Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Noctilucent Clouds Sighted From Germany!


SpaceWeather
Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:33 UTC
"The morning of July 26th was electric blue!" says Heiko Ulbricht of Freital, Saxony, Germany. "I woke up at 3 clock, looked out my bedroom window to the north and saw a stunning display of noctilucent clouds." Moments later, he dashed outside with a camera to record the view:

NLC's Over Germany
© Heiko UlbrichtImage Taken: Jul 26 2011
Location: Freital, Saxony, Germany
NLC's Over Germany_2
© Heiko UlbrichtImage Taken: Jul 26 2011
Location: Freital, Saxony, Germany
July has been an odd time for noctilucent clouds (NLCs). The month began with an extravagant display that stretched as far south as Colorado and Kansas--odd because NLCs are usually confined to higher latitudes. The event seemed to herald a period of widespread sightings. Observers were disappointed, though, when the clouds quickly retreated to their usual northern habitat. Could this German apparition signal renewed activity? Sky watchers at all latitudes should be alert for electric-blue ripples around sunrise and sunset. Observing tips may be found in the gallery.
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Bizarro Earth

Earth's Tallest Lightning Seen in Unprecedented Detail

Charles Q. Choi
Our Amazing Planet
Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:29 UTC
Lightning
© Steven CummerTrees form a horizon from which a gigantic jet emerges; the thunderstorm is 200 miles away.
Mysterious and gigantic jets of lightning that shoot up to near the edge of space have now been observed in unprecedented detail, revealing just how much charge they pack and how they form.

More than 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth's surface, extreme ultraviolet radiation from the sun reacts with air molecules to produce highly charged particles, generating an energetic region known as the ionosphere.

In 2001, scientists discovered gigantic jets of lightning arcing up from clouds in the lowest portion of the atmosphere, the troposphere, to the ionosphere. These rarities apparently are caused by the profound difference in electric charge between the ionosphere and the rest of the atmosphere, but much else about them remained unclear.

"People wonder if these gigantic jets might threaten spacecraft, aircraft and passengers," said researcher Gaopeng Lu at Duke University. "This actually makes the study of gigantic jets and other lightning-related phenomena above active thunderstorms meaningful and of practical concern."
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Bizarro Earth

Australia: Giant Kangaroo Attacks 94-year-old Woman

Anissa Haddadi
International Business Times
Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:45 UTC
Image
© Wikimedia Commons
Australia police used pepper spray to overpower an aggressive kangaroo after it attacked a 94-year-old woman in her backyard on Sunday.

"I thought it was going to kill me," Phyllis Johnson told the Courier-Mail newspaper from her hospital bed following the attack in the outback Queensland town of Charleville. The animal bowled her over as she was hanging out her laundry.

The elderly woman told reporters she thought she was going to die as the "red roo," which can jump more than nine meters in one leap, knocked her to the ground and kicked her several times.

She said she had walked out from the small flat where she lives in Charleville to hang up the washing, and as the violent attack took place, she said she kept thinking the animal would kill her. "It was taller than me and it just ploughed through the clothes on the washing line straight for me," she told the paper.

"I happened to have a broom nearby and I just started swinging at it. I bashed it on the head but it kept going for me. Not even the dog would help, it was too frightened."
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Snowman

Rare heavy snow snarls South African transport


Reuters
Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:21 UTC
Johannesburg - An unusually heavy snowfall that blanketed large parts of South Africa snarled transport on Tuesday, halting trains and leaving thousands of motorists stranded after highways closed.

The winter storm also brought high winds that played havoc with shipping and delayed air transport. The military dispatched a helicopter to pluck crew members from a cargo ship that ran aground off the east coast.

Parts of South Africa usually receive a dusting about once or twice a year but the storm that hit large parts of the eastern half of the country on Monday and Tuesday dumped up to 60 cms (2 feet) in some areas.

"Snow is not unheard of but it is usually not this extreme," said national weather service forecaster Karl Loots.

Transport authorities shut sections of major highways, including a heavily traveled route between Johannesburg and the main east coast city of Durban.
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Sherlock

Scientists Find New Australian Frog


PhysOrg
Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:50 UTC
Image
© Paul DoughtyPilbara toadlet (Uperoleia saxatilis).
A new miniature frog species or 'toadlet' has been discovered in the resource-rich Pilbara region of Western Australia, an area previously thought to support very few of the amphibians.

Researchers from the Australian National University, the Western Australian Museum, and the University of Western Australia have used genetic techniques to show more species of frog are present in the Pilbara than previously thought.

Lead author and PhD student from the Research School of Biology at ANU, Renee Catullo said the findings included a species previously unknown to science.

"The deserts of Australia are often believed to be empty regions with few species. However genetic work on reptiles and amphibians has shown that there are large numbers of species in what looks like a barren landscape to most people," she said.
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Fish

U.S.: Thousands of fish turned up dead in Indiana lake

David Williams
WAVE
Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:43 UTC
fish ,kill,indiana

Seymour, Indiana- Imagine thousands of fish literally turn up dead in a lake near your home. That's just what happened at a lake in Seymour, Indiana. So, our viewers called us asking us to get answers.

Neighbors say they've never seen anything like this before.

Stinking, dead fish giving off a foul odor and floating in the lake is what Corey Lanier and his neighbors came across this weekend
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Bizarro Earth

Heavy Snow in Central Chile


Earth Observatory, NASA
Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:29 UTC
Heavy Snow in Chile_1
© Earth Observatory, NASAAcquired 22nd July
Heavy Snow in Chile_2
© Earth Observatory, NASAAcquired 8th July
In what the interior minister described as a "white earthquake," heavy snow blanketed parts of Chile in July 2011. Snow was 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) deep in the city of Lonquimay, CNN reported. Santiago Times reported that some areas received four months' worth of snowfall in just four days.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite captured these images of the region around Lonquimay on July 22, 2011 (top), and July 8, 2011 (bottom).

Using visible and infrared light, these images better distinguish between snow and clouds than a natural-color image would. Snow and ice are bright red or red-orange. Clouds range in color from off-white to peach. Vegetation is green.

Both images show winter conditions but, compared to the image from July 8, the scene from July 22 shows snow blanketing a significantly larger area around Lonquimay. On July 22, fog fills multiple valleys in between the snow-capped peaks.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Warmer Climate Could Spark More Severe Yellowstone Fires


OurAmazingPlanet
Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:00 UTC
Old Faithful
© DreamstimeOld Faithful at Yellowstone National Park.
Large fires in Yellowstone National Park could dramatically increase by mid-century due to climate change, which could create a very different park than the one people know today, a new study suggests.

An increase in the number of severe fires in and around Yellowstone National Park would not destroy the popular park, the study authors say, but it could reduce the park's conifer-dominated mature forests (pines and firs) to younger stands and more open vegetation.

"Large, severe fires are normal for this ecosystem. It has burned this way about every few hundred years for thousands of years," said study author and ecologist Monica Turner of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "But if the current relationship between climate and large fires holds true, a warming climate will drive more frequent large fires in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the future."
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Radar

More aftershocks hit Japan as radiation is picked up in Glasgow, Scotland

Aoife Barry
TheJournal.ie
Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:10 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Lee Jin-man via PA ImagesPeople walk past a damaged road outside of Tokyo Disneyland in Urayasu, east of Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, March 29, 2011. Tokyo Disneyland was shut down after the March 11 earthquake and has been closed ever since.
A number of aftershocks hit Japan today.

At 6.3 magnitude quake hit 18.2 km (11.3 miles) below the surface, 294 km (182 miles) northeast of Tokyo, at 7.54PM local time.

A 5.2 magnitude quake hit the Southwestern Ryukyu Islands today at 7.48PM local time, 143 km (89 miles) from Ishigaki-jima, Ryukyu Islands, the US Geological Society reports.

Earthquakes have continued to be felt in Japan since the initial quake on 11 March, which led to the tsunami and subsequent devastation of loss of life.

In related news, radiation from the damaged Fukushima power plant has been detected in Glasgow, the Evening Times reports. However, the paper notes: "The levels picked up in Glasgow are tiny and similar to those detected in other parts of Europe and officials stress there is no risk to public health."
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Coffee

Scientists find that VOLCANOES were responsible for past increases in atmospheric CO2 levels


PhysOrg.com
Thu, 17 Feb 2011 10:49 UTC
Image
© Morgan Schaller, Rutgers UniversityOutcroppings like this one near Martinsville, New Jersey, US allow geologists to read geological history with the naked eye.
Pour enough magma out through Earth's crust, and you can change the atmosphere radically.

Twenty thousand years of massive volcanic eruptions doubled the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth's atmosphere 200 million years ago, according to research by Rutgers geologists published recently in the journal Science.

Morgan Schaller, Jim Wright and Dennis Kent report that the level of atmospheric CO2 went from about 2,000 parts per million to 4,000 parts per million and then shrank back to pre-eruption levels over the next 300,000 years. This implies that events of this scale have the potential to rapidly double the concentration of CO2 in earth's atmosphere. Their work, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, was based on measurements on cores taken from sites in northeastern New Jersey. Schaller is a PhD student, Wright an associate professor and Kent a professor of earth and planetary sciences in Rutgers' School of Arts and Sciences.

Comment: These are the volcanic eruptions observed on land in the past two months:
Alaska, US: Aleutian Volcano Shows Signs of Impending Eruption

Indonesia Mount Lokon Volcano Spews Ash in Biggest Eruption

Sicily, Italy: Etna Volcano Erupts Again on July 9 2011

Eritrea-Ethiopia: Thousands need aid after volcano eruption

Mt Soputan Volcano Spews Smoke, Gas in Indonesia

Chilean Volcano Colors Southern Hemisphere Skies

Ecuador: Reventador Volcano Activity Increases

Kamchatka Shiveluch Volcano erupts in Russia

Prehistoric East African Volcano Roars to Life

Mexico's Popocatepetl Volcano Erupts
Most volcanoes are under the world's oceans. Still think localised warming is man-made?

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