Some might think that Slovakia with its location is far from tornadoes, but strong tornado in Italy in the beginning of May shows, that something is going on. The journalist did not know that, in "american scale" I'm relatively close to deadly tornado, in Eagle Butte, seat of the tribal council of Cheyenne River Sioux in South Dakota. I was invited to Food, Land and Water Summit of native Americans to Eagle Butte by the University of South Dakota, to present the experience of revitalizing the damaged parts of the landscape in Slovakia. (http://www.indianz.com/News/2013/009747.asp).
When the town of Moore, Oklahoma (about 800 miles from Eagle Butte) was strucked by a deadly tornado on Monday, hot discussions arose here as well, what is the impact of the ongoing climate change on the emergence of such extreme weather events.
Here is my explanation I offered to the Americans, and I think that the same is valid for Slovakia. If we will feverishly continue drying-up Slovakia and the whole Europe, as is done here by the Americans, we will easily reach towards similar extreme weather in the next few years.
Truly, wide hinterland of the USA is extremely dry. In the past decades, what could be put under the roof, concrete and asphalt was put there, water was moved out of the landscape by channels and the rivers were regulated and channeled. In addition, in US mainland, streams and rivulets, which collect all the rainwater from paved areas are regulated, to allow the least ammount of water to remain in the landscape and drain it more quickly to the nearest dam. After all, the dams were built on that purpose, or not? Other times, the streams dry up because no water comes into them from the springs. Simply, springs already managed to dry-up.
Dry environment in the US mainland produces more energy into the atmosphere, than is produced in all US power plants together in one year. Just to remind that each cubic meter of water which is not vaporised into the atmosphere produces 700 kWh of sensible heat. Several hundred million cubic meters of rainwater are drained from the territory of Middle America. This water had previously soaked into the soil and and evaporated through vegetation and cooled the air. By consupmtion of solar energy for evaporation, production of sensible heat into the atmosphere was limited and conditions for tornadoes were held in check. Simply speaking, in the American valley of tornadoes dangerous tornadoes occur more frequently, just because of a dried-up landscape. If this drying-up will not be stopped, even more deadly tornadoes are to be expected. Here are a few images from Google Maps with "unique" solutions built for draining the urban areas.
Yellow arrows point at dried-up regulated river bed in the town of Moore, where tornado struck on Monday...
Bridges on the stream which is collecting rain water from the town of Moore are new. Probably they were destroyed during the recent flood. This is an evidence that water runs out of the river bed during intense rainfall. It means, that lot of water runs off the landscape and less infiltrates into the soil and less is evaporated into the atmosphere.
Is this a space runway? No. It's monstrously regulated river with a regulated tributary in Talsa town (Oklahoma)
And what is the lesson to be learned for Slovakia? Let's go on with drying-up of the landscape, let's regulate all streams, put more concrete and asphalt to seal the surface and let's channel rain water from paved areas into the nearest stream. What about learning from mistakes of someone else? No way! Let's try it on ourselves!
