Climate tracker: heavy rain brings flash flooding to New York Metropolis

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Climate tracker: heavy rain brings flash flooding to New York Metropolis

Torrential downpours throughout north-eastern elements of the US brought on important flooding and disruption final Friday. New York Metropolis was significantly badly affected, with flash flooding reported throughout lots of the metropolis’s subway stations and streets. One of many three terminals at LaGuardia airport was pressured to shut briefly, and a sea lion briefly escaped from its enclosure on the Central Park zoo. Town’s governor, Kathy Hochul, declared a state of emergency, describing the scenario as “life-threatening”, with hundreds of thousands of individuals put below flood watches and flash-flood warnings. No deaths or accidents have been reported.

Plenty of places reported new document each day rainfall totals, with 226mm recorded at JFK airport and 150mm in Central Park since final Thursday. It was the wettest day ever recorded at JFK airport, with information courting again to 1948. The Nationwide Climate Service additionally confirmed that it had been the wettest September for New York Metropolis in 140 years.

Switzerland’s glaciers skilled their second worst soften charge this yr, after document losses final yr. Within the final two years alone, the glaciers have misplaced an unimaginable 10% in quantity, in response to the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Community, which has been monitoring among the glaciers since 1914. This is identical as the amount misplaced between 1960 and 1990. The elevation at which precipitation freezes additionally reached a document in a single day excessive, noticed at 5,289 metres, which is a number of hundred meters increased than any mountain within the Alps.

The dramatic losses are the results of decreased snowfall through the winter months and consecutive heat summers. Researchers say that with out reductions in greenhouse fuel emissions, glaciers throughout the Alps might disappear fully by the top of the century. The glaciers play an necessary position in serving to to irrigate crops in the summertime, and in addition assist in cooling nuclear energy stations.

Antarctic sea ice reached its annual most extent earlier in September. At 16.96m sq km, it’s the lowest sea ice most witnessed since satellite tv for pc observations began in 1979. The utmost extent occurred on 10 September, 13 days sooner than the 1981-2010 common. Hotter water within the near-surface layer of the ocean is regarded as answerable for decrease than regular sea ice extent across the continent since 2016.


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