Regional Drought

Take Jamaica, for example, a recent news report suggests that water resources in the Kingston Metropolitan are on the brink of being depleted. To be specific, the report suggests that only One month's supply of water in Corporate Area is available. Except for may be Cuba and the Bahamas, the rest of the Caribbean is experiencing below normal rainfall, and drought conditions could get worse if conditions continue as is. The subtropical jet is further south in El Nino/warm ENSO years, this will generally increase the upper level winds across the Caribbean and the tropical Atlantic, which enhances vertical wind shear across the aforementioned area. These conditions tend to suppress tropical cyclone development, with accompanying dryer than normal conditions in the main development region.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/nigel20/comment.html?entrynum=11

Total flood damage in Warren alone estimated at $231 million

WARREN, MI -- Flooding that followed extraordinary rainfall Aug. 11 caused more than $231 million in property damage at 22,782 affected homes and buildings, according to the mayor's office.
Overtime pay for city employees in the flood's aftermath cost the city $157,566, according to Warren Mary Jim Fouts.
Warren was one of the hardest hit communities in widespread flooding that came after more than 6 inches of rain fell in some parts of Metro Detroit.
Fouts said total damage in Warren was estimated at over $231 million, including $10 million at the U.S. Army Garrison Detroit Arsenal on 11 Mile Road.
Damage at residential properties totaled nearly $142 million and commercial and industrial buildings saw more than $78 million, according to the Warren mayor's office. http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/08/total_flood_damage_in_warren_a.html

     

6,000 Manhattan residents lose power in latest bout of severe weather

    Thunderstorms impacted parts of northeast and central Kansas on Sunday night, delivering rainfall and power outages to Manhattan and the surrounding areas.
“We had approximately 6,000 customers (in the Manhattan area) that lost power as a result of last night’s storm,” said Gina Penzig, Westar Energy’s director of corporate communications.
Penzig said there were two large scale outages and a handful of smaller outages Sunday. The first large outage began at approximately 8:30 p.m. and affected about 2,000 customers. The second occurred at approximately 10 p.m. and affected approximately 2,600 customers. The storm provided 1.27 inches of rain to Manhattan at Manhattan Regional Airport, Byrne said. The storm came from a cold front in Nebraska that pushed into Kansas, and created a line of storms from Wichita up to the Kansas City metro area .http://www.kstatecollegian.com/2014/09/01/6000-manhattan-residents-lose-power-in-latest-bout-of-severe-weather/

http://www.kstatecollegian.com/2014/09/01/6000-manhattan-residents-lose-power-in-latest-bout-of-severe-weather/

THREAT OF THE RISING SEAS

Global warming has raised global sea level about 8 inches since 1880, and the rate of rise is accelerating. Rising seas dramatically increase the odds of damaging floods from storm surges. A Climate Central analysis finds the odds of “century” or worse floods occurring by 2030 are on track to double or more, over widespread areas of the U.S. These increases threaten an enormous amount of damage. Across the country, nearly 5 million people live in 2.6 million homes at less than 4 feet above high tide — a level lower than the century flood line for most locations analyzed. And compounding this risk, scientists expect roughly 2 to 7 more feet of sea level rise this century — a lot depending upon how much more heat-trapping pollution humanity puts into the sky. - 

http://sealevel.climatecentral.org/#sthash.vy1KFyUu.dpuf

Global Warming & Extreme Weather

There are several ways in which global warming intensifies drought. Hotter temperatures increase evaporation from soil and reservoirs. They cause more precipitation to fall as rain and less as snow, which for a region like California that relies on the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains as its natural water storage system, is problematic. Hotter temperatures also cause the snowpack to melt earlier in the year. The problem can be alleviated by building more water storage infrastructure, but that costs money.

On top of all that, there’s the apparent strengthening of high pressure ridges off the coast, pushing rain storms around California. Research suggests that there may be a connection between these ridges and the decline in Arctic sea ice, although this connection is debated among climate experts.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/sep/02/global-warmingmaking-weather-more-extreme

Weather in 2050: Warmer, Wetter, Wilder, According to U.N. World Meteorological Organization

Mega-droughts. Long-lasting heat waves. Flooded coastal cities. These are the weather scenarios for 2050 from a series of imaginary yet realistic reports from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that predict of future of warmer, wetter and wilder weather.
WMO launched a video campaign Monday to support U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s call for government and business leaders to agree to ambitious action on climate change at the U.N. Climate Summit on Sept. 23 in New York.
(MORE: Global Warming May Lead to Even More Extreme Snowfalls)
"Miami South Beach is under water," Sam Champion of The Weather Channel says in the first "weather reports from the future." TV personalities from around the world, also including Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel, appear in the videos.
"Climate change is affecting the weather everywhere. It makes it more extreme and disturbs established patterns. That means more disasters; more uncertainty," the secretary-general said in a statement.
The 2013 U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report concluded that it's at least 95 percent probable that human activity, rather than natural variations in the climate, has been the main cause of global warming since 1950.

http://www.wunderground.com/news/weather-2050-climate-change-un-world-meteorological-organization-20140902

The Really Scary Thing About Those Jaw-Dropping Siberian Craters

Russian scientists have determined that a massive crater discovered in a remote part of Siberia was probably caused by thawing permafrost. The crater is in the Yamal Peninsula, which means “end of the world.” It caught hold of the media spotlight in mid-July when it was spotted by oil and gas workers flying over the area. At roughly 200 feet wide and seemingly bottomless, speculation abounded about the cause with the Siberian Times reporting that, “theories range from meteorites, stray missiles, a man-made prank, and aliens, to an explosive cocktail of methane or shale gas suddenly exploding.”
Since this first discovery, two other smaller craters have been spotted in the surrounding regions, fueling even more armchair conjecture. Russian scientists sent to the site are now providing first-hand data showing that unusually high concentrations of methane of up to 9.6 percent were present at the bottom of the first large crater shortly after it was discovered on July 16. Andrei Plekhanov, an archaeologist at the Scientific Centre of Arctic Studies in Salekhard, Russia, who led an expedition to the crater, told The Journal Nature that air normally contains just 0.000179 percent methane.