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.
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.
This article is deeply depressing. For my part at Scoop.co.nz it is clear to me that:
1. The Govt has a deliberate strategy - probably not official but nevertheless operative to destroy NZ media. 2. This is not going to change any time soon. thespinoff.co.nz/politics/02-07…
& Sadly from what I discerned last year the @nzlabour opposition is both apathetic and indifferent to the plight of media. Also the @NZGreens. And have always been so for as long as I can remember.
This is extremely disappointing
@nzlabour @NZGreens I will be returning to NZ in August to ensure continues to function in these very difficult times for NZ media. We have faced numerous big challenges recently and thank our supporters and readers for their support.Scoop.co.nz
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.