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane…
The final image in this sequence of screenshots of Fox Weather Graphics is worth drawing attention to as it shows how much broader the impacts of this hurricane are expected to be as it moves across the great planes roughly speaking heading up the Mississippi river, and continuing to dump potential flooding rain as it goes.
This image shows the forecast expected severe weather threat from the remnants of #HurricaneBeryl in Arkansas and Missouri up as far as Saint Louis.
ALERT: High Target News Environment in play - numerous consequential news events with global implications.
1. British elections - (Thursday July 4th-Friday July 5th): Delivering an unprecedented landslide win to the left's @UKLabour Party + strong showings for the Liberals and Greens . The UK Chancellor @RachelReevesMP will shortly set out her economic policy in a speech.
2. French elections (Sunday July 7th) deliver a remarkable 2nd big win for the left in politics in France - dashing the hopes of Marine le Pen's hard right wing "Rassemblement National" of first parliamentary victory
3. Overnight (7th-8th July): an unprecedented huge Hurricane , #Hurricane Beryl - makes landfall in Houston as a Category 1 Hurricane, its main threat to the epicenter of the global fossil fuel industry will be flooding. It is still night in Houston at present.
Hmmmmmm…. Why is the audio of the @youtube version of the UNSG office daily briefing for 1st July missing sound from 5:24 to 6:07?
Afghanistan, Lebanon, Myanmar & other topics - Daily Press Briefing (1 J... via @YouTube
The content of this portion is available as it is simply a quote from written remarks of UNSG @antonioguterres made to a meeting in Austria. But the missing YouTube audio is unprecedented in my experience and hard to explain.
Intense bombing by Israeli forces on Gaza continues and kills at least 3... via @YouTube
This report also addresses the widening rift between Israeli PM Netanyahu and the U.S. Government. True to form Netanyahu is showing no sign of backing down. But this tweet showing former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant leaving on a U.S. flight for the U.S. speaks volumes in this very intense moment.
Amidst continued bombing of Rafah, Israeli forces are resuming strikes i... via @YouTube
And here from two days ago more Margaret Brennan context on the rupture in relations between the @WhiteHouse and @IsraeliPM
Israel has not come close to destroying Hamas, U.S. official says via @YouTube