Earth ChangesS


Snow Globe

Britain's colder than the Arctic: -10c freeze over Easter

Liannn Kolirin
Daily Express
Fri, 29 Mar 2013 07:03 UTC
Britain will be colder than parts of Greenland this Easter with temp­eratures plunging to an Arctic -10C (14F).
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© Daily ExpressSnowploughs battle to clear drifts as the big freeze shows no signs of relenting
Though the clocks go forward tomorrow night, marking the start of British Summer Time, there is no end in sight to the bitter weather.

This has already been the coldest March since 1962, the Met Office confirmed yesterday, and the fourth coldest since records began.

Instead of spending the four-day Bank Holiday pottering in the garden or driving to the coast, people are being advised to wrap up warm and stay indoors.

Millions have given up hope of spring arriving and are jetting off for some much-needed sun. And some are still digging themselves out after being marooned by 20ft snowdrifts.

Parts of the UK are likely to see a white Easter with wintry showers forecast for eastern areas, though these are likely to be isolated and the snow should be fairly light.

By Sunday and Monday much of Britain may look sunny and spring-like but will still feel unseasonably chilly. And the snowdrifts could remain well into April.
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Question

Mystery malady kills more bees, heightening worry on farms

Michael Wines
The New York Times
Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:12 UTC
CCD
© Jim Wilson/The New York TimesA Disastrous Year for Bees: For America’s beekeepers, who have struggled for nearly a decade with a mysterious malady called colony collapse disorder that kills honeybees en masse, the last year was particularly bad.
Bakersfield, California - A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, commercial beekeepers say, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation's fruits and vegetables.

A conclusive explanation so far has escaped scientists studying the ailment, colony collapse disorder, since it first surfaced around 2005. But beekeepers and some researchers say there is growing evidence that a powerful new class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, incorporated into the plants themselves, could be an important factor.

The pesticide industry disputes that. But its representatives also say they are open to further studies to clarify what, if anything, is happening.

"They looked so healthy last spring," said Bill Dahle, 50, who owns Big Sky Honey in Fairview, Mont. "We were so proud of them. Then, about the first of September, they started to fall on their face, to die like crazy. We've been doing this 30 years, and we've never experienced this kind of loss before."
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Health

Central Java, Indonesia:Dangerous gas emissions from Dieng volcano, alert level raised to orange


Volcano Discovery
Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00 UTC
VSI raised the alert level to the third highest level Siaga (3 out of 4), because significant changes were observed at the crater lake. The most spectacular was the change of the lake water color to dark brown on 24 March.
In addition, a significant increase in CO2 concentration within 500 m from the Timbang crater was measured, from from 0.01% (by volume) in early March to 2.5% between 11 and 15 March. Also the emissions of the magmatic gas H2S increased. The now elevated gas concentrations are becoming a significant hazard (illustrated by a cat found suffocated by CO2).
Therefore, it is strongly advised not to approach the Timbang crater within one kilometer to avoid the risk of suffocation due to the high CO2 concentrations (note that CO2 is absolutely odorless and lethal when inhaled in larger quantities)
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Info

Rare Chinese porpoises dive toward extinction

Megan Gannon
LiveScience
Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:06 UTC
Dead Porpoise
© Xu DianboA Yangtze finless porpoise found in Dongting lake, China on April 15 2012.
Giant pandas have become China's poster child for endangered species, but now another iconic animal in the country can claim to be ever rarer than the bears.

There are just 1,000 individual Yangtze finless porpoises left in the wild, according to a new report. That's less than half of what a similar survey of the porpoises found six years ago.

The rapidly dwindling numbers have conservationists worried that the species could vanish from the wild as early as 2025.

"The species is moving fast toward its extinction," said Wang Ding, head of the expedition to count the porpoises and a professor at the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Yangtze finless porpoises, the only freshwater finless porpoise in the world, live mainly in the Yangtze River and China's Dongting and Poyang lakes. They are threatened by shrinking food resources and manmade disturbances like shipping traffic.
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Snowflake Cold

Coldest March in Sheffield, UK for over a century


The Star
Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:43 UTC
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Spring Snow hits Sheffield
March was the coldest in Sheffield for more than a century, new statistics have revealed.

City residents are still shivering, gritting their paths and de-icing the car each morning despite the supposed start of spring.

Now data compiled by the Museums Sheffield Weather Station at Weston Park shows we've had a right to grumble.

This month has in fact had the lowest monthly average March temperature since 1883 - and the second coldest average March temperature ever recorded.

The average temperature was a chilly 2.4C.
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Igloo

It's the cold, not global warming, that we should be worried about

Frazer Nelson
The Telegraph, UK
Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:26 UTC
Cold
© AlamyInconvenient suffering: the idea of people (especially old people) dying in their homes from weather conditions with which we are all familiar now seems relatively boring.
A few months ago, a group of students in Oslo produced a brilliant spoof video that lampooned the charity pop song genre. It showed a group of young Africans coming together to raise money for those of us freezing in the north. "A lot of people aren't aware of what's going on there right now," says the African equivalent of Bob Geldof. "People don't ignore starving people, so why should we ignore cold people? Frostbite kills too. Africa: we need to make a difference." The song - Africa for Norway - has been watched online two million times, making it one of Europe's most popular political videos.

The aim was to send up the patronising, cliched way in which the West views Africa. Norway can afford to make the joke because there, people don't tend to die of the cold. In Britain, we still do. Each year, an official estimate is made of the "excess winter mortality" - that is, the number of people dying of cold-related illnesses. Last winter was relatively mild, and still 24,000 perished. The indications are that this winter, which has dragged on so long and with such brutality, will claim 30,000 lives, making it one of the biggest killers in the country. And still, no one seems upset.

Somewhere between the release of the 1984 Band Aid single and Al Gore's 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, political attention shifted away from such problems. The idea of people (especially old people) dying in their homes from conditions with which we are all familiar now seems relatively boring. Much political attention is still focused on global warming, and while schemes to help Britain prepare for the cold are being cut, the overseas aid budget is being vastly expanded. Saving elderly British lives has somehow become the least fashionable cause in politics.
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Bizarro Earth

China: Landslide buries 83 in Tibet gold mine area - said to be a 'natural disaster'

Gillian Wong
Associated Press / Yahoo News
Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:03 UTC
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© Associated Press/Xinhua, ChogoIn this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, earthmovers remove rocks and mud on the scene where a landslide hit a mining area in Maizhokunggar County of Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, on Friday, March 29, 2013. The large landslide trapped dozens of workers in the gold mining area, state media reported.
A massive landslide engulfed a gold mining area in mountainous Tibet, burying 83 workers believed to have been asleep early Friday morning, Chinese state media said. About 2 million cubic meters (2.6 million cubic yards) of mud, rock and debris swept through the area as the workers were resting and covered an area measuring around 4 square kilometers (1.5 square miles), China Central Television said.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the workers in Lhasa's Maizhokunggar county worked for a subsidiary of the China National Gold Group Corp., a state-owned enterprise and the country's largest gold producer. The disaster is likely to inflame critics of Chinese rule in Tibet who say Beijing's interests are driven by the region's mineral wealth and strategic position and come at the expense of the region's delicate ecosystem and Tibetans' Buddhist culture and traditional way of life.

The reports said at least two of the buried workers were Tibetan while most of the workers were believed to be ethnic Han Chinese, a reflection of how such large projects often create an influx of the majority ethnic group into the region.
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Red Flag

Madagascar hit by locust plague

Jill Langlois
Global Post
Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:42 UTC
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© SAMUEL ARANDA AFP/Getty ImagesSwarms of locusts in the Canaries.
A severe plague of locusts has landed in about half of Madagascar, threatening crops and creating concern over food shortages.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the billions of insects could cause hunger for 60 percent of the country's population.

The FAO called for $41 million to fight the plague, with the first installment of $22 million required by June. Another $19 million will be needed for a three-year strategy.
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Bizarro Earth

Incredible North Atlantic storm spans Atlantic Ocean, coast to coast

Jason Samenow
The Washington Post
Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:34 UTC
I'm not sure I've ever seen a storm this big before.
Atlantic Storm
© NASA
The storm shown here stretches west to east from Newfoundland to Portugal. Its southern tail (cold front) extends into the Caribbean and the north side of its comma head touches southern Greenland.

Not only is it big, but it's also super intense - comparable to many category 3 hurricanes. The storm's central pressure, as analyzed by the Ocean Prediction Center, is 953 mb. Estimated peak wave heights are around 25-30 feet.
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Bizarro Earth

This grieving dolphin carrying her dead calf has us stunned


MSN Now
Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:18 UTC

Whale watchers on Captain Dave's Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari out of Dana Point in California had one of the most heart-breaking dolphin encounters in recent memory. As a pod of dolphins swam by the boat, Captain Dave Anderson spotted an adult dolphin carrying a deceased calf on her back.

"I believe this calf has been dead for many days, possibly weeks," he notes. "In my nearly twenty years on the water whale-watching I have never seen this behavior. Nor have I ever seen anything quite as moving as this mother who refuses to let go of her poor calf." Oof. Hits us right in the feel-spots.

Source
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