Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Over one million hit by fresh floods in India, Bangladesh


AFP
Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:19 UTC
More than one million people have been evacuated or stranded as rivers in northeastern India and Bangladesh rose to alarming levels and submerged vast swathes of countryside, officials said Monday.

In India's Assam state, the army helped shift an estimated 800,000 people as the Brahmaputra river and its tributaries -- swollen by monsoon rains -- breached their embankments late Sunday.

©Reuters

A further 300,000 people further downstream in Bangladesh were displaced or marooned, most of them for the second time in as many months, officials said.
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Cloud Lightning

Heavy rains trigger flood alerts, claim lives, in Poland


DPA
Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:14 UTC
Heavy rains claimed lives and triggered flood alerts in the Lower Silesia region of south-western Poland Friday as emergency crews scrambled to sandbag low-lying areas to ward off rising river waters. A man working on road construction is believed to have drowned Friday after being swept away by the waters of the Sola river swollen by heavy rain in southern Poland, according to Poland's TVN24 news channel.
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Ambulance

Quakes injure 4, damage buildings in Indonesia's Java


AP
Mon, 10 Sep 2007 05:17 UTC
Two earthquakes rocked parts of Indonesia's Java Island early Monday, injuring at least four people and damaging buildings, officials said.

Wijanto, an official at Meteorological and Geophysics Agency in Jakarta, said the first quake with a magnitude of 4.9 occurred at 1:36 a.m., while the second one with a magnitude of 4.5 hit at 6:31 a.m.
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Attention

Strong 6.8 earthquake hits Colombia west coast


Reuters
Mon, 10 Sep 2007 05:17 UTC
A strong 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit near the west coast of Colombia on Sunday night, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but local authorities said there were no immediate reports of serious damage.

Officials in coastal Narino province said they had no news of damaged buildings or injuries, but they were still contacting remote rural areas. Residents told local radio the shock knocked out electricity in some areas.
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Info

Oceanic Planetary Waves

Harvey Leifert
Natural History
Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:56 UTC
Oceanic planetary waves, just an inch or two high at the surface but thousands of feet deep and hundreds of miles apart, sweep slowly but steadily across Earth's oceans: a surfer who caught one in Acapulco would take four years to wash up on a Chinese beach. The waves are speeding up, though, thanks to global warming, and as they do, they could affect weather patterns around the world.

©Paulo Cipollini, Southampton Oceanography Centre
Schematic of a typical oceanic planetary wave traveling westward with horizontal scale of about 500 kilometers and with vertical amplitude at the sea surface of about 10 centimeters. Such waves have a major effect on the large-scale ocean circulation and thus on weather and climate.
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Cloud Lightning

Thousands flee homes as fresh floods hit Bangladesh


Reuters
Sun, 09 Sep 2007 20:24 UTC
Large swathes of Bangladesh were underwater again on Sunday after heavy rains, adding to the misery of millions hit by flooding that has killed more than 830 people since late July.

Weather officials said that nearly 20 of the country's 64 districts were flooded after three days of rain swelled major rivers flowing through India into Bangladesh.

©AFP
A Bangladeshi woman uses a raft to cross a flooded field in Sirajgonj district of Bangladesh.
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Bizarro Earth

Clashes in Congo Park Endanger Gorillas

Todd Pitman
Associated Press
Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:28 UTC
DAKAR, Senegal - Renewed fighting Saturday inside a national park in Congo that is home to endangered mountain gorillas forced rangers to flee for the second time in less than a week, conservationists said.

The clashes between fighters loyal to warlord Laurent Nkunda and government soldiers took place in Virunga National Park, where some of the world's last remaining mountain gorillas live on the slopes of a volcanic mountain range that straddles Congo's border with Rwanda and Uganda, the international conservation group WildlifeDirect said.
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Bizarro Earth

4.4 Earthquake Shakes Northern California


AP
Sat, 08 Sep 2007 16:35 UTC
A moderate earthquake struck off the coast of Humboldt County in far Northern California early Saturday morning.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude 4.4 quake was centered in the Pacific Ocean about 20 miles west of Petrolia and 40 miles southwest of Eureka.

©USGS
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Attention

Bay of Bengal Faces Major Tsunami Threat, Study Says

John Roach
National Geographic
Sat, 08 Sep 2007 12:40 UTC
Millions of people along the coasts of Myanmar (Burma), Bangladesh, and India may be at risk of suffering a catastrophic tsunami-generating earthquake, according to a new study.

The northern Bay of Bengal could be pummeled by a temblor as massive as the one that sent devastating tsunamis into Indonesia and other Indian Ocean countries in December 2004, the research suggests.
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Info

Bees invade Texas woman's home


abc13.com
Wed, 05 Sep 2007 10:52 UTC
There is a potentially painful problem at a home in Katy. Hundreds of thousands of bees were living inside the walls of a woman's house and no one could get rid of them until today.

Claude Griffin with Gotcha Pest Control tried to talk himself through the enormous job of removing 500,000 bees that had taken up residence.

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