Earth Changes

NASA sees powerful "overshooting cloud tops" in Cyclone Felleng

Rob Gutro
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:47 UTC

© William Straka, UWM/NASA/NOAA
NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured this false-colored night-time image of Cyclone Felleng during the night on Jan. 28, 2013. Felleng is northwest of Madagascar.

NASA satellite imagery revealed that Cyclone Felleng is packing some powerful thunderstorms with overshooting cloud tops.

An overshooting (cloud) top is a dome-like protrusion that shoots out of the top of the anvil of a thunderstorm and into the troposphere. It takes a lot of energy and uplift in a storm to create an overshooting top, because usually vertical cloud growth stops at the tropopause and clouds spread horizontally, forming an "anvil" shape on top of the thunderstorms.

During the night-time hours (Madagascar local time) of Jan. 28, NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a night-time image of Cyclone Felleng when it was located northwest of Madagascar. The image was created at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was false colored to reveal temperatures. The image showed some pretty cold overshooting cloud tops, topping at ~170K (-153.7F/ -103.1C). The image also showed some interesting gravity waves (waves in the atmosphere) propagating out from the storm in both the thermal (infrared) and visible imagery. The infrared imagery also showed that Felleng has strengthened significantly since the previous day as convective bands of thunderstorms are wrapping more tightly into the eye.

Four dead as floods hit New South Wales and Queensland states, Australia

James Grubel
Business Day
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:39 UTC

Massive summer floods have killed four people and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes across two Australian states on Tuesday, disrupting air and rail travel and coal production.

A deluge fed by the ex-tropical cyclone Oswald dumped more than 200mm of rain in some areas of the Queensland and New South Wales states over the past three days, swelling rivers and swamping towns.

The worst-hit areas were around Bundaberg, Rockhampton and Ipswich in Queensland, and around the northern New South Wales towns of Grafton and Lismore.

Dozens killed and injured, homes destroyed in Sumatra landslide

George Roberts
ABC News
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:32 UTC

More than two dozen people have been killed, injured or are missing as a result of a landslide caused by heavy rain on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

By last night, 14 people had died in the muddy landslip, a further nine were injured and six were still missing.

The side of a hill in Agam, west Sumatra, slid away on Sunday, wiping out homes, rice paddies and an orchard.

Tornadoes in January! Wide area of U.S. faces unusual early threat

Greg McCune
Reuters
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:20 UTC

A wide area of the central and southeast U.S. faces the unusual threat of tornadoes in January over the next 12 to 18 hours as an approaching cold front clashes with unusually warm air, a meteorologist said on Tuesday.

The first tornado warning of the approaching storm was issued on Tuesday for western Missouri, said meteorologist Bill Bunting at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

A warning is intended to signal residents to take cover because a tornado could be forming. A less urgent tornado watch is in effect for a region from extreme northeast Texas through virtually all of Arkansas, western Tennessee and extreme southern Illinois.

"It's a little unusual," Bunting said of the tornado threat. "We don't see this every winter with this kind of warmth preceding a storm system."

Rare tornado spotted in Bristol Channel as storms hit North Somerset, UK

The Bristol Post
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:15 UTC

Snow, hail, heavy rain and thunder - the North Somerset area has experienced it all over the past two weeks.

And now the wild weather has caused a spectacle in the Bristol Channel, with local people capturing a picture of what appears to be a mini tornado in the estuary.

This picture was taken by Sue Hewitt, of Downend, who spotted the event while out walking along the coastal path between Clevedon and Portishead at around 1pm on Sunday.

Coral reefs going through 'extremely alarming' decline in the Caribbean

Raw Story
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:02 UTC

Coral reefs in the Caribbean are producing less than half of the key ingredient that makes their calcium skeleton compared to pre-industrial times, scientists said on Tuesday, describing the findings as "extremely alarming."

The amount of new calcium carbonate being added by coral reefs is at least half, and in some places 70 percent lower, than it was thousands of years ago.

Biologists have long sounded the alarm for reef-building corals, on which nearly half a billion people depend for their livelihood from fishing and tourism.

Previous research has estimated that coral cover is declining by as much as two percent per year in parts of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. In the Caribbean, cover has shrunk by around 80 percent on average since the mid-1970s.

Tigers under threat from disappearing mangrove forest

John Vidal
Guardian
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:51 UTC

Report shows vast forest, shared by India and Bangladesh, is being rapidly destroyed by environmental change

A vast mangrove forest shared by India and Bangladesh that is home to possibly 500 Bengal tigers is being rapidly destroyed by erosion, rising sea levels and storm surges, according to a major study by researchers at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and others.

The Sundarbans forest took the brunt of super cyclone Sidr in 2007, but new satellite studies show that 71% of the forested coastline is retreating by as much as 200 metres a year. If erosion continues at this pace, already threatened tiger populations living in the forests will be put further at risk.

Enormous sinkhole swallows buildings in Guangzhou, China

Adam Taylor
Business Insider
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:45 UTC

Several buildings have fallen into an enormous sinkhole in Guangzhou, China, destroying at least five shops and taking out power for 3,000 residential units nearby, Shanghaiist reports.

The sink hole was 300 square meters wide (3229.2 square feet), and appears to be growing. Thankfully there does not appear to be any injuries at present.

This video shows the moment the sinkhole expanded, taking out much of the building and creating a chaotic scene.

Comment: We find it interesting that the number of sinkholes are increasing... is the planet literally 'opening up'?

Sea change: The Bay of Bengal's vanishing islands

John Vidal
Guardian
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:38 UTC

© Photograph: Salman Saeed
Disappearing world … a project for climate refugees near Cox's Bazar, as people have been forced from islands such as Kutubdia in the Bay of Bengal.

Rapid erosion and rising sea levels are increasingly threatening the existence of islands off the coast of Bangladesh and India

School teacher Nurul Hashem lives in a grass hut set among coconut palms and pine trees, just yards from a pristine beach on the sparkling Bay of Bengal. It sounds idyllic, but he longs to return to the island of Kutubdia, 50 miles away, where his family home has been swallowed by ever-rising tides and is now out at sea under several feet of water.

To make matters worse, the local government, which welcomed him when he arrived three years ago, wants him and thousands of other families who have fled to the coast from the island, to make way for an airport and hotel developments.

Kutubdia is one of many islands off Bangladesh and India affected by increasingly rapid erosion and some of the fastest recorded sea-level rises in the world. These "vanishing islands" are shrinking dramatically. Kutubdia has halved in size in 20 years, to around 100 sq km. Since 1991, six villages on the island of fishermen and saltworkers have been swamped and about 40,000 people have fled. Like Hashem, most have relocated to the coast near Cox's Bazar.

NOAA: Coastal effects of climate change threaten 50 percent of Americans

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:07 UTC

Land that roughly 50 percent of Americans call home is under threat from the coastal effects of climate change, a study published Tuesday (PDF) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warns.

"An increase in the intensity of extreme weather events such as storms like Sandy and Katrina, coupled with sea-level rise and the effects of increased human development along the coasts, could affect the sustainability of many existing coastal communities and natural resources," report co-author Virginia Burkett, of the U.S. Geological Survey, said in an advisory.

The study warns that approximately 50 percent of Americans live in coastal watershed communities - a number that is projected to grow - that face increasing flood risks due to storm surges, extreme weather and rising sea levels as the climate grows more unpredictable. These risks are compounded by changes to coastal ecosystems brought about by human activity, causing "toxic algal blooms" and depleted fish stocks, loss of wetlands and dying coral reefs.

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Earth Changes

NASA sees powerful "overshooting cloud tops" in Cyclone Felleng

Four dead as floods hit New South Wales and Queensland states, Australia

Dozens killed and injured, homes destroyed in Sumatra landslide

Tornadoes in January! Wide area of U.S. faces unusual early threat

Rare tornado spotted in Bristol Channel as storms hit North Somerset, UK

Coral reefs going through 'extremely alarming' decline in the Caribbean

Tigers under threat from disappearing mangrove forest

Enormous sinkhole swallows buildings in Guangzhou, China

Sea change: The Bay of Bengal's vanishing islands

NOAA: Coastal effects of climate change threaten 50 percent of Americans

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