Is global warming making hurricanes more ferocious? New research suggests the answer is yes. Scientists call the findings both surprising and "alarming" because they suggest global warming is influencing storms now - rather than in the distant future.

However, the research doesn't suggest global warming is generating more hurricanes and typhoons.

The analysis by climatologist Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows for the first time that major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific since the 1970s have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent.

These trends are closely linked to increases in the average temperatures of the ocean surface and also correspond to increases in global average atmospheric temperatures during the same period.

"When I look at these results at face value, they are rather alarming," said research meteorologist Tom Knutson. "These are very big changes."

Knutson, who wasn't involved in the study, works in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J.

Emanuel reached his conclusions by analyzing data collected from actual storms rather than using computer models to predict future storm behavior.

Before this study, most researchers believed global warming's contribution to powerful hurricanes was too slight to accurately measure. Most forecasts don't have climate change making a real difference in tropical storms until 2050 or later.

But some scientists questioned Emanuel's methods. For example, the MIT researcher did not consider wind speed information from some powerful storms in the 1950s and 1960s because the details of those storms are inconsistent.

Researchers are using new methods to analyze those storms and others going back as far as 1851. If early storms turn out to be more powerful than originally thought, Emmanuel's findings on global warming's influence on recent tropical storms might not hold up, they said.

"I'm not convinced that it's happening," said Christopher W. Landsea, another research meteorologist with NOAA, who works at a different lab, the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory in Miami. Landsea is a director of the historical hurricane reanalysis.

"His conclusions are contingent on a very large bias removal that is large or larger than the global warming signal itself," Landsea said.

Details of Emanuel's study appear Sunday in the online version of the journal Nature.

Theories and computer simulations indicate that global warming should generate an increase in storm intensity, in part because warmer temperatures would heat up the surface of the oceans. Especially in the Atlantic and Caribbean basins, pools of warming seawater provide energy for storms as they swirl and grow over the open oceans.

Emanuel analyzed records of storm measurements made by aircraft and satellites since the 1950s. He found the amount of energy released in these storms in both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific oceans has increased, especially since the mid-1970s.

In the Atlantic, the sea surface temperatures show a pronounced upward trend. The same is true in the North Pacific, though the data there is more variable, he said.

"This is the first time I have been convinced we are seeing a signal in the actual hurricane data," Emanuel said in an e-mail exchange.

"The total energy dissipated by hurricanes turns out to be well correlated with tropical sea surface temperatures," he said. "The large upswing in the past decade is unprecedented and probably reflects the effects of global warming."

This year marked the first time on record that the Atlantic spawned four named storms by early July, as well as the earliest category 4 storm on record. Hurricanes are ranked on an intensity scale of 1 to 5.

In the past decade, the southeastern United States and the Caribbean basin have been pummeled by the most active hurricane cycle on record. Forecasters expect the stormy trend to continue for another 20 years or more.

Even without global warming, hurricane cycles tend to be a consequence of natural salinity and temperature changes in the Atlantic's deep current circulation that shift back and forth every 40 to 60 years.

Since the 1970s, hurricanes have caused more property damage and casualties. Researchers disagree over whether this destructiveness is a consequence of the storms' growing intensity or the population boom along vulnerable coastlines.

"The damage and casualties produced by more intense storms could increase considerably in the future," Emanuel said.

BOMBAY - Heavy rain again flooded Bombay on Monday after a record downpour last week triggered floods and landslides that killed nearly 1,000 people in and around India's financial capital.

Floods closed key roads and delayed train services in the sprawling metropolis of more than 15 million people, but there were no reports of new casualties or serious damage.

"The speed of the relief operations has come down, but we have deployed personnel and equipment and we are working round the clock," said Suresh Kakine, director of relief for the western state of Maharashtra, of which Bombay is the capital.

He said 600 medical teams had been dispatched around the state to help treat the injured and cremate the dead.

Disease remains a serious threat as dead bodies and animal carcasses are still strewn around the city due to last week's floods, while clean water was scarce in parts as burst sewage pipes polluted supplies.

Financial markets were open and operating normally, though volumes were fairly thin as traders could not get to work, while schools were shut as police urged people to stay off the roads.

Smita Gaikwad, who works at a back-office services firm, said she had to move in to her brother's 10th floor apartment because her ground-floor flat was under two feet (0.6 meter) of water.

"The slums nearby are washed away," she said. "Dead buffaloes are floating on water. We didn't have power for 72 hours."

"Everybody is in a state of numbness."

Before a renewed downpour on Sunday, there were angry protests in the parts of the city where people have been without electricity and water since flooding started last Tuesday.

Film-makers in the city, home to India's prolific movie industry, have started legal action against the state government over its handling of the floods, newspapers reported. [...]

BEIJING, Aug. 2 -- A rare spell of hot weather has hit Eastern Europe, leaving dozens of people dead.

According to local media in Bulgaria, Sunday's highest temperature in Plovdiv city in the south of the country reached 38 celsius, which is also the highest record in the city's 104-year history, while the highest temperature over the past three days in the southwestern city of Sandanski hit 39 degrees.

Five elderly people in Bulgaria have died of heart attacks brought on by the continuous hot wave.

The country's weather forecast department says the hot weather is likely to last the whole of August.

The fierce weather has also attacked other countries in the region, 19 elderly people have died due to the heat in Romania.

Funnel clouds have been spotted over parts of Bristol and Wiltshire.

The phenomenon on Monday night was hundreds of feet high and lasted up to 20 minutes - much longer than the average two minutes.

Mandy Doyle, who lives in High Littleton said: "It was the scariest thing I've ever seen. Something out of a movie."

Funnel clouds are similar to tornados, but are weaker and do not make contact with the ground.

Dorothy Gwinnell of Whitchurch, said her neighbour had rung her up and told her to look out the window.

"I was shocked. It was very long but it seemed to be moving quite slowly. It was kind of hovering overhead for about 15 or 20 minutes."

A mini-tornado was also seen passing over Trowbridge in Wiltshire.

No damage

PA weather forecaster Paul Knightley said it was not technically a tornado as it did not touch the ground.

"It wasn't going to cause much damage but I can imagine why people would have got excited.

"We actually had three or four funnel clouds and possibly one tornado yesterday across the country."

There were no reports of damage to property.

It comes one week after a tornado hit Birmingham, damaging buildings and uprooting trees.

Mr Knightley said Britain averaged about 33 to 35 tornadoes a year.

"If we got a few more Birminghams that would make us sit up and take notice.

"But people are just reporting these things more now and they have cameras and mobile phones to back up what they've seen."

Portuguese firefighters battled forest blazes overnight while 10 major outbreaks still raced out of control today.

More than 1,000 firefighters were deployed across the country as temperatures in some regions were forecast to exceed 45C (113F), the Civil Protection Service said. Strong winds drove night-time fires across roads and through firebreaks.

The disintegration of the huge Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica was an unprecedented event in the past 10,000 years of geological history, a study has found.

Research by scientists from Hamilton College in New York, based on the scrutiny of six ice cores from the vicinity of the ice shelf, found that a collapse of this size had not happened during the period since the end of the last Ice Age.

The piece of ice which sheered away from Larsen B into the sea in 2002 was roughly the size of Luxembourg. The study, published in the journal Nature, shows that the ice shelf had been thinning over the millennia but went through a more rapid loss in recent decades, probably due to global warming.

In March 2002, scientists announced the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula had entered a phase of rapid break-up with more than 50 billion tons of ice spilling into the Weddell Sea to form thousands of massive icebergs. It had been known for many years that the ice shelf was thinning and in retreat but the speed of its final collapse astonished scientists. It took just 35 days for the Larsen B ice shelf to fall away completely after a Nasa satellite detected the first ruptures in the 1,255 square miles of ice at the end of January 2002.

Although the disintegration of ice shelves does not itself cause sea levels to rise (because they are already floating), their loss is thought to speed up the flow of ice from ice sheets on land, causing sea levels to rise. Larsen B's smaller neighbour, Larsen A, broke off in 1995 and other much bigger ice shelves nearby, such as the Ross and Ronne, are also considered to be at risk of disintegrating, according to studies by the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge.

Researchers have measured a 2.5C increase in average temperatures in the Antarctic peninsula over the past 50 years and many scientists believe there is little doubt that this rise can be linked to global warming and climate change exacerbated by man-made pollution.

The latest study by a team led by Eugene Domack analysed oxygen isotopes and the microscopic plankton called formanifera, which are found in ice cores dating back 10,000 years. "We infer from our oxygen isotope measurements in planktonic formanifera that the Larsen B ice shelf has been thinning throughout the Holocene [from the present to 10,000 years ago], and we suggest that the recent prolonged period of warming in the Antarctic peninsula region, in combination with the long-term thinning, has led to collapse of the ice shelf," the researchers said.

HOUSTON - Commander Eileen Collins said astronauts on shuttle Discovery had seen widespread environmental destruction on Earth and warned on Thursday that greater care was needed to protect natural resources.

Her comments came as NASA pondered whether to send astronauts out on an extra spacewalk to repair additional heat-protection damage on the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Discovery is linked with the International Space Station and orbiting 220 miles above the Earth.

"Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation. It's very widespread in some parts of the world," Collins said in a conversation from space with Japanese officials in Tokyo, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

"We would like to see, from the astronauts' point of view, people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used," said Collins, who was standing with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi in front of a Japanese flag and holding a colorful fan.

Collins, flying her fourth shuttle mission, said the view from space made clear that Earth's atmosphere must be protected, too.

"The atmosphere almost looks like an eggshell on an egg, it's so very thin," she said. "We know that we don't have much air, we need to protect what we have." [...]

Striking observations of the effects of Hurricane Ivan – which swept across the Atlantic in 2004 – reveals the 100-foot wave which ended the movie The Perfect Storm were no cinematic exaggeration. And new meteorological predictions warn that 2005 may be a bumper year for North Atlantic hurricanes.

Sensors resting at 60 and 90-metre depths in the Gulf of Mexico, off Mississippi, US, measured one wave at 91 feet (28 metres) high and half a dozen waves higher than 50 feet as Ivan passed directly over the waters.

Yet even those impressive measurements missed the peak of the storm, says Bill Teague at the US Naval Research Laboratory branch in Mississippi. At the peak of the Category 4 storm, when sustained winds roared at 140 miles per hour (225 km/hour), he estimates waves reached 130 feet (40 metres).

Hurricane winds whip up high waves over the open ocean, but their heights are notoriously hard to measure because the rough seas inevitably rip the standard buoy instruments loose from their moorings before the peak of the storm.

Barnacle-like sensors

Waves up to 80 feet (24 metres) high have hit offshore oil rigs, but operators thought these were isolated "rogue" waves. But Teague told New Scientist the new measurements suggest that "what's been called a rogue wave may be fairly common in intense storms".

The group used novel sensors that stick like barnacles to the sea floor – allowing them to survive Ivan’s fury – to measure wave height by monitoring water pressure. However, each of the six sensors monitored wave height for only 512 seconds each eight hours, so they missed the peak of the storm.

Meanwhile, the US National Weather Service declared on 2 August that 2005’s hurricane season would be “extremely active”. After recording seven tropical storms in the North Atlantic in June and July, the agency predicts 11 to 14 more storms will develop through to November – giving a total of 18 to 21 during the season. A total of 9 to 11 are expected to reach hurricane strength. On average there are 10 tropical storms and six hurricanes in the season.

WASHINGTON - A dispute over whether global warming is really happening may have been caused by the placement of sensors on weather balloons when studies were done in the 1970s, researchers said on Thursday.

Very few scientists now dispute that the Earth's temperature is rising, and that this is caused by human activity, including burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

But there have been some discrepancies that have troubled experts. For instance, some measurements show that atmospheric temperatures have been unchanged since the 1970s, while temperatures at the Earth's surface are rising.

"Even though models predict a close link between atmospheric and surface temperatures, there has been a large difference in the actual measurements," said Steven Sherwood, an associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University in Connecticut, who led the study.

"This has muddied the interpretation of reported warming."

Working with a team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Sherwood and colleagues said they found the key to the differences lay in where the sensors were placed on equipment.

With exposed sensors used in earlier designs, measurements taken in daylight read too warm. Later equipment reduced this effect.

"It's like being outside on a hot day -- it feels hotter when you are standing in the direct sun than when you are standing in the shade," Sherwood said in a statement.

"We can't hang our hats on the old balloon numbers."

Writing in the journal Science, Sherwood and colleagues said this helps explain why temperatures in the troposphere -- the lower atmosphere -- appear not to have risen.

After taking this problem into account, they estimate there has been an increase of 0.2 degree Celsius (0.36 degree F) in the average global temperature per decade for the last thirty years.

"Unfortunately, the warming is in an accelerating trend -- the climate has not yet caught up with what we've already put into the atmosphere," Sherwood said. "There are steps we should take, but it seems that shaking people out of complacency will take a strong incentive."

Two other papers published in Science support this conclusion.

PARIS - More than two-thirds of France is suffering from a drought that has forced authorities to limit the use of water for agriculture and led to regional bans on filling pools, washing cars or running garden sprinklers, the ecology ministry said Thursday.

Conditions were "severe" in areas in western France, the ministry said, adding that further restrictions may follow if no rain relief comes.

A national drought crisis committee of weather exerts, consumer and farming grous and government officials met Thursday to take stock of the situation.

The ecology ministry said in a statement that a study of water use over the last 60 years showed that rainfall had been largely
inadequate to meet demand in most of the country, with only the central eastern art of France -- which benefits from Aline runoff -- being spared.

Siberia feels the heat: It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.

The discovery was made by Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand at Oxford University and is reported in New Scientist today.

The researchers found that what was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometre across.

Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation was an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He added that the thaw had probably begun in the past three or four years.

Climate scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.

"When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing."

In its last major report in 2001, the intergovernmental panel on climate change predicted a rise in global temperatures of 1.4C-5.8C between 1990 and 2100, but the estimate only takes account of global warming driven by known greenhouse gas emissions.

"These positive feedbacks with landmasses weren't known about then. They had no idea how much they would add to global warming," said Dr Viner.

Western Siberia is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world, having experienced a rise of some 3C in the past 40 years. Scientists are particularly concerned about the permafrost, because as it thaws, it reveals bare ground which warms up more quickly than ice and snow, and so accelerates the rate at which the permafrost thaws.

Siberia's peat bogs have been producing methane since they formed at the end of the last ice age, but most of the gas had been trapped in the permafrost. According to Larry Smith, a hydrologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, the west Siberian peat bog could hold some 70bn tonnes of methane, a quarter of all of the methane stored in the ground around the world.

The permafrost is likely to take many decades at least to thaw, so the methane locked within it will not be released into the atmosphere in one burst, said Stephen Sitch, a climate scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter.

But calculations by Dr Sitch and his colleagues show that even if methane seeped from the permafrost over the next 100 years, it would add around 700m tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each year, roughly the same amount that is released annually from the world's wetlands and agriculture.

It would effectively double atmospheric levels of the gas, leading to a 10% to 25% increase in global warming, he said.

Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said the finding was a stark message to politicians to take concerted action on climate change. "We knew at some point we'd get these feedbacks happening that exacerbate global warming, but this could lead to a massive injection of greenhouse gases.

"If we don't take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming that will be beyond our control and it will lead to social, economic and environmental devastation worldwide," he said. "There's still time to take action, but not much.

"The assumption has been that we wouldn't see these kinds of changes until the world is a little warmer, but this suggests we're running out of time."

In May this year, another group of researchers reported signs that global warming was damaging the permafrost. Katey Walter of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, told a meeting of the Arctic Research Consortium of the US that her team had found methane hotspots in eastern Siberia. At the hotspots, methane was bubbling to the surface of the permafrost so quickly that it was preventing the surface from freezing over. [...]

Scientists are worried Siratti Sam could also become a casualty.
About 20 dead sea turtles have washed ashore in Pinellas County in the past three days, an extremely high number that has doctors and scientists puzzled.

One of the two survivors that's being kept at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium is a large, loggerhead turtle named Siratti Sam.

"I still don't know if he'll make it," said Dr. Janine Cianciolo. "It's little movements. Yesterday, he wasn't moving at all. [He's] still not in water because he's not keeping his head above water for long enough periods of time."

It's not clear why the various kinds of sea turtles are washing ashore.

"It may or may not be associated with red tide," said Cianciolo. "They tend to show symptoms of what's called a red tide intoxication, but you have to take a lot of samples and they must go through testing to actually determine that."

Dive instructor Michael Miller took underwater video to try to figure out the mystery.

"Right now, anywhere we go from shore to 20 miles offshore, from Sarasota to Tarpon Springs, we can't find a single creature alive on the bottom right now," said Miller.

Miller says he's never seen such death and devastation under water in his 20 years of diving.

"All the coral, all the sponges, all the crabs, not a single living thing, all the star fish, the brittle stars, everything's dead," said Miller.

The sea turtles that died are being preserved with ice at the aquarium, where a necropsy will be performed in hopes it will provide some clues as to what's lurking in the waters of the gulf.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission scientists will ultimately decide whether red tide is causing the sea turtles to die. The results from the test could take anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks.

If you see a dead or injured sea turtle, call the 24-hour stranded sea turtle hotline at 727-441-1790. You'll be asked to leave a message with a phone number so rescuers can respond to the appropriate location.

A submerged island that could be the source of the Atlantis myth was hit by a large earthquake and tsunami 12,000 years ago, a geologist has discovered.

Spartel Island now lies 60m under the sea in the Straits of Gibraltar, but some think it once lay above water.

The finding adds weight to a hypothesis that the island could have inspired the legend recounted by the philosopher Plato more than 2,000 years ago.

Evidence comes from a seafloor survey published in the journal Geology.

Marc-André Gutscher of the University of Western Brittany in Plouzané, France, found a coarse-grained sedimentary deposit that is 50-120cm thick and could have been left behind after a tsunami.

Shaken sediments

Dr Gutscher said that the destruction described by Plato is consistent with a great earthquake and tsunami similar to the one that devastated the city of Lisbon in Portugal in 1755, generating waves with heights of up to 10m.

The thick "turbidite" deposit results from sediments that have been shaken up by underwater geological upheavals.

It was found to date to around 12,000 years ago - roughly the age indicated by Plato for the destruction of Atlantis, Dr Gutscher reports in Geology.

Spartel Island, in the Gulf of Cadiz, was proposed as a candidate for the origin of the Atlantis legend in 2001 by French geologist Jacques Collina-Girard.

It is "in front of the Pillars of Hercules", or the Straits of Gibraltar, as Plato described. The philosopher said the fabled island civilisation had been destroyed in a single day and night, disappearing below the sea.

Sedimentary records reveal that events like the 1755 Lisbon earthquake occur every 1,500 to 2,000 years in the Gulf of Cadiz.

But the mapping of the island carried out by Dr Gutscher failed to turn up any manmade structures and also showed that the island was much smaller than previously believed.

This could make it less likely that the island was inhabited by a civilisation.

MOSCOW - Russian health workers have found mass bird deaths in a region to the west of the Ural mountains in what could become the first case of the deadly bird flu virus spreading to Europe, officials said on Wednesday.

But Russia's chief animal health official said a preliminary investigation had shown the deaths in Kalmykia may not have been caused by the dangerous virus that can also kill humans.

The Russian state health watchdog, in a statement posted on its Web site, said the bird deaths occurred on a farm in the Caspian region of Kalmykia -- 2,000 km (1,200 miles) from the region where Russia's first flu outbreak was reported.

"This case is being investigated," the Federal Consumers' Rights and Welfare Watchdog said, adding no cases among humans had been confirmed in Russia.

Russia has fought to contain a bird flu outbreak since mid-July when the first case of the disease -- which can also kill humans -- was registered in Siberia and later in neighboring Kazakhstan and Mongolia. [...]

LITTLE ROCK - It happens every year: large numbers of copperheads gather and move in unison to dens for hibernation. But it happens in October, not July or August. Now the common event has become an uncommon and inexplicable one.

"I know for a fact that all these snakes didn't just wake up one day and do this," said Chuck Miller, whose Marion County yard has been overrun with the pitvipers. "Something's making them do it. They know something we don't know. There's got to be something more to this."

Nearly 100 of the snakes are using a cedar tree as a sort of meeting place, and neither Miller, an outdoorsman and former snake owner, nor scientists who have traveled to the rural north central Arkansas site to study the phenomenon, know why.

Stanley Trauth, a zoology professor at Arkansas State University, said the snakes normally gather to move to hibernation sites in the fall. Trauth has traveled to Miller's property to conduct research on the snakes' behavior.

"With this hot weather we didn't anticipate such a grand movement of so many snakes. In the fall they aggregate in fairly large numbers, so it's quite an unusual event," Trauth said in a telephone interview Monday.

Miller agrees. "If it were October, no one would know about it. It wouldn't be that strange," he said.

When the snakes first started showing up three weeks ago, Miller said he was a little concerned that no one would believe how many were visiting the cedar tree, so he began collecting the reptiles. He saw 20 the first night, he said.

One of his friends contacted Trauth and the research began.

Trauth and one of his graduate students traveled to Miller's property and embedded a radio transmitter in one of the snakes for tracking purposes. Other snakes also had tags clipped to their scales.

Miller said seven of nine tagged snakes were taken a quarter-mile away from the tree and released, but have since returned to the tree and been recaptured.

Trauth said the copperheads gather at the tree to leave their scent. By rubbing the tree, other copperheads know that it is a marker on the way to a den site, he said.

But Trauth is only guessing that the snakes are preparing to move to a den for hibernation.

"All we can do is speculate as to what this is right now. This might be a precursor to an actual event. But having the numbers there that he's had, it just makes you wonder what's going on," Trauth said.

A gathering of copperheads like the one in Miller's yard has not been documented before, Trauth said. Though he can't yet explain why it's happening, he can say for sure it's not for mating or feeding.

All the snakes that have been gathering at the base of the tree are adult males. Copperheads also like to feed on cicadas, but the insects haven't appeared in the area in large numbers this year.

The best guess, Trauth said, is the snakes are moving to hibernate as usual - they're just doing it earlier than normal.

All Miller knows is, it's weird.

"It's like seeing a bigfoot or something walk across the yard; if you don't keep them, no one will believe you," he said.

WASHINGTON - The five named tropical storms recorded in July were the most on record for that month, and worldwide it was the second warmest July on record, the National Climatic Data Center reported Tuesday.

In the United States it was the 12th warmest July on record, with the national average temperature 1.5 degree Fahrenheit above normal for the month.

The West was most affected by the excessive heat in July from the 11th to 27th. More than 200 cities broke daily high temperature records, with Denver, Colo., having its second warmest July since 1872 and equaling the all-time highest daily temperature record of 105 degrees.

Las Vegas, Nev., equaled its all-time record daily maximum temperature of 117 degrees, and had five consecutive days with temperatures exceeding 115.

U.S. rainfall was about average for the country as a whole, with unusually dry conditions across the Rockies, High Plains and the Mid-to-Upper-Mississippi Valley. There was above average wetness in the Southeast, in large part related to landfalling tropical storms.

Tropical Storm Cindy formed early on July 5 and then moved northward to make landfall near Grand Isle, La. Heavy rainfall and inland flooding accompanied Cindy as it tracked northeastward across the eastern U.S.

When Tropical Storm Dennis formed, also on July 5, it was the earliest date on record for a fourth named storm. Dennis grew into the earliest category 4 hurricane on record and made landfall near Pensacola, Fla., on the 10th, spreading heavy rainfall inland.

July also included Emily and Franklin. The formation of Tropical Storm Gert on the 24th made it a record five storms in the month.

Worldwide, the average temperature for July was 1.08 degrees above normal in records dating back to 1880, the second warmest July on record. The warmest was in 1998 with readings 1.17 above average for the month.

Land surface temperatures were warmer than average in Scandinavia, much of Asia, North Africa and the western U.S., while below average temperatures occurred in northern Canada and northern Alaska.

Sea ice across the Northern Hemisphere oceans, as measured by satellites, was lowest on record for July. For the last nine years, sea ice has been below the monthly mean for July. Sea ice generally reaches an annual minimum in September.

For the period January-July the average temperature of the planet was 1.06 degree above average, third warmest on record. The warmest was 1998 at 1.24 degree above normal.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Fresh from visits to Canada's Yukon Territory and Alaska's northernmost city, four U.S. senators said on Wednesday that signs of rising temperatures on Earth are obvious and they called on Congress to act.

"If you can go to the Native people and walk away with any doubt about what's going on, I just think you're not listening," said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Hillary Clinton of New York told reporters in Anchorage that Inupiat Eskimo residents in Barrow, Alaska, have found their ancestral land and traditional lifestyle disrupted by disappearing sea ice, thawing permafrost, increased coastal erosion and changes to wildlife habitat.

Heat-stimulated beetle infestation has also killed vast amounts of the spruce forest in the Yukon Territory, they said.

Such observations provide more ammunition in the fight for a bill, co-sponsored by McCain and Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman, to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, McCain said. That bill has repeatedly failed to pass the Senate.

"People around the country are going to demand it," McCain said. "It's the special interests versus the people's interest."

The United States is the biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, which many scientists have linked to global warming. [...]

BEIJING - Rice, the main staple for the majority of China's 1.3 billion people, is under threat with one quarter of the nation's farmland hit by pests and diseases this year.

The situation is so serious that Agriculture Ministry officials have organized a meeting calling for extraordinary measures to be taken, the Xinhua news agency said.

A total of 31.3 million hectares of rice fields, or 24 percent of the nation's entire cultivated area, had been hit by plagues and disease as of last month, according to the agency.

The affected fields are concentrated in 13 major rice production areas in the fertile south of the country.

The Ministry of Agriculture had earlier warned that some two million hectares of farmland and 25 million hectares of grassland would be attacked by locusts this year.

To deal with the challenge, the ministry has called for local governments to strengthen prevention and treatment measures in order to fight against rice pests and diseases, and ensure a good grain harvest in autumn.

The ministry has ordered local agriculture departments to monitor for pests and diseases, and, once they have been detected, to take resolute quarantine measures to prevent them from spreading, according to the agency.

It has also told its grassroots cadres to guide farmers in their areas to adopt the right kind of pesticides to ensure effective prevention and treatment of rice diseases.

STOUGHTON, Wis. - A tornado killed one person and damaged dozens of homes as it roared through this southern Wisconsin city late Thursday.

At least eight other people were hospitalized as the severe storms blasted their way across the central and southern parts of the state, authorities said.

"The sky just exploded. It was debris everywhere," said David Murray, 43, who captured the Stoughton tornado on his camera phone. "When it went across the road and it hit all the houses over there ... it was something you can't explain. It just exploded."

State Emergency Management spokeswoman Lori Getter said one person died in the tornado and five others were hospitalized; she had no further information about the victims. The tornado destroyed 15 homes, and 35 others had moderate to severe damage, she said.

Getter said a natural gas leak caused the evacuation of about 200 residents.

The storms also damaged homes in Viola, about 70 miles northwest of Madison. Getter said three people there were treated for injuries and about 70 to 80 homes were damaged.

"There's houses half gone. All the trees in town are gone," said Bill Bender, owner of the Viola Quick Stop. "There was stuff flying by the building, like big chunks."

Storm debris traveled eastward in clouds, depositing papers, shingles and other materials in the Milwaukee area, some 60 miles from Stoughton.

Murray described seeing a smashed truck upside down in the middle of a wrecked house, and debris, including an engine block, strewn across the nearby Stoughton Country Club. [...]

KUALA LUMPUR - A WATER crisis is looming in Malaysia, with Johor being among the worst hit of several states facing a prolonged drought.

Two of Johor's three main dams are running below critical levels and the dry spell, the worst in a decade across the country, could last till October, officials say.

Across the country, water levels at seven of the 14 dams and lakes were close to or slightly above 'alert' levels, the Department of Irrigation and Drainage said on its website.

The affected dams are on the populated west coast of the peninsula, from Kuala Lumpur to Perlis.

Water rationing has been imposed in the central state of Negeri Sembilan and in the central Johor area of Kluang.

Unless rain comes down hard in the water catchment areas in the next few weeks, officials are not ruling out the possibility of water rationing in some other areas around the country.

'This is a prolonged dry season we are going through, especially in Johor,' a senior official at the Department of Irrigation and Drainage told The Straits Times.

'If a severe drought were to happen instead of a rainy season, rationing may well happen again.'

Water rationing would be a double whammy for Malaysians who last week went through the haze crisis, the worst in eight years. There is a feeling of deja vu among Kuala Lumpur and Selangor residents for there was also water rationing in 1997 after the haze crisis.

But officials are loath to mention the 'R' word - rationing - as it would affect everyone from housewives to factories, from mamak restaurants to swanky malls.

The data on the irrigation department's website shows that two dams in Johor and one in Perak are below the critical levels. Water levels at the other dams around the country are not far from dropping below the critical levels, at which point officials must act to slow any further fall.

The action could range from initiating cloud-seeding to induce rains, to telling the public to take active steps to save water.

Cloud-seeding began yesterday near Johor's Sembrong dam and will continue today and tomorrow, said Mr Tan Kok Hong, the Johor official in charge of energy, water and communications.

The water levels at the Sembrong and Bekok dams in Johor fell below the critical levels several weeks ago.

But Mr Tan said the public should not be unduly worried as there is 'plenty' of surface water left in Johor.

'There's nothing to worry about for Singapore as its water supply comes from the Linggui dam. We also have plenty of surface water in Johor,' he said.

But the dry beds of some lakes are naturally a cause for concern.

In Taiping - Malaysia's wettest town - a small puddle surrounded by dried mud is the only evidence left of Jungle Lake, one of 10 lakes badly hit by the dry spell.

In Kedah's Lake Pedu, a huge body of water used for irrigation and water supply, water sports have stopped for about a year.

'The water is so low these days that you can see branches of old trees sticking out from the lake's bottom at some places,' said Mr Roslan Abdul Karim, resident manager of the Desa Utara Lake Pedu Resort.

While there is rain in many areas around the country, not enough falls in the water catchment areas near dams, lakes and rivers that supply drinking water.

A group of up to 2,000 common dolphins has been spotted off the coast of west Wales.

Marine experts said it was "massively unusual" to see so many off the Pembrokeshire coast, and the reason remained a mystery.

Cliff Benson, who runs Sea Trust, the marine branch of the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales, said it had been an incredible sight.

"It's fairly normal to see a hundred or so, but not thousands."

Mr Benson, who carries out regular survey work on cetaceans - dolphins, whales, and porpoises - was on his boat when he saw the dolphins approaching.

"It was like a volcanic eruption," he said. "There were dolphins of all ages - adults and mothers with their babies - and they were leaping out of the water.

"It's a mystery as to why there were so many. It could be because the waters are so rich in food, and that there aren't many predators.

"They could be coming here specifically to breed because the conditions are so right." [...]

Just days after the sighting of around 2,000 dolphins off the west Wales coast, a school of giant fin whales has been spotted fishing in the Irish sea.

The sighting by an Oxford University team was described as "unique" as they are normally on their own or in pairs.

Zoologist Dr Peter Evans said the sea "teeming with food" has put west Wales on the whale watching map.

"It was an experience of a lifetime. I see whales all around the world but this was really spectacular."

Steve Lewis whose safari company ran the trip, added: "These huge animals are normally seen singularly or in pairs.

"This is the biggest sighting of fin whales ever spotted in UK waters."

"The boat we were in was 35 feet long, and the biggest of the whales was bigger than that. It must have been 40ft plus.

"For the UK this a unique experience. There's no record of them being seen in these numbers before."

The fin whale is the second largest animal on the planet after the blue whale.

They are born at 21ft (6m) and can grow to be 85ft (26m) in the Antarctic. They weigh between 30-80 tonnes and at this time of year consume up to 35 grams of food for every kilogramme of body weight - every day.

Experts say it is that which holds the key to their arrival off the coast of west Wales.

Dr Evans, from the zoology department of Oxford University, leads the Sea Watch Foundation expeditions to Pembrokeshire.

Describing the Irish Sea as "teeming with food" this summer, he explained that it was large schools of mackerel and herring which are attracting the unusual numbers of larger visitors.

"Everywhere you look there are fish," he said.

"When we were out we were surrounded by thousands of sea birds, gannet and Manx shearwaters, all feeding in the same area."

The fin whales have been the third unusual marine sighting reported in West Wales in two weeks.

At the weekend a group of up to 2,000 common dolphins was spotted, which marine experts described as "massively unusual."

And last week two humpback whales were seen, 100 metres off the beach at Llangranog.

"We have seen unusual numbers of minke whale too," he said. "We often get one or two, but this week we've have seen up to 10.

"The increased wildlife may be because of changes in the currents off our coast," he added. "The reverse change is taking place in Scotland where the spawning grounds for sand eels and sprats are failing."

It is the sand eels that attract the mackerel and herring and the mackerel, herring and plankton that form the diet of the fin whales.

A scientist who has long disagreed with the dominant view that global warming stems mainly from human activity has resigned from a panel that is completing a report for the Bush administration on temperature trends in the atmosphere.

The scientist, Roger A. Pielke Sr., a climatologist at Colorado State University, said most of the other scientists working on the report were too deeply wedded to particular views and were discounting minority opinions on the quality of climate records and possible causes of warming.

"When you appoint people to a committee who are experts in an area but evaluating their own work," he said in an interview, "it's very difficult for them to think outside the box of their research."

Administration officials said the resignation would not affect the quality or credibility of the report, a draft of which is being finished in the next few weeks.

The report, the first product of President Bush's 10-year climate change research program, is likely to be closely scrutinized by climate scientists and environmental and industry groups for any sign of bias or distortion.

Its main focus is to explore why thermometers at the earth's surface, especially in the tropics, have measured more warming than has been detected by satellites and weather balloons in the troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere up to where jetliners cruise.

Dr. Pielke contends that changes in landscapes like the spread of agriculture and cities could explain many of the surface climate trends, while most climate experts now see a clear link to accumulating emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.

James R. Mahoney, an assistant secretary of commerce and the director of the federal climate research program, said the scientists involved in generating the report were "representative of the broad views" on the questions.

Mr. Mahoney noted that drafts of the climate report would be reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences and were subject to public comment.

"I'm disappointed that Dr. Pielke has chosen to resign over this," Mr. Mahoney said.

Dr. Pielke said he decided to resign after three papers on the troposphere trends were published online on Aug. 11 by the journal Science. The papers said errors in satellite and balloon studies in the tropics explained why earlier analyses failed to find warming in the troposphere.

Several authors of those papers, who are also authors of the coming government report, said at the time that the new findings would be discussed in the report.

Dr. Pielke said those statements were an effort to influence the shape of the final report.

Several authors of those papers denied this, saying the process of creating the reports is intended to be public, while the contents remain confidential for now.

John R. Christy, another author of the coming report who like Dr. Pielke doubts that human-caused warming poses a serious threat, said that while disagreements were normal, the effort to generate the report was improving understanding.

"This process is the worst way to generate scientific information," said Dr. Christy, who teaches at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. "Except for all the others."

WASHINGTON - Emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from U.S. cars and trucks soared 25 percent between 1990 and 2003 as more vehicles hit the roads and consumers flocked to gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, a U.S. environmental group said on Wednesday.

Despite efforts to introduce cleaner hybrid vehicles, the biggest U.S. automakers have failed to reverse growing greenhouse gas emissions, Environmental Defense said.

"Emissions keep rising despite factors that many people think should lower them," said John DeCicco of the group.

Vehicles made by General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. led the increase in gases linked to global warming. Carbon dioxide emissions from GM's 2003 model year vehicles rose 6.3 percent to 6.4 million metric tons, while Ford's increased 7.7 percent to 5 million metric tons, Environmental Defense said.

In 2003, emissions from cars and light trucks topped 317 million metric tons, up 25 percent from 1990, the group said, based on federal government data.

Part of the 13-year increase is due to more vehicles on the road. However, Americans also bought more sport utility vehicles and mini-vans during that period, and they get fewer miles per gallon of gasoline.

Automakers say they are doing their part by offering consumers new high-tech vehicles powered by cleaner hybrid, diesel and fuel cell engines.

"The auto industry is offering a vast array of highly fuel-efficient, low-emission vehicles to the public, and those are available on dealer lots today," said Eron Shosteck at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents Detroit automakers and some foreign firms.

The United States is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, which are linked to rising ocean tides, melting glaciers and wildlife extinction.

The majority of American carbon emissions are from coal-fired utilities and plants, but cars and light trucks accounted for about 20 percent of the total.

OSLO, Norway - Salmon swim north into Arctic seas, locusts plague northern Italy and two heat-loving bee-eater birds nest in a hedge in Britain.

Signs of global warming fed by greenhouse gases produced by human activity, or just summertime oddities?

In the United States, some warblers are flying north to Canada. In Costa Rica, toucans are moving higher up into the mountains, apparently because of rising temperatures.

In July, a Norwegian man fishing in a fjord had a shock when he landed a John Dory, a fish more usually found in temperate waters off southern Europe or Africa.

"There's a long list of migratory species ending up further north. It's certainly a sign of warmer temperatures," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy director at the Greenpeace environmental group.

He said salmon had been swimming through the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia into the Chukchi Sea, apparently because the frigid water had warmed up.

Such shifts could have vast long-term implications for farmers and fishing fleets.

However, some experts are skeptical that unusual sightings of everything from bears to butterflies support theories that temperatures are rising because of a build-up of heat-trapping gases emitted by cars, factories and power plants.

"If you want to measure temperatures, you use a thermometer, not a bird," said Fred Singer, who heads the U.S. Science and Environmental Policy Project. "Birds have all sorts of reasons for moving north, south, sideways or whatever."

Singer says people and creatures have adapted to unexplained changes in temperature, linked to natural variation, throughout history. Some species simply move in unexpected directions or unwittingly stow away on trucks, planes or ships.

ROBINS IN ARCTIC

However, U.N. data show that the warmest year since records began in the 1860s was 1998, followed by 2002, 2003 and 2004. Most scientists link the rise in temperatures to human emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, rather than natural change.

The panel that advises the United Nations says that rising temperatures may drive thousands of species to extinction and cause more storms, floods and deserts while raising sea levels, perhaps by 3 feet by 2100.

Inuit peoples have noted southerly species of wildlife reaching the Arctic in summertime in recent years, including robins, hornets and barn owls.

Anecdotal evidence from further south is piling up.

Two yellow, green and brown bee-eater birds, usually found in southern Europe, have nested in a hedge in southern England -- the fourth time a bee-eater nest has been found in Britain.

"It looks as if it's linked to climate change," John Lanchbery, head of climate policy at Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said of a general shift northwards of birds in Europe.

Growing seasons have extended and seas have become warmer, he said.

However, some examples are misleading.

In the Piedmont region of northern Italy this summer, residents were surprised by swarms of locusts, suspecting they had flown over from Africa.

Insect experts said they were an Italian species and did not migrate over long distances. Still, an exceptionally hot summer in 2003 has meant more parched ground, ideal conditions for the pests to lay their eggs.

"Global warming could also be a reason," said Vincenzo Girolami, an entomologist at Padua University. If there were more hotter, drier summers, there were likely to be more swarms of locusts in Italy, he said.

HEADACHE FOR RANGERS

In the United States, birds such as the Cape May warbler and Blackburnian warbler are moving north into Canada, causing a headache for forest rangers.

If the birds leave, spruce forests in the United States could be vulnerable to attacks by spruce budworm caterpillars, normally eaten by the birds. If the caterpillars are left to thrive they will eat, and dry out, the trees.

"The trees could be more stressed which could lead to more fires," said Terry Root, a professor at Stanford University in the United States. "We could really have a difficult situation."

In Costa Rica's Monteverde cloud forest, toucans, with their brightly-colored, banana-shaped bills, are threatening another species, the spectacular green quetzal, by moving to higher altitudes where the quetzals nest, she said.

VIRGINIA BEACH — Wildlife officials are investigating the mysterious deaths of hundreds of sea birds that have washed up on beaches along the Atlantic coast since mid-June, including south of Sandbridge and on the Outer Banks.

Most of the birds have been greater shearwaters , which are now migrating north from their breeding grounds in the South Atlantic. The birds, while fairly common, are rarely seen by beachgoers because they typically stay 30 to 100 miles offshore, where they feed on small fish and squid.

Some of the birds have washed up alive, unable to fly and appearing weak, and later died. The number of dead birds has alarmed wildlife officials, who are scrambling to pinpoint a cause.

More than 500 dead sea birds have been reported from Maryland to Florida since June 12, said Emi Saito, a wildlife disease specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.

Wildlife pathologists are examining the carcasses for exposure to toxins, pollutants such as heavy metals and infections that might indicate a broader environmental concern, she said.

During the past week, staffers at the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia Beach have found about a dozen dead greater shearwaters on the beach, said Dorie Stolley, a wildlife biologist.

Only a few remained in good enough condition to be examined, and the others were incinerated by city animal control officers, she said.

Staffers used rubber gloves and took other precautions while collecting the birds. People are advised not to touch dead birds they find on the beach.

Reports of dead birds also have come from Ocracoke and Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks.

Diane Duncan, an ecologist with the federal wildlife agency’s Ecological Services Office in Charleston, S.C., said the first reports came from Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head and several nearby islands.

Nearly 200 birds have washed up since then in South Carolina, Duncan said.

“In 20 years here, I have never seen this kind of mortality event,” Duncan said. “It certainly is a concern to us, and we’d like to know the cause.”

Tests on two of the birds ruled out toxins found in red tide, a type of algal bloom that biologists initially suspected as a culprit, Duncan said.

Will Post, an ornithologist and curator at The Charleston Museum, said he had dissected six greater shearwaters that had washed up alive, unable to fly, and later died.

The birds’ stomachs were empty, but they had varying levels of fat reserves, suggesting that they did not die of starvation, Post said.

“They were below normal weight, but that’s normal when they’re in migration,” he said.

The shearwaters fly nearly 5,000 miles during their annual migrations to and from their nesting grounds on Tristan da Cunha, a chain of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic, Post said. The cold-water birds breed in April and May and then fly to their summer grounds off New England and points north, he said.

Islanders in the South Atlantic are allowed to harvest about 50,000 of the young birds a year for food, which is controversial, Post said. There’s an estimated 5 million breeding pairs, he added.

The birds resemble gulls in appearance and size, with brown to gray heads and white undersides. They have webbed feet and dark, tube like bills.

Since they spend their lives at sea, Post said, they are able to drink salt water, excreting excess salt through special glands in their heads.

OCEAN CITY -- Wildlife officials are warning the public to avoid contact with dead sea birds that have washed up on Maryland's Eastern Shore recently, following reports of mystery deaths of greater shearwaters that have washed ashore since mid-June from Florida to Virginia.

Jack Kumer of the Assateague Island National Seashore said Assateague employees have discovered an unusual amount of the dead or dying birds on the park's shores starting three weeks ago.

"So far there have been 12 birds, most of which were dead and a couple living that we were monitoring. There were two in the first week and eight the second week," Kumer said.

Most of the dead birds are the pelagic -- or sea going -- greater shearwater and the number of dead birds washed ashore throughout the eastern seaboard is reported to be approaching 1,000 during the past few weeks.

Kumer warned the public to avoid contact with the dead birds.

"What I like to tell people when I see the public interacting with an animal that is dead is that animal died from something, there's a good chance it died from a disease and they have diseases that humans can contract," he said.

"I want no visitor to Ocean City or Assateague to touch any animal that has died because something killed that animal and you don't want to find out what did it."

According to Maryland DNR associate director Mark Hoffman the shearwaters are "very common visitors to Maryland waters. They're fairly common summer visitors here with peak months in May and June. They breed in the South Atlantic and migrate to the North Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland most commonly."

Department of Natural Resources veterinarian, Dr. Cindy Driscoll, said since the dead birds found on Assateague "are pelagic, we rarely see them on shore so that number is above normal."

Driscoll said she called Ocean City beach clean up last week and they hadn't reported any dead shearwaters, but said she had everyone alerted to the situation and had them on the lookout with rehabilitators ready in the event of any live cases.

As the situation worsened in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas weeks ago and cases climbed to the hundreds, dead shearwaters were shipped for testing at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., but diagnostic tests still have not revealed an answer as to the cause of the bird's deaths.

Kumer said theories include a possible bird virus, harmful bacteria, harmful algal bloom such as the "red tide," a problem with the bird's food sources or something as simple as a change in the birds migratory path.

"It could be something quite natural," Kumer said. "The population of the birds is fairly sizeable and there could be any number of the birds that die every day. If the population shifted closer to North America this year, it could explain the mortality because there could have always been this many dying and we'd never know because they were further out in the Atlantic."

Official word on the cause of the mass shearwater deaths is expected in the coming weeks from diagnostic tests performed in Madison. Until that time Driscoll and Kumer said numbers of shearwater cases will continue to mount in Maryland, but they do not predict the numbers will reach into the hundreds of cases like in the Southern states.

SEATTLE - Scientists suspect that rising ocean temperatures and dwindling plankton populations are behind a growing number of seabird deaths, reports of fewer salmon and other anomalies along the West Coast.

Coastal ocean temperatures are 2 to 5 degrees above normal, apparently caused by a lack of upwelling - a process that brings cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface and jump-starts the marine food chain.

Upwelling fuels algae and shrimplike krill populations that feed small fish, which provide an important food source for a variety of sea life, from salmon to sea birds and marine mammals.

"Something big is going on out there," said Julia Parrish, an associate professor in the School of Aquatic Fisheries and Sciences at the University of Washington. "I'm left with no obvious smoking gun, but birds are a good signal because they feed high up on the food chain."

This spring, scientists reported a record number of dead seabirds washed up on beaches along the Pacific Coast, from central California to British Columbia.

In Washington state, the highest numbers of dead seabirds - particularly Brandt's cormorants and common murres - were found along the southern coast at Ocean Shores.

Bird surveyors in May typically find an average of one dead Brandt's cormorant every 34 miles of beach. But this year, cormorant deaths averaged one every eight-tenths of a mile, according to data gathered by volunteers with the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, which Parrish has directed since 2000.

"This is somewhere between five and 10 times the highest number of bird deaths we've seen before," she said.

Parrish expects June figures to show a similar trend.

Upwelling is fueled by northerly winds that sweep out near-shore waters and bring cold water to the surface.

"You can think of it like a cup of coffee," Parrish explained. "When you pour in cold cream and then blow across the cup, the cream rises up from the bottom."

But this spring's cool, wet weather brought southwesterly winds to coastal areas and very little northerly winds, said Nathan Mantua, a research scientist with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington.

And without upwelling, high-fat plankton such as krill stay at lower depths.

"In 50 years, this has never happened," said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Newport, Ore. "If this continues, we will have a food chain that is basically impoverished from the very lowest levels."

NOAA's June and July surveys of juvenile salmon off the coasts of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia indicate a 20 to 30 percent drop in populations, compared with surveys from 1998-2004, especially coho and chinook.

"We don't really know that this will cause bad returns. The runs this year haven't been horrible, but below average," said Ed Casillas, program manager of Estuarine and Ocean Ecology at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

"The take-away message is that we are seeing unusual conditions so we need to be cautious with returns for the next one to four years," he said. "Managers need to put enough time, people and money on the ocean side of the question."

This spring, scientists began tracking anomalies along Washington's coast, from the appearance of warm-water plankton species to scores of jellyfish piling up on beaches. A Guadalupe fur seal, native to South America, was found dead in Ocean Shores.

Parrish is documenting unusual breeding behavior among common murres on Tatoosh Island off the Olympic Peninsula. In 15 years of monitoring the murre colony, this is the latest the birds have initiated breeding.

"They are starting very, very late and then just giving up," she said.

Seabirds are also showing signs of stress in California, said Bill Sydeman, director of marine ecology at Point Reyes Bird Observatory.

Sydeman monitors a colony of Cassin's auklets in the Farallon Islands, west of San Francisco. This spring's breeding season was a month late, Sydeman said. Less than half the colony tried to nest in April and then abandoned the colony by June.

"We have been monitoring this colony for 35 years. Never before have we seen colony abandonment," he said. "Nobody saw this coming."

Sydeman and Parrish point to starvation stress as the cause for decreased breeding and increased bird deaths, especially among the cormorants, murres and auklets.

Studies of dead birds in May on California beaches found emaciated bodies, with atrophied muscles and empty stomachs, said Hannah Nevins, a beached-bird survey coordinator at the Moss Landing Marine Lab in Northern California.

"Spring is when the food comes in," Nevins said. "When you have a really strong, persistent upwelling wind, it creates a conveyor belt of food, but the wind is slacking this year."

Mantua, the University of Washington research scientist, tracks ocean temperatures and climate conditions to understand changes in currents and wind patterns. This year he found temperatures 2 to 5 degrees above normal - readings typically seen during an El Nino. But this is not an El Nino year, he said.

The trend toward warmer temperatures began in fall 2002, said Peterson, the NOAA oceanographer. No one is pointing to one direct cause for the warmer waters, but many scientists suspect climate change may be involved.

While Peterson is concerned about the unusual ocean conditions, he is more worried that people will not take notice.

"People have to realize that things are connected - the state of coastal temperatures and plankton populations are connected to larger issues like Pacific salmon populations," he said.

Scientists say animals along the Pacific Coast have managed to overcome changing environmental conditions for many years.

"All of these species are very long-lived," Parrish said. "They can die in big numbers for a year or two without severe impact to the populations."

But, she cautioned, human activity could jeopardize the survival of animals already stressed by environmental changes.

"This, for instance, would be a truly bad year for an oil spill."

With fires raging through southern Europe - a region experiencing its worst drought for decades - and some parts of the continent submerged by floods, it is tempting to ascribe such extreme weather to the effects of global warming.

A firefighter looks on as fires rage in Moncao, Portugal Image: AFP
The wildfires are confounding attempts to contain them

But climate change researchers are reluctant to make such links.

"You can say that due to the Earth getting warmer there will be on average more extreme events," said Malcolm Haylock, of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, UK, "but you can't attribute any specific event to climate change."

Dozens of wildfires have been raging out of control across Portugal, confounding attempts to contain them.

Portugal, like other areas of southern Europe and North Africa has been experiencing searing heat and drought this summer.

Meanwhile, floods have brought chaos to a large swathe of central Switzerland, triggering landslides and cutting roads and railway lines.

Growing consensus

There is a growing consensus, based on past climate records and other data, that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the Earth's climate.

Many climate scientists now believe the data points to global temperatures rising by about two tenths of a degree C per decade for the foreseeable future.

But as far as the droughts and floods are concerned, climate scientists have found it more difficult to find long-term trends in rainfall.

European weather is affected by a climate system called the North Atlantic Oscillation. This describes changes in atmospheric pressure at sea level as measured over Iceland and over the Azores.

"Over the last 50 years or so, there's been a trend to lower pressures over Iceland and higher pressures over the Azores in winter," said Dr Haylock.

The impact of this climate system reaches from the upper atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean.

But its most obvious impact over the last half century is a trend towards drier conditions in southern Europe and more extreme rainfall in northern Europe during winter.

Its effects during other seasons, such as summer, are not as clear. Local weather systems seem to play a larger role here.

Computer models

Dr Haylock said that changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation cannot be linked to human-induced climate change.

Scientists simply don't have the long-term measurements to say either way.

However, computer models suggest that, as the climate gets hotter over the coming decades, the available water in the landmass may be reduced. This may in turn have knock on effects for global temperatures.

"When we run these climate models for future years, we find we were getting very, very hot days. These were so hot, they can't be explained just by more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Dr Haylock.

"Water on the ground cools the atmosphere around it a lot, and once this has dried out, the temperatures just accelerate. So there is some concern that these hot days may become more frequent over the next decade, but that is still uncertain."

As for the fires in Portugal, observers point out that poor land management and arson have also played their part in the devastation.

ANNA MARIA ISLAND - Ten miles off our coast are areas bereft of sea life along the Gulf floor. The devastated marine communities span 2,162 square miles - larger than the state of Delaware.

The Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg, and Sarasota's Mote Marine Laboratory continue investigating reports of "dead zones," or areas devoid of life in the Gulf of Mexico from Sarasota to New Port Richey.

Preliminary results were released Tuesday from a three-day research cruise conducted last week from the mouth of Tampa Bay to Pasco County, indicating that oxygen and sea life are beginning to return to some affected areas.

Also on Tuesday, the Sierra Club held a press conference to call for local, state and federal authorities to curb pollution of coastal areas and fund research into algal blooms and coastal degradation.

It is unclear how much of a role pollution played in the latest red-tide season and resulting reef devastation, but researchers said oxygen is returning to areas that had little or none during the past two weeks, an encouraging sign to the institute's Cynthia Heil.

"The bottom communities are still impacted, but it's the first step in the recovery process," Heil said.

The bottom waters of sample areas from northern Pinellas and Pasco counties, however, still show conditions of anoxia, the absence of dissolved life-sustaining oxygen, and hypoxia, or little dissolved oxygen.

The most intense anoxic areas appear to lie between Anna Maria Island north to Pasco and Hernando counties, said Richard Pierce, senior scientist and director of Mote's center of ecotoxicology.

Offshore from Sarasota, areas of low oxygen were found last week at the 1 mile mark and further south to the Fort Myers area, Pierce said.

Scientists are still unsure whether the mass mortalities were caused from direct contact with the red tide toxin or the secondary effects of oxygen depletion from the decomposition of marine life, Heil said.

The preliminary report said there's a strong thermocline, the zone where the water changes temperature and can prevent upper and lower water levels from mixing and diluting the red tide toxin or pockets of anoxia.

High concentrations of the red tide toxin Karenia brevis were found at the surface and bottom of nearshore regions, as well in the surface waters offshore of the affected area.

Affected sites showed low visibility and high levels of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is produced by bacteria, emits a rotten-egg-like smell and turns metals black, two occurrences reported by divers last week.

The full report, expected to be released today, will include data from Mote Marine focusing on areas south of Longboat Pass.

The waters off Longboat Pass is where captain Wayne Genthner said he first witnessed the absence of life from the water's surface to sea floor.

"Last Wednesday, (I) found a dead zone seven miles out of Longboat Pass," Genthner told The Herald. "I went diving down there and did five others the same day to confirm my observations."

At Tuesday's press conference, Genthner said the situation has shrunk his weekly charter boat revenue from $3,000 to $300 per week.

Genthner said fish are moving further west so he must take fishing charters further out. The result is higher expense in gas and potential safety issues.

"What happens if a storm gets in between me and land?" Genthner said.

Dr. Larry Brand, a scientist at the University of Miami, also spoke at the press conference to share the results of a study he conducted for Lee County using data going back to the 1950s.

"The red tide organisms are 10 times more abundant than 50 years ago," Brand said.

According to the data from the Gulf between Tampa Bay and Sanibel, Brand said the blooms are more intense, spatially larger and longer lasting.

MIAMI - Tropical Storm Katrina formed Wednesday morning in the Bahamas and moved toward Florida, threatening to hit the state with winds of 70 to 75 mph and heavy rain when it makes landfall Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said.

A 200-mile stretch of Florida's east coast from the Seven Mile Bridge in the Keys north to Vero Beach was under a tropical storm watch, meaning tropical storm conditions were likely within 36 hours. The storm is expected to slowly cross the state and could cause flooding as it dumps a foot of rain or more in spots before heading into the Gulf of Mexico.

At 8 a.m. EDT, the season's 11th named storm had winds of 40 mph and was about 70 miles southeast of Nassau and about 250 miles east-southeast of Florida. It was moving to the northwest at 8 mph and was expected to strengthen and that it could reach hurricane strength of 74 mph.

Eric Blake, a hurricane center meteorologist, said Floridians in the watch area should consider putting up hurricane shutters, particularly in coastal and exposed areas. He said all residents should stock up on hurricanes supplies such as water, batteries and generator fuel.

"It's time for South Florida to start taking precautions," he said.

The Florida Panhandle was hit by Tropical Storm Cindy and Hurricane Dennis earlier in the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1, and four hurricanes last year, which caused $19 billion in insured wind damage. Actual damage was about double that, experts said.

In an average year, only a few tropical storms develop by this time in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. The Atlantic hurricane season ends Nov. 30.

VIENNA - Rescue workers struggled to contain floods that left a trail of death and destruction across parts of central Europe, as parched Spain and Portugal in contrast battled dozens of raging wildfires.

Two people were killed and two others reported missing after three days of torrential downpours in central and eastern Switzerland turned Alpine streams into raging torrents and triggered flooding around the country's lakes.

It brought the confirmed death toll in Switzerland to four, after two fire fighters were killed in a landslide Sunday near Lucerne.

Floods also hit Austria, where two people have died, Bulgaria and southern Germany, hitting roads, homes, railways and tourist spots.

In Switzerland, roads and railways through the Alps were cut, helicopters helped evacuate mountain homes and campsites, and schools were closed in many areas, the authorities said, although water levels were later reported to be stabilising.

Low-lying neighbourhoods of the capital, Bern, were partly underwater after the river Aare exceeded record levels set during floods in 1999.

About 2,500 people, including some tourists, have been granted temporary shelter in civil defence facilities or hotels in villages and towns in several areas over the past two days.

In Germany, flooding was worst surrounding the popular Alpine ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria. The town, where 105 liters per cubic metre fell overnight, was almost completely cut off when the Partnach dam burst, turning the main road into a surging river and flooding hundreds of cellars.

"We're in a state of chaos," said Bernd Putzer, the local police spokesman in Garmisch said, adding that rescue workers were having problems getting to the area.

All train traffic between Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the regional capital Munich was suspended and more than 1,000 firefighters, troops and police were sent to that area alone to reinforce local rescue services.

Emergency warnings were also issued in three other parts of the state.

In neighbouring Austria, one person was found dead in the western region of Tyrol, apparently killed in a rockslide, and nine were injured in Vorarlberg, also in the west, including six when flood waters set off an explosion in their house for as yet unclear reasons. Two others are missing.

Some 450 soldiers have been mobilized to help out firemen in the west and south of the country. In Styria, in the south, a 50-year-old woman died Monday when her home was hit by floodwaters.

Waters continued to rise Tuesday in rivers in Vorarlberg and Tyrol, after heavy rain overnight cut telephone service and made many roads unpassable.

In Bulgaria, the death toll climbed to 26 since June after torrential rains flooded the northwestern region of Montana and a man was killed by lightning.

But it was a far different story in Portugal and Spain, ravaged by wildfires and the worst drought since the mid-1940s.

Nearly 3,000 firefighters and soldiers battled dozens of blazes in Portugal and police found the charred body an elderly woman near her rural home.

Eleven fires raged out of control in the centre and north of the country but firefighters said that Coimbra, the nation's third-largest city, was no longer under threat from flames due to a change in wind direction.

The agriculture ministry said most of the country faced either a "maximum" or "very high" risk of wildfires.

Portuguese forces were backed by nine firefighting planes and helicopters rushed in from five fellow European Union nations -- France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands -- after Lisbon appealed for help.

Police said they had detained seven people, including two minors, suspected of setting fires, raising the number of suspected arsonists held this year so far to 105.

In Spain's northwestern Galicia province, firefighters battled 24 blazes, including one that has burned for three days near Santiago de Compostela.

On Tuesday, the Spanish interior ministry said fires across the country had killed 17 people and forced the evacuation of 2,786.

MATAGORDA CO., TX - Miles and miles of dead fish are turning up in Texas waters and it's hitting Matagorda especially hard.

From the sky, a sea of white is covering the mouth of the Colorado River. Upon closer look, you'll see dead fish – millions of them.

"Unbelievable if you haven't seen it before," said Matagorda County Commissioner George Deshotel.

The stunning images of devastation run for miles. It's one of the largest fish kills people in the town of Matagorda have seen in years.

Ronnie Dodd runs a spring bridge and watched dozens of fish die from his perch.

"The flounder were trying to get to the side of the edge of the bank and trying to come up and get air," he told us.

Surprisingly, this is a natural event caused by stagnant water and little wind, rain, or flow.

"Millions of these menhaden come in from the Gulf into the Colorado River and because of low tidal action and low wind action, there's nothing to replenish the oxygen in the water," said Deshotel.

Texas Parks and Wildlife is closely monitoring the situation.

"It'll run its course, and when it's done, it's done," said Bill Balboa with Texas Parks and Wildlife. "It may happen again, but it happens all up and down the coast."

But for now, Matagoda is the worst place...a place with a community that depends on the fish that are quickly dying.

The fish began dying a few days ago. If the menhaden keep coming in and the conditions don't change, more can die. And that's not good news for the local economy.

Back in 1995, there was a similar situation. Then, 60 million fish turned up dead. If you see dead fish, shrimp or crabs, contact the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's 24-hour hotline. That number is 512-389-4848.

BERN, Switzerland (AP) - Rescue workers completed an airlift evacuation of a half-submerged riverside district of the Swiss capital Thursday as large parts of central and southern Europe were hit by flooding that killed at least 42 people.

Hardest hit was Romania with 31 victims, many of whom were trapped inside their homes and drowned as torrents of water rushed in. Austria, Bulgaria, Germany and Switzerland reported a total of 11 dead, but numbers were expected to climb as more bodies of the missing are recovered.

Across the Alps, military helicopters were ferrying in supplies to valleys cut off by flooding and evacuating stranded tourists - and even cows - isolated in mountain pastures by the rising waters.

The river Aare broke through the windows of a children's clothes shop in Bern, leaving baby strollers and toys floating in muddy water in the deserted streets of the city's Matte district.

"It really hits home when you something like this," said fire service chief Franz Bachmann, who led the evacuation operation. "Lots of people have lost their whole existence."

Residents evacuated from the low-lying area looked on in tears as water receded slowly, offering the first glimpses of streets, squares and ground floors submerged in mud. The area has been fully searched and none of its 1,100 residents remain, said city police spokesman Franz Maerki.

Police kept guard to prevent people returning to the area, warning that more water could surge down from the mountains as blockages of debris and mud give way.

"As soon as this wood is gone, the water here will rise rapidly again," said Bachmann.

Many homes there are in imminent danger of collapse, and electricity, phone lines and gas are cut off, city authorities said.

Three people were also missing in Romania's hard-hit Harghita, including a 4-year-old girl, said Maria Magdalena Sipos, a local government official.

Szillard Stranitsky, who drove through the area late Wednesday, said cars were unable to move because of the rain and mud on the roads.

"I was scared of driving over a corpse, either human or animal, because I couldn't see a thing," said the 37-year-old Stranitsky.

Meanwhile, officials in Austria turned their attention to the cleanup and reconstruction as the rain there eased up.

"The danger is over," said Doris Ita, the head of Austria's flood emergency department. "But we are still watching the situation."

In Germany, the Danube flooded part of the southeastern town of Kelheim, including its Weltenburg Monastery, founded in the 7th century and described as the oldest in Bavaria.

The ground floor of the Benedictine monastery, which draws 500,000 visitors a year, was submerged early Thursday, said Father Benedikt, the monastery's prior.

"The community is working feverishly to rescue what it can," said Benedikt.

There was some good news as Swiss railways said main routes through the Alps connecting northern and southern Europe were open again.

Swiss Reinsurance, the world's second-largest reinsurer, said economic losses from the flooding could reach $791 million US in Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

Hurricane Katrina slammed into Florida's densely populated southeastern coast Thursday with sustained winds of more than 125 km/hour and lashing rain.

Two people were killed by falling trees.

The storm strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane just before it hit land between Hallandale Beach and North Miami Beach. Weather officials said flooding was the main concern as the storm dropped a 30 cm or more of rain in some spots.

There were no immediate reports of major damage or flooding as the storm passed through the area. It's estimated 5.9 million Florida residents were in Katrina's projected path.

Rain fell in horizontal sheets and wind gusts hit 147 km/h toppling trees and street signs. Florida Power & Light said more than 412,000 customers were without electricity.

"The message needs to be very clear. It's not a good night to be out driving around," said National Hurricane Center director May Mayfield.

The usually bustling streets of Miami Beach were largely deserted as the storm pounded the area. Celebrities and partygoers are in town for the MTV Video Music Awards. MTV called off its pre-awards festivities Thursday and Friday.

Tourists and others hoping to get out of town before the storm were stranded as airlines canceled flights at Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports, which both closed Thursday night.

Before the hurricane struck, Floridians wary of Katrina prepared by putting up shutters, stacking sandbags in doorways and stocking up on supplies.

Water management officials lowered canal levels to avoid possible flooding, and pumps were activated in several low-lying areas of Miami-Dade.

Katrina was the second hurricane to hit the state this year -- and the sixth since last August.

Katrina formed Wednesday over the Bahamas and was expected to cross Florida before heading into the Gulf of Mexico.

After crossing the Florida peninsula, the storm could turn to the north over the Gulf of Mexico and threaten the panhandle early next week.

Katrina is the 11th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. That's seven more than normally form by mid-August in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. The season ends Nov. 30.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Hurricane Katrina flooded streets, darkened homes and felled trees with wind gusts reaching 92 mph as it plowed through South Florida and emerged over the Gulf of Mexico early Friday. Four people were killed and 1.3 million customers were left without power.

Weather officials said flooding was the main concern as the storm dropped up to 15 inches on parts of Miami-Dade County. Katrina's plodding pace meant that strong wind and heavy rain would continue to plague throughout the day.

Rain fell in horizontal sheets, seas were estimated at 15 feet and sustained winds were measured at 80 mph as the hurricane made landfall Thursday night along the Miami-Dade and Broward line. Florida Power & Light said the vast majority of people without electricity were in the two counties.

In an oceanfront condominium in Hallandale, Carolyne and Carter McHyman said heavy downpours pelted their windows after the eye passed.

"It's been horrible," Carolyne McHyman said. "Basically all our windows are leaking. We just keep mopping up and taping the windows, mopping up and taping again."

Katrina weakened into a tropical storm while over land, but strengthened over the warm waters of the gulf Friday and became a hurricane again with top sustained winds of 75 mph. At 5 a.m. EDT, Katrina was about 50 miles north-northeast of Key West and emerging over the Gulf of Mexico, heading west at 5 mph.

Forecasters said Katrina would likely strengthen and perhaps make a second landfall in the Florida Panhandle early next week.

Gov. Jeb Bush urged residents of the Panhandle and northwest Florida - areas hit by Hurricane Ivan last year and Hurricane Dennis this year - to monitor the storm.

Katrina left a trail of mayhem in its wake along the southeast coast.

In Key Biscayne, dozens of families were forced to evacuate their homes after they became flooded under 3 feet of water.

Three mobile home parks in Davie sustained considerable damage, including lost roofs. One person was trapped inside a mobile home, but officials did not know whether the person was injured, according to the Broward Emergency Management Agency.

An overpass under construction in Miami-Dade County collapsed onto a highway, authorities said. No injuries were reported, but the freeway - a main east-west thoroughfare - was closed for 20 blocks.

In the Florida Keys, a tornado damaged a hanger and a number of airplanes at the airport in Marathon, according to Monroe County Sheriff's Office. Two nearby homes were also damaged. In Tavernier in the upper Keys, part of the roof of a lumber company collapsed, deputies said.

Three people were killed by falling trees: A man in his 20s in Fort Lauderdale was crushed by a falling tree as he sat alone in his car; a 54-year-old man was killed by a falling tree in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Plantation; and a woman who was struck by a tree died at a hospital in Hollywood.

A 79-year-old man in Cooper City also died when his car struck a tree, officials said.

Three storm-related trauma patients were being treated in Hollywood, including a driver in critical condition after a tree fell on his car, said Frank Sacco, CEO of Memorial Healthcare System. [...]

TOKYO - A powerful Pacific storm disrupted air and rail traffic as it slammed Japan with heavy winds and rains Friday, killing one person and injuring two others, authorities said.

Typhoon Mawar drenched Japan's capital before being downgraded to a still dangerous tropical storm, with winds of 67 mph, according to Japan's Meteorological Agency. Mawar was expected to sweep out to the Pacific Ocean later in the day.

A 55-year-old man in Shizuoka state died late Thursday after slipping off the roof of his home, police said. Two other people were injured in storm-related accidents.

Japan Airlines said it canceled a total 24 flights including seven for international destinations Friday morning. All Nippon Airways said canceled seven domestic flights.

East Japan Railway, a major operator in central and northern parts of the country, said 23 trains with Tokyo links were canceled Friday morning.

Japan was struck by a record 10 typhoons and tropical storms last year, leaving nearly 220 people dead or missing - the largest casualty toll in two decades.

Typhoon Tokage, which hit in October, was Japan's deadliest, killing 83 people.

A tropical storm that landed southeast of Tokyo last month injured four people and forced hundreds to evacuate.

BERLIN - Floods sweeping central Europe began to subside in the Alps and move eastwards after claiming 11 more lives, while across the continent firemen fought blazes in drought-ridden Portugal.

Ten, mostly elderly, people died as floodwaters coursed through central Romania, the interior ministry said, taking the total death toll from flooding to 28 in the past week in a country that has been plagued by torrential rains since July.

Six others were missing and families were forced to evacuate 2,000 flooded homes. [...]

The weather relented over the Swiss Alps, where flooding has claimed four lives and caused damage of up to two billion Swiss Francs (1.28 billion euros). A massive clean-up operation swung into action.

Lakes remained at alarming levels and at both the Aar and Reuss rivers rescue workers rushed to clear away trees uprooted and swept along in recent days that threatened to break bridges.

In the Czech Republic, where the memories of the 2002 floods that devastated Prague are still fresh, rain abated in southern Bohemia and states of emergency were lifted.

In western Hungary, the Kapos river dropped but hundreds of homes remained at risk. [...]

By contrast Portugal and Spain continued to suffer from the consequences of drought.

In Portugal, which is suffering its worst drought since 1945, a water-dropping plane dousing a forest fire in the centre of the country crashed, but the Spanish pilot escaped serious injury.

Some 1,500 firefighters and 600 soldiers were still battling blazes that broke out six days ago, but authorities said cooler weather was helping them contain more than a dozen fires though the risk of new ones remained high.

The number of fires out of control dropped Wednesday to five from 21.

The largest was raging in a forest near Coimbra, Portugal's third-largest city, and forced the evacuation of around 60 people from a village near the central town of Penela. But firefighters saw hope.

"The intensity of the fire is diminishing considerably. Let's see if we are a bit luckier today," the fire chief of Penela, Mario Lourenco, told radio TSF.

Neighbouring Spain, too, has this week battled blazes in the north that have so far destroyed more than 19,000 hectares (46,800 acres) this month.

The giant orb of iron and nickel that anchors Earth's center is spinning faster than the planet's surface, according to a new study that confirms scientists' expectations.

The finding is based on analyses of earthquake pairs that occur at roughly the same spot on Earth but at different times. On seismic recording instruments, the earthquake signatures from waveform doublets, as they are called, look nearly identical.

When earthquakes strike, their seismic waves can travel through the planet and surface all over the globe.

The researchers analyzed 18 sets of waveform doublets -- some separated in time by up to 35 years -- from earthquakes occurring off the coast of South America but which were recorded at seismic stations near Alaska.

Earth's core is made of a solid inner part and a fluid outer part, all of it mostly iron.

The solid inner core has an uneven consistency, with some parts denser than others, and this can either speed up or slow down shock waves from earthquakes as they pass through.

So the researchers speculated that if the Earth's inner core is rotating faster than the rest of the planet, then shock waves from waveform doublets would enter and exit through different parts of the core despite originating from roughly the same spot on the planet's surface.

By analyzing the minute changes in travel times and wave shapes for each doublet, the researchers concluded that the Earth's inner core is rotating faster than its surface by about 0.3-0.5 degrees per year.

That may not seem like much, but it's very fast compared to the movement of the Earth's crust, which generally slips around only a few centimeters per year compared to the mantle below, said Xiaodong Song, a geologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an author on the study.

The surface movement is called plate tectonics. It involves the shifting of about a dozen major plates and is what causes most earthquakes.

"We're talking about 50,000 times that of plate tectonic motion," Song told LiveScience.

The Earth can be divided into separate parts: an outer crust, a highly viscous mantle, a less viscous outer core, and a solid inner core made up of mostly iron and nickel.

Circulating magma in the molten outer core generates a weak magnetic field, which the researchers suspect may be leaking into the inner core and generating an electric current. The twisting force generated by this electromagnetic interaction may be what drives the inner core's rotation.

Song said the difference in rotation of the inner core could in turn affect the Earth's rotation and have implications for satellites, rockets and spaceships.

The study is detailed in the August 26 issue of the journal Science.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana -- Parts of New Orleans are flooded with up to six feet of water Monday after some of the pumps that protect the low-lying city failed under the onslaught from Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Ray Nagin said.

Nagin said the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, on the east side of the city, was under five to six feet of rising water after three pumps failed.

WGNO reporter Susan Roesgen, who is with the mayor at the Hyatt hotel, said New Orleans police had received more than 100 calls about people in the area trapped on their roofs.

The National Weather Service reported the Industrial Canal, in the eastern part of the city, had breached a levee and three to eight feet of water could be expected.

The weather service reported "total structural failure" in some parts of metropolitan New Orleans, where Katrina brought wind gusts of 120 mph. While it offered no details, it said it had received "many reports."

Katrina came ashore Monday morning in southeastern Louisiana as a Category 4 storm, with winds topping 140 mph.

At 11 a.m. ET, the National Weather Service said Katrina had degraded to a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph.

New Orleans was prepared for a catastrophic direct hit from the powerful storm. About a million people fled the area, and about 10,000 people who couldn't leave hunkered in the mammoth Louisiana Superdome.

The National Hurricane Center said that the western eye wall was passing over the city at about 10 a.m. ET. (Watch video update on Katrina's path)

While the counterclockwise spin of a hurricane usually leaves the worst damage on its eastern edge, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers cautioned that "there's not really an easy side of a Category 4 storm" on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

CNN's John Zarella said that the wind was howling through the buildings in downtown New Orleans, ripping off chunks of debris and causing whiteout conditions.

He said that water was rushing down the street and had risen up to the wheel wells of parked cars.

Earlier, reporter Ed Reams from affiliate WDSU told CNN that Katrina ripped away a large section of the Superdome's roof. (See video of conditions within the darkened Superdome)

"I can see daylight straight up from inside the Superdome," Reams reported.

National Guard troops moved people to the other side of the dome. Others were moving beneath the concrete-reinforced terrace level.

About 70 percent of New Orleans is below sea level and is protected from the Mississippi River by a series of levees.

NHC deputy director Ed Rappaport told CNN that New Orleans could expect a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet.

That surge wouldn't top New Orleans' levees, but CNN's Myers noted that "there may be a 20-foot surge, but there may be a 20-foot wave on top of that."

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said it was too soon to feel any sense of relief.

"We don't know yet," she said. "We still have a long way to go throughout this day. We are watching. We are worried of course."

At 11 a.m. ET, the storm was centered about 35 miles east-northeast of New Orleans and 45 miles west-southwest of Biloxi, Mississippi. Hurricane force winds extended about 125 miles from the storm's center.

The storm was moving north at 15 mph.

The storm's eastern eye wall was approaching Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi.

Authorities in Gulfport told CNN that 10 feet of water cover downtown streets.

"There is intense damage," said CNN's Gary Tuchman from Gulfport. "We are watching the dismantling of a beautiful town."

"We are watching these building deteriorate and break down before our eyes," he said. "Because the water is so deep, boats are floating up the street. There is extensive damage here. This is essentially right now like hell on earth."

In Biloxi, CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano reported that wind gusts topping 100 mph were starting to pull the roofs off of nearby buildings. (Watch video report from Biloxi, Mississippi)

Hurricane warnings are posted from Morgan City, Louisiana, eastward to the Alabama-Florida state line, including New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. This means winds of at least 74 mph are expected in the warning area within the next 24 hours.

A tropical storm warning is in effect from the Alabama-Florida state line eastward to Destin, Florida, and from west of Morgan City to Intracoastal City, Louisiana. A tropical storm warning is also in effect from Intracoastal City, Louisiana, west to Cameron, Louisiana, and from Destin, Florida, eastward to Indian Pass, Florida.

A tropical storm warning means tropical storm conditions, including winds of at least 39 mph, are expected within 24 hours. [...]

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana - Hurricane Katrina claimed its first victims in Louisiana as it slammed into barrier islands while dumping torrential rain on a wide swath of the US Gulf of Mexico coast and threatened more death and massive destruction.

The hurricane made its first landfall as its northern eye crossed the coast near Grand Isle, one of Louisiana's barrier islands, at about 1000 GMT on Monday, said Martin Nelson, an official with the
National Hurricane Center.

"We may have a second landfall later on," Nelson said in a brief telephone interview.

Although slightly weaker than on Sunday, the monster storm has already forced hundreds of thousands of residents from New Orleans to Biloxi, Mississippi, to flee and seek refuge on higher ground. [...]

US President George W. Bush declared a state of emergency that clears the way for federal aid, and urged people to get out of the hurricane's path.

"We cannot stress enough the dangers this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities. I ask citizens to put their safety and the safety of their families first by moving to safe ground," Bush said from his Texas ranch. [...]

Authorities also ordered evacuations in neighboring Mississippi, which is also expected to be slammed by the monster storm.

Since Katrina raged dangerously close to offshore oil platforms, most of which have been evacuated, oil prices hit new record highs after crossing 70 dollars a barrel in Asia Monday and were expected to go higher.

The deadly storm wrought havoc in Miami and other areas of south Florida last week, killing seven people, uprooting trees and flooding entire neighborhoods.

About half a million people still had no electricity on Sunday.

Katrina is the 11th named Atlantic storm this year and among the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record. Records going back to 1851 show that only three category-five hurricanes have hit the United States in more than 150 years.

Of three category-five storms noted in history, Hurricane Andrew killed more than two dozen people when it slammed into south Florida in 1992, while Camille caused more than 250 deaths in Mississippi in 1969, and "Labor Day" killed about 600 people in the Florida Keys in 1935.

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Katrina turned slightly to the east before slamming ashore early Monday with 145-mph winds, providing some hope that the worst of the storm's wrath might not be directed at this vulnerable, below-sea-level city.

Katrina, which weakened slightly overnight to a Category 4 storm, turned slightly eastward before hitting land, which would put the western eyewall - the weaker side of the strongest winds - over New Orleans.

But National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield warned that New Orleans would be pounded throughout the day Monday and that Katrina's potential 20-foot storm surge was still more than capable of swamping the city.

Katrina, which a day before had grown to a 175-mph, Category 5 behemoth, made landfall about 6:10 a.m. CDT east of Grand Isle in the bayou town of Buras.

The storm hammered the Gulf Coast with huge waves and tree-bending winds. Exploding transformers lit up the predawn sky in Mobile, Ala., while tree limbs littered roads and a blinding rain whipped up sand on the deserted beach of Gulfport, Miss.

Katrina's fury also was felt at the Louisiana Superdome, normally home of professional football's Saints, which became the shelter of last resort for about 9,000 of the area's poor, homeless and frail.

Electrical power at the Superdome failed at 5:02 a.m., triggering groans from the crowd. Emergency generators kicked in, but the backup power runs only reduced lighting and cannot run the air conditioning.

About 370,000 customers in southeast Louisiana were estimated to be without power, said Chenel Lagarde, spokesman for Entergy Corp., the main energy power company in the region. [...]

Mayor Ray Nagin said he believed 80 percent of the city's 480,000 residents had heeded an unprecedented mandatory evacuation as Katrina threatened to become the most powerful storm ever to slam the city.

"It's capable of causing catastrophic damage," Mayfield said. "Even well-built structures will have tremendous damage. Of course, what we're really worried about is the loss of lives.

"New Orleans may never be the same."

Crude oil futures spiked to more than $70 a barrel in Singapore for the first time Monday as Katrina targeted an area crucial to the country's energy infrastructure, but the price had slipped back to $68.95 by midday in Europe. The storm already forced the shutdown of an estimated 1 million barrels of refining capacity.

Terry Ebbert, New Orleans director of homeland security, said more than 4,000 National Guardsmen were mobilizing in Memphis and would help police New Orleans streets. [...]

For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare scenario a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl of a city that's up to 10 feet below sea level in spots and dependent on a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry from the Mississippi River on one side, Lake Pontchartrain on the other.

The fear is that flooding could overrun the levees and turn New Orleans into a toxic lake filled with chemicals and petroleum from refineries, as well as waste from ruined septic systems.

Nagin said he expected the pumping system to fail during the height of the storm. The mayor said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was standing by to get the system running, but water levels must fall first.

"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," he said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."

Major highways in New Orleans cleared out late Sunday after more than 24 hours of jammed traffic as people headed inland. At the peak of the evacuation, 18,000 people an hour were streaming out of southeastern Louisiana, state police said. [...]

New Orleans has not taken a direct hit from a hurricane since Betsy in 1965, when an 8- to 10-foot storm surge submerged parts of the city in seven feet of water. Betsy, a Category 3 storm, was blamed for 74 deaths in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.

Evacuation orders also were posted all along the Mississippi coast, and the area's casinos, built on barges, were closed early Saturday. Bands of wind-whipped rain increased Sunday night and roads in some low areas were beginning to flood. [...]

Katrina hit the southern tip of Florida as a much weaker storm Thursday and was blamed for nine deaths. It left miles of streets and homes flooded and knocked out power to about 1.45 million customers. It was the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in just over a year.

NEW ORLEANS - When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans on Monday, it could turn one of America's most charming cities into a vast cesspool tainted with toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins released by floodwaters from the city's legendary cemeteries.

Experts have warned for years that the levees and pumps that usually keep New Orleans dry have no chance against a direct hit by a Category 5 storm.

That's exactly what Katrina was as it churned toward the city. With top winds of 165 mph and the power to lift sea level by as much as 28 feet above normal, the storm threatened an environmental disaster of biblical proportions, one that could leave more than 1 million people homeless.

"All indications are that this is absolutely worst-case scenario," Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said Sunday afternoon.

The center's latest computer simulations indicate that by Tuesday, vast swaths of New Orleans could be under water up to 30 feet deep. In the French Quarter, the water could reach 20 feet, easily submerging the district's iconic cast-iron balconies and bars.

Estimates predict that 60 percent to 80 percent of the city's houses will be destroyed by wind. With the flood damage, most of the people who live in and around New Orleans could be homeless.

"We're talking about in essence having - in the continental United States - having a refugee camp of a million people," van Heerden said.

Aside from Hurricane Andrew, which struck Miami in 1992, forecasters have no experience with Category 5 hurricanes hitting densely populated areas.

"Hurricanes rarely sustain such extreme winds for much time. However we see no obvious large-scale effects to cause a substantial weakening the system and it is expected that the hurricane will be of Category 4 or 5 intensity when it reaches the coast," National Hurricane Center meteorologist Richard Pasch said.

As they raced to put meteorological instruments in Katrina's path Sunday, wind engineers had little idea what their equipment would record.

"We haven't seen something this big since we started the program," said Kurt Gurley, a University of Florida engineering professor. He works for the Florida Coastal Monitoring Program, which is in its seventh year of making detailed measurements of hurricane wind conditions using a set of mobile weather stations. [...]

ANNA MARIA ISLAND - Ten miles off our coast are areas bereft of sea life along the Gulf floor. The devastated marine communities span 2,162 square miles - larger than the state of Delaware.

The Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg, and Sarasota's Mote Marine Laboratory continue investigating reports of "dead zones," or areas devoid of life in the Gulf of Mexico from Sarasota to New Port Richey.

Preliminary results were released Tuesday from a three-day research cruise conducted last week from the mouth of Tampa Bay to Pasco County, indicating that oxygen and sea life are beginning to return to some affected areas.

Also on Tuesday, the Sierra Club held a press conference to call for local, state and federal authorities to curb pollution of coastal areas and fund research into algal blooms and coastal degradation.

It is unclear how much of a role pollution played in the latest red-tide season and resulting reef devastation, but researchers said oxygen is returning to areas that had little or none during the past two weeks, an encouraging sign to the institute's Cynthia Heil.

"The bottom communities are still impacted, but it's the first step in the recovery process," Heil said.

The bottom waters of sample areas from northern Pinellas and Pasco counties, however, still show conditions of anoxia, the absence of dissolved life-sustaining oxygen, and hypoxia, or little dissolved oxygen.

The most intense anoxic areas appear to lie between Anna Maria Island north to Pasco and Hernando counties, said Richard Pierce, senior scientist and director of Mote's center of ecotoxicology.

Offshore from Sarasota, areas of low oxygen were found last week at the 1 mile mark and further south to the Fort Myers area, Pierce said.

Scientists are still unsure whether the mass mortalities were caused from direct contact with the red tide toxin or the secondary effects of oxygen depletion from the decomposition of marine life, Heil said.

The preliminary report said there's a strong thermocline, the zone where the water changes temperature and can prevent upper and lower water levels from mixing and diluting the red tide toxin or pockets of anoxia.

High concentrations of the red tide toxin Karenia brevis were found at the surface and bottom of nearshore regions, as well in the surface waters offshore of the affected area.

Affected sites showed low visibility and high levels of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is produced by bacteria, emits a rotten-egg-like smell and turns metals black, two occurrences reported by divers last week.

The full report, expected to be released today, will include data from Mote Marine focusing on areas south of Longboat Pass.

The waters off Longboat Pass is where captain Wayne Genthner said he first witnessed the absence of life from the water's surface to sea floor.

"Last Wednesday, (I) found a dead zone seven miles out of Longboat Pass," Genthner told The Herald. "I went diving down there and did five others the same day to confirm my observations."

At Tuesday's press conference, Genthner said the situation has shrunk his weekly charter boat revenue from $3,000 to $300 per week.

Genthner said fish are moving further west so he must take fishing charters further out. The result is higher expense in gas and potential safety issues.

"What happens if a storm gets in between me and land?" Genthner said.

Dr. Larry Brand, a scientist at the University of Miami, also spoke at the press conference to share the results of a study he conducted for Lee County using data going back to the 1950s.

"The red tide organisms are 10 times more abundant than 50 years ago," Brand said.

According to the data from the Gulf between Tampa Bay and Sanibel, Brand said the blooms are more intense, spatially larger and longer lasting.

MATAGORDA CO., TX - Miles and miles of dead fish are turning up in Texas waters and it's hitting Matagorda especially hard.

From the sky, a sea of white is covering the mouth of the Colorado River. Upon closer look, you'll see dead fish – millions of them.

"Unbelievable if you haven't seen it before," said Matagorda County Commissioner George Deshotel.

The stunning images of devastation run for miles. It's one of the largest fish kills people in the town of Matagorda have seen in years.

Ronnie Dodd runs a spring bridge and watched dozens of fish die from his perch.

"The flounder were trying to get to the side of the edge of the bank and trying to come up and get air," he told us.

Surprisingly, this is a natural event caused by stagnant water and little wind, rain, or flow.

"Millions of these menhaden come in from the Gulf into the Colorado River and because of low tidal action and low wind action, there's nothing to replenish the oxygen in the water," said Deshotel.

Texas Parks and Wildlife is closely monitoring the situation.

"It'll run its course, and when it's done, it's done," said Bill Balboa with Texas Parks and Wildlife. "It may happen again, but it happens all up and down the coast."

But for now, Matagoda is the worst place...a place with a community that depends on the fish that are quickly dying.

The fish began dying a few days ago. If the menhaden keep coming in and the conditions don't change, more can die. And that's not good news for the local economy.

Back in 1995, there was a similar situation. Then, 60 million fish turned up dead. If you see dead fish, shrimp or crabs, contact the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's 24-hour hotline. That number is 512-389-4848.

HURRICANES can trigger swarms of weak earthquakes and even set the Earth vibrating, according to the first study of such effects.

When Hurricane Charley slammed into Florida in August 2004, physicist Randall Peters of Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, had a seismometer ready to monitor any vibrations in the Earth's crust. He did so for over 36 hours as Charley travelled briefly over Florida, then slid back out into the Atlantic.

As the hurricane reached land, the seismometer recorded a series of "micro-tremors" from the Earth's crust. This happened again as the storm moved back out to sea. Then, as Charley grazed the continental shelf on its way out, it caused a sharp seismic spike. "I suspect the storm triggered a subterranean landslide," says Peters.

More surprisingly, the storm also caused the Earth to vibrate. The planet's surface in the vicinity of the hurricane started moving up and down at several frequencies ranging from 0.9 to 3 millihertz. Such low-frequency vibrations have been detected following large earthquakes, but this is the first time a storm has been found to be the cause (www.arxiv.org/physics/0506162).

Two coronal mass ejections hit Earth's magnetic field on August 24th, sparking a severe geomagnetic storm. Bright auroras appeared over Canada and many US states. The display was especially good in New Zealand and Australia, where sky watchers saw a rare display of Southern Lights:

A Category 5 hurricane, the most severe type measured, Katrina has been reported heading directly toward the city of New Orleans. This would be a human catastrophe, since New Orleans sits in a bowl below sea level. However, Katrina is not only moving on New Orleans. It also is moving on the Port of Southern Louisiana. Were it to strike directly and furiously, Katrina would not only take a massive human toll, but also an enormous geopolitical one.

The Port of Southern Louisiana is the fifth-largest port in the world in terms of tonnage, and the largest port in the United States. The only global ports larger are Singapore, Rotterdam, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It is bigger than Houston, Chiba and Nagoya, Antwerp and New York/New Jersey. It is a key link in U.S. imports and exports and critical to the global economy.

The Port of Southern Louisiana stretches up and down the Mississippi River for about 50 miles, running north and south of New Orleans from St. James to St. Charles Parish. It is the key port for the export of grains to the rest of the world -- corn, soybeans, wheat and animal feed. Midwestern farmers and global consumers depend on those exports. The United States imports crude oil, petrochemicals, steel, fertilizers and ores through the port. Fifteen percent of all U.S. exports by value go through the port. Nearly half of the exports go to Europe.

The Port of Southern Louisiana is a river port. It depends on the navigability of the Mississippi River. The Mississippi is notorious for changing its course, and in southern Louisiana -- indeed along much of its length -- levees both protect the land from its water and maintain its course and navigability. Dredging and other maintenance are constant and necessary to maintain its navigability. It is fragile.

If New Orleans is hit, the Port of Southern Louisiana, by definition, also will be hit. No one can predict the precise course of the storm or its consequences. However, if we speculate on worse-case scenarios the following consequences jump out:

- The port might become in whole or part unusable if levees burst. If the damage to the river and port facilities could not be repaired within 30 days when the U.S. harvests are at their peak, the effect on global agricultural prices could be substantial.

- There is a large refinery at Belle Chasse. It is the only refinery that is seriously threatened by the storm, but if it were to be inundated, 250,000 barrels per day would go off line. Moreover, the threat of environmental danger would be substantial

- About 2 percent of world crude production and roughly 25 percent of U.S.-produced crude comes from the Gulf of Mexico and already is affected by Katrina. Platforms in the path of Katrina have been evacuated but others continue pumping. If this follows normal patterns, most production will be back on line within hours or days. However, if a Category 5 hurricane (of which there have only been three others in history) has a different effect, the damage could be longer lasting. Depending on the effect on the Port of Southern Louisiana, the ability to ship could be affected.

- A narrow, two-lane highway that handles approximately 10,000 vehicles a day, is used for transport of cargo and petroleum products and provides port access for thousands of employees is threatened with closure. A closure of as long as two weeks could rapidly push gasoline prices higher.

At a time when oil prices are in the mid-60-dollar range and starting to hurt, the hurricane has an obvious effect. However, it must be borne in mind that the Mississippi remains a key American shipping route, particularly for the export and import of a variety of primary commodities from grain to oil, as well as steel and rubber. Andrew Jackson fought hard to keep the British from taking New Orleans because he knew it was the main artery for U.S. trade with the world. He was right and its role has not changed since then.

This is not a prediction. We do not know the path of the storm and we cannot predict its effects. It is a warning that if a Category 5 hurricane hits the Port of Southern Louisiana and causes the damage that is merely at the outer reach of the probable, the effect on the global system will be substantial.

Authorities along the shattered Gulf Coast searched Tuesday for survivors and worked to rescue residents stranded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which is blamed for dozens of deaths and the destruction of countless homes and businesses.

The storm ripped ashore in Louisiana Monday morning with winds topping 140 mph before scourging Mississippi and Alabama.

Katrina caused widespread flooding across the region, and floodwaters were still rising Tuesday in New Orleans after a hole opened in a levee protecting the city.

The storm is blamed for at least 68 deaths and that toll is almost certain to rise.

"We know we've had some loss of life. We really don't know how much. There are credible accounts of 50 to 80 in Harrison County. Those are not confirmed, but they're credible," Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday.

"And I hate to say it, I think there are going to be more."

A man in Biloxi told CNN affiliate WKRG-TV he believed his wife was killed after she was ripped from his grasp when their home split in half.

"She told me, 'You can't hold me,' ... take care of the kids and the grandkids..."

While Louisiana officials have not confirmed any deaths there, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said there have been reports of bodies floating in the floodwaters. Two storm-related traffic fatalities were reported in Alabama.

The storm killed 11 people last week when it made its initial landfall in Florida.

'This is our tsunami'

In Mississippi, streets and homes were flooded as far as six miles inland.

Barbour plans to make a helicopter tour of the hardest hit areas today.

In Biloxi, a 25-foot storm surge crashed in from the Gulf of Mexico on Monday and inundated structures there. Up to 30 people are believed to have been killed when one apartment complex on the beach collapsed in the storm.

"This is our tsunami," Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway told the Biloxi Sun Herald newspaper, referring to the December 26, 2004, tsunami that killed more than 226,000 people in the Indian Ocean region.

In the daylight of Tuesday morning, the waters had receded in Biloxi, but debris littered the streets and the ground floors of several structures.

Cement trash cans used as barriers in front of buildings were strewn about like cardboard boxes, and paper scraps hung from the highest branches of the trees still standing.

CNN Correspondent Miles O'Brien, standing in front of the once-luxurious Beau Rivage casino, said at least a dozen gaming places were closed and damaged from Katrina -- costing the state $500,000 a day in lost tax revenues.

Charles Curtis, a Biloxi resident who works in a casino that is now split in half, said he and his wife stood on top of their refrigerator as the water rose around them.

"The Back Bay of Biloxi came through our front door," he said, referring to the shallow, marshy strip that borders the north of the city.

"We were ready to punch a hole through the ceiling if we had to" escape, Curtis said.

Hotel worker Suzanne Rodgers returned to her beachfront home near Biloxi, but, she told CNN, "there is nothing there. There's debris hanging from trees."

"All I found that belonged to me was a shoe," she said. "There's nothing left."

Separately, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency in Jackson confirmed five Katrina-related deaths, a spokeswoman said.

Water poured into New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain after a two-block-long breach opened overnight in a section of a levee that protects the low-lying city.

Nagin had said that about 80 percent of the city was flooded and that some areas were under 20 feet of water.

CNN's John Zarrella, in a hotel on Canal Street, said the water level was "much higher" than it had been during the height of Katrina's onslaught, rising all morning Tuesday and topping the sandbags meant to keep the water out of the building.

"Water has now filled the basement of the hotel," he said. "All of the entrances to our hotel are completely surrounded, and the water is slowly creeping up the side of the building.

"Yesterday during the hurricane, the water was no where near this high."

In the city's 9th Ward neighborhood, rescue efforts continued throughout the night, with authorities in boats plucking residents from submerged homes after water topped another levee.

CNN's Adaora Udoji, monitoring the rescue efforts, said authorities had ferried at least 500 people from their homes, flooded with as much as six feet of water. Some residents reported water rose so fast they did not have time to grab their shoes.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco told CNN Monday that a 50-inch water main was severed during the storm, cutting the supply of drinkable water.

In Mobile, Alabama, the storm pushed water from Mobile Bay into downtown, submerging large sections of the city, and officials imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

An oil drilling platform broke away from its moorings and lodged under a bridge that carries U.S. Highway 98 over the Mobile River.

The Alabama National Guard activated 450 troops to secure Mobile. Two other Alabama battalions, or about 800 troops, were activated to assist in Mississippi.

When can I go home?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing to house "at least tens of thousands of victims ... for literally months on end," the agency's director, Michael Brown, said Monday night.

Veteran FEMA staffers who have surveyed the destruction are reporting some of the worst damage they have ever seen, he said.

Louisiana and Mississippi officials urged evacuees as well as those stranded by flooding from the storm to stay put.

"It's too dangerous to come home," said Blanco, who ordered state police to block re-entry routes to all but emergency workers.

The American Red Cross said it is launching the largest relief operation in its history.

More than 75,000 people are being housed in nearly 240 shelters across the region, and Red Cross President Marty Evans told CNN, "We expect that to grow" as people who can't return home seek somewhere to stay.

More than 1.7 million homes and businesses in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida were without electricity, according to utility companies serving the region.

Katrina was downgraded to a tropical depression Tuesday. As of the 11 a.m. ET update from the National Hurricane Center, Katrina was about 25 miles south of Clarksville, Tennessee, moving north-northeast at 21 mph.

On Katrina's way north Monday night through Mississippi, its outer bands spawned tornados in Georgia. Three twisters were reported there, one in central Peach County and two in the northwest counties of Carroll and Paulding. One person in Carroll County was critically injured.

MIAMI - Hurricane Katrina may sting U.S. economic growth by choking energy supplies even as the damages caused by the storm spur massive rebuilding and emergency government spending.

Economists, while emphasizing that few concrete damage assessments have yet been made, said the major hurricane that struck the country's key Louisiana energy gateway would help sustain high oil, gasoline and natural gas prices.

A seasonal downturn in demand expected after next weekend and a higher-than-usual build-up in inventories ahead of the North American winter had led to forecasts energy prices might ease in coming months.

Some economists said U.S. gross domestic growth had been already showing signs of easing and may now slow more rapidly if fallout from Katrina boosts oil to $100 a barrel for a month, or U.S. gasoline prices to $3.50 a gallon, for a few months.

"The impact on the consumer spending in such a scenario would be very dramatic, cutting the growth rate by as much as 3 percent and push real GDP growth in the fourth quarter closer to zero," Global Insight said in a preliminary analysis.

The Lexington, Massachusetts, economics consultancy said that, if oil stayed at the current $65 to $70 level for a couple of more months because of energy flow disruptions, GDP growth would be cut 0.3 percent to 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter.

On Monday, at least two oil rigs were adrift in the Gulf of Mexico, where Katrina raged through offshore fields. Fearing the worst, oil companies had shut rigs and closed refineries along the coast. U.S. oil futures jumped nearly $5 a barrel in opening trade to touch a peak of $70.80 before settling back.

"It looks like the potential disruption has helped to further boost gasoline prices and that could be some additional headwind for the economy," said senior economist Patrick Fearon at A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis.

Fearon said A.G. Edwards may later this week trim its forecast of a 4 percent annualized GDP rise in the third quarter.

The Economic Outlook Group in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, said Katrina's effect on energy prices would add to risks facing the U.S. economy and could prompt the Federal Reserve to skip a widely expected interest rate hike when it meets Sept 20.

"This is not to say they will not resume raising rates in November and December. It's just that Fed officials may want to evaluate the extent of Katrina's impact on business activity, consumer demand and on inflation pressures," Economic Outlook said.

Katrina, which last week hit south Florida, was expected to cause a total of $10 billion to $26 billion in insured damages, according to hurricane modeling firms. It could be the most expensive storm to ever hit the United States.

"There will be a lot of rebuilding that is going to need to occur. These things do spur GDP growth," said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics in Pepper Pike, Ohio.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago, said wages lost by workers and revenues missed at shops and other businesses would be generally short-lived and replaced by stepped-up demand for construction and other workers and higher sales at home-supplies outlets.

The storm may also have damaged the Port of Southern Louisiana, the world's fifth largest port by tonnage and the biggest in the United States, and may affect exports and imports of agricultural and other products, according to Swonk.

"Depending on the extent of damage, that will put pressure on other ports. A drought in the Midwest has slowed some barges and there could be some transitory impact on our GDP," Swonk said.

Freight railroads might pick up some of that transport business if the port is hobbled, she said.

Travel, leisure and gambling businesses in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama may lose some tourist visits to other U.S. destinations, such as Las Vegas and Florida, during the cleanup and rebuilding ahead, she said.

Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming.

But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.

From 1970 to 1994, the Atlantic was relatively quiet, with no more than three major hurricanes in any year and none at all in three of those years. Cooler water in the North Atlantic strengthened wind shear, which tends to tear storms apart before they turn into hurricanes.

In 1995, hurricane patterns reverted to the active mode of the 1950's and 60's. From 1995 to 2003, 32 major hurricanes, with sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or greater, stormed across the Atlantic. It was chance, Dr. Gray said, that only three of them struck the United States at full strength.

Historically, the rate has been 1 in 3.

Then last year, three major hurricanes, half of the six that formed during the season, hit the United States. A fourth, Frances, weakened before striking Florida.

"We were very lucky in that eight-year period, and the luck just ran out," Dr. Gray said.

Global warming may eventually intensify hurricanes somewhat, though different climate models disagree.

In an article this month in the journal Nature, Kerry A. Emanuel, a hurricane expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote that global warming might have already had some effect. The total power dissipated by tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic and North Pacific increased 70 to 80 percent in the last 30 years, he wrote.

But even that seemingly large jump is not what has been pushing the hurricanes of the last two years, Dr. Emanuel said, adding, "What we see in the Atlantic is mostly the natural swing."

Some of America's leading scientists have accused Republican politicians of intimidating climate-change experts by placing them under unprecedented scrutiny.

A far-reaching inquiry into the careers of three of the US's most senior climate specialists has been launched by Joe Barton, the chairman of the House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce. He has demanded details of all their sources of funding, methods and everything they have ever published.

Mr Barton, a Texan closely associated with the fossil-fuel lobby, has spent his 11 years as chairman opposing every piece of legislation designed to combat climate change.

He is using the wide powers of his committee to force the scientists to produce great quantities of material after alleging flaws and lack of transparency in their research. He is working with Ed Whitfield, the chairman of the sub-committee on oversight and investigations.

The scientific work they are investigating was important in establishing that man-made carbon emissions were at least partly responsible for global warming, and formed part of the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which convinced most world leaders - George Bush was a notable exception - that urgent action was needed to curb greenhouse gases.

The demands in letters sent to the scientists have been compared by some US media commentators to the anti-communist "witch-hunts" pursued by Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.

The three US climate scientists - Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Centre at Pennsylvania State University; Raymond Bradley, the director of the Climate System Research Centre at the University of Massachusetts; and Malcolm Hughes, the former director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona - have been told to send large volumes of material.

A letter demanding information on the three and their work has also gone to Arden Bement, the director of the US National Science Foundation.

Mr Barton's inquiry was launched after an article in the Wall Street Journal quoted an economist and a statistician, neither of them from a climate science background, saying there were methodological flaws and data errors in the three scientists' calculations. It accused the trio of refusing to make their original material available to be cross-checked.

Mr Barton then asked for everything the scientists had ever published and all baseline data. He said the information was necessary because Congress was going to make policy decisions drawing on their work, and his committee needed to check its validity.

There followed a demand for details of everything they had done since their careers began, funding received and procedures for data disclosure.

The inquiry has sent shockwaves through the US scientific establishment, already under pressure from the Bush administration, which links funding to policy objectives.

Eighteen of the country's most influential scientists from Princeton and Harvard have written to Mr Barton and Mr Whitfield expressing "deep concern". Their letter says much of the information requested is unrelated to climate science.

It says: "Requests to provide all working materials related to hundreds of publications stretching back decades can be seen as intimidation - intentional or not - and thereby risks compromising the independence of scientific opinion that is vital to the pre-eminence of American science as well as to the flow of objective science to the government."

Alan Leshner protested on behalf of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, expressing "deep concern" about the inquiry, which appeared to be "a search for a basis to discredit the particular scientists rather than a search for understanding".

Political reaction has been stronger. Henry Waxman, a senior Californian Democrat, wrote complaining that this was a "dubious" inquiry which many viewed as a "transparent effort to bully and harass climate-change experts who have reached conclusions with which you disagree".

But the strongest language came from another Republican, Sherwood Boehlert, the chairman of the house science committee. He wrote to "express my strenuous objections to what I see as the misguided and illegitimate investigation".

He said it was pernicious to substitute political review for scientific peer review and the precedent was "truly chilling". He said the inquiry "seeks to erase the line between science and politics" and should be reconsidered.

A spokeswoman for Mr Barton said yesterday that all the required written evidence had been collected.

"The committee will review everything we have and decided how best to proceed. No decision has yet been made whether to have public hearings to investigate the validity of the scientists' findings, but that could be the next step for this autumn," she said.

MIAMI - Tropical Storm Lee formed Wednesday in the central Atlantic, but posed no threat to land, forecasters said.

At 5 p.m. EDT, Lee was about 900 miles east of Bermuda and moving north-northeast at 12 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. On this track, the five-day forecast projected the storm would stay far from land.

The tropical storm had top sustained winds of 40 mph, just above the 39 mph threshold to be classified as a tropical storm.

Lee was the 12th named storm of the unusually active Atlantic hurricane season. Typically, there are only four to five named storms by late August, according to the hurricane center. Hurricane season began June 1 and runs through November.