Earth ChangesS


Attention

Third shark bite reported this week off Florida coast

Sara Nealeigh
Bradenton Herald
Sat, 08 Apr 2017 11:32 UTC
Shark attacks
It's the third time this week someone has been attacked by a shark in Florida waters, according to the Palm Beach Post.

In the most recent incident, a 16-year-old boy from Georgia was visiting Daytona during spring break, according to a report Thursday from WXIA, an Atlanta television station.

"I told my friend that I had felt something bite me and we got out of the water and (my foot) was bleeding," Kody Stephens told WXIA. "We went up and washed it and the hotel called 911. They showed up and looked at it."

Stevens told WXIA he didn't see what bit him because he got out of the water as fast as he could, and first responders told him the bite looked like it came from a shark.

Comment: See also the following report of the other attack referred to above: Shark bites Georgia woman off Florida's Atlantic coast

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Seismograph

Philippines: 5.9 magnitude earthquake rocks near Talaga, south of Manila


RT
Sat, 08 Apr 2017 10:06 UTC
Map of Phillippines
© usgs.gov
A 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck in an area near Talaga, south of Manila in the Philippines. The quake was at a depth of 42.7km.

The quake struck one kilometer outside Talaga, located less than 70km south of Manila, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports.




The quake was the second and strongest of three that occurred over a 20-minute period, all between 5.0 to 5.9 in magnitude.

Tremors have been occurring in the area since earlier this week, Reuters reports, with no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
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Tornado1

Defying Al Gore's predictions, bottom drops out of US hurricane pattern over past decade

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That?
Thu, 06 Apr 2017 21:48 UTC
al gore
© IMDB"An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore, 2006.
Inconvenient data for those who still insist climate change is making hurricanes more frequent is displayed in these two slides from Dr. Philip Klotzbach. As noted by Dr. Roger Pielke Jr, the bottom dropped out of US hurricanes over the last 10 years.

CommonDreams.org quoted Al Gore back in 2005:
... the science is extremely clear now, that warmer oceans make the average hurricane stronger, not only makes the winds stronger, but dramatically increases the moisture from the oceans evaporating into the storm - thus magnifying its destructive power - makes the duration, as well as the intensity of the hurricane, stronger.

Last year we had a lot of hurricanes. Last year, Japan set an all-time record for typhoons: ten, the previous record was seven. Last year the science textbooks had to be re-written. They said, "It's impossible to have a hurricane in the south Atlantic." We had the first one last year, in Brazil. We had an all-time record last year for tornadoes in the United States, 1,717 - largely because hurricanes spawned tornadoes.
Since Katrina, climate activists have beat a steady drumbeat warning of doom.
  1. "Warming seas cause stronger hurricanes", Nature, 2006 — "Mega-storms are set to increase as the climate hots up."
  2. "Are Category 6 Hurricanes Coming Soon?", Scientific American, 2011 — "Tropical cyclones like Irene are predicted to be more powerful this year, thanks to natural conditions"
  3. "Global warming is 'causing more hurricanes'", The Independent, 2012.
  4. "A Katrina hurricane will strike every two years", ScienceNordic, 2013 — About a widely reported study in PNAS by geophysicist Aslak Grinsted of the Niels Bohr Institute Copenhagen U. Also see "'Katrina-Like' Hurricanes to Occur More Frequently Due to Warming" in US News & World Reports.
  5. "Hurricanes Likely to Get Stronger & More Frequent", Climate Central, 2013 - About a study in PNAS by Kerry Emanuel et al.
  6. See ten even more outlandish predictions from the big 3 networks.
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Better Earth

The art of green deception . . .about those record temperatures in Antarctica

Warren Blair
Watts Up With That?
Fri, 07 Apr 2017 21:39 UTC
antarctica
Warren Blair writes:

On the same day (24 March 2015) in the real Antarctic (not Esperanza on the Trinity Peninsula) Australia's Casey research station had its coldest 24 March day in 18 years (minus 12.7 °C). That wasn't mentioned and neither was any other interesting data like Casey's 2015 March mean maximum temperature was the same as 1990 and lower than 1991, 1992, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2007 and 2009.

Highest Antarctic region temperature was 35 years ago when CO2 was 340ppm (15% less than 2015 levels).

19.8°C was recorded on 30 January 1982 at Signy Research Station located at Borge Bay (near Esperanza Base) .

Highest Antarctic temperature for a Plateau station [>2500 meters] was 28 years ago.

-7.0°C was recorded on 28 December 1989 at an Automatic Weather Station (D-80) located inland from the Adélie Coast.

Highest Antarctic temperature for a continental station (outside the Antarctic Circle) was recorded in 2015.

17.5°C was recorded on 24 March 2015 at the Esperanza Base located on the Trinity Peninsula at Hope Bay (near Signy Research Station).
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Better Earth

Scientists link California droughts and floods to distinctive atmospheric waves

Anthony Watts
Watt's Up With That?
Thu, 06 Apr 2017 21:33 UTC
wavenumber-5
© Haiyan Teng and Grant BranstatorThe high- and low-pressure regions of wavenumber-5 set up in different locations during January 2014, when California was enduring a drought, and January 2017, when it was facing floods. The location of the high and low pressure regions (characterized by anticylonic vs. cyclonic upper-level air flow) can act to either suppress or enhance precipitation and storms. The black curves illustrate the jet streams that trap and focus wavenumber-5.
From NCAR/UCAR:

Boulder, Colo. — The crippling wintertime droughts that struck California from 2013 to 2015, as well as this year's unusually wet California winter, appear to be associated with the same phenomenon: a distinctive wave pattern that emerges in the upper atmosphere and circles the globe.

Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found in a recent study that the persistent high-pressure ridge off the west coast of North America that blocked storms from coming onshore during the winters of 2013-14 and 2014-15 was associated with the wave pattern, which they call wavenumber-5. Follow-up work showed that wavenumber-5 emerged again this winter but with its high- and low-pressure features in a different position, allowing drenching storms from the Pacific to make landfall.

"This wave pattern is a global dynamic system that sometimes makes droughts or floods in California more likely to occur," said NCAR scientist Haiyan Teng, lead author of the California paper. "As we learn more, this may eventually open a new window to long-term predictability." The finding is part of an emerging body of research into the wave pattern that holds the promise of better understanding seasonal weather patterns in California and elsewhere.
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Ice Cube

Unusually large swarm of over 400 icebergs blocking shipping lanes in the North Atlantic

Jennifer McDermott
ctvnews.ca
Fri, 07 Apr 2017 19:49 UTC
Iceberg
More than 400 icebergs have drifted into the North Atlantic shipping lanes over the past week in an unusually large swarm for this early in the season, forcing vessels to slow to a crawl or take detours of hundreds of kilometres.

Experts are attributing it to uncommonly strong counter-clockwise winds that are drawing the icebergs south, and perhaps also global warming, which is accelerating the process by which chunks of the Greenland ice sheet break off and float away.

As of Monday, there were about 450 icebergs near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, up from 37 a week earlier, according to the U.S. Coast Guard's International Ice Patrol in New London, Connecticut. Those kinds of numbers are usually not seen until late May or early June. The average for this time of year is about 80.
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Cloud Precipitation

Severe hailstorm hits Springville, Alabama

Joe Songer
al.com
Wed, 05 Apr 2017 18:43 UTC
Hail
© Representative image
Weather can change in an instant in Alabama and today was no exception. This morning a loud, rumbling clap of thunder jolted me awake just after 6 a.m. followed by huge downpour of over an inch of rain.

By lunchtime the sun was out and temperatures warmed into the upper 70's.

At 6:09 p.m. the skies darkened once more and within minutes my wife Karen and I were witnessing one of the most violent hail storms either of us has ever seen.

It lasted just over four minutes. In that time, the hail shredded leaves from the trees and ripped off tree branches. The nickel to quarter size hail stones covered the ground like snow. The hail battered our metal roof and bounced on the driveway like marbles.

When it was over, fog descended over the entire area and dropped the temperature by at least 10 degrees. It was one of the most amazing things I've even witnessed and won't soon forget.

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Fireball

SOTT Focus: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - March 2017: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs


Sott.net
Fri, 07 Apr 2017 17:30 UTC
Wildfires USA March 2017
Planetary environmental chaos continued unabated this month. Several spectacular fireballs were seen from one end of the world to the other. Wildfires ravaged several mid-West states while unusually strong winds hit Illinois and New York. Madagascar got slammed by a ferocious storm as did Brazil, New Zealand and France.

Severe flooding hit several parts of the globe, but the worst affected was Peru where dozens of people died and hundreds of thousands have been left with no homes. With freak tidal waves from Iran to South Africa, strange 'gas' explosions in the UK and methane gas leaks in Russia, not to mention snow off the coast of Africa and lightning scoring direct strikes on cars, March was a pretty intense month for the planet and its inhabitants.
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Wolf

City of Khabarovsk in Russia under siege from packs of aggressive stray dogs as boy, 12, mauled on way to school


The Siberian Times
Thu, 06 Apr 2017 18:27 UTC
Mass stray dog attacks on people.
© The Siberian TimesMass stray dog attacks on people.
'Scared' residents complain of 'epidemic' in Khabarovsk, arguing animal rights campaigners and 'kind-hearted' are endangering people by blocking preventative measures.

The attack on Ivan 'Vanya' Tsybenko, 12, on his way to school is an increasingly common occurrence in this city of 589,000, say locals.

His mother Tatiana fears he would have been killed if neighbours had not seen the attack and dragged the child into their car.

I walked my son to school 7.30 am on 4 April, and then went to take my younger boy to kindergarten,' she said.

'I walked several hundred meters away from school with a pushchair, when suddenly there was a call from Vanya, who screamed: 'Mama, dogs are attacking me!'

'I was too far away by then to see what was happening, but I heard my son screaming, and dogs howling and growling.

'I ran back, but with a small child on my hands I couldn't even help him.

'Thank God two women who were driving past saw the attack and pulled my boy inside their car.

'It was my neighbours , I don't know what would have happened if it wasn't for them.
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Wolf

Woman killed by 2 dogs in Oklahoma City

Jordann Lucero
okcfox.com
Thu, 06 Apr 2017 18:08 UTC
Dog attack
Police say a woman was killed in a dog attack Thursday in northwest Oklahoma city.

The Oklahoma City Police Department reports that just before 2 p.m. April 6 officers were called to a dog attack in the 8500 block of Willow Creek Road. Police say a woman was walking her dog on Windmill Road when they were both attacked by two other dogs. The woman and her dog were both killed.

Police said one was a pit bull. Officers could not immediately identify the breed of the other do, but said it was also large.

Officer said they tried to save the woman, but could not.

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