Earth ChangesS


Heart - Black

Gulf Coast dolphin death toll rises to nearly 60

dead,dolphin
© AP

The death toll of dolphins found washed ashore along the U.S. Gulf Coast since last month climbed to nearly 60 on Thursday, as puzzled scientists clamored to determine what was killing the marine mammals.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the alarming cluster of recent dolphin deaths "an unusual mortality event," agency spokeswoman Blair Mase told Reuters.

"Because of this declaration, many resources are expected to be allocated to investigating this phenomenon," she said.

Bizarro Earth

Indonesian mud volcano flow 'to last 26 years'

The world's largest mud volcano, which left 13,000 families homeless, is likely to continue erupting for another 26 years, researchers have estimated.

mud volcano
The mud buried homes, schools and farmland, and has displaced thousands of families
It first erupted back in May 2006, and - at its peak - was spewing 180,000 cubic metres of mud a day, equivalent to 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The volcano, in East Java, Indonesia, has buried homes, schools and farmlands over seven square kilometres.

The findings have been published in the Journal of the Geological Society.

Radar

Aftershock hits New Zealand city

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Hopes are fading of finding any more survivors following the devastating earthquake in New Zealand after a strong aftershock measuring 4.4 on the Richter scale caused problems in the city and suburbs this morning.

Up to 113 are dead and around 200 others are still missing in Christchurch.

One of the missing is a 40-year-old man from Abbeydorney in Co Kerry.

The Irish man was working as an accountant at the PGG Building when it collapsed and had been living in New Zealand with his wife and son.

Reporter Will Hine from Radio New Zealand said it is unlikely any more survivors will be found.

Dozens of foreign language students died when the Canterbury Television building collapsed.

The City's Mayor, Bob Parker, said many countries are suffering together.

Igloo

US: Cold, Snow To Put Icy Grip On Bay Area Starting Thursday Evening

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© San Francisco ChronicleOne to two inches of snow fell in San Francisco on February 5, 1976, and dusting the Marin Headlands
Cold, wet weather will once again put an icy grip on the Bay Area as we head toward this weekend, bringing with it a chance that San Francisco residents could see some snow, forecasters said Wednesday.

Talk began swirling in recent days that snow could drop on San Francisco for the first time in 35 years.

National Weather Service forecaster Bob Benjamin said that while snow would likely fall at elevations lower than last weekend, it was still too soon to know for certain if there would be flurries in the city.

If the coldest predictions materialize, "In some form, people at or near sea level will see snow in the air," Benjamin said.

A southern-moving unstable cold front carrying moisture was expected to coast into the Bay Area come late Thursday, Benjamin said.

The front was expected to sit over the Bay Area and by Sunday morning bring record-breaking cold temperatures, with 20s to lower 30s forecast over the North Bay valleys, upper 20s to lower 30s around most of the San Francisco Bay shoreline southward through the Santa Clara and Salinas valleys. Higher elevation spots were expected to mostly be in the 20s.

Bizarro Earth

Indonesia's Infamous Mud Volcano Could Outlive All of Us

Lusi mud volcano
© n/a
Since it roared to life in May 2006, a mud volcano near Indonesia's coastal city of Sidoarjo has swallowed homes, rice paddies, factories, and roads, killing 15 people, displacing 40,000, and harming the livelihoods of many more. As the ongoing eruption nears its 5th anniversary, observers wonder whether it will ever stop. The answer: Not anytime soon. A new study predicts the volcano will continue spewing significant amounts of mud for another 2 decades. A second study forecasts that it could grind on as long as 87 years.

The mud volcano has inflicted a punishing blow to the region of Java island 700 kilometers east of the capital, Jakarta. Nicknamed Lusi, a contraction of lumpur (Indonesian for mud) and Sidoarjo, the volcano has so far disgorged 144 million cubic meters of mud, some of which now covers an area roughly twice the size of New York City's Central Park. Much of the mud has been diverted to a nearby river, where it has formed a new 83 hectare island and extended a natural delta. Compensation and mitigation have cost at least $767 million, according to Humanitas, a nongovernmental organization in Melbourne, Australia, that is studying the disaster's social impact. That is a fraction of the real economic toll, which is still being tallied.

Lusi may be a harbinger of disasters to come. "Like a volcanic eruption, a mud eruption is just the effect of geological activity, and I'm sure in the future another mud volcano must erupt in this region," says Soffian Hadi Djojopranoto, a geologist with the Sidoarjo Mudflow Mitigation Agency. "We need very serious research to understand this phenomenon."

Bizarro Earth

Bolivia: 50 Dead in Floods, Declares State of Emergency

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At least 50 people have been killed and tens of thousands left homeless after torrential rains hit Bolivia.

Spanish news agency EFE reported on Tuesday that the government has declared a state of emergency after flash floods and landslides swept through the country, caused by heavy rain that has continued since the beginning of the year.

The downpour has caused river levels to rise, leaving some 20 highways underwater.

Bolivia's defense minister promised 20 million US dollars in emergency aid to use for reconstructing the affected areas and help residents in those regions.

Binoculars

Austrailia: Swamp shark sightings

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© Noah Schultz-ByardThe original blurry image of the shark.
Everybody is talking about the rumours of a four metre shark that has been seen in the Little Topar Swamp between Broken Hill and Wilcannia.

Terrorising locals and striking fear into the hearts of passersby on the Barrier Highway, the shark has reportedly been spotted by many people.

No one has seen it moving yet, but there is a theory which claims that the little known 'Far West Desert Shark' (Deserto-fictumo-piscenious) is actually unable to move, due to being made entirely of tin.

Regardless of what it is made from, or whether it is an actual shark, grave fears are held for what might happen if the shark ever gets a taste for human flesh.

Distressed locals say that they are now unable to enjoy the swamp as they normally would.

Bizarro Earth

Scientist: Baby dolphin deaths unprecedented

New Orleans - A scientist says the deaths of about two dozen baby bottlenose dolphins is unprecedented in 30 years of studying dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico.
dolphin
© telegraph.co.uk /cc

Moby Solangi says the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Miss., has no record of previous mass deaths in which the majority were infants.

The recent deaths occurred in birthing areas off Mississippi and Alabama. Six bodies intact enough for dissection were a mix of stillborn, premature and full-term calves that died shortly after birth.

Solangi says possible causes include cold winter and disease. He said scientists are investigating whether there was a link to the BP oil spill. But he says only one dolphin species - and no other kind of animal - appears to be dying in unusual numbers.

Sun

Sunspots Overhead: Solar Flares Are Back

Giant gobs of incandescent gas are hurtling towards Earth! Satellites to fall from the sky! Sun in giant eruption as solar flares toast astronauts!

Sadly, no. No astronauts have been harmed in the making of the latest round of breathless excitement infecting the mainstream media as the sun begins to get more active. Although astrophysicists, radio hams and climatologists are genuinely thrilled that solar cycle 24 has at long last begun, and there's been more activity on the sun's surface over the last couple of weeks than in many months previously, we're still at the low end of what will probably be a very quiet few years.

The cycles are eleven years long and are most visible as changes in the number of sunspots. At the bottom of each cycle, the sun can go for weeks without visible sunspots: at the top of a lively cycle, there can be hundreds a year.

For reasons we still don't understand, there are quite dramatic changes in the peak levels of each cycle: the sun's been going through a noisy patch for the last thousand years or so, but is now calming down faster than we expected.

Cycle 24 is late and is going to be quiet overall, but it's on its way up - and with sunspots come solar flares. We haven't had those for a while, hence the excitement recently when a couple of reasonably modest ones kicked off (and failed, unsurprisingly, to have much of an effect).

Heart - Black

Starving Eagles "Falling Out of the Sky'

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© Lyle Stafford/The Globe and MailA Bald Eagle sits on a log in the Squamish river in Brackendale, BC.
When David Hancock saw the bald-eagle count on the Chehalis River drop from more than 7,000 to fewer than 400 over a few days in December, he knew a crisis was coming.

Earlier this week, news reports that starving eagles were "falling out of the sky" in the Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island, confirmed his fears.

Wildlife rescue centres on the Island have reported birds growing so weak from hunger that they fall out of trees, or fly so clumsily they hit things. One crashed into a roof.

Mr. Hancock said a collapse of chum salmon runs has left British Columbia's bald-eagle population without enough food to make it through the winter, leaving them weak from hunger and forcing thousands of birds to scavenge at garbage dumps.

Reports of starving eagles have been coming in from all over the Lower Mainland but seem concentrated in the Comox Valley, he said.

"This is what I said would be happening," said Mr. Hancock, a biologist, publisher and author of The Bald Eagle of Alaska, BC and Washington.