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Mother Nature’s revenge: Over the last month alone, all corners of the world were hit by major floods. While this is anecdotal, does it not feel like we’re witnessing a new natural disaster each day?

Photo by Chris Gallagher / Unsplash

Picture this:

You come home to find one of your windows broken. It costs $500 to fix so you call someone to get it done.

The next week you come home and the same window is smashed. You chalk it up to bad luck and begrudgingly fork out another $500 to have it fixed.

The next week you come home and are shocked to discover 5 of your windows are smashed. Do you have $2500 to fix them? You find the money, but cut back on eating out for dinner.

The next week those same 5 windows are smashed again. Yet another $2500.

You’ve already cut unnecessary expenses and soon face a tough decision: do you fix the windows or stop contributing to your child’s education fund? Do you fix the windows or make your mortgage payment?

Now imagine every person on your block also had their windows broken, forcing them to cut the same expenses and make the same impossible choices.

This is how climate change erodes civilization. A relentless onslaught of expensive disasters, draining energy and resources from what makes life livable.

Disaster relief or social programs? Reconstruction or eldercare? Rescue efforts or defense?

There comes a day when you can’t have it all. Then, slowly but surely society is bled dry by a thousand cuts. Mother Nature wins.

It’s already happening.

Over the last month alone, all corners of the world were hit by major floods. While this is anecdotal, does it not feel like we’re witnessing a new natural disaster each day?

We may face the impossible choices sooner than expected.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The vast ravines swallowing whole neighbourhoods around the world

April 23, 2024

The vast ravines swallowing whole neighbourhoods around the world

This was once a bustling street in Buriticupu, a city in north-east Brazil.

Now it is a vast chasm 80m deep – a 20-storey building could fit inside it.

Canyons like this are known locally as “voçoroca” or “torn land” in the indigenous Tupi-Guarani language.

The phenomenon is a result of gully erosion, one of the most aggressive forms of soil degradation caused by rain and waste water.

And it is advancing at a worrying speed, destroying thousands of homes in Latin America and Africa.

Former police officer José Ribamar Silveira was nearly killed when he fell into this gully.

He got lost as he was driving home from a party one night in May 2023.

As he turned the car around, the 79-year-old reversed and accelerated backwards. It was dark, there were no warning signs or barriers around the voçoroca, and before he knew it, the car – with him inside – plunged into the vast hole.

“When the car slid, even though it was falling quickly, I thought of my youngest son,” he tells the BBC.

Baby Gael had turned four months old the day before. “I asked God to protect me so that I could raise my little son,” says Lt Silveira.

He was knocked unconscious and woke up at the bottom of the ravine three hours later. After a complicated rescue operation and months of convalescence, he can now walk without crutches.

Portrait of José Ribamar Silveira near a ravine — José Silveira nearly died when he fell into the ravine

His experience is a vivid example of the risks facing Buriticupu’s 70,000 residents.

As more gullies appear, there are fears that the city in Maranhão state, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, could be split in two. At 350m above sea level, Buriticupu has about 30 gullies, with the largest two separated by less than 1km.

“If the authorities don’t contain this, they will meet and form a river,” says Edilea Dutra Pereira, a geologist and professor at the Federal University of Maranhão.

Gullies have been part of the Earth’s geological history for millions of years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

With ‘jaw-dropping,’ ‘astounding’ and ‘extraordinary’ weather, Vancouver just had its rainiest fall ever

December 4, 2021

With ‘jaw-dropping,’ ‘astounding’ and ‘extraordinary’ weather, Vancouver just had its rainiest fall ever

Weather bombs, seven atmospheric rivers in a month and a tornado, among other things, plus lots (and lots) of rain

rainyweatherdroplets — Rain drenched Vancouver this fall, smashing records in city and across the province.Brendan Kergin / Vancouver is Awesome

The fall of 2021 was quite a season.

Vancouver saw weather bombs, seven atmospheric rivers in a month and a tornado, among other things. And along with all of that came the rain.

The City of Vancouver, pelted with near-constant rain for three months, smashed its record for rainiest fall on record (which meteorologically speaking runs from Sept. 1 to Nov. 30) says Environment Canada warning preparedness meteorologist Armel Castellan.

Over September, October and November 611.5 mm of rain fell here. That breaks the old record of 531.9 mm in 1996, smashing it by almost 80 mm; in meteorological terms, that’s a lot. And records go back over 120 years.

On average we see 364.4 mm, so this year we got 168 per cent of the usual.

But it wasn’t the most, with Abbotsford getting an “astounding” 884.5 mm over the three months; the average there is 475 mm.

“The previous wettest fall for Abbotsford was 2016 and was only 666 mm, so you overshot that in Abbotsford by over 200 mm which is absolutely jaw-dropping,” says Castellan.

And in Victoria, where the total wasn’t as high, the difference from the usual was massive; at the Victoria Gonzales station they had 509.6 mm, compared to the normal of 230.1 mm. That’s 221 per cent of the normal.

“Honestly, for a seasonal record to be broken by that much, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that,” Castellan says.

While daily records can vary quite a bit, for an entire season to break records by those numbers is extremely unusual, given that it requires such a long pattern of weather.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Vancouver is now completely cut off from the rest of Canada by road

November 16, 2021

Vancouver is now completely cut off from the rest of Canada by road

There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada.

The Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley are now completely cut off from the rest of British Columbia and the country by road.

<who>Photo Credit: Linda Corscadden</who>The southbound lanes of the Coquihalla Highway have been completely washed out near Othello Tunnels.

Photo Credit: Linda Corscadden
The southbound lanes of the Coquihalla Highway have been completely washed out near Othello Tunnels.

Flooding and mudslides had closed most routes between the coast and BC Interior over the past 24 hours, but the back route through Whistler on Hwy 99 remained open this morning.

That changed shortly after 11 am, when DriveBC reported that a mudslide 42 kilometres south of Lillooet had shut down Hwy 99 as well.

The only way to drive between the coast and the rest of Canada at this time is through the United States.

However, Washington is also seeing highway closures due to the inclement weather and residents would need a COVID-19 test to re-enter Canada.

Here’s a full list of mainland BC highways currently closed:

Hwy 1 between Hope and Lytton
Hwy 1 between Lytton and Spences Bridge
Hwy 3 between Hope and Manning Park
Hwy 3 between Princeton and Keremeos
Hwy 3 near Fernie
Hwy 5 between Hope and Merritt
Hwy 7 on both sides of Agassiz
Hwy 7 between Maple Ridge and Mission
Hwy 11 between Mission and Abbotsford
Hwy 93 between Radium Hot Springs and the BC-Alberta border
Hwy 99 between Pemberton and Lillooet

“PoP” Goes the Weasel

July 5, 2021

“PoP” Goes the Weasel

How do you plan your work in your garden? One of the things that is most likely to affect what you do is rainfall. But how do you know when and how much rain is likely to fall? One way to get an idea of the possibility of rain is to look at something called “Probability of Precipitation”, or as we call it, “PoP”. How often have you heard someone say that the weatherman (or woman) was wrong because they predicted 30 percent chance of rain and they did not get anything? Or someone else says there was only a 10 percent chance of rain and they got flooded? If you understand how these forecasts are made, it might help you plan your outdoor activities, including your garden work and when you water.

*Source: John Robert McPherson, Creative Commons*

How is “PoP” defined?

According to the National Weather Service (NWS):

PoP = C x A where “C” = the confidence that precipitation will occur somewhere in the forecast area, and where “A” = the percent of the area that will receive measurable precipitation, if it occurs at all. The forecast is what we call a “conditional” forecast—that means it depends on two different things, one of which requires the other to occur. It’s important to keep in mind that these forecasts are made for a particular period of time (often 12 hours) and for a particular area (the forecast zone). The first part of the calculation is whether or not it will rain at all anywhere in the forecast zone during the time that the forecast covers. The second is how much of the forecast zone will be hit by precipitation sometime during the forecast period.

How likely is it that precipitation will occur?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rainforest on Fire

August 27, 2019

RAINFOREST ON FIRE

On the Front Lines of Bolsonaro’s War on the Amazon, Brazil’s Forest Communities Fight Against Climate Catastrophe

THE RIVER BASIN at the center of Latin America called the Amazon is roughly the size of Australia. Created at the beginning of the world by a smashing of tectonic plates, it was the cradle of inland seas and continental lakes. For the last several million years, it has been blanketed by a teeming tropical biome of 400 billion trees and vegetation so dense and heavy with water, it exhales a fifth of Earth’s oxygen, stores centuries of carbon, and deflects and consumes an unknown but significant amount of solar heat. Twenty percent of the world’s fresh water cycles through its rivers, plants, soils, and air. This moisture fuels and regulates multiple planet-scale systems, including the production of “rivers in the air” by evapotranspiration, a ceaseless churning flux in which the forest breathes its water into great hemispheric conveyer belts that carry it as far as the breadbaskets of Argentina and the American Midwest, where it is released as rain.

In the last half-century, about one-fifth of this forest, or some 300,000 square miles, has been cut and burned in Brazil, whose borders contain almost two-thirds of the Amazon basin. This is an area larger than Texas, the U.S. state that Brazil’s denuded lands most resemble, with their post-forest landscapes of silent sunbaked pasture, bean fields, and evangelical churches. This epochal deforestation — matched by harder to quantify but similar levels of forest degradation and fragmentation — has caused measurable disruptions to regional climates and rainfall. It has set loose so much stored carbon that it has negated the forest’s benefit as a carbon sink, the world’s largest after the oceans.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“We’re Already Starting To Ration Our Corn” – Perfect Storm Could Send Spot Prices Higher

August 5, 2019

“We’re Already Starting To Ration Our Corn” – Perfect Storm Could Send Spot Prices Higher

Corn is extensively used to feed livestock, but the surge in spot prices has forced US farmers to search elsewhere for low-cost substitutes, reported Reuters.

The persistent wet weather that swamped the Midwest this spring is now reducing corn yields.

More recently, dry, hot weather continues over large swaths of the Midwest, is also wreaking havoc on corn yields. Volatile weather as a whole, in 2019, could lead to one of the lowest corn harvests in years.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) last month projected 2019 corn production at 13.88 billion bushels, an 8% drop YoY.

Agricultural organizations, equipment dealers and factories that convert corn into ethanol have already felt the pressure from farmers because of millions of acres went unplanted due to wet weather across the Central and Midwest, including corn and soybean belts.

Accurate picture of how the spring of 2019 has been so far. (Yes, that is a turtle swimming in the corn)

Reuters spoke with meat producers who are now rushing to find substitutes to avoid margin compression from skyrocketing corn prices; they’re attempting to stretch out supplies of corn held in storage.

Experts have warned spot prices of corn could jump once harvesting begins this fall because declining yields will be realized.

Higher prices for corn could translate into higher meat prices, which are already soaring after China’s African swine fever crisis has led to the deaths of hundreds of millions of pigs.

USDA supermarket data showed retail pork prices had soared 9% YoY versus this time last year, while beef prices are up 2%. Rising food costs are occurring at a time when the overall economy is rapidly slowing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Breathing Highways and Sponge Cities

February 21, 2018

Breathing Highways and Sponge Cities

“We could do worse than to go back to the way nature manages rainfall.“

During the 20th Century, the rate of global warming was twice as fast in Taiwan (1.7°C) as for the world as a whole (0.74°C). Partly as a result, the number of days with rainfall decreased dramatically and typhoons gained strength. In 2009, Typhoon Morakot dropped over 1,000 mm (39.4 inches) in a single day and caused the loss of 699 lives. A massive mudslide wiped out Xiaolin Village and 474 people were buried alive. In 2015, Typhoon Soudelor left similar damage. It took months to repair the roads.

Then Taiwan and East China were struck by Dujuan, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Jenny, a killer storm and the thirteenth typhoon of the 2015 Pacific typhoon season. Eight months later, Nepartak became the third most intense tropical cyclone on record with 114 deaths and more than $1.5 billion damage in Taiwan and East China. September brought Meranti, a super typhoon and the strongest ever to make landfall in China in more than 1000 years of records. Meranti’s peak sustained winds tied the record set by Haiyan in 2013, 195 mph (315 km/h), comparable to a tornado, or a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. In Taiwan, nearly 1 million households lost power and 720,000 lost water supplies. Flooding in Zhejiang took 902 homes and affected 1.5 million people.

Between those punctuations, the erratic weather brought long droughts. New Taipei City had to enforce water restrictions when the Shihmen reservoir went dry in April. All cities along coasts or rivers have engineered means to remove excess water and to prevent flooding. Few have the means to sustain themselves in severe droughts.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Who will drink the last glass of water in Cape Town?

January 28, 2018

Who will drink the last glass of water in Cape Town?

Because Cape Town sits between picturesque beaches and mountains, it is a favored travel destination. And, its weather during the summer is described as “almost too perfect.” That’s in part because it rains very little in the summer in this second most populous city in South Africa.

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

Trouble is, starting in 2015 the rainy season never arrived. One year, then two years and now three years of extreme drought have brought the city’s water supplies almost to exhaustion. Barring extraordinary rains or even more draconian cutbacks in water usage than have already occurred, Cape Town officials say they will have to turn off water to most household taps and businesses sometime in April. They’re calling it “Day Zero.” Hospitals and essential public facilities will be exempt. Most residents would have to line up at designated water supply stations for a daily allocation of 25 liters.

Cape Town’s current troubles were not necessarily foreseeable in the usual sense. Yearly long-range weather forecasts raised no alarmswhen they were released since they did not predict an extreme drought for that year.

The causes of the city’s water problems are, in fact, multiple. First, Cape Town’s population has risen 80 percent since 1994 (the end of white rule) to 3.75 million people putting extraordinary demands on its water system. Second, average rainfall has been gradually decreasing for decades and has reached its lowest since 1933. Comparable records before that are not available. One calculation cited in the above linked article is that the current drought is the worst in more than 300 years. Another calculation suggests the multi-year drought is a once-in-a-millennium event. Third, climate change is almost certainly increasing the likelihood of such a drought though there is no way to prove the link to this particular drought.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rampant Wildfires Will Affect Our Drinking Water

October 24, 2017

Rampant Wildfires Will Affect Our Drinking Water

In a world of bigger, hotter fires, it is time to think of forests as vital infrastructure, and to invest in preserving these resources for the future.

If you live in the northwestern half of the continent, as I do, there has been no escaping this year’s extraordinary wildfire season.

Tens of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate their homes. Tourists and hikers destined for national parks such as Glacier, Waterton, Yosemite and Mount Rainier have had to cancel plans or suffer through noxious smoke drifting in from fires, some hundreds of miles away. Hardly a day goes by when a public health official isn’t warning people to stay inside or reduce physical activity.

Once the smoke clears, a more enduring problem will emerge. Forests play a large role in regulating climate change and rainfall patterns over land. They also act as filters for water consumed by hundreds of millions of people.

But once trees catch fire, they unleash ash, sediments and various noxious chemicals. And heat from fires undermines soil stability. Then, when heavy rain falls, tainted water slides into rivers rather than seeping into underground aquifers. If it rains hard enough, flooding often follows, especially when there are no trees to take up what moisture is absorbed into the soil.

The inevitable overload of carbon and sediment coming from a big fire can interfere with a water treatment plant’s disinfection process, just like a dishwasher with a plugged drain. When that happens, carbon reacts with chlorine and produces undesirable chemical byproducts, including known and suspected carcinogens.

The science of wildfire hydrology has been around for some time. But most government agencies wouldn’t consider funding research into this field until the 2002 Hayman fire burned nearly 138,000 acres of forest in the Colorado Rockies, producing catastrophic results.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canadians fight floods across the country

May 7, 2017

Canadians fight floods across the country

Thousands in Central Canada, the Atlantic and B.C. spend the weekend struggling with rising water levels

Erick Miner comforts a cat rescued by boat from a home Saturday on Rue Saint-Louis in Gatineau, Que., as rising river levels and heavy rains continue to cause flooding. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press) Poster of video clip

Across the country, thousands of Canadians are spending the weekend in a desperate struggle with rising floodwaters caused by unusually persistent rainfall.

More than 400 Canadian Forces personnel were deployed to western and central Quebec on Saturday as high water continued to threaten hundreds of residences, including some in the Montreal area.

Another 800 troops will be added to that total by the end of Sunday, officials have since announced.

More than 130 Quebec communities have been hit by flooding, with an estimated 1,900 homes affected and more than 1,000 people forced to leave.

Floodwaters in Quebec are expected to peak today due to continued rain in most of the affected areas.

Premier visits flooded area

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard visited the flooded Montreal-area community of Rigaud yesterday and urged people to heed authorities if they recommend they leave their homes.

Rigaud Mayor Hans Gruenwald Jr. declared a state of emergency Sunday morning and ordered a mandatory evacuation of the region’s flood zones, saying authorities could no longer guarantee the safety of residents.

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre said he is also evaluating whether to declare a state of emergency after three dikes gave way in the Pierrefonds-Roxboro borough, in the city’s north end.

Homes have been evacuated in Pierrefonds, as well as on the two nearby islands, Ile-Bizard and the smaller Ile-Mercier.

flooding-central-eastern-western-Canada-military

Canadian forces have been deployed to help affected communities cope with rising water levels, including 80 soldiers in Gatineau, seen leaving their temporary headquarters here. (Ashley Burke/CBC)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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