I was sitting in the recent heatwave with my brain probably overheating when I thought to myself “Where is all the water?”
In Europe, and I think much of the northern hemisphere we’re seeing extreme temperatures, with lakes, reservoirs and rivers drying up, the land parched and vegetation suffering from the drought conditions. That’s what made me wonder where the water has gone to.
Did it go to the southern hemisphere? I’m not hearing of many huge rainstorms and flooding from there, although I realise much of the world’s land mass is in the northern hemisphere so maybe it’s raining a lot over the oceans?
There will be more water vapour in the atmosphere at higher temperatures, but can that account for all the water that’s disappeared from the ground? I could probably calculate how much extra is in the atmosphere but I’m feeling lazy today!
There are thunderstorms across the UK and Ireland today so that’s going to bring some water back but only a very small amount of what we’ve lost this year.
Well, there are some reports of floods around the world, but could it also just be in the oceans raising the sea level a tad?
The drought in western Europe is a small area globally I guess too.
I’ve seen lots of report of drought other than in Europe and UN statistics say about 30% of the world’s population is suffering from water stress.
I guess the sea levels could have gone up a little but then what’s breaking the water cycle the we learned about at school? The hotter weather should be evaporating more water from the sea which should then fall as rain.
Well, I think that it has all just been dumped back to terra-firma, just had over 27mm in an hour this afternoon, following on from just 4.8mm in the whole of July. Trouble is, with the ground being bone dry, it just runs off, I need some to soak into my lawn so that my grass goes back to green!
Nuts! La Nina will be bad news for us in the western US because it will mean less rain which will only add to our drought problems. And we will probably see more tropical activity in the Eastern Pacific (which won’t help us) and less in the Atlantic. Yeah, I know the drill.
We certainly have stolen it with help from New Zealand. Last year was by far the wettest I have recorded in 13 years of measurements and this year is on track to be similar.
It has been so wet here for so long that 2 or 3 mm turns the place into a bog.
For us it is an enormous relief after having two consecutive years of being within a few hundred metres of losing everything to bushfire. We had 9 months break between the two threats with months on end of being enveloped in thick smoke.
The Indian Ocean Dipole seems to be given credit here as well as La Nina for our current wet conditions in eastern Australia.
I was blown out to see the fires burning into the suburbs of London on tv. This is just “normal” for us but it crossed my mind that that was a sure sign the world is changing fast (among many many others).
Ian
