|
Signs Supplement: Climate
and Earth Changes
June 2004
MARENGO, Ind. (AP) - The death
toll from a chain of Memorial Day holiday thunderstorms and tornadoes
stood at 10 as residents of the South and Midwest struggled with
power outages, debris and water-logged streets.
Storms produced heavy rain, high winds and dozens of tornados
along an arc from Louisiana to New England. More thunderstorms moved
across parts of the Great Lakes states Monday.
Gov. Joe Kernan surveyed the damage from a helicopter Monday,
a day after the storms that destroyed dozens of homes, and said
the town of Marengo "just got clobbered.'' The National Weather
Service estimated winds up to 170 mph blew through the town of 800
people.
Two Indiana National Guard units were expected to arrive Tuesday
in Marengo, about 35 miles northwest of Louisville, Ky., to move
heavy debris to help reopen roads, said Lt. Col. Larry Powers, a
Guard spokesman.
Kernan has extended a disaster emergency he issued last week for
the entire state. He said he expected Federal Emergency Management
Agency officials to arrive Tuesday to begin reviewing whether areas
would be eligible for disaster aid. [...] |
Jordan has launched an appeal
to the international community to save the Dead Sea from extinction.
The Dead Sea's days as a tourist resort could be numbered.
It said the world's saltiest body of water, found at the lowest
point on the earth's surface, will disappear in 50 years' time unless
more water is pumped into it.
It has proposed that nearly two billion cubic metres of water
per year be pumped from the Red Sea into the Dead Sea. |
A study of sunlight bounced between
the Earth and the Moon shows that during the 80s and 90s the Earth
reflected less of our star's light out into space.
But the trend seems to have been reversed during the past three
years.
Researchers think this may be because of the natural variability
in cloud cover, which can act to push back the Sun's heat and light
away from Earth.
The effect must be taken into account in estimates of future global
warming, they report in the journal Science. |
Authorities in the Swiss town
of Thun have put the local population on flood alert after the nearby
lake rose to danger level Thursday because of heavy rain. Lake Thun,
25 kilometres (15 miles) south of the Swiss capital Bern and on
the edge of the Alps, reached the high water level of 558.3 metres
above sea-level early on Thursday and was expected to overflow later
in the day, town authorities said in a statement.
Fire services and civil protection units worked overnight to help
people seal their ground floor entrances and cellars, and the 41,700
inhabitants were advised to listen to the radio.
"If the level carries on rising, we will ask for help from
neighbouring towns," Thun official Hans Ueli Gerber told the
Swiss news agency ATS.
The river Aar, which flows through Bern, has also risen in recent
days because of heavy rain in the Swiss Alps. |
The International Federation of
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Tuesday trebled an appeal for
funds for the victims of the deadly floods that have lashed Haiti
and the Dominican Republic. [...]
The federation put the death toll from the floods that swept through
towns and villages in the two countries that make up the island
of Hispaniola at an estimated 2,000 people. [...]
According to an official tally, between the two countries, 1,406
people are known to have died and many have been buried in mass
graves. Nearly 30,000 people have been forced from their homes. |
Eleven people were killed and
five injured after heavy rainstroms caused a large landslide in
China's southwestern Guizhou province, state press reported Tuesday.[...]
In a separate landslide further north in Sichuan province, at
least three people were killed and four hurt when a four-story residential
building collapsed in Chongqing municipality on Monday. |
The US government is coming under
increasing pressure from its own companies to sign up to the Kyoto
protocol on climate change, EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstroem
said Wednesday.
"Slowly but steadily things are also changing in the US,"
she told reporters. "It is coming from the bottom up. There
are also big American companies or multinational companies (which)
look to Europe. "They understand that they will have to do
something about greenhouse (gas) emissions and climate change. There
is a completely different scenario and political understanding of
this problem," the Swedish official said.
US President George W. Bush, in one of his first acts on taking
office, turned his back on the Kyoto protocol in March 2001 arguing
the commitments it enforced on industrialised nations would be too
costly for the US economy. After the US withdrawal, Russia now holds
the agreement's future in its hands under its complex ratification
arithmetic.
Under the protocol, countries are supposed to slash their emissions
of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in a bid to stop the
warming of the earth's atmosphere.
In February the US Defense Department downplayed
a report on climate change that it had commissioned that warned
that abrupt climate change "could bring the planet to the edge
of anarchy" as countries war over dwindling resources.
Wallstroem said: "But from the administration of course we
have no other signals... But ultimately, they will have to and especially
if a majority of countries around the world will actually ratify
the Kyoto protocol." |
One of the UK's best-known scientists,
Professor James Lovelock, says only a catastrophe will prompt the
world to tackle the threat of climate change.
He says the global climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, is simply
an attempt to appease a self-regulating Earth system.
Professor Lovelock thinks the Earth's attempts
to restore its equilibrium may eliminate civilisation and most humans.
[...] Professor Lovelock said: "In the late 1930s when I
was a student we knew that war was imminent, but there was no clear
idea of what to do about it.
Future fears
"I find a marked similarity between attitudes over 60 years
ago and those now towards the threat of global [climate] change.
"Most of us think that something unpleasant may soon happen
but we are as confused over what to do about it as we were in 1938.
"Our response so far is just like that in 1938, an attempt
to appease. The Kyoto agreement is uncannily like that of Munich,
with politicians out to show that they do respond but in reality
are bidding for time."
Professor Lovelock said global warming was "the response
of our outraged planet", and the consequences for humanity
were likely to be far worse than any war.
"We are at war with the Earth itself", he said. "We
are Gaia's target now." Professor Lovelock added that we had
still to wake up to the seriousness of our plight, with some people
continuing to deny that global change even existed.
Heeding them, or the deep Greens who rejected science, would allow
the planet to return to its normal state of health, "but by
eliminating the majority of humans and probably civilization as
well". |
FREDERICTON - Wild Atlantic salmon
stocks on North America's east coast are at a historic low, a report
from the Atlantic Salmon Federation said on Thursday.
Without strong domestic and international action, wild salmon
could eventually disappear from its North American habitats altogether,
according to the New Brunswick-based federation.
"Since 1974, we have gone from more than 1.5 million salmon
to fewer than 500,000 today," Bill Taylor, president of the
federation, said in Fredericton. [...] |
DALLAS - Nearly 300,000 customers
remained without power Thursday after hurricane-force winds, heavy
rains and hail the size of tennis balls hit northern Texas on Tuesday
and Wednesday.
Utility officials said the storms were the area's worst ever in
terms of lost power — at one point leaving 500,000 customers
in the dark. Insurance officials estimated the damage at $100 million.
Tens of thousands also were without power in Louisiana, Arkansas,
Oklahoma and West Virginia as a result of storms this week. [...] |
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A levee
broke in an agricultural area 80 miles east of San Francisco on
Thursday, sending water flooding over fields and forcing the evacuation
of workers, state officials said.
fficials said the break near Stockton, California, occurred early
in the morning and forced the evacuation of farm workers and equipment
in the sparsely populated area but did not appear to threaten any
homes. [...] |
"There are 36 factors that
affect the tides, from the Earth's proximity to the sun and the
moon to the moon's angle in relation to the equator, said Richard
Strickland, who teaches oceanography at the University of Washington.
Every 19 years, those factors line up just so - creating the lowest
low tides and the greatest differences between low and high tides,
he said. Virtually everywhere outside of the tropics will have seen
the lowest low tides in 19 years between about Friday and Sunday,
he said." |
GAVIOTA, Calif. - A wildfire
in Southern California scorched more than 6,000 acres and forced
the evacuation of hundreds of people from a gated community nearby,
authorities said Sunday.
The flames spread quickly through a line of narrow canyons and
steep hillsides covered with dense, old-growth brush, burning on
both sides of Highway 101 about 27 miles north of Santa Barbara.
Fire department spokesman Barry Peckham said temperatures in the
area were expected to reach 90 degrees, making it easier for the
fire to spread.
"There's quite a potential for extreme fire behavior,"
he said.
More than 300 firefighters battled the blaze, which was reported
shortly before noon on Saturday, said Charlie Johnson, spokesman
for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department. [...] |
Scientists have found a series
of vents in the Nordic Seas that may have burped enough methane
to cause massive global warming 55 million years ago.
The early Eocene Period witnessed a dramatic increase in temperature,
which was triggered by a sudden surge of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere.
But just where these gases came from has been something of a mystery.
Nature magazine reports the discovery of gas vents dating from
the right time and which could represent the source. |
FORT WORTH, Texas - Thunderstorms
battered northern Texas with heavy rain and wind up to 70 mph during
the night, flooding streets and homes and knocking out power in
areas where some people were still in the dark because of last week's
violent weather.
An estimated 6 inches of rain fell through early Monday in parts
of Fort Worth, Denton and communities along Interstate 35, which
was blocked by high water in places. Three to 5 inches of rain fell
in an area from Jacksboro toward Decatur.
People had to be rescued from stalled cars and from homes flooded
by water 3 to 6 feet deep in Fort Worth and Tarrant County late
Sunday, authorities said.
Wind gusted to as high as 70 mph at Saginaw late Sunday, the National
Weather Service (news - web sites) said.
The storms knocked out electrical service for large areas of the
Fort Worth suburbs of White Settlement and Benbrook, authorities
reported.
Last week, about 500,000 customers were blacked out by severe
storms Tuesday and Wednesday in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan
area. Fewer than 500 of those homes and businesses were still without
power Monday in Tarrant County, Grand Prairie and DeSoto, said Scott
Withers, spokesman for TXU Electric Delivery.
Just over 5 inches of rain fell in adjacent areas of southern
Oklahoma, but there were no immediate reports of flooding or damage,
state and local officials said. |
AT 336 PM MDT...THE HIGH TEMPERATURE
AT DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT REACHED 98 DEGREES. THIS BREAKS THE
130 YEAR OLD RECORD OF 97 DEGREES WHICH WAS SET IN 1874. |
Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau
issued an alert Monday as tropical storm Conson approached the island,
bringing with it the possibility of torrential rains that could
trigger landslides and floods.
At 8:00 pm (1200 GMT) the center of the storm was 560 kilometers
south-southwest of Oranpi, the southernmost tip of Taiwan.
With a radius of 150 kilometers, the storm was moving north-northeast
at an hourly speed of 14 kilometers.
The bureau said the edge of the storm may swipe at Taiwan late
Tuesday if it kept moving at the present direction and speed. |
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Humanity's
closest relative the chimpanzee could be extinct in around 50 years
because it is hunted for meat and threatened by deforestation and
disease, researchers say.
Only 8,000 remain of the most vulnerable chimpanzee subspecies,
the Pan troglodytes vellerosus, which is found predominantly in
Nigeria, and it could be extinct in two decades, according to a
study.
The study was presented at a conference of The Pan African Sanctuaries
Alliance (PASA) in Johannesburg. PASA sanctuaries care for orphaned
or injured great apes. [...] |
Spain has sent nine planes to
Morocco to combat a plague of locusts that is sweeping the southern
Maghreb and threatens to head for Europe. Clouds of desert locusts
have darkened Moroccan skies for months in the worst such plague
since 1986.
Light aircraft sent by the Spanish foreign ministry are combating
the creatures with insecticide, spraying hundreds of thousands of
hectares from the Atlantic coastline to the Algerian border.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warns that if
the plague is not stopped, the locusts - which can measure up to
15cm - could devastate crops throughout southern Morocco, Algeria
and Tunisia. With a favourable wind, they could reach Europe where
they would be more difficult to control, the FAO says.
Desert locusts, or Shistocerca gregaria, travel in swarms millions
strong and devour any vegetation in their path. The creatures' usual
habitat is the Sahara, and they move between north and south according
to the season.
But if the wind changes, they can head north across the Mediterranean.
In 1956, locusts reached Extremadura in south-western Spain and
in 1987 they descended upon Rome. [...]
Spain mounted the aid project as a matter of urgency, said Juan
Peña, Spain's aid and co-operation organiser in Morocco.
"It's in the interests of both our countries to stop the locusts
crossing the Gibraltar Strait," Mr Peña said.
"It's much easier to control the plague in the desert than
in Spain." He recalled his experience of the last plague, between
1984 and 1987. "If you get caught up in a cloud of locusts
you have to stop the car because they blot out the sun," he
said yesterday. [...] |
Earth's current climate may last
for at least another 15,000 years, barring any effects from human
intervention, according to a new study of Antarctic ice published
in the latest issue of the journal Nature. |
MANILA (Reuters) - A tornado ripped
through a town in the central Philippines, destroying hundreds of
flimsy houses and killing at least two people, the national disaster
agency and the coast guard said on Thursday.
A dozen residents from the coastal town of Dulag on Leyte island
were reported missing.
The tornado, which lasted 35 minutes on Wednesday morning, destroyed
about 900 houses, leaving one elderly man dead and four people wounded,
agency officials said. [...] |
Fierce storms lashed northern
Germany Wednesday, snarling traffic and sparking hundreds of fires,
authorities said.
Fallen trees and branches blocked rail lines and roads and damaged
roofs and cars while heavy rains flooded several streets.
Rail travel between the ports of Hamburg and Kiel was disrupted
and trains bound from Hamburg to Berlin had to be rerouted. Traffic
on the autobahns around Hamburg was backed up for several kilometers
(miles).
Lightning was believed to have started a fire at a Dow chemical
plant in the city of Stade, when hydrogen-based exhaust from a ventilation
pipe on the roof ignited. The company said the blaze caused no damage.
Electrical storms led to a fire at a wind farm in the town of
Wulfshagen. Firefighters let the windmill's rotor burn because they
were unable to reach it with hoses.
In Hamburg, the fire brigade took 260 emergency calls while large
swathes of the state of Schleswig-Holstein on the Danish border
lost electricity.
Meteorologists warned of further storms in the eastern states
of Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg and said tornadoes were possible. |
Three women and a man were killed
by in a lightning strike in central Pakistan in an early monsoon
thunderstorm, police and hospital officials said Wednesday.
"Four persons including three women died and more than a
dozen people were injured by lightning," Aftab Ahmed Shaikh,
senior medical officer in Leiah district told AFP. [...] |
CHARLOTTETOWN - Maritime Electric
said crews will be working through Wednesday to restore power to
parts of Prince Edward Island.
At noontime around 3,100 customers were without power. A lightning
storm earlier in the day is being blamed for the outages. [...] |
Facing another hot and dry summer,
China is sounding the alarm bell over its worsening water shortage
and the very real effect it has already started to have on the economy,
state media said Wednesday.
The bad news is that China's water supply is under greater pressure
than ever, and the even worse news is that the situation will go
on deteriorating until 2030, when the population peaks at 1.6 billion,
the China Daily said.
"By then, China may be plunged into a water crisis,"
said Suo Lisheng, vice minister of water resources. [...] |
BEIJING, June.12 (Xinhuanet) --
In the midst of the nation's first long heat wave for the summer,
visiting a location in China's north sounds likes the ideal solution
-- but just make sure that place is not Beijing, China Daily reported
on Saturday.
Sweltering weather prevailed over the country's capital again
on Friday with a top of 38 C, even higher than cities further south
and inland which are noted for their hot temperatures. |
DES MOINES, Iowa - Tornadoes and
severe thunderstorms rolled across northern Iowa Friday, causing
damage to some farms but no injuries, authorities said.
About five tornadoes touched down in rural Clay County amid heavy
thunderstorms in northwest Iowa. [...]
The storms damaged buildings on some farms, but most of the damage
was to crops, the sheriff said. [...] |
Forty-nine dolphins have been
found dead on beaches in Mauritania, the deputy head of the northwest
African country's oceanography and fishing institute, Mika Diop,
told AFP here Friday.
The dolphins' carcasses were found early this week on beaches
in southern Mauritania, near the border with Senegal.
A team from the oceanography institute had seen four dead dolphins
on the beach on Mboyo island, seven kilometers (4 miles) from the
Senegalese border on Monday, and the following day found the carcasses
of 45 more dolphins nearby, said Diop.
Rumours of the mammals' deaths had been circulating in the Senegalese
capital Dakar among environmental activists, who said they believed
the dolphins had died after underwater explosions were carried out
to look for oil.
The precise reason for the dolphins' deaths is still not known,
said Diop. |
DES MOINES, Iowa - Tornadoes damaged
farm buildings and crops as violent thunderstorms battered southeastern
Minnesota, northern Iowa and Nebraska. One twister destroyed David
Mickelson's barn, home, garage, machine shed and silo south of Otho,
Iowa.
"You work all your life to build up a place like this and
in a matter of seconds it's all gone," Mickelson said.
No injuries were reported in the storms that started Friday afternoon
and continued through the evening.
At least six tornadoes touched down near the south-central Kansas
town of Mulvane on Saturday evening, destroying one home and damaging
another, overturning cars and downing power lines.
everal other tornadoes were reported elsewhere in the state, but
there were no immediate reports of injuries. [...] |
OTTAWA - Environment Canada has
confirmed a tornado touched down in eastern Ontario, just north
of Gananoque.
The small twister cut a five-kilometre swath through the countryside
near Lansdowne during a storm Wednesday.
One man died when a tree crushed his front porch. |
WILDWOOD, Mo. - To folks around
Wildwood, it is nothing but freaky: an entire 23-acre lake vanished
in a matter of days, as if someone pulled the plug on a bathtub.
Lake Chesterfield went down a sinkhole this week, leaving homeowners
in this affluent St. Louis suburb wondering if their property values
disappeared along with their lakeside views.
“It’s real creepy,” said Donna Ripp, who lives
near what had been Lake Chesterfield. “That lake was 23 acres
— no small lake. And to wake up one morning, drive by and
it’s gone?”
What once was an oasis for waterfowl and sailboats was nothing
but a muddy, cracked pit outlined by rotting fish. |
HANOI, Vietnam - Typhoon Chanthu
killed seven people and left seven more missing when it swept through
central Vietnam over the weekend, officials said Monday.
Five fishermen were killed when their boat sank Saturday off the
coast of Binh Dinh province, some 650 miles south of Hanoi, said
the official from the provincial floods and storms control bureau,
who identified himself only as Tuan.
Another man, who was washing his feet in a river, drowned after
being sucked in by the strong current. A sixth fisherman was killed
when strong winds forced two fishing boats against the dock, crushing
him, the official said.
The typhoon also injured five people and destroyed or damaged
more than 180 houses in the province. [...] |
Severe thunderstorms swept across
the Plains and Midwest during the weekend, spinning off tornadoes,
causing power outages and delaying travel for airline passengers.
Two people were killed in weekend storm-related accidents in Missouri.
Lightning struck the ground outside a tent at the Army's Fort
McCoy in west-central Wisconsin on Sunday, injuring 17 Army Reservists
from the San Antonio, Texas, area, said public affairs officer Linda
Fournier. One soldier remained hospitalized Monday. [...] |
TWO billion people worldwide
will be at risk of devastating flooding by 2050 due to climate change,
deforestation and rising sea levels, according to experts at the
United Nations University (UNU).
One billion people, the majority of them among the world's poorest
inhabitants, are estimated to live in the potential path of a permanent
flood and unless preventive efforts are stepped up worldwide, that
number could double or more in two generations. |
TORONTO - Continuing funding
cuts threaten Canadian research on reducing smog and climate change,
and improving the accuracy of severe weather forecasts, top government
and university scientists warned Thursday.
The group of 21 scientists sounded the alarm in a new report,
saying since the mid-1990s, there are fewer meteorologists working
at Environment Canada's weather office and much of the equipment
is out of date.
It's time for the federal government to put more funding into
the meteorological service so it can better predict severe weather
patterns, said Peter Taylor, an atmospheric scientist at Toronto's
York University. |
An insect that normally inhabits
warm countries has been found living and breeding in the UK, entomologists
say.
The green "shield" bug, which attacks a broad range
of crops, is usually seen in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Australia,
North America and Africa.
Its arrival in Britain is a clear sign of climate change, claim
experts from the Natural History Museum, London.
"I'm always reluctant to invoke global warming but it is
the only explanation" said curator of beetles, Max Barclay.
Stink bugs
The green vegetable bug (Nezara viridula) is similar to our native
green shield bug (Palomena prasina), but is paler in colour and
has a longer, narrower shape. Also, unlike its British cousin, the
green vegetable bug has no brown markings.
The insects - sometimes known as "stink" bugs, because
of the foul odour they emit when threatened - are regular stowaways
to the UK.
They often get shipped in with imported vegetables but, until
recently, they have not been able to stand Britain's cold climate.
Now three healthy colonies have been found in London - two in
the Queen's Park area and one in Kings Cross.
"When somebody first brought a specimen to me I didn't believe
it," Max Barclay told BBC News Online. "I thought somebody
had picked it up on their holidays, but it really was eating their
tomatoes in London."
Of course, if three colonies have been found, the actual number
is likely to be far higher.
"It is not something that is going to attract much attention,"
said Dr Barclay. "So there may well be several colonies living
unnoticed."
Clear sign
This is not the first time an insect that usually likes warm weather
has come to the UK. But the really interesting thing about the green
vegetable bug is that we know it could not survive here in the past.
"World experts on this group said in 1959 that it can't establish
in the British Isles," said Dr Barclay. "They said it
is a regular import - it is always coming in - but it can't live
here.
"And for forty years there was no record of it, so they seemed
to be correct. But obviously something has
changed now."
He continued: "I have been looking at a lot of new species
that have come in over the years - but this is the only one that
tells a clear story about global warming.
"In all the other cases people say, 'Is this to do with global
warming?' And we have to say we are not sure. But in this case we
are sure." |
LAS VEGAS -- The drought gripping
the West could be the biggest in 500 years, with effects in the
Colorado River basin considerably worse than during the Dust Bowl
years, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday.
"That we can now say with confidence," said Robert Webb,
lead author of the new fact sheet. "Now I'm completely convinced."
The Colorado River has been in a drought for the entire decade,
cutting an important source of water for millions of people across
the West. |
SAO PAULO, Brazil - A dam ruptured
in northeastern Brazil, flooding a small city and killing at least
three people, officials said Friday.
The Camara Dam on the Mamanguate River burst Thursday night and
flooded the city of Alagoa Grande in Paraiba state, some 1,300 miles
northeast of Sao Paulo.
"Rescue workers have recovered three bodies, but at least
four people are reported missing and feared dead," said Marco
Alfredo, spokesman for the Paraiba state government.
Antonio Soares da Silva of the state's Water Resources Department
said the rupture was caused by a "construction flaw." |
PATNA, India (AFP) - At least
50 villages were submerged and rail services paralysed as the first
of the annual flash floods hit the eastern Indian state of Bihar,
an official said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, the official in
the state's flood control centre said. [...] |
Kaloops — Firefighters are
working to contain what officials say is the biggest fire yet this
year in B.C.
The wildfire is burning up the sides of a mountain near Lilooet,
about 100 kilometres west of Kamloops.
Fire Information Officer Kevin Matuga says nine fires were sparked
in the area last night by lightning from a large thunder storm.
[...] |
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The weather
gave firefighters a break Saturday as they battled a fire that burned
nearly 300 acres and prompted evacuations along the Rio Grande in
central New Mexico.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Saturday said that
it has authorized the use of federal funds to battle the Bernardo
fire. [...] |
TOKYO (AP) - A powerful typhoon
pummeled southern Japan on Sunday, killing at least three people
as it headed north toward the country's more densely populated islands.
Classified as "large and very powerful,'' Typhoon Dianmu
was packing sustained winds of nearly 60 mph, with some gusts reaching
100 mph, Japan's Meteorological Agency said.
Dianmu - Mandarin Chinese for "Mother of Lightning'' - was
centered about 800 miles southwest of Tokyo and traveling north.
Forecasters said it could hit Japan's southernmost main island of
Kyushu by Sunday evening.
The agency predicted up to 16 inches of rain in parts of Kyushu.
The typhoon raked Okinawa's main island Saturday and stormy weather
continued to disrupt dozens of flights and some ferry services in
the area Sunday. The Meteorological Agency recorded waves of up
to 39 feet.
Two of the dead were college students apparently swept away by
rough seas while barbecuing on the beach Saturday in Shizuoka, 95
miles west of Tokyo. Their bodies were found washed ashore Sunday.
A 32-year-old windsurfer died Saturday in high waves off southern
Okinawa island, coast guard officials said.
A 73-year-old Tokyo resident remained missing after he went fishing
Friday near Kozu island about 75 miles south of Tokyo. Officials
feared he may have gotten lost in high waves. |
WASHINGTON -- The United States
needs to make a new commitment to research on water resources in
order to confront the increasingly severe water problems faced by
all parts of the country, says a new congressionally mandated report
from the National Academies' National Research Council. In particular,
a new mechanism is needed to coordinate water research currently
fragmented among nearly 20 federal agencies, said the committee
that wrote the report.
"Water crises are not confined to
western states," said committee chair Henry J. Vaux,
professor emeritus and associate vice president emeritus, department
of agricultural and resource economics, University of California,
Berkeley. He cited as an example the recent conflict between Maryland
and Virginia over Potomac River water rights that had to be settled
by the U.S. Supreme Court. To be sure, semiarid western states are
still in need of new water supplies for fast-growing populations,
a problem that has been complicated by recent drought. And regulation
of water levels and flows in the Klamath and Missouri rivers have
sparked considerable debate as well. "Decision-makers at all
levels of government are going to have to make difficult choices
in the coming decades about how to allot limited water supplies,
and they need sound science to back them up," Vaux added.
Given the competition for water among farmers, environmental advocates,
recreational users, and other interests -- as well as emerging
challenges such as climate change and the threat of waterborne
diseases -- the committee concluded that an additional $70 million
in federal funding should go annually to water research, with the
aim of improving the decision-making of institutions that control
water resources and better understanding the water-use challenges
that lie ahead. The committee noted that overall federal funding
for water research has been stagnant in real terms for the past
30 years, and that the portion dedicated to research on water use
and related social science topics has declined considerably. For
example, while other fields such as the health sciences have seen
large funding increases over the last three decades, per capita
spending on water-resources research has dropped from $3.33 to $2.44,
despite the growing number of water conflicts around the country.
[...] |
BEIJING (AFP) - Egg-size hail
stones pounded China's northern city of Handan, injuring 32 people
and causing serious damage to houses, farmland and trees.
The 30-minute hail storm on Sunday also caused a blackout in the
city in Hebei province, the Xinhua news agency said Monday.
It caused an estimated 105 million yuan (12.7 million US dollars)
in damage and affected some 640,000 people.
The 32 people who were injured were in a stable condition, Xinhua
said.
Officials were sent to the area to coordinate rescue efforts and
the government was allocating funds to help the city, it said. |
AMARILLO, Texas - Wind gusting
to 70 mph and hail the size of baseballs pounded the Texas Panhandle,
smashing almost all of the windows on one end of a six-story hospital,
where one patient was injured by flying glass.
"It blew out the lobby. The windows are shattered. They blew
in on the patients," said Mary Barlow, a spokeswoman for Baptist
St. Anthony's Hospital. [...]
Damage estimates were not yet available Tuesday, but were expected
to total millions of dollars, authorities said.
Homes and vehicles were damaged by hail
up to baseball size. [...]
Heavy rain flooded some underpasses and rural roads, and Hartley
County Sheriff Franky Scott said water was up to 4 feet deep in
some areas.
"It had the barbed wire fence covered up," Scott said.
Storm spotters reported several twisters in the Amarillo area,
including one along Interstate 40. |
The head of one
of the world's biggest oil companies has admitted that the threat
of climate change makes him "really very worried for the planet".
In an interview in today's Guardian Life section, Ron Oxburgh,
chairman of Shell, says we urgently need to capture emissions of
the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which scientists think contribute
to global warming, and store them underground - a technique called
carbon sequestration.
"Sequestration is difficult, but if we don't have sequestration
then I see very little hope for the world,"said Lord Oxburgh.
"No one can be comfortable at the prospect of continuing to
pump out the amounts of carbon dioxide that we are pumping out at
present ... with consequences that we really can't predict but are
probably not good."
His comments will enrage many in the oil industry, which is targeted
by climate change campaigners because the use of its products spews
out huge quantities of carbon dioxide, most visibly from vehicle
exhausts.
His words follow those of the government's chief
science adviser, David King, who said in January that climate change
posed a bigger threat to the world than terrorism.
"You can't slip a piece of paper between David King and me
on this position," said Lord Oxburgh, a respected geologist
who replaced the disgraced Philip Watts as chairman of the British
arm of the oil giant in March.
Companies including Shell and BP have previously acknowledged
the problem of climate change and pledged to reduce their own emissions,
but the issue remains sensitive, and carefully worded public statements
often emphasise uncertainties over risks.
Robin Oakley, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace, said: "This
is an important statement to make but it does have to come with
a commitment to follow through, and that means making the case to
his peers in the oil industry who are still sceptical of climate
change."
Mr Oakley said a gulf was opening between
more progressive oil companies such as Shell, which invests in alternative
energy sources including wind and solar power, and ExxonMobil, the
biggest and most influential producer, particularly in the US.
In June 2002 ExxonMobil's chairman, Lee Raymond,
said: "We in ExxonMobil do not believe that the science required
to establish this linkage between fossil fuels and warming has been
demonstrated."
Lord Oxburgh's words will also fuel arguments over sequestration.
Supporters say it will allow a smoother transition to reduced emissions
by allowing us to burn coal, oil and gas for longer. Critics argue
that the idea is an expensive and probably unworkable smokescreen
for continued reliance on fossil fuels.
Last year the Guardian revealed that ministers were considering
plans for a national network of pipelines to carry millions of tonnes
of carbon dioxide from power stations to be buried under the North
sea.
"You probably have to put it under the sea but there are
other possibilities. You may be able to trap it in solids or something
like that," said Lord Oxburgh, who claimed even vehicle emissions
could be trapped and disposed of. "The timescale might be impossible,
in which case I'm really very worried for the planet because I don't
see any other approach."
According to a 3,000m (about 10,000ft) ice core
from Antarctica revealing the Earth's climate history, carbon dioxide
levels are the highest for at least 440,000 years.
Lord Oxburgh said the situation is particularly urgent because
many developing countries, including India and China, are sitting
on huge untapped stocks of coal, probably the most polluting fossil
fuel.
"If they choose to burn their coal, we in the west are not
in a very good position to tell them not to, because it's exactly
what we did in our industrial revolution."
Bryony Worthington, a climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth,
said: "It isn't a responsible attitude to say we're going to
pledge to do sequestration but if the plans don't work out then
the world's messed up. He's done quite a clever job by making it
clear he's concerned but at the same time not pledging to do anything
about it."
She called for tougher emission standards for new vehicles, as
well as greater investment in energy efficiency measures and renewable
sources.
A former non-executive director with Shell, Lord Oxburgh was catapulted
into the chairman's role after the company was forced to reveal
it had overstated the extent of its reserves. He was widely viewed
as a safe pair of hands.
He followed his long-standing academic career with spells as chief
science adviser to the Ministry of Defence and rector of Imperial
College, London. A crossbench life peer, he still chairs the Lords
science and technology select committee, although he must retire
from Shell next year. |
A worldwide experiment to test
the plausibility of the disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow starts
on 22 June.
Computer users across the world are being invited to download
and run a climate model of what may happen this century.
The test will see how predictions may change if the behaviour
of the Gulf Stream is affected, as the film shows.
The project is the work of climateprediction.net, a consortium
of UK universities and the Met Office.
Last September the group launched a global online effort to generate
"the world's most comprehensive probability-based forecast
of 21st century climate".
Visitors to its website were able to download a unique version
of the Met Office's climate model, simulating several decades of
global climate at a time.
That experiment has recruited 49,000 participants in 130 countries,
but the new one aims to go further.
Dr David Frame, the project coordinator, said: "So far we
have been asking people to simulate how the climate could respond
to rising carbon dioxide levels.
"Now we are extending the project to investigate how predictions
might change if the thermo-haline circulation in the oceans were
to slow down, altering the flow of the Gulf Stream."
'Physically plausible'
Dr Mat Collins of the Met Office said: "Extreme scenarios
make great films, but for practical planning we need to know how
likely it is that such events will actually happen."
The University of Oxford scientist leading the experiment is Nick
Faull. He said: "We are not trying to predict the odds on a
shut-down of the thermo-haline circulation, but we are asking: 'If
it did happen, what are the chances it would offset the warming
due to rising greenhouse gases and cause a cooling?
What consequences would it have for the atmosphere and oceans?'"
Anyone wanting to join the experiment can download a secure software
package, including a version of the Met Office's state-of-the-art
climate model, from the climateprediction.net site.
Each model, the organisers say, is a slightly
different but "physically plausible" representation of
processes going on in the atmosphere, land and near-surface ocean. |
Long before a Hollywood blockbuster
about catastrophic climate change packed cinema multiplexes this
spring, researchers at the top of the world, supported by the National
Science Foundation (NSF), were using an array of scientific tools
to build a comprehensive scientific picture of environmental change
in the Arctic and what it may mean for the rest of the globe.
Led by oceanographer James Morison, of the University of Washington,
NSF- supported scientists from Oregon State University, as well
as others supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), the Naval Post-graduate School, and the Japan Marine Science
and Technology Center, are conducting an array of experiments at
the North Pole to understand this little-known, but extremely important
region.
The Polar regions, scientists believe, will sound the earliest
warnings that changes in global climate are underway and, in recent
years, the Arctic has experienced a well-documented warming trend.
Whether this change is permanent or part of a cycle and what the
potential effects of a warmer Arctic Ocean could be are questions
the team hopes to answer. [...] |
Wise, Va. -- While local amateur
astronomers gathered to watch the recent Venus Transit at The University
of Virginia's College at Wise observatory, not-a-one of them realized
that spectacular transit of Venus across the face of the Sun may
lead to disastrous flooding along China's Yellow River or other
more Earthly inclement weather conditions.
Geng Guoqing, an expert on natural calamities in The People's
Republic of China, was more worried about the consequences for China's
second-longest river, according to the Xinhua news agency.
Geng has compared historical records reaching 2,187 years back
and found a clear correlation between Venus transits and serious
floods along the river's middle and lower reaches, reports Xinhua.
Geng, a researcher at the Special Committee on Natural Calamities
Forecasting under the China Geophysics Society, says that flooding
could be that Venus blocks part of the Sun's radiation that should
have been transmitted to Earth.
The Venus Transit causes climatic disturbances across the globe,
he argues to skeptics.
Dr. Mitchell Gordon, an astrophysicist at The University of Virginia's
College at Wise, recently conducted a lecture the evening prior
to the transit but made no note or passing observation of any correlation
between a transit of Venus and natural disasters on Earth in a review
of its history.
One Venus Transit observer, tongue-in-check, noted that "here
in Wise it did rain almost immediately following the Venus Transit
June 8 and almost every day two-weeks thereafter!" |
SYDNEY — Koalas, an iconic
symbol of Australia, face extinction as rapid urbanization along the
eastern seaboard destroys their fragile habitat, environmental activists
have warned. [...] |
The amount of raw sewage entering
the river Ganges every minute is 1.1 million litres, the World Health
Organisation (WHO) says.
Its Atlas Of Children's Health And The Environment says large
quantities of sewage are also flushed into rivers, lakes and oceans
worldwide.
One gram of faeces can contain 10 million viruses, one million
bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 worm eggs.
It also says up to a million lives could be saved annually by
hand-washing.
Launched at a conference of European health and environment ministers
in Budapest, Hungary, the atlas says polluted water and air, together
with other hazards linked to the environment, kill more than three
million children under the age of five every year.
While 10% of the world population falls within that age group,
it says, 40% of the environment related disease burden affects these
small children. |
The rush to privatize water is
underway across the world. In the new documentary 'Thirst,' filmmakers
Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow set out to explore the consequences.
There are untold profits to be made from controlling
the simplest and most vital ingredient of our survival: water.
The only question, from a profit standpoint, is why it has taken
this long.
"You can't do anything without water," says Alan Snitow,
co-producer and co-director of Thirst, a groundbreaking and provocative
new film about the rush to privatize what the filmmakers rightly
define as the very "essence of life."
In their third collaborative documentary film after the successes
of Blacks and Jews (1997) and Secrets of Silicon Valley (2001),
Bay Area-based filmmaking duo Deborah Kaufman and Snitow take an
unflinching and multifaceted look at water privatization in Bolivia,
India, Japan and the U.S.
What Kaufman and Snitow find is that the "water rush"
is likely to turn into one of the most volatile and potentially
galvanizing issues of the 21st century.
"This is an incredible struggle, and yet it's still so far
below the radar that we're trying to give it a voice," Kaufman
says. "People are already willing to die for [water], but it's
something that many of us still take for granted."
The grab for corporate control of water is indeed already here
in our own backyards. But the conflict over water supplies perhaps
most familiar to news-savvy audiences is the place where Thirst
goes first: to Cochabamba, Bolivia. After
the country auctions off the water system of its third-largest city
to U.S.-based Bechtel Corporation in 1999, residents experience
water price hikes of 30-300%, and the situation eventually erupts
in a cross-class protest that makes headline news worldwide.
By April 2000, the government responds to
civil unrest by declaring martial law. Shortly thereafter,
Victor Hugo Daza, a 17-year-old peaceful protester, is shot dead
in the streets by a government sniper.
Daza's death doesn't quell dissent the way it was intended to.
In fact, protests heat up to the point that water consortium execs
beat a hasty retreat, and Cochabamba's water system gets handed
over to a community-run utility. In an unlikely turn of events,
the citizens actually get what they want; water gets treated like
a human right, not as the last frontier of the commercialization
and privatization of earth's natural resources.
"They're on the defensive in the global South," Kaufman
explains. "In many ways, they're ahead of us responding to
what's in the near future for all of us."
In point of fact, American cities and towns are
the new staging ground for rapid and strategic power plays over
who controls water supply. In 2004, 85% of U.S. municipal water
systems are publicly owned, with a shocking 15% already in the hands
of corporations. Unbeknownst to most residents, municipal governments
are being heavily courted in the here and now to turn over control
of their water supply to multinational companies like Suez Water,
whose U.S. subsidiary took control of Atlanta's water in 1999.
The incentive for local governments is hard to miss; with an estimated
cost of a trillion dollars, the prospect of replacing aging pipes
and improving the condition of public water plants is increasingly
seen by city leaders as a budgetary drain best dealt with through
privatization.
To exemplify the point, Kaufman and Snitow turn their camera to
Stockton, California, where a well-run locally controlled water
purification and distribution system is about to be offered to the
highest bidder. (Notably, the public utility
itself isn't allowed to be one of the bidders.)
The transfer of power over the water supply is intended to take
the form of a "public-private partnership," and Stockton
Mayor Gary Podesto is a firm supporter.
"This can be done for less dollars," as Mayor Podesto
says.
A subsequent, well-orchestrated grassroots mobilization by city
residents -- baristas, orthodontists, environmentalists, utility
employees and union members among other unlikely allies -- fails
to capture any attention from the national media. But Kaufman and
Snitow have the instinct to jump into the heart of the conflict,
meeting and talking with all sides of the privatization debate.
But there is no storybook ending in Thirst where Stockton's citizenry
are concerned. By February 2003, in fact, the Mayor and a severely
divided City Council hand over the $600 million, 20-year contract
to a two-company consortium of corporate water giants: OMI and Thames.
All along, Stockton residents who did their
research were emphatic that corporate claims of cost effectiveness,
quality and safety had not been realized elsewhere.
In Atlanta's case, for instance, the city's
$428 million, 20-year contract with Suez-subsidiary United Water
Services was cancelled after a series of citywide EPA alerts advising
residents to boil their tap water because of toxic contaminants.
Finally, after five such "boil-alerts,"
staff cutbacks, leaking water mains, and rising sewer bill costs,
city administrators yanked back control of the utility.
Little victories aside, corporate water grab is still fully underway,
working in collusion with governments and international financial
agencies, wreaking environmental havoc and inflating water prices
all the while. In the final analysis, the battle over water, says
Kaufman, has more to do with democracy than what's coming out of
your tap. And it's toward this end, say the filmmakers, that they
fully intend their documentary to spur further activism and to educate
audiences about the extent to which water has already been commodified.
As captured in Thirst, John Briscoe, the Senior Water Advisor
to The World Bank, puts it this way to an assembly at the Third
World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan.
"What does it mean to say that water is a human right?"
he asks." Those who proclaim it so would say that it is the
obligation of [governments] to provide free water to everybody.
Well, that's a fantasy."
In touring the U.S. with their film, Kaufman and Snitow have already
become cautiously optimistic that the tide of privatization can
be turned. A model ordinance to safeguard water as a public trust
has already been drafted in concert with Madison, Wisconsin Mayor
David Cieslewicz, and will be presented at the upcoming 72nd U.S.
Conference of Mayors in Boston, which runs from June 25-29th. (Perhaps
not so coincidentally, the conference's website is being sponsored
by Veolia Water, which has become North America's leading private
"service provider" for local government water and wastewater
supplies.)
"It's a festival of privatization," as Snitow says.
"But what they don't yet fully realize is that for many people,
water is the final boundary that can't be crossed." |
BERLIN (AFP) - Two people were
killed, several injured and widespread damage was caused in storms,
including a tornado, that have hit Germany, state police said.
Wind gusting at up to 115 kilometres (65 miles) per hour tore
down trees and damaged houses and property in the states of Saxony-Anhalt
in the north, neighbouring Lower Saxony and the southern region
of Bavaria.
A boat with three people aboard was caught in a storm on the Chiemsee
lake in Bavaria on Wednesday. A 62-year-old man drowned, police
said.
In Lower Saxony, a falling tree killed a man in the afternoon
and another fell in the evening on a group of 16 students, badly
injuring two of them.
A tornado struck the village of Micheln in Saxony-Anhalt injuring
at least six people, damaging some 300 buildings and tearing roofs
from homes.
Around 200 rescue workers were mobilised Thursday to reconnect
electricity supplies and re-open roads that were blocked around
the village.
"We have seen pictures of devastation like
those we know of from the United States. It's the sort of thing
you only usually see on television," said Bernhard Boedecker,
coordinator of the rescue efforts.
More of them same weather was expected in Germany
on Thursday. |
WHITEHORSE - People in the Yukon
are experiencing a record-breaking heat wave.
Environment Canada says Dawson City had the highest temperature
ever recorded in that community.
The official thermometer showed 34.5 on Sunday, the hottest it's
been since Environment Canada starting keeping records there in
1976.
The weather office says, however, that earlier data from other
sources at the town site indicate that it did get up to 35 Celsius
back in 1950.
In Whitehorse, Old Crow, Faro and Watson Lake, records have been
set for the longest stretches of hot weather ever documented. [...] |
Gales, floods, fallen trees and
landslips caused havoc across much of the south of England yesterday
as flaming June felt more like miserable November.
The weather caused a washout at Wimbledon and a backlog of 175
matches. Spectators bought 1,000 umbrellas, 2,500 rain ponchos and
150 kagouls but the All England Club will have to refund almost
£1 million to 25,000 people who bought tickets in advance.
[...]
About 35,000 homes were left without electricity in Kent, Surrey,
Sussex, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex after
trees brought down lines belonging to EDF, supplier to a quarter
of Britain. Last night more than 10,000 homes were still without
power.
Other families were evacuated from homes threatened by hundreds
of tons of sand following a landslip in Porthowan, Cornwall.
The remains of the concert hall at Brighton's crumbling West Pier
fell into the sea. Fire had reduced the Grade I listed structure
to its metal frame in March last year.
All Channel ferries from Dover were suspended for several hours.
Hundreds of passengers were stranded on eight ferries which were
unable to dock because of Force 10 storms reaching 60 mph and took
shelter off Deal.
Several London Underground lines, including the Waterloo and City
and Metropolitan lines, were closed because of flooding and trees
across tracks. A 12-year-old girl broke a leg when she was hit by
debris from a roof in Blaenymaes, near Swansea, where 20 houses
were damaged by high winds.
Floods led to road closures in Dorset and Cornwall and driving
conditions were difficult across the South as the rain moved slowly
north to Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. [...] |
Toxic chemical releases into the
environment rose 5 percent in 2002, marking only the second such increase
reported by the Environmental Protection Agency in nearly two decades,
and the first since 1997. Some 4.79 billion pounds were released in
2002, the latest for which figures are available, not including releases
from metal mining, the EPA reports. The agency stopped including that
data because of a recent court decision in an industry challenge.
A study by two environmental groups said EPA was underreporting the
air pollution portion of releases of chemicals and emissions by 330
million pounds a year. |
BEIJING (AFP) - Twenty-seven people
were confirmed dead and another 27 were missing after massive rainstorms
lashed central China's Hunan province, forcing the evacuation of
168,000 people, an official said.
The rainstorms engulfed 30 counties in the province over a six-day
period, disaster relief official Fang Zhiyong told AFP Friday.
"Some people died because the floods washed them away, and
some because their homes collapsed," the Beijing-based official
said. "The floods also triggered mudslides."
Nearly eight million people live in areas affected by the storms,
and 168,000 had to be relocated as their homes were threatened by
the downpour and accompanying floods and landslides, he said.
The storms caused thousands of houses to collapse, with material
losses estimated at three billion yuan (360 million dollars), he
said.
"Some roads are extremely muddy or simply flooded,"
said Fang. "Traffic is very bad."
Among the worst-hit cities was Yueyang near giant Dongting Lake,
which was also at the centre of large floods two years ago. [...]
This year could be no less disastrous. With the flood season approaching,
China has warned that nearly 30,000 reservoirs have safety problems,
and some might even collapse. [...] |
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A new US supercomputer
has shown that global temperatures could be rising more than scientists
had thought, experts said.
The computer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research projects
that temperatures could rise by 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees
Fahrenheit) if countries continue to emit large amounts of carbon
dioxide.
The previous estimates were a rise of about two degrees Celsius
(3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). [...] |
SASKATOON - Wednesday night's
frost has had a dampening effect on the spirits of many Saskatchewan
farmers.
Even if it turns out there wasn't extensive frost damage, the
frost will delay the development of many crops.
Lorne McClinton, a farmer from near Yellow Grass, says the frost
is a challenge that producers don't need right now.
He worked late Wednesday night spraying herbicide on his late
maturing crops and when he woke up, McClinton was dismayed to see
frost on his vehicles.
He says this has been a trying year. First it was too dry—then
too wet. He has experienced flooding, hail, and now frost.
"Maybe I should be checking Exodus
and making a check list of the plagues of Egypt because so far,
like I said we're doing well on them. All we need is locusts and
we'll just about have them." [...] |
Rising temperatures are shrinking
all but two of the main glaciers that give Europeans clean water,
scientists say.
A report by the European Environment Agency says the current rate
of glacier retreat is now reaching levels higher than those of the
last 10,000 years.
It says climate change is affecting the whole environment, from
the plight of glaciers to plants' growing seasons.
The EEA is developing a continent-wide internet information system
to help people to prepare for extreme weather.
Looking for help
From 1850 to 1970, it says in EEA Signals 2004,
glaciers in the European Alps lost about a third of their area and
half their mass, with 20-30% of the remaining ice lost since 1980.
It says about 75% of the glaciers in the Swiss
Alps are likely to disappear by 2050.
The agency's executive director, Professor Jacqueline McGlade,
said what happened during extreme events was perhaps more important
than the monitoring of climate change's impacts.
Speaking at a conference in Hungary of European environment and
health ministers organised by the World Health Organisation, Professor
McGlade said the EEA had placed on its website satellite images
of the distribution of fires in Italy and Portugal in recent summers.
Pinpointing the problems
She said: "We noticed a significant increase in web traffic
and were informed after the event that the public had been unable
to obtain local information of where fires were spreading and were
therefore using the EEA site instead."
So the agency was building "a geo-referenced
public information service on the environment, called In Your Backyard".
Professor McGlade told BBC News Online: "What that means
is you'll be able to type in your postcode, wherever in Europe you
live, and find information about your neighbourhood.
"Some of it will be about landfill sites, or power plants,
for example, and that part should be ready by the end of this year.
"But by mid-2005 we hope to be providing
details of threats from events like heatwaves, droughts and floods."
"The time has come when extreme weather needs
dealing with systematically, not simply as something you forget
about the day after it's happened." [...] |
WINNIPEG - The low temperatures
over the past couple of months has been more than unpleasant for
people in the golf business. They're losing money.
Manitoba has suffered through its coldest
spring in almost 60 years; May and June temperatures have
been locked in the low teens – 10 degrees below normal. [...] |
VANCOUVER - There were at least
4,200 lightning strikes as a major storm system moved across across
B.C. on Thursday, triggering more wildfires.
The B.C. Forest Service says there are now more than 358 forest
fires burning. On the same day last year, there were only 57 wildfires
burning in B.C. [...] |
A paper published this week in
the journal Science supports the hypothesis that heat transfer by
ocean currents – rather than global heating or cooling –
may have been responsible for the global temperature patterns associated
with the abrupt climate changes seen in the North Atlantic during
the past 80,000 years.
Authored by the University of Bremen's Frank Lamy and colleagues,
the paper provides new evidence that Southern Hemisphere climate
may not have changed in step with Northern Hemisphere climate. Though
these new measurements of ocean surface temperature off Chile are
consistent with information from Antarctic ice core samples, they
still contradict measurements made on land in the Southern Hemisphere
– suggesting additional research will be needed to resolve
the issue.
Scientists have found evidence of rapid and dramatic climate change
that took place in a matter of decades during cool periods of the
last 80,000 years in the North Atlantic. Knowing whether climate
changes took place simultaneously in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres
is vital to understanding the mechanism involved – and assessing
whether similar abrupt climate change could be a threat today.
"People are very interested in these dramatic climate changes
because they occur on very human time scales," said Jean Lynch-Stieglitz,
associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
at the Georgia Institute of Technology and author of a "Perspectives"
article accompanying the Lamy paper in Science. "It's really
important to understand what is causing them and what conditions
are necessary for the climate to rapidly transition from cold to
warm and back again." [...]
"The real significance of this paper is that it gets us closer
to understanding the mechanism causing these rapid climate changes,"
she said. "Earlier sediment core work at lower resolution has
suggested that the Southern Hemisphere has been doing its own thing.
The record from Antarctica is nicely resolved
and shows that the Southern Hemisphere is not participating either
in magnitude or timing with the climate changes that have occurred
in the North Atlantic."
The Lamy researchers studied sediment cores taken from a location
off the coast of southern Chile where sediment builds up rapidly,
providing detailed information about climate change with good time
resolution. Their 50,000-year record is consistent with Antarctic
ice core data showing that Southern Hemisphere climate change did
not occur at the same or in the same magnitude as Northern Hemisphere
change.
"What this paper suggests is that
that when it was really cold off Greenland in the North Atlantic,
it was actually a bit warm off Chile," said Lynch- Stieglitz.
"That's very similar to the record in Antarctica. The fact
that the ocean off Chile looks so much like what has been going
on in Antarctica gives us hope that there may be a consistent response
throughout the Southern Hemisphere."
Knowing what was happening in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres
is important because the mechanisms that could have caused synchronized
change differ dramatically from those that could have caused unsynchronized
change.
Both hemispheres warming and cooling at the same time would imply
global changes caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases. But
one hemisphere cooling while the other warmed would suggest simple
heat transfer, accomplished by changes in ocean or atmospheric currents.
"You can make the climate cool in certain places just by
redistributing the heat through changes in ocean currents, atmospheric
circulation or both," said Lynch-Stieglitz. "The most
fully developed theory to account for these rapid climate changes
is that they do represent changes in the transport of heat into
the North Atlantic by what we call overturning circulation of the
ocean."
In that scenario, warm water flows northward from the Southern
Hemisphere into the North Atlantic, where it gives up its heat.
Being denser, the cooled water then sinks and flows back south.
The scenario accounts for both heating in the north and cooling
in the south.
It's possible, Lynch-Stieglitz notes, that both global warming
and changes in ocean heat transport occurred simultaneously, though
records of carbon dioxide concentrations do not show concentration
increases that would be enough by themselves to account for the
climate change. [...] |
A new US supercomputer has shown
that global temperatures could be rising more than scientists had
thought, experts said Thursday.
The computer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research projects
that temperatures could rise by 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees
Fahrenheit) if countries continue to emit large amounts of carbon
dioxide.
The previous estimates were a rise of about two degrees Celsiusdegrees
Fahrenheit).
Information from the Community Climate System Model, known as
CCSM3, will be presented to the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate
Change, an international body of experts established by the United
Nations to assess the environmental impact of climate change.
According to the US National Science Foundation (NSF), a variety
of models in the past have been used to understand the effects of
carbon dioxide, a common greenhouse gas emitted by cars and power
plants.
Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have increased significantly
in recent decades to about 370 million parts per million today and
levels are continuing to rise.
If carbon dioxide emissions were to double, most scientific models
agree that this would signifigantly increase global temperatures.
But, the models have been unable to produce consistent results
in trying to determine the impact of other sources global warming,
such as radiation from clouds or thunderstorms and the effect aerosol
gases have on the environment.
Clifford Jacobs, an NSF scientist, said that with the new models
"the degree of uncertainty has narrowed."
"We have a higher degree of confidence in these results than
in the previous results."
Jacobs said scientists now hope their models will become sophisticated
enough to predict how climate change will affect specific regions,
such as in Africa or the American Midwest.
He hopes the scientific breakthrough will "better inform
the ongoing debate" over global warming.
"The key question is: How much of the change is a natural
variability and how much of the change is caused by activities of
mankind on the face of planet," he said. |
HAGATNA, Guam - The Northern Mariana
Islands were under a typhoon warning Monday as Tropical Storm Tingting
was upgraded to typhoon status. As the storm moved through the region,
it dumped record-breaking rains, causing
flooding and mudslides on neighboring Guam.
Saipan and Tinian were under a typhoon warning as the storm moved
northwest at about 9 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
As of early Monday afternoon, the storm had maximum winds of 75
mph with gusts of 90 mph, with damaging winds extending up to 140
miles from the center, forecasters said.
The center of the typhoon was located 100 miles north-northeast
of Saipan, 175 miles north-northeast of Rota and 230 miles north-northeast
of Guam. [...] |
DENVER - More than 2 inches of
rain along the Rocky Mountain foothills Sunday afternoon flooded
streets and basements, destroyed a house, sent mud down a hillside
and forced the rescues of several people.
A 12-year-boy riding his bicycle through a creek was swept nearly
a mile downstream by a wall of water in Colorado Springs, said firefighter
spokesman Capt. Randy Royal. He was transported to a hospital with
non-life threatening injuries and evaluation for hypothermia.
"He's lucky he survived that," Royal said.
Several other people needed to be rescued by passers-by and firefighters
as creeks quickly turned into raging rivers.
"It surprised them," Royal said. "It was a lot
of rain in a short amount of time." [...] |
Vancouver — Nineteen people
were forced to flee their homes late Sunday night as a forest fire
raced towards two tiny communities on the Yukon-B.C. border.
Everyone who was asked to leave did, said Cynthia Mann, a provincial
fire information officer.
Yukon fire crews fighting the Cole River fire placed sprinklers
on all threatened structures, but by Monday afternoon, Ms. Mann
said it wasn't clear on whether anything had been damaged.
“The wind is blowing the ash ahead of the fire and its creating
new fires ahead of it and that's usually associated with extreme
fire behaviour,” Ms. Mann said, adding the fire is about 100
square kilometres in size. [...] |
FUKUOKA (Kyodo) - Strong winds
blew through Saga Prefecture on Sunday morning, causing blackouts,
damage and minor injuries to 13 people, according to local fire
and police officials.
The gusts, which occurred at around 7:20 a.m., knocked down five
power poles, causing up to 6,300 houses in the Saga area to lose
electricity, Kyushu Electric Power Co. officials said. Traffic lights
also stopped working.
About 260 houses were damaged and some cars were blown on to their
sides. The roof of an elementary school and gates at a high school
pool were damaged.
The Saga Local Meteorological Observatory said the gusts may have
resulted from a tornado traveling at a speed of 180 kph to 248 kph.
The observatory said the atmospheric pressure dropped sharply due
to a seasonal rain front in the prefecture.
The gusts recorded a wind velocity of 65.16 kph at 7:22 a.m.
"Due to rain clouds that developed around Saga, a situation
was created under which tornadoes and gusts could easily occur,"
an observatory official said. |
There is a strong link between
increasing night temperatures and decreasing rice yields
Global warming could have a severe effect on rice production,
say scientists working in the Philippines.
The researchers studied 12 years of rice yields and 25 years of
temperature data, to work out how they are linked.
Yields dropped by 10% for each degree of warming, an alarming
trend since rice is the staple diet for most of the world's expanding
population, they say.
[...] They found that average daytime temperatures, which increased
by 0.35C since 1979, had little effect on productivity.
However, there was a strong link between increasing night temperatures
- which rose by an impressive 1.1C over 25 years - and decreasing
rice yields, they discovered.
[...] Computer models of climate change suggest that night-time
temperatures will continue to rise faster than in the day - by several
degrees C in the coming decades.
This is bad news for rice because it often grows in the tropics
- very near the top end of its temperature range. So a slight increase
in temperature can bear a heavy cost. |
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