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Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters reports on the staggering floods that have hit Thailand:
Heavy rains in Thailand during September and October have led to extreme flooding that has killed 283 people and caused that nation’s most expensive natural disaster in history. On Tuesday, Thailand’s finance minister put the damage from the floods at $3.9 billion. This makes the floods of 2011 the most expensive disaster in Thai history, surpassing the $1.3 billion price tag of the November 27, 1993 flood, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).
And this is but the latest example of how extreme weather harms global food security (see “Global Food Prices Expected to Climb, Get More Volatile.” As BusinessWeek reported, “Floodwaters have swept across 60 of Thailand’s 77 provinces over the past two months … destroying more than 10 percent of the nation’s rice farms.” Masters notes “Thailand is the world’s largest exporter of rice, so the disaster may put further upward pressure on world food prices, which are already at the highest levels since the late 1970s.”
Eastern Thailand was deluged with 5 feet of rain in September. And there’s more to come:
Some of the highest tides of the month occur this weekend in the capital of Bangkok, and the additional pressure that incoming salt water puts on the flood walls protecting the city is a major concern. A moderate monsoon flow continues over Southeast Asia, and the latest GFS model precipitation forecast foresees an additional 2 – 5 inches of rain over most of Thailand during the next three days.
More at the linkMeteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters reports on the staggering floods that have hit... more
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Massive floods have left 500 people dead across Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, officials said Monday, as authorities stepped up efforts to reach victims of the unusually heavy monsoon rains.
In Thailand, where the death toll from the country's worst floods in decades rose to 269, thousands of soldiers fanned out across affected areas as part of a huge aid operation.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who has described the situation as a "serious crisis," said the kingdom had two days before the arrival of the next tropical depression, but insisted the situation was under control.
"It is not necessary to announce disaster zones because we still can handle it," she told reporters, a day after postponing official visits to Singapore and Malaysia to stay and monitor the authorities' response.
She said new flood defences would be built in several locations in the north and east of the capital.
In neighbouring Cambodia, the toll from the country's worst floods in over a decade reached 207, including 83 children, a disaster official there said. Vietnam has reported 24 deaths from flooding in the Mekong Delta.
Vast swathes of rice paddy have been damaged or destroyed in Southeast Asia as a result of the floods.
In Thailand the floods have damaged the homes or livelihoods of millions of people, particularly farmers, across about three quarters of the country's provinces.
Huge efforts are now under way to stop the waters from reaching low-lying Bangkok, home to 12 million people, with prevention measures including sandbags along the Chao Phraya river.
More at the linkMassive floods have left 500 people dead across Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam,... more
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Time to get louder at government about this. Time to win this conversation with truth. CO2 traps heat. One of the main points of this, plus some others I divulge. ;l). Thanks Current for this venue for us to tell it like it is.
This video is dedicated to the indigenous peoples of our world and those experiencing the brunt of the effects of climate change/biodistress. May we find it within us to do what is right for all.Time to get louder at government about this. Time to win this conversation with truth.... more
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Severe storms hit the Midwest on Saturday and are expected later in the Northeast, where flash flooding killed at least three people in Pittsburgh on Friday.
Heavy rains submerged cars in flood water that was nine feet deep in places in Pittsburgh, authorities said.
A mother and her two daughters died when water engulfed their vehicle in a low-lying section of the city's Washington Boulevard near the Allegheny River.
Kimberly Griffith, 45, and her daughters Brenna, 12, and Mikaela, 8, drowned in the vehicle and were pronounced dead at the scene around 6 p.m., a spokeswoman for the Allegheny County medical examiner's office said.
The water pinned their vehicle to a tree and they were unable to escape, authorities said.
Rescue workers also recovered a body from the river believed to be that of an older woman reported missing during the flood, Raymond DeMichiei, the city's deputy director of emergency management, said.
During the flood, more than a dozen cars were stranded along the road, local media reports said, and paramedics in boats went from car to car to rescue drivers and passengers. Some motorists stood on their vehicles' roofs or clung to trees to avoid the rising water.
Rescue crews used inflatable rafts to reach stranded drivers and 11 were rescued.
PHILADELPHIA SOAKED
The Philadelphia area was also soaked by heavy thunder showers Friday, bringing a record rainfall of 12.95 inches for August, according to NWS meteorologist Lee Robertson.
"Actually, we're on the verge of setting a record for any month," Robertson said. The previous record is from September 1999, set when a hurricane pushed rainfall to 13.07 inches.
As more storms were forecast for the region Sunday, the NWS warned in a flood advisory that nearly half of all flood fatalities are vehicle-related.
"As little as six inches of water will cause you to lose control of your vehicle," the NWS stated.
The Weather Channel forecast more storms from the Great Lakes to the Central Plains into Saturday night.
One man died as storms and a tornado roared across northern Wisconsin Friday night, cutting an 8-mile-wide-swath 65 miles north of Green Bay and taking out power to around 2,000 homes, officials said.
Douglas Brem, 43, was staying in a rented trailer at a recycling center in the path of the storm that caused extensive damage to homes, said Marinette County Coroner George Smith.
Damaging winds and hail were the primary threats for cities from St. Louis to Chicago Saturday, according to weather.com.Severe storms hit the Midwest on Saturday and are expected later in the Northeast,... more
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Communities along the Missouri River including Dakota Dunes, SD, Sioux City, Iowa, and South Sioux City, Nebr., are preparing for anticipated floods in the wake of record high releases from upstream Missouri River reservoirs.
Downstream from all the water backed up in Lake McConaughy and the Missouri River reservoirs, Nebraskans are coming to grips with flooding potential.
Having seen the situation unfolding from the air earlier this week at Niobrara, Blair, Omaha and elsewhere, Al Berndt knows he needs to give the situation his full attention.
"I will frame it this way," Berndt said Thursday on behalf of the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, "at any point when we activate the State Emergency Operation Center, it's a 10."
"In terms of flows and knowing now what's coming, this is our 10."
Heavy precipitation in Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas, together with melting snow from higher altitudes, is putting unprecedented pressure on reservoirs that already are at or near spillway capacity.
Speaking in terms of once-in-a-century floods might seem off base, considering the series of dams and reservoirs built to control flooding began operating in the middle of the last century.
Or maybe not.
As Berndt pointed out, there's not much control left when the storage capacity is stretched to a point where water has to be released at the same rate it's coming in.
"The quicker the water comes into the system up there," he said, "the quicker we'll see it and the quicker they'll have to pass it down here."
Neither Nebraska emergency management officials nor the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was willing to estimate how many people might have to be evacuated in the state before the threat eases.
"We're dealing with two rivers at different ends of the state that are basically doing the same thing," Berndt said of the Platte and the Missouri.
In one sign of what's to come, Nebraska 2 was reduced to one-way traffic Thursday near the Iowa border at Nebraska City.
Gas pumps at the nearby intersection with Interstate 29 were pulled.
Meanwhile, in the latest in a series of history-making decisions, the Corps announced it would open spillway gates Friday morning on the Big Bend Dam near Fort Thompson, S.D., to pass floodwater from Lake Sharpe to Lake Francis Case for the first time since the dam went into service in 1963.
"Rapidly changing weather conditions in Montana, northern Wyoming and the western Dakotas have prompted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to make adjustments to previously announced releases from Garrison Reservoir (in North Dakota) in order to evacuate floodwaters out of the Missouri River main-stem reservoir system," said a Thursday announcement.
Berndt is among flood-emergency officials saying it will get worse before it gets better.
"How much worse is anybody's guess," he said. "I think we have seen, especially with the Platte over the winter, the water will remain high for an extended period of time. Displaced people are going to be out of their homes."
In the decades since the Missouri reservoirs were filled, there has been frequent argument among river interests in a given year about how much water to hold back for recreation and how much to release for navigation and other purposes.
Mike Jess, former director of what was then known as the Nebraska Department of Water Resources, doesn't see much room for argument about what the Corps could or should have done headed into 2011.
"Circumstances this year are just so extraordinary with the snowpack that's accumulated over the winter and the spring rains," Jess said. "If the Corps had done things significantly differently, I don't think it would make much difference."
The flood threat is real, Jess said.
http://journalstar.com/news/local/article_47392598-56b8-5563-80fc-781239e1471b.htmlCommunities along the Missouri River including Dakota Dunes, SD, Sioux City, Iowa, and... more
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Despite what you may read or see in the mainstream media, out in the real world, massive and rapid changes are taking place in many ecological systems as a result of global warming. The Earth seems to be already convinced of global warming and is responding quickly.
Perhaps the most significant, and likely most enduring, are the shifts taking place in the Earth's oceans. Whilst many readers may have read or heard about Ocean Acidification, there are numerous other changes taking place in the oceans which should be equally as concerning. One such phenomena to appear in the last few decades is mass coral bleaching, a consequence of the continued warming of the oceans. Once vast stretches of colourful reefs teeming with marine life are being reduced to lifeless rubble covered in seaweed or slime. Many areas are not recovering, and the scale and frequency of bleaching worldwide is getting worse. In fact, early reports suggest 2010 may have witnessed the largest single bleaching event ever recorded.
The lowdown on coral bleaching
Reef-coral are actually a symbiosis (a mutually beneficial relationship) between the coral polyp, an anemone-like creature, and tiny algae called zooxanthellae. The coral provide shelter and nutrients for the algae , and in exchange the algae provide carbohydrates (food) to the polyp, using energy from the sun (photosynthesis) and the nutrients provided by the coral. These algae live in the skin tissue of the polyp and produce the coloured pigments which make coral reefs so visually spectacular. When this partnership breaks down the polyps expel the algae, which leads to the "bleached" effect. Although the polyp does feed using its tentacles to snare food, the bulk of its nutrition (90%+) comes from the algae, and they are a critical component of coral skeleton formation and therefore reef maintenance and growth. Without symbiotic algae, the coral can die from starvation, or become so weakened by a lack of food, that it succumbs to harmful bacteria (Mao-Jones 2010), and/or seaweeds which can poison and kill coral on contact.
Because reef-coral have adapted tolerance to a narrow band of environmental conditions, bleaching can occur for a number of reasons, such as ocean acidification, pollution, excess nutrients from run-off, high UV radiation levels, exposure at extremely low tides and cooling or warming of the waters in which the coral reside. Typically these events are very localized in scale and if bleaching is mild, the coral can survive long enough to re-acquire new algal partners. So bleaching in itself is not something new, but mass coral bleaching on the huge scale being observed certainly appears to be, and represents a whole new level of coral reef decline.
Ocean warming is driving mass coral bleaching
As coral reefs operate very near to their upper limit of heat tolerance (Glynn & D'Croz 1990), bleaching en masse happens when the surface waters get too warm above their normal summer temperature, and are sustained at this warmer level for too long. The intensity of bleaching corresponds with how high, and how long temperatures are elevated and, as one might expect, the intensity of bleaching affects the rate of survival. Small rises of 1 -2 degree C, for weeks at a time, usually induce bleaching.
This episodic ocean warming has been most pronounced worldwide during El-Nino events, when the Pacific Ocean exchanges heat to the atmosphere and surface waters. In recent years though, severe mass bleaching is happening outside of El-Nino because of the "background" ocean warming. The huge mass bleaching in the Caribbean in 2005, a non El-Nino year, and again this year is a prime example of this (Eakin 2010) . Evidence connecting warm surface waters and mass coral bleaching has strengthened to the extent that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a coral bleaching alert system in place. This alert system accurately forecasts mass coral bleaching based on satellite data of sea surface temperatures.
Hot water + Coral = Dead coral
So how does hot water kill coral?. It requires both high water temperatures and sunlight. Oxygen is released as waste during photosynthesis and like all chemical processes this is affected by temperature, speeding up as more energy (warmth) is applied. When water temperatures rise too high the protective mechanisms to prevent heat damage, employed by the coral and the algae, are overwhelmed. The zooxanthellae algae produce high levels of oxygen waste which begin to poison the coral polyp. In acts of self-preservation the coral kick out the algae, and in doing so become susceptible to starvation, opportunistic diseases, competitive seaweeds and macroalgae (slime to you and me) . Coral can succumb to the effects of bleaching years later, and for those coral that survive, growth effectively ceases and full recovery can take anything up to a decade.
Coral resilience is futile
On a world scale coral reefs are in decline, and it makes for rather depressing reading for an avid diver like myself. Over the last 30-40 years 80% of coral in the Caribbean have been destroyed (Gardner 2003) and 50% in Indonesia and the Pacific (Bruno & Selig 2007). Bleaching associated with the 1982 -1983 El-Nino killed over 95% of coral in the Galapagos Islands (Glynn 1990), and the 1997-1998 El-Nino alone wiped out 16% of all coral on the planet. Globally about 1% of coral is dying out each year. Not all of this continual decline is solely down to bleaching of course, pollution and other human activities are also contributing, but bleaching is speeding up the loss of coral.
cont.Despite what you may read or see in the mainstream media, out in the real world,... more
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