Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

US: Earthquake Magnitude 3.8 - Indiana

Image
© USGS
Date-Time:
Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 12:55:21 UTC

Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 07:55:21 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
40.427°N, 85.888°W

Depth:
4.9 km (3.0 miles) set by location program

Region:
Indiana

Distances:
20 km (15 miles) ESE of Kokomo, Indiana

20 km (15 miles) WSW of Marion, Indiana

40 km (25 miles) S of Wabash, Indiana

75 km (50 miles) NNE of Indianapolis, Indiana

Alarm Clock

Cold Spell Endangers Florida's Manatees

manatees
© Carol Grant / Getty ImagesA little snuggling to keep the blood flowing in chilly waters.

Folks up and down East Coast aren't the only warm-blooded creatures fleeing the cold this week.

Manatees - the giant marine mammals with paddle-shaped tails - are swimming en masse from colder-than-usual Gulf of Mexico waters into warmer springs and power plant discharge canals, reports the Associated Press.

Earlier this week, more than 300 manatees swam into the outflow of Tampa Electric's Big Bend Power Station.

Said Wendy Anastasiou, an environmental specialist at the power station's viewing center: "It's like a warm bathtub for them. They come in here and hang out and loll around."

2010 has proven to be a particularly deadly year for the gentle giants, which can weigh 1,200 pounds and grow to 10 feet long.

Question

Why is The North Magnetic Pole Racing Toward Siberia?

Compass
© Wikimedia Commons
Finding Santa Claus's home at the North Pole is easy on a globe - just look for the point on top where all the lines of longitude meet. But that is just the "geographic" North Pole; there are several other definitions for the poles, all useful in different scientific or navigational contexts. Among the many north poles, let us rejoice that Santa Claus did not choose the magnetic pole for his home, for he would have to spend as much time moving as delivering presents.

The north magnetic pole (NMP), also known as the dip pole, is the point on Earth where the planet's magnetic field points straight down into the ground. Scottish explorer James Clark Ross first located the NMP in 1831 on the Boothia Peninsula in what is now northern Canada, and with the planting of a flag claimed it for Great Britain.

But the NMP drifts from year to year as geophysical processes within Earth change. For more than 150 years after Ross's measurement its movement was gradual, generally less than 15 kilometers per year. But then, in the 1990s, it picked up speed in a big way, bolting north - northwest into the Arctic Ocean at more than 55 kilometers per year. If it keeps going it could pass the geographic north pole in a decade or so and carry on toward Siberia. But why?

Snowman

Is Siberian snow, eastern U.S. cold link legit?

Yesterday, Jason summarized research performed by Judah Cohen and colleagues which finds above normal fall snow cover in Siberia leads to cold winter over eastern North America. As a long-range forecaster with the Commodity Weather Group in Bethesda, Md., I can confirm that this relationship has some legitimacy.
jet stream
© National Science FoundationFigure of relationship between Siberian snow and jet stream pattern courtesy National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF caption excerpt: "When [autumn] snowfall is high in Siberia, the resultant cold air enhances atmospheric disturbances, which propagate into the upper level of the atmosphere, or stratosphere, warming the polar vortex. When the polar vortex warms, the jet stream is pushed south leading to colder winters across the eastern United states and Europe. Conversely, under these conditions the Arctic will have a warmer than average winter."

The illustration above nicely illustrates this relationship, showing how the snow cover enhances the waves that set up the cold patterns like we've seen this year and last year. It is amazing to watch these powerful atmospheric waves propagate across our planet and grow over Siberia. We recently saw such a wave develop in December that helped establish the recent cold, and a new one is expected to move across Eurasia in the coming week. You can watch these waves (way up toward the top of the troposphere) via an excellent National Weather Service animation.

So is this all we ever need to know about seasonal forecasting? Is this relationship the magic bullet?

Sun

Solar Storms Could Bring Northern Lights South

Aurora
© Reuters/ISSThis aurora australis image was taken during a geomagnetic storm that was most likely caused by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun on May 29. The photo was taken from The International Space Station. Increased solar activity over the next two years will push these displays farther from the poles, making them visible to people as far south as the continental US and as far north as Buenos Aires.

Increased solar activity could give residents of the continental U.S., southern Europe and Japan the chance to see the northern lights for the first time in several years.

The National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center says the sun is entering a period of high activity, marked by more sunspots and a greater chance of a coronal mass ejection, or CME, hitting the Earth. That would result in auroras being visible much further from the poles than they usually are.

A CME is essentially a blast of charged particles (mostly protons and electrons) that speeds outward. Most of them pass by and humans never notice, but occasionally the Earth is in the way. When that happens, the particles - enough to weigh as much as a small asteroid -- hit the Earth's magnetic field and get trapped.

They then are pushed at high speeds to the polar regions, where they hit the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere and ionize them. The atoms release energy as light and form the aurora borealis, or northern lights. (The same thing happens in the southern hemisphere, where it is called the aurora australis). That is why the closer to the poles you are, the better chance you have of seeing the auroras.

Cloud Lightning

Winds, cold blast slam California after storm

Image
© Christopher Chung/Associated Press Safari West staff members Brian Jellison, left, and Cervando Cornejo work on removing a fallen oak tree on Wednesday. The tree crushed a wood-frame canvas tent and killed a visitor at the wildlife park, east of Santa Rosa, on Tuesday evening.
Cold blasts of wind hit California on Wednesday in the trail of a storm that dumped more rain and snow on the soggy state but failed to trigger significant new mudflows.

One person was killed by a falling tree and a snowboarder was missing, power outages were scattered around the state and some roads and highways were closed, but the region escaped widespread problems in the two-day round of foul weather.

Chilly wind gusts of more than 40 mph hit northern Los Angeles County as the low pressure system that brought the storm moved east, and forecasters warned that the night would allow even colder air and higher winds that could down power lines and topple trees rooted in saturated soil.

An expected drop of snow levels to low elevations also posed a threat to highway travel over mountain passes.

Meanwhile, communities east and south of Los Angeles that were hit hard by runoff in a dayslong series of storms last week were able to focus on cleaning up without additional new damage.

Alarm Clock

Honeybees May Be Spreading Disease to Wild Bees

bees
© Sarah Greenleaf/UC BerkeleyA wild bee (the bumblebee, Bombus vosnesenskii) and a honey bee forage together on a sunflower.
Eleven species of wild pollinators in the United States have turned up carrying some of the viruses known to menace domestic honeybees, possibly picked up via flower pollen.

Most of these native pollinators haven't been recorded with honeybee viruses before, according to Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. The new analysis raises the specter of diseases swapping around readily among domestic and wild pollinators, Cox-Foster and her colleagues report online Dec. 22 in PLoS ONE.

Gone are any hopes that viral diseases in honeybees will stay in honeybees, she says. "Movement of any managed pollinator may introduce viruses."

A pattern showed up in the survey that fits that unpleasant scenario. Researchers tested for five viruses in pollinating insects and in their pollen hauls near apiaries in Pennsylvania, New York and Illinois. Israeli acute parasitic virus showed up in wild pollinators near honeybee installations carrying the disease but not near apiaries without the virus.

Sun

Forecasters Keep Eye on Looming 'Solar Max'

Solar erruption
© AFPA NASA image of an eruption on the Sun.
The coming year will be an important one for space weather as the Sun pulls out of a trough of low activity and heads into a long-awaited and possibly destructive period of turbulence.

Many people may be surprised to learn that the Sun, rather than burn with faultless consistency, goes through moments of calm and tempest.

But two centuries of observing sunspots -- dark, relatively cool marks on the solar face linked to mighty magnetic forces -- have revealed that our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of behaviour.

The latest cycle began in 1996 and for reasons which are unclear has taken longer than expected to end.

Now, though, there are more and more signs that the Sun is shaking off its torpor and building towards "Solar Max," or the cycle's climax, say experts.

Igloo

Berlin Sees Most Snow in December Since 1900s

German capital Berlin has experienced more snow this month than any other December of past 110 years, as more bitter cold is expected in the country's east, the German Weather Service (DWD) said Tuesday.

Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg have never seen such a thick snow in December for more than a century, as some places received 40 centimeters of snow since Dec. 1, the weather agency said.

Cloud Lightning

More Rain, Possible Mudslides for Los Angeles, San Diego Areas

LA rain chart
© accuweather
Rain spreading over Los Angeles and San Diego today could trigger new mudslides and flooding problems as many residents are still cleaning up from last week's barrage of storms.

The rain will continue to spread from northwest to southeast across Southern California this morning, falling heavily at times.