Another freak cyclone strikes Yemen It’s not often that I have to write twice in a week ab
Another freak cyclone strikes YemenIt’s not often that I have to write twice in a week about identical weird weather events, but after Chapala last week (see http://on.fb.me/1koSQ7h), Megh battered the island of Socotra (see (see http://on.fb.me/1KYcz2E) before making landfall on Tuesday. These storms are the first cyclones to make landfall in this country in 30 years of satellite records, Only one other cyclone is known to have made landfall in 60 years of weather records, underlining the exceptional nature of these events. Neither have two cyclones ever spun up in such rapid succession in the Arabian sea, nor such strong storms developed in this season. Megh peaked at force 3 with maximum sustained winds of 203kph, and followed a near identical track to last week’s category4.In ‘normal’ times the country would get rainfall from the remnants of cyclones, rather than being battered by the full force of the storm. Yemen is still recovering from last week’s floods that brought several years’ worth of rain in a week to a parched country with depleted aquifers surviving under severe water stress. Widespread flooding from rapid runoff resulted last week, and more of the same has happened again over the last couple of days. Early reports suggest more extensive damage to Socotra than last week and at least two fatalities. Reefs have been damages, soil eroded away, and many rare endemic plants uprooted, including dragon’s blood trees (see earlier linked post on Socotra for these enigmatic wonders).Rescue response is very difficult due to a complex and multi-actor civil war compounded by foreign invasion that has been ravaging the nation, so the latest storm will no doubt intensify the chaos. So far little information has filtered out on the latest storm’s effects. Some of the affected areas are out of government control, and even Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula issued an appeal for help last week.2015 is the warmest year on record, and the atmosphere and oceans are churning with excess heat energy that has to be dissipated somehow within the world system. Storms and cyclones are one of the ways in which this happens. Water temperatures in the Arabian sea are significantly above normal, and were close to record highs before Chapala. Some researcher have argued that a lack of wind shear to dissipate forming storms may be to blame, and suspect that increased aerosol air pollution over the Indian ocean may be affecting weather patterns in new and little understood ways..LozImage credit: 1: NASA 2: Mohammed Bazahier/AP 3: jaferbalfas/twitter.comhttp://go.nasa.gov/20M8DO5http://bbc.in/1lk4nVMhttp://wxch.nl/1Pdc5xghttp://wapo.st/1Nn5z16http://bit.ly/1lk4vExhttp://bit.ly/1La3aFb -- source link
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