Current estimates indicate that more than 1,000 people died. This makes it the deadliest tropical cyclone ever to have made landfall on the southern African subcontinent.

More recently, 2022 has also experienced intense tropical cyclones. On March 11, Cyclone Gombe, a Category 3 storm, made landfall on the Mozambique coastline.

A month earlier, Tropical Cyclone Batsirai intensified to a Category 4 storm on February 2, weakening to a Category 3 storm before making a landfall on the south African nation on February 5.

Until Idai, tropical cyclone Eline, which struck in 2000, was the most devastating tropical cyclone to make landfall in Mozambique.

After Idai, Eline was the strongest— though not the deadliest— cyclone to have hit the southern east African coast.

This ranking as the strongest was soon after challenged by tropical cyclone Kenneth, a category 4 tropical cyclone that made landfall over the border of Mozambique and Tanzania six weeks after Idai.

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At any one time, Earth's atmosphere holds only about a week's worth of rain. But rainfall and floods have devastated Australia's eastern regions for weeks and more heavy rain is forecast. So where's all this water coming from?

We recently investigated the physical processes driving rainfall in eastern Australia. By following moisture from the oceans to the land, we worked out exactly how three oceans feed water to the atmosphere, conspiring to deliver deluges of rain similar to what we're seeing now.

Such research is important. A better understanding of how water moves through the atmosphere is vital to more accurately forecast severe weather and help communities prepare. The task takes on greater urgency under climate change, when heavy rainfall and other weather extremes are expected to become more frequent and violent.

Read More here .

Ministry of Earth Sciences Secretary M Ravichandran on Monday said that the Deep Ocean Mission will help strengthen observations over the Indian Ocean as the country has over the years benefitted from these them for its statistical and dynamical monsoon forecast modelling.

Ravichandran was addressing the inaugural session of the International Indian Ocean Conference (IIOC) 2022 jointly organised by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), National Institute of Oceanography and Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS).

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Governments talk of green jobs, green industrial revolutions and creating green new deals. The aim of these efforts is to tackle runaway climate change, biodiversity loss and inequality by remoulding our political and economic systems. But where is the blue in all of this? As Chris Armstrong writes, there can be no green transformation without a blue one alongside it.

For most of us, ocean ecosystems are out of sight, out of mind. We refer to tropical rainforests as the “lungs of the Earth” but tiny organisms called phytoplankton release 70% of the planet’s oxygen – much more than trees. In total, the oceans store 50 times more carbon than our atmosphere. The Gulf Stream alone transports 550tn calories of heat across the North Atlantic every second. Without this, the tropics would be unbearably hot and more temperate regions extremely cold. It helps make Earth the Goldilocks planet, perfect for life to thrive.

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The innovation project ChemFlow aims to help reducing the environmental footprint of offshore oil and gas production by enabling subsea tiebacks with complex fluid chemistry. Now the experimental work is taking place.

Tieback solutions to existing oil and gas facilities can play a key role for Norway’s ability to meet emission targets while maintaining a competitive industry.

However, petroleum production systems often deliver fluids with complex physical chemistry. The innovation project ChemFlow aims to develop new models in the multiphase flow simulator LedaFlow taking the properties of fluids with complex chemistry into account.

Ongoing experimental campaigns in ChemFlow reveal new knowledge that is essential for understanding the impact of chemicals on flow behavior and improving the accuracy of the prediction models required for cost efficient and safe design and operation of tie-back systems.

Read More here .

A large cargo vessel carrying cars has sunk in the Atlantic Ocean, thirteen days after a fire broke out on board.

The ship's manager and Portuguese navy confirmed on Tuesday that the Felicity Ace sank around 400 kilometres off the Azores.

The Panama-flagged vessel was being towed after a salvage team had extinguished the fire, MOL Ship Management in Singapore said in a statement.

The 200-metre-long vessel had been sailing from Germany to the United States before it caught fire last month. Portugal's Air Force had evacuated the 22 crew members, before letting the ship drift for several days in the mid-Atlantic.

Ocean-going tugboats with firefighting equipment had been hosing down the ship’s hull to cool it.

Find More here .