Weather bombs across the globe

Climate Change Ignores all Borders as Rain Bombs Fall on Kauai and the Middle East Alike

Robertscribbler,

2 May, 2018

The weaponization of weather language has long been a topic of some controversy in the meteorological press. Peace-loving people the world over rightly try to communicate in a manner that discourages violent conflict. And the term ‘rain bomb’ has taken quite a lot of flak from those with thus-stated good intentions.

However, whether or not the language itself bristles with perceived warlike phrases, the weather itself is steadily being weaponized against everyone and everything living on the face of planet Earth by the greenhouse gasses fossil fuel related industries and technologies continue pumping into the air.

(Bruce Haffner snapped this photo of an extreme heavy rainfall event over Phoenix, AZ during 2016. Climate change has been increasing the intensity of the most severe storms. So we see historic an unusually strong events more and more frequently.)

So I’ll add this brief appeal before going into another climate change related extreme weather analysis — fight climate change, not wars. The opportunity for a peaceful, hopeful, prosperous future for basically everyone depends on it.

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Whether you like the phrase or not, more rain-bombs — or extreme heavy rainfall events far outside the range of usual weather norms — keep falling. And most recently the all-time record for the most rain to fall within a 24 hour period was shattered on April 14-15 as nearly 50 inches inundated Kauai, Hawaii. In a separate instance half a world away, late April and early May has seen extreme drought giving way to extreme flooding over parts of the Middle East. Both increasingly extreme drought events and much heavier than usual precipitation events are signals of human-caused climate change. And, lately, these signals have been proliferating.

Rainfall Records Shattered in the World’s Wettest Place

For the Kauai event, the Washington Post reports that 49.69 inches of rain accumulated at the Waipa rain gauge on Kauai in just one 24-hour period. Though Kauai is the rainiest place on Earth — receiving some 400 inches per year — this single day rainfall was far in excess of even that soggy norm. In total, it amounted to about one and a half months of precipitation for the world’s wettest location falling in just one day.

 

The previous all-time record for single day rainfall in the U.S. occurred in 1979 in Alvin, Texas during Tropical Storm Claudette. This storm dumped 43 inches over a 24-hour period. The recent Kauai event shattered this record. And it involved no tropical cyclone — just historically high moisture levels over the Pacific colliding with unstable air masses streaming down from the north. In this case, warming ocean surfaces are generating higher levels of evaporation which in turn are feeding extreme thunderstorms all across the Pacific and over adjacent land masses.

(Historically heavy rains flip cars and wreck structures in Kauai on April 14-15. Image source: Lace Anderson and Hawaii News Now.)

Chip Fletcher, an expert on the impact of climate change on Pacific island communities, told the Los Angeles Times:

“The flooding on Kauai is consistent with an extreme rainfall that comes with a warmer atmosphere. Just recognize that we’re moving into a new climate, and our communities are scaled and built for a climate that no longer exists.”

The present record Kauai event has been classified as a 1 in 100 year instance in the context of past climatology. But given present conditions and ever-increasing Earth surface temperatures, this new record may fall within a decade or less as the atmosphere continues to load more moisture and as evaporation and extreme precipitation events steadily increase.

Middle East Hammered by Extremes of Drought and Storm

Half a world away, the Middle East is seeing its own series of weather and climate shocks. The nations of Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia have been experiencing widespread and long term drought. This drought has, as with the recent Central U.S. event, in large part been driven by rising temperatures. Evaporation plays its role here too as lands dry out more swiftly when temperatures rise.

(A storm sweeping in from the Med brings heavy rains and havoc to a drought-stricken Middle East. Image source: Tropical Tidbits and The Washington Post.)

However, with climate change, you can never discount the hard swing back to heavy rain despite prolonged drying as weather chaos ensues. Such was the situation during the recent week as an intense weather disturbance crossed the Mediterranean and entered the Middle East on April 26th and 27th. The colder air mass tapped high levels of moisture bleeding off the, again, much warmer than normal sea surfaces in the Med. It then dumped this moisture in the form of extreme precipitation over the Middle East.

In Israel, the resulting flash floods swept away ten teenagers as street flooding that was described as ‘epic’ ran through the country’s cities. Waters over-topped sidewalks and rushed into homes and businesses as the heavens unleashed. One to two inch per hour rainfall rates were reported. Meanwhile, in Syria, heavy hail pelted down. Jordan and Egypt were also inundated — with many streets described as impassable due to flood waters. The leading edge of cooler air kicked up a massive haboob — which spread its immense cloud of dust over Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Over recent days, the stormy pattern continued. Heavy rains overtook parts of Yemen — forcing a dam to burst and washing away dozens of homes and farms

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Two More in a Lengthening Tally

These two events are just the most recent affairs in a much larger and far more widespread pattern of ramping extreme global weather events. Events that will continue to proliferate so long as the world continues to warm. This is the state of affairs that continued fossil fuel burning has brought about. The rain bombs are hanging, enlarging, above us. They are waiting to fall. And the politically-charged denials of their chief manufacturers — oil, gas, and coal — only make the situation worse for us all.