Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Aug 8, 2021 36 tweets 26 min read Read on X
Today's rainfall/weather update for the #NorthAfrica #HornOfAfrica and #MiddleEast follows.

The short version is that the peak of the rainy season may have passed, but there are signs of another Indian Monsoon surge coming in 10-12 days in long range forecasts.
Here is the long-range GFS model PWAT forecast for the Indian Monsoon. Towards the end it strengthens and we see high levels of moisture heading for the #HornOfAfrica.
Here is a big picture view of the greater region including all the areas that this weekly bulletin will cover.

A review of the past week showed that Sahel-Sahara rainfall has continued, as has rainfall in northern Sudan. The northerly rain is however not particularly heavy.
Water flows originating in the Arabian Sea and West Africa/East Atlantic #NA Coast continue to significantly impact Europe's weather causing serious flooding in many areas.
Today's 10-Day Rainfall forecasts for North Africa from August 8th through August 17th.

GFS, CMC and KMA models.
48-hour #NorthAfrica rainfall forecasts (today and tomorrow from the same 3 models).
This is a favourite forecast plot, it shows precipitable water vapour anomaly vs the 1981-2010 climate data set over the next five days.
It shows us there is still signs of an airborne water anomaly over the Sahara, albeit not one quite as large as we saw in July.
Water is transiting in both directions over the the Sahara in huge volumes. Rainfall tends to be higher at night based on these satellite images.
Meanwhile the high levels of water transit east-west have finally brought about conditions for the Atlantic Hurricane season to commence. For most of this summer there has been very little storm formation activity in the usual tropical zone because it has been unusually dry.
Finally for #NorthAfrica we have the long-range 16-day (GFS) and 12-day (KMA) forecasts both of which continue to show significant rain in arid parts of the Sahara in Mali.
These satellite pictures are from a couple of days ago. The first shows the #GERD lake which other higher-resolution satellite photography released today has reached 600ms above-sea-level, higher than the dam face itself, suggesting very high flow levels over the cascade.
Today's August 8th 10-day rainfall forecasts for #Ethiopia (+1 12-day from KMA) and the #HornOfAfrica: #Somalia, #Somaliland, east #SouthSudan, south-east parts of Sudan, #Djbouti and #Eritrea.

Heavy rain is forecast for all significant Nile basins incl. #Abbay & #Tekeze.
48 Hour forecasts (today and tomorrow) from the same three models.

Rainfall intensity appears to have dropped 30-40% from late July peaks when 25mm (1 inch) of rain was consistently falling each day across most of the highlands.
However if the 2nd major Indian monsoon pulse forecast in the GFS model (2nd tweet at the top) develops, then rainfall could return to peak levels towards the end of August.
This graph shows is Nile flow usually peaks in early September, but there can be significant variance between years in the flow contribution from different catchments. This year all catchments appear to be receiving a lot of rain.
This year as those following these bulletins will know there has been rain most days in Western Saudi Arabia since mid April. This does not appear to have stopped or slowed significantly over the last fortnight.

Here we see the same area 1 year apart, Aug 2020 vs Aug 2021.
And here are similar comparisons for
TOP: Western Sahel (Mali & Mauritania), and
BOTTOM: Central Sahel (Niger and Chad).

The differences are not spectacular yet, and most obvious in Saudi. I will return to look at these later.
The final forecast segment addresses the #MiddleEast.

August 8th 10-Day accumulated rain forecasts for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, CMC, KMA & ACG weather models.

#ArabianStorms

#KSA #Yemen #Oman #Jordan #Sudan #Iran #Syria #GERD #Sudan #DesertRain #UAE

الله أعلم
@Arab_Storms has been continuing his coverage of flooding around the world of which there has been a great deal. Here are three tweets from his recent postings. Firstly one of Sudan flooding.
Jazan in South West Saudi Arabia has had the most consistent rain including some spectacular storms including this one yesterday..
And Oman waterfalls continue to deliver spectacular cell-phone footage extremely reliably.
48 Hour August 8th (today and tomorrow), accumulated rain forecasts for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, CMC, KMA and ACG weather models.

#ArabianStorms

#KSA #Yemen #Oman #Jordan #Sudan #Iran #Syria #GERD #Sudan #DesertRain

الله أعلم
And finally we have today's long-range #MiddleEast August 8th rainfall forecasts.

The 16-day GFS & GEFS models, the 12 day KMA and the 15 day EPS (Euro ensemble) model forecasts.

الله أعلم
We now move to a big picture view. North Western Hemisphere zero hour simulation data (i.e. now).

1. Precipitable water PWAT anomaly
2. PWAT (potential rain + energy)
3. MLSP (Mean Sea Level Pressure)
4. 250Hpa (jet stream winds approx 11-15 kms high)
These 4 weather parameters are useful to look at in visualizations to develop understanding if what is happening with our weather.

The Jet-Stream (250Hpa) winds move the water, PWAT shows us where it is and MLSP shows us the pressure contours (analogous to peaks and valleys).
Each of these forecasts is 16 days long & this model is superb at the large scale dynamics. Notably in the plot above you see that none of the Atlantic Cyclone candidate systems are expected to develop. If so then this August will be historically quiet.
This is my favourite map as it brings it all together. Also water has mass and momentum, so this is effectively a map showing atmospheric energy.The battering of Europe is relentless. Also, note the water moving south over the Sahara and the #HOA monsoon burst at the end.
This parameter is the hardest to read and get your head around but is extremely significant in what is happening. Thunder storms send water up into the mid atmosphere 10-18kms above us - and these winds carry that water large distances, and can cause freak rain events.
And to complete this bulletin, here is a bit of a recap of the last week in satellite animations. This shows Monday-Tuesday (2-3).
And here we see the same day and night over North Africa, again, 2-3 August.
Here we see the Indian and East African Monsoons on the 4th and 5th of August.
And the corresponding North Africa/Sahara animation for the 4th-5th August.
And finally the 6th to the 7th August, again beginning with the Indian and East African monsoons.
And its North Africa/Sahara 6th-7th August counterpart.
Which gets us up to date.

This is the new format that I plan to use going foward for weekly rain updates until the end of the big rainy season. The rain is actually rather important in relation to the peace issue, as it is not really practical to fight in the rainy season.

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More from @althecat

Jan 22
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.Image
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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.Image
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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.
Read 15 tweets
Jan 12
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.

Understand The Economy via @YouTubeyoutube.com/playlist?list=…
Read 7 tweets
Jan 9
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.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 8
Comedians vs Trump and Elon /1

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Jan 5
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.

dalek.zone/w/xjUjomMZxRCv…
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.
Read 8 tweets
Jan 2
So @elonmusk has definitely opened the doors it seems to Pandora’s box.
He may have jumped the gun a little. But he has his reasons.

Germany & Magdeburg.

But the fuse was arguably lit when the CIA and FBI Commandeered Jack Dorsey’s Twitter for its own purposes.

I don’t think we are going back.

This is the new normal.
Welcome to the era of Trump.

This is what happens when you have a VERY Messy transition of power in the Global Hegemony.
Read 4 tweets

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