NASA: it rained so hard the oceans fell
“The year 2010 was one the worst years in world history for high-impact floods. But just three weeks into the new year, 2011 has already had an entire year's worth of mega-floods. “ -- Meteorologist Jeff Masters
I spend hours a day researching what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls “global weirding”: the destabilization of our weather system fueled by the three million tonnes of fossil fuel pollution we inject into it each hour. So it is a rare day when something shocks me as much as a recent U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) report on last year’s extreme rainfall.
As most locals know from soggy personal experience, our corner of planet Earth since last spring has been a bit wetter and greyer than normal. And next door, our Washington neighbours donned their gum boots and slogged through their fourth wettest year since 1895.
Still, we got off lucky. Very lucky it turns out.
According to this jaw-dropping NASA report, worldwide rainfall and snowfall were so extreme, in so many places last year, that sea levels fell dramatically.
Sea levels have been rising steadily for over a century as the ever warmer ocean water expands and the world’s remaining glaciers and ice sheets melt. In fact sea levels are rising twice as fast now as they were a few decades ago. As the NASA chart above shows there have been some ups and downs but nothing in the modern satellite record comes close to the 6 mm drop worldwide last year.
While 6 mm might not sound like a lot, when collected from the surface of all our planet’s oceans it adds up to 26,000 gallons of water per human.
So just where did all this missing water go?
The ringleader of the great water heist was one of the strongest La Nina cycles of recent times. La Nina shifted and altered weather patterns causing extreme precipitation to funnel into places like India, Pakistan, Australia, and northern tiers of both South and North America.
In the map below, produced from NASA’s GRACE satellite data, blue indicates areas that gained water last year. The darkest blue areas gained as much as 50 mm in one year.
These dark blue spots are also the sources of the world’s epic floods of the last couple years which not only left tens of millions homeless and destroyed agriculture and infrastructure, but also left behind so much water that global oceans were depleted by 6 mm.
A YEAR OF RECORD FLOODING
Last year 182 floods affected 180 million people, almost double the annual average for the last decade. Here are a few:
One fifth of Pakistan under water displacing 20 million people after freak monsoon rains that wouldn’t stop.
140 million Chinese affected by weeks of record flooding and landslides.
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(22) Comments
This is shocking. Thanks.
FAKE FAKE FAKE
Palq, please explain your hypothesis that leads you to shout FAKE.
Otherwise you leave us with nothing to consider. But I guess that's what you wanted to be known for: A voice in the denial wilderness signifying nothing.
Barry nice job .
The Extreme Rain Events of 2010This is just partial list of the extreme rain that fell in 2010 . If you know one, add it to this thread. All the reports listed here are from The National Weather Service, NOAA, and news reports.
The Swat Valley -
I never saw a number on just how bad the rainfall was there , until this story from the Guardian . " It was raining so hard, you couldn't see a man standing in front of you " ..............
" In more than 60 hours of non-stop torrential rainfall, the floods washed all that away. The north-west normally receives 500mm (20in) of rain in the month of July; over one five-day period 5,000mm fell. "It was incredible," said Sameenullah Afridi, a local United Nations official. "
That's 196.8 inches of rain , 16 feet .
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/01/pakistan-floods-us-military
http://coloradobob1.newsvine.com/_news/2010/11/21/5504169-the-extreme-ra...
Minnesota's state climatologist, Jim Zandlo, has concluded that no fewer than three "thousand-year rains" have occurred in the past seven years in our part of the state. And a University of Minnesota meteorologist, Mark Seeley, has found that summer storms in the region over the past two decades have been more intense and more geographically focused than at any time on record.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28hedin.html
RE The rain in the Swat Valley at the beginning , 16 feet of rain .
Residents describing the deluge say it began with a constant, pounding rain that started around July 28 and continued for a week. There were brief pauses of stifling heat and humidity, quickly followed by more rain. It went on that way for over a month. The center of Nowshera was flooded in some places up to 10 feet above street level.
Government officials say that from July 28 to Aug. 3, parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded almost 12 feet of rainfall in one week. The province normally averages slightly above 3 feet for an entire year.
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/10/12/12climatewire-the-night-the-river-roared-in-like-a-demon-23379.html?pagewanted=2
Two different locations report 16 and 12 foot rains.
It might occur to the geniuses at NASA that flooding rivers flow back into the sea.
The 1931 flood in China killed 2 million people. The 1881 flood killed almost as many. Much of the country was 20 feet deep in water. The author has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.
Without any mention of current extreme droughts, a balanced perspective missing. And with 7 billion people consuming water as never before, every single influence must be carefully considered for any accurate measure of the total of Mother Earth's water. My perspective: http://www.standupfor2013.com/RespectWater.html
Interesting, but I did notice that many of the places cited as having massive floods came from places that had less rainfall than usual. Curious.
It sounds like nature is in another round of serious weather events around the world. Just curious. David Icke in his book 'The Biggest Secret (published in 1999) states a scientist friend of David told him that we were soon to enter an interstellar energy cloud. He said it would raise our vibration and advance consciousness. Not easy but positive.
In July 2010 a 'SolarStormWarning.com' website states that a Russian scientist tells us we have entered this energy clooud. He says it is affecting the planets, sun, and the earth recieves the energy and it causes earthquakes. When asked what the affects on the earth would be he says, "Global catastrophe. Not in the tens of years from now, but in the ones of years." Sounds like poetic doomsday.
I checked NASA.GOV website on the scientist, Alexey Dmitriev. He checks out as real. I checked Interstellar Energy Cloud on the site and all I get is a discription of other stars and clouds and other mundane stuff. Nothing on what we have entered. I entered the scientists name and interstellar energy cloud. Nothing. At least not on what is supposedly affecting the earth.
Maybe someone knows where to look. Unless NASA does not want this to be known.
When heavy rain happens in areas that have experienced recent drought conditions it tends to run off and cause flash flooding. Periodic drought is a common occurrence in some areas and has little or nothing to do with the 3-5% of total atmospheric CO2 that humans produce.
All one has to do is look out the door on any given day that you can see blue and you realiize it has more to do with their socalled "geo engineering" In Portland OR you could see them dumping tons of crap in our skys everyday. I got so I could call the big storm in midwest like magic. All the sheeple thought I was a some kind of a seer. Spray Spray Spray. Dumb a@@es
It might occur to the geniuses at NASA that flooding rivers flow back into the sea.
It's quite obvious what's likely happening here. It's only my hypothesis however.
A combination of low solar activity, antropogenic CO2 emissions and rapid El Nino and La Nina fluctuations have altered precipitation patterns around the globe. When it rains rapidly in areas that are normally dry, it's a direct consequence of taking water vapor OUT of areas that are in drought, which remain dry for a certain length of time. When the pattern shifts again, yet other areas experience flood, and still other areas experience drought.
When all this extra rain washes onto the ocean surface, areas of the ocean are temporarily freshened. Fresh water evaporates more quickly than saltwater, and more evaporation means both more cooling of the ocean, and more rain deposited somewhere else. A lot of these cycles are self-feeding. When you get floods on the Missouri or Souris for example, that water eventually makes it to the ocean, but much of the remaining land remains dry. This cycle of flood, then drought, then flood, is very damaging to crops around the world, and seems to be getting worse in recent years.
It's important to learn the big picture skillfully, and yet not go crazy over it. In fact, it really doesn't matter whether the main cause of the near-linear sea level rise trend over the past century man-made or natural. The important thing is that there are occasionally deviations as seen in the 2010-2011 data, and we need to understand what's behind these changes. Maybe it's caused by all this extra rain, and MAYBE it's a sign that Earth's climate is shifting away from natural variability. To claim that this one-year data point disproves man-made climate change, or that it proves the Earth is cooling, is downright ridiculous.
Personal opinions, politics and emotions inevitably get in the way on the subject of climate change. However, this is SCIENCE we are talking about. When people don't make an effort to understand, or make an effort NOT to understand, we fail to recognize some important things in our world.
Has no one here noticed that our weather has only changed in accordance with removing God from this nation ? With each level of removal, our weather/disasters have increased. What's more, we need not stop burning our own fossil fuels ; we need better understanding on HOW to burn them. Slow this nation down to where we are not running all over and we will greatly reduce emissions. Todays "going green" is only for making a profit & opening us up to forgien gov. control. I for one would rather pollute than pay terrorists for fuel. I am a First Responder & due to having electric cars we have to learn a new method on an accident scene especialy if water/rain is involved. If I go to asses a victim and have to go through a puddle I could get electrocuted. plus that scene has become a Hazmat zone. Re-think this thing ; once upon a time, back in 6th grade science we were taught that the Milkyway was the ONLY Galaxy. So much for scientist knowing it all !
This talk is the latest on our collective situation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOq2A_SGTYA&feature=channel_video_title
Late in 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) announced we were committed to warming the planet by about
1 C by the end of this century. Never mind that we were almost there
when they reached this profound conclusion. Simply for elucidating
the obvious, the IPCC was granted a share of the Nobel Peace Prize
(climate-change crusader Al Gore received the other half).
A year later, late in 2008, the Hadley Centre for Meteorological
Research provided an update, indicating that, in the absence of
complete economic collapse, we’re committed to a global average
temperature increase of 2 C. Considering the associated feedbacks,
such an increase in temperature almost certainly spells extinction of
Homo sapiens sapiens, the “wise” ape.
In September 2009, the United Nations Environment Programme
concluded we’re committed to an average planetary temperature
increase of 3.5 C by 2100. This leaves little doubt about human
extinction by the end of the current century. Such a rapid increase in
global average temperature almost certainly sets into motion a series
of positive feedbacks that lead to runaway greenhouse, including
decreased solar refl ectance from light-colored surfaces due to melting
of planetary ice, release of carbon previously locked in peat throughout
the world’s northern regions, and release of methane hydrates from
deep beneath the world’s seas.
In October 2009, Chris West of the University of Oxford’s UK
Climate Impacts Programme indicated we can kiss goodbye 2 C as a
target: four is the new two, and it’s coming by mid-century. Yet again,
the latest scenarios do not include potential tipping points such as the
Scientists are saying if the ice caps melt,sea levels will rise.
But if I understand this study,if the frozen fresh water stored in the ice caps melt,it will evaporate in to the atmosphere and be deposited back on the earth as rain flooding the earth.
And the sea levels will either lower or stay the same.
The water will just be redistributed upon the earth.
I always wondered why they call this planet Earth when it is over 70% covered with water.
On the one hand, doomsayers offer no alternatives but for total or near total abstinence from fossil fuel, a position they cannot hope to win in the near term (being ineffective just allows you to say I told you so, it doesn't actually help). On the other hand, deniers live only for today, figuring out money will buy them out of the problem.
Yet, there are energy sources that have zero to near-zero long term impact, some even well-developed. For example, rainfalls flow into the ocean. It either gives up its potential energy as heat, or turn turbines on its way out, giving "free" energy on a long term basis. Similarly, generation of electricity by wind, tide and solar collection methods also have zero impact due to the laws of conservation of energy. So, why are we wringing our hands instead of doing something about it?
Back and forth these comments go. All I know is that clean air and water are in decline. Can you drink from the river? Progress is great until there is no air to breathe. Little was mentioned about children who are obese, asthmatic, have little hope for a healthy, wealthy life like their parens had. We have to slow down our "rat race" so that the generations after us can have a life, too.
I see that half a dozen people disliked my last comment. Would anyone care to explain the reason behind this? And why do many of us prefer to blame chemtrails or HAARP or religion-associated topics for environmental changes rather than something else in which we all contribute to the problem - basic human psychology?
Great article but the CORRECT spelling of ColOmbia is NOT ColUmbia