Earth ChangesS


Attention

Alaska, US: Aleutian Volcano Shows Signs of Impending Eruption

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© Wikimedia CommonsThe nearly symmetrical face of Mount Cleveland
Recent satellite images of a remote Alaska volcano along a flight route for major airlines show the mountain may be poised for its first big eruption in 10 years, scientists said on Thursday.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory has issued an eruption advisory for the 5,676 foot-tall Cleveland Volcano, located on the uninhabited island of Chuginadak in the Aleutian chain about 940 miles southwest of Anchorage.

The advisory was based on "thermal anomalies" detected by satellite, the observatory said. Those measurements indicate the volcano could erupt at any moment, spewing ash clouds up to 20,000 feet above sea level with little further warning, the observatory said.

A major eruption could disrupt international air travel because Cleveland Volcano, like others in the Aleutians, lies directly below the commercial airline flight path between North America and Asia, said John Power, scientist-in-charge at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The volcano's last major eruption came in 2001, when it blasted ash more than 5 miles into the sky and spilled lava from the summit crater. Cleveland has experienced several smaller eruptions or suspected eruptions since then.

Radar

New Zealand: 5.1 Magnitude Earthquake Hits Christchurch

Christchurch earthquake
© Celsias
An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale hit New Zealand's Christchurch city on Friday morning, Xinhua reported.

According to China's Xinhua news agency there were no reports of injuries or damage, following the earthquake that occurred at 5.39 am local time (17.39 GMT on Thursday).

The quake was centred 40 km west of the city, at a depth of 12 km, said New Zealand Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS).

"The earthquake was felt along the east coast of the South Island from North Canterbury to Dunedin" said the GNS duty seismologist Caroline Holden.

Holden further added that a few more magnitude four quakes are expected in the following days.

Bizarro Earth

Monsoon Floods Kill 6, Displace More than 10,000 in Southern Bangladesh

Floods triggered by monsoon rains in southern Bangladesh have killed 6 people, displaced more than 10,000 and washed away shrimp farms close to the Bay of Bengal, authorities said Friday.

The region's Matamuhuri and Bakhkhali rivers overflowed after five days of heavy rain and inundated about 200 villages, chief government administrator Zainul Bari said. The displaced have taken shelter in school buildings in the flood-hit district of Cox's Bazar, he said.

He said flood waters damaged shrimp farms and paddy crops in the affected areas.

Bari said government relief workers are handing dried food and clean drinking water to the displaced.

Also Friday another government official Shafiq Mia said six flood-related deaths have been reported in the area, 296 kilometers (185 miles) south of Dhaka.

Sun

US: Northeast Braces for Temps Near Boiling Point

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© AP Photo/Mary AltafferVanity Mendez, 11, left, Isaiah Rivera, 6, center, and Jonathan Medina, 11, cool off at an open fire hydrant in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, Thursday, July 21, 2011.
The extreme heat that's been roasting the eastern U.S. is only expected to get worse, and residents are bracing themselves for temperatures near and above boiling point.

Weather service heat warnings and advisories have been issued Friday from Ohio to Maine.

The high temperatures and smothering humidity will force up the heat indexes. Boston's 99 degrees on Friday could feel like 105 degrees; Philadelphia's 102 degrees like 114 degrees and Washington, D.C.'s 103 degrees may seem the same as a melting 116 degrees.

Many cities have opened cooling centers.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

Info

US, Texas: Severe Weather Across Nation Causes Food Scarcity at Food Bank

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The West Texas Food Bank is being hit by months of severe weather across the nation, from droughts to floods it's all taking a toll on how much and what type of food they are handing out.

The food bank is trying to fill two gaps right now, food and finances, and the scarcity of both is very visible.

"If you look around and see all these empty spots in this facility here, they should be filled with food," said Augie Fernandes, the Executive Director of the West Texas Food Bank.

Flooding, quickly followed by severe droughts have caused quite an alarming situation for the West Texas Food Bank.

"A situation where some crops have been burdened by drought and some by flooding and too much water."

Now the food bank, filled with non-perishables is in desperate need for fresh produce.

Cloud Lightning

Australia: Wild Weather Still Lashing Illawarra Coast

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© Google
The State Emergency Service (SES) experienced a busy night in the Hunter and on the central coast but the number of calls-outs has dropped off in the Illawarra.

A heavy weather front continues to dominate the coast, with the Bureau of Meteorology issuing a severe weather warning with very heavy surf for the Illawarra.

In the 24 hours to 9:00am Friday, Fig Tree received 74 millimetres of rain, Bellambi 71mm and Scarborough 62mm.

Grant McClory from the SES says localised flooding is still occurring and houses are experiencing rain damage.

"Total tasks since Tuesday lunchtime add up to only around 80 to 90 tasks," he said.

Bizarro Earth

Guatemalan woman finds huge sinkhole under bed

sinkhole
© Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty ImagesA man inspects the sinkhole in Guatemala City.
Sinkhole, 12m deep and 80cm in diameter, forms at Guatemala City home of 65-year-old Inocenta Hernandez

You may sometimes wish the ground would swallow you up, but for some the danger of disappearing down a deep hole is all too real.

The people of Guatemala City are increasingly unable to trust what's beneath their feet because of treacherous sinkholes.

The latest person to get a shock was 65-year-old Inocenta Hernandez. "When we heard the loud boom we thought a gas canister from a neighbouring home had exploded, or there had been a crash on the street.

"We rushed out to look and saw nothing. A gentleman told me that the noise came from my house, and we searched until we found it under my bed."

Comment: What was once an occasional incident has become a alarmingly regular occurrence - we're getting reports of sinkholes every other day now!

July 17: Tennessee, US: Sinkhole beside Spring Hill's new high school stirs speculation

July 14: Utah, US: Girl dies, father hurt in crash caused by sinkhole

July 14: Florida, US: Tarpon Springs homeowners wonder if homes will be swallowed by sinkhole

July 12: US: Lenoir, North Carolina sinkhole evidence of a possible wider problem

July 7: South Carolina, US: Sinkhole Closes Stephens County Boat Ramp

June 27: Australia: Enormous sinkhole swallows south-east Queensland Rainbow beach

A collection of sinkhole images from around the world


Bizarro Earth

Small Volcanoes Add up to Cooler Climate

Mt.Montserrat
© NASAActive since 1995, Soufrière Hills in Montserrat (shown in a 2009 photo taken from the International Space Station) is one of several small volcanoes that have spit cooling sulfur particles high into the atmosphere in the last decade.

Along with sulfur emitted by coal-burning power plants, volcanic particles spewed high in the atmosphere reduced the amount of global warming otherwise expected during the 2000s, a new study finds.

Relatively small volcanic eruptions last decade sent sulfur high enough in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and help stall a rising global temperature trend. The work, reported online July 21 in Science, suggests it doesn't take a colossal eruption for volcanoes to have a discernible influence on climate.

"If you don't include these stratospheric aerosols in the models, you're going to overestimate how much the temperature should have increased over the past decade," says team member John Daniel, an atmospheric physicist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado.

Scientists had known that aerosols cool the planet, and that big eruptions spew lots of aerosols up high. But nobody had calculated how smaller recent eruptions might affect climate, and many had assumed that stratospheric aerosols from volcanoes dropped essentially to zero after particles from the 1991 eruption of the Philippines' Mt. Pinatubo fell out of the atmosphere.

Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: Gigantic Crack Opens Up In Mexico

Mexico Crack
© Before It's News
The crack appeared on 13 July in Santa Maria Huejoculco in Chalco, State Mexico, land has now reached 500 meters long and authorities have not taken preventive measures, warned James Espinoza Hilario, responsible for Social planning on the Sierra Nevada project of the Autonomous Metropolitan University.

In addition, after survey work was detected in Santa Maria Huejoculco yet another gap of about four km which reached La Candelaria Tlapala, in the community of Miraflores, in Chalco, explained Professor Martín Espinosa.

These failures are part of a family of cracks that exist in the region and threaten to spread across the entire east area of the Valley of Mexico.

This event began back 2009 in a small area of this region but since it has grown and is eating up everything around it .

Comment: On top of all the sinkholes opening up, this crack in the ground in Mexico joins a list of fissures opening up all over the world:

June 30: US: St. Clair Crack Remains a Mystery

March 18: Everett, Washington: Land Crack Appears, Neighborhood is Sinking

March 7: Pakistan: Giant Fissure / Crack Opens in the Ground in Seagi Gulistan

February 25: Large Crack Opens in the Earth in Southern Peru

January 7: Large crack in the ground appears in the Michigan Upper Peninsula

October 6 2010: Mysterious crack still begs answers


Extinguisher

U.S.: Thousands Evacuated After Sewage Plant Fire at Riverbank State Park New York

sewage plant fire
© phlpp7r/Twittermassive fire at the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant at 725 W. 135th St. forced the evacuation of Riverbank State Park and closed a portion of the West Side Highway.

Manhattan - Thousands of people were evacuated from a packed Harlem park Wednesday afternoon after an explosion triggered a roaring fire at a sewage treatment plant that spewed a 30-foot plume of fire into the air, officials said.

The ferocious four-alarm blaze, which also snarled traffic on the West Side Highway, broke out in the engine room of the city's North River Wastewater Treatment plant, at 725 W. 135th St., at 11:46 a.m., an FDNY spokesman said.

"There was heavy fire, heavy smoke," said FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief Joseph Woznica. The cause of the fire, which raged for hours, was not immediately clear, but Woznica said that pressurized fuel helped spark a "30-foot plume of fire."