Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Off The West Coast of Northern Sumatra - Earthquake Magnitude 7.3

Sumatra Quake_100112
© USGS
Date-Time
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 18:37:01 UTC

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 12:37:01 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
2.396°N, 93.175°E

Depth
29.1 km (18.1 miles)

Region
OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA

Distances
423 km (262 miles) SW of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia

537 km (333 miles) SW of Lhokseumawe, Sumatra, Indonesia

951 km (590 miles) W of KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia

1789 km (1111 miles) WNW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia

Bizarro Earth

South Pole Hits Record High Temperature on Christmas Day

South Pole Station
© Andrew V. Williams/Antarctic Photo LibraryThe South Pole Station, which saw a record high of 9.9 degrees Fahrenheit on Christmas Day, shattering the previous record of 7.5F set 33 years ago. The warm temperatures were accompanied by a rare bit of snow.

A rare white Christmas at the South Pole brought with it a record-breaking heat wave - at least for a day.

The temperature officially hit 9.9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 12.3 degrees Celsius) about 3:50 p.m. on Dec. 25, according to South Pole Station site senior meteorologist Phillip Marzette. That shattered the old record of 7.5F (minus 13.6C) set on Dec. 27, 1978 - though technically that record had been broken on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 2011, when the temperature climbed to 8.1F (minus 13.3C). (All dates and times are local, based on the New Zealand time zone.)

Those sorts of temperatures may not qualify as mild to some people, but consider that the average annual temperature at the South Pole is about minus 56.9F (minus 49.4C). In the summer, from late October to early February, the average is closer to minus 26F (minus 32C), Marzette said.

"We like to call this our little Christmas miracle that we ended up getting snow and getting a record high for the books," Marzette said a few days after the record-breaking day, when temperatures had returned to mid-summer norms, about minus 15F (minus 26C).

The snow was certainly an unexpected bonus. Precipitation in the continental interior is normally very light. Ice crystals are the most common form of precipitation at the South Pole. Ice crystals often fall out of a clear sky, glittering like tiny diamonds in the sunshine, and sometimes creating atmospheric phenomena like sundogs.

Larger snow grains often accompany storms, while actual snowflakes usually only occur at the height of summer, from mid-December to mid-January, when temperatures are at their warmest.

Bomb

"Off The Scale" Smog Grounds China Flights

Beijing Smog
© Associated PressRider battles thick smog in Beijing on January 10, 2012.
More than 150 flights to and from Beijing have been cancelled or delayed as a thick cloud of acrid smog shrouded the city, with US figures saying the pollution was so bad it was off the scale.

The national meteorological centre said the Chinese capital had been hit by thick fog that reduced visibility to as little as 200 metres in some parts of the city, while official data judged air quality to be "good".

But the US embassy, which has its own pollution measuring system, said on its Twitter feed that the concentration of the smallest, most dangerous particles in the air was "beyond index" for most of the morning.

The US system measures particles in the air of 2.5 micrometers or less, known as PM2.5, considered the most dangerous for people's health.

Today's reading on its air quality index, which rates anything over 150 as unhealthy, over 200 as very unhealthy and over 300 as hazardous, breached the upper limit of 500, at which it stops giving figures.

Meanwhile, the Beijing Environmental Bureau, which currently bases its air quality information on particles of 10 micrometres or larger, known as PM10, said the air quality in the capital was "good".

Bizarro Earth

At least eight dead in Brazil landslide

Image
© AP
A landslide triggered by torrential rains killed at least eight people in Rio de Janeiro state Monday and 14 others may still be buried in the rubble, local officials told Globo television.

Colonel Sergio Simoes, the head of the local fire department, said six adults and two children perished and 14 were still missing after nine house collapsed in the northern Sapucaia munipality.

Civil Defense officials said a family of five who took refuge in a car may also have died after the vehicle was buried by the mud.

Simoes said the priority for rescue workers was "to find the bodies."

Earlier in the day, Sergio Murilo, a spokesman for the Sapucaia municipality, put the death toll at three.

Cloud Lightning

US: Torrential rain causes flash flooding in Houston

Image
© Kimberly CherryFlooding in Houston, Jan. 9, 2012
Dallas - Severe weather hit the Houston area Monday, flooding streets and homes and leaving thousands of people without power, emergency officials said.

Torrential rain fell across the area, causing flash flooding that left streets and highways impassable and submerged some vehicles.

"We have a lot of roadways closed, and some evacuations are going on," said Alan Spears of the Fort Bend County office of emergency management.

In the city of Richmond, rescues were conducted by boat and on foot. Spears said he believes a tornado touched down in the area.

"We had 7,000 people without power in the county," he said.

Sixty miles southeast, in Texas City, a law enforcement officer witnessed what appeared to be a tornado strike near the Mall of Midland, the National Weather Service reported.

Attention

Russian city livid after toddler lost in urban sinkhole

Russia sinkhole
© RIA Novosti/Nikolay PahomovMother and her child fall in hole in Bryansk.
A normal weekend stroll with her one-and-a-half year-old son turned tragic for a young mother in the western Russian city of Bryansk, when the ground opened up under her feet.

­Tatyana Didenko, 26, and her only son Kirill fell into a sinkhole on a busy street in Bryansk Sunday. The woman was saved by her husband Vladimir Didenko, a traffic police officer - someone called him shortly following the accident, and he was not far from the scene, Komsomolskaya Pravda reports. "He pulled his wife out, she caught the edge of the ditch and held on," witnesses told the newspaper. "But he couldn't manage to save the child," they added.

Better Earth

'Extinct' Galapagos tortoise may still exist

Image
© YaleThe Isabela tortoises have been breeding with a close relative from elsewhere in the Galapagos
A giant Galapagos tortoise believed extinct for 150 years probably still exists, say scientists.

Chelonoidis elephantopus lived on the island of Floreana, and was heavily hunted, especially by whalers who visited the Galapagos to re-stock.

A Yale University team found hybrid tortoises on another island, Isabela, that appear to have C. elephantopus as one of their parents.

Some hybrids are only 15 years old, so their parents are likely to be alive.

The different shapes of the giant tortoises on the various Galapagos islands was one of the findings that led Charles Darwin to develop the theory of evolution through natural selection.

The animals are thought to have colonised the archipelago through floating from the shores of South America.

Colonies on each island remained relatively isolated from each other, and so evolved in subtly different directions.

Bizarro Earth

US: Arizona - Earthquake Rattles Winslow Near Dormant Volcanoes

Image
© USGS
The U.S. Geological Survey recorded a magnitude 3.1 earthquake in Arizona Sunday afternoon. According to the USGS, the quake hit at 12:11 p.m. about 21 miles southwest of Winslow and about 113 miles northeast of Phoenix. (Winslow is about a 3-hour drive from Phoenix.) With a depth of just over 3 miles, the temblor was a relatively shallow one.

Google Earth shows the epicenter to be between what appear to be small dormant volcanoes. The volcano to the south of the epicenter is on the Colorado Plateau between the Mogollon Rim and Winslow. The remnants of the two cones to the north appeared to have been weathered away, leaving a plateau behind.

Google Earth also showed a sinkhole swarm not far from the epicenter. Meteor Crater, one of the best-known meteorite impact craters on the planet, is 20 miles west of Winslow, putting it in the circumference of the quake.

Bizarro Earth

Santa Cruz Islands - Earthquake Magnitude 6.6

Santa Cruz Quake_090112
© USGS
Date-Time
Monday, January 09, 2012 at 04:07:16 UTC

Monday, January 09, 2012 at 03:07:16 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
10.557°S, 165.160°E

Depth
38.9 km (24.2 miles)

Region
SANTA CRUZ ISLANDS

Distances
75 km (46 miles) WNW of Lata, Santa Cruz Islands, Solomon Isl.

355 km (220 miles) E of Kira Kira, San Cristobal, Solomon Isl.

584 km (362 miles) ESE of HONIARA, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands

2266 km (1408 miles) NE of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia

X

Mass herring death a mystery in Norway

Image
© Unknown
Scientists have yet to agree on why thousands of dead herring have washed up on a Norwegian beach in the last week.

Officials say piles of dead herring, weighing in excess of 20 tonnes, have covered a beach near the northern Norwegian city of Kvaenes, Nordreisa. This event has prompted various scientific explanations as well as speculation from 2012 doomsday enthusiasts.

44 year-old Jan-Petter Jorgensen, who discovered the stinky deposit while walking his dog, Molly, still wonders what caused the mass death among the fish. He said to the Daily Mail, "People say that something similar happened in the 1980s. Maybe the fish have been caught in a deprived oxygen environment and then died of fresh water?".