Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Fertilisers reducing plant diversity

Scientists have identified why excessive fertilisation of soils is resulting in a loss of plant diversity. Extra nutrients allow fast growing plants to dominate a habitat, blocking smaller species' access to vital sunlight, researchers have found.

As a result, many species are disappearing from affected areas.

A team from the University of Zurich, writing in Science, warned that tighter controls were needed in order to prevent widespread biodiversity loss. Estimates suggest that the global level of nitrogen and phosphorous available to plants has doubled in the past 50 years.

Sun

Atmospheric Solar Heat Amplifier Discovered

For decades, the supporters of CO2 driven global warming have discounted changes in solar irradiance as far too small to cause significant climate change. Though the Sun's output varies by less than a tenth of a percent in magnitude during its 11-year sunspot cycle, that small variation produces changes in sea surface temperatures two or three times as large as it should. A new study in Science demonstrates how two previously known mechanisms acting together amplify the Sun's impact in an unsuspected way. Not surprisingly, the new discovery is getting a cool reception from the CO2 climate change clique.

Scientists have long suspected that changes in solar output may have triggered the Little Ice Age that gripped Europe several centuries ago, as well as droughts that brought down Chinese dynasties. Now, in a report in the August 28 issue of the journal Science entitled "Amplifying the Pacific Climate System Response to a Small 11-Year Solar Cycle Forcing," Gerald A. Meehl et al. have demonstrated a possible mechanism that could explain how seemingly small changes in solar output can have a big impact on Earth's climate. The researchers claim that two different parts of the atmosphere act in concert to amplify the effects of even minuscule solar fluctuations.
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© ScienceSolar irradiance variation during 11-year cycles.

Bizarro Earth

Flooding Kills at Least 31 in Turkey

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© Reuters
Flash floods killed at least 31 people in and around Istanbul on Wednesday, the government said, as the area continued to struggle with its heaviest rainfall in 80 years.

The floodwaters rose quickly. After just a few hours of heavy rain, water had covered many of the city's low-lying areas as well as one of the primary highways connecting the city center and the main airport. Drivers who were caught by the heavy rains told the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency that the fast-rising waters were strong enough to push heavy trucks off the road. News stations showed video of people running and climbing on top of vehicles to escape the rising waters.

Ikitelli, a crowded business district along the highway, was among the hardest hit areas.

Arrow Down

Canada: Grizzlies starve as salmon disappear

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First the salmon vanished, now the bears may be gone too.

Reports from conservationists, salmon-stream walkers and ecotourism guides all along British Columbia's wild central coast indicate a collapse of salmon runs has triggered widespread death from starvation of black and grizzly bears. Those guides are on the front lines of what they say is an unfolding ecological disaster that is so new that it has not been documented by biologists.

"I've never experienced anything like this. There has been a huge drop in the number of bears we see," said Doug Neasloss, a bear-viewing guide with the Kitasoo-Xaixais tribes in Klemtu, about 180 kilometres south of Kitimat.

Ladybug

Why Are Native Ladybugs Disappearing?

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Researchers in New York are breeding colonies of ladybugs from those found by scientists in Oregon and Colorado during a year-long search.

Last year, entomologist John Losey from Cornell University first introduced the Lost Ladybug Project in an attempt to find out why the once-common native ladybug species had almost completely disappeared across the nation.

The project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, rounds up citizen scientists, or individual volunteers who may have no scientific training, to search for ladybugs and relay photos of them to Losey and his team.

Researchers are particularly interested in the nine-spotted, two-spotted and transverse ladybugs. They are three native species whose populations have drastically dropped over the past ten years, likely due to the introduction of foreign species to control crop pests.

Bizarro Earth

Are wheat varieties losing disease resistance?

Questions of whether old reliable wheat varieties are losing their resistance to common diseases continue to pop up as growers in the upper Southeast begin getting ready for wheat planting.

It has been widely reported that sister varieties Tribute and McCormick have had increasing problems with powdery mildew over the past two years. Whether this is a true loss of resistance, a shift in disease race, or a permanent problem continues as growers make decisions on which varieties to plant for the 2009-2010 growing season.

Carl Griffey, a Virginia Tech Professor and leader of one of the top small grain breeding programs in the country says the explanation is complicated.

Better Earth

Scientists develop new method making it easier to find oil all over the world

Researchers at KTH have been able to prove that the fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.

"With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!" says Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology in Stockholm.

Together with two research colleagues, Professor Kutcherov has simulated the process of pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner strata of the earth's crust. This process generates hydrocarbons, the primary elements of oil and natural gas.

Bizarro Earth

Newspapers Examine Drought, Famine in East Africa

According to Canada's National Post, a humanitarian coalition "warns East Africa faces 'a perfect storm of crop failures, a multi-year lack of rain, conflicts and political turmoil,' which now threatens 20 million people with severe hunger." Fighting in Somalia has driven 1.55 million people to internal camps outside the capital of Mogadishu as well as refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, where the unsanitary conditions of one camp led Oxfam to label it "barely fit for humans."

"For the fourth year in a row, East Africa is in the grip of a devastating drought, which is killing crops, livestock and children, and displacing hundreds of thousands of people," according to the National Post, which adds that 28 percent of the U.N.-led emergency appeal for $576 million in aid has received funding. One in 10 Kenyans and 4.6 million Ethiopians are in need of food assistance, according to the World Food Program (9/9).

The New York Times examines the situation in Kenya, where the "devastating drought ... is stirring up tensions in the ramshackle slums where the water taps have run dry, and spawning ethnic conflict in the hinterland as communities fight over the last remaining pieces of fertile grazing land."

Phoenix

Drought makes California vulnerable to busy fire season

Los Angeles - Even as a mammoth wildfire still burns in the San Gabriel Mountains, California hasn't seen this year the level of destruction that flames delivered the past two years.

That could change soon however, fire officials say. A prolonged drought, which is drying up vegetation and fueling a seemingly endless fire that has burned more than 250 square miles of Los Angeles County, could be the start of a fall siege in Southern California.

Cloud Lightning

'Freak' storm and tornado kills 17 in Argentina

A violent storm that triggered a tornado has killed at least 17 people in the southern part of South America and destroyed hundreds of houses.

Northern Argentina and southern Brazil, and the small countries of Uruguay and Paraguay wedged between them, were hit by fierce rain, hail and winds travelling at more than 70mph.

In northeastern Argentina, 10 people died, including seven children, authorities said.