As nations of the world meet in NYC at #UNGA discusses Climate Change cooperation in advance of @COP26 there is a monster low pressure circulation/storm over Eastern parts of Europe.
And the weather forecast for the next five days looks a little hairy.
@COP26 Meanwhile a few 1000 kms to the south East rains over the Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa picked up again today.
@COP26 Zooming out we see that there are also multiple tropical storm candidates in the Tropical Atlantic which at a practical level make forecasting in Europe a little unpredictable as their path and intensity is very hard to predict.
There are two major factors driving this the Jet-stream level winds 11-18kms up which are moving water around, and the quantity of water in the atmosphere.
Here we see a 72 hour forecast which contains a powerful jet coming at Europe across the North Atlantic.
We also see a strong West to East flow across North Africa which will be also carrying tropical moisture, from tropical ears in the East Atlantic off the coast of Africa.
This animation shows a five day forecast of airborne Precipitable water. Both the Nth Atl. and Nth Africa atmospheric rivers can be seen. And also several cold air incursions from the north. When cold air & moist air collide we can expect rain.
Here we have a 6 day temperature forecast in 6 hourly increments. Its not freezing, but its also not particularly warm.
Finally we have a water vapour transport simulation plot which shows pressure, jets and water vapour together.
This currently shows the Canadian vapour jet pushing the low pressure system east.
And this plot shows the current rainfall solution which comes from all these inputs - this is over five days.
There is nothing hazardous in this at the moment, but it depends a lot on whether the Canadian Jet dislodges the low pressure system.
It was a circulation like this, with northerly (arctic) and South Western (atlantic) inputs which led to the devastating flooding in July.
The city is remarkably like Wellington weather wise swinging from day to day and occasionally lovely on a good day.
But the NCQG negotiations are still pretty much deadlocked on the most important issue here, Finance, with no numbers on the table yet. And talks still stuck on many of the same issues they were stuck on at the beginning.
I had an opportunity to speak the Egyptian Ambassador as I was leaving who is in a “Pair” appointed by the Presidency with the Australian Ambassador takes to try to get an agreement on the NCQG. He was optimistic about a realistic NCQG figure being eventually offered by Developed Nations to Developing Nations. But did not expect this to come until the very end.
And Negotiations will therefore continue today. This video was at the venue last night - Birds seem to have a commute past the venue to where they sleep.
Developed Nations want some nations that have developed since the process begun, Annex 2 Nations, to be part of the contributor base. The two most prominent of these China and Saudi Arabia say they are already contributing voluntarily and apparently not keen to be brought into the official NCQG base - and this remains an obstacle.
The Ambassador did not think their position on this will change.
As some followers in NZ may be aware I am currently at #COP29 in Baku Azerbaijan. My fourth COP. And this is a relatively difficult one. Rod Oram died tragically in a cycling accident in March 2024 when I was back in NZ for my first visit since leaving NZ to spread my wings in 2015.
I caught up with him in Glasgow back in 2021 in the time of Covid.
But I have known him for a lot longer as you will see in the photos in this thread. The oldest pictures I have are from him at the Egypt hosted COP in 2022. My second COP.
His successor in climate coverage @NewsroomNZ's @marcdaalder is attending his first COP this year which got me thinking about NZ's COP UNCCC coverage trailblazer for in person COP coverage.
There is a great spirit of camaraderie among the large COP media pool. In Glasgow he helped me orient myself, which is not an effortless process as the COP process is so big and varied and seemingly endless. But the attendees and guardians from the UNFCCC are all great people too.
Here at #COP29 at the end of 2024 the brilliant Marc Daalder is now filling Rod's shoes as in person COP correspondent. Whilst there are a fair few other Kiwis here we are the only Kiwi Journos here that I know of.
As I had never met him I was quite surprised when Cindy Baxter turned up to meet him and it turned out he was sitting one row away from me.
The official video record of COP29 is being erased every 12 hours & nobody here knows
The Media Center for UNFCCC COP meetings was transformed in 2021 in Glasgow during the UK Presidency of the COP. The new high tech set up has cameras in all official meeting places recording the events in full. The content from this system is then made available to media in the MEDIA Center via the IBC (Interational Broadcast Center) platform.
The center also has desks for several hundred journalists to work during the COP.
The first signs came on Thursday day four (14 November 2024) of COP29 last week during the first week of the COP. Ordinarily reporters attending COPs can request access to get files downloaded through a media desk. This can be useful to extract quotes or report on events that we are unable to attend due to timetable clashes etc.
The wrong headed and frankly selfish approach of NZME and STUFF on the issue of the "Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill" [see: mch.govt.nz/our-work/broad…] is deeply problematic for independent and digital native publishing companies such as @Scoop.
Part 1 of my thoughts on the subject can be found here.
Other medium sized digital native publications including @NewsroomNZ and @TheSpinoffTV are in a similar position to us - as well as a large group of smaller independent digital and print publications across New Zealand.
.@Google has made it very clear to the Government that it will withdraw its support for NZ media companies should this Bill pass. It considers the proposal to be a link tax and that the precedent that this would create for how the internet works globally is something that it cannot accept. As this is a global policy issue it will not back down on this.