Earth ChangesS


Info

Data charts show 2016 not the 'warmest in a 1000 years'

2016 record warming
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
With an avalanche of articles coming out claiming 2016 as the warmest year ever as the planet cool in a damage control fashion. I present 20 data charts that prove this year is not the warmest ever and the warming experienced in 2016 El Nino is a natural cycle.


Comment: Global temperature data is almost entirely made up by NOAA


Seismograph

Magnitude 3.5 earthquake shakes southeast Missouri near New Madrid Fault

Earthquake chart
Did you feel it this morning? Another earthquake struck Friday morning along the Mississippi River southeast of Poplar Bluff. The United States Geological Survey says it was a magnitude 3.5 and occurred at 8:45am. That area is near the New Madrid Fault. It was weaker than the tremor that hit in Oklahoma a few days ago.

A 5.6 magnitude earthquake struck Saturday morning near Pawnee, Oklahoma, and rattled through at least six surrounding states in the US heartland, according to the US Geological Survey.

The earthquake was also felt in Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Nebraska, and Iowa, according to USGS geophysicists.

The New Madrid fault line is about twenty times larger than California's famed San Andreas fault. The biggest earthquake in U.S. history happened in the New Madrid seismic zone in 1812. The fault line has been more active over the last few years.

Seismograph

Shallow 5.7 magnitude earthquake recorded in Tanzania

Graph
© Dimas Ardian, Getty Images
A report by world earthquakes.com indicates that the quake, whose epicenter was in Nsunga, Kagera, Tanzania, in the Lake Victoria Basin region, recorded a depth of 10 kilometers.

A moderate earthquake with a moment magnitude of 5.7 has hit Uganda Saturday afternoon.

Tremors were confirmed by our reporters in parts of Kampala, Mukono, Ntungamo, Entebbe, Bushenyi and surrounding areas. A similar magnitude was recorded in Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, according to media reports.

A report by world earthquakes.com indicates that the quake, whose epicenter was in Nsunga, Kagera, Tanzania, in the Lake Victoria Basin region, recorded a depth of 10 kilometers.

Seismograph

6.0 magnitude earthquake hits northern Peru

Peru earthquake
The jungle region of northern Peru has been struck by an earthquake of 6.0 magnitude, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). The epicentre was located 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of the city of Moyobamba at a depth of 114 kilometres (70 miles).

According to the USGS map, the quake epicentre is located on the eastern slope of the Andes, where the mountain range meets the Amazon rainforest.

There are no immediate reports of damage or casualties from Saturday's (September 10) tremor, which is 31 miles from the city of Moyobamba. Peru's civilian defense agency said it was continuing to monitor the situation. Local radio stations said the quake was felt in some cities in Peru's centre and east.

According to a 2007 Peruvian census, the city is home to over 40,000 people and is the capital of Peru's San Martin region.

The quake is reported to have happened at 10.08 GMT (11.08 BST). Moyobamba is the capital of the San Martin Region in Peru and has a population of around 42,000. It has over 3,500 species of native orchids and known as the City of Orchids.

Cloud Precipitation

Nine dead and two missing after intense rains cause mudslide in Guatemala

Guatemala mudslide
© REUTERS/Saul Martinez
A child looks at the site where a landslide took place causing a trailer to fall on top of homes causing several casualties in Villanueva, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, Guatemala, September 7, 2016.
At least nine people died and two people were missing from a small town near Guatemala City on Wednesday after intense rains the night before caused a mudslide, emergency workers said.

Around 50 people were affected and various homes were damaged in Santa Isabel II, a town 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the capital, David de Leon, a spokesman for the national emergency services, told reporters.

After Tuesday's rains, the lack of drainage caused water to accumulate and eventually triggered the mudslide, de Leon said.

Authorities opened shelters for those affected, while emergency services continued to look for survivors.

The rainfall caused flooding and mudslides across the Central American nation.


Seismograph

Magnitude 5.1 earthquake shakes the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand

new zealand earthquake
© Screenshot / GeoNetA 5.1 magnitude earthquake has struck 50km north of the Pelorus Sound.
A magnitude 5.1 earthquake has struck north of the Marlborough Sounds, GeoNet reports.

The "light" quake was centred at sea about 50km north of French Pass in the Marlborough Sounds at a depth of 80km, GeoNet said.

A nearby resident told RNZ they felt light shaking and creaking.

And GeoNet are also reporting a series of weak magnitude-3 quakes north west of Te Araroa on the East Cape of Gisborne this morning.

The area has been experiencing continued aftershocks following a large magnitude 7.1 tremor on 2 September.

Comment: A couple of days ago a 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck south of New Zealand near the Macquarie Islands.


Fish

Mystery disease killing thousands of fish in Nepal

Dead Fishes at Lake in Katmandu
© Katmandu Post
Nearly 50,000 fish have perished in the past one month in different parts of Bardia due to a mystery disease.

Most of the deaths have been reported from Sorahawa and Basgadi which are known as fish pocket areas. Fish farmers said that around 1,000 fish farmed in ponds and lakes were dying daily.

Fish ponds are filling up with dead fish and farmers have not been able to identify the disease that may cause their ruin. More than 20,000 fish raised on 75 hectares in Bardia Lake have died.

Pushpa Bhusal of Sorahawa has been rearing fish in the lake. He has leased the lake from the district development committee to rear fish. Local fish farmer Lallu Ram Tharu said he was losing 200 to 300 fish daily.

The District Agriculture Office has started to spray medicines on the ponds and lakes to control the disease. There are no labs in the Mid-Western Region to identify the disease, said fisheries development officer Ram Awatar Harijan.

He said that the fish could have died due to low oxygen levels in the water and lack of nutrition. "The agriculture office has recommended spraying herbicides."

Map

Largest avalanche ever recorded in Tibet baffles scientists

Tibet Glacier
© The Daily Galaxy
On July 17, 2016, a huge stream of ice and rock tumbled down a narrow valley in the Aru Range of Tibet. When the ice stopped moving, it had spread a pile of debris that was up to 30 meters (98 feet) thick across 10 square kilometers (4 square miles). The massive debris field makes this one of the largest ice avalanches ever recorded. The only event of a comparable size was a 2002 avalanche from Kolka Glacier in in the Caucasus , explained Andreas Kääb, a glaciologist at the University of Oslo. A multispectral imager on the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellite captured an image of the debris field on July 21, 2016. The Operational Land Imager, a similar instrument on Landsat 8, acquired an image on June 24, 2016, that shows the same area before the avalanche.

The cause of the avalanche is unclear. "This is new territory scientifically," said Kääb. "It is unknown why an entire glacier tongue would shear off like this. We would not have thought this was even possible before Kolka happened." Nine people, 350 sheep, and 110 yaks in the remote village of Dungru were killed during the avalanche.

Kääb's preliminary analysis of satellite imagery indicates that the glacier showed signs of change weeks before the avalanche happened. Normally, such signs would be clues the glacier might be in the process of surging, but surging glaciers typically flow at a fairly slow rate rather than collapsing violently in an avalanche.

Comment: What they're saying is that this mass of ice and snow shouldn't have moved the way it did without some additional energy input, ie something should have pushed or otherwise forced the avalanche along.

We can't suggest anything that might have done this, but we can suggest similarities with bizarre 'landslides' in recent years where land apparently 'slides' along flat surfaces - or, at least, insufficiently steep gradients. Here's something from Russia last year:




Arrow Down

Serious decline for the beluga population of the St Lawrence estuary

Beluga mother and calf. The Beluga of the St Lawrence as of this week are listed as endangered as their numbers continue to decline.
© J. Klenner, DFOBeluga mother and calf. The Beluga of the St Lawrence as of this week are listed as endangered as their numbers continue to decline.
This week the federal government officially recognized the continuing decline in numbers of the white whales of the St Lawrence estuary by changing their status.

Previously labelled as "threatened" the beluga are now listed in the more worrisome category of "endangered".

While the whales were already protected under the threatened listing, the new category means a recovery plan will have to be developed among the federal and Quebec governments, scientists, industry, fisherman, aboriginal groups and other affected groups.

Over 100 years ago there were an estimated 10,000 beluga in the St Lawrence estuary, in 2012, there were only about 900.

St Lawrence beluga distribution range
© Dept Fisheries and Oceans CanadaSt Lawrence beluga distribution range

Comment: See also: Beluga whale population in St. Lawrence estuary on 'catastrophic' path, Canada


Attention

Dead minke whale washes ashore on beach in Kennebunkport, Maine

A dead minke whale on Goose Rocks Beach.
© Kennebunkport Police DepartmentA dead minke whale on Goose Rocks Beach.
A decomposing minke whale has washed up on a Kennebunkport beach.

The dead whale washed ashore some time before dawn Friday on Goose Rocks Beach, according to police.

Minke whales are common in the Gulf of Maine and are among the smaller whale species. They grow to be less than 30 feet long when fully mature and weigh about four to five tons. They can live for 50 years or more.

Messages for Kennebunkport police and public works officials were not immediately returned, but a report from WMTW-TV showed a front-end loader attempting to remove the carcass Friday.