#Extreme Rainfall

[malenipshadows]

   “Concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane have continued to rise despite an urgent need to reduce them.”  [Excerpted from The Washington Post.com.]     Last year was the fifth hottest ever recorded on the planet, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Tuesday [01-10-2023]. It was part of an unabated broader warming trend as humans continue to pump massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.    Extreme heat waves in Europe, Asia and the United States — which stemmed in part from more than a century of burning fossil fuels — helped drive 2022’s unusual warmth, researchers found.    Europe sweltered through its hottest summer on record and its second-hottest year overall, researchers said. Pakistan experienced catastrophic flooding as a result of extreme rainfall. In February, Antarctic Sea ice reached its lowest minimum in 44 years of satellite records.    The year “2022 was yet another ... of climate extremes across Europe and globally. These events highlight that we are already experiencing the devastating consequences of our warming world,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said in a statement announcing the annual findings.  [Remainder omitted.]

[reasonsforhope]

As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year.

Earlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three days—over half of what the city typically gets in a year. It’s the kind of extreme rainfall that’ll get ever more extreme as the planet warms.

The city’s water managers, though, were ready and waiting. Like other urban areas around the world, in recent years LA has been transforming into a “sponge city,” replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants. It has also built out “spreading grounds,” where water accumulates and soaks into the earth.

With traditional dams and all that newfangled spongy infrastructure, between February 4 and 7 the metropolis captured 8.6 billion gallons of stormwater, enough to provide water to 106,000 households for a year. For the rainy season in total, LA has accumulated 14.7 billion gallons.

Long reliant on snowmelt and river water piped in from afar, LA is on a quest to produce as much water as it can locally. “There's going to be a lot more rain and a lot less snow, which is going to alter the way we capture snowmelt and the aqueduct water,” says Art Castro, manager of watershed management at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Dams and spreading grounds are the workhorses of local stormwater capture for either flood protection or water supply.”

Centuries of urban-planning dogma dictates using gutters, sewers, and other infrastructure to funnel rainwater out of a metropolis as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. Given the increasingly catastrophic urban flooding seen around the world, though, that clearly isn’t working anymore, so now planners are finding clever ways to capture stormwater, treating it as an asset instead of a liability. “The problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley. “No one driveway or roof in and of itself causes massive alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does. Maybe we can solve that problem with a thousand Band-Aids.”

Or in this case, sponges. The trick to making a city more absorbent is to add more gardens and other green spaces that allow water to percolate into underlying aquifers—porous subterranean materials that can hold water—which a city can then draw from in times of need. Engineers are also greening up medians and roadside areas to soak up the water that’d normally rush off streets, into sewers, and eventually out to sea...

To exploit all that free water falling from the sky, the LADWP has carved out big patches of brown in the concrete jungle. Stormwater is piped into these spreading grounds and accumulates in dirt basins. That allows it to slowly soak into the underlying aquifer, which acts as a sort of natural underground tank that can hold 28 billion gallons of water.

During a storm, the city is also gathering water in dams, some of which it diverts into the spreading grounds. “After the storm comes by, and it's a bright sunny day, you’ll still see water being released into a channel and diverted into the spreading grounds,” says Castro. That way, water moves from a reservoir where it’s exposed to sunlight and evaporation, into an aquifer where it’s banked safely underground.

On a smaller scale, LADWP has been experimenting with turning parks into mini spreading grounds, diverting stormwater there to soak into subterranean cisterns or chambers. It’s also deploying green spaces along roadways, which have the additional benefit of mitigating flooding in a neighborhood: The less concrete and the more dirt and plants, the more the built environment can soak up stormwater like the actual environment naturally does.

As an added benefit, deploying more of these green spaces, along with urban gardens, improves the mental health of residents. Plants here also “sweat,” cooling the area and beating back the urban heat island effect—the tendency for concrete to absorb solar energy and slowly release it at night. By reducing summer temperatures, you improve the physical health of residents. “The more trees, the more shade, the less heat island effect,” says Castro. “Sometimes when it’s 90 degrees in the middle of summer, it could get up to 110 underneath a bus stop.”

LA’s far from alone in going spongy. Pittsburgh is also deploying more rain gardens, and where they absolutely must have a hard surface—sidewalks, parking lots, etc.—they’re using special concrete bricks that allow water to seep through. And a growing number of municipalities are scrutinizing properties and charging owners fees if they have excessive impermeable surfaces like pavement, thus incentivizing the switch to permeable surfaces like plots of native plants or urban gardens for producing more food locally.

So the old way of stormwater management isn’t just increasingly dangerous and ineffective as the planet warms and storms get more intense—it stands in the way of a more beautiful, less sweltering, more sustainable urban landscape. LA, of all places, is showing the world there’s a better way.

-via Wired, February 19, 2024

[anumetservice]

Near Record-Breaking Dry November Followed Near Record-Breaking Wet October

Dale C. S. Destin – Published 22 December 2023 | In the span of two months, Antigua experienced a meteorological rollercoaster, going from a near-record-breaking wet October to a near-record-breaking dry November. With an island-average total of 25.7 mm (1.01 in), November 2023 has emerged as the second driest such month on record. It fell just short of the historic low set back in 1947, a…

[nepalenergyforum]

Infrastructure in Mountainous Regions at Risk from More Extreme Rainfall

Every degree Celsius of warming increases the density of major downpours by 15 percent at elevations above 2,000 metres, they reported in the journal Nature. On top of that, each additional 1,000 metres of altitude adds another one percent of rainfall. A world, in other words, 3C hotter than preindustrial levels will see the likelihood of potentially devastating deluges multiply by nearly…

[kp777]

By Isabella O'Malley, Brittany Peterson and Drew Costley. AP

Huffington Post

July 11, 2023

Schools in New Delhi were forced to close Monday after heavy monsoon rains battered the Indian capital, with landslides and flash floods killing at least 15 people over the last three days. Farther north, the overflowing Beas River swept vehicles downstream as it flooded neighborhoods.

In Japan, torrential rain pounded the southwest, causing floods and mudslides that left two people dead and at least six others missing Monday. Local TV showed damaged houses in Fukuoka prefecture and muddy water from the swollen Yamakuni River appearing to threaten a bridge in the town of Yabakei.

In Ulster County, in New York’s Hudson Valley and in Vermont, some said the flooding is the worst they’ve seen since Hurricane Irene’s devastation in 2011.

Although destructive flooding in India, Japan, China, Turkey and the United States might seem like distant events, atmospheric scientists say they have this in common: Storms are forming in a warmer atmosphere, making extreme rainfall a more frequent reality now. The additional warming that scientists predict is coming will only make it worse.

Read more.

[thechembow]

"Atmospheric river" (OR induced storm) drenches Los Angeles with record-setting rain, blasts Sierra with 160-mph winds

Feb. 6, 2024 - Fox Weather

A deadly [storm] brought life-threatening extreme weather to California this week, breaking rainfall records and slamming the Sierra Nevada mountains with wind gusts that rivaled a Category 5 hurricane...

Multiple daily rainfall records have been broken across the greater Los Angeles area. Downtown Los Angeles recorded 7.04 inches since Sunday. That makes this the third-highest two-day rainfall total on record. The city averages 14.25 inches of rain annually and received half of that in 48 hours.

Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) recorded 1.76 inches on Sunday, breaking a 1958 record of 0.56 inches. Since Sunday, LAX reported receiving 4.38 inches of rain.

Santa Barbara Airport recorded 2.39 inches on Sunday, blowing the previous record out of the water set in 1990 of 0.50 inches.

The National Weather Service office in San Diego recorded the highest rain totals for California within 24 hours at higher elevations. By Tuesday at 4 a.m. PST, the NWS said that the area of Lytle Creek recorded 12.22 inches of rain. Deer Creek Dam received 9.21 inches...

Mammoth Mountain Ski Base in California recorded 33 inches in 12 hours by Monday morning. Aspendell, located in Inyo County, picked up just under 28 inches.

[novelistparty]

dimensional analysis is one my most-used skills and I learned it in chemistry class when I was 15

[numbuh424]

.

[indizombie]

A new study has found that mountains across the globe, including the Himalayas, are now seeing more rainfall at elevations where it has mostly snowed in the past. The change has made the mountains more dangerous, scientists say, as increased temperatures not only bring rain but also accelerate melting of snow and ice. The rainwater also loosens the soil resulting in landslides, rockfalls, floods and debris-flows. "Our findings provide several lines of evidence demonstrating a warming-induced amplification of rainfall extremes at high altitudes, specifically in snow-dominated regions of the Northern Hemisphere," says the study, published in June in the Nature journal. The finding is consistent with a special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2019 which said that snowfall had decreased, at least in part because of higher temperatures, especially at lower elevations of mountain regions.

Navin Singh Khadka, ‘Himachal Pradesh floods: More rain, less snow are turning Himalayas dangerous’, BBC

[farmerstrend]

The Looming Impact of La Niña: How the Greater Horn of Africa Can Prepare for Depressed October-December Rains

“Explore how the Greater Horn of Africa can prepare for depressed October-December rains due to La Niña, with strategies including climate-smart agriculture, water harvesting, and fast-maturing crops.” “Discover the critical role of climate resilience, community-led projects, and government investments in protecting vulnerable communities in the Greater Horn of Africa from the impacts of La…

[rightnewshindi]

भारत के 84 फीसदी जिले विनाशकारी वर्षा और अत्यधिक गर्मी के शिकार, 2036 तक हर 10 में से 8 होंगे प्रभावित

Delhi News: आईपीई ग्लोबल और ईएसआरआई इंडिया की संयुक्त रिपोर्ट मैनेजिंग मानसून्स इन ए वार्मिंग क्लाइमेट में इसका खुलासा किया गया है। रिपोर्ट को 1993 से 2022 तक के देश के अलग-अलग रीजन मेंं तापमान और वर्षा आंकड़ों के आधार पर तैयार किया गया है। आईपीई ग्लोबल लि. एक अंतरराष्ट्रीय विकास परामर्श समूह है जो विकासशील देशों को सतत विकास लक्षयों (एसडीजी) को प्राप्त करने में मदद करने के लिए विशेषज्ञ तकनीकी…

[jthurlow]

Two 1924 "Extreme Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Events" Affecting Completion of the St. Lucie Canal

I want to thank Tony Cristaldi of the National Weather Service, Melbourne, Florida, for writing and sharing historic weather information that gives strong insight into why in 1924 the St. Lucie Canal was so damaged that its completion date has been “clouded in history,” and thus the subject of my most recent blog posts. The October 1924 Cuba hurricane is the earliest officially classified…

[strangererotica]

EXPLICIT CONTENT | MINORS DNI

Eddie Munson x Reader

Summary: You and Eddie spend some ‘quality time’ together in his van on a stormy afternoon 😘 Includes oral sex (f receiving) face-sitting, masturbation, squirting, unprotected p in v sex

It’s a gorgeous, stormy afternoon in Hawkins. Heavy rainfall drums against the roof of Eddie’s van, trickling down its fogged-up windows. The two of you are wrapped together under a blanket in the back, stripped to your underwear. Eddie’s hands run along your back as you lay over him, his fingers working your bra undone. He succeeds at unhooking it and the bra slides down, the fat of your breasts now pressed against his bare skin. Your breath hitches when your peaked nipples meet the coarse hair on Eddie’s chest. Every part of you seems on fire, sensitive and filled with need. Eddie can feel your arousal, one of his thighs situated between yours, the warmth of your soaked panties wetting his leg…

His breath is warm and moist on your neck, raising goosebumps across your skin. Eddie’s lips suck gently along the base of your throat, traveling down your chest till he’s massaging your breast in his mouth. You keen into his tongue, gliding your nipple against the soft, wet pad. Lightning strikes close by, the rumble of thunder vibrating the backseat under your bodies. Eddie slides his lips off your breast, his eyes wide with mischief. “That was a big one, huh?” he murmurs up at you. Adjusting yourself on top of Eddie, you’re now straddling his bulge instead of his thigh. He groans as you bear down on his stiff cock, the fat outline prominently tenting his boxers. “Yeah, it is a big one,” you respond, using Eddie’s previous words.

He holds you at the waist, rolling his hips upward, grinding you over his bulge. The rain grows stronger along with the wind, whipping against the sides of Eddie’s van. He gently eases you off of him for a second, gazing between your bodies at the soaking mess you’ve made on his boxers. “Jesus Christ,” he marvels, sounding awestruck. “I don’t know if it’s wetter out there, or in here…Fuck I need to taste you…” Eddie guides your hips as you crawl up his body, till your thighs are framing his face. “Atta girl,” he mumbles into your cunt, but his words are obviously muffled by your pussy in his mouth. Eddie’s left hand squeezes at your hip, while his right hand moves to touch himself.

His eyes drift closed, his tongue lapping your cunt through your slippery panties. You sink deeper over Eddie’s face, humping his lips and chin, marking him in your scent. He’s tugging at his cock now, grunting into your wet heat as he fucks himself and you at the same time. Your fingers are locked in Eddie’s hair, his ebony curls damp with sweat. The atmosphere inside the van is extremely warm, prompting you to toss the blanket off your bodies and onto the floor. Eddie’s hand is working himself closer and closer to climax, his mouth sucking your clit through your panties with the same goal. The underwear is completely saturated by this point, a useless barrier between your cunt and Eddie’s mouth. When you come, your orgasm fucking drenches Eddie, the slippery liquid running down his cheeks and neck.

Eddie flips you over, pulling his cock from his boxers and tugging the sopping crotch of your panties aside. Your legs wrap around him instinctively, begging him to fill you up, and he readily obliges. Eddie enters you easily in one thrust, his hands clutching your ankles for leverage as he pumps your cunt full of his release. He lays over you, panting and chuckling into your hair, “fuck sweetheart, m’sorry I came so quick. Y’just squeezed me so good, couldn’t help myself…”

Eddie slides a hand between your bodies to pull his dick out of you, his fingers grazing your clit in the process. A little gasp leaves your body at the contact; Eddie smiles up at you wickedly, that mischievous look in his eyes again. “Aww,” he coos. “Looks like you’ve got one more in there for me, huh princess?”

Before you can respond, Eddie’s already moved backward in the seat, nuzzling your belly on the way down to your pussy. He peels the ruined panties off of you, slathering your legs in your juices as he pulls them off and tosses the soaked fabric to the floor. Eddie rests on his elbows in front of your ass, and burrows his face between your legs.

Your fingers find his hair, tangling in Eddie’s wet mass of curls as he eats you. Heavy rain pummels the roof of Eddie’s van as his tongue bullies its way inside your pussy. It’s almost too much, the way he forces his tongue in and out of you. Eddie isn’t content with licking your clit; he literally has to fuck you with his mouth before he’s satisfied with his work. He knows from experience that you have the strongest orgasms when he pumps his tongue in and out of you like this, rubbing the tip against your g-spot, licking you from the inside out. Your hold tightens in Eddie’s hair, your cunt gripping his tongue as its thrusts continue.

Rutting yourself against his face, your clit bumps Eddie’s nose just as his tongue reaches the deepest place inside you yet. Your climax streaks through you like a bolt of lightning painting the sky, your creamy walls twisting and clenching around Eddie’s tongue. He grins into your cunt as you soak his face again, getting off on the vibrations of your orgasm he can feel through his tongue.

Eddie licks soft stripes up and down your pussy as your orgasm fades, pressing feather-light kisses onto your clit. “Good job, baby,” he says, lifting his head from between your legs. “I knew y’had another one in you…”💋

[reasonsforhope]

"In China, a landscape architect is reimagining cities across the vast country by working with nature to combat flooding through the ‘sponge city’ concept.

Through his architecture firm Turenscape, Yu has created hundreds of projects in dozens of cities using native plants, dirt, and clever planning to absorb excess rainwater and channel it away from densely populated areas.

Flooding, especially in the two Chinese heartlands of the commercial south and the agricultural north, is becoming increasingly common, but Yu says that concrete and pipe solutions can only go so far. They’re inflexible, expensive, and require constant maintenance. According to a 2021 World Bank report, 641 of China’s 654 largest cities face regular flooding.

“There’s a misconception that if we can build a flood wall higher and higher, or if we build the dams higher and stronger, we can protect a city from flooding,” Yu told CNN in a video call. “(We think) we can control the water… that is a mistake.”

Pictured: The Benjakitti Forest Park in Bangkok

Yu has been called the “Chinese Olmstead” referring to Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of NYC’s Central Park. He grew up in a little farming village of 500 people in Zhejiang Province, where 36 weirs channel the waters of a creek across terraced rice paddies.

Once a year, carp would migrate upstream and Yu always looked forward to seeing them leap over the weirs.

This synthesis of man and nature is something that Turenscape projects encapsulate. These include The Nanchang Fish Tail Park, in China’s Jiangxi province, Red Ribbon Park in Qinghuandao, Hebei province, the Sanya Mangrove Park in China’s island province of Hainan, and almost a thousand others. In all cases, Yu utilizes native plants that don’t need any care to develop extremely spongey ground that absorbs excess rainfall.

Pictured: The Dong’an Wetland Park, another Turescape project in Sanya.

He often builds sponge projects on top of polluted or abandoned areas, giving his work an aspect of reclamation. The Nanchang Fish Tail Park for example was built across a 124-acre polluted former fish farm and coal ash dump site. Small islands with dawn redwoods and two types of cypress attract local wildlife to the metropolis of 6 million people.

Sanya Mangrove Park was built over an old concrete sea wall, a barren fish farm, and a nearby brownfield site to create a ‘living’ sea wall.

One hectare (2.47 acres) of Turenscape sponge land can naturally clean 800 tons of polluted water to the point that it is safe enough to swim in, and as a result, many of the sponge projects have become extremely popular with locals.

One of the reasons Yu likes these ideas over grand infrastructure projects is that they are flexible and can be deployed as needed to specific areas, creating a web of rain sponges. If a large drainage, dam, seawall, or canal is built in the wrong place, it represents a huge waste of time and money.

Pictured: A walkway leads visitors through the Nanchang Fish Tail Park.

The sponge city projects in Wuhan created by Turenscape and others cost in total around half a billion dollars less than proposed concrete ideas. Now there are over 300 sponge projects in Wuhan, including urban gardens, parks, and green spaces, all of which divert water into artificial lakes and ponds or capture it in soil which is then released more slowly into the sewer system.

Last year, The Cultural Landscape Foundation awarded Yu the $100,000 Oberlander Prize for elevating the role of design in the process of creating nature-based solutions for the public’s enjoyment and benefit."

-via Good News Network, August 15, 2024

[hashemsamar]

Displacement Diaries [3]:

🚨 The Tent Amidst War and Hardships!!

In the midst of ongoing war, tents have become a refuge for many families who have lost their homes due to bombing and destruction. These families live in harsh conditions that offer little protection from the weather, lacking basic necessities like water and electricity. The tent, although a symbol of resilience and challenge, also reflects the state of humanitarian collapse we are experiencing.

As for us in particular, we have undergone five displacements, and with each move, we hope it will be the last. Living in a tent is not easy, especially with a large family that includes children and the elderly. We strive to adapt, but the biting cold at night and the extreme heat during the day make life inside the tent a continuous challenge. With winter approaching, our fears grow as rain and winds become an additional source of suffering. The tents do not provide adequate protection from the harsh cold or water seepage, making living conditions even more difficult.

Amid rising prices, basic necessities like food and medicine have become scarce and nearly impossible to obtain. Humanitarian aid is dwindling, and prices are skyrocketing, putting us in a difficult position as we seek new ways to secure the bare minimum for survival. Even simple daily needs have become a burden for us, and with the arrival of winter, we require additional items like warm clothing, blankets, and heating devices that have become a distant dream.

Urgent Needs for My Small and Large Family:

1. Tents and Shader: We need to secure 2 tents and Shader to protect our family from the rain, as the current situation threatens our safety due to the drop in temperatures and heavy rainfall.

2. Blankets and Clothing: We require sufficient blankets to keep our family warm, in addition to suitable clothing and footwear to face the harsh weather conditions.

3. Total Amount Needed:The total cost for these urgent needs is estimated at $6000.

Current Danger: The lack of these essentials over the next week puts our family at significant risk, especially given the current conditions we are facing, which could lead to our drowning due to the rain and rising sea levels.

Dear friends who support Palestine, please participate and write about.

@appsa @buttercuparry @fancysmudges @brokenbackmountain @mothblossoms @aleciosun @fluoresensitive @khizuo @lesbiandardevil @transmutationisms @schoolhater @timogsilangan @sayruq @malcriada @palestinegenocide @sar-soor @akajustmerry @annoyingloudmicrowavecultist @feluka @tortiefrancis @flower-tea-fairies @tsaricides @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @visenyasdragon @belleandsaintsebastian @ear-motif @kordeliiius @brutaliakhoa @raelyn-dreams @troythecatfish @thenewinquiry @4ft10tvlandfangirl @queerstudiesnatural @northgazaupdates2 @skatezophrenic @awetistic-things @baby-girl-aaron-dessner @nabulsi @sygold @junglejim4322 @heritageposts @chososhairbuns @palistani123-blog @90-ghost @illuminated-runas @dlxxv-vetted-donations.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Zuni farmers in the southwestern United States made it through long stretches of extremely low rainfall between A.D. 1200 and 1400 by embracing small-scale, decentralized irrigation systems. Farmers in Ghana coped with severe droughts from 1450 to 1650 by planting indigenous African grains, like drought-tolerant pearl millet. Ancient practices like these are gaining new interest today. As countries face unprecedented heat waves, storms and melting glaciers, some farmers and international development organizations are reaching deep into the agricultural archives to revive these ancient solutions. Drought-stricken farmers in Spain have reclaimed medieval Moorish irrigation technology. International companies hungry for carbon offsets have paid big money for biochar made using pre-Columbian Amazonian production techniques. Texas ranchers have turned to ancient cover cropping methods to buffer against unpredictable weather patterns. But grasping for ancient technologies and techniques without paying attention to historical context misses one of the most important lessons ancient farmers can reveal: Agricultural sustainability is as much about power and sovereignty as it is about soil, water and crops.