"It was felt all over Nuku'alofa," said journalist Pesi Fonua, adding the tremblor shook buildings in the city's downtown area.

Tonga has been rocked by scores of quakes recently, including a 7.8-magnitude temblor on May 4 that damaged some buildings.

Tonga, located halfway between Australia and Tahiti _ has a population of around 108,000 and an economy dependent on pumpkin and vanilla exports, fishing, foreign aid and remittances from Tongans abroad.

The fire was about five miles south of Casper - Wyoming's second-largest city, near the center of the state. But it was moving southeast, away from the city, toward scattered rural subdivisions.

Crapser estimated about 225 firefighters were on the fire, but said he expected numbers to go up significantly as more crews are pulled from other fires elsewhere.

"We're still calling for resources all around the country. With the fire activity going on about the country, resources are hard to come by," Crapser said.

Elsewhere, cooler air helped firefighters in southern California advance on a blaze that charred about 7 1/2 square miles and temporarily cut power in northern Los Angeles County on Sunday. Germain Aguilara, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said they hoped to have the fire fully contained by Wednesday night.

"The crew keeps advancing on it," Aguilara said. "As long as the wind out there is not erratic, that will help us make progress."

In Washington state, about 550 Army soldiers were undergoing basic fire training before being dispatched in 20-person crews to help on a 141-square-mile wildfire in the Okanogan and Wenatchee national forests.

In Idaho, a blaze in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, 7 miles north of Stanley, had grown to more than 25 square miles and was threatening vacation cabins.

In Montana, a 50-square-mile fire in the northwestern part of the state near the Canadian border showed little activity, and was 75 percent contained. Meanwhile, residents of nine homes in Ravalli County were asked to be prepared to leave as a fire southeast of Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park grew to less than a square mile.

Lightning in northern Nevada also started 10 brush fires in Elko County along a 100-mile stretch from Interstate 80 to near the Idaho line, authorities said Tuesday. Five firefighters were treated after their truck overturned, but the most serious injury was a broken arm, authorities said.

State police closed all highways and feeder roads into Hatch, though nearby Interstate 25 remained open. A command center was moved out of town to nearby Las Cruces because of the high water, and schools were ordered closed through Thursday.

Police and rescue workers helped people navigate the high water as they waded from their homes Tuesday evening. No injuries were reported.

Hatch, home to about 1,700 residents, is one of the nation's leading chili producers and proclaims itself the Chili Capital of the World. An annual chili festival over Labor Day draws tens of thousands of tourists.

It wasn't immediately known what effect the flooding would have on this year's crop, which had been expected to be a strong one. Chili farmer Joe Paul Lack said heavy rain has hurt his crops in Rincon.

"There is definitely going to be a (chili) shortage if this rain keeps up, but I'm more concerned about the town - our churches and our schools - than the crops," said.

He tried to work his way around the flooded area in his pickup truck to find his workers and family members who might need a place to stay, but found all roads into the village closed.

Tuesday's rain was the latest in a series of storms that have rolled throughout New Mexico in recent weeks, damaging roads, homes, canals and other infrastructure.

To the north in Socorro County, residents also were asked to evacuate due to flooding brought on by Tuesday's heavy rains.

More flooding was possible east of the Hatch Valley along the Rio Grande, which was expected to rise at least a foot overnight due to runoff.

Residents who live along or near the river were urged to be prepared for evacuation on short notice, said Dona Ana County spokesman Jess Williams.

A state irrigation department official said levels at the Dharoi dam, 150 kilometres (93 miles) north of Ahmedabad on the Sabarmati River, were near the danger mark.

"At present it is less than three feet (0.91 metres) below the danger mark," said the official who wished to remain unidentified.

He said the department was planning to release 100,000 cubic metres (3.5 million cubic feet) of water per second in phases on Wednesday.

"So people living along the riverbanks have been asked to move out to safer places," he said.

Reports said heavy rain in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan -- all bordering Gujarat -- had caused the Sardar Sarovar reservoir on the Narmada River to overflow.

The Press Trust of India news agency said residents of some central and southern districts of Gujarat had also been warned following the release of water from the Kadana dam on the Mahi River.

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers gathered results from 52 computer simulations to calculate the risks from climate-induced changes to the world's key ecosystems.

They then grouped the results according to the amount of global warming: less than 2C (3.6F); 2-3C (3.6F-5.4F); and more than 3C (5.4F).

For each of the temperature ranges, the team assessed the probability of changes in forest cover, the frequency of wildfires and changes to freshwater supplies over the next 200 years.

'Dangerous climate change'

Marko Scholze, from the University of Bristol's Department of Earth Sciences, and the paper's lead author, said the findings revealed a direct link between rises in global temperature and damage to ecosystems.

"We show the steeply increasing risks, and increasingly large areas affected, associated with higher warming levels," he said.

"The United Nations says we should limit greenhouse gas emissions so we do not have dangerous climate change. So the question is 'what is dangerous climate change?'.

"In this paper we define the level we think is dangerous and see how likely it will come true," Dr Scholze told BBC News.

Richard Betts, manager of Climate Impacts at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, welcomed the findings.

"This makes an important new contribution to the debate on the effects of climate change," he said.

"We already knew that we cannot rely on just one model, as different models give different answers.

"This work helps us go beyond that vague statement, as it shows how much the models agree on particular levels of impact and how much they disagree."

He said the research was an important first step towards quantifying the risks of damaging impacts associated with particular levels of global warming.

The findings showed areas that would experience the worst forest loss would include Eurasia, eastern China, Canada and the Amazon.

Areas of western Africa, southern Europe and eastern US states were at most risk from dwindling freshwater supplies and droughts as a result of rising temperatures.

The data also showed that any temperature increase of more than 3C (5.4F) could result in land "carbon sinks" releasing their stored carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating the problem of global warming.

Dr Scholze hoped the collated data would answer some of the concerns among more sceptical members of the scientific community who questioned the accuracy of climatic modelling.

"That is exactly why we did this study," he said. "We used as many models as we could and did not rely on any one study.

"We looked at 52 simulations and the probabilities of dangerous climate change these models showed."

Dr Betts agreed: "Of course it is risky to make these projections when models are continuously being changed, but we do have to make decisions on climate change now so if we wait for the perfect model we will be too late.

"The models give the best encapsulation of current understanding of the climate system, and are the only way of assessing physically plausible futures."

Dr Scholze said he hoped the findings would be used in debates on dangerous climate change and the measures needed to avoid it.