Earth ChangesS


Better Earth

How Antarctica grew its ice - and lost its hanging gardens

Image
© Martin Siegert et al.Put together, the images reveal a striking landscape of sharp peaks and hanging valleys surrounding a deep gorge carved out by ice
Up to 3000 metres beneath the ice, at the coldest point on Earth, towering peaks, hanging valleys and deep gorges have been frozen in ice for 14 million years. Now the first detailed view of this frozen landscape is revealing how the world's biggest chunk of ice - the Antarctic ice sheet - was born.

The radar images suggest that Antarctica "grew" its ice cap in three stages, carving out the rock below in distinct ways as glaciers expanded, retracted, and flowed downstream.

The images were collected between 2004 and 2008 by researchers who drove huge trains of caterpillar tractors in tight lines over Dome A, a plateau of ice at the heart of Antarctica. The tractors carried radars that pinged down through the ice and sent back profiles of the frozen rock landscape below.

Dome A, the highest point on the continent, is also one of the coldest places on Earth, with temperatures as low as -90 °C. Far beneath its frozen surface lie the Gamburtsev mountains, where glaciologists believe the Antarctic ice sheet was born. Its distance to the ocean and high altitude would have made it the coolest spot on the continent 34 million years ago, when the ice began to grow.

Light Sabers

US: Oil, gas drillers in Pennsylvania fight environmental study

Oil and gas drillers in Pennsylvania predict environmental studies required by the federal government to tap into reserves under the Allegheny National Forest would effectively halt the more-than-a-century-old drilling operations there.

A recent settlement of a lawsuit by environmentalists against the Forest Service requires environmental analysis of drilling projects under the federal National Environmental Protection Act.

But the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Association, Minard Run Oil Co., and Warren County sued the U.S. Forest Service and several environmental groups Tuesday seeking to lift the requirement.

Hourglass

Climate Change: Science Manipulated

Natural causes of global warming are much more significant than manmade changes

1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wants to claim that the global average temperature has unexpectedly and abruptly increased during the 20th century after a gradual cooling from the year 1000, and that this unexpected increase of the temperature is mostly man-made-the greenhouse effect of CO2.

2. For their purpose, the IPCC ignored the fact that the Earth went through a cold period called "the Little Ice Age" from 1400 to 1800.

3. The Earth has been recovering from the Little Ice Age from 1800 to the present. A recovery from a cold period is warming. It is mostly this warming that is causing the present climate change and it is not man-made. If they admit the existence of the Little Ice Age, they cannot claim that the global average temperature unexpectedly increased from 1900.

3a. In addition to the steady recovery from the Little Ice Age, there are superposed oscillatory changes. The prominent one is called the multi-decadal oscillation.

3b. In fact, most of the temperature change from 1800 to 2008 can be explained by the combination of the recovery from the Little Ice Age and the multi-decadal oscillation. If the recovery from the Little Ice Age continues, the predicted temperature rise will be less than 1°C (2°F) by 2100, not 3~6°C.

Cloud Lightning

Freak storms pummel Southern California

Two women in the Inland Empire are killed and another injured in lightning-related incidents. Lightning also ignites more than a dozen brush fires.

Thunder rumbled through the Southland and freak storms pelted the region with hail, lightning and unseasonal rain, killing two women in the Inland Empire, bedeviling aviation and touching off more than a dozen brush fires on the parched mountain slopes ringing Los Angeles County.

Sun

Sunspot Minimum at Hand

sun spot
© NASA/SOHO

The sun has become more active in recent days with cycles 24 spots in middle latitudes. See sunspot group number 11019 for group of red spots. This is slightly diminished since yesterday. The dark green areas are coronal holes out of which the solar wind escapes at higher velocity.

Peter Lawrence has a close up view of that sunspot posted on spaceweather.com.
sun spopt
© NASA/SOHO

There is a loop of the sunspots develop and rotate around the solar disk the last few days here.

This activity came late enough in the month of May, to keep the monthly number for May below the value of 14 months ago of 3.2 which it is replacing in the 13 month running mean. That means the solar cycle minimum can't be earlier than November 2008, making it at least a 12.5 year long cycle 23.

Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Magnitude 5.7 - Revilla Gigedo Islands Region

Image
© US Geological Survey
Date-Time:
Wednesday, June 03, 2009 at 21:37:34 UTC

Wednesday, June 03, 2009 at 02:37:34 PM at epicenter
Location: 19.171°N, 109.311°W

Depth: 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program

Region: REVILLA GIGEDO ISLANDS REGION

Distances:
180 km (110 miles) ENE of Socorro Island, Mexico

410 km (255 miles) S of Cabo San Lucas, Baja Calif. Sur, Mexico

455 km (280 miles) WSW of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico

1065 km (660 miles) W of MEXICO CITY, D.F., Mexico

Bug

US: 10,000 bees crowd wing of plane at Massachusetts airport

Image
© AFP/File/Saul LoebHoney bees walk on a moveable comb hive at the Bee Research Laboratory, in Beltsville, Maryland in 2007. The number of domesticated bees is on the rise worldwide despite declining numbers of wild honey bees in the United States and Europe, a study said Thursday.
Danvers - Maybe these bees were too tired to fly for themselves. A gang of honeybees landed on the wing of a plane used for flight school training at Beverly Airport. At first, the 10,000 or so bees swarmed over the left side of the aircraft, then landed on top of the left wing. The owner of the flight center called police, who said to call local bee removal expert Al Wilkins.

Wilkins used a specially designed vacuum to suck the bees off the plane, and then relocated them to hives where they will produce honey.

Book

Climate Change Reconsidered: 880-page Report Counters UN IPCC

Image
As Congress debates global warming legislation that would raise energy costs to consumers by hundreds of billions of dollars, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has released an 880-page book challenging the scientific basis of concerns that global warming is either man-made or would have harmful effects.

In "Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)," coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals.

Arrow Down

US: Honey Bee Loss for Third Year in a Row

Image
© Jack Dykinga
News continues to be bleak for the nation's commercial beekeeping industry, which could ultimately mean more bad news for farmers and higher prices at the grocery store.

Although a recent survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America to measure colony losses over the winter of 2008-2009 found that the total number of colonies lost last winter was lower than the losses suffered over the previous two winters, a 29% loss is worrying. Overall, beekeepers are facing honey bee losses at rates that are economically unsustainable.

Info

Satellites spot new penguin colonies by their poo

emperor penguin colonies
© Thorsten Milse/Robert Harding/Rex FeaturesBreeding emperor penguin colonies like this one in Halley Bay can stay in one spot on the ice for eight months, creating a characteristic reddish-brown spot of guano.
Looking for penguins? The fastest and easiest way is to spot their poo from space, say researchers.

Peter Fretwell and Philip Trathan of the British Antarctic Survey located 38 emperor penguin colonies on winter sea ice all the way around Antarctica by spotting patches of their faeces, or guano, in satellite images. Ten of the colonies had not been observed before.