Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Lightning strikes kill four in Andhra Pradesh, India

Lightning
Four persons including two children were killed after being struck by lightning in separate incidents in North Andhra region today.

The lightning claimed the lives of K Someswara Rao (9) and his brother K Praveen Kumar (5) when they were playing outside their house in Billaput area under Dumbriguda mandal in the Agency area of Visakhapatnam.

Sub-inspector of Dumbriguda police station B Ramakrishna said bodies would be sent for autopsy.

Two shepherds were killed in lightning strike in Jeegiram area under Saluru police station limits in Vizianagaram district early morning. They were identified as A China Sambayya (60) and M Siva (25).

The two were grazing the sheep in a field. The incident came to light after the sheep returned home without the owners.

Sub-Inspector of Salur police station, AS Rao, said bodies were handed over to the relatives following the autopsy.

Source: Press Trust of India

Cloud Lightning

Update: Lightning strikes kill 33 across Bangladesh in a day

Lightning
At least 33 people including women and children have died in lightning strikes during thunderstorms in 12 districts.

Rain and thunderstorms occurred in the capital and elsewhere on Thursday after a week of heat wave that has been scorching the country.

Five persons were killed in Sirajganj and Rajshahi each, and four in Pabna, Kishoreganj and Brahmanbarhia each in the afternoon, local officials and police said.

Around the same time, Dhaka, Gazipur, Bogra and Natore had two casualties each, and Habiganj, Naogaon and Niphamari had one death each.


The now-defunct SAARC Meteorological Research Centre's former director Sujit Kumar Deb Sharma told bdnews24.com that it was natural for thunderstorms to occur in this season of Nor'westers.

They generally occur between March and May and sometimes between October and November after the rainy season too, he said, adding that lightning during such storms kills 200-300 people on average each year in Bangladesh.

Info

Humpback whale sightings in San Francisco Bay thrill boaters, biologists alarmed

Humpback whale
Humpback whales have been swimming into San Francisco Bay in unprecedented numbers over the past two weeks — even leaping out of the water near Alcatraz — in a sight that has thrilled boaters, alarmed marine biologists and harked back to a famous wayward whale three decades ago.

As many as four humpbacks at a time have been spotted flapping their tails and breaching in bay waters, apparently feeding on anchovies and other schooling fish during incoming tides.

Bizarro Earth

Mount Sourabaya erupts - first time in 60 years

Mount Sourabaya
© NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey
Nobody lives near Mount Sourabaya, but a NASA satellite captured its eruption in the South Atlantic in this false-color image.
For the first time in 60 years, Mount Sourabaya erupted with a spectacular show of fiery lava — in fact, it erupted twice. But there wasn't a single human soul who saw the eruptions live; nobody lives on the volcano's remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean, according to NASA Earth Observatory.

Instead, satellites captured images of the eruptions, which happened on April 24 and May 1, 2016, NASA reported.

Volcanic eruptions in far-flung places, such as the South Atlantic, used to go unnoticed. But the advent of satellites and seismic monitoring has given scientists new insight into volcanic events worldwide, NASA officials said.

"Today, scientists can pick up signatures of events occurring far from any human observers," NASA's Earth Observatory said in a statement.

That's exactly what happened when Mount Sourabaya erupted. The volcano sits on Bristol Island, one of the largest islands in the South Sandwich Islands chain. The archipelago is located about 1,725 miles (2,776 kilometers) southeast of Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is about the distance from Los Angeles to Chicago.

Bizarro Earth

Earth's magnetic field is changing

With more than two years of measurements by ESA's Swarm satellite trio, changes in the strength of Earth's magnetic field are being mapped in detail.

Launched at the end of 2013, Swarm is measuring and untangling the different magnetic signals from Earth's core, mantle, crust, oceans, ionosphere and magnetosphere - an undertaking that will take several years to complete.

Although invisible, the magnetic field and electric currents in and around Earth generate complex forces that have immeasurable effects on our everyday lives.

The field can be thought of as a huge bubble, protecting us from cosmic radiation and electrically charged atomic particles that bombard Earth in solar winds. However, it is in a permanent state of flux.

Presented at this week's Living Planet Symposium, new results from the constellation of Swarm satellites show where our protective field is weakening and strengthening, and importantly how fast these changes are taking place.

The animation above shows the strength of Earth's magnetic field and how it changed between 1999 and May 2016.

Blue depicts where the field is weak and red shows regions where it is strong. As well as recent data from the Swarm constellation, information from the CHAMP and Ørsted satellites were also used to create the map.

It shows clearly that the field has weakened by about 3.5% at high latitudes over North America, while it has strengthened about 2% over Asia. The region where the field is at its weakest - the South Atlantic Anomaly - has moved steadily westward and weakened further by about 2%.

In addition, the magnetic north pole is wandering east, towards Asia.

Airplane

More severe turbulence: 8 passengers injured on JetBlue flight from Puerto Rico to Orlando

JetBlue plane
© Jet Blue
On Monday, a JetBlue flight heading to Orlando experienced severe turbulence which resulted in eight injured passengers being transported to the hospital when the plane finally landed.

According to WESH-TV, JetBlue Flight 1134 was en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Orlando, Florida, when the plane began to shake violently as attendants served snacks and beverages to the passengers.

One of the people onboard, Veronica Hernandez Torres, stated that the plane took a sudden dive, sending passengers without their seatbelts on into the air. Several people onboard reportedly struck their heads on the ceiling of the aircraft.

Once the turbulence was over, crew members found a doctor onboard who examined passengers with injuries, including a woman and a child who suffered cuts and abrasions as a result of the incident.

The flight crew considered making an emergency landing in the Bahamas, but the doctor onboard treated the victims and cleared them to continue the flight to Orlando. The JetBlue flight landed safely just before 9 p.m. local time, and emergency crews were waiting to assist the injured passengers.


Comment: Some other incidents of severe turbulence injuring passengers during flights in the past couple of weeks include:


Cloud Lightning

Lightning bolt kills 3 in Rajshahi, Bangladesh

Lightning
Three people were killed and four others injured by a lightning strike in Mohonpur upazila on Thursday afternoon, says news agency UNB.

Abdur Razzak, 28, son of Shamsuddin of Ata Narayanpur village, Abdul Aziz, 50 of Hattoir village and Sri Soito Chandra, 30 of Dangapara village died on the spot when a thunderbolt struck them during a storm around 1:30pm, said Abdus Samad, chairman of Mohonpur upazila.

The injured were Jalal Uddin, 40, of Pullakuri village, Alimon Begum, 70 of Baroipara village and Jahanara Begum, 28, of Mollah Dying village of the union.

Meanwhile, another woman was injured by a lightning strike at Dhaminpur village in Baghmara upazila.

The injured were admitted to different hospitals of the district.

Cloud Lightning

Lightning bolt kills 2 students in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Grief
Two students have been killed in lightning strike at Jatrabari ​in the capital.

Another was also injured in the same incident on Thursday afternoon.

Of the deceased, Mohammad Noman Hasan Lincoln, 21, was a student of Dhaka Polytechnic Institute, and Shahed Sohag, 20, was a computer science student of Ahsanullah University.

Inspector Mozammel Haque of Dhaka Medical College police outpost confirmed the deaths.

Witnesses said lightning struck the victims while they were playing football with their peer in Balur Math in the Kather Pool area of Jatrabari around 5pm amid the gusty wind and rain.

They were rushed to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital where the duty doctors declared Lincoln and Sohag dead around 6pm.

Injured Raiyan is now undergoing treatment at the hospital.

According to the fellows, Lincoln used to help his father in his business besides his study.

Attention

Thousands of tuna crabs found in Imperial Beach, California

Thousands of shrimp wash ashore in Imperial Beach.
© Barbara RichardsThousands of shrimp wash ashore in Imperial Beach.
Thousands of tuna crab washed ashore near the pier in Imperial Beach Wednesday morning.

Lifeguards first discovered the crabs during low tide. This marks the second year in a row the tuna crabs have washed ashore in such large numbers.

"Just like last year, in June we had a washing of tuna crabs and they think its correlated with El Nino," said Imperial Beach Lifeguard Captain Robert Stabenow. "The warmer waters are pushing them up and when they hit the cold waters of San Diego, they die off."

The majority of the crabs that washed ashore in Imperial Beach are dead, but some are still alive. Experts are advising that people do not eat the crabs because they may be covered in toxins.


Bizarro Earth

Hungry road: Huge sinkhole swallows car in London

London sinkhole
© euronews
A car fell into a large sinkhole which opened up in Greenwich, in southeast London, early Thursday morning.

Metropolitan police received a call at 3:23am (local time), reporting of a sinkhole at Woodland Terrace in Greenwich. Officers found a dark blue family car, a seven-seater Vauxhall Zafira, peeping out of the hole twice as big as the vehicle.

​The car's unlucky owner, Ghazi Hassan, was just visiting his brother the night before and parked the car near Benefice of Charlton St. Thomas' Church.