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Carnivore Comeback: Bear and wolf populations are thriving in Europe

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Thu, 18 Dec 2014 17:44 UTC
Image
© Kjell Isaksen
A female brown bear (Ursus arctos) with three yearlings in Gutulia National Park in Hedmark, South East Norway.
Despite having half the land area of the contiguous United States and double the population density, Europe is home to twice as many wolves as the U.S.

A new study finds that Europe's other large carnivores are experiencing a resurgence in their numbers, too - and mostly in nonprotected areas where the animals coexist alongside humans. The success is owed to cross-border cooperation, strong regulations and a public attitude that brings wildlife into the fold with human society, rather than banishing it to the wilderness, according to study leader Guillaume Chapron, a professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences' Grimsö Wildlife Research Station.

In Europe, "we don't have unspoiled, untouched areas," Chapron told Live Science. "But what is interesting is, that does not mean we do not have carnivores. Au contraire; we have many carnivores."
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Reindeer populations are on the decline worldwide

Kelly Dickerson
livescience.com
Wed, 17 Dec 2014 17:19 UTC
Image
Reindeer populations are in trouble around the world, and in China, the iconic animals are on the decline largely because of inbreeding, according to new research.

Some folklorists say Christmas tales of flying reindeer may have originated as a hallucination, with one theory claiming the inspiration for Santa Claus came from shamans who would give out bags of hallucinatory mushrooms in late December in the Siberian and Arctic regions. But, nonflying reindeer are very real and an important part of northern ecosystems.

Reindeer populations currently live in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Alaska, Russia, Mongolia and China, and populations across the board are declining. In the new study, researchers from Renmin University in Beijing focused on the reindeer population in China, which has declined about 28 percent since the 1970s.
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Snowflake

Japan snowstorm dumps feet of snow, kills 11; hundreds of flights canceled

Sean Breslin
Weather.com
Thu, 18 Dec 2014 17:33 UTC
Image
© Instagram/@marn_9
In the village of Hinoemata in western Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, more than 30 inches of snow covers the ground following a large storm, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014
A massive storm system dropped feet of snow on parts of Japan this week, leading to travel problems and at least 11 deaths.

"As of late Thursday night, local time, Tsunan, Japan reported a snow depth of 81.5 inches (207 centimeters)," said weather.com meteorologist Jon Erdman. "Seven other locations in western Honshu reported at least 150 centimeters (about 59 inches) of snow depth, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency."

Eleven people have been confirmed dead in the storm. NHK said one Hokkaido death occurred when a car skidded into a utility pole, and the other was a 74-year-old woman who was trapped under a warehouse roof that collapsed under the weight of the snow. The fatality in Hiroshima occurred when a driver got out of his car and was hit by another vehicle, NHK said.

Comment: Related:
Major winter storm targets Japan; heavy rain, snow, typhoon strength winds
Heavy snow in Japan causes power blackouts and stranded train passengers
The geological record shows that the default climate for this planet is a very cold one. Ice Ages last up to 100,000 years and are separated by 'inter-glacials', narrow windows of relative warmth that last, on average, 11,500 years. Our civilization is currently situated on the tail-end of the Holocene inter-glacial, meaning that it's just a matter of time before the next Ice Age.

How much time? Nobody knows. But in this week's show we're also going to examine the evidence for a synchronistic relationship between climate stress and the rise and fall of human civilizations within a more recent historical timeframe. Is it possible that humanity does play a role in modulating 'climate change', but perhaps not in the way environmentalists are suggesting?

SOTT Talk Radio: Ice Age Cometh? Extreme Weather Events and 'Climate Change'


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Arrow Down

New study shows 2,000-year downward trend of Northern European summer temperatures

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Thu, 18 Dec 2014 03:02 UTC
In a paper published in the Journal of Quaternary Science, Esper et al. (2014) write that tree-ring chronologies of maximum latewood density (MXD) "are most suitable to reconstruct annually resolved summer temperature variations of the late Holocene." And working with what they call "the world's two longest MXD-based climate reconstructions" - those of Melvin et al. (2013) and Esper et al. (2012) - they combined portions of each to produce a new-and-improved summer temperature history for northern Europe that stretches all the way "from 17 BC to the present." And what did they thereby learn?

As the international team of researchers from the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, Sweden and Switzerland describes it, this history depicts "a long-term cooling trend of -0.30°C per 1,000 years over the Common Era in northern Europe" (see figure below). Most important of all, however, they note that their temperature reconstruction "has centennial-scale variations superimposed on this trend," which indicate that "conditions during Medieval and Roman times were probably warmer than in the late 20th century," when the previously-rising post-Little Ice Age mean global air temperature hit a ceiling of sorts above which it has yet to penetrate.

Image
© Adapted from Esper et al. (2014).
Northern Europe summer (June, July, August) temperature reconstruction. Data shown in°C with respect to the 1961-1990 mean
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Bizarro Earth

Japanese meteorologists monitoring Takachidake volcano as seismic activity increases


Sputnik
Wed, 17 Dec 2014 15:41 UTC
Japan's Meteorological Agency which provides round the clock monitoring of volcanic activity has raised the volcanic eruption alert to the second level for the Tokachidake region in Hokkaido.

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Japan's Meteorological Agency has raised the volcanic eruption alert for the Tokachidake volcano on Hokkaido Island to the second level, warning that small-scale volcanic activity is possible.

The agency has set a one kilometer safe zone around the area as a volcanic eruption may trigger a rockfall. Meteorologists note that Tokachidake's volcanic activity has been growing steadily in recent years, accompanied by small-scale earthquakes. Since July 2014 there have been a number of changes in the rates of seismic activity in the region. For example, in September 2014 there were a series of small earthquakes, "volcanic tremors," lasting for almost 22 minutes. Meteorologists warn that the eruption of ash and small rocks caused by a "tremor" may pose a serious threat to people.

Comment: Volcanic eruptions and seismic activity have been on the increase in Japan for some time:

Japan's Mt. Ontake volcano suddenly violently erupts - seven people unconscious, eight seriously injured and more than 250 stranded on the mountain

Mount Aso volcano in South Japan erupts after 22 years prompting flight cancellations

Japan's massive 2011 earthquake may trigger more, and larger, volcanic eruptions

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Igloo

'Ice pancakes' pictured floating on River Dee


The Telegraph, UK
Thu, 18 Dec 2014 20:20 UTC
Dinner plate-sized discs made out of frozen foam have been pictured on the river in Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Ice pancakes
© HEMEDIA
Ice pancakes recently found at Lummels Pool, near Aboyne, Aberdeenshire.
"Ice pancakes" made out of frozen foam have been forming on the River Dee in Aberdeenshire.

The discs, which are roughly the size of dinner plates, were photographed on the Scottish river at Lummels Pool, in Birse.

They are thought to have been formed overnight, when temperatures fall to below freezing, before they rub and bump together to make a roughly circular shape, as temperatures rise during the day.

The phenomenon can happen on rivers or the open sea, but is more usually spotted in the Antarctic, according to experts from the River Dee Trust who made the discovery.

Comment: The BBC host thinks this is a good sight to see. But why are we observing a common Antarctic phenomenon in the UK?

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Snowflake

Superbomb winter storm predicted for Northeastern U.S. at Christmas

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Wed, 17 Dec 2014 14:43 UTC
A "superbomb" storm is being predicted for Christmas Day in the Northeast United states according to WeatherBell Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue who has pointed out it looks to be reminiscent of the Cleveland Superbomb of 1978 aka the "Great New England Blizzard of 1978″.

This GFS forecast model for Christmas Day shows the depth of the low, poised to gather moisture from the Great Lakes and dump it into the Northeastern U.S. over the next 24-48 hours, potentially making Christmas and post-Christmas travel a nightmare, but ... there is a twist.
Image
Dr. Maue adds on his Twitter feed:
Exciting to see extreme weather forecasts with an item that requires dusting off the record books. 958 mb low
For reference, a 958 millibar low pressure system is as low as the central pressure for some tropical storms and nearly that of some hurricanes. For example Hurricane Sandy had a central pressure of 940 mbar or 27.76 inHg.

Comment:

UK weather bomb' brings hundreds of lightning strikes,and power outage to 17,000 homes

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Ice Cube

Since October, Arctic sea ice extent remains at 10-year high


Steven Goddard.wordpress.com
Wed, 17 Dec 2014 02:10 UTC
Since the end of October, Arctic sea ice extent has been at a 10 year high almost every day.
Image
Total sea ice extent on the northern hemisphere since 2005. The ice extent values are calculated from the ice type data from the Ocean and Sea Ice, Satellite Application Facility (OSISAF), where areas with ice concentration higher than 30% are classified as ice.

The total area of sea ice is the sum of First Year Ice (FYI), Multi Year Ice (MYI) and the area of ambiguous ice types, from the OSISAF ice type product. However, the total estimated ice area is underestimated due to unclassified coastal regions where mixed land/sea pixels confuse the applied ice type algorithm. The shown sea ice extent values are therefore recommended be used qualitatively in relation to ice extent values from other years shown in the figure. In late 2012 sea ice climatology and anomaly data will be available here.

COI | Centre for Ocean and Ice | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut

Comment: Oops! The Arctic sea ice is holding up to global warming better than anyone expected.

Ice age cometh: No warming left to deny... Global cooling takes over... CET annual mean temperature plunges 1°C since 2000

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Beaker

Birds in central Michigan are dying due to decades-old DDT pollution

Mark Brush
michiganradio.org
Tue, 16 Dec 2014 22:21 UTC
Image
© Teri Kniffen's video
American robin found in Kniffen's neighbor's yard in 2014. Volunteers collect the birds to have them tested for neurotoxicity.
All this week we're bringing you stories about the chemical company responsible for the PBB tragedy in Michigan. Michigan Chemical accidentally contaminated the state's food supply in the 1970s, but the legacy of that company is still very much with us today.

Michigan Chemical - which later became Velsicol Chemical - made more than just PBB, and it left these toxic chemicals behind in St. Louis, Michigan.

One woman insists something is wrong with the birds

Teri Kniffen and her family moved to St. Louis in 1994. She had heard about Velsicol Chemical and the PBB tragedy in Michigan, but when they bought their house, they didn't realize they were moving right next to where the old plant site was buried.

In 2001, she started noticing dying robins in her yard.

"When I'd go out in the backyard, and get near them, they wouldn't move," says Kniffen. "They just would stagger around the yard, and they'd end up dying."

Kniffen said she would find around 10 to 12 dead birds a year - mostly American robins. She said she tried to get officials from the MDEQ and the EPA to test the birds, but they mostly ignored her. An MDEQ official told her to collect the dead birds in her freezer, but she says by the time they came to collect them four years later, she was told the birds could not be tested.

So two years ago, Kniffen had the birds tested herself at MSU, and the birds tested positive for acute DDT and DDE poisoning.

Kniffen videotaped the birds as well. Here's what she and her neighbors would see (this video might be disturbing for some viewers):

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Question

Bird flu feared in mass deaths of 3,000 Swedish and Danish seals


thelocal.dk
Tue, 16 Dec 2014 21:05 UTC
Image
© Susanne Nilsson/Flickr
An outbreak of bird flu has likely killed about 3,000 seals off the coast of Sweden and Denmark this year, Swedish authorities announced Tuesday, raising the alarm a month after Germany.

"So far this year about 3,000 harbour seals have died in Swedish and Danish waters and were probably infected with the bird flu virus H10N7," the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management said in a statement.

The virus was first detected among sick and dead seals found in April off the coast of Gothenburg southwest of Sweden -- and the agency said the death toll was far higher than initially thought.

In October the numbers of seals killed by the virus was estimated at about 700 but researchers now say most of the dead animals had sunk, making estimates difficult.
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