Record extremes in weather and climate will become increasingly common as temperatures rise because of climate change, the United Nations weather agency said today.

"New record extreme events occur every year somewhere in the globe, but in recent years the number of such extremes has been increasing," the World Meteorological Organisation said.

The agency is based in Switzerland, which has just registered the hottest June since measurements were first taken 250 years ago, with temperatures 6C (10.8F) above average.

In neighbouring France, maximum temperatures in June were more than 40C (104F).

WMO said there were 562 tornados in the United States in May, an increase of 163 on the previous record. The south-eastern part of the country was exceedingly wet and cold, with some regions receiving 13.65 inches more rain than usual in the three months from March.

When the bodies of Scott of the Antarctic and his party were discovered in 1912, a collection of rocks and fossils were found by their tent...

Scott's collection contained some of the first plant fossils found in Antarctica, the remains of ancient lush deciduous forests that carpeted the continent about 250 million years ago.

The fossilised leaves and bark, now in the archives of London's Natural History Museum, show Antarctica was once green and warm. Exactly how forests managed to flourish at the South Pole has been contentious ever since.

Falling leaves

Much of the debate centres on the predominance of deciduous trees (which lose their leaves during winter) over evergreens.

The accepted wisdom is that trees dropped their leaves because they were unable to photosynthesise during the dark winters. (Photosynthesis is the light-dependent process used by plants to make carbon, the stuff of life.)

According to this theory, deciduous trees in a polar climate save more valuable carbon than evergreens since carbon is lost by canopy respiration during warm, dark winter months.

Dr Osborne and colleagues have now tested this theory by growing modern day descendants of the trees in conditions they would have encountered in an ancient polar forest.

It turns out that leaf shedding was a false economy. The quantity of carbon lost would have far outweighed that burned as fuel by an evergreen in the darkness of a warm polar winter.

"Our findings show that the long-standing explanation for the dominance of deciduous trees in these ecosystems simply doesn't add up," says Professor David Beerling.

There must be another explanation, he adds, perhaps water supply, soil fertility or the chilling effects of low temperatures.

Physicists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have produced X-ray emissions in a laboratory setting by recreating the conditions that exist when solar winds collide with gases surrounding comets.

Using the electron beam ion trap facility located at Livermore Laboratory, physicists Peter Beiersdorfer, Hui Chen and Mark May created charge exchange between heavy ions to produce X-ray emissions, similar to what happens when solar wind and gases collide in a comet.

In collaboration with researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Columbia University Department of Physics and the University of Missouri-Rolla Department of Physics, the team will present "Laboratory Simulation of Charge Exchange-Produced X-ray Emission From Comets" in the June 6 edition of Science. [...]

Beiersdorfer said that cometary X-rays can serve as a diagnostic for solar activity and hence "space weather" by measuring the quantity and composition of the heavy ion flux in solar wind. In addition, recent work has shown that emissions can be a potential tool to gauge the speed of the solar wind. [...]

Europe is set to try to do something no-one has ever done before - to chase and land on a comet. The Lander science will focus on the in situ study of the composition and structure of the nucleus material.

Comet-chasing mission Rosetta has refocused its sights on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. During its meeting on May 13-14th 2003, ESA's Science Program Committee decided Rosetta's new mission baseline.

The spacecraft will be launched in February 2004 from Kourou, French Guiana, using an Ariane-5 G+ launcher. The rendezvous with the new target comet is expected in November 2014.

Delayed indefinitely earlier this year to troubleshoot launch issues, ESA's Rosetta lander, is now back on track to be the first man-made object to land on a comet. [...]

On Jan. 2, 2004, another NASA spacecraft called Stardust will fly within 75 miles of a cometary main body (called Wild-2)--close enough to trap small particles from the coma, the gas-and-dust envelope surrounding the comet's nucleus. Stardust will be traveling at about 13,400 miles per hour (mph) and will capture comet particles traveling at the speed of a bullet fired from a rifle. Its main camera, built for NASA's Voyager program, will transmit the closest-ever comet pictures back to Earth. Launched in February 1999, Stardust was designed to capture particles from Wild 2 and return them to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft already has collected grains of interstellar dust. It is the first U.S. sample-return mission since the last moon landing in 1972.

In the next 5 or so years, there will be several encounters of spacecraft with comets and asteroids. All the following missions are funded, though not all have been launched yet.

Working Group 7A of the International Telecommunication Union's Study Group 7 may sound like an anonymous international committee like any other. But this is no quango of grey bureaucrats in greyer suits arguing over the desired colour of toilet paper. At the heart of this group's discussions is something of fundamental importance to anyone who has ever taken a second to fall in love or to score a goal: time itself, and how to define it.

Unbeknown to most people there is not a single accepted way of telling the time, but several different scales running concurrently. The differences are usually small, but the scales can be as much as 30 seconds apart and the gap between them is growing steadily.

Aircraft navigation systems tell a different time from the watches of passengers, pilots and air traffic controllers. Experts are warning that this could spell disaster.

"We should only have one type of timescale throughout the world," says Bill Klepczynski, a time expert who advises the federal aviation administration. "There's a possibility for danger."

The International Telecommunication Union - the global body that agrees time standards - is taking the issue seriously, and has set up the working group to advise it what to do. "We're trying to gather data on how people are using time, what sort of problems they have and whether or not a contiguous timescale would be beneficial," says Ron Beard, who heads the group.

But the plans have not pleased everyone, and arguments about the best way forward are rattling the usually steady world of timekeeping.

The problem arises because the Earth cannot keep time as accurately as modern atomic clocks, which count the steady shaking of atoms. These atomic clocks replaced the motion of the Earth as the world's official timekeeper in 1967. The pull of the moon is gradually slowing our planet down, so every now and then our clocks are halted for a second to let it catch up. [...]

Since the debate began, the slowing of the Earth has become less pronounced and no leap seconds should be needed for several years. Experts are unsure exactly why this has happened -a number of factors can have short-term influences on its rotation, including earthquakes and even wind blowing on mountains - but they agree that the constant drag of the moon means the slowing will soon pick up again, and within a few decades we could be forced to add two or even three leap seconds a year. [...]

What time is it? It could be a while yet before we know for sure.

It has been awhile since we published our findings concerning what we believe to be an army of immense size in the skies above. Many of you have written and asked why we haven't posted recently. The fact of the matter is - this is a very serious subject. There are so many out there willing to try and debunk or to write off these ideas that we ourselves want to be sure. I can now say that we are sure. We are absolutely positive, based upon recent evidence that you shall see below, that we are indeed on the brink of great change.

The following points are the major contentions to the previous findings:

1) The cubes seen in the GOES satellite images are equal in size and are uniform on the page, indicating that they are a product of the satellite camera or the processing.

TMG's answer: The cubes are not uniform if one takes a closer look. A close look will reveal that they have a field around each cube and each cube is distinctive within a group. There are some that appear to be close to the surface - some are very very large and several are similar sizes, but different shapes - rectangles, rounded corners, have height, etc.. The reason that they all appear to be one dimensional is because what we are seeing is primarily the fields of the cubes. In other words the view is in the eye of the beholder. Not a psychological treatment at all, but rather a trick of the view. And how can we assume this? Because we have seen them in a variety of cameras, at different supposed distances, around the sun, the moon, and in the skies above the earth. And now we have a movie of several of them moving in course together.

2) Our beliefs for why these cubes are here is too negative, we are professing doom, not the good tidings that these beings could be bringing.

Tag's answer: In our experience we have found that people either believe in evolution or they are creationists. This, of course isn't a profound statement, but when you begin to look at the details, the lines begin to be drawn. And this isn't even the beginning of the problems. The real problems come when religionists of whatever category fall out to their own separate beliefs. A practical look at what we are talking about could be the issue of Mars. Many Christians for instance do not believe that there could possibly be life on other planets, so they do not believe that there could be alien races visiting the earth. So the idea of life ever existing on Mars is difficult to incorporate into their belief system. Some believe that the earth is the center of all creation because Christ came to the earth and atoned for the sins of all creation here. This has been a common criticism of some of our past articles. The prophets of the Old Testament, many myths, Christ himself and other stories passed down through the generations speak of a final judgment of man. This judgment is always portrayed as a destruction of the wicked. The war that is to come, or judgment is not going to be a pleasant experience. Sheldon Nidle or not.

3) If there were ships in our atmosphere NASA would know and it would not be a secret. There are no conspiracies.

TMG's answer: This is just plain ignorance. There are many things that are kept from the population. Just take a stroll through American History. It is our belief that we have reached a critical point in history. We believe that the earth was a creation and that the epic of mankind has reached its pinnacle or climax. Further that there has been an opposing force on the earth over the ages, and that the earth has basically been off limits to other beings (even though some have broken that rule over the years). However, now there are others being ordered or commanded to the earth to partake in the judgment of mankind. Thus we have been seeing in some SOHO images, what appears to be craft firing beams of plasma at each other. There has been a war going on for the ages, it is just in recent years that it is coming close to home. We believe that many (not all) in our government know this. We as humans all think that we have our lives under control. This is a false belief.

These have been the primary arguments, complaints or contention concerning our previous postings.

Now... take a look at what we have seen with our own eyes... See with your own eyes....

OTTAWA -- Canadian scientist Jan Veizer, whose previous research about the causes of climate change was seized upon by opponents of the Kyoto accord, has published a new study certain to add more fuel to their fire.

The latest research by the University of Ottawa geologist suggests that the driving force behind climate change during the past 545 million years has been "galactic cosmic ray flux" -- the fluctuating intensity of thermal energy from the sun and stars -- rather than carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere. [...]

"Atmospheric levels of CO2 are commonly assumed to be a main driver of global climate," the authors state. "Independent empirical evidence suggests that the galactic cosmic ray flux (CRF) is linked to climate variability. We find that at least 66 per cent of the variance in the paleotemperature trend could be attributed to CRF variations likely due to solar system passages through the spiral arms of the galaxy.

"Our approach, based on entirely independent studies from astrophysics and geosciences, yields a surprisingly consistent picture of climate evolution on geological time scales," the paper says. "At a minimum, the results demonstrate that the approach is potentially viable, as is the proposition that celestial phenomena may be important for understanding the vagaries of the planetary climate."

More specifically, the authors assert that the long-term "warming effect of CO2" is "potentially lower" than generally thought. They say the carbon dioxide factor would appear to have a maximum impact of 1.9 C on sea temperatures rather than the 5.5 projected in certain worst-case scenarios.

Veizer, who also teaches at Ruhr University in Germany and was reached there Wednesday by phone, describes cosmic rays as the thermal energy emitted by stars, particularly when they are young, and which the Earth is occasionally bombarded with in combination with solar winds.

When the planet is "passing through the area of the galaxy where you have lots of new stars, then you have a big flux," he said.

Veizer's theories on climate change, based on his study of oxygen isotopes trapped in rocks formed by ancient marine fossils, first made headlines three years ago. A distinguished, Czechoslovakian-born geologist, Veizer sparked an international uproar when he argued that something other than carbon dioxide must have been driving changes to the Earth's climate over the eons because the correlation you'd expect to see between CO2 levels and the "paleotemperature" record revealed by his fossils wasn't there. [...]

Climate Oddity: "Warming Up?"

By T.W.

I find it just a bit puzzling how Europe and the Northern hemisphere has experienced the warmest June for 100's of years with the mean average up to 6 degrees above the norm, and the most horrific heat in the plus 40's. You would expect that this would not be the case in the bottom of the world at the same time would you?

Here we are in the grips of a New Zealand winter and we have experienced the warmest June Since records began 150 years ago, mean average up 3 degrees

Truely the warming up is global at the moment anyway, I cannot remember a winter that has been so like a spring so far, with highest daily temperatures all through the month of June around the low twenties (centigrade).

A.L. writes: June has been the hottest month in Suisse romande since they started recording in 1864. The article in French tells about this and other interesting statistics.

J.C. writes: The most noticable earth changes here in Scotland, are the wind and the winter temperatures. The strong winds that were seasonable in october/ november to blow down the dead leaves, and then the strong winds that we used to have in march in preperation for spring have now become constant. The wind may die down for a few days respite, but sure enough they will soon come back. Our winters too are now quite warm considering what they used to be, making the budding of plants erratic.

One other noticable change, at least to me are the chemtrails. I live in the countryside and look at the sky on a regular basis, I noticed that just before the war in Iraq there were many contrails in the sky that would take an age to dissipate, this is new but know one notices, some of those I do show try to fob them of with simple excuses then close there eyes again.

N.B. writes from Vancouver BC, Canada: I just wanted to give you a little report from my little corner of the world. Hell the first thing I must say is, as I am typing this, outside over my city there is INCREDIBLE chemetrail activity. I have also noticed the chema-bomb thing people have started to talk about. UFO activity, man according to local witnesses the activity has picked up tremendously in just the past two weeks.

[T]he night seems brighter and brighter from 12 midnight to 6 am. But I guess part of it is because of the close approach of mars. Also the weather is incredibly unstable. For example two days ago it was so hot I couldn't go out, but just today I had to take out my sweater to go out for 5 min. Believe me I've leaved here 10 years, never have I experience such variance in the weather. Also at night the stars seem like they are much closer than last summer. Hopefully I can get a camera and post some pictures soon, [un]till than I'll keep you posted on things happening locally.

TUCSON - Firefighters lit controlled burns around homes, camps and an array of telescopes and antennas Friday as a wildfire that had already destroyed 300 mountaintop homes raged in gusting wind. [...]

Driven by the wind, the fire ballooned from 41,500 acres to 56,000 acres between Wednesday and Thursday and threatened new destruction.

An updated tally of acreage burned hadn't been completed Friday afternoon, but officials estimated it may reach 60,000 acres by today. The fire was 60 percent contained. [...]

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- Tornadoes have a reputation for being unpredictable. However, the pattern of destruction that occurs when a tornado interacts with a building is predictable, and that makes it preventable, according to University of Arkansas researcher Panneer Selvam.

Outbreaks like the one in May, 2003, reinforce the dangers tornadoes pose. In the 10 days from May 2-11, 583 tornadoes struck in 17 states. The results include 42 deaths and more than $2.2 billion in property damage. [...]

Astronomers believe that the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized body smashed into the Earth, ejecting matter into orbit and lengthening our day to its present value of 24 hours. Until recently, however, estimates of much of the Moon is "impactor material" that came from this impactor object, as opposed to the Earth, have varied wildly - from 1 to 90%. Now, by comparing the compositions of lunar and terrestrial rock samples, astronomers in Germany have calculated that no more than two-thirds of the Moon is impactor material. Moreover, they estimate that the Moon must be at least 4.5 billion years old (C Munker et al 2003 Science 301 84)...

If the giant impact occurred while the core and mantle were forming, the Earth would have contributed little niobium to the Moon. But Munker and colleagues calculated that the lunar Nb/Ta ratio would be boosted to the observed level if up to 65% of the Moon consisted of impactor material.

This theory also leads Munker's team to believe that the Moon must be at least 4.5 billion years old, since radioisotope dating shows that the Earth's core and mantle were fully formed by that time.

GENEVA (AP) - Record extremes in weather and climate will likely become increasingly common as temperatures rise because of climate change, the United Nations weather agency said Thursday.

librarythinkquest.org

''New record extreme events occur every year somewhere in the globe but in recent years, the number of such extremes has been increasing,'' the World Meteorological Organization said. [...]

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) -- A river polluted with waste from Brazil's biggest city of Sao Paulo covered the streets of a small colonial town with a thick layer of snow-like foam that emits harmful acidic gas on Friday.

A Town Hall official contacted by Reuters said the foam had been affecting Pirapora do Bom Jesus for about a month, but a clogged clear-water channel made the foam levels rise especially high, blocking bridges across the river Tiete which runs through the town and nearby streets.

"It is all a dreadful consequence of Sao Paulo city's pollution," said Mare Brasilio, a Town Hall spokeswoman. "The sulphydric gas caused by the foam provokes respiratory problems among children and elderly people."

In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire.

In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate change.

The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole (though environmentalists will seize on it to claim that the direst warnings of climate change are being borne out).

The Geneva-based body, to which the weather services of 185 countries contribute, takes the view that events this year in Europe, America and Asia are so remarkable that the world needs to be made aware of it immediately.

The extreme weather it documents, such as record high and low temperatures, record rainfall and record storms in different parts of the world, is consistent with predictions of global warming. Supercomputer models show that, as the atmosphere warms, the climate not only becomes hotter but much more unstable. "Recent scientific assessments indicate that, as the global temperatures continue to warm due to climate change, the number and intensity of extreme events might increase," the WMO said, giving a striking series of examples.

In southern France, record temperatures were recorded in June, rising above 40C in places - temperatures of 5C to 7C above the average.

In Switzerland, it was the hottest June in at least 250 years, environmental historians said. In Geneva, since 29 May, daytime temperatures have not fallen below 25C, making it the hottest June recorded.

In the United States, there were 562 May tornadoes, which caused 41 deaths. This set a record for any month. The previous record was 399 in June 1992.

In India, this year's pre-monsoon heatwave brought peak temperatures of 45C - 2C to 5C above the norm. At least 1,400 people died in India due to the hot weather. In Sri Lanka, heavy rainfall from Tropical Cyclone 01B exacerbated wet conditions, resulting in flooding and landslides and killing at least 300 people. The infrastructure and economy of south-west Sri Lanka was heavily damaged. A reduction of 20-30 per cent is expected in the output of low-grown tea in the next three months.

Last month was also the hottest in England and Wales since 1976, with average temperatures of 16C. The WMO said: "These record extreme events (high temperatures, low temperatures and high rainfall amounts and droughts) all go into calculating the monthly and annual averages, which, for temperatures, have been gradually increasing over the past 100 years.

"New record extreme events occur every year somewhere in the globe, but in recent years the number of such extremes have been increasing.

"According to recent climate-change scientific assessment reports of the joint WMO/United Nations Environmental Programme Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global average surface temperature has increased since 1861. Over the 20th century the increase has been around 0.6C.

"New analyses of proxy data for the northern hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1,000 years."

While the trend towards warmer temperatures has been uneven over the past century, the trend since 1976 is roughly three times that for the whole period.

Global average land and sea surface temperatures in May 2003 were the second highest since records began in 1880. Considering land temperatures only, last May was the warmest on record.

It is possible that 2003 will be the hottest year ever recorded. The 10 hottest years in the 143-year-old global temperature record have now all been since 1990, with the three hottest being 1998, 2002 and 2001.

The unstable world of climate change has long been a prediction. Now, the WMO says, it is a reality.

Heavy storms ripped through northern Illinois early Saturday, destroying homes and leaving about 120,000 people without power, authorities and residents told CNN.

No weather-related deaths or injuries were reported, said Sgt. Laura Kubiak of the Chicago Police Department.

Winds as high as 85 mph sent trees crashing into houses and power lines, authorities said. [...]

TUCSON, Ariz. - A wildfire tore through Ponderosa pine and brush in an Arizona national forest, about 250 miles north of another blaze that has destroyed more than 300 mountaintop homes and burned six cabins as it jumped into a new subdivision.

The new wildfire erupted Saturday night in the Prescott National Forest, forcing the evacuation of about 100 homes, said forest spokesman Steve Sams. [...]

HONOLULU, Hawaii (AP) -- Millions of tourists have voyaged across the Pacific just to spread their beach towel on a patch of Waikiki's warm, inviting sand.

Trouble is, there's not as much of it as there used to be.

Waikiki's world-famous white sand beaches have been eroding an average of one foot a year since 1985, experts say. And as the shoreline shrinks and reefs fill with the sand moving offshore, many say it's time to protect the key asset of Hawaii's best-known tourist strip. [...]

TAOS, New Mexico (AP) -- A mountain wildfire roared across 500 to 1,000 acres near Taos Pueblo, chasing campers from the area and prompting fire engines to be called in to protect homes.

The fire burned to within a half-mile to a mile of the Indian pueblo. Lightning was suspected in the blaze that broke out Friday afternoon, said Carson National Forest fire information officer Iggy Peralta.

Several campers were evacuated from Pueblo Canyon and from Encibado Canyon on the east slope of Rancho Canyon Peak, Peralta said. Fire engines were guarding a few homes from the fire on pueblo land, he said.

"This thing is moving pretty fast," Peralta said.

The wildfire, which Peralta said produced "80 to 100-foot flame waves," was south and east of Wheeler Peak, the state's highest mountain at 13,161 feet. [...]

Massive tsunamis, miles of raging forest fires, a stratosphere clogged with enough debris to obscure the sun -- even a relatively small asteroid striking Earth would wreak enough havoc to end civilization.

"It's not whether it's going to happen," said Bruce Weaver, director of Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy (MIRA). "The question is how long it will be (until one hits)." [...]

WASHINGTON - Officials at the National Zoo suspect that a large cat got into a bald eagle's enclosure and killed the bird, perhaps already weakened by fierce storms and unable to fly. [...]

The 21-year-old eagle, found by a zookeeper early Thursday, had severe puncture wounds to his abdomen and back, spokeswoman Julie Mason said. Zookeepers suspect a large cat crept into the cage and attacked the eagle, who could have been injured during Wednesday night's fierce rain storms. [...]

"Whenever you have an organization that cares for literally hundreds of animals you're going to have some deaths on occasion," Cecere said. "It's just sad that that happened, especially on the Fourth of July."

More than 60 firefighters and four aircraft are battling a forest fire at a seaside area near Athens, the fire department said.

The blaze broke out at Porto Rafti, 22 miles east of Athens, but did not pose any threat to homes.

The cause was not immediately known.

The fire department issued warnings for most of mainland Greece, amid strong winds and temperatures of 40C.

PHILADELPHIA (KYW) As if the heat and humidity aren't bad enough, a line of powerful thunderstorms toppled trees and snapped powerlines throughout the Delaware Valley.

The storms rumbled through the region late Saturday afternoon, leaving a mess in their wake...

As of 11 p.m. Saturday, PECO was working to restore power to more than 27,000 customers. At one point, some 79,000 customers were without power.

WELLINGTON, July 6 (Xinhuanet) -- New Zealand experienced the coldest day of the year Saturday as some roads and airports throughout the country were closed, and mail deliveries were interrupted.

Weather expert Bob McDavitt, however, said if the cold front --which came through from the Antarctic on Friday night -- had arrived a few days earlier, the type of big snow that paralyzed Christchurch in 1992 could have been on the cards again...

On Saturday, 30 cm of snow dropped on the mid-Canterbury town of Methven, roads in the South Island and lower North Island were closed and motorists in Christchurch were told to avoid two inner city overpasses because of ice...

He said the effects of the cold snap were probably being felt more because of good weather until now. June was the warmest on record.

WASHINGTON - In "Star Wars," Darth Vader rules the "dark side" of a fantasy universe. In real life, astronomers are exploring the "dark side" of our own universe. They find it a mystifying place.

According to a batch of new reports published in a special "Welcome to the Dark Side" issue of the journal Science, most of the cosmos cannot be seen, even with the most powerful telescopes. All but a tiny fraction of creation consists of two exotic, invisible ingredients called "dark energy" and "dark matter".

Astronomers admit they don't understand either of them.

"Cosmologists have no idea what the nature of the dark matter and the dark energy may be," Jordi Miralda-Escude, an astronomer at Ohio State University in Columbus, wrote in Science.

"We're stuck with this preposterous universe," said John Carlstrom, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago. "It's a universe in which ordinary matter, the stuff of which humans, stars and galaxies are made, accounts for less than 5 percent of the universe's total mass and energy."

[...] "We should be humble about dark energy," said Sean Carroll, a University of Chicago astronomer. "We haven't a clue as to what is going on."

Some physicists theorize that a vacuum, like empty space, is actually a seething mass of unknown particles that continuously pop in and out of existence, creating pressure that drives the expansion of the universe.

Anthony Tyson, an astrophysicist at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., told Science: "The universe is not those pinpoints of light we can see in the night. It is, in fact, this dark side."

A press release from the federally supported National Center for Atmospheric Research claims a "New Look at Satellite Data Supports Global Warming Trend." This claim is likely to be played out big by supporters of the Kyoto Protocol, who want to restrict drastically the use of energy.

But the NCAR result is based on the wishful thinking of well-known Global-Warming promoters rather than on solid science.

[...] Finally, we have a large amount of non-instrumental data. Such proxies include measurements of the widths of tree rings, isotope data from ocean and lake sediments, ice cores and corals, etc. All of these can be calibrated in terms of temperature. I have personally examined many of these published results and have yet to find any that show a recent warming. It is another strong piece of evidence that supports the conclusion that the surface data from weather stations are contaminated by local heating effects and cannot be relied on to support global warming.

But if the RSS analysis is not correct, then the NCAR study is mostly hot air. As science journalist Ron Bailey points out: "Evidently, the strategy being used by Santer et al. is that if their models don't agree with the data, then change the data." Our hope is that Congress does not buy into this shell game.

(AP) -- Severe thunderstorms moved across the Midwest, while scattered showers developed over the South and Northeast. The West had mostly sunny skies.

A line of thunderstorms that moved across Indiana, Michigan and Ohio produced wind gusts up to 65 miles-per-hour and damaged roofs and power lines. Fort Wayne, Indiana, reported 1 inch of rainfall.

Cloudy skies and scattered showers also developed as a result of the intense daytime heating across the South. A few storms across the Gulf Coast were severe. [...]

THE WORLD Meteorological Organisation normally produces statistics-heavy reports at the end of the year, not news bulletins about today's weather.

Its announcement on July 2 that the record extremes in weather being experienced globally this year are evidence that climate change is actually under way is therefore much more than just another salvo in the long argument about global warming.

[...] The whole global climate suddenly flips into a cool, dry phase that can last for many centuries before warmer conditions return: there have been two such episodes, at 12,500 years ago and 8,500 years ago, even since the end of the last Ice Age. Or the cool, dry phase could last for a hundred thousand years if other conditions, like the shape of the earth's orbit and the tilt of its axis, have already put us on the brink of a new Ice Age.

The flips of the past were caused by natural warming of one kind or another, but by adding man-made warming to the problem we are making it far more dangerous. We have built all of human civilisation, and increased our population a thousandfold, since the last cool, dry episode. All of that is at risk if the climate flips and yet the public debate is still all about gradual change.

Despite the certainty many seem to feel about the causes, effects and extent of climate change, we are in fact making only slow progress in our understanding of the underlying science. My old professor at Harvard, the great economist Joseph Schumpeter, used to insist that a principal tool of economic science was history -- which served to temper the enthusiasms of the here and now. This must be even more so in climatological science. In recent years the inclination has been to attribute the warming we have lately experienced to a single dominant cause -- the increase in greenhouse gases. Yet climate has always been changing -- and sometimes the swings have been rapid.

At the time the U.S. Department of Energy was created in 1977, there was widespread concern about the cooling trend that had been observed for the previous quarter-century. After 1940 the temperature, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, had dropped about one-half degree Fahrenheit -- and more in the higher latitudes. In 1974 the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, stated: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade." Two years earlier, the board had observed: "Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end . . . leading into the next glacial age." And in 1975 the National Academy of Sciences stated: "The climates of the earth have always been changing, and they will doubtless continue to do so in the future. How large these future changes will be, and where and how rapidly they will occur, we do not know."

These statements -- just a quarter-century old -- should provide us with a dose of humility as we look into the more distant future.

[...] When we look back over the past millennium, the questions that arise are even more perplexing. The so-called Climatic Optimum of the early Middle Ages, when the earth temperatures were 1 to 2 degrees warmer than today and the Vikings established their flourishing colonies in Greenland, was succeeded by the Little Ice Age, lasting down to the early 19th century. Neither can be explained by concentrations of greenhouse gases. Moreover, through much of the earth's history, increases in CO2 have followed global warming, rather than the other way around.

We cannot tell how much of the recent warming trend can be attributed to the greenhouse effect and how much to other factors. In climate change, we have only a limited grasp of the overall forces at work.

[...] Most significant: The possibility of long-term cycles in solar activity is neglected because there is a scarcity of direct measurement. Nonetheless, solar irradiance and its variation seem highly likely to be a principal cause of long-term climatic change. Their role in longer-term weather cycles needs to be better understood.

There is an idea among the public that "the science is settled." Aside from the limited facts I cited earlier, that remains far from the truth. Today we have far better instruments, better measurements and better time series than we have ever had. Still, we are in danger of prematurely embracing certitudes and losing open-mindedness. We need to be more modest.

GAUHATI, India Nearly 80 people have died and more than 1,500 villages are under water because of monsoon rains in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, officials said Monday.

At least 71 people have died of waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, malaria, and Japanese encephalitis since the annual deluge reached the state in June, said P.C. Bhattacharya, a health department official. Eight others have drowned or been swept away in overflowing rivers, he said.

On Sunday night, the Brahmaputra River breached several embankments, flooding more than 230 new villages across the state, said Nurzamal Sarkar, Assam's flood control minister.

"More than 1 million people have now been hit by the floods, and 19 of the state's 24 districts have been submerged," Sarkar said.

The mighty Brahmaputra river burst its banks at several points, bringing to 1.4 million the number of people made homeless by floods in India and Bangladesh, as disease, rising waters and landslides claimed 16 more lives.

Eleven people were killed near the Indian hill station Darjeeling when landslides triggered by days of rain buried five houses, police said. [...]

To the east, the Brahmaputra, the 2,900-kilometer (1,800-mile) river sacred to Hindus that winds down from the mountains of Tibet to the delta of Bangladesh, broke its embankments around the northeastern Indian state of Assam, submerging roads and smashing down mud embankments.

Local officials estimated 200,000 more people were left homeless Tuesday across five districts of Assam as the rising Brahmaputra washed away their huts. [...]

Tropical Storm Claudette could become a hurricane in the next day or two, according to forecasters.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Claudette is packing 50 mile-per-hour winds.

The storm was over open sea, centered roughly 400 miles southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, while its outer fringes spread rain and scattered thunderstorms across parts of the Caribbean.

The storm was drifting west at 29 mph and could become a hurricane within 48 hours, forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. [...]

WASHINGTON (July 7) -- Global warming could bring on years of drought, resulting in more wildfires and public health problems, two speakers from Harvard Medical School and Duke University said during a Washington press conference July 2.

"The chief concern has to be that global warming, if left unchecked, will mean more intense weather extremes, including drought," said Paul R. Epstein, a medical doctor and the associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "The resulting, and worsening, wildfire problems in the United States could well mean a steadily increasing toll in the related health problems."

As wildfires become more prevalent, so will haze pollution, he said.

"Global warming is causing much of the world´s water to evaporate, leaving dry, vulnerable forests," said William H. Schlesinger, dean of Duke University´s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences in Durham, N.C.

In 2002, more than 7.3 million acres of U.S. forestland burned, but largely because of global warming, the stage is now set for even more wildfires, Schlesinger said.

This must be even more so in climatological science. In recent years the inclination has been to attribute the warming we have lately experienced to a single dominant cause -- the increase in greenhouse gases. Yet climate has always been changing -- and sometimes the swings have been rapid.

At the time the U.S. Department of Energy was created in 1977, there was widespread concern about the cooling trend that had been observed for the previous quarter-century. After 1940 the temperature, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, had dropped about one-half degree Fahrenheit -- and more in the higher latitudes. In 1974 the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, stated:

"During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade."

Two years earlier, the board had observed:

"Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end . . . leading into the next glacial age."

And in 1975 the National Academy of Sciences stated: "The climates of the earth have always been changing, and they will doubtless continue to do so in the future. How large these future changes will be, and where and how rapidly they will occur, we do not know." [...]

If the flip-over of the Earth's magnetic field is overdue, how long do you estimate it will be before it eventually happens?

Scientists believe that reversals of the Earth's magnetic field happen every 250,000 to 700,000 years. The time period over which this happens is thought to be around 5,000 years, although there is some evidence of previous reversals taking as little as 100 years. During a reversal the magnetic field strength will decrease. If this decrease is significant, there could be an increase in the amount of radiation (solar wind - particles from the Sun) as these are usually deflected around the Earth by the magnetic field. Navigation by compass may also become more difficult.

The last magnetic polar reversal appears to have been 780,000 years ago, which could mean that we are indeed very overdue for one. However, scientists are currently trying to simulate the motion of the Earth's liquid core in an attempt to predict exactly what happens during field reversal. The event does not seem to be very regular as you can see from the range given above, and since we are having a hard time trying to work out what exactly happens, accurately predicting the reversals is a long way away.

20 March 2003 In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.

The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The Sun's increasing output has only been monitored with precision since satellite technology allowed necessary observations. Willson is not sure if the trend extends further back in time, but other studies suggest it does. [...]

Some 138 members of Congress and more than 100 physician, health, environmental and consumer groups have formally asked President George W. Bush to tighten mercury restrictions within his air pollution plan, known as "Clear Skies."...

The primary health risk from mercury emerges when airborne mercury falls into surface waters where it can accumulate in streams and oceans. Bacteria in the water transform mercury into methylmercury, which fish absorb when they eat aquatic organisms and humans absorb when they eat fish.

Scientists have shown that methylmercury can cause brain and nerve damage and studies indicate children and women of childbearing age are at a disproportionate risk. [...]

Patches of mysterious shoe-melting, foot-roasting hot ground in parts of West Africa may have nothing to do with volcanic activity, as has been thought for decades.

Researchers have dug down and found evidence that the ground itself is burning and generating baked patches of ground in parts of the nation of Mali. What's burning, specifically, are buried layers of peat the combustible buried remains of vegetation which are apparently igniting spontaneously and may have been doing so for eons...

The team located the hottest area on the edge of a wide patch of seared ground exceeding 1,400 deg Fahrenheit (760 deg Celsius) - near Haribibi in the Lac Faguibine area west of Timbuktu, Mali. They then dug an exploratory trench through the hottest area. What they found was a flaming 1,526 F (830 C) layer of peat just a yard down. [...]

DENVER (AP) - Even as the fire danger eases across the Southwest, wildfires are breaking out in other Western states that until now had enjoyed the benefits of a cool, wet spring.

Scorching heat is sucking the moisture out of shrubs and trees, providing fuel for new fires in Oregon, Washington and Colorado. In all, 20 large fires were burning across the West on Wednesday...

The fire danger ranged from high to extreme in parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

ANCHORAGE - Hot summer weather is setting records in Anchorage.

The high of 84 degrees Tuesday set a new mark for July 8, breaking an 84-year-old record. It also turned out to be the warmest day ever recorded in Anchorage for the month of July, topping the 83 degrees reached July 11, 1953, said Dave Vonderheide, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

Tuesday was the fourth warmest day in Anchorage's recorded weather history, although it shares that distinction with three other days, all in one June or another, Vonderheide said.

The hottest day ever recorded in Anchorage was June 25, 1953, when it hit 86 degrees.

ASHFORD, Wash. (AP) -- The Elbe-Ashford Fire District plans to distribute free weather radios to about 900 households in the upper Nisqually River area this summer to help residents better prepare for volcanic mudflows off Mount Rainier.

"Considering that they don't have an emergency warning system, this is a big tool in their tool box," said Ted Buehner, warning coordinator meteorologist for the National Weather Service. [...]

The rare weather pattern [in Indiana] that is producing torrential rains resulting in record flooding isn't going anywhere soon, weather experts said.

And that means more rain in the forecast, likely until Friday. Thunderstorms again were expected to hit the area this afternoon and Thursday, tapering off Thursday night. [...]

"This is pretty unusual for any time," Sabones said. The St. Marys River breaking a crest record set in 1913 is "pretty significant," he said. [...] For the latest updates online, go here

Moisture coming in from the Gulf of Mexico dumped more than an inch of rain in parts of San Antonio this morning, causing minor flooding in some areas of the city.

Chuck Fehlis captured this image on his digital camera shortly before 11 a.m. today. It shows a black ring that National Weather Service officials first believed was a halo effect produced by the sun. The weather service later determined that an 'explosion caused by lightning' produced the ring...

Several people reported seeing the ring this morning shortly after a lightning bolt struck an area near North New Braunfels Avenue and Nacogdoches Road.

"I saw the lightning strike out the side of my eye, and when I turned to look, there was a plume of black smoke rising up ...with the circle of smoke on the top of it, Chris Yanas said in an e-mail to the San Antonio Express-News.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has ordered the stepping up of efforts to fight massive floods that have killed at least 370 people nationwide this year.

The central government also Friday warned local leaders they were responsible for ensuring that damage is minimized. [...]

Despite a rising death toll in the southern areas of Chongqing municipality and Guizhou, Hunan, Sichuan and Guangxi provinces, government officials appeared more concerned with flooding along the Huai River, where water levels have reached 10-year highs. [...]

Something is happening on Mars and it's so big you can see it through an ordinary backyard telescope. On July 1st a bright dust cloud spilled out of Hellas Basin, a giant impact crater on Mars' southern hemisphere. The cloud quickly spread and by the Fourth of July was 1100 miles wide--about one-fourth the diameter of Mars itself.

"The cloud can be seen now through a telescope as small as 6 inches," says Donald Parker, executive director of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO). "Its core is quite bright."

Parker has been tracking the cloud through his own 16-inch telescope. "A red filter helps," he notes. "Even a piece of red or orange gelatin held between the eye and ocular will improve the visibility of the dust."

Two years ago, a similar cloud from Hellas Basin grew until it circled the entire planet. Features on Mars long familiar to amateur astronomers--the dark volcanic terrain of Syrtis Major, for example--were hidden for months. "The planet looked like an orange billiard ball," recalls Parker. [...]

The death toll from massive floods crippling large parts of China jumped to 569 Friday with half a million homes destroyed as Chinese President Hu Jintao ordered increased efforts to fight the annual blight.

Up until July 10, more than 505,000 homes had collapsed and 1.33 million houses had been damaged by floods that have mainly occurred in central, east and southern China since mid-May, the Civil Affairs Ministry said in its latest report.

At least 2.29 million people have been evacuated while economic losses nationwide have risen to 39.87 billion yuan (4.8 billion dollars). [...]

WILLSHIRE, Ohio - President Bush issued a disaster declaration Friday for 25 counties in storm-ravaged Indiana as flood water began receding from hundreds of homes there and in neighboring Ohio.

The disaster declaration triggered the release of federal money to help victims of the heavy rain, tornadoes and flooding that have plagued northern Indiana and Ohio. [...]

The St. Marys River had dropped to about 25 feet Friday morning at Decatur, Ind., after cresting at 27 feet Wednesday, and the National Weather Service said it should fall below its flood stage of 17 feet on Sunday. [...]

At least 49 people have been killed over the past month by floods, landslides and lightning in monsoon rains that have ravaged Nepal, the home ministry said Thursday.

"We have information that at least 24 have died from floods and landslides since mid-June. Twenty-five people have been killed by lightning in the last 72 hours," home ministry spokesman Gopendra Bahadur Pandey told AFP.

He said hundreds of people have lost their homes in the monsoon, primarily in the low-lying and mid-mountain ranges in the east and center of the kingdom. [...]

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas - Tropical Storm Claudette headed for the Texas coast Saturday, with forecasters expecting the sluggish storm system to intensify to hurricane strength before landfall early Tuesday.

As of Saturday night, the storm was about 345 miles east of Brownsville and continuing at 8 mph toward the mouth of the Rio Grande. Maximum sustained winds were 50 mph, with higher gusts.

"It's actually slowing down right now," said Tim Speece, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Brownsville.

Speece said Claudette was expected to stay tropical storm strength through Sunday morning, then gather strength as it moves across the Gulf. [...]

On Aug. 27, 2003, Mars will be less than 34.65 million miles (55.76 million kilometers) away -- closer to our planet than it's been in nearly 60,000 years.

The view will be stupendous.

Track Mars' growing brightness with SPACE.com's exclusive Mars viewing maps and charts, updated monthly.

Mars in July, 2003: Mars during July looms ever nearer, brighter, and more imposing as it approaches its closest opposition in nearly 60,000 years and rendezvous with Earth in late August.

It rises about three hours after sunset on July 1, but less than two hours after by the 31st (which means toward the end of July, you can catch Mars late at night, after about 11 p.m. in the southeast).

Finding the Red Planet: Mars, the Roman God of War, is now easy to find. It is the unmistakable beacon of the pre-dawn sky and will soon be visible before midnight [...]

A raging fire in southern Arizona has affected amateur as well as professional astronomy.

For much of the past month, fire has threatened multiple observing sites located in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, Arizona. Tim Hunter, a local amateur astronomer and owner of 3towers Observatory stated, "Arizona amateur astronomers were quite worried the fires would harm the observatories on Mount Lemmon and Mount Bigelow. We have a tightly-knit community. Whether professional or amateur, we all love astronomy ."

Regarding amateur astronomy during the fires, Hunter said that the smoke and haze did overlie the city at various times, making it somewhat uncomfortable to be outside and making it all but impossible to observe, particularly for those who are on the east side of town nearest the fire.

"My good friend, amateur astronomer James McGaha, had to shut down his very active asteroid observing program for several days," Hunter explained. "He could easily see the fires in the canyons near him and the smoke was at times almost overwhelming."

The smoke also created a large cloud that seemed to gather water vapor, increasing the cloud and haze effects. [...]

At least 20 children have died in a winter cold spell that has hit Peru's southeastern Carabaya province, a local official said Sunday.

Entire families have been affected by the freezing conditions that have seen thermometers drop to minus-23 degrees Celsius (minus-nine degrees Fahrenheit), city official Alberto Quinonez said.

The Kaliningrad area (a Russian enclave on the Baltic coast) may face a marine disaster, local environmental officials warn as they report spotting patches of oil along the Kaliningrad coastline.

They track the oil pollution down to two sources. They say it may come either from a Chinese tanker that recently sank near the Danish island of Bornholm or from a tanker washed out in neutral waters.

The continuing oil spills may cause grave damage to the ecosystem of the area, including that of the famous Kurshskaya Kosa, a natural reserve on the UNESCO World Heritage list, the officials warn.

A RARE type of dragonfly has been discovered in Scotland for the first time by environmentalists, providing further evidence that global warming is helping some species move north.

The broad-bodied chaser, Libellula depressa, was spotted by Sophie Dacheux, Scottish Wildlife Trust contracts co-ordinator, while she was monitoring recent planting work carried out by conservation teams at Craiglockhart pond in Edinburgh.

Experts already had spotted a specimen depositing eggs near Carlisle this year, so it looks as if the dragonfly has flown north.

Scientists believe ever-warmer weather has dramatically extended the species' northern reach. [...]

WASHINGTON - Climatologist Patrick J. Michaels says fears of catastrophic global warming are scientifically unfounded and "alarmist." Any climate change that does occur would not affect Earth or its inhabitants in any significant way, he said.

"The science is settled in a very non-alarmist way," Michaels told CNSNews.com. He predicted that his message would not be well received by many in the climate debate.

"A non-alarmist way is politically very unpopular in Washington, D.C.," he said.

Michaels, author of the book "Satanic Gasses: Clearing the Air about Global Warming" and an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia, was the featured speaker at a luncheon sponsored by Cato Institute on Friday. [...]

Fifty-one people were feared dead after being buried by a mudslide in southwestern China's Sichuan province over the weekend, state media said today.

Rescuers recovered one body - that of a female tourist from Shanghai - after flash floods in a river valley dislodged a wall of mud and rocks and blocked roads leading to the site, according to the official publication China Daily.

Seasonal flooding in China has killed nearly 570 people this year and forced the evacuation of 2.3 million, according to Civil Affairs Ministry figures released last week.

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Weeks of heavy rain have caused at least three landslides along with heavy flooding in central and eastern China.

The landslides happened over the weekend in Tibet, Sichuan, and Hubei provinces, China's official Xinhua news agency said Monday. [...]

PALACIOS, Texas (AP) - Hurricane Claudette sloshed ashore on the Texas Gulf Coast on Tuesday, peeling off roofs, knocking out power and flooding low-lying areas before its whistling wind began to let up.

At least one death was reported, a 33-year-old woman in Victoria who was hit by a limb from a storm-weakened tree, authorities said. The Coast Guard had to rescue two men whose 92-foot shrimp boat sank.

Claudette became a hurricane, the first of the Atlantic storm season, early Tuesday when sustained wind around its eye reached 74 mph. By the time it hit land at midday, its sustained wind topped 80 mph and gusts of 88 mph were recorded at Wadsworth, site of the South Texas Project nuclear power plant. [...]

Climate change could imperil the unique creatures which have made their home in the inhospitable waters of Antarctica, scientists believe. [...]

The sealife which has developed there resembles some life forms around North America and Europe millions of years ago.

But global warming could allow predators from warmer seas to colonise the Antarctic.

If that happens, a highly sensitive sea floor community could vanish, the scientists say. [...]

PARIS (AP)--Rome is considering water rations. London will reward anyone who can invent an air conditioning system for the sweltering Tube. In Paris, the city's fountains have become wading pools.

Summertime has arrived with a vengeance in parts of Europe, forcing dehydrated tourists to run for cover as officials from England to Romania scramble to limit the damage from drought and heat.

In Paris, where the mercury rose to 93 degrees Tuesday, water vendors were out in force, ice cream parlors did brisk business and weary tourists took refuge just about every place they could.[...]

The higher temperatures had a silver lining for some parts of Europe. Places like England, Berlin and some Baltic countries were basking in uncommonly balmy conditions more reminiscent of summer in the Mediterranean.[...]

Thunderstorms swept across western France late Tuesday, causing at least one death and an unknown number of injuries, fire officials said. Southwest England was to have heavy rains Wednesday.

But scorching temperatures in Italy prompted authorities Tuesday to discuss whether to declare a state of emergency in the country's north because of a weekslong drought.[...]

Rome officials spoke about rationing water in dozens of the capital's districts, and Italian newspapers warned that fruit and vegetable prices could rise by 30 percent because output from parched fields was shrinking.[...]

Levels in some of Europe's leading rivers were dropping. German officials said the Rhine was at five-year lows, and ships along the Danube faced the risk of running aground in Romania.

The economic fallout was poised to hit agriculture too.

In Austria, farming groups warned that drought is likely to cut this summer's harvest of various crops--such as grains, peas and corn--in many places down to about 60 percent of normal levels.

At least four brush fires broke out on Corsica on Tuesday, prompting firefighters to fan out across the French Mediterranean island to battle the blazes.[...]

A team of UK astronomers have announced the discovery that some supernovae have bad habits -- they belch out huge quantities of 'smoke' known as cosmic dust. This solves a mystery more than 10 billion years in the making. The new observations, published on 17th July in the journal 'Nature', answer long-standing questions about the origin of the first solid particles ever to form in the Universe.

The team measured the cold cosmic dust in 'Cassiopeia A', the remnant of a supernova explosion in our own Galaxy, about 11,000 light years from Earth. The amount of dust was a thousand times what had been previously detected, suggesting that these powerful explosions are one of the most efficient ways to create cosmic dust. This also answers the riddle of how large quantities of dust recently discovered in the early universe were formed.

Unlike household dust, cosmic 'dust' actually consists of tiny solid grains (mostly carbon and silicates) floating around in interstellar space, with similar sizes to the particles in cigarette smoke. The presence of dust grains around young stars helps them to form and they are also the building blocks of planets. [...]

WHITERIVER, Ariz. - Firefighters worried about wind, lightning and a lack of rain Wednesday as they battled a blaze that forced thousands of people to leave their homes on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. [...]

Fires also were active in Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Oregon and Washington, the National Interagency Fire Center said.

Four people died and up to 80 were injured in violent summer storms that have lashed western France, while the downpours started drifting across to sticky southern Britain yesterday. [...]

In France, as well as the four weather-related fatalities on Tuesday night, three people were reported missing after the storms tore across the region between Bordeaux and Biarritz, felling pine trees and devastating camp sites and caravan parks along the coast. Winds of 100mph (160kph) and hailstones the size of golf balls left 100,000 homes in the area without electricity and interrupted train services. [...]

Over 9,000 people had to flee their homes in hills behind France's picturesque Mediterranean coast overnight as two forest fires spread over a large area of countryside, rescue officials revealed. [...]

The biggest blaze consumed some 9,000 hectares (22,500 acres) of brush and pine woods in the Maures hills behind Saint-Raphael in the Var region, one of the country's premier tourist destinations. [...]

HELENA (AP) - A fire that started in Idaho west of Wisdom became a Montana fire Saturday as it burned deeper into heavy stands of timber on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.

Several other fires around the state also expanded overnight, and the attack on a new fire near Glacier National Park was taken over by an interagency team of expert fire managers.

The Blackwall Fire in extreme western Montana doubled in size to 900 acres by Saturday, all of the growth coming on the Montana side of the border.

Violent storms swept through central Illinois early Friday, damaging homes, covering lawns with quarter-sized hail and dumping up to three inches of rain. [...]

Heavy storms and golf ball-sized hail snarled rush-hour traffic in the Chicago area Thursday afternoon and caused power outages for about 160,000 Commonwealth Edison customers. About 50,000 were still without service Friday morning, spokesman Tim Lindberg said. [...]

At least five people were killed Tuesday as Typhoon Imbudo hit the Philippines with peak sustained winds of nearly 200 kilometers (nearly 120 miles) an hour, officials said.

The strongest typhoon to strike the Philippines in five years toppled power pylons and uprooted trees as it reached land on the northern town of Palanan in mid-morning, blocking roads and blacking out a wide area of the north. [...]

German farmers, sweating like much of Europe through one of the worst heatwaves in decades, could lose up to 80 percent of their crops in some cases, the head of the German farming association said Monday. [...]

Temperatures rose to near 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) on Sunday in Germany, the hottest day of the year so far.

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. - A wildfire destroyed a house and four outbuildings and forced about 250 people to flee as it roared across rolling, oak-studded hills.

The blaze was 30 percent contained early Monday after charring 1,500 acres near the community of Santa Margarita, said California Department of Forestry dispatcher Corrin Clark. [...]

Fires also were active Monday in Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming, the National Interagency Fire Center said.

German farmers, sweating like much of Europe through one of the worst heatwaves in decades, could lose up to 80 percent of their crops in some cases, the head of the German farming association said Monday. [...]

Temperatures rose to near 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) on Sunday in Germany, the hottest day of the year so far.

OSLO (Reuters) - With the world sweltering through one of the hottest years on record, some icy bastions have been getting frostier in defiance of global warming.

The rare cool spots, also from Canada to China, cause headaches for policy makers seeking to impose expensive measures to curb emissions from cars and factories blamed for blanketing the globe and driving up temperatures. [...]

And experts say that apparent anomalies, such as the growth of glaciers in Norway in the 1990s, can often be explained by a wider picture of global warming because of increased snowfall.

"When the oceans get warmer, you get more evaporation so you create more clouds. Then you can have more precipitation and in some areas it can be in the form of snow," said Josefino Comiso, a senior scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre.

He said that his research, for instance, indicated that snow was getting deeper over higher parts of Greenland. Ice and snow in some regions of Antarctica was also getting thicker. [...]

RAYMERTOWN, N.Y. -- Three young girls found a frog with no eyes in a pond near their home in Raymertown in rural Rensselaer County, about 15 miles northeast of Albany. [...]

A group of other girls found a turtle with two heads in the Rensselaer County town of Poestenkill in May.

PARIS -- A fire broke out on the top of the Eiffel Tower on Tuesday, sending black smoke pouring from the 1,069-foot Paris landmark and forcing the evacuation of a stream of visitors.

The fire -- which erupted in a knot of cables in a telecommunications room just below the tower's broadcast antenna -- was put out after 40 minutes, said fire official Christian Decolloredo. [...]

Across a large swath of eastern, central and south-western France, the fields are turning yellow, the streams and rivers are drying up. Forest fires have devastated more than 40,000 acres of forest between Toulon and Saint Tropez and are still blazing in southern Corsica.

France has been struck by its worst drought in 27 years. In some eastern regions, without rain since February, records suggest this is the driest spell for a century.

The French government this week agreed emergency aid for cattle and sheep farmers, including the use of scores of trains to transport hay and straw to the most stricken areas in the Massif Central and in eastern France.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - [...] The storm, packing wind of up to 100 mph, killed at least six people and knocked out electricity for hundreds of thousands of customers.

Memphis was among the hardest hit, with hundreds of trees down, homes and businesses damaged and entertainment landmarks endangered. [...]

WYNNE -- An early morning thunderstorm left many without power in Wynne [Arkansas] Tuesday. [...]

"We had winds between 75-100 miles per hour that came through eastern Arkansas this morning," Thompson told The Sun Tuesday. "As of 5 p.m. we had about 7,500 customers without power; 2,000 in Forrest City; 1,100 in Hughes; 1,300 in Wynne; 1,700 in Marion; and, 1,800 in Earle." [...]

"We had a lightning and wind storm move through here at about 6 a.m.," Horton told The Sun. "We have scattered outages all over due to high winds. I think it was just sudden straight-line winds, to the best of my knowledge. It's kind of unusual, especially for this time of year." [...]

PITTSBURGH -- The Pennsylvania National Guard is on limited state active duty to assist with storm clean up Wednesday.

The storms caused downed trees, and flooding. More than 150,000 residents are without power, and may be until Friday. [...]

A company called TransOrbital of La Jolla, Calif., is seriously considering the idea of putting storage facilities on Earth's only natural satellite, says a report in PC Magazine. [...]

The moon is a pretty safe place to store your data," said Mr. Laurie. "Sept. 11 caused people to think about what data backup really means, and there is also always the threat of a natural disaster here on earth, such as a small asteroid hitting the planet." [...]

Carbon stored beneath the Earth's crust could be released by volcanic eruptions (NASA)

A vast reservoir of carbon is stashed beneath the Earth's crust and could be released by a major volcanic eruption, unleashing a mass extinction of the kind that last occurred 200 million years ago, German geologists report. [...]

A British scientist has been attacked and killed by a leopard seal while on a snorkelling expedition off the coast of Antarctica.

Kirsty Brown, 28, is believed to have drowned on Tuesday afternoon when the seal struck her and dragged her underwater, causing contact to be lost for a few vital minutes. [...]

BOISE, Idaho - Two firefighters were overrun by flames and killed soon after they were dropped by helicopter to battle a fast-moving blaze in a national forest in central Idaho, officials said Wednesday.

The fire in the Salmon-Challis National Forest about 130 miles south of Missoula, Mont., was caused by lightning and first reported Sunday night. Hot temperatures and wind blew it up from 120 acres to about 1,000 acres Tuesday night, when the two died, officials said. [...]

Wildfires this year have charred some 1.46 million acres nationwide. That remains a quieter-than-average wildfire season.

Other states with large fires included Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

The sweep of colours shows minute variations in the Earth's gravitational field.

If you were to fly over the red areas, you would be tugged ever so slightly downwards; the blues mark regions where the planet's attraction is much weaker. [...]

PASADENA, California -- The prospect of finding life on Mars is alive and well.

Despite its extremely hostile environment, the red planet may indeed be an asylum for microorganisms. That viewpoint is gaining support, thanks to scientists looking for life in a range of extreme conditions right here on planet Earth.

Experts that are on the trail of finding life on Mars are taking part this week in the Sixth International Conference on Mars sponsored by the California Institute of Technology, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Lunar and Planetary Institute, NASA, and the Planetary Society.

BEIJING (Reuters) - One of the most powerful typhoons in years ripped into south China, killing at least four people and injuring 16, the official China Daily said on Friday.

Over one million people were affected by the storm, the seventh typhoon to hit coastal areas in China this year, it said. Winds of up to 115 mph pounded the southern province of Guangdong when Imbudo hit land at noon local time Thursday.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Traffic lights were out all over town. Fallen trees littered city streets. And the death toll from this week's powerful storm that raked through Memphis continued to rise.

The storm, which hit early Tuesday, was blamed on a fourth death Wednesday. Residents were still picking up from damage caused by 100-mph winds and utility crews from surrounding counties arrived to help restore power.

Severe weather reports across the [United States]:

* Flooding occurred in much of Florida and western Texas with the heavy rainfall over the day. In Harris County, Texas, over 3.00 inches of rain fell in only 1 and 1/2 hours.

* Hail was reported for Florida and a few locations in New York and Vermont. Hail as large as 1 inch fell in Vermont from the heavy thunderstorms.

* Scattered strong wind reports occurred in Montana, coastal Texas, Florida and New York. One wind gust near El Campo, Texas, saw a man get trapped under a grain trailer tarp when a strong wind gust blew him off the trailer.

* The all time record was broken in Salt lake City of days of at least 100 degrees yesterday with a 10th consecutive day over the century mark. The old record of 9 was set from July 14th through July 22nd of 1960.

* Records set from across the West Thursday [...]

The lightning is reported to have struck 100,000 times in Norway over the last 24 hours. [...]

Dahlsett stresses that the amount of strokes is not unique:

"Still, it is a lot of lightning and we are not too far off the record", he said.

If there are more than 200,000 strokes of lightning over the next 24 hours, it would break the old record.

"I think we may reach that number", Dahlsett said.[...]

PHOENIX (AP) -- It's so hot windshields are shattering or falling out, dogs are burning their paws on the pavement, and candles are melting indoors. [...]

With the average high for the first three weeks of the month at 110 degrees, Phoenix is on track to have the hottest July since the National Weather Service started keeping records in 1896. The average July high is 104. [...]

LONDON (AFP) - Human induced global climate change is a weapon of mass destruction at least as dangerous as nuclear, chemical or biological arms, a leading British climate scientist warned.

John Houghton, a former key member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Monday that the impacts of global warming are such that "I have no hesitation in describing it as a weapon of mass destruction." He said the United States, in an "epic" abandonment of leadership, was largely responsible for the threat. "Like terrorism, this weapon knows no boundaries," Houghton said. "It can strike anywhere, in any form -- a heatwave in one place, a drought or a flood or a storm surge in another"

The US mainland was struck by 562 tornados in May, killing 41 people, he said, but the developing world was hit even harder. For example, pre-monsoon temperatures this year in India reached a blistering 49C (120F), 5C (9F) above normal.

"Once this killer heatwave began to abate, 1,500 people lay dead -- half the number killed outright in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre," Houghton said. He said British Prime Minister Tony Blair begun to face up to this, rhetorically at least, but "nowadays everyone knows that the US is the world's biggest polluter, and that with only one 20th of the world's population it produces a quarter of its greenhouse gas emissions." "But the US government, in an abdication of leadership of epic proportions, is refusing to take the problem seriously -- and Britain, presumably because Blair wishes not to offend George Bush -- is beginning to fall behind too," Houghton said.

Three people have died in forest fires that have swept through countryside near the French Riviera - the first fatalities of this summer's devastating blazes.

President Jacques Chirac has announced severe penalties for those caught deliberately starting fires.

Two of those killed were a British couple who were found dead in woods outside the village of La Garde Freinet. [...]

BUCHAREST, Romania - A heat wave and a drought are gouging a multibillion-dollar hole into Europe's economy, crippling shipping, shriveling crops and driving up the cost of electricity.

In Romania, dredgers dug into the Danube on Monday to deepen the river bed for hundreds of stalled barges, while in Croatia, five tons of dead fish polluted a lake.

Levels on the Danube were under two yards near Bazias in southwestern Romania, more than a yard below the minimum needed for barge traffic. At the southern port of Zimnicea, dredgers scooped up sludge from the river bed Monday, attempting to deepen navigation channels for the 251 ships waiting to move upstream to key markets in central and northern Europe.

Weeks of heat and dryness also choked other parts of the Balkans and the rest of Europe.

Croatia's major rivers - the Sava, Drava, Kupa and Danube - were reported at their lowest levels ever, threatening water and electricity shortages, while Serbia's ecology minister, Adjelka Mihajlov said his republic's major rivers were at their lowest in 100 years.

Heralding potential ecological disaster, Grigore Baboianu, the director of the Danube Delta Reservation, said 10 percent of the delta's unique wetlands, home to rare waterfowl and other animals, had dried up, while about 40 percent of the delta's water had evaporated.

Upstream on the Danube, ships traveling from Austria to Germany were not carrying full loads because of low water levels. The drought also affected barge traffic on other rivers - the Elbe was impassable despite some weekend rain, and the Rhine was only deep enough to support lightly loaded boats. Many goods normally moving on the Elbe between Hamburg and the Czech Republic were offloaded and put on trucks.

Hartmut Rhein, of Germany's Deutsche Binneschifffahrt AG, said the increased costs of using trucks or canals instead of normal river traffic will mean higher prices for heavy equipment, scrap metal, building materials and grain.

Although there were no shortages yet, some shipments are "just taking longer and getting more expensive," Rhein said.

The worst drought in years, brought on by a prolonged heat wave that has kept temperatures well above 86 degrees for weeks, agriculture ministers from the European Union (news - web sites) were demanding compensation from EU headquarters for affected farmers.

Farm lobby groups in the European Union say the drought has cost more than $5.7 billion in losses. Hardest hit within the EU have been Italy, France, Germany, Portugal and Austria, where farmers' representatives warn of harvests up to 60 percent below normal yields for some crops.

Lack of rain beyond occasional brief thunder storms have also slashed crops outside the EU - in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia and Romania. In Hungary alone, the government estimated drought-induced agricultural losses at about $434 million as corn stalks wither and fruit orchard leaves turn yellow.

After weeks of forest fires, dipping river levels and lack of rain, the drought made front-page news in parts of Europe.

"France is thirsty," read the lead story of Le Figaro newspaper Monday, as residents coped with limits on car washing, watering lawns and filling swimming pools.

Farmers in 55 of France's 96 departments were on alternate-day irrigation plans and were requested to regularly report the status of their water meters to local authorities, Le Figaro said. Violations carried fines of up to $1,720 for a first-time infraction.

Southern and eastern France have been hard hit by the drought, without significant rainfall in about two months. As river levels dip, several regions have banned fishing, including the central Loire and southern Hautes-Alpes departments until Sept. 21.

Forest fires fueled by the lack of rain and humidity have burned through 50,000 acres since the beginning of the month.

The Danube, which flows across 10 European countries, is also an essential source of electricity, supplying water to hydroelectric and nuclear power plants across the region. The volume of the Danube was at 3,066 cubic yards a second, the lowest in 160 years, according to Romanian shipping companies.

"A trip (to Western Europe) that normally took six days now takes three weeks, and we're loading only at half capacity," said Victor Crihana, director of Trans-Europa, an Austrian-Romanian shipping company.

Workers at Romania's only nuclear power plant at the southern port of Cernavoda were ready to shut down its reactor if water levels fell another 3.3 feet.

In Italy, where a heat wave and accompanying drought have lasted weeks, the national grid was overloaded by the use of air conditioners, causing summer blackouts for the first time in over 20 years. The Po River, which feeds many lesser rivers in northern Italy, was at near record low levels.

Rivers in the forest areas in northwestern Croatia were so low that some systems were pumping only mud instead of water and residents had to have bottled water delivered to their doorsteps. [...]

A rogue male elephant has killed three people and seriously injured one in a two-hour rampage in northern Thailand and remains on the loose, police said Wednesday. [...]

Such attacks are rare in Thailand. Thailand is home to some 4,200 elephants, including 2,257 in the wild, according to forestry department figures.

PASADENA, California - The two moons of Mars - Phobos and Deimos - could be the byproducts of a breakup of a huge moon that once circled the red planet, according to a new theory.

The capture of a large Martian satellite may have taken place during or shortly after the formation of the planet, with Phobos and Deimos now the surviving remnants.

Scientists monitoring the highest levels of the atmosphere say they have detected a slowing in the rate of destruction of the Earth's protective veil of ozone -- the first sign that the phasing out of chemicals that harm the ozone layer is having a restorative effect.

[...] The study's lead author, Michael Newchurch, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, cautioned that the effects had been found only in the uppermost stratosphere, where less than 20 percent of the ozone layer is situated.

He also stressed that what has been detected is just a notable slowing of the rate of ozone loss, not a reversal. It will be at least four or five decades before the ozone layer rebuilds to the levels seen before the damage started, he said.

We may be pushing the stratosphere away.

The sky isn't falling in, say scientists - it is rising. And it's our fault.

The top of the troposphere - the atmosphere's lowest layer - has risen by several hundred metres since 1979, mostly because of transport and industrial emissions, reckon Ben Santer, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and colleagues.[...]

Something's cooking in Yellowstone National Park, and it's not just the weather.

At Norris Geyser Basin, new steam vents and mud pots are popping up, some geysers are draining themselves and Porkchop geyser has erupted for the first time since 1989.

All that, and the ground temperature has risen to 200 degrees Fahrenheit in places, hot enough to boil water at Yellowstone's altitude.

That's also hot enough to cook eggs on the ground, not to mention kill trees and other plants.

Things are changing rapidly enough that the National Park Service has closed about half of the famous geyser basin to visitors due to safety concerns.

There are 12,500 feet of trails in the basin on the west side of the park, and 5,800 of them are now closed until "conditions have returned to acceptable ground temperatures and stable surface conditions," the Park Service announced this week.

"It sounds like they're having some growing pains down there," said Tim McDermott, codirector of the Thermal Biology Institute at Montana State University.[...]

The increased activity was first noticed July 11 and Porkchop geyser erupted July 16, the first time it's blown in 14 years.

Prior to 1989, that geyser was in continuous eruption for four years, a period that ended with an "explosion," the Park Service said.[...]

This will likely be the hottest summer in Shanghai in 70 years, according to local forecasters.

Today's high is expected to reach 37 degrees Celsius, marking the 20th day this year the mercury has topped 35 degrees. The record for days with temperatures above 35 degrees was set in 1934, when the city suffered through 23 scorchers, according to the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau. [...]

Smoke and flames rise from the Robert Fire on Wednesday, July 30, 2003, at Glacier National Park, Mont. WEST GLACIER, Mont. (July 30, 4:09 p.m. ADT) - A wildfire menacing Glacier National Park paused Wednesday, but uncooperative weather kept firefighters from making a full attack on the 14,200-acre blaze that has forced hundreds of people from their homes.

Firefighters had to suspend their backburn efforts until just the right combination of humidity, temperature and wind developed, said fire information officer Bill Beebe.

In addition, a weather inversion held smoke close to the ground, making conditions too dangerous for helicopters to fly their spot attacks for much of the day, he said.

The forecast for Wednesday afternoon called for winds gusting to 22 mph and temperatures up to 100 degrees in Glacier National Park, whose spectacular mountain views make it one of the nation's most popular parks [...]