“The heaviest average rainfall to lash a swathe of southern and eastern China in more than half a century brought torrential rain and floods that destroyed houses, damaged crops and forced the evacuation of nearly 80,000 people, state media said.
“Even more rain is expected, state broadcaster CCTV said today, after average rainfall in the affected areas this week was recorded as 51 per cent higher than in the corresponding periods of previous years, and the largest since 1961.
“Aerial footage and images released by Xinhua News show rows of half-submerged buildings and flooded streets in some of the worst-hit areas including southeastern Jiangxi province and neighbouring Hunan.”
“Even before the intense flooding of the past week, their children were already sick and malnourished. “My children are suffering from fever, but we don’t have any medicine,” Kawser says. “We are living in real hardship here.”
“Hafiz and his family are among one million ethnic minority Rohingya Muslims living in the overcrowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar…”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/11/asia/rohingya-camp-flooding-intl-hnk/index.html
“A train of 50 wagons filled with water from Jolarpet arrives at Chennai [India] on July 12, 2019. Chennai has been grappling with an acute water crisis over the past four months. The southern metropolis is facing a daily water deficit of at least 200 million litres, and the four reservoirs supplying to the city have run dry. “
Pictures:
“Catherine Head and colleagues at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) studied reefs in the remote Chagos Archipelago of the British Indian Ocean Territory before and after two ocean heatwaves with unusually high sea temperatures, which came 12 months apart.
“Surveying of the seafloor between 2015 and 2017 found that the high sea temperatures led to the loss of 70 per cent of the hard corals.”
“A THIRD blast of hot Saharan air is expected to hit [Spain’s] Costa Blanca this weekend, with temperatures today already reaching 40.7 degrees in Xativa.
“Interior municipalities – such as Orihuela and Alcoy – are expected to experience the brunt of the heat.”
“Parts of Scotland and northern England could face flooding as up to a month’s worth of rain may fall in the space of two hours. The Met Office has issued a thunderstorm warning for much of Scotland, bar the west coast, and large swathes of northern England and the Midlands, including East Anglia.”
[Maui had a very intense, prolonged heatwave in June]
“Thousands of people on Maui have been ordered to evacuate two towns in the path of a spreading wildfire, Hawaiian officials and media said. The 1,200 hectare (3,000 acre) brush fire in the island’s central valley was uncontrolled on Thursday night, Maui’s mayor, Mike Victorino, told a news conference. Firefighters were monitoring it overnight but it was too dangerous to battle it in the dark, he added.”
“A mudslide provoked by heavy rains caused the deaths of four children and three adults in the community of Santo Tomás Chautla, Puebla [Mexico], yesterday.
“The torrential downpour that struck the area late Wednesday afternoon weakened the side of a hillside, causing a piece of it to break away directly over a dwelling located on the hill.”
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/torrential-rain-triggers-puebla-mudslide/
“Louisiana has withstood devastating hurricanes before, but authorities are urging residents not to underestimate the danger and destruction Tropical Storm Barry threatens as it gets closer to the coast Friday.
“”Look, there are three ways that Louisiana floods: storm surge, high rivers, and rain. We’re going to have all three,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/12/us/tropical-flooding-friday-wxc-trnd/index.html
“Vehicles were trapped in floodwaters across much of the Baltimore region Thursday night after storms produced torrential downpours and flash flooding. …
“Widespread flooding made roads impassable in parts of eastern Baltimore County, the National Weather Service said.”
“Some Great Lakes water levels hit record highs in June and are only expected to keep climbing, prompting concern from Michigan officials for waterfront communities already flooded.
“Lake Superior, Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario set record high monthly mean water levels in June, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported this week.”
“Sue Mauger has tracked non-glacier stream temperatures in Cook Inlet [Alaska] for years. And she says she hasn’t seen readings like these. “We saw the highest recorded temperature we’ve ever measured… 81.7 degrees on the Deshka River.”
““So really, so far beyond what is comfortable for salmon and also at least five degrees warmer than any [recorded temperature] previously,” she said.”
https://www.kbbi.org/post/cook-inlet-streams-record-high-temperatures-could-be-fatal-salmon
“Lining the fjords of Greenland are remnants of Viking-era Norse outposts that flourished for less than 500 years before they were mysteriously abandoned.
“And now this lost culture is experiencing a second disappearance, triggered by climate change.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/viking-history-is-melting-away-in-greenland/
“High temperatures and relentless sun throughout the spring have caused Arctic sea ice volume to plummet, nearly setting a record low for the month of June. Sea ice extent has also plummeted, setting a new record low as of July 10.”
“A record start to summer ice melt in Greenland this year has drawn attention to the northern ice sheet… But what about at the other icy end of the planet? …Like Greenland, the Antarctic ice sheet is losing ice and contributing to unabated global sea level rise.
“But there are worrying signs Antarctica is changing faster than expected and in places previously thought to be protected from rapid change.”
“…climate change is not our only existential crisis. Biodiversity loss deserves just as much of our attention. We are, in fact, living during the sixth mass extinction in the history of the Earth.
“According to a recent report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, an estimated 1 million species are currently at risk.”
Read the previous ‘Climate’ thread here and visit my Patreon page here.
