Thread: The mighty Manning river ceases to flow.

Originally Posted by 1984V8110

"No just here, the Mighty Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe is a trickle.
https://qz.com/africa/1765688/photos-of-victoria-falls-running-dry-in-zimbabwe-and-zambia/"

I'd seen this claim and decided to look up some data : River Flows | Zambezi River Authority. The website shows mean discharge of the Zambezi at Victoria Falls. What it shows is that every year the flow of the Zambezi at Victoria Falls reaches a minimum about now and then increases as the wet season there develops. The discharge at the moment does not appear to be significantly less than the long term mean for this time of the year.

There appears to be a need in the press to make apocalyptic claims about the weather which frequently don't stand up to scrutiny. I suspect that this claim about the Zambezi is one of them.

Rgds


Michael

Well, while I agree about the press reporting sensationalism, there is more to the Zambesi than that.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Sounds like a classic example of climate change making extremes more extreme. Drought upstream causing the lowest level in up to five decades, while downstream is flooding because of the Indian Ocean Dipolar.

At the risk of usurping Ron's role, I feel I should point out that "dipolar" is an adjective as in "a dipolar bond" (chemistry). The noun is "dipole", as in "Indian Ocean Dipole", which is a measure of the temperature difference of surface waters across the Indian Ocean.