Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Louisiana scientist locates another vast oil plume in the gulf

A day after scientists reported finding a huge "plume" of oil extending miles east of the leaking BP well, on Friday a Louisiana scientist said his crew had located another vast plume of oily globs, miles in the opposite direction.

James H. Cowan Jr., a professor at Louisiana State University, said his crew on Wednesday found a plume of oil in a section of the gulf 75 miles west of the source of the leak.

Cowan said that his crew sent a remotely controlled submarine into the water, and found it full of oily globules, from the size of a thumbnail to the size of a golf ball. Unlike the plume found east of the leak -- in which the oil was so dissolved that contaminated water appeared clear -- Cowan said the oil at this site was so thick that it covered the lights on the submarine.

Bizarro Earth

Fierce hurricane season predicted

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© AFP/Getty ImagesPowerful Hurricane Helene churns over the open Atlantic Ocean in 2006. Federal forecasters are predicting an above-average season in the Atlantic.
Federal forecasters today called for an "active" to "extremely active" hurricane season this year, with anywhere from 14 to 23 named storms expected to form in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.

Of those named storms, 8 to 14 should become hurricanes, including 3 to 7 "major" hurricanes, with wind speeds above 111 mph.

Tropical storms are given a name when wind speeds reach 39 mph, and are upgraded to hurricane status when their sustained winds reach 74 mph. An average Atlantic hurricane season sees 11 named storms, including six hurricanes, with two becoming major hurricanes.

Forecasters do not predict the number of storms that will make landfall.

The forecast was announced Thursday morning by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Comment: This 'fierce hurricane season' news doesn't bode well for Florida and the other Gulf states. See these stories for more information: Is It Raining Oil In Florida? This Is Just The Beginning, Nightmare scene as oil smothers Louisiana wetlands and Florida Gulf oil spill: Plans to evacuate Tampa Bay area are in place


Igloo

The History Of Ice On Earth

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© Astromujoff / GettyDon't forget your woolly mittens.
Primitive humans, clad in animal skins, trekking across vast expanses of ice in a desperate search to find food. That's the image that comes to mind when most of us think about an ice age.

But in fact there have been many ice ages, most of them long before humans made their first appearance. And the familiar picture of an ice age is of a comparatively mild one: others were so severe that the entire Earth froze over, for tens or even hundreds of millions of years.

In fact, the planet seems to have three main settings: "greenhouse", when tropical temperatures extend to the poles and there are no ice sheets at all; "icehouse", when there is some permanent ice, although its extent varies greatly; and "snowball", in which the planet's entire surface is frozen over.

Why the ice periodically advances - and why it retreats again - is a mystery that glaciologists have only just started to unravel. Here's our recap of all the back and forth they're trying to explain.

Comment: For an eye-opening article, read Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow by Laura Knight-Jadczyk.


Bizarro Earth

San Andreas-Like Fault Found in Eastern United States

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© Mark G. Steltenpohl, Isidore Zietz, J. Wright Horton, Jr., and David L. DanielsThe fault is invisible from the surface, but magnetic surveys from the air see it clearly, represented in the white line.
The fault stretches from N.Y. to Alabama and could cause an earthquake with the right mix of ingredients.

For 30 years geologists have been puzzled by a remarkably straight magnetic line that runs between New York and Alabama along the Appalachians.

A more recent aerial magnetic survey of the Alabama end of the line suggests that it's probably a 500-million-year-old San Andreas-style fault that appears to have slipped 137 miles (220 kilometers) to the right in the distant past.

If so, it's no surprise that the most dangerous part of the eastern Tennessee seismic zone is right next to part of this magnetic line and has the second-highest earthquake frequency in the eastern United States.

"It's most likely a strike-slip fault," said Mark Steltenpohl of the University of Alabama at Auburn. "But it's all buried."

Binoculars

Study: Sharks May Like Your Swimsuit

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© Click Orlando
Majority Of Shark Attack Victims In Florida Wore Black And White Swimsuits, Study Shows

If you're headed to the beach, you may not want to wear a swimsuit with a certain color combination.

A newly released study shows that a majority of shark attack victims in Florida were wearing black and white swimsuits.

The study, which looked at shark attacks over the past 52 years in Florida, said that swimsuits featuring a color combination of black and yellow were also common among shark bite victims.

Local 6 looked into whether more swimmers have been wearing those colors, and if that played a role in the statistics.

Fish

Photos: Weird Fish with Transparent Head

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© Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Transparent-Headed Fish

With a head like a fighter-plane cockpit, a Pacific barreleye fish shows off its highly sensitive, barrel-like eyes--topped by green, orblike lenses--in a picture released today but taken in 2004.

The fish, discovered alive in the deep water off California's central coast by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), is the first specimen of its kind to be found with its soft transparent dome intact.

The 6-inch (15-centimeter) barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) had been known since 1939--but only from mangled specimens dragged to the surface by nets.

Attention

Volcano Blast Sparks Guatemala Emergency

Pacaya volcano
The last big eruption of the Pacaya volcano was in 1998
A state of emergency has been declared in Guatemala after a volcanic eruption killed a television journalist and forced the international airport to close.

Anibal Archila's burnt body was found near the Pacaya volcano by a colleague, who said the reporter had been unable to escape a shower of boulders triggered by the eruption.

Some 1,600 people have been evacuated from the slopes of the volcano, which stands 2,552m (8,372ft) above sea level about 15 miles south of the capital, Guatemala City.

Three children aged seven, nine and 10 have been reported missing in the area.

Between two and three inches of ash have built up on streets in some southern parts of the capital city since the volcano started erupting on Wednesday.

Comment: According to Global Voices quoting Vivo en Guatemala blog:
Currently, explosions are taking place every second and can reach 500 meters above the crater surface. The ash columns are reaching 1500 meters of height and are dispersing towards the West and South West over the villages of El Rodeo and El Patrocinio. Ash precipitation is also reported in Amatitán, San Francisco of Sales, Calderas, Los Pocitos and San Vicente Pacaya.



Fish

Renowned Marine Biologist Carl Safina on the BP Oil Spill's Ecological Impact on the Gulf Coast and Worldwide

bird oil

Carl Safina, founding president of Blue Ocean Institute. He is author of many books about marine ecology and the ocean, including Song for the Blue Ocean.

Juan Gonzalez: As we continue our discussion on the BP oil spill, we turn now to look at the long-term ecological impact of the spill. Our next guest testified before Congress last week and warned the fallout from the spill may be felt across much of the world. Joining us here in New York is Carl Safina, the founding president of Blue Ocean Institute. He's author of many books about marine ecology and the ocean, including Song for the Blue Ocean.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

Carl Safina: Thanks for having me.

Juan Gonzalez: What message did you bring to Congress?

Carl Safina: Well, that this is not just a regional disaster, although it certainly is, but that the Gulf of Mexico is a tremendous engine of life and also a tremendous concentration zone, where animals from the whole open Atlantic Ocean funnel into the Gulf for breeding and millions of animals cross the Gulf and concentrate there on their northward migration and then fan out to populate much of North America and the Canadian Arctic, the East Coast, the Canadian Maritimes. So it's a real hotspot, and it's a terrible place to foul.

Bizarro Earth

US: Hurricane plus oil equals more problems

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Hurricane Katrina
A predicted busy hurricane season this summer is on a collision course with an unprecedented oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the results are anyone's guess, weather experts say.

"The problem is that this is a man-made experiment we wish we hadn't made," said Jenni Evans, a professor of meteorology at Penn State University.

Scientists on Thursday said as much as 19,000 barrels of oil have been spewing every day from the BP well in the Gulf, making it the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Most of the oily water lies off the coast of Louisiana, where marshes and wildlife have been coated and the state's fishing and tourism industries have taken direct hits.

Not only is it hard to track how contaminants would be redistributed by a hurricane, but it's also hard to predict how the slick would affect the storm, NOAA Public Affairs Officer Dennis Feltgen and Evans agreed.

Alarm Clock

2nd, stronger Iceland volcano 'to erupt'

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A warning sign at the base of Myrdalsjokull glacier, which is part of the ice cap sealing the Katla volcano. Katla is 10 times more powerful than neighbor Eyjafjallajokull.
Scientists have warned a second much larger volcano in Iceland is showing signs of eruption, with the government expressing readiness to face a possible crisis.

After the successive eruptions of Eyjafjallajokull which caused air traffic mayhem in Europe and brought thousands of flights to a halt earlier in the year, Katla volcano is also threatening to blow.

Experts say there has been a 200 percent increase in its volcanic activity in recent days, MSNBC reported.

"An eruption in the short term is a strong possibility," the University College London (UCL) institute for risk and disaster reduction outlined in a report.

Seismic readings indicated a substantial increase in tremors in the areas surrounding the volcano, the report said.

On May 21 alone, four earthquakes near Katla were detected in 12 hours; a record since the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull volcano in March.