Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions. In addition to the latest weather events, they also point to recent cyclones in Burma, last winter's fatal chills in Nepal and Bangladesh, December's blizzards in Britain, and every other drought, typhoon and unseasonable heat wave around the world.

But is it true? To answer that question, you need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.

Anne Jolis, editorial writer for WSJ Europe, has the surprising data on extreme weather events.

As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."

In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. "There's no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather," adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.

Solar wind buffeting Earth's magnetic field is sparking bright Valentine's auroras around the Arctic Circle. Øystein Lunde Ingvaldsen sends this picture of the sweet lights over Bø in Vesterålen, Norway:

"It was a short but beautiful blast of Northern Lights," says Ingvaldsen. "Perhaps this is a preview of bigger things to come later this week." Indeed, CMEs en route to Earth from exploding sunspot 1158 are expected to arrive on Feb. 15th-17th, sparking brighter lights at even lower latitudes. Sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

A powerful solar flare, hurled into space when superhot gases erupted on the sun yesterday (Feb, 13), might cause a display of the aurora borealis for parts of the northern United States overnight tonight (Feb. 14).

The sun unleashed the solar flare yesterday at about 12:30 p.m. EST (1730 GMT) from a sunspot region that was barely visible last week. Since then, it has grown in size to more than 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) across - nearly eight times the width of our Earth.

The flare was categorized by the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado as a Class M6.6 and is the strongest solar flare observed in 2011. It could ramp up northern lights displays for skywatchers living in northern latitudes and graced with clear skies.

Such a flare, covering more than 1 billion square miles of the sun's surface (called the photosphere), was described as "moderate" in intensity. Class M flares are stronger than the weakest category (Class C). They are second only to the most intense Class X solar flares, which can cause disruptions to satellites and communications systems and pose a hazard to astronauts in space.

NOAA's Prediction Center has forecast the possibility of additional solar flares from the same sunspot region over the next two or three days.

With five earthquakes rattling the coast over the past four days, Chileans are still feeling the aftershocks of a huge earthquake that ruptured one year ago.

A magnitude 6.8 earthquake offshore of Bío-Bío, Chile, on Feb. 11 sent thousands running for higher ground, the Associated Press reported. That quake triggered at least two dozen aftershocks, including earthquakes of magnitudes 6.0, 5.8 and 5.6, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The rumbling continued today with a magnitude 6.6 temblor underwater near Maule, Chile.

"Chile is an active place so we always have a lot of earthquakes going on," said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist with the USGS in Golden, Colo.

That seismic activity is created as one of the Earth's rocky plates dives under another one. Near Chile, the Nazca plate is thrust under the much larger South American plate at a rate of about 2 inches (6 centimeters) per year.

Friday's magnitude 6.8 quake is thought to be an aftershock from the devastating magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck Concepcion, Chile, last year, said Michael Bevis, a geophysicist at Ohio State University, who has studied how the earthquake last year changed Chile's coast. [See images of Chile's raised coast.]

"That's a huge earthquake, so it's going to have more aftershocks that last longer," than other, smaller earthquakes, Bevis told OurAmazingPlanet.

Tropical Cyclone Bingiza made landfall on Madagascar on Feb. 14, 2011.

The U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) reported that, as of about noon Madagascar time on Feb. 14, Bingiza had maximum sustained winds of 98 mph (155 kilometers per hour) and gusts up to 120 mph (195 kph).

NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of Bingiza at 10:00 a.m. local time on Feb. 13, 2011. In the image, Bingiza's eye approaches northern Madagascar, and a spiral arm grazes Antananarivo.

Although Bingiza would weaken somewhat over land, the storm was expected to re-strengthen after passing over northern Madagascar, thanks to high sea surface temperatures, according to a NASA statement. The JTWC forecast that, on the western side of Madagascar, the storm would travel southward, roughly tracing the island's west coast.

A plethora of scientists have come out in the past 12 months warning about the signs of an impending Ice Age.

Another mammoth Icelandic volcano, Baroarbunga, is ready to erupt. This one could dwarf the Eyjafjallajokull glacier volcano that blew in 2010 causing havoc throughout Europe.

That's the word that's streaming out of the northern island nation as geophysicists around the globe hold their breaths to see what will happen next.

The Eyjafjallajokull eruption galvanized Europe and stunned the world with its unrelenting ferocity. It caused billions of dollars in loss, paralyzed European air travel and caused food and other commodities to spike upwards.

Worried experts warn that this eruption could be much, much worse.

University of Iceland geophysicists have warned of a significant rise in seismic activity in the area of Vatnajökull, the largest of Iceland's glaciers. A swarm of earthquakes has erupted signaling the likely eruption of Bardarbunga, Iceland's second biggest volcano and one that sits directly above a major lava conduit.

Baroarbunga, a stratovolcano towering 6,600 feet, is part of the island nation's largest volcanic system. The huge volcano's crater covers 43 square miles and is completely encased under glacial ice.

Sri Lanka will lose over one million tons from its upcoming paddy harvest due to recent flooding, officials say.

"We expected a yield of around 2.75 million metric tons from the harvest due in March to April," Kulugammanne Karunathileke, secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, told IRIN. "After the heavy rains we will only get around 1.75 million."

Karunathileke, the highest ranking official at the ministry, said the country had expected a bumper crop - until flooding, which began in January, left some paddy fields under water for up to 11 days. The worst-hit areas are in the eastern districts of Ampara, Batticaloa, Polonnaruwa, Trincomalee and the north-central district of Anuradhapura.

Together they account for over 1.2m tons of the harvest.

Snow and cold records are falling across the South as another winter storm blankets parts of Mississippi with half a foot of snow. One mayor admits he might have to buy a plow.

As yet another major winter storm broke the all-time winter snowfall record in the northern Mississippi town of Booneville Wednesday, Mayor Joe Eaton found himself staring at some unusual challenges for a place where the annual average temperature is 60 degrees.

After a 10-inch snowfall in late January and another three inches Wednesday, his troubles include keeping out-of-school kids from getting into trouble with their all-terrain vehicles as well as finding money in the budget to upgrade his makeshift snow removal equipment.

Coming off a colder-than-average winter in 2010, this season's record-setting cold and snow is supplying the citizens of Dixie with a new appreciation for what their Yankee brethren deal with on a more regular basis.

Scientists aboard the Royal Research Ship James Cook have discovered a new set of deep-sea volcanic vents in the chilly waters of the Southern Ocean. The discovery is the fourth made by the research team in three years, which suggests that deep-sea vents may be more common in our oceans than previously thought.

Using an underwater camera system, the researchers saw slender mineral spires three metres tall, with shimmering hot water gushing from their peaks, and gossamer-like white mats of bacteria coating their sides. The vents are at a depth of 520 metres in a newly-discovered seafloor crater close to the South Sandwich Islands, a remote group of islands around 500 kilometres south-east of South Georgia.

"When we caught the first glimpse of the vents, the excitement was almost overwhelming," says Leigh Marsh, a University of Southampton PhD student who was on scientific watch at the time of the discovery.

Deep-sea vents are hot springs on the seafloor, where mineral-rich water nourishes lush colonies of microbes and deep-sea animals. In the three decades since scientists first encountered vents in the Pacific, around 250 have been discovered worldwide. Most have been found on a chain of undersea volcanoes called the mid-ocean ridge, however, and very few are known in the Antarctic.

It spent 25 years successfully avoiding aeroplanes, animal traps and all the other pitfalls of flying.

But one of the top ten oldest birds ever recorded has sadly met an unfortunate fate - electrocution on a telegraph pole.

The Kodiak Island bald eagle died in Alaska after hitting a utility pole's crossbar last month.

The mature wild bird's discovery has provoked much interest among raptor biologists, after a band on its leg revealed it is the second-oldest bald eagle documented in Alaska.

Biologists have no other way of confirming mature wild eagle ages other than on recovered bands.

'Based on the bird-banding record that I've seen, it would be one of the top ten oldest birds ever recorded,' Kodiak Island wildlife biologist Robin Corcoran said.