[RAR] the damp apocalypse

[madd0ct0r]

Arch culverts. Convert all roads to tunnels operating beneath the 15 m of snow on top. Just god help you come the spring thaw...

http://mashable.com/2015/02/22/boston-b ... Z4IwklGkqF

[Simon_Jester]

Good luck implementing that before first snowfall in the Northern Hemisphere, which has already happened in some places. Alaska, I have no doubt, among them.

Especially since a lot of construction materials don't like being laid out in the rain.

EDIT: I mean, a lot of buildings will just collapse under this kind of mass; they're designed to survive having one meter of snow dumped on the roof, but not ten. And ten meters is, hm...

(10000 mm)/((1.5 mm/hr)*(13 mm snow/1 mm rain))

(10000 mm)/(19.5 mm snow/hr)

513 hours, or 21 days.

So somewhere in the first three weeks of continuous or near-continuous freezing temperatures in the northern hemisphere, many if not most buildings will suffer structural collapse.

I really really think that this scenario ends in an Ice Age, locally to both hemispheres if not globally. The accumulated snowpack and icepack is going to take a lot of time to melt, and may not melt at all in a timely manner if enough direct sunlight is being reflected into space by clouds. Without actual climate modeling tools, I can't comment on whether we'd end up in a Snowball Earth scenario, or just a really deep Ice Age in which most of the planet is covered in ice but a belt around the equator (maybe up to 30-40 degrees on either side of it) is okay because it never gets below freezing.

Furthermore, water locked up in the growing snow/ice sheets will be coming directly out of the oceans, although that would hae happened anyway. So ironically, permanent global rain may result in sea levels dropping given how you've "sourced" the rain.

[madd0ct0r]

Yup.

Not sure on the ice age.water vapour is a green house gas and the clouds will insulate the ground at night. I suppose we could assume the drop in isolation at ground level puts that energy in the clouds, minus that which is reflected and that which is radiated