Earth ChangesS


Blackbox

Best of the Web: Fall of Roman Empire Linked to Wild Shifts in Climate

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© Carlos Gotay/GettyOutlook is bleak
Centuries of unpredictable climate may have been partly to blame for the fall of the western Roman Empire. A detailed record of 2500 years of European climate has uncovered several links between changing climate and the rise and fall of civilisations.

Climate fluctuation was a contributing factor alongside political failures and barbarian invasions, says Ulf Büntgen of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research in Birmensdorf, Switzerland, who led the project.

Büntgen used tree rings to build up a history of European climate. Using nearly 9000 samples from oak, pine and larch, Büntgen and colleagues were able to reconstruct how temperatures and rainfall in western Europe changed over the last 2500 years.

Radar

At least 39 dead in South African floods

Johannesburg - Floods have killed or left missing at least 39 people in South Africa and destroyed thousands of homes in neighboring Mozambique, officials said on Monday.

Heavy rains from late December and through most of January have led to floods in the two countries, with torrential downpours at the weekend again swelling rivers.

South Africa's Cooperative Governance Ministry estimated at least 32 have been killed while police said on Monday another seven went missing in Centurion, near Pretoria, after they were swept away by high waters.

The army has been placed on stand-by to evacuate people from areas near major dams.

"All disaster management structures in the country have been put on high alert," the cooperative governance ministry said.

Bizarro Earth

Flashback Best of the Web: Walls of Water 10ft High in a Month-Long Mega Hurricane: California Told to Prepare for Biblical 'ARkStorm'

ARkstorm flooding
© UnknownA map of the flood area of the hypothetical ARkStorm event
Scientists are now warning Californians that the long-awaited 'big one' earthquake could be the least of their environmental concerns.

Another more deadly threat awaits the West coast of America - in the form of a biblical 'ARkStorm', which could bring death and destruction on a scale never before seen.

Walls of water 10ft high, rain falling in feet instead of inches, and nine million people's homes flooded during a hurricane-like megastorm that could last more than month.

The every-other-century event last happened in 1861 and left the central valley of California impassable.

The cost was impossible to quantify - but should a similar event happen today the damage could total more than $300billion.


Comment: Feb 16, 2017: It does not have to be a hurricane as continuous stormsystems loaded with water aka Atmospheric Rivers would be enough to create the scenario outlined here. Something that California is experiencing now in the beginning of 2017.


Bizarro Earth

Philippines - 3 Volcanoes in Luzon Acting Up - Phivolcs

Mayon Volcano
© Tam3rd/Wikimedia CommonsMayon Volcano in Albay, Philippines
Three active volcanoes in Luzon showed signs of increased activity Sunday, exhibiting rock fall, moderate steam, and minor quakes in their respective vicinities, state volcanologists reported.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said signs of unrest were detected in Mayon, Taal, and Bulusan volcanoes during its 24-hour observation.

Phivolcs reported having observed one rock fall at Mayon Volcano in Albay and its steam was white and moderate.

Meanwhile, crater glow was not observed due to thick clouds covering Mayon's summit.

"Results of ground deformation surveys conducted last November and December 2010 showed that the volcanic edifice remains inflated based on 2008 baseline data," the Phivolcs said.

Alert Level 1 has been raised due to Mayon's current activity.

While no eruption is imminent, Phivolcs strongly prohibited the public from wandering within the six-kilometer radius permanent danger zone (PDZ) due to the continuing threat from sudden small explosions and rock falls from the upper and middle slopes of the volcano.

Fish

Dead Fish Start Washing Up in Australia

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Investigations are underway into the cause of a fish kill in Jervis Bay. About 70 different species have been washed up on the shore line around Honeymoon Bay and Bindijine. Among the kill were groper, flathead, stingrays and sea horses. Samples of the dead fish have been taken away for testing. The incident has experts mystified, because many fish kills often effect only a few species, while on this occasion the deaths are across the board.

Source

A sleepy little coast bay town of Jervis Bay was rocked by lots of dead and dying fish washing up on shore.

I was driving down the coast and heard this interview on a little radio station where the guy had phoned in and tell the radio station about what he was looking at, literally hundreds of dead and dying fish, some still moving seemingly trying to get out of the water, the witness on the radio saying it's almost like they were trying to escape something or trying to get out of the water for oxygen.

Radar

Best of the Web: Did Australia's obsession with global warming contribute to the Brisbane floods?

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© GettyA man paddles down a street in a Brisbane suburb
Who, if anyone, is to blame for the terrible flooding in Brisbane? Commentators are pointing their collective finger at the usual suspects. For the extreme green magazine Grist, the floods expose mankind's arrogance in believing that he can build settlements anywhere he likes, even on floodplains. Nature is "taking a perverse pleasure in pointing out just where the shiny, might city is weakest", gloats Grist. Others are blaming Aussie property developers, for thoughtlessly throwing up flood-prone buildings, and yet others think Queensland politicians should have done more to improve flood defences.

But might there be another, so far overlooked, contributing factor to the floods? Might the politics of environmentalism itself - the contemporary obsession with global warming as the greatest threat to mankind - have exacerbated the impact of the flooding in Brisbane? It seems possible that Aussie politicians' and officials' deeply held conviction that the main problem we face today is increased heat, droughts and a lack of rainfall caused them to take their eye off the ball in Brisbane, and to be unprepared for something as relatively normal as very heavy rainfall.

Bizarro Earth

Iran: Mass Fish Death Recorded in Caspian Sea

dead fish
© na

Mass fish death was recorded in the Iranian sector of the Caspian Sea," Iranian Gulistan Province's Nature Conservation Department Deputy Head Mohsen Jafarnejad said.

Mass death of fish in the Caspian Sea is recorded on the west coast of the Gulistan Province. A large number of dead mullet have washed ashore, Shomalnews.com reported.

"An analysis of samples taken from dead fish was carried out, and now we are waiting for their results," Jafarnejad said.

Bizarro Earth

Philippine Floods Toll Rises to 51; Fishermen Missing

The death toll from more than two weeks of heavy rains in the central and southern Philippines has risen to 51, disaster officials said on Sunday, as authorities stepped up their search for another 16 people missing at sea.

Agriculture and infrastructure damage now exceeds 1.6 billion pesos ($36 million) after floodwaters inundated rural communities in about a third of the country's 80 provinces, said Benito Ramos, head of the government's disaster agency.

Major rice and corn production areas in the north and western parts of the country have been spared from the damaging impact of the persistent rains that began in late December.

Most of the dead either drowned or were buried by mudslides, Ramos said. Nearly 20 people are still missing.

"We're expecting the number of casualties to increase because more people have gone missing," Ramos told Reuters, appealing to fishermen in the central Bicol region to stay onshore until the weather improved.

Search planes and ships are looking for 16 fishermen whose boat capsized in rough seas off the central island of Catanduanes.

Igloo

7,000 Buffalo and Cows Freeze To Death in Vietnam

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© unk
Freezing Vietnam to enter another cold snap

After enduring a freezing cold with temperatures in mountainous areas dropping to minus four degrees Celsius, northern Vietnam is to undergo another fresh cold snap starting Saturday.

Deputy Director of the National Hydro-meteorological Forecast Center Le Thanh Hai said the new cold bout will drive down temperatures in mountainous provinces to under 10 degrees Celsius and even lower in higher mountainous areas.

Temperature in delta region provinces will dip to 11-12 degrees Celcius.
The Center also predicts an even stronger cold front on January 21 lasting until January 25.

Cow

US: 200 Dead Cows Found on Farm in Stockton, Wisconsin

The Portage County Humane Society is trying to figure out what caused 200 cows in the town of Stockton to perish.

Deputies were dispatched to the town just after 1 p.m. on Friday after they were notified of numerous dead cows lying in a field in the 8000 block of Fourth Avenue, according to a Portage County Sheriff's Department news release.

The owner of the cattle reportedly told deputies that he had been working with a local veterinarian and suspected that the animals died from either infectious bovine rhinotracheitis, or IBR, or bovine virus diarrhea, or BVD, the Sheriff's Department said.

According to Cattletoday.info, IBR, aka red nose, is an acute, contagious virus of cattle that usually occurs in the air passages of the cow's head or its windpipe.