FREDERICTON - Flooding is easing in the upper reaches of New Brunswick's St. John River valley, but the water is still rising downstream, the province's Emergency Measures Organization and River Watch 2005 said on Sunday.

"Persons living or working along the lower St. John River and in low-lying areas should remain on the alert and take steps to protect their property," a news release said.

In some areas, the only way to get around is on canoe.

From Jemseg, roughly halfway between Fredericton and Saint John, down to salt water, the river is still rising. But upriver from the town, it has peaked and is beginning to drop.

Even so, for Fredericton and nearby areas, "flooding is expected to continue for the next few days as the water levels slowly decrease," EMO said. [...]

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- April made a stormy exit in Alabama.
Thunderstorms this weekend brought a flood threat to coastal retreats along the Styx and Fish rivers, and downed some trees and knocked out power in the Birmingham metro area.

The National Weather Service warned residents along the rivers in south Baldwin County to brace for high water caused by the downpour.

The Styx River near Elsanor was expected to crest near 17.7 feet early Sunday and fall back below flood stage Sunday evening. Moderate flooding was forecast for the Fish River near Silverhill. The river was expected to crest near 14.7 feet early Sunday and fall back below flood stage early Monday.

The thunderstorms, packing high winds and lightning, also moved across north-central Alabama early today. The storms caused nearly 16,000 temporary power outages in the Birmingham-Hoover metro area. [...]

Experts at the Climate Modeling Group at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), part of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, expect drought to worsen in the Plains and the West over the next several years due to La Niña-like conditions. LDEO's "Persistent Drought in North America" Web site provides an in-depth examination of drought in this region.

Using observations and models, LDEO scientists learned that all the major dry and wet events in the American West in the last century and a half were forced by slowing varying tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs). On the Web site, Climate Modeling Group scientists show that decadal variations of these SSTs are predictable to a modest degree a few years in advance.

The group’s research on whether rising greenhouse gases will induce an El Niño-like (causing increased precipitation over the American West) or La Niña-like (causing less precipitation over the American West) response in the tropical Pacific Ocean provides additional insight on whether the American West is entering a more drought-prone period than any seen since European settlement. [...]

MADRID: Spain has suffered its driest winter and early spring since records began almost 60 years ago, data from meteorologists showed on Friday.

Rainfall from November to the end of March this year was 37 per cent below the average for the period and the lowest since records started in 1947, the National Meteorological Office said.

With water reserves in Spain at just 60 per cent of full capacity, farmers fearing water rationing say they are planting fewer crops.

Neighbouring Portugal is suffering its worst drought for 25 years and authorities there have imposed irrigation restrictions in the south, a popular tourist destination.

Using ocean data collected by diving floats, U.S. climate scientists released a study Thursday that they said provides the "smoking gun" that ties manmade greenhouse gas emissions to global warming.

The researchers, some of them working for NASA and the Energy Department, went a step further, implicitly criticizing President Bush for not taking stronger action to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

They said the findings confirm that computer models of climate change are on target and that global temperatures will rise 1 degree Fahrenheit this century, even if greenhouse gases are capped tomorrow.

If emissions instead continue to grow, as expected, things could spin "out of our control," especially as ocean levels rise from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the NASA-led scientists said. "The climate system could reach a point where large sea level change is practically impossible to avoid."

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the latest to report growing certainty about global warming projections.

Floats and satellites used

More than 1,800 technology-packed floats, deployed in oceans worldwide beginning in 2000, are regularly diving as much as a mile undersea to take temperature and other readings. Their precise measurements are supplemented by better satellite gauging of ocean levels, which rise both from meltwater and as the sea warms and expands.

Researchers led by NASA's James Hansen used the improved data to calculate the oceans' heat content and the global "energy imbalance." They found that for every square meter of surface area, the planet is absorbing almost one watt more of the sun's energy than it is radiating back to space as heat - a historically large imbalance. Such absorbed energy will steadily warm the atmosphere. [...]

'Can no longer be genuine doubt'

Significantly, those emissions have increased at a rate consistent with the detected energy imbalance, the researchers said.

"There can no longer be genuine doubt that humanmade gases are the dominant cause of observed warming," said Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "This energy imbalance is the 'smoking gun' that we have been looking for." [...]

Springtime on the Columbia River usually means hordes of Chinook salmon swimming up the river, nourishing on their way centuries-old Indian traditions and a voracious commercial fishery.

This year, however, thousands of salmon seem to have gone missing - and no one knows why.

"We’ve got a big mystery on our hands, a run of salmon that seems to have disappeared," said Stuart Ellis, a harvest management biologist with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.

Scientists had initially expected this year’s salmon run to number about 225,000 fish swimming past the Bonneville Dam where they’re counted. But, as of last Thursday, scientists had only counted about 26,000 since the beginning of the year.

A group of fish managers and tribal representatives met Monday to revise their estimate, knocking the number of fish they expect to pass from the original estimate of 225,000 to an unofficial guess of between 70,000 and 100,000.

Harsh consequences
For the first time the Indian tribes - who have for centuries relied on the salmon for their cultural and economic well-being - have been forced to get the fish used in their springtime ceremonies from other sources, some donated from sympathetic fishermen downstream and others from freezers storing last year’s catch.

Charles Hudson, the manager of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, said that the effects of the dearth of Chinook this year run deep, deeper than just having to rely on frozen fish for the annual ceremonies.

The tribes also depends on the fish for much of their daily food, and were initially given a seasonal allotment of 25,000 fish to feed about 20,000 people this year. So far, tribal fishermen have caught under 5,000 fish, according to the commission's statistics.

The tribes are also dependent on salmon for much of their economic sustenance, but it looks as though that will also be jeopardized this year.

"It looks very likely that there will be no - zero - commercial fishery this year," said Hudson.

Significant drop in tourism
On April 20, federal fish managers shut down the entire Columbia River above the Bonneville dam to all commercial and sport fishing.

This has resulted in commercial fisherman losing one quarter to one third of their profits for the entire year, according to Oliver Waldman, the executive director of Salmon for All, a fisherman’s advocacy organization.

"They’re broke," he said. The Chinook are their most important catch, the most valuable fish on the West Coast, netting the fishermen $5-6 per pound.

Now, however, "the fishery is sitting at the dock," Waldman said.

Bill Witt, who owns a fishing guide company that runs frequent trips on the Columbia, estimates that if the river is closed until June, his business will lose at least $25,000, about one-tenth of its income for the season.

Within four days of the fishery shutting down, Gimme-A-Go Fishing Adventures lost about $3,000, according to its owner, Jon Ball.

"I’ve been sitting at home. I had the last three days off," he said on Tuesday. He had to cancel all of the river tours he had booked for the weekend, as well as a television feature that was to be filmed from his boat.

Ball noted that it’s not only sportsmen like himself who depend on the sport fishing industry, but also the riverside towns who rely on tourists and fishermen to rent hotel rooms and visit stores and restaurants. Now none of those businesses are getting the expected seasonal rush.

"Everybody’s screwed," said Ball.

Unsolved mystery
So what happened to the fish?

Were they victimized by the wily sea lions that have discovered how to climb fish ladders at the Bonneville Dam, sitting there all day and devouring the unfortunate fish that try to swim past? Has there been some significant change in ocean conditions that have killed thousands of fish? Or is there some secret black market downriver that’s catching all the fish as they try to swim up the river?

Sea lions are easy targets of the public and the government fish managers, who have begun to blast fireworks on the Bonneville Dam fish ladders where many lions have taken up residence. But even the hundreds of sea lions that now live around the dam couldn’t eat nearly enough fish to account for the tiny run.

The fish market is also closely monitored by government regulatory agencies, so a massive black market is highly unlikely.

Scientists say they haven’t seen any evidence of a dramatic change in ocean conditions that could cause so many fish to die, but that could be a likely problem, according to Steve Williams, the assistant director of the fish program at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Such changes could include increased predation of the fish, or a change in water temperatures. Williams said scientists have not been able to pinpoint what changes have occurred that have hurt fish populations.

Williams noted that the annual springtime smelt fish run up the river was also nearly nonexistent this season. Smelt runs have not in years past been accurate predictors of salmon runs up the river, but both fish would be susceptible to altered ocean conditions, so the same problem could be to blame for reduced populations of both fish.

Most people involved have established their own theories. Ball, the fisherman, said he suspects the salmon have been tricked by lower water levels caused by last summer’s drought into delaying their run up the river. He said he also thinks the sea lions may have quite a bit to do with it.

Ellis and Williams both agree that none of these problems individually should take all the blame. If anything, the low numbers of salmon are the result of a number of factors influencing their ability to swim past the Bonneville Dam to their upstream spawning grounds.

Room for optimism
Williams said that despite the dismal numbers and initial panic, he and others are now looking at the salmon run with "slight optimism."

"Last week we were definitely in crisis mode," he said. But the increase in the number of fish making their way upstream is cause for optimism, he said, and he expects the run this year to at least hit the minimum expectation of 70,000 fish.

Williams also said that the commercial and sport fisheries might, if the count continues to trend upward, be opened again soon. He said fish managers are evaluating the necessity of the closure on a weekly basis, and could decide as soon as next week that salmon numbers are sufficient to warrant it reopening.

Even if the fishery were to reopen soon, however, it would be too late for many of those people dependent on the fish. Most of the Indian celebrations are done for the season, and most of the commercial fishermen have departed the salmon fishery, looking for greener pastures in other Pacific Northwest regions.

"They’re hoping, with a great, fervent hope, that the Alaska season will bring some revenues to them and their families," said Waldman, of Salmon for All. Even if the river were reopened to the fishermen next week, they’ve already departed north and couldn’t be repositioned for the Chinook catch.

Scientists are careful to note that the fish count continues through early June, but say that even if it turned out that the run was simply delayed this year, or even if daily counts jumped into the thousands, this year’s run still won’t come close to the numbers initially predicted.

BIG FLATS, Wis. - A fast-moving forest fire destroyed 30 homes and forced dozens to flee as it spread to almost 4,000 acres before being contained overnight, officials said Friday.

No major injuries were reported.

The wind-whipped fire - described as the largest wildfire in Wisconsin in 25 years - swept across nearly 3,900 acres, destroying 30 permanent and seasonal homes, at least 30 camper trailers and about 60 sheds or similar structures, Big Flats Fire Chief Dick Meyers said. About 125 families were evacuated, and about two dozen spent the night at an elementary school.

The total loss will be in the millions of dollars, said David Weitz, a spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources.

More than 200 homes and businesses lost electricity as the flames consumed utility poles, damaged transformers and burned at least 25 miles of power lines.

The blaze in rural Adams County began Thursday when a landowner started a small fire to clear grass before building a campfire, said Steve Courtney, a Natural Resources incident commander.

Along with the homes, the fire destroyed camper-trailers and other outbuildings, Fire Chief Dick Meyers said. Gov. Jim Doyle, who surveyed the damage by helicopter, said he saw many houses still standing. [...]

Some people reported seeing flames shooting 120 feet into the air, said Trent Marty, head of the state's forest protection bureau. [...]

WASHINGTON - The Earth has been getting brighter since 1990, reversing a trend called global dimming, scientists reported on Friday in the journal Science.

A brighter Earth means more sunlight is reaching the ground. The scientists wrote that there appeared to be fewer particles in the air to reflect light back into space before it hits the ground.

The planet has become about four per cent brighter, the researchers said, although they could not pinpoint exactly why.

The scientists, led by Martin Wild of the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland, suggested the reason could be less pollution.

"This may be ... due to more effective clean air regulations and the decline in the economy with the political transition in Eastern European countries in the late 1980s," Wild and his co-authors wrote.

The trend could explain why higher temperatures as forecast by global warming did not occur until the late 1990s.

The study said the dimming effect found by other scientists between the 1960s and the 1980s, perhaps due to cloud composition and pollution, masked the greenhouse effect.

But the atmosphere began to change from the mid-1980s, Wild's team wrote, with less carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

"This masking of the greenhouse effect and related impacts may no longer have been effective thereafter, enabling the greenhouse signals to become more evident during the 1990s," they wrote.

Wild's study also found the dimming trend continues in some areas, such as China and India, where pollution remains largely unabated.

The scientists behind another study published in the same issue of Science supported Wild and his colleagues.

Bruce Wielicki of the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia and his team used satellites to show the Earth has increased its reflectivity.

They also discounted the suggestion that changing cloud patterns could be responsible for the Earth's new glow.

There's a myth about the sun. Teachers teach it. Astronomers repeat it. NASA mission planners are mindful of it.

Every 11 years solar activity surges. Sunspots pepper the sun; they explode; massive clouds of gas known as "CMEs" hurtle through the solar system. Earth gets hit with X-rays and protons and knots of magnetism. This is called solar maximum.

There's nothing mythical about "Solar Max." During the most recent episode in 2000 and 2001, sky watchers saw auroras as far south as Mexico and Florida; astronomers marveled at the huge sunspots; satellite operators and power companies struggled with outages.

Now the sun is approaching the opposite extreme of its activity cycle, solar minimum, due in 2006. We can relax because, around solar minimum, the sun is quiet. Right?

"That's the myth," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The truth is, solar activity never stops, "not even during solar minimum."

To show that this is so, Hathaway counted the number of X-class solar flares each month during the last three solar cycles, a period spanning 1970 to the present. X-flares are the most powerful kind of solar explosions; they're associated with bright auroras and intense radiation storms. "There was at least one X-flare during each of the last three solar minima," says Hathaway.

This means astronauts traveling through the solar system, far from the protection of Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field, can't drop their guard--ever.

Recent events bear this out: Rewind to January 10, 2005. It's four years since solar maximum and the sun is almost blank--only two tiny sunspots are visible from Earth. The sun is quiet.

The next day, with stunning rapidity, everything changes. On January 11th, a new 'spot appears. At first no more than a speck, it quickly blossoms into a giant almost as big as the planet Jupiter. "It happened so quickly," recalls Hathaway. "People were asking me if they should be alarmed."

Between January 15th and 20th, the sunspot unleashed two X-class solar flares, sparked auroras as far south as Arizona in the United States, and peppered the Moon with high-energy protons. Lunar astronauts caught outdoors, had there been any, would've likely gotten sick.

So much for the quiet sun.

It almost happened again last month. On April 25, 2005, small sunspot emerged and--déjà vu--it grew many times wider than Earth in only 48 hours. This time, however, there were no eruptions.

Why not? No one knows.

Sunspots are devilishly unpredictable. They're made of magnetic fields poking up through the surface of the sun. Electrical currents deep inside our star drag these fields around, causing them to twist and tangle until they become unstable and explode. Solar flares and CMEs are by-products of the blast. The process is hard to forecast because the underlying currents are hidden from view. Sometimes sunspots explode, sometimes they don't. Weather forecasting on Earth was about this good ... 50 years ago.

Researchers like Hathaway study sunspots and their magnetic fields, hoping to improve the woeful situation. "We're making progress," he says.

Good thing. Predicting solar activity is more important than ever. Not only do we depend increasingly on sun-sensitive technologies like cell phones and GPS, but also NASA plans to send people back to the Moon and then on to Mars. Astronauts will be "out there" during solar maximum, solar minimum and all times in between.

Will the sun be quiet when it's supposed to be? Don't count on it.

BEIJING - China is facing an "apocalyptic" summer of severe drought and floods, a leading weather expert has warned, with water supplies and grain production under threat.

"China may face a grim situation from seasonal floods or drought this year with potential damage worse than that of last year," said Qin Dahe, a top official at the China Meteorological Administration.

"There will be much fear of a bad harvest this year."

Qin was speaking during a national televised conference on summer weather forecasting and services, said the China Daily, which reported him as saying China faced an "apocalyptic" situation.

He warned the probabilities of weather-related disasters were high with the rainy season already underway in parts of south China while the national flood season was imminent.

Thousands of people die every year from floods, landslides and mudflows in China, with millions left homeless.

While some parts of the huge country suffer massive rainfall, other parts are ravaged by drought, with drinking water and grain yields hit.

Qin said most of western and northeast China as well as parts of south China are in the midst of their worst drought in 50 years and no end was in sight, while huge rain belts were forecast for other areas.

TAIPEI - Torrential rain in Taiwan has caused mass flooding and landslides that have claimed the lives of four people and left another four missing, fire agency and government officials said Sunday.

"The bodies of the four victims have been found," said an official from the National Fire Agency, which coordinates rescue operations in Taiwan.

A 60-year-old man was drowned in northern Hsinchu city.

Two agricultural officials were found dead after they were washed away by rising floodwater outside the city in Hsinchu county.

The fourth victim was working on a riverbed in southeastern Taitung county when he was engulfed by floodwaters, the agency said.

Hundreds of residents were evacuated from Hsinchu county and central Nantou, where at least 500 millimeters (20 inches) of rain had fallen in three days, it said.

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman declared a state of emergency in Adams and Hall counties late Thursday after touring hard-hit central Nebraska, which is recovering from heavy rain and pounding storms.

Heineman also sent 20 soldiers from the Nebraska National Guard to help with sandbagging in the Grand Island area, as requested by city officials.

It may take days or even weeks before the state can provide an estimate of damage to the region's buildings, infrastructures and crops, Heineman said.

Heineman said officials would continue to assess damage, which could lead to more disaster declarations in other counties.

The damage is done and now its time to pick up the pieces. Thursday was a rough day for residents across the South Plains. The storms produced 10 tornadoes across the area.

A tornado tore through a house just two miles west of Ralls. Harley Reese, 77, wasn't home at the time. The 2,500 square-foot house was ripped off its foundation and contents were found a mile-and-a-half away. [...]

Softball sized hail broke several windows, sky lights and car windshields. The most damage was done on the south side of Lake Ransom Canyon and just to the east. The storm damaged several roofs, but there were no reports of damage to any homes. [...]

Atlantic Ocean ripe for two more decades of fostering strong storms

TAMPA, Fla. - With the onset of the 2005 hurricane season little more than two weeks away, meteorologists on Friday warned that conditions in the Atlantic Ocean again were ripe for spawning tropical storms that could slam into Florida or other parts of the Eastern U.S. or Gulf coast with potentially devastating and deadly consequences.

Last season, Florida was hit by four hurricanes in six weeks, an unprecedented succession of natural disasters in the state that was blamed for 123 deaths and more than $42 billion in property damage. Although predicting where and when storms will make landfall is impossible, forecasters attending Florida's 19th annual Governor's Hurricane Conference agreed that the Atlantic Ocean was in the throes of an active period that could last another two decades or more.

"We're in a new era now, and we're going to see a lot more major storms," said William Gray, a professor in Colorado State University's department of atmospheric science, who issues a much-awaited yearly prediction of hurricane activity. [...]

A new study finds whale beachings coincide with changes in solar activity. (Mavis Burgess)

Surges of solar activity may cause whales to run aground, possibly by disrupting the creatures' internal compasses, according to German scientists.

University of Kiel researchers Klaus Vaneslow and Klaus Ricklefs looked at sightings of sperm whales found beached in the North Sea between 1712 and 2003.

They compared the record with another set of historical data - astronomers' observations of sunspots, an indicator of solar radiation.

They found that more whale strandings occurred when the sun's activity was high.

The sun experiences cycles of activity which range from eight to 17 years, with 11 years being the average.

Short cycles are linked with periods of high energy output, while long cycles are believed to be low energy.

Changes in levels of solar radiation have a big effect on earth's magnetic field.

The most notable events are solar flares that cause shimmering lights, called aurorae, in the magnetic fields in polar regions.

Big solar flares can also disrupt telecommunications and power lines and knock out delicate electronic circuitry on satellites.

The researchers found that of the 97 stranding events reported around the coastal countries of the North Sea over the 291 years, 90 per cent occurred when the sun cycles were below average in duration. [...]

'Dead zones', where pollution has starved the sea of life-giving oxygen, are increasing at a devastating rate

It has arrived early; it's bigger than ever and it promises a summer of death and destruction. The annual "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico - starved of oxygen, and thus killing fish and underwater vegetation - has appeared earlier than usual this year.

This is just one sign of a rapidly growing crisis. The number of similar dead zones in the world's seas has doubled every decade since 1960, as a result of increasing pollution. The United Nations Environment Programme says that there are now 146 of them worldwide, mainly around the coasts of rich countries. Its executive director, Klaus Töpfer, calls their growth "a gigantic, global experiment ... triggering alarming, and sometimes irreversible, effects".

The Gulf of Mexico dead zone - which can cover more than 7,000 square miles - is mainly caused by fertilisers, flowing down rivers to the sea. Every year the Mississippi river - which drains 41 per cent of the United States - dumps 1.6 million tons of nitrogen in the gulf, three times as much as 40 years ago. Most comes from the highly productive corn belt, which helps to feed the world. The nutrients feed blooms of algae and phytoplankton. The algae drain oxygen from the water, as do the decomposing bodies of the plankton, when they fall to the seabed and die.

It hits a fishery that provides one-fifth of the country's entire harvest from the sea. As a result, catches of brown shrimp, the gulf's most important species, have dropped since 1990. The worst years match those with biggest dead zones, which appear to block juveniles from reaching their offshore spawning grounds. Last year, the dead zone was even blamed for a tripling in shark attacks on Texas bathers. Fish and swimming crabs flee the pollution for cleaner water, followed by the sharks.

Scientists recently found 19 locations with severely depleted oxygen in the gulf, where they expected to find none at this time of year. "It usually doesn't start until June," said Steven DiMarco, a researcher at Texas A&M University, one of several groups involved in the testing. "It was larger at that time than it was at any time in 2004. During January and February of this year, the flow of the Mississippi river was larger than at any time in 2004."

The stratification levels between the fresh river water and heavier salt water of the sea created the dead zone, which usually is at its most severe between 30 and 60 feet below the surface. The zone was first recorded in the early 1970s. It originally occurred every two to three years, but now returns each summer.

The world's biggest dead zone is in the Baltic, where sewage and nitrogen fallout from burning fossil fuels combine with fertilisers to over-enrich the sea. Fish farming can also exacerbate the problem.

Nearly a third of the world's dead zones are off the United States - including a notorious one in Chesapeake Bay - but they also cluster round the coasts of Europe and Japan, and have reached China, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand. [...]

Image of the sun from the SOHO spacecraft of the intense solar activity taken May 15, 2005, at 7:50 a.m.

"This event registered a 9 on the K-Index, which measures the maximum deviation of the Earth's magnetic field in a given three-hour period," said Gayle Nelson, lead operations specialist at NOAA Space Environment Center. "The scale ranges from 0 to 9, with 9 being the highest. This was a significant event."

Possible impacts from such a geomagnetic storm include widespread power system voltage control problems; some grid systems may experience complete collapse or blackouts. Transformers may experience damage. Spacecraft operations may experience extensive surface charging; problems with orientation; uplink/downlink and tracking satellites. Satellite navigation may be degraded for days, and low-frequency radio navigation can be out for hours. Reports received by the NOAA Space Environment Center indicate that such impacts have been observed in the United States.

NOAA forecasters said the probability of another major event of this type is unlikely, however, other minor level (G-1) geomagnetic storms are possible within the next 24 hours.

This event was forecast by NOAA as the result of a solar flare that occurred on Friday, May 13.

The NOAA Space Environment Center, one of the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction, is home to the nation's early warning system for solar activities that directly affect people and equipment on Earth and in space. The NOAA Space Environment Center’s 24/7 around-the-clock operations are critical in protecting space and ground-based assets. Through the SEC, NOAA and the U.S. Air Force jointly operate the space weather operations center that continuously monitors, analyzes and forecasts the environment between the sun and Earth. In addition to the data gathered from NOAA and NASA satellites, the center receives real-time solar and geophysical information from ground-based observatories around the world. NOAA space weather forecasters use the data to predict solar and geomagnetic activity and issue worldwide alerts of extreme events.

NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of the nation's coastal and marine resources.

PERTH - Severe winds and torrential rain have ripped through the southwest of Western Australia, blocking roads, damaging buildings, felling trees, bringing down power lines and closing schools.

Hundreds of State Emergency Service volunteers were called to incidents across Perth and further south.

The town of Bunbury, 180km south of Perth, appears to have been the worst affected by the line of severe thunderstorms yesterday.

Staff at the town's ABC radio station were lucky to escape with their lives after a 38m crane collapsed on their building.

Some schools in the town were forced to close, the roof of the town's cathedral was damaged and numerous businesses and homes also lost roofs.

At the ABC station, journalist Alisha O'Flaherty said she had stepped out of her office and was walking towards a printer as she prepared her 6.30am bulletin when the crane collapsed, crushing the newsroom.

"I heard a sound like a train coming towards me and basically this enormous crash behind me, and the whole office was destroyed," said Ms O'Flaherty.

"I was shocked for a second, and then we all gathered together and left the building because we didn't think it was stable."

Bicton, 15km south of Perth, was also battered, and the suburb's primary school was badly affected.

State Emergency Service spokeswoman Nita Gill said there had been calls to 500 incidents across the city, and 150 volunteers had been asked to help. [...]

NANCHANG, May 15 (Xinhuanet) -- The Yangtze River areas will receive more rain this year than last year and will be under threat in the coming June-August flood season.

Cloudy and rainy weather has lingered at the middle and lower reaches of the river since the beginning of spring, and several hydrological stations have reported record high levels of water, said Cai Qihua, director of the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee.

He made the remarks at a meeting on flood control of the Yangtze River Sunday in Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi Province.

The Yangtze River, historically rampant with flooding, was spared slightly last year. But typhoons, mud-rock flows and landslides still occurred in some flooded areas. [...]

HANOI - A Vietnamese oil tanker sank after colliding with another vessel, spilling tonnes of diesel off the country's southern coast, state media reported on Friday.

The tanker, operated by state oil monopoly Petrovietnam, went down on Thursday near Dai Hung oilfield with a cargo of 100 tonnes of diesel oil after crashing into a Liberian-flagged oil tanker, the Nhan Dan newspaper reported.

An oil spill appeared near the crash site, around 135 nautical miles southeast of the southern oil hub Vung Tau City, which is 125 km (75 miles) northeast of Ho Chi Minh City, the report said.

All 16 crew of the Vietnamese ship were rescued. There was no damage to the Liberian vessel.

ST. JOHN'S - Warming waters in the North Sea have pushed dozens of species of fish farther north, according to British researchers.

Reporting in the latest issue of the journal Science, the researchers found water temperatures in the North Sea climbed about one degree Celsuis during their investigation period, 1977 to 2001.

"We've seen that nearly two-thirds of the species have shifted their geographic centre in response to warming, and most of those shifts have been northward," says principal researcher Allison Perry, a doctoral student at the University of East Anglia.

In all, 36 species were considered, including cod and other commercially sought species, such as whiting.

The study pointed to a range of troubles, because while some species have moved significantly northwards, other species – including traditional food sources for other fish – have not.

"It's not so simple as just all of the fish moving together," Perry says.
"What we're seeing is a whole range of different responses ... so there are some fish that are shifting and among those some are shifting more quickly, and others are shifting more slowly, and there are some fish that don't seem to be responding at all."

The researchers attributed the rise in temperature to global warming. [...]

DHAKA : At least 17 people died and more than 1,000 homes were destroyed Tuesday in pre-monsoon storms in northwestern Bangladesh, police officials told AFP.

The storms uprooted trees and flattened hundreds of bamboo and tin roofed dwellings, killing 13 people in Natore district, said district additional superintendent of police Mustafizur Reza. Four others died in adjoining Rajshahi district, about 160 kilometres (100 miles) from the capital Dhaka, added a district police spokesman.

The victims died when they were hit by falling trees and other objects, the officials said.

Phone lines to some of the areas had been cut, they added.

In another storm in central Bangladesh Tuesday, a ferry carrying more than 100 people capsized.

At least one person has been confirmed dead and a salvage operation to recover bodies thought to be trapped in the sunken vessel was due to begin early Wednesday.

YELLOWKNIFE – People living in a wilderness camp downriver from Fort Good Hope narrowly escaped the floodwaters of the Mackenzie River late last week.

The 14 Sahtu Dene at Charlie Tobac's camp on the Tida River, 60 kilometres down river from the community, had to be evacuated when waters swept through the camp.

The group had been in contact with Fort Good Hope and had heard about the flooding in the community, so knew they were next to face the rising waters.

Tobac says they placed as much of their equipment and supplies as they could on stilts, and started hauling the remainder of their goods up a slope away from the river.

But the speed of the rising waters still caught them off guard, and Tobac says the flood waters were terrifying.

"All that water was just going over the cliff and it was just like rapids. I heard trees breaking like sticks and sounds like shots of rifles. It was really loud," he says.

Tobac says they had a radio, but the had to save the radio's one remaining battery to start their outboard in case they had to make a fast escape by water.

By Wednesday, the Fort Good Hope band became alarmed by their radio silence, and sent out a helicopter.

The helicopter relayed a total of eight people from Tobac's camp that day and the next.

But the camp was flooded out before the chopper could return for the last six on Friday.

The remainder had to take to their boat in search of higher ground.

CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream - the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing.

They have found that one of the “engines” driving the Gulf Stream - the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea - has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength.

The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures.

Such a change has long been predicted by scientists but the new research is among the first to show clear experimental evidence of the phenomenon.

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, hitched rides under the Arctic ice cap in Royal Navy submarines and used ships to take measurements across the Greenland Sea.

“Until recently we would find giant ‘chimneys’ in the sea where columns of cold, dense water were sinking from the surface to the seabed 3,000 metres below, but now they have almost disappeared,” he said.

“As the water sank it was replaced by warm water flowing in from the south, which kept the circulation going. If that mechanism is slowing, it will mean less heat reaching Europe.”

Such a change could have a severe impact on Britain, which lies on the same latitude as Siberia and ought to be much colder. The Gulf Stream transports 27,000 times more heat to British shores than all the nation’s power supplies could provide, warming Britain by 5-8C.

Wadhams and his colleagues believe, however, that just such changes could be well under way. They predict that the slowing of the Gulf Stream is likely to be accompanied by other effects, such as the complete summer melting of the Arctic ice cap by as early as 2020 and almost certainly by 2080. This would spell disaster for Arctic wildlife such as the polar bear, which could face extinction.

Wadhams’s submarine journeys took him under the North Polar ice cap, using sonar to survey the ice from underneath. He has measured how the ice has become 46% thinner over the past 20 years. The results from these surveys prompted him to focus on a feature called the Odden ice shelf, which should grow out into the Greenland Sea every winter and recede in summer.

The growth of this shelf should trigger the annual formation of the sinking water columns. As sea water freezes to form the shelf, the ice crystals expel their salt into the surrounding water, making it heavier than the water below.

However, the Odden ice shelf has stopped forming. It last appeared in full in 1997. “In the past we could see nine to 12 giant columns forming under the shelf each year. In our latest cruise, we found only two and they were so weak that the sinking water could not reach the seabed,” said Wadhams, who disclosed the findings at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna.

The exact effect of such changes is hard to predict because currents and weather systems take years to respond and because there are two other areas around the north Atlantic where water sinks, helping to maintain circulation. Less is known about how climate change is affecting these.

However, Wadhams suggests the effect could be dramatic. “One of the frightening things in the film The Day After Tomorrow showed how the circulation in the Atlantic Ocean is upset because the sinking of cold water in the north Atlantic suddenly stops,” he said.

“The sinking is stopping, albeit much more slowly than in the film - over years rather than a few days. If it continues, the effect will be to cool the climate of northern Europe.”

One possibility is that Europe will freeze; another is that the slowing of the Gulf Stream may keep Europe cool as global warming heats the rest of the world - but with more extremes of weather.

BEIJING- Global warming is shrinking glaciers on the Tibet side of Mount Everest faster than ever, putting world water supplies at risk, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.Chinese scientists researching the world's tallest peak, which China refers to by its Tibetan name, "Qomolangma", had found clear evidence of increasing glacial melting, Xinhua said.

"Global warming has resulted in glaciers melting fast in the Mount Qomolangma area ... threatening the balance of global water resources," it said.

Around 75 percent of the world's fresh water is stored in glacial ice, much of it in mountain areas, allowing for heavy winter rain and snowfall to be released gradually into river networks throughout the summer or dry months.

"The growing melting area means less fresh water reserves for the world in the future," Xinhua said.

The Chinese scientists had found the melting point of one Everest glacier had risen around 50 metres (165 ft) in just two years, more than twice as fast as normal, while a huge, high-altitude ice cliff seen in 2002 had apparently disappeared, it said.

Similar melting has been reported on Nepal's side of the mountain. The United Nations warned in 2002 that more than 40 Himalayan glacial lakes were dangerously close to bursting, endangering thousands of people, because of global warming.

Scientists say global warming could drive the average global temperature up by 1.4-5.8 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years, which would cause glaciers to retreat and oceans to rise and swamp low-lying areas around the world.

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - Deforestation in the Amazon rain forest in 2004 was the second-worst ever, figures released by the Brazilian government showed Wednesday.

Satellite photos and data showed ranchers, soybean farmers and loggers burned and cut down a near-record area of 26,130 square kilometres of rain forest in the 12 months ending in August 2004, the Brazilian Environmental Ministry said.

The destruction was nearly six per cent higher than in the same period the year before, when 24,600 square kilometres were destroyed.

The deforestation hit record numbers in 1995, when the Amazon shrank by a record 29,000 square kilometres, an area roughly the size of Belgium.

Environmentalists were shocked with the new figures, which were announced nearly a year after the Brazilian government announced a multimillion-dollar package to curtail destruction.

"It's a tragedy, a demonstration that more needs to be done by the government," said Paulo Adario, head of Greenpeace's Amazon program. [...]

(New Zealand) - Record rainfall has turned parts of the Bay of Plenty into a disaster zone, with a state of emergency being declared in Tauranga on Wednesday afternoon.

Around 230 millimetres of rain fell in and around Tauranga, stretching emergency services and bringing the city to a standstill.

A state of emergency has also been declared in the small township of Matata near Whakatane due to serious flooding.

The Whakatane District Council says it has received reports that a number of homes are underwater or have been hit by mudslides.

Emergency services are in the township to assess the damage and assist where needed. A number of people are being evacuated to Whakatane.

In one of Tauranga's worst hit suburbs, Otumoetai, several streets have been blocked and houses are teetering on a cliff edge. Elsewhere emergency services have called in the Army to help get people to safety.

Homes have collapsed and many are on the verge of destruction as mud slides and floods sweep through the suburbs of Tauranga. Eight houses have already been seriously damaged by flooding and slips, and 200 people have been evacuated.

Tauranga Mayor Stuart Crosbie says the forecast for more rain could bring further flooding to the city. Up to 120 millimetres is forecast for Wednesday night. [...]

SEWAGE PLANT A SUSPECT BUT EVIDENCE IS LACKING

MORRO BAY - Known for its fishing port, sandy beaches and hulking Morro Rock, a granite monolith that has guided sailors since the 1600s, Morro Bay has gained another distinction lately: It's a place where California sea otters appear to be dying in unusual numbers.

Two years ago, a toxic algae bloom off the quiet San Luis Obispo County town was to blame. Last year, dozens of otters there died of a brain parasite found in opossums. And in a 2002 study, otters in Morro Bay were found to suffer the highest rate of infection of Toxoplasma gondii, a potentially fatal parasite found in cat feces, of any coastal area in California.

Marine biologists -- who are working the mystery like sleuths in the TV series "CSI'' -- say they don't know for sure what the culprit is. They offer a range of theories: polluted storm runoff, the geography of the area, even toxic chemicals used in boat paint that might weaken otter immunity or -- most likely -- a combination of things.

But as the detective work continues, one landmark is making environmentalists uneasy: the town's sewage plant.

Built in 1954, the oceanfront plant discharges 1 million gallons a day of partially treated sewage into the ocean, half a mile off the beach. [...]

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - Five Chilean soldiers died and 95 others were missing after a snow storm trapped an army battalion in the Andes mountains, an army commander said Thursday.

The battalion was returning from a mountain drill Wednesday when the storm hit, reducing visibility to near zero with driving snow, Gen. Emilio Cheyre said.

By early Thursday, 333 members of the 433-soldier battalion were safe at military installations in the area, some 500 kilometres south of Santiago, Cheyre told Radio Cooperativa.

The five soldiers who died were victims of hypothermia, the army said. [...]

The first storm of the Pacific hurricane season spiraled toward Central America's Pacific coast on Thursday, killing two and forcing thousands of others from their homes as it gashed the terrain and soaked the region with rain. The National Hurricane Center upgraded "Adrian" from a tropical storm to a Hurricane on Thursday afternoon.

Guatemalan officials declared a "maximum alert" ahead of Adrian and Salvadoran officials closed schools and began evacuations Thursday as the hurricane began to threaten the impoverished Central American nation and its neighbor Guatemala. Many schools and offices were closed on Thursday, and some stores were crowded with people stocking up on water and food.

Both countries declared emergencies as the storm gained strength, carrying heavy rains that forecasters warned would likely cause flooding.

A Category I hurricane, Adrian was expected to pick up pace and the eye of the storm was expected to hit land late Thursday or early Friday along El Salvador's northern coast, near the country's capital, San Salvador.

At last report Adrian was about 120 miles southwest of San Salvador with winds approaching 75 mph with higher gusts, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported. The hurricane center notes that "The biggest threat from Adrian is the potential for torrential rainfall, which will likely produce flash flooding and potentially devastating mud slides over the mountainous terrain of Central America." [...]

Powerful thunderstorms had unleashed ten twisters in Iowa and Minnesota by late Wednesday. Three of the ten were in Minnesota, where debris was reported by two law enforcement officials on Highway 29 near Benson in the west-central section of the state.Farther south, a tornado was on the ground at least 10 minutes in western Iowa near Fort Dodge. [...]

QINGYUAN - It's rice-planting season in China's southern province of Guangdong, but despite the landscape of flooded fields dotted with green seedlings, Lian is worried."There is not enough water. There's rain now, but it's still not enough. There's not enough water in the reservoir," she says squatting by the edge of a field, her trousers rolled to the knee and a broad straw hat hiding her eyes.

The province is recovering from its worst drought in 50 years, allowing farmers to begin sowing.

The drought in southern China has affected everything from crops and livelihoods to hydropower.

"Throughout history droughts have happened, but the frequency and level of severity are increasing because of climate change," said Yang Ailun, a Greenpeace climate and energy specialist based in the provincial capital of Guangzhou.

Even as the rainfall diminishes, consumption is growing ever higher.
A few kilometres (miles) outside of Guangzhou, smokestacks give way to fields and stylish city people are replaced by barefoot farmers.

But the lack of water is affecting both.

Crops are dying and fish farms drying up, while grid overloads last year forced factories to tap power only overnight, and led the government to ask restaurants and hotels to limit use of electric lights.

"In this part of Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta area, the population is increasing very fast. Through the 1990s, the economic boom has also driven up water consumption," said Ma Jun, an environmentalist and the author of "China's Water Crisis".

"The water consumption rise is staggering," he said. [...]

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian village was left baffled Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight.

NTV television showed pictures of a giant muddy hole bathed in summer sun, while fishermen from the village of Bolotnikovo looked on disconsolately.

"It is very dangerous. If a person had been in this disaster, he would have had almost no chance of survival. The trees flew downwards, under the ground," said Dmitry Zaitsev, a local Emergencies Ministry official interviewed by the channel.

Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.

"I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us," said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.

WASHINGTON - Eleven states sued the Bush administration on Wednesday to block new rules allowing coal-burning utilities to trade rights to emit toxic mercury, adding to a flurry of lawsuits challenging the regulations.The core issue in all the lawsuits is whether the Environmental Protection Agency went far enough with its March regulations to protect public health. Mercury contaminates fish and water and has been linked to neurological disorders in young children.

The EPA regulations rolled out in March ordered US utilities to cut their emissions of mercury by 70 percent by 2018 through a cap-and-trade system.

On Wednesday, New Jersey and 10 other states filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., saying the cap-and-trade rules will lead to "hot spots" with concentrated mercury levels near power plants. That's because polluting utilities will be able to buy rights to emit the toxin rather than reduce levels outright.

"These laws are deeply flawed and contrary both to science and law," said New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey.

EPA officials have downplayed the possibility of hot spots and the agency said it will "vigorously defend" the rules against court challenges from states and environmental groups.

The other states in the lawsuit are California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

The nation's 1,100 coal-burning power plants emit about 48 tons of mercury each year, the largest unregulated US source. [...]

Aside from views of cattails and blackbirds, the marshes in the lower Hudson Valley near New York City offer an amazingly detailed history of the area's climate. Sediment layers from a tidal marsh in the Hudson River Estuary have preserved pollen from plants, seeds, and other materials. These past remnants allowed researchers from Columbia University, New York, N.Y. and NASA to see evidence of a 500 year drought from 800 A.D. to 1300 A.D., the passing of the Little Ice Age and the impacts of European settlers.

Plants provide an indicator of climate because the well-being of a species is controlled by the temperature and moisture of a region, and whether those conditions suit a type of plant. That's why if you draw latitudinal or horizontal lines around the world you'll find very similar species growing along those lines, like tropical plants around the equator, or tundra and northern or boreal forest species in a circumference south of the North Pole.

From the pollen record found in sediments in Piermont Marsh of the lower Hudson Valley, a Medieval Warm period was evident from 800 to 1300 A.D. Researchers know this from the striking increases in both charcoal, a sign of dry vegetation and fires, and pollen from pine and hickory trees. Prior to this warming spell, there were more oaks, which prefer a wetter climate. [...]

During this drought period, a core drilled into the marsh bed showed large influxes of inorganic soil particles, a sign of erosion. Plant roots hold soil in place, but with drought and plant deaths, more erosion occurs.

Droughts like this also make the bay saltier, and evidence of this was found by an increase in salty marsh plants, like saltmarsh cordgrass. The changing salinity of the marshes and estuaries could present future water quality issues in the event of a drought. For example, heading north up the Hudson River, the city of Poughkeepsie draws its municipal water directly from the river. Because the salinity of the river changes with drought, causing saltier water to move further north, salinity changes have the potential to affect the water supply of the city.

During the Little Ice Age from the early 1400s to late 1800s, the vegetation changed again to plants that favored cooler and wetter climates. The core records revealed increases in spruce and hemlock that prefer cooler and wetter climates.

Similarly, when Europeans settled the area they cleared the forests for agriculture. The pollen record reflects this with a vast decline in tree pollen and an increase in pollen from weedy plants like ragweed, plantain, sorrel and dock. Inorganic soil particles also went up following European settlement.

Peteet points out that researchers could use these methods to similarly learn about climate in other parts of the world.

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.

The sight had 74-year-old George English scratching his head.

"It's disheartening, getting out on your deck and seeing this," he said as he stood next to wife, Betty, and the "lakeside" condominium they bought in 1996 for its view. "One day it's a beautiful lake, and now, bingo, it's gone."

Some residents said they noticed that the lake, after being swelled by torrential rains weeks earlier, began falling last weekend. The Englishes said they noticed the drop-off Monday.

By Wednesday, the manmade lake - normally seven to 10 feet deep in spots - had been reduced to a mucky, stinky mess.

David Taylor, a geologist who inspected the lakebed Wednesday, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the sinkhole was formed when water eroded the limestone deep underground and created pockets in the rock. The sinkhole was "like a ticking time bomb."

The lake and surrounding housing development date to the late 1980s. The development now includes more than 670 condominiums and houses, about one-tenth of them bordering the lake.

Because the lake is private property, the subdivision's residents will have to cover the cost of fixing it, probably through special property assessments. George English expects it to cost $1,000 a household.

It is a price English said he is willing to pay. He just wants the unsightly pit gone, either by refilling it with water or dumping enormous amounts of dirt into it to create green space or usable land.

"I think it'll come back again," he said. "You have to hope they can fix it."

Icelanders are accustomed to their land being stretched, split, and torn by violent earthquakes and haphazardly rebuilt by exploding volcanoes. But everyone was surprised when a large lake began to disappear into a long fissure created by one of last summer's earthquakes.

The draining lake is an oddity even by Icelandic standards, and has lured hordes of curious onlookers to it barren shores.

"If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the lake draining," said geologist Amy Clifton of the Nordic Volcanological Institute in Reykjavik, Iceland. "It sounds like water going down the sink."

Last year, during a leisurely Sunday drive, a geologist noticed a large gash in the landscape about 20 kilometers (13 miles) from Reykjavik and reported it to Clifton. When she arrived she found a fissure-about a foot wide and 400 meters (1,280 feet) long-that led directly into Lake Kleifarvatn and disappeared beneath the water.

Lake Kleifarvatn, which measured about six kilometers (3.7 miles) long and 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) wide last year, has shrunk dramatically. Now it is only 3.5 kilometers long and roughly 1.8 kilometers wide, said Clifton.

Kleifarvatn is draining at about one centimeter (one-third of an inch) a day, according to Clifton. "You can almost see the lake level drop," she said.

Summerhouses that were once mere steps from waterfront are now more than a kilometer away from the water's edge. The placid waters have dropped more than four meters in the last year. In their place is a barren lake bed speckled with sulphur-rimmed thermal springs that spit boiling water and mud.

Clifton spends much of her time mapping and measuring "rips, gashes, and holes" in the Icelandic landscape. Describing herself as a "walking pencil," because her treks are all mapped by global positioning system (GPS) technology, she investigates open cracks, torn vegetation, rock falls, sinkholes, and other disturbances and tries to determine what caused them.

But what phenomenon created the large fissure at Lake Kleifarvatn is an enigma. "I couldn't find an earthquake in our database that was big enough to cause such a huge rupture in the surface," said Clifton.

She and some of her colleagues think a "quiet earthquake" may be responsible. Explaining such a scenario, Clifton said the water may have "lubricated the fault lines, allowing them to slide quietly and slowly, preventing the shock waves that would normally accompany an earthquake."

The earthquake thought to be responsible for the fissure at Lake Kleifarvatn occurred last year on June 17, about 80 kilometers (49 miles) east in the South Icelandic seismic zone. "No one ever expected earthquakes in this region to affect the surface in the Reykjanes Peninsula, where Lake Kleifarvatn is located," said Clifton.

Clifton hopes to eventually understand the relationship between the movement of faults deep within Earth and their surface effects in the region. Such knowledge is important for mapping areas that may be subject to future hazards, especially in regions where the population is growing.

While the Lake's dramatic disappearance is, for Clifton, "alarming, interesting, and unusual," she and her colleagues assume the waters will return. The last time a similar event happened was in 1912, after a magnitude 7 earthquake, and it took about three decades for the water level to normalize, she said.

Iceland experiences violent geological events because it sits at the Mid-Atlantic ridge-the boundary of the North American and European continental plates. The North American plate is shifting westward and the European plate is moving eastward. In the middle is a "hot spot," which spews the magma that has created the island of Iceland. Iceland grows by two centimeters (three-fourths of an inch) every year because of stretching and building caused by the combination of plate movements and volcanic activity.

Clifton said: "Iceland is a natural laboratory for studying this stretching and understanding the time scale on which these events occur."

When Lake Jackson "disappeared," governmental agencies jumped in. The Northwest Florida Water Management District, along with state and local governments, were prepared to implement a massive clean-up plan to restore the lake to its previous ecological health and to its renown trophy largemouth bass days. [...]

On September 16, 1999, most of the water remaining in the southern portion of Lake Jackson drained through Porter Hole Sink, an eight-foot wide sinkhole, leaving only isolated pools. The largest pool in the northwest portion of the lake drained slowly into Lime Sink over the next six months and in May 2000, this portion of the lake was completely dry.

The first documented disappearance of the lake's water was in May of 1907. The lake also disappeared in 1909, 1932, 1935, 1936, 1957 and 1982. Today, water managers call this process a natural drawdown, dewatering, draining or drydown.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) - A flash flood warning was issued for Yellowstone National Park and northern Teton County last night after heavy rains drenched northwest Wyoming.

No damage was immediately reported.

The National Weather Service said that a half inch to an inch fell in a short time, and more was possible.

The heavy rain, combined with mountain snowmelt, caused rising waters across the Teton Range and southern portions of Yellowstone National Park from the south entrance to West Thumb Junction.

Utah rivers and streams continued their march to flood stage. Peak snowmelt flows could arrive as early as Sunday.

In eastern Utah, officials say the Ashley River threatens to swamp as many as 40 houses in Vernal. West of Salt Lake City, a mudslide blocked the intake to a culinary water system for Stockton.

Stockton is asking its 529 residents to limit their use of water until the city can push boulders from the intake.

In southern Utah, record flows continued to swamp the Sevier River, flooding agriculture lands.

A flood watch remained in effect for other parts of southern Utah. [...]

Clean up continues after a tornado touches down in Eastern Kentucky.

The twister hit a community near Campton in Wolfe County.

The National Weather Service rates the tornado F-0, the lowest on its scale, packing winds near 70 miles an hour.

The tornado blew over roofs and tree limbs and sent one woman, Orinne Spencer, to the hospital.

Spencer is in stable condition. [...]

BHUBANESHWAR, India : At least 35 people have died from sunstroke and dehydration in India over the past two weeks with soaring temperatures gripping vast tracts of the country, officials said Saturday.

Twenty-four people have died in the eastern Indian state of Orissa because of a heat wave, said state revenue minister Manmohan Samal.

He said authorities were investigating whether far more people had been killed in the extreme temperatures.

"The government has heard reports that 113 people have died due to heat-related reasons but we can only confirm 24 deaths right now. We are still investigating the reports," Samal told AFP. [...]

LOS ANGELES – Record temperatures left Southern Californians sweltering on Saturday as thousands flocked to parks, beaches and malls to beat the heat.

After a record-setting wet winter, scorching temperatures have fire officials on guard. Several brush fires ignited during the week, including a 120-acre blaze that threatened 40 homes near the Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County on Saturday. It was expected to be fully surrounded early Sunday. [...]

DHAKA - Flash floods caused by heavy pre-monsoon rains killed at least one person and left more than 50,000 marooned in villages in northeastern Bangladesh, officials said.

About 100 villages across Maulvibazar district, 160 kilometres (100 miles) from the capital Dhaka, were inundated Tuesday after five river embankments were breached, said district flood relief chief Azadur Rahman Mallick.

One man was swept away when a river burst its bank and at least 100 houses were completely washed away, he said on Wednesday. [...]

Any astronomer will tell you that the Sun is unpredictable. But on Jan. 20, 2005 it was dangerously so, leaving scientists to rework theories of how space storms operate and showing that interplanetary space travel will be a deadly serious business.

In new studies presented today, researchers detailed a solar outburst that shocked Earth with the highest dose of radiation measured in five decades.

The tempest arrived frighteningly fast.

Other solar outbursts have provided more dramatic pictures, more threatening X-ray flares, and tremendous coronal mass ejections of hot gas that arrive several hours later. But the solar event at 2 a.m. ET on that January morning created an intense burst of energetic protons that, surprisingly, tripped radiation monitors all over the planet within moments.

"This flare produced the largest solar radiation signal on the ground in nearly 50 years," said Richard Mewaldt of the California Institute of Technology. "But we were really surprised when we saw how fast the particles reached their peak intensity and arrived at Earth."

Mewaldt is a co-investigator on NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft, which monitored the event. Several studies on the flare are being presented this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) New Orleans.

The raging proton storm peaked in 15 minutes. Normally, the most intense part of a proton event takes two hours or longer to build up.

"That's important because it's too fast to respond with much warning to astronauts or spacecraft that might be outside Earth's protective magnetosphere," Mewaldt said. "In addition to monitoring the Sun, we need to develop the ability to predict flares in advance if we are going to send humans to explore our solar system." [...]

Flares emanate from sunspot groups, regions of the Sun where intense magnetic energy caps upwelling solar material, creating cooler, darker spots. The surprising January flare came on the heels of a series of other very large but otherwise normal flares from the same sunspot group. Scientists can't say why the fifth event was so unusual.

"It means we really don't understand how the Sun works," Lin said.

Moscow sweltered in record heat for a second day Tuesday, as emergency officials said four people drowned as they sought refuge in rivers and ponds and 10 police officers collapsed from heat exhaustion outside the courthouse where Mikhail Khodorkovsky's verdict is being read.

Tuesday's air temperature peaked at 30.8 degrees Celsius at 5 p.m. -- breaking the record of 29.7 degrees set on May 24, 1983, said Nadezhda Satina, spokeswoman for the Moscow weather bureau.

On Monday, the air temperature rose to 29.5 degrees, also topping the previous record for the day -- 29 degrees -- from 1939, Satina said.

But relief is in sight. A cold front is expected to blow across Moscow on Wednesday and Thursday, pushing daytime temperatures down to 21 to 26 degrees for the rest of the month, she said. [...]

It's Texas, and it's supposed to get hot - but this early?

Spring 2005 was cooler than normal until summer-like weather hit North Texas with a vengeance this weekend.

Temperatures reached 98 degrees on Sunday at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, breaking the record of 96 set in 1939; Saturday's high of 97 topped the record for that date by a single degree.

Though the average high for this time of year is 85, 90-degree temperatures in May are not unusual. However, Sunday marked the second day in a row that saw a record high set and the third consecutive day of above-average temperatures.

At Richardson's Wildflower Arts and Music Festival, water and even sunblock on ice wasn't enough.

"It comes on all of a sudden, and they're not ready for it," said Richardson Fire Department battalion chief Tim Mock.

Eight people at the festival were overcome by the heat streaming down via sunlight.

"People are getting overheated, and with the sunlight they're not used to it," Mock said. "Wednesday was 85 degrees, and today it's 100."

PHOENIX (AP) -- Record breaking temperatures again Sunday, across the state.

It was 109 degrees Saturday and Sunday in Phoenix.

Sunday's high ties the old record of 109 degrees last set in 2000.

The old Phoenix record of 107 degrees was set on Saturday's date in 2000 and tied in 2003. That record was shattered shortly after 2:30 p-m.

The rest of the state wasn't any better today.

Record high temperatures were set or tied in south-central and southwest Arizona this afternoon.

Monday's forecast isn't expected to be any cooler.

More than one million Mozambicans are reeling from a drought that has hit the south of the country and only little more than a tenth are getting food aid, an official said late Tuesday.

"The drought is now affecting more than one million people in the south of the country," Silvano Langa, head of the National Disaster Management Institute, said at a meeting with officials from the UN World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

"Only 150,000 people have got food assistance in June," Langa said, adding that the "target is being revised" for the affected population in the regions of Maputo, Gaza and Inhambane.

Langa said he hoped the shortage would not be as "acute as in past years when we had to ward off the combined effects of drought and war."

He said he was not launching an "urgent international appeal" for help, but was counting more on "bilateral aid."

A former Portuguese colony, Mozambique gained independence on June 25, 1975, only to plunge into war a year later that was to last until 1992, claiming up to one million lives.

More than half of the population of 17 million lives on less than a dollar a day.

BOSTON -- A spring nor'easter brought driving rain and strong winds to the region Wednesday morning, as damp, frigid weather continued to plague New England with the unofficial start to summer just days away.

Officials at the National Weather Service in Taunton said the nor'easter, which reached New England on Tuesday night, would bring winds of up to 60 mph along the coast. The storm could also drop 1 to 2 inches of rain and bring coastal flooding with the early morning high tide on Wednesday.

BOMBAY (Reuters) - India's monsoon appears to have set in over the southern Andaman Sea, the first entry point for the subcontinent, after a delay of about 10 days, weather officials said on Wednesday.

The monsoon, closely watched in India because two-thirds of the population earns a living from farms, was expected to arrive over the southern coast around June 7, about a week later than normal, officials said.

"Unprecedented" effort is required to slow biodiversity loss
If we continue with current rates of species extinction, we will have no chance of rolling back poverty and the lives of all humans will be diminished.

That is the stark warning to come out of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), the most comprehensive audit of the health of our planet to date.

Organisms are disappearing at something like 100 to 1,000 times the "background levels" seen in the fossil record.

Scientists warn that removing so many species puts our own existence at risk.

It will certainly make it much harder to lift the world's poor out of hardship given that these people are often the most vulnerable to ecosystem degradation, the researchers say.

The message is written large in Ecosystems and Human Well-being: the Biodiversity Synthesis Report.

It is the latest in a series of detailed documents to come out of the MA, a remarkable tome drawn up by 1,300 researchers from 95 nations over four years.

The MA pulls together the current state of knowledge and in its latest release this week focuses specifically on biodiversity and the likely impacts its continued loss will have on human society.

Even faster

In one sense, and precisely because it is a synthesis, the new document contains few surprises. It is, nonetheless, a startling - and depressing - read.

A third of all amphibians, a fifth of mammals and an eighth of all birds are now threatened with extinction. It is thought 90% of the large predatory fish in the oceans have gone since the beginning of industrial trawling.

And these are just the vertebrates - the species we know most about. Ninety percent of species, maybe more, have not even been catalogued by science yet.

"Changes in biodiversity were more rapid in the last 50 years than at any time in human history," said Dr Georgina Mace, the director of science at the Institute of Zoology, in London, UK, and an MA synthesis team member.

"And when you look to the future, to various projections and scenarios, we expect those changes to continue and in some circumstances to accelerate.

"Future models are very uncertain but all of them tell us that as we move into the next 100 years, we'll be seeing extinction rates that are a thousand to 10,000 times those in the fossil record."

'Invisible services'

One feature that sets the MA apart from previous projects of its kind is the way it defines ecosystems in terms of the "services", or benefits, that people get from them.

Some of these services are obvious - they are "provisional": timber for building; fish for food; fibres to make clothes.

At another level, these services are largely unseen - the recycling of nutrients, pollination and seed dispersal, climate control, the purification of water and air - but without these "support" and "regulating" systems, life on Earth would soon collapse.

And although we may be some distance away from an "end scenario", there is no doubt the rapid expansion of the human population and its high consumption of natural resources have taken a heavy toll on ecosystems and the organisms that inhabit them.

"Biodiversity and human well-being just cannot be separated," said Dr Kaveh Zahedi, the officer in charge of the Unep World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, UK.

"We are befitting from a whole range of services that up until now have almost been invisible; we haven't considered them. And then they suddenly pop up on our radar screens - we have a tragedy in Asia with a tsunami and we realise that those mangroves that were cut down had a value; they provided a service in terms of coastal protection."

Similar picture

Land-use (habitat) changes, climate change, pollution and over-exploitation - they are all pushing down on biodiversity and the pressure shows little sign of easing.

"The magnitude of the challenge of slowing the rate of biodiversity loss is demonstrated by the fact that most of the direct drivers of biodiversity loss are projected to either remain constant or increase in the near future," the MA biodiversity synthesis report says.

Removing huge swathes of forest has a blunt and clear impact on biodiversity by taking out the habitat formerly occupied by plants and animals. But there are subtle changes taking place, too.

The distribution of species around the globe is becoming more homogenous, as invasive creatures hitch a ride on fast human transport and trade routes.

Genetic diversity, also, is declining rapidly.

This is most obvious in domesticated plants and animals where the pursuit of high yields and the pressures of global markets have pushed farmers towards a limited range of cultivars and breeds.

And so it is not simply that species are fewer in number, their changed circumstances may also have reduced their resilience and their ability to cope with future change.

Possible tensions

In 2002, world governments, through the Convention on Biological Diversity, set themselves the target of making a "substantial reduction in the rate of loss of biological diversity" by 2010.

The MA illustrates just how tough it will be to meet that target. What is more, there may even be occasions when progress towards that target conflicts with the even loftier 2015 Millennium Development Goals of cutting into world hunger and poverty, and improving healthcare.

A classic example is the development of rural road networks - a common feature of hunger reduction strategies - which are likely also to accelerate rates of biodiversity loss by fragmenting habitats and by opening up new areas to unsustainable harvests.

This sort of thing has been well documented in Africa where the bushmeat trade that endangers many species follows the development of transport infrastructure.

"This is a very important issue," said Dr Mace. "It's clear there are going to have to be trade-offs and compromises but it's not a simple relationship. It's not a case that you can have 20% poverty and 80% biodiversity.

"If you do things the right way, if you chose the right options for poverty alleviation, you can also maximise biodiversity and sustainability."

And Dr Neville Ash, another MA synthesis team member, added: "The bottom line is that you cannot achieve long-term poverty alleviation without sustainability.

"In order to reduce hunger and poverty and increase access to clean water and sanitation, we need to have a strong base of environmental sustainability which is providing these services on which people rely for their well-being."

Little time

It is very evident, too, that we need to get a move on.

The wheels of global governance turn slowly, as was seen with the Kyoto Protocol on climate change which finally entered into force in February after many years of negotiation.

The MA has identified possible solutions - from significant shifts in consumption patterns and better education, to the adoption of new technologies and a large increase in the areas enjoying protection.

And if some of the ideas sound "old hat", such as the abolition of farming subsidies that drive crop production to the detriment of field biodiversity - that is because they are.

"Most of the approaches to achieving more sympathetic management of the natural environment and the conservation of biodiversity - I think we and governments know them already," commented Graham Wynne, the chief executive of the UK bird conservation group, the RSPB.

"The real challenge is to deploy them more extensively and more intelligently.

"And you can't get away from the fact that we simply need more money.

"The sums of money we throw at the environment in the West are relatively modest; and the sums of money the West is prepared to devote to developing countries is pitiful."

HESPERUS, Colo. - A river in southwestern Colorado spilled over its banks Wednesday, sending fast-moving water into a trailer park and forcing families to scramble through thigh-deep water to protect their belongings.

"It was scary. It sounded like we were sleeping in the river," Louise Suazo said as water from the swollen La Plata River rushed under her home.

Several rivers in southwestern Colorado are cresting this week after days of hot weather and melting snow. Water levels are expected to remain high through the Memorial Day weekend,
National Weather Service hydrologist Brian Avery said.

"It's not over and it won't be over until at least next week," he said.

In neighboring Utah, a missing elderly woman was found dead Wednesday in an ordinarily moderate creek sent rushing by melting snowpack. Cynthia Lark, 76, has dementia and was thought to have wandered away.

In Hesperus, 240 miles southwest of Denver, dead trees and other debris forced the La Plata over its banks and into the Pinewind Trailer Park. Residents slogged through the water to dig diversion ditches, hoping to steer the water away from propane tanks and electrical wiring.

Six of the homes either were surrounded by water or had water flowing beneath them. Gas service was turned off, and most residents had lost phone service.

Avery said most major flooding has been in southwestern Colorado, where the water is reportedly the highest it has been since the regional drought began about six years ago.

Avery said authorities were concerned boaters, rafters and kayakers would be drawn to high rivers, despite dangerous and icy conditions.

"We're trying to encourage people to be very safe or just avoid the water altogether," Avery said.

Rescue workers have pulled 18 people from the Animas River in the past five days and county officials planned to monitor popular bridges after a 23-year-old man was rescued - and arrested - after jumping into the torrent from a bridge Tuesday. He was dared by friends to leap.

SEATTLE - Make that an iced coffee. While the Northeast was bidding farewell to unseasonable temperatures in the 40s, residents of the northwest corner of the nation dusted off the sunscreen and shorts Friday as the National Weather Service issued its first-ever heat advisory for Seattle.

The advisory covering the urban corridor from Tacoma north to Everett was prompted by a second day of record temperatures. Friday's high of 89 degrees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport broke a 33-year-old record for the date. Thursday's high - also 89 degrees - broke a 58-year-old record.

Phyllis Cameron, 92, planned to keep cool with lots of iced tea and a few gin-and-tonics. "I'm just going to enjoy it on the chaise on my deck," said the lifelong Seattle resident.

The weather service, however, was advising that people should drink lots of water, stay indoors and out of the sun, and check on relatives and neighbors.

The advice didn't seem to be taking. Winter-pale flesh was on display in the city's parks, and the streets were packed with people drinking iced coffee.

Seattle is among the cities added this year to the weather service's excessive heat program. A heat advisory means conditions could lead to heat stress in some people and a warning indicates a higher possibility that people will get sick or die.

The organizers of the annual Northwest Folklife music festival welcomed the heat, which boosted attendance for the normally slow first day. Concertgoers crowded into Seattle Center, enjoying the music, the sun and a giant fountain shooting cool water 120 feet into the air.

Last year it rained, said Rafael Maslan, 20, a festival board member.

Seattle-area temperatures were expected to cool over the weekend, and Weather Service meteorologist Dustin Guy said the heat advisory would not be renewed for Saturday.

NIJMEGEN, The Netherlands - Dikes and dams will not be enough to stop the deluge. With climate change, people will have to learn to live with floods and tidal waves, scientists at an international conference said.

"We have gone from the point of defending ourselves from flooding to managing floods and learning to live with them," said Eelco van Beek, who was among the 300 experts attending a conference in the Dutch city of Nijmegen.

During the past two years, more than 600 floods have been recorded in the world, causing the deaths of 19,000 people and damage valued at about 25 billion dollars (20 billion euros).

The figures do not include the deaths of some 273,000 people when a tsunami hit the countries bordering the Indian Ocean last December.

The conference in the Netherlands brought together scientists and humanitarian specialists to try to find ways of handling inundations, whether from the sea or rivers.

"It is time to say good-bye to the traditional approach of making ever higher dikes and ever stronger pumps," said Melanie Schultz van Haegen, the Dutch state secretary for water management.

A purely defensive strategy is "untenable, especially because of the difficulty of defending against the consequences of climate change," she said.

Pioneers in the fight to control water, the Netherlands now prefers to allow rivers to overflow into specific spill-over zones.

As for crises such as the Asian tsunami, the conference called for a global alert and prevention system, including the means to reach people who do not have access to mass communication such as the Internet or telephones.

In Africa, for example, transistors have been handed out to residents in certain areas at risk of flooding so they can get the alerts. The operation is set to be extended to southeast Asia.

"These systems can give an alert for all types of disasters because a tsunami does not hit just once in their lives," said Avinash Tigay, the Indian director for water management issues at the
World Meteorological Organization.

TORONTO (CP) - It arrived encircled in a shroud of torrential rain so severe that nobody caught sight of its devastating presence until it was too late. When the high winds, hail and continuous thunder and lightning subsided, 11 were dead and 155 were injured as large swaths of a southern Ontario city and surrounding areas lay in ruin.

"Nobody, that we're aware of, actually saw the tornadoes on that day," Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson said of the storm that tore through Barrie, Ont., on May 31, 1985.

"The rain, instead of just staying well out ahead of the thunderstorm, was actually wrapped right around the tornado itself, making it basically (impossible) for anyone to distinguish it from a heavy rain."

Twenty years later, environmental scientists and storm watchers are sure of two things.

First, that advancements in weather tracking and improved emergency management strategies leave Canadians much better prepared for the next killer tornado.

Second, the next killer tornado - especially for Ontario - is long overdue.

"Our return period for a storm of that intensity is about 15 years in Ontario," said Coulson.

"We're now 20 years since that event, and we haven't seen its like since then. That potential still exists for us to experience a storm of that intensity again."

Roughly 80 of these destructive storms touch down each year in Canada's tornado alleys - southern Ontario, the prairies and southeastern Quebec. New Brunswick and the interior of British Columbia also see their share.

What's rare is the magnitude of the tornado that wreaked havoc on southern Ontario in 1985 - on the Fujita scale of zero to five, it measured a four.

"This was a real big super cell thunderstorm, probably twice the height of Mount Everest, that produced the tornado," said George Kourounis, a Toronto-based storm chaser.

Storms of that destructive magnitude are often noted for the lives and structures they spare thanks to their confounding patterns of destruction. [...]

Bank Holiday revellers in Cambridgeshire enjoying a weekend of sunshine were stunned when the weather took a dramatic turn for the worse.

Three tornados up to half a mile wide hit the flat fenland farmland within an hour.

Benton Spencer, 24, was "absolutely stunned" to see the first from the A142 Newmarket to Ely road, as he and girlfriend Kate Ashby were driving to her family home in the village of Barway.

When they reached the village, near Soham, they saw another larger one on fields behind the house and minutes later a third over a nearby factory.

Mr Spencer told Sky News Online: "The first one appeared at about 10.30am. It was fairly well formed and about 2,000ft high, but it didn't come to ground.

"About half an hour later another one appeared, stayed together and came to ground. There was a good cloud of dust and it was about half a mile wide.

"It lasted two to three minutes and was moving in and out of the trees."

Mr Spencer said that when the freak weather struck he and several others stopped on the road to watch the event.

"A few of us pulled our cars over to watch and take pictures. Everyone was pretty shocked."

The nearby town of Newmarket was also hit by freak weather, with giant hailstones turning the streets white. [...]

There will be no Memorial Day cookout for the residents in the 11000 block of Larkwood at the Carlyle Place Apartments, because there's nowhere dry to sit after an F-1 tornado swept through southwest Houston Sunday night.

Approximately 130,000 customers across Houston were without power at the peak of the storm.

Portions of the complex's roof were torn off forcing approximately eight to 10 families to seek other shelter.

"And all of the sudden, just, bam," said one resident. "There's a piece of tin like this one on the sidewalk, it went past my face. So I jumped back inside, grabbed the kids and we headed for the bathtub."

The cars that weren't damaged, were trapped because the parking lot was littered with glass, nails and debris that used to be part of the building's roof.

"That's right where my bedroom is," said one woman referencing a door-sized hole the storm punched in the building's wall.

"I'm just glad I wasn't laying in my bed," said another man, "because if I was laying in my bed, the big old glass fell right where I lay."

Despite the damage, there were no serious injuries. Seven people were treated at the scene for minor injuries, but no one required transport to the hospital. [...]

Sunday's storms dropped a record amount of rain for that date at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport, the National Weather Service reported today, and more may be on the way.

A record rainfall of 3.56 inches fell at the airport Sunday, breaking the old mark of 3.36 inches set in 1978, the weather service said.

Flash flooding remains possible across portions of Southeast Texas today and the weather service has issued a flood watch effective until 7 p.m. today throughout the region. Counties included in the watch are Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, Polk and San Jacinto.

Additional rainful amounts of 1 to 2 inches appear likely this afternoon and early this evening, with isolated areas possibly experiencing 3 to 5 inches, the weather service said.

Heavy thunderstorms soaked much of the region Sunday, causing widespread street flooding, traffic tie-ups and some power outages, while lightning injured a northwest Harris County teenager and started an apartment fire in Jersey Village. In southwest Houston, a building collapsed, injuring 2.

Much of Southeast Texas was under thunderstorm and tornado watches and warnings throughout the afternoon and night. The National Weather Service office in League City reported up to 7 inches of rain in east Harris and Liberty counties. Though meteorologists had not confirmed any tornadoes, the Harris County Sheriff's Department received a report of a funnel cloud near Greenspoint Mall. [...]

The torrential storms and the tornado twister in the northern part of Bulgaria over the weekend have incurred damages of over BGN 4 M, according to preliminary estimates.

The damages as a result from the tornado, hailstorm and flood in the town of Turgovishte only stand at nearly BGN 4 M, local civil defence authorities said.

The storms and floods have shown no mercy also to national roads, farms and orchards most of which are badly ruined. Many people who occurred to be outside when the tornado blew suffered psychological traumas.

In some parts where the cherry-picking season in on the threshold, fruit is likely to get rotten, local farmers said. Grain plants in certain areas to the north of Bulgaria were killed by the severe hailstorms.

Bulging rivers to the north of the Balkans chain have left under water great parts of private and public farmland.

Lightning killed three people and a man was missing as storms swept Bulgaria, flooding farmland and destroying roads, police said on Monday.

A 74-aged woman died when she was struck by lightning while sheltering from torrential rain in the central town of Troyan on Sunday. In the southern towns of Haskovo and Plovdiv, two 20-aged men were struck and died in separate incidents.

PRAGUE - The Czech capital Prague on Saturday registered its hottest temperature for the day for 113 years, hitting 31.8 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit), the local authorities said.

The previous record for the day had been recorded in 1892 with 31.6 degrees Celsius.

Fires in the Siberian forests - the largest in the world and vital to the planet's health - have increased tenfold in the last 20 years and could again rage out of control this summer, Russian scientists warn.

They say they have neither the money nor the equipment to control or extinguish the huge forests fires often started illegally and deliberately in the Russian far east by rogue timber firms who plan to sell cheap lumber to China.

In 2003, one of the hottest summers in Europe, 22m hectares of spruce, larch, fir, Scots pine and oak were destroyed, charred, scorched or in some way affected by fire. On one day in June that year, a US satellite recorded 157 fires across almost 11m hectares, sending a plume of smoke that reached Kyoto 5,000 kilometres (3,107 miles) away.

Forests absorb carbon dioxide from the air and release oxygen. The world's forests are part of the calculations behind the Kyoto agreement, ratified by Russia, Britain and many other nations, but not the US or Australia, to control the greenhouse emissions that fuel global warming.

Forests have also become part of the currency of exchange, called carbon trading, intended to keep economies stable while limiting emissions overall. Most attention has been focused on the steady destruction of the surviving Amazon and Indonesian forests.

But the so-called "boreal" forests of Siberia, slow-growing but huge, are equally vital. They became a global issue in 2003, when so many fires raged in Siberia and the Far East that atmospheric scientists identified their smoke and soot in Seattle, on the far side of the Pacific.

"You should try to protect your forests, because they are the lungs of the planet: they absorb carbon dioxide," said Anatoly Sukhinin, of the Sukachev Institute of Forestry in Krasnoyarsk, the once-closed Siberian centre where the British Council has just opened Zero Carbon City, a touring exhibition on global warming. "It looks to me like these huge forests are currently being devoured by a powerful lung cancer."

Russia's forests stretch almost from the steppes of central Asia to the Arctic permafrost, and from European Russia almost to the Bering Sea. Vast areas are almost pristine, the preserve of migrating birds and the occasional hunter and trapper.

In the north, the trees grow slowly, some reach the age of 400-500 years, and are vulnerable to any disturbance. In the south, the forests become cluttered with dry underbrush, and at risk from electrical storms. But the biggest threats come from climate change and deliberate arson by people intent on illegal logging.

"One factor is global warming, and there is absolutely no doubt that this is happening. Global warming results in more extreme droughts: greater droughts, longer droughts, and more frequent droughts. The other factor is underfunding. We cannot do a good job to preserve and protect our forests," Dr Sukhinin said. "There is very little money to fund such work. We have some equipment left from the old times, we have some organisational support, but we are critically underfunded by the government."

Cooperation with US and Canadian partners means that they get the big picture from US government satellites.

In the enormous expanses of Siberia, they need specialised firefighting aircraft. The government in Moscow has designed and made some, but sells or leases them to other countries. Even when the foresters can identify the areas ablaze, they can do little.

The forests are at risk in early spring - after the dry cold of the Arctic winter - and in high summer, when temperatures soar. Fires in the forests are a threat to oil and gas pipelines, to wildlife and to the permafrost itself. Heat from the blazing underbrush and the parched canopy can disperse the clouds in a fierce thermal updraft, melting the frozen soil and leaving behind a landscape of charred stumps and dripping swamp.

On top of natural hazards, the Russian scientists count the risk of arson.

Paradoxically, forests have become money to burn. Licences to log healthy forest are expensive. But timber merchants and logging companies can buy cheap licences to clear stands of timber in some way damaged by fire.

Forests quickly recover from fires which rage through the underbrush. Many trees have adapted to survive periodic ground-level fire, and flourish on the ashes of their more lowly competitors.

"After a fire, the timber improves and is even better," said Dr Sukhinin. "And that is the time when people can come in, fell the trees, sell the timber to China and get good money.

"The Chinese themselves, they pay well and they pay the same money for timber from affected areas as for timber from unaffected areas - and that is the reason for the arsonists. It's illegal if you don't have a licence."

It is unlikely humans exterminated in a short killing spree the immense marsupial Diprotodon and other huge beasts that once roamed Australia.

Two new studies reject the theory that humans moving on to the continent more than 45,000 years ago took out its megafauna in a 1,000-year "blitzkrieg".

The studies suggest instead a more complex pattern to the extinctions.

Their authors say humans certainly had a role but it was not as important as the period's climate changes.

The studies are published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and in Memoirs of the Queensland Museum.

'Guilt by association'

Migrating humans have been blamed for the quick disappearance of large creatures both in the northern and southern hemisphere.

In North America, for example, the demise of mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch is coincident with the arrival on the landmass of humans with new stone-spear technologies about 12,000 years ago.

And in Australia, the extinction of great beasts - such as the marsupial lion (Thylacoleo carnifex), the immense wombat-like Diprotodon optatum and the 400kg lizard Megalania prisca - also occurred at roughly the same time humans appeared on the scene.

Previous research had even indicated a very rapid removal of the megafauna, in perhaps as little as a thousand years.

But in their PNAS paper, Clive Trueman, from the University of Portsmouth, UK, and colleagues in Australia argue evidence for the involvement of human overkill in the southern extinction is largely circumstantial - "guilt by association".

They report detailed new dating data on fossils found at Cuddie Springs in New South Wales. These suggest humans lived side by side with the great beasts of Australia for at least 10-12,000 years.

It gives the lie, they claim, to the notion that humans rapidly removed the large animals either by hunting or changing the landscape through burning.

Instead, the team argues for a more complex explanation of megafaunal extinction in which large climate shifts played a significant role.

These saw temperatures plummet and the lush landscape become arid.

Also, the researchers believe humans simply would not have had the hunting technologies to take out so many large creatures.

"There is not a single stone-spearpoint in Australia until, at the very earliest, about 15,000 years ago - long after anyone thinks the megafauna went extinct," said co-author Dr Stephen Wroe, from the University of Sydney.

"You try taking out a two-to-three-tonne wombat with a pointy stick.

"I don't doubt the first Aboriginals did hunt megafauna but the argument that they did it with the efficiency required to effect near-instantaneous extinction is not, in my view, credible."

Small and big

This analysis fits with the second paper, published by Gilbert Price, of Queensland University of Technology.

He says that the colder, drier climate that came about between 50,000 and 20,000 years ago changed the type of animals that could survive in the region of Australia that he studied.

He found that the patterns of fossils in a creek bed in the Darling Downs area of south-east Queensland suggested that other, smaller species also disappeared with the larger ones.

The shift in the fossils found in the 10m-deep section of creek bed mirrored the changes to the environment as woodland and scrubland gave way to grassland, he told Memoirs of the Queensland Museum.

Mr Price said that many of the fossils found pre-dated human activity in the area, absolving humans from any involvement in their extinction.

"We've done a little bit of radiocarbon dating on the deposits themselves and we know that the age of the deposits pre-dates the first humans on the Darling Downs by about 30 to 35,000 years," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"We know that there's no human or cultural artefacts in the deposits as well and we know that all the cut marks on the bones are related to predation by some of the other species that lived on the Darling Downs, such as marsupial lions."

Some commentators in the Australian media on Tuesday questioned whether Trueman's and colleagues' dating of Cuddie Springs was as reliable as they claimed.

They also pointed to evidence that the megafauna had withstood previous climate uphevals, making it unlikely that one more extreme, Late-Pleistocene shift would have had such a big impact on its own.

MIAMI - If hurricanes again pound the United States this summer, their roar is likely to be accompanied by the din of another storm -- an angry debate among US scientists over the impact of global warming.

Last season's $45 billion devastation, when 15 tropical storms spawned nine hurricanes in the Atlantic and Caribbean, prompted climatologists to warn of a link to warming temperatures.

But hurricane experts say the unusual series of hurricanes, four of which slammed into Florida in a six-week period, was the result of a natural 15- to 40-year cycle in Atlantic cyclone activity.

After a lull between 1970 and the mid-1990s, the number of storms picked up dramatically from 1995 and higher-than-normal activity is expected for the next five to 30 years as a phenomenon known as the "Atlantic multidecadal mode" holds sway.

"Really, for the folks that are doing work on hurricanes, there isn't a debate (about global warming)," said Chris Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's hurricane research division in Miami.

Many climatologists disagree. They say the large, decades-long swings in hurricane activity may mask, but do not rule out, longer term climate change trends.

The warmer waters and increased air moisture that global warming is expected to produce are, after all, the primary fuels that hurricanes feed off during the June to November season.

"Global climate change is happening. The environment in which these hurricanes form is clearly changing," said Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. He is also a lead author of the next major UN report on climate change, due in 2007. [...]