"Day 258 of 2012 is the highest for this date since satellite scanning of Antarctic ice areas commenced 33 years ago" the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition announced today. "It is also the fifth highest daily value on record." Coalition chairman, Hon Barry Brill, says the most remarkable aspect is the extent to which the 2012 area exceeds normal Antarctica averages. "The sea ice cover yesterday was 311,000 square kilometers above the 1979-2012 average. The surplus ice is more than twice the area of New Zealand." The Antarctic dimensions come partly at the expense of Arctic sea ice," said Mr. Brill. "Over the 33-year period aggregate global sea ice volumes have remained steady, but there are fluctuations between the two polar areas from year to year.

The fluctuations are the result of ocean currents and wind patterns, rather than temperatures. Antarctic ice is much more important than that of the Arctic. The area of its sea ice is a million square kilometers larger than the highest value ever recorded in the Arctic. Then, of course, the Antarctic is an entire continent, with more than 90% of the earth's glacial ice," said Mr. Brill. "It is appropriate that this record should occur in a week that The Listener carries a cover story featuring the winter low point of Arctic ice, along with multiple pictures of calving glaciers and forlorn polar bears," said Mr. Brill. "The magazine has little to say about the Antarctic apart from complaining that it is "poorly understood."

The author also avoids mentioning the glaring facts that no significant global warming has been recorded in the past 16 years, and that sea level rise is apparently decelerating. "It is unfortunate that under-informed writers, albeit unwittingly, mislead their readers who should be helped to understand the difference between sea ice extent and ice cap ice, both thickness and extent as regards the latter. The ice cap in the Arctic is small compared to the Antarctic. The cap of the Antarctic is increasing in thickness in most places, except around the Antarctic Peninsula. Sea ice extent is largely a consequence of sea surface temperature, ocean currents and wind," said Mr. Brill, who advised those interested in graphic confirmation of Antarctic sea ice readings to refer to this link as well as this link.

More than 70 percent of Earth is covered in water, and the oceans remain some of the most mysterious parts of our world. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 95 percent of what lies underwater has not ever been seen by humans. NASA confirms that humans have better maps of the surface of Mars than of the bottom of the sea.

Earlier this year, off the southern coast of Japan, Yoji Ookata, a deep-sea photographer and diver who has been documenting the deep sea for more than 50 years, saw something he had never observed before. A circular pattern of rippling sand about 80 feet below sea level and 6 feet in diameter was on the ocean floor. Ookata returned to the same spot with a TV camera crew in tow to capture the discovery and figure out who or what had created its intricate design.

Ookata dubbed his new find the "mystery circle" and was shocked to find out that a single puffer fish, no more than a few inches long, had created the circles using just one fin. The tiny fish works tirelessly day and night to complete the design. While the circled sculpture is beautiful to look at, Ookata and his crew learned that the fish's creation maintained a dual purpose. Female fish are attracted to the ridges and valleys left in the sand, and they deposit their eggs in the center. The eggs are then shielded from the ocean currents, as the higher points of the sculpture create a barrier to protect them. The more ridges a sculpture contains, the more likely it will attract the females of the species.

This discovery really just scratches the surface of knowledge about the ocean. The rest of the 95 percent still awaits exploration.

Arif Huseynov: "The Volcano was too powerful at the beginning and the mud covered more than 2 ha of the area"

Baku. Kamala Guliyeva - Lokbatan mud volcano erupted in the morning has weakened, Executive of Mud Volcanism Department under the Geology Institute of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences Arif Huseynov told APA.

Huseynov said that the eruption process is being studied. The volcano accompanied by a rumble at 05.00 spew flames at 09.00: "According to the preliminary observations, the eruption was powerful and mud spread across the area of more than 2 ha. The exact information will be announced after the measurements. But this eruption was more powerful than the eruption in 2010. At that time, the mud covered about 2 ha area."

Husyenov says that no flame is being observed in the area: "The volcano has already weakened. It is not likely to flame again, as it's weakened."

A powerful storm wreaked havoc on the Arctic sea ice cover in August 2012. This visualization shows the strength and direction of the winds and their impact on the ice.

As climate change proceeds - which the record summer melt of Arctic sea-ice suggests it is doing at a worrying pace - nations, communities and individual citizens may begin to seek compensation for losses and damage arising from global warming. Climate scientists should be prepared for their skills one day to be probed in court. Whether there is a legal basis for such claims, such as that brought against the energy company ExxonMobil by the remote Alaskan community of Kivalina, which is facing coastal erosion and flooding as the sea ice retreats, is far from certain, however. So lawyers, insurers and climate negotiators are watching with interest the emerging ability, arising from improvements in climate models, to calculate how anthropogenic global warming will change, or has changed, the probability and magnitude of extreme weather and other climate-related events. But to make this emerging science of 'climate attribution' fit to inform legal and societal decisions will require enormous research effort.

Attribution is the attempt to deconstruct the causes of observable weather and to understand the physics of why extremes such as floods and heatwaves occur. This is important basic research. Extreme weather and changing weather patterns - the obvious manifestations of global climate change - do not simply reflect easily identifiable changes in Earth's energy balance such as a rise in atmospheric temperature. They usually have complex causes, involving anomalies in atmospheric circulation, levels of soil moisture and the like. Solid understanding of these factors is crucial if researchers are to improve the performance of, and confidence in, the climate models on which event attribution and longer-term climate projections depend.

Event attribution is one of the proposed 'climate services' - seasonal climate prediction is another - that are intended to provide society with the information needed to manage the risks and costs associated with climate change. Advocates of climate services see them as a counterpart to the daily weather forecast. But without the computing capacity of a well-equipped national meteorological office, heavily model-dependent services such as event attribution and seasonal prediction are unlikely to be as reliable.

According to the linked Youtube video, residents of Yekaterinburg, Russia stated that the Olkhovka river that flows through the city began to give off steam and possibly boil.

Gusty winds tore off the roof of the University of Trinidad and Tobago's south campus on Sunday destroying more than $12 million worth of equipment and displacing more than 1,500 students.

A severe thunderstorm warning has been issued for a large swathe of NSW, with heavy falls of hail and rain and damaging winds predicted.

Heavy hail falls were hitting Sydney's west this afternoon.

The Bureau of Meteorology warned the storms were likely to bring large hailstones and heavy rainfall that may lead to flash flooding and damaging winds in the warning area into late today.

A less than half-hour freak storm in Linden has left millions of dollars in damage and several persons homeless in its wake.

The roofs of seven houses in Amelia's Ward, Linden were Monday afternoon blown off during a freak storm. No one was injured.

Region 10 Chairman, Sharma Solomon said telephone and electricity services were not disrupted but the there was "significant damage" to the houses.

Flooding in Cameroon's Far North Region has killed nearly 30 people and affected more than 26,000 others, officials said Monday.

More than 4,000 people in the Logone and Shari division were displaced, and more than 22,000 people in the region of Maga, Mayo-Danay division, also have been affected.

Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary described the flooding as "a calamity," and he called for urgent action to save lives, livestock and property. Dana FM, a local radio station, said the death toll will grow as bodies are collected and identified. For the past few weeks, there has been no sign of the flood easing.