The current "Biblical" rain event over Pakistan - which has destroyed 145 bridges and has one third of the country under water began on August 10th - and has the form of a cyclone over land. 17 days of torrential rains. (image: last 24 hours)
This image, also today, shows the scale of the outflows from the cyclonic storm which remains centered around 300kms from the sea and which is fed by atmospheric water coming off the North Arabian Sea. The outflows from the storm are causing devastating flooding further north.
This thread will now look at what happened since the last thread which ended on August 19th. The set up for this catastrophic event involves two cyclones, both of which have remained largely intact over land. Here on the left you can see #Invest04B 2022 (unnamed) making landfall.
These images show #Invest04B crossing India over 4 days - 19-22 August - heading towards the storm over South East Pakistan and Rajastan India.
On the 22nd of August the Storm from the Bay Bengal started to drag the smaller storm over Pakistan into its orbit.
This 22/8 animation shows 24 hours when the storms started to interact - it also shows how the huge storm over the center of India is being fed by streams of water from both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.
And the following day, the two storms effectively became one.
In the animation it is obvioys that the storm is strengthening over land. And the area affected by it - over India and Pakistan is colossal 1.3 million km2. Roughly 1% of Earth's landmass - an area larger than Peru, and a little smaller than Mongolia.
On 23-24 August the combined India Pakistan rain storm continued to move west - with the outflow rain bands flowing NNE covering an even larger area.
On the 25th the storm was once again centered over the same area in South East Pakistan where it formed 15 days earlier on the 10th August from a depression which travelled inland from the Arabian Sea.
The intensity of the outflows here is astonishing.
25-26th August.
Yesterday.
And the storm appears to be finally weakening. The circulation appears to be disintegrating.
And 26th-27th August getting us up to date.
The storm has finally gone. Some streams of atmospheric water are still coming north over Pakistan. but this may be finally over tomorrow
As the clouds finally clear it is possible to see what look like the flooded areas from satellite, which are huge. First image is an initial effort to show the obviously flooded areas. 2nd shows it without the measuring boxes.
Here's two high resolution NASA Worldview images for comparison
Left. Satellite image from October 6 2021 for comparison.
Right. Satellite image for today.
A larger image allows you to see more clearly the floodwaters in yellow brown on the LHS of this image.
This area in particular is full of big cities.
I think the worst flooding however will be further south in the South East around Karachi and Hyderabad - where it has been raining very heavily continuously for 17 days.
This area in North West India also appears to be extremely flooded. It has also had heavy rain continuously over the 17 day period.
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
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.
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.
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.