Earth ChangesS


Fish

Pacific herring in Canada bleeding from eyeballs, faces, fins, tails, baffle biologist: 'I've never seen fish looking this bad'

herring
© Alexandra Morton via Vancouver 24 hrs
The Globe and Mail, Aug 13, 2013 Independent fisheries scientist Alexandra Morton is raising concerns about a disease she says is spreading through Pacific herring causing fish to hemorrhage. [...] "Two days ago I did a beach seine on Malcolm Island [near Port McNeill on northern Vancouver Island] and I got approximately 100 of these little herring and they were not only bleeding from their fins, but their bellies, their chins, their eyeballs. [...] "It was 100 per cent ... I couldn't find any that weren't bleeding to some degree. And they were schooling with young sockeye [salmon]"

Telescope

Astronomer captures incredible footage of noctilucent clouds and Northern Lights together in Scottish night sky

  • Maciej Winiarczyk, 41, captured the images in Caithness, Scotland
  • Noctilucent, or 'night-shining', clouds are normally too faint to be seen
  • Half way through the video the clouds are joined by a spectacular aurora
A stunning time-lapse video of a rare celestial show has been captured dancing across a night sky.

The recording gives a rare glimpse of rolling noctilucent clouds and dancing aurora glimmering across the horizon.

The astronomer witnessed the famous Northern Lights and 'night clouds' earlier this month, over a single night above Caithness, Scotland.

It is unusual to see either phenomena, and incredibly rare to see both simultaneously.


Noctilucent - or 'night-shining' - clouds are made of sunlight-reflecting ice crystals and are normally too faint to be seen from the ground.

The clouds are the highest in atmosphere at around 50 miles above the Earth's surface.

They are often photographed from aircraft in flight, from the International Space Station.

Comment: While it was once rare to see noctilucent clouds, it's becoming quite common these days due to increased comet dust in the upper atmosphere:

Global dust veil: Dust belt from the overhead cometary explosion in Russia raced around the world in just four days


Phoenix

Fires sweep trough Madeira

Image
© Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC.
Fires have been burning out of control on the Portuguese island of Madeira. The fire that broke out in the early hours of the morning on August 16, 2013 above the village of Monte became stronger towards noontime as intense heat and the wind made the flames spread.

News outlets have been reporting that up to eleven houses were destroyed over the weekend. Firefighters have been battling to control the flames which reached the outskirts of the capital Funchal by Friday night. The hospital in Funchal had to be evacuated, according to reports. The original fires are reported to be largely extinguished, but another has been causing concern after rekindling last night in Barreira, above Santo António. Properties have been threatened and residents evacuated. Stronger winds were apparently to blame. An accident involving an Army vehicle and resulting in one dead and three injured firefighting personnel has been reported.

Phoenix

Wildfires persist in California

Image
© Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC
Several fires are currently raging in central and northern California. These fires can be seen in this natural-color Terra satellite image taken by the MODIS instrument on August 18, 2013.

The American wildfire began August 10, 2013 and the cause of the fire is still under investigation. To date over 13,000 acres have been affected. The growth potential for this fire is high due to terrain and weather patterns. Thunderstorms predicted over the next few days may bring additional complexity and increase the potential for new starts. The National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning beginning today, through Wednesday evening, August 21. Changing weather patterns are likely to affect fire behavior and smoke dispersal patterns.

The Swedes Fire began on August 17, 2013 and grew to 1,995 acres Sunday, where it now stands. Firefighters have contained 45 percent of the blaze. The goal is to have the fire fully contained by Thursday the 22nd. Winds are erratic and change frequently, which is dangerous for residents in the area because the fire can move quickly in unexpected directions.

No Entry

Storm drain collapse blamed for Gulfport sinkhole

Sinkhole Mississippi
© Savannah Ramsey BaswellA collapsed storm drain pipe created this sinkhole on Dolan Avenue in Gulfport.
There's a huge reminder of Sunday's heavy rain on Dolan Avenue in Gulfport. Barricades now surround a three foot deep hole, which measures about nine feet long and eight feet wide.

Public Works Director Wayne Miller said the collapse of a storm drain pipe created the sinkhole.

WLOX News received pictures from a viewer showing a car perched precariously above the growing hole. It's located about one block north of Highway 90 at Dolan Avenue and 16th Street.

Dolan Avenue is the street where Lynn Meadows Discovery Center is located. Visitors to the children's museum have to detour around the cave-in.

No Entry

Sinkhole severely damages wheels of woman's car

Sinkhole in Winnipeg
© (Courtesy Jan Knight)A close-up view of the sinkhole
A Winnipeg woman's morning started with a bang after she drove into a sinkhole in a downtown parking lot on Monday.

Jan Knight was pulling into her regular parking lot at 5:20 a.m. when she was jolted after driving into and out of a metre-deep hole.

"My front tire popped and before I knew what was going on, I went over again and my back rear tire popped and my car was virtually undriveable," she said.

"The front and rear driver-side tires and the rims and the hub caps are all destroyed."

Stop

Sinkhole closes Wellington street

Sinkhole, NZ
© CHRIS SKELTON/Fairfax NZTHE HOLE PICTURE: Workers making the scene of a sinkhole in Wellington safe by covering it and installing fences.

Part of a street in central Wellington has been closed off after a sinkhole opened in the road.

A section of Hobson St in Thorndon is expected to remain cordoned off until at least Monday, after the three-metre square sinkhole was discovered.

Wellington City Council did not believe it was caused by the earthquake but said the collapse of a stormwater drain was the likely explanation.

"It might be the result of a broken stormwater pipe, that's basically collapsed by the sounds of it," council spokesman Richard MacLean said.

"It looks like we're going to close the street to through traffic until Monday."

It was likely the stormwater pipe had eroded over time, and the road had collapsed after the pipe below gave way.

It would not cause water problems for local residents even if it rained, because council would drain water away using other methods.

A Wellington Free spokesnab said the road closure would not affect callouts. Ambulances could still get in and out via Davis St.

Cloud Lightning

Tornado hits Guangzhou, storms leave thousands homeless

At least 22 people were killed in Guangdong Province and 7 are missing due to the floods that struck the province in the aftermath of Typhoon Utor, BBC News reports.

At least 105 have been killed nationwide after Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang were also hit with floods.

According to GD Chinanews, at least 4.9 billion yuan worth of damage has been done in the province, over 51,000 people have been forced to evacuate their homes, and 19,000 homes have been destroyed.

Tornado in China
© Sina WeiboThis image was snapped in Meizhou on Aug. 17

Arrow Down

Spot the error. The IPCC can't

Leaked reports of the Fifth IPCC Report, due next month, say the IPCC experts are now 95% sure that human activities and emissions are the main cause of global warming since the 1950s.[1]

The same IPCC experts remain 100% sure that the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas are homes to tropical forests, and that they have been since 1995.

But given a doubling of global CO2, they expect the central US tropical forest belt to shift eastwards to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois, even stretching east to Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
World Map
© tthomas061.wordpress.com
Looking at my own part of the world, I see that the IPCC has Papua-New Guinea, Indonesia and the Philippines currently covered in savannas, dry forests and woodlands. But with global CO2 doubling, the prairies of south-east Asia will surge northwards to Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, even southern China.

India, as in the map below, acquires tropical forests through about 70% of its area. For some reason, the IPCC's tropical forest belt of northern Australia (most Aussies believe it is gum-tree land) advances south by about 1000km, such that tourists towns like Cairns and Townsville become surrounded by Congo-like vegetation, suitable for imported bonobos and, maybe, okapi.

Bizarro Earth

Japanese volcano produces largest eruption in nearly a century

Sakurajima Volcano
© Thinkstock
One of the world's most active volcanoes showed its ugly side this weekend, erupting and producing an ash cloud that spread out across one southern Japanese city.

Sakurajima, a volcano that sits in the background of the southern Japanese city of Kagoshima and is known for producing hundreds of small explosions per year, erupted Sunday in one of the volcano's largest explosions in decades and perhaps the largest since an eruption in 1914, burying village homes in feet of ash.

The plume from Sunday's eruption reached 16,500 feet (more than 3 miles) before settling down over homes and businesses in Kagoshima and surrounding areas. The ash caused poor visibility and train delays in the city that sits just 5 miles east of the summit of Sakurajima. Residents who ventured outside were forced to wear dust masks to keep from inhaling deadly volcanic glass shards produced from explosive expansion of bubbles in erupting magma.

Some evidence from a YouTube video of the eruption shows what might be small pyroclastic flows generated from the explosion as well.