In February 2022, one dumped cubic kilometres of water onto the city of Brisbane. An atmospheric river is a narrow, fast-flowing stream of moist air. It can be many thousands of kilometres long, and a few hundred wide. It's a giant and invisible conveyor belt of water in the sky, moving above and across the planet.
At any given moment, there are about a dozen of these atmospheric phenomena across the globe - most of them over water. But, unlike a land-based river, they are not fixed in location. Instead, they continually form, fade, reform and evolve. So they come and go.
This story is from the September - October 2022 edition of Australian Geographic Magazine.
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This story is from the September - October 2022 edition of Australian Geographic Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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