Earth ChangesS


Cloud Precipitation

Rains leave rising death toll in Colombia, Venezuela

tachira river
© AFPResidents stand next to a buliding damaged by the overflowing of the Tachira River
The toll from weeks of heavy rains across Colombia has risen to 174 people dead and over 1.5 million homeless, the Colombian Red Cross said Saturday.

And in neighboring Venezuela to the east, driving rains have triggered flooding and cave-ins that have killed 34 people over the past week and left an estimated 73,000 people homeless nationwide, officials said.

In Colombia, 225 people have been injured and 19 were missing, Colombian Red Cross deputy director of operations Cesar Uruena told reporters. A total of 1,821 homes have been damaged or destroyed.

Igloo

US: Monster storm predicted

Image
© Reed/Reuters
A huge storm followed by arctic cold threatened much of the upper quarter of the United States.

Forecasters predicted a monster storm this weekend -- possibly the worst of the season -- stretching from the Great Lakes to the central Appalachians, dumping snow and rain coupled with high winds over a wide area with blizzard conditions possible. Accuweather.com predicted poor travel conditions through much of the area but it was unclear where the rain-snow divide would come.

The snow is expected to begin over Iowa Saturday and then spread east and north, dumping 6 to 12 inches with higher amounts expected in lake-effect regions, possibly as much as 3 feet.

The Buffalo, N.Y.-area already has four feet of snow on the ground and in Western Michigan, 12 to 18 inches of snow has fallen since Sunday.

Sun

Science bulletin: 'Sun heats Earth!' Russian research forecasts global cooling

Habibullo Abdussamatov
© naHabibullo Abdussamatov

In a sharp rebuke to climate alarmists who believe human-generated carbon dioxide is responsible for causing catastrophic global warming, a Russian scientist has issued what amounts to a news flash announcing, "Sun Heats Earth!"

Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, has published a paper in which he tracks sunspot activity going back to the 19th century to argue that total sun irradiance is the primary factor responsible for causing climate variations on Earth, not carbon dioxide.

Moreover, Abdussamatov's analysis of sun-activity data has led him to conclude that the Earth is entering a prolonged cooling phase because sunspot activity is currently in a phase regarded as a "minimum."

Better Earth

Flashback Under Ice

ash drifts
© Reves-Sohn et al.; A. Soule and C. Willis/WHOI

Expedition yields first evidence of explosive volcanism on Arctic seafloor

A two-week cruise on an icebreaker to the top of the world last summer gave scientists a look at the aftermath of an event once thought impossible: a violent volcanic eruption on the deep-sea floor.

In 1999, a global network of seismic instruments detected the largest swarm of earthquakes ever to occur along the planet's system of mid-ocean ridges, where tectonic plates spread to form new ocean crust. Several aspects of the recorded vibrations suggested that the quakes were generated by volcanic activity, says Robert A. Reves-Sohn, a geophysicist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

However, he notes, many scientists have doubted that explosive volcanism can take place at the 4,000-plus-meter depth where these quakes occurred because the immense pressure of overlying water prevents seawater from flashing into steam, a major driving force for such eruptions.

Igloo

NASA Satellite Sees An Early Meteorological Winter In US Midwest

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© NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response TeamThe MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of snow on December 7, 2010 at 17:05 UTC (12:05 EST). Snow appears on the ground in eastern Minnesota and Iowa, southwestern Wisconsin, northern Illinois, much of Indiana, northern Kentucky and western Ohio. The white area over Lake Michigan and southeast into northern Indiana and Ohio are clouds.
NASA's Terra satellite captures daily visible and infrared images around the Earth and took a daytime image of a blanket of snow in the Upper Midwest this week. Even though astronomical winter is less than two weeks away, the central and eastern U.S. are already experiencing meteorological winter.

Meteorological winter is basically an identification of the winter season based on "sensible weather patterns" for record keeping purposes. That means "meteorological winter" happens whenever snow and ice occur, even before astronomical winter arrives on December 21, 2010. Astronomical winter is based on the position of the Earth in its orbit around the sun.

The residents of the upper Midwest are already feeling the effects of winter this week, with high temperatures in the 20s and 30s, and wind chills in the single numbers (Fahrenheit) or colder. The satellite image of snow on the ground in the upper Midwest is proof of an early meteorological winter.

It was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument on December 7, 2010 at 17:05 UTC (12:05 EST). MODIS is an instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites.

Bizarro Earth

5.2 magnitude quake jolts different parts of Pakistan

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© USGS
An earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale jolted many parts of Punjab and KPK early Friday morning at 23:17 GMT on Thursday (04:17 a.m. Friday local time), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake struck at 4:17 am with its epicenter 64 kilometres east of Zhob in Baluchistan, at a depth of 19 kilometers, the United States Geological Survey said. Tremors were felt in Faisalabad, Vehari, Jhang, Dera Ismail Khan as well as tribal areas. Unsettled by the sudden shocks, people came out of their houses, whereas no reports of any kind of losses have been received.

From USGS:

Date-Time:
Thursday, December 09, 2010 at 23:17:32 UTC

Friday, December 10, 2010 at 04:17:32 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
31.557°N, 70.140°E

Depth:
9.8 km (6.1 miles)

Butterfly

Majestic Monarch Butterflies Face Population Crisis

Monarch Butterflies_1
© Daniel Terdiman/CNETClusters of monarch butterflies in coastal California locations like Santa Cruz may become rarer and rarer as loss of habitat and essential plants threaten the majestic species.

Santa Cruz, California.--When I lived in this beach town on the central California coast in the early 1990s, I loved visiting a stunning local state park where each winter you could find more than 120,000 monarch butterflies swarming, clustering, and flying everywhere you looked.

It was an awesome sight.

Today, a visit to the monarch grove at Natural Bridges State Beach reveals a much grimmer situation--just 2,000 monarchs during the peak of their "overwintering" season, the period from late October through early March when the colorful butterflies rest in the trees here, protected from the cold, rain, and wind, waiting for mating season in the early spring.

And the same bleak picture is being painted in nearby Pacific Grove, California., a tiny town adjacent to Monterey that is known as "Butterfly Town, USA," Where once many tens of thousands of monarchs would spend each winter, there are now less than 5,000. And that's up a tick from last year.

"The big picture is that the monarch populations have precipitously dropped since the 1970s, '80s, and '90s," said Mia Monroe, a monarch expert with the international insect conservation group, The Xerces Society. "And needless to say, we're all worried and concerned and are asking why."

What's happened during the last 15 or so years then is nothing short of a crisis for these beautiful creatures. The rapid depletion of the annual coastal monarch population is a direct reflection, experts say, of the impact of humans on nature. Monarchs must lay their eggs on the milkweed plant, which is gradually disappearing in crucial parts of California as housing subdivisions replace the orchards, meadows, and vacant lots where the plant once proliferated, and as more efficient farming methods have allowed people to grow crops at the margins of their properties, places where milkweed used to thrive.

Igloo

Freeze brings Paris to a standstill

Paris snow Alexandre III bridge
© Agence France PresseA cyclist struggles over the snow-covered Alexandre III bridge in Paris.
Icy roads left much of the Paris region paralysed on Thursday after the heaviest snowfall in almost 25 years, with drivers advised not to use their cars unless absolutely necessary.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux asked drivers to leave their vehicles at home the day after 11 centimetres (more than four inches) of snow fell on Paris, the most since 1987.

Snowman

French motorists camp out as snow smothers Paris

Paris snow
© Reuters/Benoit TessierCars drive in a snow-covered street in Paris as winter weather and sub-freezing temperatures continue in northern France.
Several thousand Parisians were forced to spend the night in emergency shelters or their cars, and transport remained chaotic on Thursday, after a blanket of snow fell on the French capital.

City authorities asked residents to avoid using their cars after the heaviest snowfall in nearly a quarter of a century covered city streets with ice and slush, causing traffic jams that prevented commuters getting home on Wednesday night.

Igloo

US: Monster Storm Could Be Winter's Worst

winter storm map
© AccuWeather.comGet your snow shovels and plows ready.
In areas hit by the monster snowstorm this weekend, these could be the worst conditions of the winter months, factoring in snow and returning wind, cold, and lake effect into next week.

The monster snowstorm slated for this weekend will hit portions of the Midwest, eastern Great Lakes, central Appalachians, Ontario and Quebec hardest.

The heaviest snow is most likely to begin over Iowa and surrounding areas Saturday. The snow will then encompass Michigan, western New York, southern and southwestern Ontario and southwestern and central Quebec for the remainder of the weekend.