Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

California: Typhoon remnants threaten to bring Central Valley flooding, mudslides, weather service says

typhoon Melor weather map
© The Weather Channeltyphoon Melor
The remains of super typhoon Melor, which is barreling across the Pacific at high speed today, threaten to bring flooding to some areas of California's Central Valley and mud slides in recently fire-ravaged areas, the National Weather Service reports.

Up to 6 inches of rain could fall starting Tuesday in the foothills and mountains east of the Sacramento Valley in the season's first major storm for Northern California, meteorologist Felix Garcia of the National Weather Service said.

The valley could see up to 2 inches of rain during the entirety of the storm, he said.

The snow level will stay above 7,000 feet or 8,000 feet, meaning virtually all the precipitation will be in the form of rain, Garcia said.

Areas where fires occurred may suffer more.

Magnify

Killer Earthquakes Shake Scientific Thought

Earthquake
© AP PhotoIndonesian soldiers crawl under a collapsed building during a rescue attempt in the Sumatran city of Padang on October 2 after a 7.6-magnitude quake toppled buildings in the area late on September 30. A sudden cluster of massive earthquakes which has shaken Asia-Pacific communities and likely left thousands dead has also jolted some scientists, who are starting to question conventional thought.
A sudden cluster of massive earthquakes which has shaken Asia-Pacific communities and likely left thousands dead has also jolted some scientists, who are starting to question conventional thought.

Experts who dismissed notions that far-away quakes could be linked are beginning to think again after huge tremors rocked Samoa and Indonesia on the same day, followed by another major convulsion in Vanuatu.

Some 184 people died in the terrifying tsunami which smashed Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga on September 30, while thousands are feared dead after parts of Indonesia's Padang city were reduced to rubble just hours later.

On Thursday, thousands of panicked people fled the coast as a rapid succession of large quakes off Vanuatu set off a tsunami warning for much of the South Pacific.

The "remarkable" sequence has prompted veteran earthquake-watcher Gary Gibson to tear up his theory it was all down to chance and search for a possible connection.

Better Earth

Al Gore Challenged at Environmental Conference

The director of Not Evil, Just Wrong, a documentary challenging Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, dares to ask a question at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference. Apparently Mr. Gore only allows the 'right kind' of questions to be asked of him.


Bizarro Earth

6.4-magnitude quake hits South Pacific, no tsunami alert

A 6.4-magnitude quake hit the Santa Cruz islands in the South Pacific on Friday, seismologists said, a day after a series of huge quakes sparked a region-wide tsunami alert.

The quake struck at a depth of just 9.4 kilometres (six miles) about 315 kilometres northwest of the Luganville, part of the Vanuatu archipelago, at 8:16am (2116 GMT) but no tsunami warning was immediately issued.

The region has been pummelled by some 20 aftershocks after Thursday's triple tremors measuring 7.6, 7.8 and 7.3 sparked a tsunami warning for much of the South Pacific, sending thousands of residents fleeing from the coast.

Bizarro Earth

5.9 Earthquake Shakes Tonga

A moderate magnitude 5.9 earthquake shook the South Pacific near Tonga on Sunday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. No tsunami watch was issued.

The quake struck at 8:41 Sunday morning (1941 GMT Saturday) at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), the USGS said.

It was centered 65 kilometers (40 miles) east-northeast Hihifo, Tonga, and 645 kilometers (400 miles) north-northeast of the capital, Nuku'alofa, Tonga, the agency reported.

Sunday's quake was 260 kilometers (160 miles) southwest of Apia, Samoa, which was hit by a quake and a devastating tsunami on Sept. 29, with at least 183 people killed.

Magnify

Temperatures of Sea Water Fringing South Pole were Tropical 50 million Years Ago

Earth
© Unknown
The temperature difference between equatorial and polar sea waters was minimal during the extremely warm 'Greenhouse world' 60 to 50 million years ago. This is the main conclusion drawn by a team of scientists from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of California, Santa Cruz. The team of scientists, headed by Peter Bijl, show that circum-Antarctic sea water exceeded 30ºC at that time. The results were published in Nature this week.

The conclusions are based on analyses on sediments retrieved from the ocean floor east of Tasmania. This area bordered to Antarctica during the early Paleogene (60-35 milion years ago). Much global warming research is focused on polar areas, because these are particularly sensitive to climate change.

Previously, scientists from Utrecht University and the Royal NIOZ presented in a suite of Nature and Science articles the manifestation of Greenhouse climates in the Arctic regions, with the invasion of tropical algae and sea surface temperatures of up to 24ºC. Meanwhile, temperatures of waters fringing the Antarctic continent during the Greenhouse climates were a great unknown to climate scientists. The multidisciplinary research, published in Nature, now reached a breakthrough.

Better Earth

Farmed Out: How Will Climate Change Impact World Food Supplies?

Impact
© iStockPhotoBLEAK FUTURE?: A new report estimates that climate change will result in 25 million more malnourished children by 2050.
A new study attempts to estimate the effects of climate change on global agriculture--and outline ways to mitigate its most dire consequences

The people of East Africa once again face a devastating drought this year: Crops wither and fail from Kenya to Ethiopia, livestock drop dead and famine spreads. Although, historically, such droughts are not uncommon in this region, their frequency seems to have increased in recent years, raising prices for staple foods, such as maize.

This scenario may simply be a taste of a world undergoing climate change in the mid - 21st century, according to a new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a Washington, D.C. - based organization seeking an end to hunger and poverty through appropriate local, national and international agricultural policies. By IFPRI's estimate, 25 million more children will be malnourished in 2050 due to the impact of climate change on global agriculture.

"Higher temperatures and changes in precipitation result in pressure on yields from important crops in much of the world," says IFPRI agricultural economist Gerald Nelson, an author of the report, Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security: Impacts and Costs of Adaptation to 2050. "Biological impacts on crop yields work through the economic system resulting in reduced production, higher crop and meat prices, and a reduction in cereal consumption. This reduction means reduced calorie intake and increased childhood malnutrition."

Bizarro Earth

Another Inconvenient Truth: The World's Growing Population Poses a Malthusian Dilemma

Land
© iStockPhotoMALTHUSIAN DILEMMA: How to feed a human population expected to reach nine billion by 2050 while also grappling with poverty as well as climate change, dead zones, biodiversity loss and other environmental ills?
Solving climate change, the Sixth Great Extinction and population growth... at the same time

By 2050, the world will host nine billion people - and that's if population growth slows in much of the developing world. Today, at least one billion people are chronically malnourished or starving. Simply to maintain that sad state of affairs would require the clearing (read: deforestation) of 900 million additional hectares of land, according to Pedro Sanchez, director of the Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program at The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

The bad news beyond the impacts on people, plants and animals of that kind of deforestation: There isn't that much land available. At most, we might be able to add 100 million hectares to the 4.3 billion already under cultivation worldwide.

"Agriculture is the main driver of most ecological problems on the planet," said economist Jeffrey Sachs, Scientific American columnist and Earth Institute director. "We are literally eating away the other species on the planet."

Sachs made his remarks yesterday at a symposium hosted by the institute on how to improve agriculture to address the mounting challenge of feeding the world while combating climate change and stopping the wholesale loss of biodiversity, among other interrelated issues.

Bulb

Scientist: Carbon Dioxide Doesn't Cause Global Warming

A noted geologist who coauthored the New York Times bestseller Sugar Busters has turned his attention to convincing Congress that carbon dioxide emissions are good for the Earth and don't cause global warming. Leighton Steward is on Capitol Hill this week armed with studies and his book Fire, Ice and Paradise in a bid to show senators working on the energy bill that the carbon dioxide cap-and-trade scheme could actually hurt the environment by reducing CO2 levels.

"I'm trying to kill the whole thing," he says. "We are tilting at windmills." He is meeting with several GOP lawmakers and has plans to meet with some Democrats later this week.

Much of the global warming debate has focused on reducing CO2 emissions because it is thought that the greenhouse gas produced mostly from fossil fuels is warming the planet. But Steward, who once believed CO2 caused global warming, is trying to fight that with a mountain of studies and scientific evidence that suggest CO2 is not the cause for warming. What's more, he says CO2 levels are so low that more, not less, is needed to sustain and expand plant growth.

Bizarro Earth

Deluge in Rain-Soaked Philippines Kills Over 160

Image
© AP Photo/Philippine Coast Guard
Driving rain on the heels of back-to-back storms triggered dozens of landslides across the northern Philippines on Friday, burying more than 160 people, washing away villages and leaving almost an entire province under water.

The latest deluge brought the death toll to nearly 500 from the Philippines' worst flooding in 40 years after storms started pounding the country's north on Sept. 26.

More than 160 people were killed in landslides in Benguet and Mountain Province along the Cordillera mountain range, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) north of Manila, officials said. Residents were jolted awake by the rumbling sound of mudslides and floodwaters tearing apart the saturated soil and washing away homes.