Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Jan 6, 2022 24 tweets 11 min read Read on X
An animation showing the current #SaharaWaterTransport #MiddleEast #ExtremeWeather event over its full terrestrial area and timescale from 17th December till today.

Daily rain intensity measures show where rain fell each day.
1. Along the bottom the monsoon atmospheric river moves West.
2. Over the Atlantic storms produce atmospheric moisture.
3. This travels ENE over the Sahara to the Middle East

[Src. New animation service on @Nasa #Worldview.]
@NASA This animation looks at the next segment in water transport - same time period - over the Indian Ocean and Eurasia to China. Again the monsoon is moving in the opposite direction.

It is remarkably how shallow the angle is of the atmospheric rivers which are moving ENE.
This second animation is the reason for this thread, as I wanted to see what the cascading effects of what we are seeing in the middle east are over India China and the West Pacific. And as you can see they are significant.

Each frame as you can see is a single day.
The next series of animations [Src. @zoom_earth] looks more closely at the period from 1st Jan to 6th Jan at the Himalayas leg of the water transport route - and the mechanisms involved.

The West & East African, and Indian Ocean Monsoons add to the flows as they progress East.
In particular I was examining the growth of this large cloud area eastwards over China and the West Pacific. These high res. satellite images [Src. @Nasa #Worldview] show the period from the 2nd to the 5th of January
Towards the end of the period, on the 4th and 5th we can now see weather radar traces of storm activity in this cloud mass which covers most of China - and now extends out over the West Pacific.
This integrated water vapour transport animation shows the last 72 hours, incl. the final phases of the Middle East #extremeweather event which I have been monitoring fairly closely since early December.
This series of animations covers the far eastern end of this process, each animation shows 24 hours, beginning on the night of the 1st of January.
Here we see the night of the 2nd of January into the third, and significant growth in the cloud mass. We cab also see a flow of moisture north east out of the Bay of Bengal which is contributing to the buildup over China.
In this PWAT anomaly animation 4-6 January we can more easily visibly see where anomalous levels of atmospheric water are building up. Notably in Northern India.

At the beginning we see the Baluchistan flood event. & at the end, a build up of water over Eastern China
Here on the night of the 4th and the 5th of Jan we see a burst of storm activity which appears to be connected to a flow coming north from the monsoon over Myanmar out of the bay of Indian Ocean.
This 177 hour PWAT model forecast of the North Indian Ocean runs from the 4th through to the 13th of January. It shows the atmospheric river which had been over the Arabian Peninsular moving over the Indian subcontinent like a firehose.
And here is the corresponding accumulating rain forecast for the same 7 day period.
And here is the 4th in this series of animations and gets us up to date today. This animation illustrates the complex multi-layered nature of the atmosphere with the grey cloud that passes by above the dominant dense cloud layer which now covers most of populated China.
The final mechanistic part of all this are the jetstream (11-19kms high) winds from the. Here we see the period from the 4th to the 6th covered in the last two satellite animations.

The dominant feature is the main band running west to east.
One of the features in this perfectly explains this rain event over Iran and Afghanistan over the last 24 hours.
This trough like feature caused by a very sharp meander in the Jetstream similar to those we see very regularly now over Europe. The Northerlies on the left hand side bring cold air which causes the heavy rain/snow.
The extreme precipitation events which you see here (all those over the Sahara and ME are very large and most were also intense), were unusual.

Their 1st cause is the presence of water which arrives via this persistent west east jetstream.
But each of these nation sized storms has its own detailed explanation, an intersection of streams, cold air, a nearby low etc.
And its the details which make these storms dangerous, usually only one part of these rain events is extremely hazardous or damaging, e.g. the duration and intensity of the storm over Kuwait on Sunday/Monday.
This was just a tiny part of a much larger storm, the impact of which was largely due to geography, specifically the presence of mountains. And this storm took at least 11 lives in Iran. and did massive amounts of damage. ncr-iran.org/en/ncri-statem…
My working hypothesis for the past 9 months whilst monitoring signs of apparent signs of climate change in North Africa and the Middle East has been simple:
Warmer air carries more water = more rain.

Current 16 day rainfall forecasts:
1. India
2. China
3. ME
4. Eurasia
This held true over the northern hemisphere summer and now it appears to be doing so over winter, albeit in unexpected ways.

/ENDS

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More from @althecat

Nov 23
A wise head here in the media center just made a compelling counter argument to the practicality of the G77 and China walking away from the talks here.

And it’s essentially based in the recognition of rising geo-strategic entropy and the phenomena arising out of a lack any coherent global order. /1
The loud activist refrain here is “no deal is better than a bad deal.” But the question is what will the mean. in another conversation a person involved in finance talks just suggested that it’s looking very unlikely that there will be any agreement here simply because there is no strong leadership here. And in particular minimal representation here of strong G7 leadership. /2
By strong here I mean “financially strong.”

So the most likely outcome here now looks to almost certainly be no agreement on an NCQG and as a result it’s feeling rather gloomy now. /3
Read 14 tweets
Nov 23
It’s a gray day here at #COP29Azerbaijan as the 29th Meeting of Nations to address what is now a #ClimateCrisis enters extra time, day one. THREAD. Image
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Civil Society is preparing for a big day in the COP29 venue till the Closing Plenary is convened most likely fairly late Saturday. Here are letters sent to the largest Developing block of COP Nations G77+ China and several developed world nations last night.

This came after new texts were released on the Core remaining issues in this Climate Summit:

Finance - specifically the NCQG - the draft text contained the first number placed on the table 250 Billion, which is not even an inflation adjusted upgrade on the 100 Billion a year in finance agreed in Copenhagen in 2009.

See: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhage…Image
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The open letters to the developed and developing world from #COP29 Civil Society have been endorsed by a huge number of organisations globally.

And will underpin a day of action today at the COP29 Venue. Image
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Read 7 tweets
Nov 22
Final official day of #COP29Azerbaijan

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.Image
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.
Read 7 tweets
Nov 19
ROD ORAM In Memoriam. A Photo Thread.

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.Image
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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.Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 18
COP29 Erasure – COP29 Media Center Crippled scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2411…
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.
Read 10 tweets
Nov 12
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.

"Google's Support For Democracy And Media In NZ" scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2411…
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.
Read 11 tweets

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