Image: Typhoon INFA over China showing the lights of Tokyo where the world is gathered to celebrate youth & excellence and the unity of the nations of the world at the Olympics.
Here we see Japan again and tropical storm #Nepartak which is on route towards the Olympics.
#Nepartak is a child of #INFA's gyre and you can see an atmospheric river coming from #INFA's outflows which leads directly to her.
This weekly thread is the sequel to the daily threads published April-July in solidarity with the efforts to complete the 2nd filling of the #GERD dam under difficult circumstances.
There hasn't been a clear view of the #GERD in the past week sadly, just a glimpse.
Today's picture showing the big picture. 1. The Indian Monsoon is still sending a lot of moisture west. 2. #ArabianStorms continue on a daily basis 3. The Ethiopia Highlands rains remain intense.
Here we see a 10 day animation of PWAT over North Africa from the CMC model.
Today's 10-Day Rainfall forecasts for North Africa from July 25th through August 3rd.
GFS, ECMWF, CMC and KMA models.
48-hour #NorthAfrica rainfall forecasts (today and tomorrow from the same 4 models).
Finally for #NorthAfrica we have the long-range 16-day (GFS) and 12-day (KMA) forecasts
A 24 hour animation of clouds and storms over the Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa today.
This is a new plot, a ten day Ethiopian Precipitable water forecast. This forecasts the quantity of water that is in the atmosphere over the #HornOfAfrica, this is where the rainfall comes from. There is a correlation between presence of water and rainfall intensity.
This PWAT forecast from the same model (Australia's ACG model) shows a wider view including the source of the water the Indian Monsoon.
It suggests rainfall will be heaviest over the next few days and decline at the beginning of next week.
48 Hour forecasts (today and tomorrow) from the same three models.
NOTE: The ten day forecasts suggest the levels of rain over Ethiopia's Highlands will continue at their intensity of roughly 1 inch per day across the entire catchments.
Rainfall over this period in the Arabian Peninsula is as far as I am aware unprecedented and almost certainly a sign of climate change in the region.
In the Nile basin rainfall has been unusually widespread, intense, has continued through the night.
It is probable this is the reason for the unusually high flows reported by Sudan at the Merowe dam this week. There is a high risk that significant Nile flooding may occur this year, especially if this pattern continues. This has all the hallmarks of an extreme weather event.
That said I am not a meteorologist and have no access to the flow data which is a much better way to understand the level of threat this poses. @TirusewAsefa may be able to help with this.
For some time I have been concerned about the very high levels of the Aswan Dam.
Here we see satellite images, left today, and right 25th of June. I have no expertise in reading these images but they may show that the dam level has been reduced to enhance the dam's capacity to manage the flow surge which is coming Egypt's way.
The final forecast segment addresses the #MiddleEast.
July 25th 10-Day accumulated rain forecasts for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, CMC, KMA & ACG weather models.
Translation: According to a United Nations report, climate change has killed more than one million people in the past 50 years. Our world is getting warmer by the day and these heavy rains are a sign of climate change.
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.
This is an update thread on this OCCRP story on @StateDept and @USAID funding for several large investigative journalism projects which has had a lot of downstream impacts it seems. Especially in Europe,
The underlying original story about govt funding for investigative journalism projects was initially flagged by @ryangrim.
This organisation - OCCRP that not many people seemed to have been aware of - was responsible for a series of outstanding investigative journalism consortia projects including the Panama papers.
This is a leaked rough cut of the NDR (German public broadcaster north west Germany) investigation into what happened With the OCCRP story.
It was never officially published but was recently leaked publicly by Wikileaks.
With the benefit of hindsight arguably Wikileaks ought to be the international organisation that coordinates these large investigative consortia, though it’s not clear that they want to do so.
What is clear from the fallout from all of this is that the system that was in place for running these consortia is no longer fit for purpose.