© REUTERS

Ambulance workers load a stretcher into an ambulance as lifeboat crews look on in a flooded street in St Asaph.

Hundreds of flood warnings remained in place across England and Wales this morning as flood-ravaged towns woke up to another day of devastation.

Although the weather has improved for much of the UK overnight, the Environment Agency last night said there was still a possibility of more flooding and disruption for the next 48 hours.

In north Wales hundreds of people spent the night away from their homes after parts of the River Elwy yesterday burst in banks and flooded properties.

The body of an elderly woman was discovered yesterday in her flooded bungalow home in St Asaph, where she had lived for four decades.

Margaret Hughes was found by police and fire rescue officers as they searched houses flooded with deep water in the area, where more than 500 people were evacuated.

Approx. 3:30am (0330 CST) Lubbock, Texas. This is the second time in as many days that I have been awoken by this sound. I only had my camera to record this sound, so the quality probably sucks. I live in the Texas High Plains. I have lived here all my life, and I do not think this is a cotton gin considering I live in the middle of the city. I will be posting this to other sites as well. Thank you.

Humans must immediately implement a series of radical measures to halt carbon emissions or prepare for the collapse of entire ecosystems and the displacement, suffering and death of hundreds of millions of the globe's inhabitants, according to a report commissioned by the World Bank. The continued failure to respond aggressively to climate change, the report warns, will mean that the planet will inevitably warm by at least 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, ushering in an apocalypse.

The 84-page document,"Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided," was written for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics and published last week. The picture it paints of a world convulsed by rising temperatures is a mixture of mass chaos, systems collapse and medical suffering like that of the worst of the Black Plague, which in the 14th century killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe's population. The report comes as the annual United Nations Conference on Climate Change begins this Monday [Nov. 26] in Doha, Qatar.

A planetwide temperature rise of 4 degrees C - and the report notes that the tepidness of the emission pledges and commitments of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will make such an increase almost inevitable - will cause a precipitous drop in crop yields, along with the loss of many fish species, resulting in widespread hunger and starvation. Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to abandon their homes in coastal areas and on islands that will be submerged as the sea rises. There will be an explosion in diseases such as malaria, cholera and dengue fever. Devastating heat waves and droughts, as well as floods, especially in the tropics, will render parts of the Earth uninhabitable. The rain forest covering the Amazon basin will disappear. Coral reefs will vanish. Numerous animal and plant species, many of which are vital to sustaining human populations, will become extinct. Monstrous storms will eradicate biodiversity, along with whole cities and communities. And as these extreme events begin to occur simultaneously in different regions of the world, the report finds, there will be "unprecedented stresses on human systems." Global agricultural production will eventually not be able to compensate. Health and emergency systems, as well as institutions designed to maintain social cohesion and law and order, will crumble. The world's poor, at first, will suffer the most. But we all will succumb in the end to the folly and hubris of the Industrial Age. And yet, we do nothing.

Four of the world's great rivers, including the Murray Darling, are all suffering from drastically reduced flows as a direct result of water extraction, according to new ANU research.

The multi-author study - led by ANU researchers Professor Quentin Grafton, Dr Jamie Pittock, Professor Tom Kompas and Dr Daniel Connell of the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University - examined the threats from water extractions and climate change on four of the world's iconic river systems; the US Colorado River, the South African Orange River, the Chinese Yellow River and the Murray.

The researchers found that in all four basins, over a long period of time, outflows have greatly reduced as a direct result of increased water extractions, and that urgent changes in governance of water are needed to ensure the systems remain healthy and viable.

Toronto - The Weather Network's top forecaster is advising Canadians to keep their winter mitts close and snow shovels even closer as he expects much of the country is in for a harsher blast of winter than it was dealt last year.

"We'll get more winter this year than we did last year," said director of meteorology Chris Scott.

And that means a return to more "typical" historic conditions of cold and snow gripping much of the country, he said.

"If you think back on Christmas Day (2011) there were many major cities in the country that didn't have a lot of snow on the ground - and that was the theme for the winter."

"The way things are shaping up right now we think there'll be more cold air to work with and as a result we think that some of these storm systems that track through will dump a bit more snow than they did last year," Scott said.

At first glance these beautiful images from the Antarctic appear to show 50-ft tall waves that have been instantly frozen as they break. Some people have posted the pictures online, taken by scientist Tony Travouillon at Dumont D'Urville, with a description claiming they are a tsunami wave which was frozen. But although email chains and internet forums back this claim up, what is really pictured is the natural phenomenon of blue ice.
These freezing blue towers were created when ice was compressed and the trapped air bubbles were squeezed out. During the summer the surface ice melts and new ice layers compress on top. The ice appears blue because when when light passes through thick ice, blue light is transmitted back out but red light is absorbed.

Additional Images

Amman -- Some streets in Zarqa Governorate were submerged with rainwater on Sunday after a heavy downpour caused the formation of floods, according to authorities and town residents.

Motorists abandoned their cars in the middle of the streets after rainwater inundated the vehicles, crippling traffic movement in the already-congested streets of Zarqa, 22km east of Amman, according to eyewitnesses.

"The weather became suddenly cloudy and rain started pouring heavily at around 1:00pm. Ten minutes later, some of the streets turned into streams," town resident and taxi driver, Abu Haitham, told The Jordan Times.

Authorities diverted traffic to different routes and waited for the floods to end before they started pumping out water from submerged streets and tunnels, he added.

"The rain stopped less than an hour later, but the floods continued coming from higher areas. I have never seen this much rain in my life in Zarqa," the town resident said.

Abu Rasoul, another resident of Zarqa, said that manholes in the streets were over-flooded with the heavy rain, noting that water flooded several shops, including his mini-market.

"The last time I saw such heavy rain was in the 1970s," the 70-year-old man, said.

Winter wheat in the U.K., which had its wettest summer in a century this year, showed the worst-ever symptoms in the current season of fungal diseases fusarium ear blight and septoria tritici, CropMonitor said.

There was a "marked increase" in ear blight, with 96 percent of field samples displaying symptoms, the crop-quality service said in a report e-mailed today. Some types of fusarium can result in yield losses or the development of mycotoxins, chemicals that can harm humans and animals, according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.

"Ear blight symptoms were recorded at the highest-ever levels since the survey began," said CropMonitor, which is run by government and industry groups. Some field samples also showed fusarium on plant stems and nodes, where leaves emerge from stems, according to the report.

Septoria tritici, which also can cut yields, was the most common foliar disease, with 97 percent of crops affected, CropMonitor said. Brown rust was recorded on 17 percent of field samples and tan spot affected 14 percent of crops.

Powdery mildew affected only 4 percent of crops, the lowest level ever recorded and down from last year's results showing 34 percent of crops were infected.

A 21-year-old woman was killed when a tree smashed into her tent while she was sleeping, as torrential rain and fierce winds continued to cause chaos in parts of the UK.

Two men who are also believed to have been in the tent, near Exeter city centre, were injured when the large tree toppled into their shelter. It is not yet known why the three were in the tent.

The government said on Sunday morning that almost 500 homes and businesses had been flooded, mainly in the south-west of England and the Midlands. Overnight four severe flood warnings - meaning lives are in danger - were issued for Cornwall, though by first light this had been reduced to two. Dozens of sections of roads in the west country, including the M5 and M50, were flooded .

Naturalists in Berlin have sighted a pack of wolves and their cubs just 15 miles south of the German capital for the first time in more than 100 years.

The German office of the World Wildlife Fund said yesterday that farmers had alerted its field workers to the existence a wolf pack which appeared to have moved into a deserted former Soviet army military exercise area near the village of Sperenberg south of Berlin.

Janosch Arnold, a WWF wolf expert, told Berlin's Die Tageszeitung that naturalists equipped with infra-red night vision cameras had filmed the animals in the area overnight.

"There is definitely a wolf pack with cubs and they seem to be on top of the world," he said.