A Requiem for Flooded Cities: Russian Flood Disaster Worsens, Amur River to Hit 30 Feet
29
August, 2013
Earlier
this month, Russia experienced a Song
of Flood and Fire in
which massive burning of Siberia’s tundra transitioned to the worst
flood event in Russian history. Now, the still ongoing and worsening
flood has become a haunting requiem for flooded cities as more than
100,000 homes have been devoured or damaged by the still-rising
waters.
As
of today, news reports indicate that flood waters have risen as high
as 7.6 meters (about 24 feet) along the Amur River shattering a
previous record of 6 meters and moving on toward a predicted high of
an unprecedented 9 meters (30 feet). These record high water levels
are the worst seen in the 120 years of record keeping along the Amur
River, a rate of flooding and rainfall that numerous Russian
scientists are now attributing to climate change.
The
Amur floods come just one year after a record flash flood in Krymsk
killed 171 people and resulted in 600 million dollars in damages. The
current Amur floods are expected to reach nearly 1 billion dollars in
losses, Russia’s most costly flood disaster in its history.
A
brief break in the clouds over this heavily flooded region allowed
for satellites to provide pictures of the heavily flooded Amur. What
follows is nothing short of eye-opening as the Amur River appears to
expand to the size of a large inland bay.
Here
is a picture of the Amur River on July 11:
Amur
River July 11
This
shot shows an approximately 500 mile length of the Amur River running
along the border between Russia and China. In this shot, we see the
river ranging between 1-3 miles in width. By August 21, the situation
is remarkably transformed:
Amur
River Flooding August 21
In
the above image, the Amur and its tributaries have swollen to between
5 and 20 miles in width devouring both forest lands and cities alike.
The August 21 image was taken at a time when the Amur levels were
about 7 meters, at another half meter in height and with more
flooding on the way, even this remarkable picture is just a prelude
to end flood levels.
Damages
from flooding have resulted in the losses of about half a million
hectacres of crops in the region, pushing food prices, on average,
about 10% higher. Hungry brown bears displaced by the flood waters
are increasingly encroaching on villages and towns in the region with
Russian officials resorting to airlifting bears away from an at-risk
human population.
Russian
officials seem both stunned and taken aback by the rapacity and
violence of these floods.
“I’m not going to read letters and telegrams that are coming from citizens in my address. We’ll discuss those at a separate meeting,” Putin said Thursday. “But I want to turn your attention to the fact that not everything is as smooth as we’d like to think.”
An
increasing number of Russian meteorologists and scientists are
linking these events to climate change, all while they lament a
general lack of Russian government response.
“It is quite possible that such showers are indeed consequences of global warming. How else to explain this constant change in the climate?” Svetlana Ageyeva, head of the meteorological center in the Khabarovsk region, told RIA Novosti. “I would not laugh at those who say such things.”
Russian
government has deep ties to its petroleum industry and preference
goes to oil producing entities with little thought to the
consequences of climate change. Most scientists in Russia expect
little or no response from government unless the situation there
continues to grow worse to the point where it begins to affect the
profitability of government entrenched businesses.
Large,
wet weather systems continue to converge over the Amur region as the
Jet Stream delivers a stream of storms from the west and as Arctic
storm systems ride down from the north along a deep trough. These
converging rivers of air and moisture brought powerful storms, once
again, to the already battered region today.
Amur
Rain August 29
A
similar Jet Stream pattern and moisture delivery system has been in
place since late July, when evaporation spilling off the top of
the Ocean
Heat Dome near
Shanghai dumped even more water vapor into an already overwhelming
convergent flow. Since that time, a trough plunging down from the
Arctic and a Jet Stream rushing across the continent have continued
to link up over Amur, delivering storm after storm after storm. This
is the kind of fixed, global warming-induced, weather pattern Dr.
Jennifer Francis alluded to in her recent work at Rutgers and in her
even more recent briefings to the US Congress.
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