|
Signs Supplement: Climate
and Earth Changes
August 2005
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. [...] |
Malaysia
facing water crisis
Prospect of water rationing looms as severe dry spell causes dam
levels across the country to drop drastically |
By Reme Ahmad
Malaysia Bureau Chief
August 19, 2005 |
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. |
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