Sharply increased seismic activity and volcanic eruptions in the Aleutian Islands and the far western Brooks Range are being investigated by scientists.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory says the activity over the past few months is the most seen by the station 26 years.

On the Alaska Volcano Observatory website three volcanoes are classified with a yellow alert level - signifying signs of elevated unrest above known background levels - and three are at an orange alert level - heightened unrest with increased likelihood of eruption.

Orange is the second-highest alert level after red signifying an eruption that is imminent or underway.

An ominous gas crater that has been burning in a Turkmen desert for more than 40 years is a perfect site for boosting tourism in the country, local officials and academics say. The man-made pit, known as "the Door to Hell," earlier faced backfill.

Tourism may not be the strongest side of the Central Asian republic's economy, as only around 10,000 visitors come to Turkmenistan yearly, according to official stats - most of them from Iran, Germany and the US. However, local tourism officials say they found a promising tourist attraction - and it is really hot.

Amid the arid Karakum desert, covering most of the country and known for its extreme temperature changes, one can find a huge sinister-looking pit known as Derweze or Darvaza - commonly referred to by the locals as "the Door to Hell."

South Australia is bracing for more wild weather after thousands of properties were left without power due to strong wind and rain.

The State Emergency Service has responded to more than 170 incidents in South Australia after the state was buffeted by wind of more than 90km/h.

Trees and power lines were brought down, with the SES reporting incidents of roof tiles being ripped away and driveways being blocked by debris. The SES advised that people should stay indoors, away from windows, during high winds.

Around 6,000 premises were left without power in South Australia on Monday, with the Bureau of Meteorology warning that the extreme weather would continue for a further day.

Variations in high-altitude wind patterns expose particular parts of Europe, Asia and the US to different extreme weather conditions, a new study has shown.

Changes to air flow patterns around the Northern Hemisphere are a major influence on prolonged bouts of unseasonal weather - whether it be hot, cold, wet or dry.

The high altitude winds normally blow from west to east around the planet, but do not follow a straight path. The flow meanders to the north and south, in a wave-like path.

These wave patterns are responsible for sucking either warm air from the tropics, or cold air from the Arctic, to Europe, Asia, or the US. They can also influence rainfall by steering rain-laden storms.

Between 1978 and 2008, Oklahoma had just two earthquakes with a magnitude over 3.0. In 2014, thus far, there have been around 200 such earthquakes there, more even than the highly unstable state of California. (They've had 140.) Experts believe the unusual increase in earthquakes is linked to the number of wastewater wells connected to oil and gas drilling.

Wastewater wells occur when oil and gas companies inject wastewater deep underground. Scientists believe that the wastewater acts as a lubricant in existing fault lines, causing more movement. Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, has also been linked to earthquakes, though the majority of Oklahoma's tremors were caused by wastewater wells.
The USGS and Oklahoma officials are adding monitor stations to best determine which wastewater wells are causing the earthquake issue. There are currently 15 permanent stations and 17 temporary stations.

Thus far, none of the earthquakes in Oklahoma have caused major damage. However, USGS geophysicist Rob Williams believes it is only a matter of time, "Given the rate of earthquakes over the last six months, it's concerning enough to be worried about a larger, damaging earthquake happening, let alone what might happen in the future."

Until the last year, when the Central African Republic's civil war became a humanitarian crisis too dire to ignore, most Americans thought little about the country at all. It has a low global profile in part because it is exceedingly poor, with four out of five people living on less than $2 a day. It has some natural resources, but because it is landlocked by other troubled countries - Chad, Sudan, Congo, and Cameroon - even if a lull in the war allowed it to extract those from the ground, it would still face formidable problems in exporting them.

But for one group, the Central African Republic is anything but ignorable, and in fact is home to an enduring scientific mystery. Geophysicists who map the earth's magnetic fields have identified a disturbance in the earth's natural magnetic fields within the Republic. They still have few clues about what causes it, but at least some think it could be key to understanding one of the most dramatic events in the history of the planet.

When geophysicists look at the globe, they don't see national borders. Instead they see geological features like fault lines and tectonic plates, or, if they study geomagnetism, zones where the earth's normal, needle-points-north magnetic field seems to go haywire. They map these anomalies by satellite and with ground surveys. When they look at the Central African Republic, something strange appears in the center of the country: a massive aberration known as the Bangui Magnetic Anomaly, named for the country's capital. At 600 miles across, it is one of the largest such anomalies on earth.

"If you were on the ground there and you had a magnetic compass, you'd need to correct for it," says Patrick T. Taylor, a NASA geophysicist who has studied the anomaly closely. "The compasses would go berserk."

This morning at 1:35 am tourists on the French Indian Ocean Islands La Reunion tourists witnessed a spectacular many had been waiting to see for some time. The Piton de la Fournaise volcano erupted.

"It made a few days that we were waiting for it, said Pascal Viroleau, CEO of Reunion Island Tourism, about the eruption of the volcano of Reunion Island, the Piton de la fournaise. According to Viroleau, "the volcano entered in activity this morning at 1:35 am."

Most recently, an eruption occurred on December 9, 2010 and lasted for two days. The volcano is located within Réunion National Park, a World Heritage site. It is considered one of the major attractions of the Indian Ocean Vanilla Islands.

"Sleeping since December 2010," Piton de la fournaise is considered as one of the major attractions of the Indian Ocean Vanilla Islands.

Dr. Christian Schlüchter's discovery of 4,000-year-old chunks of wood at the leading edge of a Swiss glacier was clearly not cheered by many members of the global warming doom-and-gloom science orthodoxy.

This finding indicated that the Alps were pretty nearly glacier-free at that time, disproving accepted theories that they only began retreating after the end of the little ice age in the mid-19th century. As he concluded, the region had once been much warmer than today, with "a wild landscape and wide flowing river."

Dr. Schlüchter's report might have been more conveniently dismissed by the entrenched global warming establishment were it not for his distinguished reputation as a giant in the field of geology and paleoclimatology who has authored/coauthored more than 250 papers and is a professor emeritus at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Then he made himself even more unpopular thanks to a recent interview titled "Our Society is Fundamentally Dishonest" which appeared in the Swiss publication Der Bund where he criticized the U.N.-dominated institutional climate science hierarchy for extreme tunnel vision and political contamination.

Following the ancient forest evidence discovery Schlüchter became a target of scorn. As he observes in the interview, "I wasn't supposed to find that chunk of wood because I didn't belong to the close-knit circle of Holocene and climate researchers. My findings thus caught many experts off guard: Now an 'amateur' had found something that the [more recent time-focused] Holocene and climate experts should have found."

Other evidence exists that there is really nothing new about dramatic glacier advances and retreats. In fact the Alps were nearly glacier-free again about 2,000 years ago. Schlüchter points out that "the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers. Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned."

An unlucky driver was left stranded at a Perth casino after a sinkhole partially swallowed their car.

The sinkhole, which opened up in the Crown Casino carpark yesterday morning, developed after heavy rain at the weekend, WA Today reports.

Nine News reporter Scott Cunningham said the bitumen had collapsed in two places, trapping the two left wheels of the driver's side.

"The bitumen has caved in, there's probably a metre-and-a-half drop I suppose where you can see that the sands just all cave in, around and underneath the wheels," he said.

"There's just one car that appears to be stuck there at the moment, security has fenced-off the area around it."

A photo posted by the reporter to social media showed the full extent of the damage.

As the sinkhole is on private property, the casino will be responsible for its repair.

Source: Nine News, WA Today

A sinkhole near the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden that trapped a city bus will likely take a month to fix, according to a Metropolitan Sewer District official.

The Metro bus was partially stuck in the hole, 15 feet wide and 15 feet deep, near Vine and Shields streets in Corryville around 9 p.m. Thursday, said Cincinnati police Lt. Tim Brown, the night chief.

"It's crazy," he said.

The bus was towed overnight.

An MSD crew investigated a reported buckle in the pavement earlier Thursday when crews discovered a backup of sewage upstream of the buckled pavement in the sewer manhole, according to a release. The bus drove over the buckled area around 9 p.m., at which point the sinkhole opened.

MSD crews were called to repair the hole, which sewer construction inspector Dave Rieman says is the largest he has seen in at least a decade. "Cave-ins are common, but not ones this big," he said.