What you see in green in the left-most image below was Pakistan’s Lake Manchar (June 25th): the largest freshwater reservoir in that country. After catastrophic monsoon rains and with increased meltwater inflow from the Himalayas, the swollen lake has suffered breaches (accidental and deliberate), resulting in the two images to the right (August 28th and September 5th).
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| (source) |
A more comprehensive view of the Indus Valley floods (in blue, waters)::
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| August 4th (source) |
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| Fourteen days later. |
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By contrast, this was Lake Poyang (Jiangxi Province) on July 10th, fed by the Yangtze River:
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| (source) |
This year’s high temperatures and scarce rains have reduced the Yangtze River, the world’s sixth by discharge, to a trickle. As a result this was Poyang on August 27th:
On average the Yangtze discharges some 30 thousand cubic metres of water per second. By comparison, the Rhine and Danube, also drying, discharge on average some 3 thousand and 7 thousand, respectively.
So far the average world temperature has increased by something like 1.1 - 1.2°C. If we were to stick to the commitments countries made at COP26 - a big if - we will be on our way to 2.4 - 2.6°C.
Just let that sink in.
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