Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

40 seafloor gas seeps found off U.S. east coast

Douglas Main
OurAmazingPlanet
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:02 UTC
Gas Seeps
© NOAATwo different perspectives of the seeps, made by bouncing sound waves off rising plumes of gas.
A research cruise has discovered 40 previously unknown gas seeps on the seafloor off the U.S. East Coast. The plumes of gas are almost certainly methane, also known as natural gas, according to government scientists.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas due to its ability to absorb heat, but the released gas is not likely to reach the ocean surface in significant quantities and affect the climate, said Carolyn Ruppel, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey, which collaborated in the research. Neither is the amount of gas likely to warrant commercial interest, she said.

The seeps were found in four clusters, three of them about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Nantucket, Mass. The other cluster, consisting of 17 of the seeps, was mapped about 90 miles (147 kilometers) east of Cape Henry, Va., according to a release from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which led the expedition.

Methane seeps are important to find and study since they involve the transfer of carbon from the ground to the atmosphere, which is important for getting an accurate picture of climate change in terms of how much gas is emitted naturally and how much is emitted by humans, Ruppel told OurAmazingPlanet. Methane also can oxidize in water and contribute to ocean acidification, she said.
Read More...
Arrow Down

Sinkhole swallows car in Albuquerque, New Mexico, second such incident in a year

Liz McKernan
koat.com
Fri, 04 Jan 2013 08:01 UTC
Southbound Prince St. SE blocked at Grape Ave. SE


A driver in the early-morning hours had an unexpected detour when they drove into a sinkhole in the South Valley.

This is the second such incident in the area this year.

The driver wasn't injured, but crews had to tow the car out of the hole that took up the entire southbound lane of Prince Street SE at Grape Avenue SE.

Expect traffic delays in the area until crews can assess the situation.

It's unclear how much of the line will have to be replaced.
Read More...
Bizarro Earth

New submarine volcanic eruption off Turkey's coast suspected

T
Volcano Discovery
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:16 UTC
Underwater Volcano
© Volcano DiscoveryLocation of earthquakes during Dec 2012 between Simi and Turkey.
A new submarine volcanic eruption might have recently started off Turkey's west coast in the Marmaris Sea between the mainland and the Greek Island of Simi near Rhodes.

Scientists from Istanbul's Technical University announced that they have found evidence of 2 active vents at about 200 m water depth along a north-south trending fissure of 2.5-3 km length.

According to local newspapers, a rise in sea temperature was detected which suggests that lava might be erupting from the vents. According to Prof. Ahmet Ercan, it might take 1-3, or 20 years for the volcano to surface if at all.

The area is located at the eastern end of the volcanically active Hellenic Arc and volcanic activity here would not be a huge surprise, in fact. Possibly preceding the eruption, as magma was rising through the crust, the area was affected by a series of seismic swarms during the past months. According to the scientists, a previous submarine eruption already occurred here in 2009.

Source: Haber Seninle (In Turkish)
Read More...
Map

Great Lakes Reach Record Low Water Levels


9&10 News, Northern Michigan
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:13 UTC
Image
© WikipediaA rare cloudless satellite view of the entire Great Lakes region, April 24, 2000, with the names of the lakes added
The Great Lakes have had lower water levels this past year, but now they have reached an all-time, record low.

The Federal Government says preliminary numbers show both Lake Michigan and Lake Huron reached record low water levels, in December.

The credit is given to the low level, to light snowfall last Winter, and light rainfall in the Spring.

The previous all-time low level was set in 1964, at 576.2 feet.

The preliminary mark for December 2012, is 576.15 feet.
Read More...
Igloo

Global Warming Strikes New Mexico!

Steven Goddard
Steven Goddard Wordpress Blog
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:09 UTC
You know that global warming is hitting hard, when New Mexico wakes up to -33C temperatures.
Freezing Temperatures
© Wunderground.com
Source
Read More...
Arrow Down

Javan rhino officially extinct in Vietnam

Douglas Main
OurAmazingPlanet
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:20 UTC
Javan rhino
© WWF-Greater MekongA Javan rhino in Vietnam captured in a camera-trap photo.


It's official: There are no more rhinos left in Vietnam.

A large female Javan rhino, estimated to be between 15 and 25 years old, was shot and killed in late April 2010, and had its horn removed by a poacher. Turns out it was the country's last, as reported by Rachel Nuwer at Take Part, a digital media and advocacy company.

It's the second subspecies of Javan rhino to go extinct. The third subspecies remains in Indonesia, likely confined to a single park, where as few as 35 of the critically endangered animals survive. A camera trap caught video of a mother Javan rhino and her calf in Ujung Kulon National Park in 2011.

It's not known whether the population is increasing or decreasing, and their survival remains in doubt, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a global network of government and private groups that assesses the extinction risk of species.

DNA analysis of rhino dung in Vietnam's Cat Tien National Park in 2009 found that only one rhino remained at that time - the same one that was shot a year later, according to a study published recently in the journal Biological Conservation.
Read More...
Snowflake Cold

India: more than 100 die of exposure as temperatures drop in the north


Huffington Post
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:14 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Channi AnandA homeless child sits wrapped in a towel in his temporary home under a flyover in Jammu, India, on Jan. 2,2013.
Police say more than 100 people have died of exposure as northern India deals with historically cold temperatures.

Police spokesman Surendra Srivastava said Thursday that at least 114 people have died from the cold in the state of Uttar Pradesh. At least 23 of those died in the past 24 hours.

Srivastava said many of the dead were poor people whose bodies were found on sidewalks or in parks.
Read More...
Igloo

January 1 snow coverage sets new record for U.S.

Jillian MacMath
AccuWeather
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 09:15 UTC
Snow January US
© NOAA
With 67 percent of the contiguous U.S. covered by snow, the first day of 2013 marked the widest coverage of snow the U.S. has seen on Jan. 1 in the past ten years.

(Note: Percentages of snow coverage have only been calculated since 2004.)

The previous record was set in 2010, when the new year saw 61 percent of the U.S. beneath snow. That same season was marked by the blizzard nicknamed 'Snowmageddon,' in the mid-Atlantic, which set a long list of records in cities such as Philadelphia, DC and Baltimore.

"As far as New Year's Days go, I think that our snow cover is very healthy," AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Jack Boston said.

The lack of snow coverage since record keeping began in 2004, with the exception of 2010, have been an anomaly, Boston explained.
Read More...
Better Earth

Deepest corals in Great Barrier Reef discovered

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 08:21 UTC
Image
© Catlin Seaview SurveyDeep-sea corals found lower than ever seen before in the Great Barrier Reef. The corals are four times deeper than most scuba divers can dive.
Even four times as deep as most scuba divers venture, the Great Barrier Reef blooms. A new exploration by a remote-operated submersible has found the reef's deepest coral yet. The common coral Acropora is living 410 feet (125 meters) below the ocean's surface, a discovery that expedition leader Pim Bongaerts of the University of Queensland called "mind-blowing." The group had previously seen the coral living in the reef at a depth of about 200 feet (60 m).

Coral reefs are made of colonies of polyps which secret a rock-like exoskeleton. The polyps have a symbiotic relationship with algae that provide them nutrients using photosynthesis. Because this process requires light, coral reefs thrive in clear, relatively shallow water.

"The discovery shows that there are coral communities on the Great Barrier Reef existing at considerably greater depths than we could have ever imagined," Bongaerts said in a statement.
Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Will a megathrust earthquake strike the Northwest U.S. in 2013? Some clues are emerging

Jake Ellison
SeattlePi
Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:47 UTC
Megaquake
© Seattle Pi
There were 4,800 earthquakes in the Northwest in 2012 and a record "episodic tremor and slip" event - a string of deep mini-quakes running from Vancouver Island to below Centralia - over the summer, but does any of that mean we're likely to see the "big one" in 2013?

While the devastating megathrust quakes that happen every 300 to 500 years in our neck of the woods (those caused by the Juan De Fuca plate's grinding collision and subduction with the North American plate) are still impossible to predict, some clues may be emerging.

An immature science

Taken together, last year's quakes were "mild" since so few of them were big enough to be felt, said John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.

The biggest and most interesting quake of the year struck under Victoria, B.C., last week. It was a magnitude 4 temblor and resembled in depth and fault the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually quake that damaged Seattle and shook the region in 2001, he said.It was felt and reported to the network's webpage by about 800 people.

He added that a string of unusual quakes around the globe has the seismic community baffled. A big earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean six months ago was "very strange" because of its size and distance from the plate boundary.It showed "we can get earthquakes we really hadn't anticipated," he said.

In the past few years, China got hit with an earthquake on a fault that wasn't mapped, New Zealand suffered a "very rare earthquake" ...
"There's a whole series of events in the last decade that give us the impression that we know less than ever," Vidale said. "We keep thinking that these are the specific risks we need to look out for and then earthquakes happen that aren't the ones we thought were most likely to happen."
Also, a roughly annual seismic event in the Northwest discovered 12 years ago - the "episodic tremor and slip,"or ETS - went wild last summer.
Read More...