More Weird Weather from Robertscribbler.

First, the cause of all this global weirding.

CO2’s Vertigo-Inducing Rate of Rise — In First 5 Months of 2016 Hothouse Gas Concentration Rocketed 3.7 Parts Per Million Above 2015 

“Perhaps the most worrisome threat is that because the Arctic is warming so much faster than the globe as a whole, the permafrost — soil that remains frozen year-round — is thawing. As it does, organic matter which is trapped within can decay, and when it does it releases CO2 into the atmosphere, except those places where instead of releasing CO2 it releases CH4.” — Tamino. 

With the Northern Hemisphere Pole warming at a rate 2-3 times faster than the rest of the globe, there’s a risk that we start to set off a kind of runaway warming feedback. We may be near that threshold now… God help us if we’ve crossed it… 

Image source: NOAA ESRL.

https://robertscribbler.com/2016/06/22/co2s-vertigo-inducing-rate-of-rise-in-first-5-months-of-2016-hothouse-gas-concentration-rocketed-3-7-parts-per-million-above-2015/

Now the effects - first in Arizona and Nevada: Lake Mead is drying up. How soon before Phoenix and Las Vegas will simply dry up and blow away?

Water Knives in the Near Future — 16 Year Drought Brings Lake Mead To New Record Low 

It’s been ridiculously hot along the unstoppable shrinking shoreline at Lake Mead. Over the past four days, highs have peaked at a scorching 109 to 111 F (42 to 44 C). Similar heat blasted all up and down the Colorado River Basin, squeezing moisture out of a key water supply for 25 million people in California, Arizona, and Nevada. 

Source: NASA.

If you thought the current drought was bad, then this animation will knock your socks off. Loss of soil moisture for the US is ridiculously extreme under business as usual fossil fuel burning in this NASA projection. 

https://robertscribbler.com/2016/06/23/water-knives-in-the-near-future-16-year-drought-brings-lake-mead-to-new-record-low/

Now on to Japan, where 700,000 had to be evacuated because of floods; and to West Virginia, where even the Greenbrier Resort, host to a civil defense / continuity of government folly in the cold war 1960s, got flooded out. I'll bet the folly became an aquarium!

Bad Rains Fall Across Globe — 700,000 Evacuated in Kyushu Deluge as Worst Flood in 100 Years Inundates West Virginia
In Kyushu, Japan on Friday, government officials urged 700,000 residents to evacuate as record heavy rains and severe flooding inundated the city for the fifth day in a row. Half a world away in West Virginia, another unpredicted record deluge dumped 8.2 inches of rain, washed out roads, cut off shopping malls, flushed burning homes down raging rivers, and left more than 14 people dead and hundreds more stranded. 

Individually, these events would be odd. But taken together with what are now scores of other extreme flooding events happening around the world in the space of just a few months and the context begins to look a lot like what scientists expected to happen due to human-forced climate change.

In Kyushu, the skies opened up on Monday. An extension of a seasonal front draped across China and feeding on moisture bleeding off of record hot ocean surfaces edged out over Japan. Mountainous cloud banks unloaded. Record rains in the range of five inches an hour then began to inundate the southern Japanese island. This mass dumping of water eventually accumulated to half a meter (or 1.6 feet) over some sections of the island over the course of just one 24 hour period. 

A burning home floats down a West Virginia creek swollen to a raging torrent by the worst flood to hit the state in 100 years. 

Numerous homes and hundreds of cars have also been lost due to the flash floods that swept through West Virginia’s valleys. In one instance, a burning house was filmed floating down a river. As a result of the severe and unexpected rains, 44 of the state’s 55 counties have now been declared a disaster area.

These severe flooding events add to those this week occurring in China, Australia, Sri Lanka,Indonesia, and Great Britian over just the past seven days. In addition, extreme floods have swept through Texas, Canada, Central Asia, Europe, Ghana and Argentina over the past couple of months. 

The floods occur at a time when global temperatures are just coming off of new record highs during the first part of 2016. Temperatures that, in February peaked near 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than 1880s averages. 

https://robertscribbler.com/2016/06/24/bad-rains-fall-across-globe-700000-evacuated-in-kyushu-deluge-as-worst-flood-in-100-years-inundates-west-virginia/

And you know the cause. Ever increasing CO2 built-up in Earth's atmosphere. Cause by combustion of fossil fuels, adding to the Fossil Fuels Derivatives Beast. 2016 is strange.