Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 187 posts

Re: Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

#151

Post by [deleted] »

prpl wrote: post #62
ben_w wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not directly, though I can't guess at indirect effects. If 100% of the water from that landed in the flooded area of Pakistan, it would've only added 2.6 mm: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=146%20million%20cubic%2...

I had only been alluding to indirect effects - an increase in the greenhouse effect, which certainly would raise temperatures (and increase the amount water air can hold). I think we will find that, even during an increase in anomalous years from climate change, 2022-2023 will be anomalous.

[deleted]

Re: Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

#152

Post by Comevius »

kurupt213 wrote: post #147
Comevius wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-022-2034-1 Unlikely. At least a single volcanic eruption is not enough to change the long-term climate trend, you need a clusters of eruptions to persist through centuries for that. HTHH will likely decrease the global mean surface temperatures by 0.004°C in the first year. Compared to that human activity is a thousand times more significant, everything else is statist…

Human activity is responsible for less than 5% of greenhouse gasses. One eruption can spew decades worth of gases into the air

This is misinformation. Volcanoes are responsible for less than 0.5 Gt of the global CO2 emissions a year. That's a bit less than the 50 Gt we are responsible for. Volcanoes and solar flares would have caused a slight cooling in the last 100 years, not a sharp warming we are experiencing.

There is a natural carbon cycle, which is quite balanced in that there is barely any radiative forcing, which is the difference between how much energy enters the atmosphere and how much of it leaves. Human activity amounts to all, I repeat all of the radiative forcing in the last century, and more actually, because naturally there would have been negative forcing.

Re: Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

#153

Post by tuatoru »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #64

"Pakistan is home to over 7,200 glaciers, more than anywhere outside the poles. Rising temperatures, linked to climate change, are likely making many of them melt faster and earlier, adding water to rivers and streams that are already swollen by rainfall." https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2022/8/30/23327341/pa...

> climate change ... [glaciers] melt faster and earlier

Yes, this has been strongly predicted by climate models since forever. Mark Lynas' 2006 book Six Degrees, which summarised climate change research up to about 2005, has a section on this.

The prediction was that Pakistan will be wetter (i.e. have higher river flows) than historical averages through the 2020s because of glacial retreat.

Sometime in the late 2030s or early 2040s, the glaciers will be effectively gone, and Pakistan will be without water, except during the monsoon (which may be more erratic - different models still say different things here). The rest of the year, the river beds will be dry.

The time to start planning flood control and water retention structures was 20 years ago. Better late than never, though.

Re: Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

#154

Post by MichaelZuo »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #126
nomel wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pakistan is home to over 7,200 glaciers, more than anywhere outside the poles It seems odd to give a measure of ice as the count of the pieces.

Kind of, right? But it also makes sense. We might talk about a highly populated country having a lot of cities -- even though cities are just somewhat loosely defined pieces of the population total.

I've never heard of anyone talk of the total number of cities in China, or India, or Indonesia, etc. Where do people talk like that?

Re: Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

#155

Post by YetAnotherNick »

umvi wrote: post #102
raffraffraff wrote: post #47

"You have two life lines left: 50/50, and ask the audience" "I'm gonna go with A. Climate change "

Climate change has made us all incredibly intellectually lazy. Literally anything happens and we don't bother trying to understand why past "climate change". Natural disaster? Climate change. More or less insects/birds/rodents than usual? Climate change. More or less rain/snow/hail/heat/cold/storms/floods/droughts than usual? Climate change. Wildfire? Climate fire. Crypto currencies using record breaking amounts of e…

Yes, I really wish that there is some place for nuanced discussion regarding climate change. I think most would agree that any single event can't be attributed to climate change just we could only look into average frequency.

Re: Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

#156

Post by aliswe »

nomel wrote: post #82
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #64

"Pakistan is home to over 7,200 glaciers, more than anywhere outside the poles. Rising temperatures, linked to climate change, are likely making many of them melt faster and earlier, adding water to rivers and streams that are already swollen by rainfall." https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2022/8/30/23327341/pa...

> Pakistan is home to over 7,200 glaciers, more than anywhere outside the poles It seems odd to give a measure of ice as the count of the pieces.

glaciers do have a certain minimum size, though.

Re: Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

#157

Post by YetAnotherNick »

munk-a wrote: post #105
umvi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change has made us all incredibly intellectually lazy. Literally anything happens and we don't bother trying to understand why past "climate change". Natural disaster? Climate change. More or less insects/birds/rodents than usual? Climate change. More or less rain/snow/hail/heat/cold/storms/floods/droughts than usual? Climate change. Wildfire? Climate fire. Crypto currencies using record breaking amounts of e…

Climate change is happening and most of us live in a country (or next to a country, yay Canada!) where half the political body actively denies that it is happening and refuses to take action. As long as half of America continues to engage in such dangerous denialism there is no amount of drum beating that is excessive.

There are so many things factually incorrect here

> most of us live in a country

No we don't

> here half the political body actively denies

By actively deny, you mean that they force everyone like you? If you mean that, then it's factually wrong.

> no amount of drum beating that is excessive.

Umm, as a suggestion you should look for more effective way of convincing people.

Re: Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

#158

Post by pfdietz »

morsch wrote: post #20
bagels wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any sources that discuss this?

The undersea eruption also ejected 146 million tons of South Pacific Ocean water into the stratosphere.[56] The amount of water vapor ejected was 10 percent of the atmosphere's typical stock.[57] It was enough to temporarily warm the surface of Earth. This water vapour was estimated to remain for 5–10 years.[55] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Hunga_Tonga%E2%80%93Hunga...

10% of the stratosphere's typical stock.

Re: Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

#159

Post by blooalien »

zaroth wrote: post #99
IX-103 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. Climate change is going to require changes of at least that scale, whether we reduce emissions or not.

Luckily for humanity that won’t actually be necessary. In the next 20-30 years I suspect we’ll just moderate total solar irradiance as-needed by injecting moon dust into L1. The only issue is if there are powerful countries that are actually benefiting from the warming and don’t want to cool it down bit.

Luckily for humanity that won’t actually be necessary because in the next 20-30 years we're likely to revert to savagery and barbarism, and "civilized" behaviors won't matter anymore (assuming one of our "leaders" doesn't do the epic stupid and get us all "nuked" out of existence).

Re: Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?

#160

Post by morsch »

pfdietz wrote: post #158
morsch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The undersea eruption also ejected 146 million tons of South Pacific Ocean water into the stratosphere.[56] The amount of water vapor ejected was 10 percent of the atmosphere's typical stock.[57] It was enough to temporarily warm the surface of Earth. This water vapour was estimated to remain for 5–10 years.[55] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Hunga_Tonga%E2%80%93Hunga...

10% of the stratosphere's typical stock.

If true, the article should be changed. Isn't the stratosphere extremely dry?
Post reply on HN