Earth ChangesS


Ambulance

Fires from Long Island to Florida test crews

Miguel Llanos
MSNBC
Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:30 UTC
Image
© MSNBC/Today ShowBrush fires fanned by gusty winds have been raging throughout the New York tri-state area, with one blaze injuring firefighters and destroying buildings on a swath of Long Island.
Dry and breezy conditions were fanning brush fires and wildfires up and down the East Coast, including one on Long Island, N.Y., where two blazes merged overnight, officials said Tuesday morning.

"The fire is not under control. It's burning heavily," NBCNewYork.com quoted Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone as saying at a press briefing. "We're putting as much water on it as we can."

The weather conditions made for "red flag warnings" along the East Coast, NBC weather anchor Al Roker said on TODAY. Areas from Long Island to Florida and as far west as Kentucky were under the advisory, which reflects extremely dangerous fire conditions.

In Long Island's Suffolk County, a state of emergency was declared Tuesday and mandatory evacuations were earlier ordered for an undetermined number of residents in Ridge and Manorville.
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Bizarro Earth

Disease outbreaks continue to plague shrimp, lobster crops in Vietnam


FIS
Mon, 09 Apr 2012 22:30 UTC
Lobster farmers are facing serious difficulties to avoid their crop mortality.
© seafoodfromvietnamLobster farmers are facing serious difficulties to avoid their crop mortality.
Farmers in Vietnam's central region are struggling with the mass mortalities of their lobster crops. Meanwhile, farmers in the Mekong Delta in the south are constantly fighting against heavy tiger and white-legged shrimp deaths.

The provincial Departments of Agriculture and Rural Development in the Mekong Delta report that many provinces have begun the newest shrimp crop this year -- but large amounts have succumbed to disease.

So far, 848.3 million breeder shrimp have been released on 12,412 ha by 11,563 farming households in coastal areas in Tra Vinh Province, of which over 40 million on more than 1,017 ha farmed by 800 households have die.
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Nuke

Japan is Poisoning Other Countries By Burning Highly-Radioactive Debris


Washington's Blog
Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:33 UTC
insanity
© n/a
Fukushima to Burn Highly-Radioactive Debris

Fukushima will start burning radioactive debris containing up to 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram. As Mainchi notes:
The state will start building storage facilities for debris generated by the March 2011 tsunami as early as May at two locations in a coastal area of Naraha town, Fukushima Prefecture, Environment Ministry and town officials said Saturday.

***

About 25,000 tons of debris are expected to be brought into the facilities beginning in the summer, according to the officials.

***

If more than 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium are found per kilogram of debris, the debris will be transferred to a medium-term storage facility to be built by the state. But if burnable debris contains 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium or less, it may be disposed of at a temporary incinerator to be built within the prefecture, according to the officials.

Within the 20-km-radius no-go zone spanning across Naraha and five other municipalities along the coast, debris caused by the magnitude 9.0 quake and the subsequent tsunami has amounted to an estimated 474,000 tons, much of remaining where it is.
How much radiation is that?

It is a lot.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen has said that much lower levels of cesium - 5,000-8,000 bq/kg (20 times lower than what will be allowed to be burned at Fukushima) - would be sent to a special facility in the United States and buried underground for thousands of years. See this and this.

It is comparable to the levels of radioactivity found within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. See this and this.
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Bizarro Earth

Deadly March Tornadoes Are First Billion-Dollar Disaster of 2012

Andrea Mustain
Our Amazing Planet
Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:10 UTC
Tornado Damage
© Michael Raphael/FEMATornado damage in Henryville, Ind., after a tornado swept through the small community on March 2, 2012.
A swarm of tornadoes that tore through the Midwest and Southeast in early March has earned the grim title of the nation's first billion-dollar weather disaster of 2012.

From March 2 through the early hours of March 3, 132 tornadoes were reported across nine states. Although those numbers are preliminary, and will undoubtedly decrease once overlapping reports are eliminated, their aftermath was devastating, causing more than $1.5 billion in damage and killing 40 people.

The storms killed four people in Ohio, but they took the greatest toll in Indiana, killing 13, and Kentucky, where 23 people died.

The costly disaster follows on the heels of a record-breaking year for devastation wrought by the vagaries of the weather and longer-term climate conditions. Last year, the United States experienced 14 separate events that caused $1 billion or more in damage. Five of those events were tornado outbreaks.
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Sun

U.S. heat records shattered during March


Fox News
Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:04 UTC
Piedmont Park Atlanta
© Associated Press
It's been so warm in the United States this year, especially in March, that national records weren't just broken, they were deep-fried.

Temperatures in the lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That far exceeds the old records.
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Snowflake

As Seen From Antarctica, Halo Appears Around the Moon


Space Weather
Sun, 08 Apr 2012 18:51 UTC
In the icy lands around the south pole, ordinary things take on an exotic quality. Count moon haloes among them. On April 5th, Sam Burrell photographed this specimen rising above the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica:

Moon Dog
© Sam BurrellImage Taken: Apr. 5, 2012
Location: Brunt Ice Shelf, Antarctica
"Around midnight, the air on the Brunt Ice Shelf the air was filled with diamond dust," says Burrell. "As the moon rose, we caught this show."

Diamond dust is the atmospheric optics term for tiny, jewel-like crystals of ice. They form on cold days in the air near ground level. When they catch the rays of the low-hanging sun or moon, the results can be spectacular. "In this single display, we could see a moon halo, moondogs, and hints of a moon pillar," says Burrell.
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Igloo

Anchorage breaks seasonal snowfall record


CNN
Sun, 08 Apr 2012 18:11 UTC
While winter is a distant memory for most Americans, it continues unabated in Anchorage, Alaska -- where a new bout of precipitation this weekend helped the city break its record for seasonal snowfall, at more than 133 inches (3.38 meters).

Some 3.4 inches of snow -- and counting -- had fallen as of 4 p.m. (8 p.m. ET) Saturday in Anchorage, according to the National Weather Service.
Image
© VL Vercammen/CNNSnow caused the roof to collapse in the auditorium at the Abbott Loop Community Church in Anchorage, Alaska
That brought the seasonal total for the city to 133.6 inches -- breaking the record of 132.6 inches, set in 1954-1955.

And with snow continuing to fall into early Sunday morning, the figure promises to get even larger.

"Okay...now the records broken, could you please make the snow go away??!!" wrote one commenter of the Facebook page of the weather service's Alaska division.
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Igloo

First Glaciers in Japan Recognized

Minoru Matsutani
The Japan Times Online
Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:50 UTC
Japanese Glaciers
© Tateyama Caldera Sabo Musuem / KyodoCoup de glacier: An ice gorge near Tateyama, Toyama Prefecture, that has been recognized as one of the three first glaciers found in Japan is shown last June. All three are in the Northern Alps.
Scientists have found three glaciers in Toyama Prefecture, the first recognized in Japan and the southernmost in East Asia.

Tateyama Caldera Sabo Museum discovered the three slow-moving chunks of ice in the Hida Mountain Range, otherwise known as the Northern Alps.

Their research paper submitted to the Japanese Society of Snow and Ice was accepted Tuesday, the museum said.

A glacier is defined as a large mass of ice that over many years "flows" owing to its great weight, according to the Japanese Society of Snow and Ice. They are often found on high mountains, such as the Himalayas, and have even been found on Mount Kilimanjaro, which is almost on the equator. Until now, the southernmost glaciers in East Asia were on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.

"We have known something similar to glaciers existed, so we checked to see if the masses of ice are moving," said Hajime Lida, a researcher for the museum.
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Bizarro Earth

Death toll rises to 15 as Buenos Aires recovers from heavy storm


Buenos Aires Herald
Sun, 08 Apr 2012 16:36 UTC
Buenos Aires storm destruction
© Buenos Aires HeraldEstimates of the damage caused suggested a figure of several million pesos’ worth.
Death toll rises to fifteen in Buenos Aires City and Province as the region recovers from a heavy storm that hit the area on Wednesday night taking porteños by surprise after an unusual warm day for the season.

Intense rain and hail storms caused death and destruction throughout the country and mainly in the Buenos Aires province and Capital area. Over 500 people had to be evacuated. Estimates of the damage caused suggested a figure of several million pesos' worth.

According to officials, four people died in Buenos Aires City. One person was killed when a wall collapsed, while three others were perished after a roof collapsed in Villa 21 shantytown. The ten victims died in the province: four in Moreno, one in Quilmes, one in Florencio Varela, one in Isidro Casanova, one in Gonnet, one in Flores and another in Avellaneda.

Most of the victims were crushed by toppled walls, fallen roofs or blown trees.

Victim number fifteen was confirmed this morning at Villa Soldati neibourhood. Bertilio Alarcón worked for the gendarmerie when his station was hit and dragged by the strong winds.
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Attention

More Evidence Rises Of Role Pesticides Play In Bee Colony Collapse

Lee Rannals
redOrbit
Sun, 08 Apr 2012 13:09 UTC
Bees
© redOrbit
As bee populations continue to decline, researchers are scurrying to try and find an answer as to why.

A new study from Harvard School of Public Health has linked one of the most widely used pesticides, imidacloprid, as the bee's nemesis.

The authors wrote in a paper being published in the Bulletin of Insectology that they have found "convincing evidence" of the link between imidacloprid and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which adult bees abandon their hives.

"The significance of bees to agriculture cannot be underestimated," Alex Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the Department of Environmental Health, said in a press release. "And it apparently doesn't take much of the pesticide to affect the bees. Our experiment included pesticide amounts below what is normally present in the environment."

The team conducted a study in Worcester County, Massachusetts to try and replicate how imidacloprid may have caused the CCD outbreak.

They monitored bees in four different bee yards, each of which had four hives treated with different levels of imidacloprid and one control hive.
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