A brief pictorial thread of parts of the northern hemisphere where extreme or unusual weather phenomena are underway.
Starting with #eastasia#infa & #3rdStorm which seems to have initiated formation. This is the storm which will crash #Olympics2021, shortly after the opening.
The 1st animation is 120 hours. This version goes for 11 days longer. As on #infa’s path beyond 120 hours, what happens beyond July 26th is pretty uncertain. #infa is also continuously not behaving as expected, totes normal for a heat engine of this magnitude.
Heading west a few thousand miles the lingering impact of the #ArabianMomsoonBurst is set to continue for some time bringing thunderstorms to the Arabian peninsula on a daily basis. See @Arab_Storms for video reports.
Next we go north west to Europe where a brief spell of hot weather and cloudless skies in the West is about to end, reverting to the #europebigwet conditions of the first half of the year. Lower than normal temperatures and endless thunderstorms, some of which have taken lives.
This version of the same map highlights areas of unusually high atmospheric moisture. Europe returns to an elevated state but the impact of the #arabianmonsoonburst on the Sahara is the most interesting phenomena here. Lots of #desertrain.
A third view shows us the next 5 days of rainfall accumulation. I am in the direct path of the incoming rain in Europe which arrives tomorrow and which will be a pleasant change for me at least. As I like rain. And rain hereabouts is generally very gentle.
Another unusual aspect of these North Atlantic forecasts is the continued absence of cyclones. While there have been several named storms this year, there had been only one hurricane, #Elsa which brought a lot of rain to the Eastern seaboard.
And finally a view of the #westafricanmonsoon which is having a very active year, in line with the East Asian and Indian Monsoons. These are the engines which are producing both predicted and some unpredicted changes to weather systems (e.g. the quiet Atlantic hurricane season.
Rivers are fixed in place, predictable, but at times hugely destructive. There are also fluid atmospheric rivers in the sky fed by convective thunderstorms which can tower to 18kms high and transport water thousands of Kms at high speed.
These two animations show forecasts for those rivers.
This one over the Western Pacific where typhoon #infa is sitting in the middle of a huge mass of meandering very wet atmosphere, and orchestrating what is happening around it.
These two animations only show the winds at 250hpa pressure, between 11-15kms high typically. But there are rivers at many different altitudes and they go in different directions.
And the physics of this gets more complicated the more water/energy there is.
This is why hurricanes are so hard to compute.
It is a scientific miracle that these models enable us to see into the future. They are a much needed early warning system for the globe which will help us to navigate the difficult times ahead.
But a massive investment and collaboration may well be needed to provide global coverage of the kind that currently exists in the US with meso-scale very accurate, rapid update short time scale models capable of identify local catastrophes yet to come, in time to prepare.
We live in interesting times, and it seems they are about to get much more interesting on the weather front.
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.