Hundreds of schools were closed and crews worked to clear slush and ice from highways Tuesday following the latest in a series of snowstorms to batter the Northeast this winter.

A foot of snow hit cities in southeastern Massachusetts, where a January storm buried some towns under 6-foot-tall drifts. A foot also was possible by Wednesday morning in parts of Maine, New York and Pennsylvania.

The storm marked the third snowfall in the Northeast in a week. [...]

TORONTO (CP) - Winter isn't ready to surrender its icy and snowy grip on southern Ontario just yet.

March arrived like a lion Tuesday, leaving the region digging out from under up to 15 centimetres of snow that created a lengthy, slushy and slippery morning commute.

A storm created by the merger of two low pressure systems was moving at a snail's pace. It was expected to continue through Tuesday and likely into Wednesday with areas along the lower Great Lakes due for the greatest amounts of snow. [...]

PARIS - Certainly, the temperatures are still far from the -67,8 degrees Celsius during February of 1892 and 1933 in Verkhoïansk (Siberia), the coldest city of the northern hemisphere, according to Météo France. But at this time of the year, the last time France shivered so much was 34 years ago.

The day Monday and the night which followed set new records regarding not only the thermometer, but also electric consumption, with 86.024 megawatts Monday at 7:15 PM according to RTE, manager of the electrical grid. The preceding record dated from last January 26th, with 84.706 MW.

This keen demand, due to the "exceptional" cold wave, has even constrained France, traditionally an exporter of electricity, to import 3% of its electric consumption from Spain and Germany - something which had not happened for twenty years, RTE specifies.

The fall of the temperatures also obliged EDF to carry out rotating cuts of the electricity of the 208,000 subscribers in Corsica Monday evening in order to avoid a "rupture of the system"...

PARIS - A bitter cold snap sweeping much of Europe Tuesday claimed the life of a man in Portugal as snow and fog triggered massive pile-ups and cancellation of air and train traffic throughout the continent.

The 92-year-old man died of hypothermia at a hospital in Evora, 150 kilometres (95 miles) southeast of Lisbon, one day after he checked into the facility after spending the night alone in his unheated home, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Another 73-year-old man who also checked into the hospital Monday with severe hypothermia was still in critical condition, she added.
Temperatures fell to record lows for this time of the year in Portugal overnight.

The mercury also plunged to a 100-year low in Germany, where heaters had to be brought into zoos to keep the lions warm.

At least 25 people were injured in Germany in two pile-ups on a motorway engulfed in thick fog. Rescuers worked to cut people free from the wreckage while the motorway from Munich to Lindau in southern Germany was blocked in both directions following the crashes involving at least 100 vehicles.

A 30-car pile-up also cut off Scotland's main highway linking Glasgow to Edinburgh, but no-one was injured.

Air traffic was disrupted out of Madrid and Barcelona due to snowfall, with 180 flights grounded in Barcelona's El Prat airport alone.

Trains were forced to return to stations in Spain's Grenada and Almeria, while frozen tracks led to the cancellation of dozens of trains in Switzerland.

Ferry boats were also cancelled between Spain and Morocco due to strong winds in the Strait of Gibraltar, and port authorities in the Spanish enclave of Cueta on the Moroccan coast said winds had damaged several boats, including some police patrol boats.

Meanwhile, records were broken across the continent. The mass of snow covering the Czech Republic was "probably the largest in the last 40 years," said hydrologist Jan Danhelka.

The Swiss capital Bern registered minus 15.6 degrees CelsiusFahrenheit), its coldest ever at this time of the year since data began to be collected in 1901.

Croatia had its coldest night since 1963, with minus 21 degrees C (minus 6 in the central parts of the country.

France beat records set in 1971. It was coldest in the village of Saugues in the western region of Haute-Loire where thermometers registered minus 29.5 degrees C (minus 21 F) Tuesday morning.

Worst hit though was the Berchtesgaden region near Germany's border with Austria, with temperatures of minus 43.6 degrees C (minus 46.5 F), close to the minus 45.9-degree C (minus 50.6 F) record set in 2001. [...]

Unprecedented and maybe irreversible effects of Arctic warming, linked to human intervention, have been discovered by a team of international researchers led by Queen's University biologist John Smol and University of Alberta earth scientist Alexander Wolfe.

The researchers have found dramatic new evidence of changes in the community composition of freshwater algae, water fleas and insect larvae (the base of most aquatic food webs) in a large new study that covers five circumpolar countries extending halfway around the world and 30 degrees of latitude spanning boreal forest to high arctic tundra ecosystems.

"This is an important compilation of data that human interference is affecting ecosystems on a profound scale," says Dr. Smol, Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change and 2004 winner of Canada's top science award, the Gerhard Herzberg Gold Medal.

"We're crossing ecological thresholds here, as shown by changes in biota associated with climate-related phenomena like receding ice cover in lakes. Once you pass these thresholds it's hard to go back." [...]

The new study shows that climate change has lengthened summers and reduced lake ice cover across much of the Arctic. This in turn prolongs the growing season available to highly sensitive lake organisms, and opens up new habitats. The most intense population changes occurred in the northernmost study sites, where the greatest amount of warming appears to have taken place, the researchers say. [...]

"The timing of the changes is certainly consistent with human interference, and one of the major avenues is through climate warning," notes Queen's biologist Dr. Kathleen Rûhland. "This is another example of how humans are directly and indirectly affecting global ecology."

An earlier lake sediment study co-authored by Drs. Douglas and Smol, published in the journal Science in 1994, caused controversy with its interpretation of climatic warming in three high Arctic ponds. Now, says Dr. Smol, "the tide has turned, and some of the strongest skeptics of that 1994 study are co-authors on this paper."

One area in the Canadian sub-Arctic that appears not to be warming to the same extent is in Labrador and northern Québec. Team member Reinhard Pienitz, from Université Laval, notes that this represents an important control region for the study.

The fact that no patterns of biological change are evident there supports the findings from other areas where warming has been inferred. "The changes have not been primarily caused by, for example, atmospheric deposition of contaminants," says Dr. Pienitz.

JAKARTA. March 3 (Xinhuanet) -- At least two people were killed and a number of houses smashed Thursday in a landslide in Bandung regency of West Java province of Indonesia, local media reported.

The landslide was triggered off by heavy rains, according to local radio the Elshinta Online.

Garbage and mud struck four houses at 5:00 a.m. local time, as the villagers slept, said the radio.

BRUSSELS, March 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Much of Europe on Wednesday plunged into near record icy weather, leading to a spate of road accidents and the death of at least four people.

In Switzerland, temperatures in a village of la Brevine close to the frontier with France even dived to minus 34.4 Celsius. The temperatures in Rome also fell to one of their lowest level in 200 years, with a record low for the country of minus 32 Celsius in the mountains separating Umbria and the Marches.

Three Romanians, including a one-month baby, died of the cold, and temperatures in the capital, Bucharest, fell to minus 20 Celsius, the lowest level in March since 1900.

In Portugal, a 92-year-old man died in his own house without heating system in Evora, 150 km southeast of Lisbon.

Electricity consumption hit the highest point and fuel oil suppliers said they were running out of stock.

The snow and ice also hampered traffic across the European continent and led to a spate of road accidents. The canal linking Berlin with the Polish port of Szczecin has also been blocked due to the 14-centimeter thick ice.

At 2pm (NZT) Cyclone Percy - a highest rating category five storm - was 222km south west of the island of Palmerston and moving in a south-south east direction.

Cook Islands police deputy commissioner Maara Tetava told NZPA the storm had largely bypassed the atoll, sparing it the damage experienced earlier this week on the northern islands of Pukapuka and Nassau, where just 10 buildings were left intact.

The storm was now heading south and if it maintained its current course its centre was expected to pass about 240km from Rarotonga.

However the Australian-Pacific Centre for Emergency and Disaster Information (APCEDI) said the storm was expected to take a southeast turn at some stage, which could bring it closer to Rarotonga.

Wind was gusting at more than 300kmh at its centre, the APCEDI said on its website. [...]

QUETTA, Pakistan - Five members of the same family died Friday when their mud-brick home collapsed, pushing the death toll from a fresh spate of torrential rains in southwestern Pakistan to 19, police said.

Two women and three children perished in Kili Nausar, on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, "when the roof caved in due to incessant rain," police officer Aminullah Khilji told AFP.

The latest rains come at the end of a bitter winter in which at least 550 Pakistanis have died from torrential rain, snow and avalanches. [...]

TOKYO - Unusually heavy snowfall blanketed Tokyo on Friday, cancelling or delaying dozens of flights and trains and slowing down road traffic.

Some two centimeters (four-fifths of an inch) of snow accumulated in downtown Tokyo, the first time since 1998 that more than one centimeter of snow covered the Japanese capital, according to the meteorological agency. [...]

With temperatures remaining stubbornly high and snowfall uncommonly low, state and federal officials are likely to declare a drought emergency for Washington as early as next week, intensifying concerns that this summer could spawn serious wildfires and financial misery for farmers.

Gov. Christine Gregoire is scheduled to meet with federal officials early next week to review snow and weather data, clearing the way for a decision by Thursday, a state official said.

But from what she's already seen, Gregoire is virtually certain that a drought emergency will be declared. The only question, she said, is how much of the state will be covered. [...]

YAKIMA, Wash. -- Skies are blue and mountains are bereft of snow across the Northwest this year. And while many people might be reveling in the unexpected early spring, water managers in several states are crossing their fingers and hoping winter will make another appearance.

It's all about staving off the dreaded 'd' word: drought.

"Every day that goes by that we don't get snow, we just fall further behind," said Ted Day, a hydraulic engineer with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Boise, Idaho.

Authorities are bracing for a seventh year of drought in Montana, where the mountains are so bare that peaks will need three times the usual snowfall between now and when the spring runoff begins just to reach average levels.

In Idaho, snowpack is at about 50 percent of average with the lone bright spot - albeit a rather dim one - being Eastern Idaho at 75 percent of average. Parts of the state already have endured five straight years of drought.

Conditions are even grimmer in Washington, where snowpack stands at just 16 percent of average in some places. Spokane saw the driest February since record-keeping started in 1881.

In famously rainy Seattle, joggers in shorts crowd waterfront sidewalks to enjoy the unusual sunshine, while the almost snow-free peaks of the Olympic Mountains loom across Puget Sound.

The Northwest hasn't been this parched in the winter in nearly three decades, raising concerns about early wildfires and low streamflows, which could limit the hydropower supply, reduce water for irrigators and threaten endangered fish. [...]

Summary - (Mar 4, 2005) Scientists are fairly certain that the Earth went through a snowball glaciation 600-800 million years ago, when the entire planet was locked in snow and ice. One new theory to explain this extreme cooling is the possibility that the Solar System passed through an interstellar cloud of dust and gas, which obscured the light from the Sun. Even if the cloud wasn't thick enough to obscure light from the Sun, it could have enabled charged particles to pass into the Earth's atmosphere and destroy the ozone layer. These clouds are huge, and it would take the Solar System 500,000 years to pass through one.

(New Zealand) - Temperatures swung between extremes during the three months of summer, with the country experiencing the coldest December since 1945 but the eighth warmest February on record. [...]

Greenhouse gases are warming our oceans, changing their chemistry and threatening rainfall patterns that provide the planet with its fresh water, scientists say.

The gases that cause global warming sometimes are given as factors in problems ranging from the strength of hurricanes to altered wildlife habitats. But in what may be the most comprehensive look yet at the oceans, a group of researchers recently told a scientific conference that the marine effect is just as severe.

"In terms of global warming, the oceans are where the action is," said Tim Barnett, an oceanographer at the Scripps Oceanographic Institution. "The oceans are sort of a canary in the coal mine."

The 1990s turned out to be the warmest decade in the past 1,000 years, experts say. [...]

BOSTON - A late-winter storm lashed parts of the Northeast with icy winds and frigid temperatures Tuesday, closing Boston's airport, knocking out power to thousands of homes and dumping at least 8 inches of snow in some areas.

Whiteout conditions forced authorities to close Logan International Airport after a number of flights were canceled. Logan spokesman Phil Orlandella said the airport planned to reopen early Wednesday.

Boston expected to receive 6 to 8 inches of snow by Wednesday; the weather service said western suburbs were already reporting 8 inches late Tuesday. Wind gusts over 50 mph were creating dangerous wind chills; minus 24 degree wind chills were forecast for Worcester through Wednesday morning.

Scattered power outages caused by gusty winds left about 22,000 utility customers without electricity.

In New Jersey, slick driving conditions caused scores of highway wrecks. "I have more accidents than I have troopers," state police Capt. Al Della Fave said.

The state remained under a wind advisory. Winds reached 61 mph hour in northwest New Jersey, and 50 mph in Atlantic City.

The wintery conditions came only a day after spring-like weather raised temperatures in the Northeast into the 60s under clear, sunny skies.

In North Carolina, a line of strong thunderstorms rumbled across the countryside with winds up to 70 mph, toppling trees, damaging buildings and cutting electrical service to tens of thousands of homes.

At one point, more than 34,000 utility customers were without power. [...]

A suspected tornado threw a large pine tree into a home in Wilson County, punching a hole in the roof.

WELLINGTON - A tornado tore through the town of Greymouth on New Zealand's southern West Coast, demolishing buildings and tossing shipping containers into the air.

The tornado cut a swathe 300 metres (yards) wide through the town and "it was just a mass of timber and roofs coming through the sky... the damage is just unbelievable", Grey District mayor Tony Kokshoorn said.

He said the roof of one of the biggest buildings in town had lifted and came flying through the air towards him as he drove away from council chambers.

"I couldn't believe it -- I just dived into the back seat," he said. [...]

Blizzards and rainstorms have ravaged the Lisu Autonomous Prefecture since the weekend, with snow falls in mountain areas of up to one metre (3.3 feet) deep, Xinhua news agency said.

Communication and power lines have been cut and houses and farmland ruined.

The local government has rushed tons of food and other relief supplies to disaster-affected people, the agency said.

SEATTLE - With snowpacks at a quarter of normal levels and sunny, warm days well ahead of the summer months, the home state of the "rainy city" of Seattle declared a drought emergency on Thursday.

Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire authorized the statewide drought emergency, the first since 2001, after unusually low winter snowfalls in the Cascades left rivers on both sides of the mountain range flowing at record-low levels.

Gregoire said in a statement it was "very likely that all areas of our state will experience at least some level of drought this year."

She also told the state's National Guard to get ready to fight wildfires, and will ask the legislature to approve an additional $8.2 million to deal with the drought.

Officials from the state's Department of Ecology said this year's drought could be worst since 1977, the driest year on record.

Similar conditions were affecting other northwestern states, including Idaho, Montana and Oregon.

Although Seattle is known as the "rainy city" with its image of gray skies and Gore-tex wearers, official records put the city's annual average rainfall at 37 inches, below New York City's 47 inches (1,200 mm), according to official records.

With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years.

Their findings are certain to generate a renewed burst of speculation among scientists who study the history and evolution of life. Each period of abundant life and each mass extinction has itself covered at least a few million years -- and the trend of biodiversity has been rising steadily ever since the last mass extinction, when dinosaurs and millions of other life forms went extinct about 65 million years ago.

Comment: Hmm. 65 million years less 62 million years. 5 minus 2 leaves 3, 6 minus 6 leaves 0, uh, that leaves 3 million years. We're not rocket scientists or anything, but it looks to us like we're 3 million years overdue for another mass extinction. Even allowing for the extinction period itself of "a few million years"... Does someone want to check our math?

Of course, on time scales of millions of years, that could still leave us tens of thousands of years, or even hundreds of thousands of years, before we need to build a tunnel and live underground with our stockpiles of lentils and rice. Then again, all the rich and powerful already have access to government bunkers...think they know something we don't?

The graph above is curious in that it ignores that last 50 million years and sets the beginning and ends of the cycles at the peaks rather than the troughs, that is, the point of catastrophe. The end of the last cycle was, according to the graph, about 88 million years ago. Except that the dinosaurs died, according to mainstream science, 65 million years ago. Does it look to you like someone is trying to fudge the numbers? And does the data end 48 million years ago, the impression given by the graph?

The Berkeley researchers are physicists, not biologists or geologists or paleontologists, but they have analyzed the most exhaustive compendium of fossil records that exists -- data that cover the first and last known appearances of no fewer than 36,380 separate marine genera, including millions of species that once thrived in the world's seas, later virtually disappeared, and in many cases returned.

Richard Muller and his graduate student, Robert Rohde, are publishing a report on their exhaustive study in the journal Nature today, and in interviews this week, the two men said they have been working on the surprising evidence for about four years.

"We've tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction," Muller said, "and so far, we've failed."

But the cycles are so clear that the evidence "simply jumps out of the data," said James Kirchner, a professor of earth and planetary sciences on the Berkeley campus who was not involved in the research but who has written a commentary on the report that is also appearing in Nature today.

"Their discovery is exciting, it's unexpected and it's unexplained," Kirchner said. And it is certain, he added, to send other scientists in many disciplines seeking explanations for the strange cycles. "Everyone and his brother will be proposing an explanation -- and eventually, at least one or two will turn out to be right while all the others will be wrong."

Comment: Wow! Such insight!

Muller and Rohde conceded that they have puzzled through every conceivable phenomenon in nature in search of an explanation: "We've had to think about solar system dynamics, about the causes of comet showers, about how the galaxy works, and how volcanoes work, but nothing explains what we've discovered," Muller said.

The evidence of strange extinction cycles that first drew Rohde's attention emerged from an elaborate computer database he developed from the largest compendium of fossil data ever created. It was a 560-page list of marine organisms developed 14 years ago by the late J. John Sepkoski Jr., a famed paleobiologist at the University of Chicago who died at the age of 50 nearly five years ago.

Sepkoski himself had suggested that marine life appeared to have its ups and downs in cycles every 26 million years, but to Rohde and Muller, the longer cycle is strikingly more evident, although they have also seen the suggestion of even longer cycles that seem to recur every 140 million years.

Sepkoski's fossil record of marine life extends back for 540 million years to the time of the great "Cambrian Explosion," when almost all the ancestral forms of multicellular life emerged, and Muller and Rohde built on it for their computer version.

Muller has long been known as an unconventional and imaginative physicist on the Berkeley campus and at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. It was he, for example, who suggested more than 20 years ago that an undiscovered faraway dwarf star -- which he named "Nemesis" -- was orbiting the sun and might have steered a huge asteroid into the collision with Earth that drove the dinosaurs to extinction.

"I've given up on Nemesis," Muller said this week, "but then I thought there might be two stars somewhere out there, but I've given them both up now."

He and Rohde have considered many other possible causes for the 62- million-year cycles, they said.

Perhaps, they suggested, there's an unknown "Planet X" somewhere far out beyond the solar system that's disturbing the comets in the distant region called the Oort Cloud -- where they exist by the millions -- to the point that they shower the Earth and cause extinctions in regular cycles. Daniel Whitmire and John Matese of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette proposed that idea as a cause of major comet showers in 1985, but no one except UFO believers has ever discovered a sign of it.

Or perhaps there's some kind of "natural timetable" deep inside the Earth that triggers cycles of massive volcanism, Rohde has thought. There's even a bit of evidence: A huge slab of volcanic basalt known as the Deccan Traps in India has been dated to 65 million years ago -- just when the dinosaurs died, he noted. And the similar basaltic Siberian Traps were formed by volcanism about 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when the greatest of all mass extinctions drove more than 70 percent of all the world's marine life to death, Rohde said.

The two scientists proposed more far-out ideas in their report in Nature, but only to indicate the possibilities they considered.

Muller's favorite explanation, he said informally, is that the solar system passes through an exceptionally massive arm of our own spiral Milky Way galaxy every 62 million years, and that that increase in galactic gravity might set off a hugely destructive comet shower that would drive cycles of mass extinction on Earth.

Rohde, however, prefers periodic surges of volcanism on Earth as the least implausible explanation for the cycles, he said -- although it's only a tentative one, he conceded.

Said Muller: "We're getting frustrated and we need help. All I can say is that we're confident the cycles exist, and I cannot come up with any possible explanation that won't turn out to be fascinating. There's something going on in the fossil record, and we just don't know what it is."

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice, wrote Robert Frost. But whatever is to be our fate, it is now overdue.

After analysing the eradication of millions of ancient species, scientists have found that a mass extinction is due any moment now.

Their research has shown that every 62 million years - plus or minus 3m years - creatures are wiped from the planet's surface in massive numbers.

And given that the last great extinction occurred 65m years ago, when dinosaurs and thousands of other creatures abruptly disappeared, the study suggests humanity faces a fairly pressing danger. Even worse, scientists have no idea about its source.

'There is no doubting the existence of this cycle of mass extinctions every 62m years. It is very, very clear from analysis of fossil records,' said Professor James Kirchner, of the University of California, Berkeley. 'Unfortunately, we are all completely baffled about the cause.'

The report, published in the current issue of Nature, was carried out by Professor Richard Muller and Robert Rohde also from the Berkeley campus. They studied the disappearances of thousands of different marine species (whose fossils are better preserved than terrestrial species) over the past 500m years.

Their results were completely unexpected. It was known that mass extinctions have occurred in the past. During the Permian extinction, 250m years ago, more than 70 per cent of all species were wiped out, for example. But most research suggested that these were linked to asteroid collisions and other random events.

But Muller and Rohde found that, far from being unpredictable, mass extinctions occur every 62m years, a pattern that is 'striking and compelling', according to Kirchner.

But what is responsible? Here, researchers ran into problems. They considered the passage of the solar system through gas clouds that permeate the galaxy. These clouds could trigger climatic mayhem. However, there is no known mechanism to explain why the passage might occur only every 62m years.

Alternatively, the Sun may possess an undiscovered companion star. It could approach the Sun every 62m years, dislodging comets from the outer solar system and propelling them towards Earth. Such a companion star has never been observed, however, and in any case such a lengthy orbit would be unstable, Muller says.

Or perhaps some internal geophysical cycle triggers massive volcanic activity every 62m years, Muller and Rohde wondered. Plumes from these would surround the planet and lead to a devastating drop in temperature that would freeze most creatures to death.

Unfortunately, scientists know of no such geological cycle.

'We have tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction,' Muller said. 'So far we have failed. And, yes, we are due one soon, but I would not panic yet.'

Aon Units Release Global Climate/Catastrophe Report

Two Aon subsidiaries, Aon Re Global and Impact Forecasting, LLC, have released a report on 2004's natural catastrophes, describing "a year of freakish weather patterns, ending with the worst natural disaster in modern times: the December 26th tsunami."

The report notes that "unusually violent weather throughout the U.S. and the Pacific Rim made 2004 one of the most active years for natural phenomena in recent memory." The tsunamis alone "killed more than 159,000 people across Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and India and obliterated villages and seaside resorts in ten countries across southern Asia and eastern Africa" said the report. "By contrast, the worst natural disaster in 2003 was the Bam, Iran earthquake in which 26,271 people perished."

It also confirms that the 2004 hurricane season in the U.S. was among the most active on record. "The western Atlantic produced 15 named storms and 9 hurricanes, which is above the norm of 10 tropical systems and 6 hurricanes. The United States and Caribbean Islands experienced a rough August and September, with 6 major hurricanes making landfall in 2004, well above the average normal landfall of 1-2 storms. By contrast, 2003 saw only two of seven hurricanes making landfall. It had been half a century since Florida sustained hits by three destructive hurricanes in rapid succession. In 1950, hurricanes Baker and Easy made landfall in or near Florida within a six-day period."

The report also found that the U.S. tornado season was especially active in 2004, due at least in part to the tropical storms that battered the southern part of the country. The higher-than- usual number of hurricanes helped to spawn some of the 1,722 tornadoes in the United States in 2004, according to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. That's up from the previous year's total of 1,376. A normal tornado season yields an average of 1,200 tornadoes.

"Of the 1,722 storms in 2004, 20 were so-called 'killer' tornadoes, resulting in 36 deaths. That's down from 2003's 23 'killer' storms and 54 fatalities. Both years were below the normal count of 25 'killer' storms resulting in an average of 54 deaths nationwide."

More general findings indicated that the global climate last year "was warmer and wetter than normal, which is a change from previous years, where warmer but drier than normal conditions existed. Precipitation amounts were also higher than normal for the first time in four years. Though many areas still experienced drought conditions, some locations received an overabundance of rain, leading to severe flooding that killed thousands of people this last year, primarily across Southeast Asia and through the Caribbean Sea."

While the report, which is issued at the beginning of each year, doesn't discuss the recent heavy rains in Southern California, they would seem to be evidence of an ongoing trend. The study does point out that a number of "record-breaking natural disasters" occurred last year "many of which broke long-standing records. Haiti and the Dominican Republic were hit with two massive flooding events in 2004, killing over 5,000 people in May and September combined. Monsoon flooding across Bangladesh, India, and China claimed more than 1,900 lives from late June through early August. Landslides and flooding from successive tropical systems killed thousands of people in late November in the Philippines."

Destructive tropical cyclone Ingrid is moving off the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, and out to sea, the Bureau of Meteorology said today.

Darwin experienced strong winds overnight, but was spared the brunt of the cyclone as it passed further north than originally projected.

Residents of the Tiwi Islands - Melville and Bathurst Islands,  80km north of Darwin - were today assessing the damage after a violent encounter with the category three storm overnight.

Northern Territory Police Darwin region controller Commander Max Pope said many large trees had been uprooted on the islands, with some buildings damaged by high winds and fallen debris.

However, there were no reports of injuries.

Communication and power was cut last night, and many of the islands' 4,000 residents waited out the fierce storm in emergency shelters in the community sport and recreation halls, health clinics and schools.

Commander Pope said it was uncertain when power and communications would be restored. [...]

GENEVA : Global warming is causing Himalayan glaciers to rapidly retreat, threatening to cause water shortages for hundreds of millions of people who rely on glacier-dependent rivers in China, India and Nepal, WWF warned on Monday.

The warning by the global conservation group comes as WWF released a new report which it said exposes the rate of retreat of Himalayan glaciers accelerating as global warming increases.

The report indicates glaciers in the region - which represent the greatest concentration of ice on the planet after the Arctic poles - are now receding at an average rate of 10 to 15 metres (33 feet) per year.

"The rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers will first increase the volume of water in rivers, causing widespread flooding," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature's Global Climate Change Programme in a statement.

"But in a few decades this situation will change and the water level in rivers will decline, meaning massive economic and environmental problems for people in western China, Nepal and northern India."

Himalayan glaciers feed into seven of Asia's greatest rivers - the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Yellow rivers - ensuring a year-round water supply to hundreds of millions of people in the Indian subcontinent and China. [...]

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - As many as 50,000 villagers are on the brink of starvation because of severe drought in Indonesia's remote southeast, local officials said Sunday.

Poor harvests from a lack of rainfall threaten about 33,000 people in Lembata district in the province of East Nusatenggara, while 17,000 others in Solor district have run out of food, the district chiefs said.

"These villages are already poor," said Felix Fernandes, chief of Solor district. "Hundreds of hectares of corn and rice fields are parched because of no rain in the past months."

Andreas Dulimanuk, chief of Lembata district, said food aid was urgently needed to head off famine. The provincial government has distributed 45 tons of rice, but it wasn't sufficient, he said.

Dulimanuk said no deaths have been reported so far but added "the villagers are being threatened by starvation."

The drought-affected areas are located about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) southeast of the capital, Jakarta.

'...6,000 TONS of particulates, chemicals and other pollutants are emitted DAILY by metropolitan Manila's two to three million vehicles, hundreds of factories, and households.'

The indidence of respiratory tract infections (RTIs) is still increasing. If one looks at the records in many hospital ERs (emergency rooms) in Metro Manila, RTI is one of the leading causes for hospital admissions. If you blame it on the changing weather or the high pollen count this time of year, you're probably barking up the wrong tree. Stand at any intersection of Edsa and you'll know the answer.

Without realizing its real and imminent dangers, many residents in Metro Manila and other key cities including Baguio, which was previously thought to be a pristine city with fresh air, are making a difficult decision to stay. Many are not aware that unless something is done about the pollution problem, many parts of these cities will no longer be fit for human habitation in a decade or two.

The warning signs are familiar to all those who live in cities where the air is polluted: aching backs, wheezing, coughing, headache, dizziness and a myriad of other symptoms. Millions of Metro Manila residents breathe dirty air every day of the year.

Health concerns (asthma, other lung infections, heart problems, cancers, central nervous system damage and lowered IQs) increasingly affect people from all walks of life. It is a growing health hazard that has reached monstrous proportions. It is a true epidemic like no other plague we've seen before. And no community within the metropolis is immune from the growing threat of Metro Manila's degraded air quality.

Dirty City

World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Environment Program (Unep) studies show that Metro Manila's air shed is one of the five dirtiest and most polluted in the world, topped only by the metropolitan areas of Mexico City, Shanghai and New Delhi.

Reports indicate that 6,000 tons of particulates, chemicals and other pollutants are emitted daily by Metro Manila's two to three million vehicles, hundreds of factories, and households.

In March 1999, the British Medical Journal quoted Dr. Miguel Celdran, a pediatrician at the Makati Medical Center, who said: "About 90 percent of my patients have respiratory illness, and we're seeing babies as young as two months suffering from asthma. Twenty years ago, this was unheard of."

A survey by the Philippine Pediatric Society, which asked doctors to describe the most common illnesses that they treat, received the same response in every case: diseases of the upper respiratory tract.

Urine samples from children living and begging on the polluted streets showed that at least 7 percent had high lead concentrations.

Increased Traffic

In 1997, a technical study financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) showed that air pollution in Metro Manila had reached critical proportions. The reasons are a 10 percent annual growth rate in the vehicle fleet, increased traffic, poor traffic planning that reduced speeds and escalated commuting times, and poorly tuned motors that ran unnecessary extra hours, in effect multiplying the pollutants being released into the air.

Other sources of air pollution include power plants, industries, restaurants and dry cleaning establishments.

Metro Manila's air quality crisis grows in scale daily. Vehicle densities, for instance, have increased from 675,310 in 1990, to 1.2 million in 1998, to over 2 million in 2001. Vehicle density in Metro Manila has gone from 1,600 per km2 in 1995 to 3,144 per km2 in 2000, and at an accelerating rate of growth. There is a direct correlation between the number of cars on the road and the amount of pollution in the air.

There are other sources of pollutants: power plants, dust from continuous street diggings, solvent evaporation, and ozone.

Despite the completion of the second elevated light rail system, there has been little effort to reduce the 500 or so bus companies operating some 5,000 plus diesel-spewing buses on Metro Manila's roadways or to relocate any of the bus terminals that clog Edsa.

And with any level of economic growth-welcome news for sure-will come increased transport demands in the city.

The snow-capped summit of Mount Kilimanjaro has melted away to reveal the tip of the African peak for the first time in 11,000 years.

The glaciers and snow which kept the summit white have almost completely disappeared.

Although scientists had predicted the melt would happen, it is 15 years sooner than they had predicted.

The white peak of the 19,340ft mountain has long formed a stunning part of Tanzanian landscape, not least because it is only 200 miles south of the equator.

The photograph is part of the NorthSouthEastWest exhibition by The Climate Group, a book of which will be presented to ministers at the G8 energy and environment summit in London.

Steve Howard of The Climate Group said: "Climate change is real. So are the solutions, which are practical, affordable and in many cases, profitable. [...]

The G8 meeting comes a day after the WWF warned Himalayan glaciers are receding at among the fastest rates in the world because of global warming.

The environmental group warned that the melting could result in water shortages for millions of people who rely on rivers supplied by the glaciers in China, India and Nepal.

COPENHAGEN - While most of Europe has shivered through an unusually cold March, a snow festival in Arctic Greenland has been postponed indefinitely because of a "heat wave."

The 11th annual international Snow Sculpture Festival in Nuuk was scheduled for March 18-21, when the average temperature in Greenland's capital would usually be well below freezing.

"The snow has been melting because of the mild weather and last week we had several days of rain," Nuuk Tourism manager Flemming Nicolaisen said.

The festival is a popular attraction and more than 20 teams had been scheduled to take part. Nicolaisen said the artists needed plenty of fine new snow to sculpt.

Greenland's climate is usually harsh and about 80 percent of the semi-autonomous Danish province is covered by ice, but February brought record-high temperatures above 15 degrees centigrade.

The Danish Meteorological Institute blamed the weather on the Foehn, a warm, dry wind.

DARWIN, AUSTRALIA - A cyclone tore through islands on Australia's sparsely populated northern coast, causing extensive damage to buildings, uprooting trees and stripping them bare, before blowing southwest into the Timor Sea.

Survivors said they were amazed no one was killed or injured by Cyclone Ingrid, which wreaked havoc on Croker Island on Sunday.

The weather system was recorded as a maximum-strength category 5 cyclone, with winds of up to 320 kilometres per hour, as it howled over Croker, 200 kilometres northeast of Darwin. It diminished to category 3, still pushed by 215 km/h winds, as it blew over the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, on Monday.

The 100,000 people of Darwin, the largest city on the northern coast, hid in cyclone shelters until the Bureau of Meteorology cancelled its cyclone warning for that area on Monday. [...]

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, -- A cyclone hit south Kamchatka in the small hours of Sunday. The wind is strong, and snowfalls are heavy. Waves are high in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific. Vessels do not dare to leave the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. [...]

The wind reaches 30 meters per second on the shore, and waves are five to seven meters high. Fishing vessels are hiding from gale in bays.

The wind reaches 24-32 meters per second in the southeast and southwest of the Kamchatka region. Heavy snowfalls in the Ust-Bolsheretsk and Yelizovo districts and the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky have reduced visibility to 500 meters. Weathermen have given a storm warning. [...]

LAS VEGAS, N.M. (AP) - A slow-moving storm dumped nearly 3 feet of snow on parts of northern and eastern New Mexico, closing major highways, schools and some government offices Tuesday.

``I've lived here for all my life, and this is one of the worst as far as how quick it (snow) accumulates,'' said Steve Lucero, owner of a tow truck service at Las Vegas, where 2 feet of snow had fallen since the storm developed Monday.

The National Weather Service reported that Cowles, northwest of Santa Fe, got the most snow from the storm - 38 inches. Gascon, a village in northern New Mexico, and Mineral Hill, near Las Vegas, each had received 34 inches as of Tuesday.

Gov. Bill Richardson declared a state of emergency in seven counties Tuesday. [...]

LONDON - A photo of Mount Kilimanjaro stripped of its snowcap for the first time in 11,000 years will be used as dramatic testimony for action against global warming as ministers from the world's biggest polluters meet on Tuesday.

Gathering in London for a two-day brainstorming session on the environment agenda of Britain's presidency of the Group of Eight rich nations, the environment and energy ministers from 20 countries will be handed a book containing the stark image of Africa's tallest mountain, among others.

"This is a wake-up call and an unequivocal message that a low-carbon global economy is necessary, achievable and affordable," said Steve Howard of the Climate Group charity which organised the book and an associated exhibition.

"We are breaking climate change out of the environment box. This crisis affects all of us. This is a global challenge and we need real leadership to address these major problems -- and these ministers can give that leadership," he told Reuters [...]

ST. JOHN'S - Huge waves have pushed tonnes of ice into communities in eastern Newfoundland, damaging roads, wharves and properties from Bonavista Bay to the Avalon Peninsula.

Weather officials warned the conditions that caused Wednesday's storm surge – including a low-pressure system, high tides and high winds – might worsen overnight before the bad weather moves offshore.

In Flatrock north of St. John's, Peter Maher watched as monster waves swamped the community's harbour, destroyed parts of a breakwater and ripped apart asphalt on some roads.

"We had seas, they must have been ten, fifteen metres," Maher said, adding that the waves smashed the harbour beyond recognition.

"What we can see here now is we got our complete breakwater washed out, two million dollars gone bottom up here this evening."

Another Flatrock resident, Tony Grace, said the surge was the worst he has seen in more than 25 years. [...]

BEIJING - Severe and unseasonal snow storms have left at least 36 people dead in southwest China, with about 190,000 people snowed in and 21,000 collapsed houses, a news report said on Wednesday.

More than eight million people have been affected by the blizzards in Yunnan province, which normally enjoys a mild climate but had a metre (three feet) of snow in some areas between March 3-12, the semi-official China News Service said.

BANGKOK : As Thailand wrestles with one of its worst droughts in years, millions of people from China to Indonesia are also desperate for the rains to return.

In at least seven countries in and around Southeast Asia, wells and reservoirs have dried up, crops have withered, governments have declared disaster zones, and in some cases communities are going hungry.

Authorities in Thailand, one of the rice bowls of Southeast Asia and a country heavily dependent on agriculture, were scrambling to contend with bone-dry conditions in 63 of Thailand's 76 provinces. Drought now affects 9.2 million people in the country. [...]

At least 809,000 hectares (two million acres) of farmland lie ruined at a cost of 7.4 billion baht (193.2 million dollars), according to interior ministry figures.

"Farmers' revenues would be affected, particularly the farmer who focuses on exports," Thaksin said Tuesday.

Large dams are only at 40 percent capacity or below, according to the agriculture ministry, while four reservoirs in northeastern Thailand have reported critical capacity levels.

"We have a potable water shortage, so we have to do whatever we can to help during this situation," said Pinyo Thongsing, an official at Chulabhorn dam in Chaiyaphun province, where reservoir levels have plunged to four percent of capacity.

"If there is no rain during this period, we'll be in crisis."

Thai authorities are planning to ask their neighbours, especially Laos and Myanmar, about diverting water from the Mekong river to slake thirsty farm land.

Yet Vietnam's Mekong delta is itself in dire straights. Some experts, blaming the El Nino weather phenomenon, say the Mekong Delta could face its worst drought in a century.

Vietnam has been hit both in the delta and the central region. A ministry of agriculture official in Hanoi confirmed the central highlands' five provinces were affected, including 162,500 hectares of cultivated lands containing 134,500 hectares of coffee.

Nationwide, the drought has cost more than 60 million dollars, the official said. [...]

Parts of southern China are experiencing their worst drought in decades.

The sustained drought in southern Guangdong province, said to be the worst in 55 years, threatens the rice harvest and other crops. Cloud seeding planes have been dispatched to operate between March and May.

On China's southern Hainan Island, drought has meant 900,000 people face difficulty getting drinkable water.

It has also posed a threat to more than 210,000 hectares of crops -- more than half of the province's total arable land -- and to 194,000 head of livestock, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Cambodia, too, was suffering its worst drought in recent years, hitting 14 out of 24 provinces and municipalities.

Nhim Vanda, chairman of the National Disaster Management Committee, said some areas were experiencing food shortages and not less than a million people were affected. Of those, 700,000 were seriously hit in the predominantly agricultural kingdom of 13 million people.

In Malaysia, more than 6,000 rice farmers are affected, officials said.
Rain is not expected until late March, and a meteorological department official told AFP cloud-seeding would begin in the northern states of Perlis and Kedah on Wednesday.

In Laos, officials were coy about disclosing the drought's extent.

There have been few if any rains since December, but the impact on crops is likely minimal as most are harvested later in the year during the rainy season.

MANILA - At least five people were killed and 13 were missing after a freak storm tore through the central Philippines on Thursday, rescue officials said.

A wooden-hulled ferry and a fishing boat capsized off a pier at the port city of Ormoc on Leyte island in heavy seas caused by Tropical Storm Roke, the civil defense office and coast guard said.

Twenty-five passengers were rescued from the ferry but three drowned and eight were missing, they said. Eleven people were rescued from the fishing boat and five were missing.

Falling trees crushed to death a 72-year-old woman on Bantayan island and a five year-old girl on Cebu island, both west of Leyte.

Dozens of inter-island ferries were confined to port across the central islands because of the storm, leaving more than 3,000 passengers stranded.

Roke's peak winds had weakened to 85 kilometers (53 miles) per hour by noon from about 105 kilometers per hour earlier Thursday.

The eye of the storm was in the north of the Sulu Sea about 100 kilometers southeast of Coron island at 4:00 pm (0800 GMT) and was moving west at 30 kilometers an hour, the weather bureau said.

It should exit into the South China Sea early Friday, they said. [...]

(Phillipines) - Tropical storm "Auring" (international code name Roke) left at least 15 people dead and 16 others missing after cutting through Central Visayas, the civil defense office said Friday.

A fishing boat went down off the municipality of Ta-rangan on the eastern island of Samar, killing eight crew-members and leaving 15 others missing.

Four people drowned and one was missing after a boat capsized in strong waves off the central city of Ormoc as Auring lashed the country on Thursday, the civil defense office said.

Three other people were crushed to death by falling trees also in Ormoc.

The storm has since weakened into a tropical depression as it moved out towards the South China Sea early Friday. [...]

KABUL - Torrential rains have killed more than 200 people and destroyed thousands of houses in several parts of Afghanistan in recent days, officials said on Sunday.

The worst hit areas were Deh Rawud district in the rugged central Uruzgan province and the western provinces of Farah and Herat, they said.

"The deaths of 115 have been confirmed... while thousands of homes have been destroyed,,"" Uruzgan's governor Jan Mohammad Khan said, adding that many more people were missing.

U.S. military Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters rescued around 250 people in the Deh Rawud District, some 70 kilometers northeast of the U.S. at Kandahar, after the Helmand river burst its banks.

In Farah 68 people died as a result of floods, its governor Assadullah Falah said. Officials reported 40 more deaths in Faryab and Ghor provinces.

"We have reports of total destruction of 7,800 houses in Farah," Falah said, adding that large numbers of livestock had been killed.

Some 2,500 houses had collapsed in Herat province. Most houses in Afghanistan are built from mud and are highly vulnerable to flooding.

Local officials also reported an outbreak of dysentry diarrhea in Herat's mountainous and inaccessible Pashtun Zarghoon area.

Afghanistan had its worst winter for over a decade after nearly six years of harsh drought.

Several hundred people lost their lives during the winter and the current rains coupled with melting snow have caused the latest calamity.

At least 41 people were killed when a flash flood washed a tractor-trailer carrying pilgrims into a fast-flowing river in Pakistan, police said today.

The Muslim pilgrims were on their way back from a shrine when the vehicle was hit by a torrent of water late on Friday.

It was crossing a riverbed near a dirt road in Dera Ghazi Khan, 125 miles northwest of Multan in Punjab province, said a military police spokesman.

He said rescuers recovered 41 bodies, while 28 other passengers survived by swimming ashore.

Another military police official and state Pakistan Television reported that 50 people had died. The reason for the discrepancy wasn’t clear.

Many regions of Pakistan have been hit by heavy rains and snow in recent months in what has been the country’s bitterest winter in years.

Authorities fear more flooding as spring comes and snow melts in the high mountains.

PENDLETON - Farmers and other water users are facing the worst drought in 28 years, according to Chet Sater of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Umatilla Field Office in Hermiston.

It's been the third-driest winter in 75 years, according to scientists at the Columbia Basic Agricultural Research Center on Tubbs Ranch Road, northeast of Pendleton. [...]

A recent study has suggested that the trends scientists and the general public are seeing with the nature and climatic conditions are only due to get worse in the coming times. Global warming and the rise in the levels of the ocean are real and would continue to happen irrespective of the steps we take now to prevent it. In simple words, it just might be too late to prevent any permanent damage from happening to our planet Earth.

National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has released the report developed by their team of climate modelers, which says that the climate would continue to get warmer in the coming times irrespective of any measures taken by the governments around the world as early as 2000. The condition is overall so bad that even if no more greenhouse gases are added to the atmosphere from now on, the global averaged surface air temperatures would rise by one degree Fahrenheit and global sea levels would rise another 4 inches from thermal expansion by 2100.

The research team has also warned that low-level areas surrounding the oceans are at extreme danger of getting swallowed by rising sea levels as the time passes by. As per their calculations, the worst-case scenario can be as bad as an average temperature rise of 6.3°F and sea level rise from thermal expansion of 12 inches by 2100. One of the lead authors Gerald Meehl said in a statement: “Even if we stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, the climate will continue to warm, and there will be proportionately even more sea level rise. The longer we wait, the more climate change we are committed to in the future.”

Looks like it is definitely the time we think about the damage we are causing to the mother earth…

"Many people don't realize we are committed right now to a significant amount of global warming and sea level rise because of the greenhouse gases we have already put into the atmosphere," says study author Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. "The longer we wait, the more climate change we are committed to in the future." Meehl and his NCAR colleagues ran two coupled climate models that link major components of our planet's climate and incorporate their interactions. The researchers then analyzed scenarios in which greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at low, moderate and high rates. The highest rates of accumulation led to model results that included a 3.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperatures and a 30 centimeter rise in global sea level.

But even without additional greenhouse gas contributions, they found, global temperature would continue to rise because of a characteristic known as thermal inertia. Water in the oceans heats and cools more slowly than air does because of its greater density, leading to a delayed response. In addition, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have long atmospheric lifetimes and can affect temperatures for years after first being introduced into the atmosphere. The authors conclude that "at any given point in time, even if concentrations are stabilized, there is a commitment to future climate changes that will be greater than those we have already observed."

MILWAUKEE - A snowstorm just before the start of spring had dumped nearly 2 feet of snow on parts of Wisconsin by Saturday, providing enough powder to reopen a ski hill that had shut for the season.

The bulk of the snow fell in the western part of the state, but accumulations varied significantly. The town of Alma Center received 23 inches of snow, while Goodrich about 65 miles to the north only got 2 inches.

Parts of Minnesota received up to 2 feet of snow on Friday, shutting down roads and causing more than 260 flights to be canceled out of the Twin Cities.

The snow caused the Mount LaCrosse Ski Area in Wisconsin to reopen for the weekend after it reported a record snowfall of 13.9 inches Friday. The resort had closed for the season on March 13. [...]

DHAKA - At least 12 people were killed and more than 200 were injured by a tropical storm that flattened more than 3,000 houses in 15 villages in northern Bangladesh, police said Monday.

"A twister accompanied by a hail storm flattened more than 3,000 houses in Northern Gaibandha district, killing at least 12 (people)" late on Sunday night, district police chief Bhanu Lal Das told AFP.

"The death figures will go up as we cannot start full-scale search operations because of the rough weather," he added.

Winds of about 100 kilometres per hour (62 miles per hour) destroyed crops, uprooted trees and electricity poles, cutting off communications to the 15 villages, in one of the most impoverished parts of the country.

"We suspect more bodies are stuck up in the flattened houses," Das said, adding the hail storm and continuous downpour made search operation difficult.

More than 200 injured people were rushed to different hospitals and clinics in the district, police said.

Tropical storms frequently hit Bangladesh during summer. Before Sunday's storm, at least 20 people had been killed in five tropical storms in different Bangladesh districts since earlier this month.

BUCHAREST - Flooding in central and northern Romania has forced the closing of several national highways leaving more than 400 people stranded Sunday as rescue workers evacuated villages, according to the Romanian environment ministry.

Heavy rain along with melting snow has caused mud slides in the Mures region, the ministry said. Hundreds of homes and thousands of acres of farmland have been inundated by flood waters.

Disaster crews have been evacuating people for two days from the affected villages, according to a Mures official, Cristian Vladu. [...]

South San Francisco, Calif. (AP) -- A rogue funnel cloud raced through South San Francisco Sunday, knocking down power lines and ripping up rooftops.

The whirling cloud - which meteorologists from the National Weather Service believe was a tornado - was spotted at 3:40 p.m. just west of the city. It appeared in the middle of a heavy thunderstorm with blue-black skies and hail. [...]

The twister formed over the Westborough hills and headed over Interstate 280.

After wreaking havoc in an industrial park and residential area close to downtown South San Francisco, it raced northeast and eventually dissipated over San Francisco Bay about 4 p.m. [...]

The funnel cloud touched down about six times, according to witnesses and damage reports.

South San Francisco police desk officer Dave Stahler said the funnel appeared in the middle of a thunderstorm "with really dark skies, tons of rain and lots of hail. It cleared immediately and we got the frantic phone calls."

No injuries were immediately reported. [..]

Meteorologists from the National Weather Service will conduct a storm survey Monday to determine if the funnel was in fact a tornado, which is unusual for the Bay Area. [...]

Once a dominant species, the volume of cod on the Scotian Shelf has plunged 96% since the 1850s, according to landmark research published today. In fact, just 16 small schooners of the pre-Civil War era could hold all adult cod currently estimated in the once-rich Scotian Shelf.

Writing in today's edition of Frontier's in Ecology (www.frontiersinecology.org), Census of Marine Life researchers announced the first-ever estimate of cod levels in the 1850s, created using old schooner catch records and observations, coupled with modern modeling tools. And they say their findings have profound implications for contemporary policy makers trying to rebuild fishery "remnants" and restore the marine ecosystem. [...]

To estimate long ago fish levels, researchers used 1850s New England schooner records of daily catch locations and fleet activity on the fishing grounds. Fishers then, using handlines, had "negligible incentive to falsify records" and, combined with ancillary documents, their logs "provide a solid, reliable basis for stock assessment."

Changing fishing patterns suggest handline fishery in sailing schooners depleted regional cod stocks. Between 1852 and 1857, Beverly vessels fished the Scotian Shelf close to 90% of the time, a figure that declined to 60% in 1859 as captains searched farther afield for more economically profitable concentrations of cod.

Some vessels left the Beverly fleet and may have left the cod fishery altogether, a familiar pattern in collapsing fisheries today. Catch per unit of fishing effort (CPUE in fish per day per ton of vessel) declined by over 50% between 1852 and 1859.

"In the logs themselves, effort was measured in a good day's catch. On May 23, 1859, Gilbert Weston, captain of the Dorado on the Scotian Shelf's Banquereau Bank, noted in his log that they 'had 1000 hooks out (on trawls) and (caught) 130 (cod) fish.' However, men who had fished in 1852 remembered good days when seven or eight handliners fishing two hooks apiece over the schooner's rail could each bring in more than 100 fish. George Gould's crew of eight on the Betsy & Eliza had four such good days in 1852, landing more than 1,000 cod on one long day in June."

Estimated 1.26 metric tons of cod on Scotian Shelf in 1852

Using a mathematical formula, the researchers estimate cod biomass on the Scotian Shelf was 1.26 million metric tons in 1852, compared with less than 50,000 metric tons today, the adults within which represent 3,000 metric tons, or 6%.

The study notes the estimate of 1850 cod biomass is "quite conservative" as the old fishing logs only record adult cod. "Prevalent hook sizes in this deepwater fishery made landing smaller juvenile cod very unlikely."

More than 8,000 villagers from the flattened hamlets in the district of Gaibandha spent a second night in the open after Sunday's storm ripped their homes apart, police said.

The twister accompanied by a hailstorm flattened 3,000 houses, destroyed crops, uprooted hundreds of trees and electricity poles and cut off communications to the 15 villages, located in one of the most impoverished parts of the country.

Three communes were hit by strong winds on Sunday and Monday and around 140 houses and nine schools were damaged, the official Vietnam News Agency reported.

"It happened in a very remote area", said a local official from the province's committee for natural disasters. "The four died after their houses collapsed."

Blustery weather on the first day of spring yesterday caused power outages around the region and kept the U.S. Coast Guard busy rescuing boaters and runaway boats alike.

Gusts up to 40 miles per hour knocked branches into power lines, causing scattered outages around Seattle. City Light crews were busy repairing power lines all day.

About 20,000 people also lost power in parts of Kitsap and Thurston counties yesterday, and a Puget Sound Energy spokesman said crews were working into the night to restore power there. [...]

OTTAWA - A new report says spawning levels are so low that the commercial, recreational and aboriginal sockeye salmon fisheries on British Columbia's Fraser River will be gone in three years.

The report from the Commons fisheries committee blames the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for failing to ensure conservation of sockeye, as well as failing to implement previous recommendations to save the stock. [...]

The committee says the fear of confrontation with First Nations groups led in part to the poor enforcement of regulations. The report also cites record high temperatures in the river as a cause for the drop in numbers.

The committee says sockeye runs are unlikely to build back up to last year's levels before 2020.

LOWRALAI, Pakistan: The flood caused by rains swept away eight members of a family at Kohla on Tuesday.

As per details, the intermittent rain caused flood at Kohla, in which eight members of a family drowned.

The dead bodies of the deceased were recovered after the struggle of many hours. [...]

PROTECTION, Kansas - Severe storms spilled over from Oklahoma into parts of south central Kansas on Monday, with school children taking shelter after a tornado was seen near Protection.

"I got a call that someone had spotted a possible tornado," said Brian Harris, branch manager of the Protection Co-op and assistant fire chief in the Comanche County community. "We saw it touch down about three miles south of town."

Harris said the tornado, following Kiowa Creek, was on the ground about 20 minutes before rising back into the sky about a mile-and-a-half from Protection.

Prior to the tornado spotting at about 1:30 p.m., the Protection Co-op recorded an inch of rain and pea-sized hail. [...]

Tornado sirens wailed Monday night as a few twisters danced across Lamar and Delta counties, but little damage was reported.

Many Lamar County residents sought cover at 6:35 p.m., when a tornado warning was issued and the cityís warning sirens were sounded. However, many other residents stood on porches looking toward the heavens and talking on cell phones about what they were seeing. So many people were talking about the storm that some cell phone callers received ìall circuits are busyî messages.

Emergency radio frequencies were noisy, too, as spotters kept watch on the sky, spotting wall clouds, funnels and tornadoes on the ground. [...]

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) - Flash floods triggered by heavy rains hit remote areas of southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 21 people and forcing thousands to flee their flooded homes, officials said.

The deaths were reported from villages near Kolhu, a town about 300 kilometres east of Quetta after floodwaters destroyed many homes there, said Razaq Bugti, a spokesman for the Baluchistan government. [...]

MAR. 23 12:56 P.M. ET A three-month drought in Brazil's southern breadbasket has destroyed an estimated 13 million tons of grain, believed to be the worst crop loss in the country's history, officials said Wednesday.

According to Jonas Cavalcante, spokesman for the government's National Supply Company, this year's harvest will be 9 percent below initial predictions made in December, costing farmers an estimated 6 billion reals ($2.2 billion) in lost revenue.

"If these numbers are confirmed, it will be the biggest crop loss in the history of Brazilian agriculture. The climate has been very violent this year and nobody was able to predict that," said Cavalcante. [...]

DHAKA : At least 22 people were killed when tropical thunderstorms swept much of Bangladesh this week, destroying homes, cutting off power supplies and disrupting air and river travel, officials said Thursday.

The thunderstorms hit 25 districts across the country late Tuesday and Wednesday and were accompanied by winds of up to 56 kilometres (34 miles) per hour that flattened thousands of thatched and tin houses.

The storms follow a tornado which ripped through 15 villages in northern Bangladesh on Sunday, killing at least 54 people.

Two boats caught in the storms sank and killed at least four people in the central districts of Madaripur and Chandpur, police said.

Four people were killed by lightning in the northeastern district of Habiganj, district police officials said. Fourteen people were killed when they were hit by falling trees and other objects. [...]

CALCUTTA - Three people were killed and 30 were hurt in heavy rainstorms in India's West Bengal state Thursday, as weather forecasters warned a severe storm was approaching.

Thursday's strong winds and rain also damaged more than 7,500 houses, state officials said.

People living in the state's coastal districts were meanwhile moved to safer areas and fishermen were warned not to venture into the sea as a severe storm was forecast to be on the way, West Bengal Relief Minister Hafiz Alem Sairani said.

Forecasters said a storm with winds of more than 80 kilometers (50 miles) an hour was likely to hit West Bengal in the next 24 hours.

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. - The usually brown landscape of California's Joshua Tree National Park has lots of green, yellow and blue this spring.

The reason? Winter storms that dumped up to 15 inches of rain on the normally dry desert area about 140 miles east of Los Angeles.

Park officials say more than 750 species of flowers can be found in the 800,000-acre park, and they expect all of them to bloom this year because of the rain.

They call it a rare event but say it's happened before.

This has been one of the wettest seasons on record in southern California.

ATLANTA - Storms packing large hail, lightning and drenching rain pounded the Southeast over the weekend, injuring motorists in Georgia and Mississippi and flooding rivers and streets across the region.

In northwest Atlanta, the grandchildren of one woman had to be rescued from her house because of Sunday's rising floodwaters. Firefighters used ladders to get the children out of the house.

Parts of central Georgia saw up to 8 inches of rain Sunday, forcing at least five rivers from their banks, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kent McMullen said. Near Newnan, the rain was blamed for a five-car pile up that shut down Interstate 85 in both directions Sunday. Three people were injured.

Trees fell and hail pelted parts of south-central Mississippi. Mississippi Emergency Management Agency officials said two people were injured and the hardest hit areas appeared to be Hinds and Yazoo counties.

A Yazoo County man was hospitalized in stable condition Saturday night after a tree and power lines fell on his car, agency spokeswoman Lea Stokes said. A woman in Yazoo County was treated at a hospital and released after "hail went through the windshield of her car."

A possible tornado Sunday afternoon damaged some trees and homes in a rural area near Montgomery, Ala., but no injuries were reported. Anita Patterson, the director of the Montgomery County Emergency Management Agency, said damage was not extensive and roads were passable.

In southwest Georgia, residents of Dougherty County left Sunday church services to find the water had risen over the road. Dougherty County Public Works employee Booker Saylor said it's the worst flooding he's seen since the 1990s.

In Washington state, meanwhile, an early spring storm drenched both sides of the Cascades and brought snow to the mountains, turning Snoqualmie Pass into an icy mess where at least 30 accidents were reported, one of them fatal.

Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom- laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.

The report does not make jolly reading. [...]

Slow degradation is one thing but sudden and irreversible decline is another. The report identifies half a dozen potential "tipping points" that could abruptly change things for the worse, with little hope of recovery on a human timescale.[...]

Walt Reid, the leader of the report's core authors, warned that unless the international community took decisive action the future looked bleak for the next generation. "The bottom line of this assessment is that we are spending earth's natural capital, putting such strain on the natural functions of earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted," Dr Reid said.

"At the same time, the assessment shows that the future really is in our hands. We can reverse the degradation of many ecosystem services over the next 50 years, but the changes in policy and practice required are substantial and not currently under way," he said.

The assessment was carried out over the past three years and has been likened to the prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - set up to investigate global warming - for its expertise in the many specialisms that make up the broad church of environmental science.

In summary, the scientists concluded that the planet had been substantially "re-engineered" in the latter half of the 20th century because of the pressure placed on the earth's natural resources by the growing demands of a larger human population.

"Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than at any time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber and fibre," the reports says.

The full costs of this are only now becoming apparent. Some 15 of the 24 ecosystems vital for life on earth have been seriously degraded or used unsustainably - an ecosystem being defined as a dynamic complex of plants, animals and micro-organisms that form a functional unit with the non-living environment in which the coexist.

The scale of the changes seen in the past few decades has been unprecedented. Nearly one-third of the land surface is now cultivated, with more land being converted into cropland since 1945 than in the whole of the 18th and 19th centuries combined.

The amount of water withdrawn from rivers and lakes for industry and agriculture has doubled since 1960 and there is now between three and six times as much water held in man-made reservoirs as there is flowing naturally in rivers.

Meanwhile, the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that has been released into the environment as a result of using farm fertilisers has doubled in the same period . More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen fertiliser ever used on the planet has been used since 1985.

This sudden and unprecedented release of free nitrogen and phosphorus - important mineral nutrients for plant growth - has triggered massive blooms of algae in the freshwater and marine environments. This is identified as a potential "tipping point" that can suddenly destroy entire ecosystems. "The Millennium Assessment finds that excessive nutrient loading is one of the major problems today and will grow significantly worse in the coming decades unless action is taken," Dr Reid said.

"Surprisingly, though, despite a major body of monitoring information and scientific research supporting this finding, the issue of nutrient loading barely appears in policy discussions at global levels and only a few countries place major emphasis on the problem.

"This issue is perhaps the area where we find the biggest 'disconnect' between a major problem related to ecosystem services and the lack of policy action in response," he said.

Abrupt changes are one of the most difficult things to predict yet their impact can be devastating. But is environmental collapse inevitable?

"Clearly, the dual trends of continuing degradation of most ecosystem services and continuing growth in demand for these same services cannot continue," Dr Reid said.

"But the assessment shows that over the next 50 years, the risk is not of some global environmental collapse, but rather a risk of many local and regional collapses in particular ecosystem services. We already see those collapses occurring - fisheries stocks collapsing, dead zones in the sea, land degradation undermining crop production, species extinctions," he said.

Between 1960 and 2000, the world population doubled from three billion to six billion. At the same time, the global economy increased more than six- fold and the production of food and the supply of drinking water more than doubled, with the consumption of timber products increasing by more than half.[...]

Agricultural intensification, which brought about the green revolution that helped to feed the world in the latter part of the 20th century, has increased the tendency towards the loss of genetic diversity. "Currently 80 per cent of wheat area in developing countries and three-quarters of all rice planted in Asia is now planted to modern varieties," the report says. Dr Reid said that the authors of the assessment were most worried about the state of the earth's drylands - an area covering 41 per cent of the land surface and home to a total of two billion people, many of them the poorest in the world.

Drylands are areas where crop production or pasture for livestock is severely limited by rainfall. Some 90 per cent of the world's dryland regions occur in developing countries where the availability of fresh water is a growing problem.[...]

So what can be done in a century when the human population is expected to increase by a further 50 per cent?

The board of directors of the Millennium Assessment said in a statement: "The overriding conclusion of this assessment is that it lies within the power of human societies to ease the strains we are putting on the nature services of the planet, while continuing to use them to bring better living standards to all.

"Achieving this, however, will require radical changes in the way nature is treated at every level of decision-making and new ways of co-operation between government, business and civil society. The warning signs are there for all of us to see. The future now lies in our hands," it said. [...]

"The Millennium Assessment cuts to the heart of one of the greatest challenges facing humanity," Roger Higman, of Friends of the Earth, said.

"That is, we cannot maintain high standards of living, let alone relieve poverty, if we don't look after the earth's life-support systems," Mr Higman said.

"Yet the assessment hasn't gone far enough in specifying the radical solutions needed. At the end of the day, if we are to respect the limits imposed by nature, and ensure the well-being of all humanity, we must manage the global economy to produce a fairer distribution of the earth's resources," he added.

THE TIPPING POINTS TO CATASTROPHE

NEW DISEASES

As population densities increase and living space extends into once pristine forests, the chances of an epidemic of a new infectious agent grows. Global travel accentuates the threat, and the emergence of Sars and bird flu are prime examples of diseases moving from animals to humans.

ALIEN SPECIES

The introduction of an invasive species - whether animal, plant or microbe - can lead to a rapid change in ecosystems. Zebra mussels introduced into North America led to the extinction of native clams and the comb jellyfish caused havoc to 26 major fisheries species in the Black Sea.

ALGAL BLOOMS

A build up of man-made nutrients in the environment has already led to the threshold being reached when algae blooms. This can deprive fish and other wildlife of oxygen as well as producing toxic substances that are a danger to drinking water.

CORAL REEF COLLAPSE

Reefs that were dominated by corals have suddenly changed to being dominated by algae, which have taken advantage of the increases in nutrient levels running off from terrestrial sources. Many of Jamaica's coral reefs have now become algal dominated.

FISHING STOCKS

Overfishing can, and has, led to a collapse in stocks. A threshold is reached when there are too few adults to maintain a viable population. This occurred off the east coast of Newfoundland in 1992 when its stock of Atlantic cod vanished.

CLIMATE CHANGE

In a warmer world, local vegetation or land cover can change, causing warming to become worse. The Sahel region of North Africa depends on rainfall for its vegetation. Small changes in rain can result in loss of vegetation, soil erosion and further decreases in rainfall.

The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries - some of them world leaders in their fields - today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure.

The study contains what its authors call "a stark warning" for the entire world. The wetlands, forests, savannahs, estuaries, coastal fisheries and other habitats that recycle air, water and nutrients for all living creatures are being irretrievably damaged. In effect, one species is now a hazard to the other 10 million or so on the planet, and to itself.

"Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted," it says.

The report, prepared in Washington under the supervision of a board chaired by Robert Watson, the British-born chief scientist at the World Bank and a former scientific adviser to the White House, will be launched today at the Royal Society in London. [...]

If this trend holds, solar minimum should arrive in 2006 followed by a rapid ascent back to solar maximum in 2010. It is widely believed that sunspots vanish and solar flares stop--completely--during solar minimum. Not so. Occasional big sunspots will unleash flares and spark auroras in 2006, just not so often as in recent years.

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. -- Something strange is stirring in and around local waters.

In the last few months, fish and bird species have been popping up in places they're not normally found. These transients aren't arriving in huge numbers, just an oddity here and there -- an Arctic bird off St. Augustine Beach, an armored catfish normally in South America found in the Indian River Lagoon, spiny dogfish normally farther north found in Ponce de Leon Inlet.

"Something's going on in the North Atlantic," said Chuck Hunter, an Atlanta- based refuge biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. [...]

But whatever caused these out-of-towners to visit, it's left some fishermen scratching their heads.

As for the one Arctic bird found in St. Augustine and the others reported in South Carolina, researchers are dumbfounded. [...]

"Many of the effects are going to be long-term effects," Paperno said. "We won't (understand) this for several years down the road."