Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Heavy Snow on the Korean Peninsula

Korean Peninsular
© NASANASA images courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Acquired February 14, 2011.
In mid-February 2011, residents along South Korea's east coast were struggling to dig out from the heaviest snowfall in more than a century. The BBC reported that hundreds of stranded motorists awaited rescue, and hundreds of homes had collapsed under the weight of heavy snow. The South Korean government had deployed 12,000 soldiers to assist and rescue residents.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite acquired this natural-color image on February 15, 2011. Mostly clear skies allowed MODIS a nearly uninterrupted view of the Korean Peninsula. East of Seoul, clusters of small white clouds cast shadows onto the surface below. But most of the white on the peninsula is snow.

Agence France-Presse reported that the port city of Samcheok recorded 100 centimeters (39 inches) of snowfall on February 11 and 12 - the heaviest snowfall amount since record keeping began in 1911. In the west, Seoul escaped heavy snow, although the Han River froze over for the first time in years, according to the BBC.

Info

US: Winter Storm Watch Issued For Sierra Nevada

The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Watch for the Sierra Nevada from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday evening.

Light snow and strong gusty winds will linger over the mountains tonight.

A stronger storm is expected Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday.

Six to sixteen inches of snow is expected from 4000 through 5000 feet. One to three feet of snow is possible above 6000 through 8000 feet.

Cloud Lightning

Virginia, US: 'Thundersnow' behind mysterious blue flashes of light?

lightning
© Associated PressWere the eerie flashes of blue light similar to that in the picture above thundersnow — or something else?
Eerie flashes of blue lit up the snowy sky during this week's powerful coastal storm, but no one seems to know for sure what caused it.

Howard Bernstein, morning meteorologist at WUSA 9 in Washington, said he believes the lights were lightning strikes associated with "thundersnow."

The National Weather Service reported frequent lightning with Wednesday's storm, but said those who saw the flashes of light would have also heard thunder, and that wasn't the case around Prince William.

Bernstein says that's not necessarily true.

"I've given this a little bit of thought (and I also did a little research). I believe we were seeing lightning that was refracted by all of the ice crystals/snow flakes to give it more of a blue appearance," he said this morning in an e-mail. "Also, the thunder was probably quite muffled by all of the snowflakes, so if you weren't very close to the lightning, you probably couldn't hear the thunder."

Comment: Read the following article to get an insight into the true nature of lightning and other electric phenomena.


Question

Pakistan: Concern voiced over increasing peacock deaths in Thar

peacock
© Unknown
The mysterious death of two beautiful blue peacocks in their natural habitat, the Thar Desert, has caused concern among wildlife conservationists.

An official of Society for Conservation and Protection of Environment (Scope) in Mithi, Bharumal Amrani, has said that they have received reports of the death of two peacocks from different areas. He fears that more than 100 peacocks might have died in Mithi, Islamkot and Nagarparkar neighbourhoods.

The official is not sure about the places and the exact number of the birds that died, but says that Scope officials have made complains to Sindh Wildlife Department officials in their areas, but the officials have turned a deaf ear to the issue.

President Makhdoom Bilawal Welfare Society Arbab Nek Mohammad, who is supervising the project in collaboration with the UNDP Global Environment Facility's (GEF) Small Grants Programme, to conserve the peacocks in the Thar region, says that according to the information their organisational network collected at least 500 peacocks have died so far. He said that a lack of feeding, especially grains, in the natural habitat and the biting cold in the area might be the main reasons behind the death of the birds.

Cloud Lightning

South Africa: Karoo Hit by Flash Floods

flood
© Times Live
The Karoo was hit by flash floods at the weekend.

More than 100mm of rain fell in 24 hours on Saturday and Sunday in and around the central Karoo towns of Graaff-Reinet and Nieu Bethesda, The Herald Online reported on Monday.

In some places, 75mm fell in just 30 minutes, causing farm dams to burst.

Police and disaster management officials were on high alert and ready to evacuate residents where necessary.

In Graaff-Reinet, the town's Nqweba Dam swelled to its highest level in more than 36 years on Sunday.

The Herald Online reported that the dam rose to 116 percent capacity on Sunday morning.

"It looks like more rain is on the way," said the area's disaster management head, Christopher Rhoode.

Cloud Lightning

Afghanistan: Floods, Heavy Snow Kill 25 in Two Weeks

Afghan snow
© Masoud Popalzai/IRINBad weather hampers deliveries
Kabul - Flash floods and heavy snowfall killed 25 people and damaged up to 3,000 houses in different parts of Afghanistan over the past two weeks, according to government officials.

At least 20 people died and 53 have been injured in Parwan, Herat, Wardak and Daykundi provinces, the Afghanistan National Disasters Management Authority (ANDMA) said. Five people lost their lives in mudslides and snowstorms in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, the provincial department of the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) said.

Shindand District in the western province of Herat is among the worst affected areas where, in addition to four deaths and over a dozen injured, almost 2,600 families have been affected, officials said.

"In the beginning we had difficulties in delivering aid to Shindand because of insecurity and road inaccessibility," said Shafiq Behrozyan, a spokesman for the governor of Herat, adding that some humanitarian agencies had also opposed the transportation of aid items by military planes. "But we managed to send aid consignments by road."

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said it had dispatched 250 tons of food aid to Shindand and that distribution was ongoing.

Fish

New Zealand: Mystery pollution kills off fish life

A toxic discharge has killed more than 500 fish in a New Plymouth stream and those responsible could face a fine of $600,000.

Taranaki Regional Council resource management director Fred McLay said hundreds of fish were found dead in the Mangaone Stream.

"This is a major fish kill. There were too many to pick up," Mr McLay said.

It was not known where the pollution had come from but the council hoped to complete its investigations within 10 days.

This was not the first time the stream, which runs through a New Plymouth industrial area, had been affected by pollution, he said.

Bizarro Earth

Indonesia - Earthquake Magnitude 6.1 - Sulawesi

Sulawesi Quake_150211
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 13:33:53 UTC

Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 09:33:53 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
2.470°S, 121.541°E

Depth
20.6 km (12.8 miles)

Region
SULAWESI, INDONESIA

Distances
160 km (100 miles) ENE of Palopo, Sulawesi, Indonesia

200 km (125 miles) NNW of Kendari, Sulawesi, Indonesia

1500 km (930 miles) NW of DARWIN, Northern Territory, Australia

1680 km (1040 miles) ENE of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia

Sun

Gust of solar wind brings sweet Valentine's auroras to Arctic Circle

Last night, as predicted, a gust of solar wind hit Earth's magnetic field, sparking bright Valentine's auroras around the Arctic Circle. Øystein Lunde Ingvaldsen sends this picture of the sweet lights over Bø in Vesterålen, Norway:

Image
© Øystein Lunde Ingvaldsen
"It was a short but beautiful blast of Northern Lights," says Ingvaldsen. "Perhaps this is a preview of things to come later this week." Indeed, a series of CMEs en route to Earth from exploding sunspot 1158 are expected to arrive on Feb. 15th-17th, prompting bright displays at even lower latitudes. Sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

Arrow Up

Hawaii: Lava lake at Halemaumau crater rising gradually, could spill out to crater floor

Image
The lava lake at Kilauea's Halemaumau crater has been rising gradually in the last few months.

Volcanologists don't know what the significance of the rise is. It's possible that the lava could spill out of the pit and on to the crater floor, though this might take months to happen.

The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported the observatory's seismologists are also watching an increased number of earthquakes in the upper east rift zone.

Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory scientist-in-charge Jim Kauahikaua says the increase in seismicity somewhat resembled the prelude to a brief June 2007 eruption in a remote section of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. But there have also been several similar seismic episodes when nothing happened.

Kilauea is the world's longest continually erupting volcano. The east rift zone began erupting in 1983.