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To: ChinuSFO who wrote (136027)

8/21/2013 10:20:50 AM

From: Wharf Rat

Respond to of 149317

Asia gets more than droughts.

Tropical Storm and Monsoonal Flow Collide Over Super-Heated Pacific to Dump Two Feet of Rain on Manila

Yesterday, tropical storm Trami churned through an abnormally hot Pacific Ocean toward an inevitable date with downpour over Taiwan and Southeastern China. There, a procession of tropical storms and monsoonal moisture had set off record floods which, by Tuesday, had resulted in the deaths of over 200 people. The now saturated region expects the arrival of Trami today, but not after the tropical monster, loaded with megatons of moisture, clashed with an already amped monsoonal flow to drench the Philippines as it emerged from a broiling Pacific Ocean.

Throughout the past month, an ocean heat dome had caused surface water temperatures to soar above 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) over a vast swath of the Pacific Ocean just to the east of China and to the south of Japan and Korea. This powerful pool of latent Pacific heat was a major factor in the delivery of record heatwaves to China, Korea and Japan which resulted in thousands of hospitalizations and at least 100 lives lost. But yesterday, the heat and moisture rising off the Pacific would play its highly energetic part in an entirely different anomalous weather event — the inundation of the Philippine capital city of Manila.

Trami Collides with Monsoonal Flow to Produce Record Rainfall over Philippines

(Image source: NASA/Lance-Modis)

As Trami made her way over these hot and moisture rich waters, she grew in size until her cloud area covered a width of more than one thousand miles. Ocean temperatures soaring between 2 and 4 degrees (Fahrenheit) above average helped to pump its immense bulk full of moisture even as it became wrapped in a dense flow of monsoonal moisture proceeding from west to east off the continent.

By Monday, Trami was moving in from the east, lashing the Philippines with her dense, thunderstorm laden, spiral bands even as monsoonal storms came into collision with these bands from the west. The combination of a moisture rich tropical storm colliding with an equally rain dense monsoonal flow over a Philippines surrounded by anomalously hot water set off an extraordinarily intense rain event in which the capital of Manila was inundated by a powerful deluge.

Rainfall rates for this sprawling city hit a stunning 2 inches per hour and maintained that record shattering pace for almost twelve hours running. In total, more than 23.5 inches of rainfall was recorded at rain gauges across the capital. Many residents, whose homes were flooded in a rising rush of water, were forced to evacuate and initial reports indicate that at least 100,000 of Manila’s 12 million residents have now relocated to emergency shelters. So far, at least 8 deaths and millions of dollars in damages have been attributed to the storm. But with local levees and damns under threat of over-topping and collapse, the initial reports and estimates may just be the beginning.

Satellite and water vapor imagery taken on Tuesday showed rains continuing over the Philippines, albeit at a less intense rate, as Trami turned her great bulk of moisture northwestward toward the already soaked regions of Taiwan and southeastern China. Trami is expected to intensify into a category 1 Typhoon this afternoon and is likely to deliver severe rains and flooding to already soaked regions.

Trami Rakes Taiwan and Philippines

(Image source: NOAA)

You can see Trami raking both Taiwan and the Philippines with massive and rain-dense cloud bands in the most recent NOAA water vapor imagery. In this image, the storm appears to intensify as it bears down on the already storm-soaked shores of China and Taiwan.

Conditions in Context

The Philippines is hit by a total of 20 tropical cyclones each year. So heavy rainfall and floods are a regular aspect of life there. However, the nearly 24 inches of rainfall during a 12 hour period experienced yesterday is unprecedented, breaking even a number of Manila’s very high record rainfall totals. The conditions that led to these records, just one year after another severe rainfall event, include anomalous heating of the Pacific Ocean under a powerful Ocean Heat Dome during late July and early August, a rather strong and thick monsoonal flow that has tended to meander a bit further north than is usual, and a very large tropical cyclone fed by both the anomalous heat and added moisture.

Climate research has shown that we can expect more intense rainfall events worldwide as the hydrological cycle increases by 6% with a .8 degree Celsius temperature rise. Similar research has found evidence of more frequent tropical cyclones as oceans warm and seasons in which hurricanes may develop continue to lengthen. This region of the Pacific Ocean, in particular, has shown an increasing number of cyclones as Earth has continued its human-driven warming trend, with temperatures increasing by .2 degrees Celsius per decade over the last 30 years. Since the vast Pacific Ocean forms a kind of moisture trap in this steamy region, it is likely the area will experience some of the worst flooding and storm effects coming down the pipe due to human-caused warming.

Trami’s expected delivery of powerful storms to China and Taiwan will also, unfortunately, probably not be the last for this season. Water temperatures are still stunningly high and moisture flows from both the Indian Ocean and the Pacific are likely to churn out many more storms before the tropical cyclone season ends months from now.
robertscribbler.wordpress.com

"the hydrological cycle increases by 6% with a .8 degree Celsius temperature rise"
Good to see that; they've been using 4% for a few years, and I've been thinking it's higher ever since I heard the figure 8%/degree. Places all over the country are getting flash floods now.... 4 inches rain in an hour, 8 inches in 4 hours, whatever.
=
Japan Breaks National Heat Record. Chinese Heat Wave Continues

Posted by: Christopher C. Burt,
8:48 PM GMT on August 12, 2013

An all-time national heat record was set in Japan today (August 12th) when the temperature peaked at 41.0°C (105.8°F) at the Ekawasaki site in Shimanto (part of Kochi Prefecture). The previous record of 40.9°C (105.6°F) was recorded at Tajima and Kumagaya on August 16, 2007. Tokyo endured its warmest daily minimum on August 11th with a low of 30.4°C (86.7°F). This was the 2nd warmest minimum on record for Japan following a minimum of 30.8°C (87.4°F) at Itoigawa on August 22, 1990.

Location of Shimanto on the island of Honshu in Japan. Wikipedia.

How many have died as a result of the Chinese heat wave?

On Sunday, August 11th, the temperature peaked at 42.7°C (108.9°F) at Shengxian, its hottest temperature measured so far during the heat wave. At Hangzhou the temperature reached 41.1°C (106.0°F) on August 11th and 40.3°C (104.5°F) on August 12th marking the 12th day since July 24th that the city surpassed or tied its previous all-time record high of 40.3° set on August 1, 2003.

Eastern CHINA, where about 30% of the population of the country and 5% of the global population reside (approximately 400 million people) has undergone a heat wave unprecedented in its history. No one really knows how many have died as a result of the heat wave (Chinese news sources claim ‘about two dozen’), but statistically it is almost certain that many thousands must have perished as the result of the heat over the past month.

The populous cities of CHINA must be almost unendurable during long summer heat waves. On top of the extreme daily maximum temperatures of the past month, the minimums have also been in record-breaking territory. Health officials site that the lack of night time cooling ultimately leads to high mortality rates during heat waves. Photo from Wikicommons.

Virtually every possible heat statistic has been broken for most sites in eastern CHINA (as well as central and southern Japan, and South Korea). I cannot think of any other heat event that has affected so many people for so long (including those that plagued the U.S. in the mid 1930s, Russia in 2010, and Western Europe in August 2003). Obviously, the Chinese authorities are keeping the fatalities from this ongoing event under wraps. The European heat wave of 2003 killed over 72,000 people, the Russian heat wave of 2010 killed over 55,000, and in the U.S historical record, we know that many thousands also succumbed to the heat waves of the mid-1930s and in 1995 in the Midwest. The dense population of cities like Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, and Changsha (these three metropolitan areas accounting for 50 million people) and the fact that many if not most have no air-conditioning and are also unofficial immigrants from rural areas (meaning that if they died in the heat wave, their deaths would not be reported as local urban fatalities) leads one to the conclusion that a major catastrophe must be taking place.

It is difficult to properly estimate the number of fatalities as a result of excessive heat. In the West the estimates are mostly derived from examining mortality statistics and comparing how many anomalous deaths occurred during a heat period compared to what would normally have been observed. This was how the figures for the deaths in Europe in 2003, Russia in 2010, and the U.S. in 1995 were ascertained. Obviously, this has not (yet) been undertaken in CHINA. The Chinese authorities are notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to mass casualty natural disasters fearing, I would surmise, that releasing statistics of such might cause unnecessary panic. Often subtle hints must be looked for in official press releases such as this statement recently released by the government-owned Xinhua news agency : Several have died of heat strokes already, including construction workers, many of whom are migrants with limited health care benefits. The mortality rate for heat strokes could be as high as 50%-70% due to lack of timely treatment.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that it is ALWAYS hot and humid in eastern CHINA during the summer (unlike Russia and Western Europe), so perhaps the population has learned to adapt to extreme heat.

This graphic displays how heat is the deadliest weather event in the U.S., accounting for 29% of all weather-related fatalities during the period of 1995-2012. It is, therefore, inconceivable that the death toll from the current heat wave in CHINA is only ‘a couple of dozen’. Graphic from Weather Underground based on data from NOAA.

Christopher C. Burt
Weather Historian
wunderground.com

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (136027)	8/21/2013 7:58:10 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 149317

Al Jazeera Provides Best-In-Class TV Coverage Of IPCC Climate Report By Joe Romm on August 21, 2013 at 4:38 pm The TV media have been doing a pretty good job of covering the leaked Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) from the UN Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC). CNN had a piece with some great graphics and a strong final warning on the need for action — “only humans can stop it from happening worse”:.... ... The winner for best media coverage of the leaked IPCC report, however, would seem to be Al Jazeera America with a full half hour of climate coverage Tuesday alone. As Media Matters reports: During its first day on the air, Al Jazeera America gave climate change nearly half as much coverage as network news programs did during the year 2012, all while avoiding common pitfalls like providing false balance to those that deny the science and leaving the crisis’ manmade origins ambiguous. Here’s a short clip: thinkprogress.org