Occasioned by my return from Ethiopia to my home in France. These first two images show #Ethiopia on June 2nd and June 7th (today). The big rains are beginning.
These three big pictures show satellite observed cloud activity yesterday over the tropical belt in the populated hemisphere from the Western Pacific across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans to the Eastern Pacific.
The description part of this thread begins over the Indian Ocean which as you can see here - in a 16 day precipitable water forecast - is filling up with water coming in from the east.
On the basis of this GFS model forecast it looks as if the Indian Monsoon is about to begin.
This animation shows the accumulating rainfall forecast over this 16 day period.
This animation provides more details about the atmospheric water movement in the Indian Ocean over this period.
The dominant water flow pattern indicated here is south west (up the East coast of Africa) towards the north west. And is forecast to strengthen rapidly.
There is a reason I am focussing on this, as it is this burst of monsoon activity which will also bring the big rains to Ethiopia, which will provide the rain for the Grand Ethiopian Rennaissance Dam (GERD)'s next filling, and deliver the rain needed for this year's harvest.
This image shows the GERD dam on June 2nd (Sudan's Rosieres dam is top left). You can see that the lake is already turning brown as the Abay flood waters arrive. This is the last clear satellite image of the dam. It has been obscured by cloud ever since.
This satellite animation shows the last 24hours over the Horn of Africa.
This wider view shows the complexity of the atmospheric water flows over East Africa and the West Indian Ocean.
This GFS model 16 day forecast of 250hpa Jetstream winds (8kms to 15kms altitude) shows the beginning of formation of a climatic feature which will help bring the big rains. The winds - shown moving westwards over southern India here, will pick up water from the Indian monsoon.
This is the latest GFS accumlating rain forecast from today through to the 17th of June.
There's a fair bit of variation between the three model forecasts in the details we have for Ethiopian rain over the coming 10 days (1. ECMWF [euro], 2.GFS [US] and 3&4. KMA 10&12 days [Korea]) but the overall picture is consistent the rains are starting.
We now zoom out to the North African Picture more broadly. This animation shows the Sahara over the past 24 hours, including revealing an atmospheric river originating in West Africa carrying water to the Levant.
Here we see the overall atmospheric water picture which shows - as climate models have been predicting - increasing quantitites of atmospheric water over the Sahel.
The atmospheric climate anomaly is more obvious in this view - showing precipitable water anomalies vs the 1981-2010 data set. But deterministic (physics) model predictions of rainfall from this vary considerably.
Here are four model forecasts
1.ECMWF, 2. EPS (Euro Ensemble), 3. GFS and 4. KMA models.
The Canadian CMC model has been consistently the most bullish model when it comes to #DesertRain.
We also have two longer range model rainfall forecasts. 1. GFS 16-days (384 hours) 2. KMA 12-Days (288 hours)
To complete the Africa portion of this long rainge weather forecast bulletin here is the Africa wide IWVT (Integrated Water Vapour Transport) model forecast from the GFS 3hr model.
This shows the clearest view of the NW Indian Ocean atmospheric water flows.
The final set of forecasts are for the Middle East. And to introduce them we have another big picture, showing the Horn of Africa, Egypt, the Near & Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, an area representing a very significant portion of human history and population.
Here's a PWAT forecast for this area, this time from the Australian Access-G model.
For now at least it appears that the unusual June 2021 rains in Saudi Arabia (see quoted tweet) are not in the forecasts.
Here we have three longer range forecasts for the middle East. The EPS model shows a fair bit of rain over the Jinzan Mountains from Yemen up the Eastern Red Sea Coast. Time will tell. 1. EPS Ensemble (15 days) 2. GEFS Ensemble (16 days) 3. KMA (12 days)
Which is not to say there is not a lot of extreme weather out there......
Check out @Arab_Storms for the latest events, of which there appear to be many.
At this point following the Qatar obscenity Israel is now breaking the internet and the world.
something decisive is needed to break Israel - a peaceful action that will work and show the world that justice still exists and that peace is possible.
A wise friend proposed a brilliant idea. Every nation on earth which is willing and able should send a frigate to the Mediterranean Sea and take a message to Israel that it cannot ignore.
The foundations of the United Nations itself are now crumbling under the weight of the Gaza Obscenity and nations like Britain that seem to have been turned are facing protest and resistance of epic proportions from their citizens.
I’ll be posting videos and news here on Twitter from the flotilla which is about to depart from Majorca for Tunis on the first leg of the journey to Gaza.
More boats are expected to join the flotilla from Europe and North Africa along the way as it moves west across the Mediterranean. @GretaThunberg is making the voyage again and Israel will not be able to contain or stop this flotilla most likely. And definitely not the publicity.
This first video is of a wind squall hitting one of the boats as it departs Barcelona.
Netanyahu has proposed a pathway to end the war in Gaza under pressure primarily from the U.S. UK, France & Germany. Spain and Ireland and several other European nations & the European Commission.
The @israelipm sounds defeated. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end. The deal being offered to Gaza is far from perfect but it sounds workable in Netanyahus outline.
@IsraeliPM Whether it will be approved by Hamas however is unclear and rather complicated - as it’s unclear who inside Gaza would be in a position to respond to the offer. Many of Hamas’s fighters may prefer to die as martyrs also than to agree to any deal.
This is pathetic from @realDonaldTrump he’s lashing out like an angry teenager. Jerome Powell says he’s included a the costs of a building that was completed years ago in his very public attack on the FED Chair.
Trump has completely lost the plot. The single most damaging thing that he could do to undermine confidence in the U.S. dollar (which he publicly claims to want to deflate and there by make all Americans poorer - is to attack the Federal Reserve and the SEC.
@realDonaldTrump Trump is setting fire to the dollar to distract from his Epstein mess what a complete baby.
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.