Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

One Dead as Typhoon Ma-On Lashes Japan


Straits Times
Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:00 UTC
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© Agence France-PresseDozens of people were injured and more than 100 flights cancelled as strong Typhoon Ma-On lashed southern Japan on Wednesday with torrential downpours and gale-force winds, meteorologists and reports said.
Typhoon Ma-On swerved away from Japan's Pacific coast on Wednesday, leaving one person dead and dozens of others injured and damaging a centuries-old castle in Kyoto, officials and reports said.

The storm system, packing winds of up to 108kmh, was located 140km offshore on Wednesday, slowly heading east and further from the main island of Honshu.

The Japan Meteorogical Agency said Ma-On was still expected to bring downpours overnight in the country's eastern and northern regions including coastal areas hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami which sparked a crisis at a nuclear power plant in the area.

The drowned body of an 84-year-old man was found on the bank of a river on Shikoku Island on Wednesday after he went missing a day earlier while checking his boat, local police said.

The eye of Ma-On, which spanned 1,600km, made landfall on Shikoku in southwestern Japan late Tuesday, bringing up to 120cm of rain since Sunday, the weather agency said.
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Bizarro Earth

Crops Indirectly Deforest Amazon

Tim Wall
Discovery News
Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:21 UTC
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© Wikimedia CommonsFarm in Jataí Serra do Caiapó, Brazil.
Increased production of soybeans and sugarcane in Brazil increased deforestation of the Amazon, but not directly.

More crops are being grown on the Brazilian savannah, where ranchers have traditionally raised their cattle. As crops take the place of cattle on the savannah, the ranchers move into the forest.

Marcelus Caldas, an assistant professor of geography at Kansas State University, and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin and Michigan State University analyzed land use data from 2003-2008. They examined geographic information systems, maps and statistics to determine how large scale monocultures were indirectly leading to deforestation.

"Our data shows that the Amazon now has 79 million heads of cattle," Caldas said in a press release. "Fifteen years ago, it had less than 10 million. That means that there's a problem with cattle moving inside the forest."
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Cloud Lightning

India: Assam govt sounds flood alert, 2.5 lakh people affected


Rediff News
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:32 UTC
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© assamspider.com
Assam government on Tuesday sounded an alert across the state after flood waters breached embankments and submerged roads and houses in Lakhimpur, Dhemaji and Sonitpur districts, affecting around 2.5 lakh people, officials said.

Incessant heavy rains in Arunachal Pradesh and the affected districts triggered the first wave of floods with 75,000 people being displaced as their dwellings were washed away, the officials said. The state government, after sounding the alert, directed the National Disaster Management teams and district administrations to provide rescue, medical and relief materials to the affected people, they said.

The road link between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh through Dhemaji district has been severed following the flood waters running over National Highway-52 at Samarajan. The rising waters of the Brahmaputra were also swelling the streams inside the one-horned rhino habitat Kaziranga National Park in Golaghat district, Park sources said.
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Ambulance

Thirteen Dead and 86 Injured in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan 6.1 Earthquake


BBC News
Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:22 UTC
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At least 13 people in Uzbekistan have been killed in a 6.1-magnitude earthquake centred in Kyrgyzstan near the two countries' border.

The Uzbek emergency ministry said the quake, in the Ferghana valley, also injured 86 people.

Kyrgyzstan has so far reported no casualties. The quake struck at 0135 on Wednesday (1935 GMT Tuesday).

It was centred 42km (26 miles) south-west of the city of Ferghana at a depth of 18km, the US Geological Survey said.
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Fish

U.S.: Florida Fish & Wildlife researchers say 'pretty large' fish kill warrants investigation

Chase Cain
WTSP
Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:05 UTC
Sharks, rays, crabs, and all kinds of fish have been turning up dead on Southwest Florida beaches for the past two days.


The dead fish started washing ashore Monday morning near Vanderbilt Beach in Collier County, just north of Naples. Now, state researchers in the Bay Area work to figure out what's killing all the sea life.

"We can microscope, analyze the cells at the cellular level," Biologist Catalina Brown tells 10 News as she sorts through tissue samples from dead fish at the Fish & Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg. Brown is one state researcher working to solve the mystery of what's killing all sorts of fish in Collier County.
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Radar

Mt. Etna erupts with fountains of lava

Elizabeth Weise
USA Today
Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:58 UTC
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Tom Pfeiffer/VolcanoDiscovery
Iceland's gotten all the press of late, but there are other volcanoes in the world. One of the more famous ones, Italy's Mount Etna, spent Monday night into Tuesday morning sending up cascading fountains of lava and throwing out car-sized molten rocks.

The volcano's southeast crater began to show fractures on the Monday afternoon, says volcanologist Tom Pfeiffer, who leads volcano tours through Volcano Discovery. At just after midnight Tuesday morning it began to mildly erupt and the tour group walked to a viewpoint on the rim of the Valle del Bove.

At around 2:30 am the volcano began to send up fountins of lava 1,600 feet into the air, Pfeiffer said via email from Italy.

"At the peak of the eruption at around 3 am, the fountains pulsated between an estimated 500-800 m height, with large incandescent bombs visible more than 1 kilometer above the vent and landing behind southeast crater," he wrote. "The fountains gradually decreased by around 4 am and the activity turned into exploding giant lava bubbles, detonating with loud noise, and throwing large bombs up to 1 km in spherical directions above the crater. This activity slowly waned until dawn. While the fountains lasted, the crater wall was completely covered by incandescent lava."
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Bizarro Earth

Australia: Mysterious Big Fish Kill in Cape York River


ABC News
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:37 UTC
fish kill
© n/a
Queensland's Department of Environment and Resource Management says it cannot explain why large schools of fish are dying in a Cape York river.

The department says it received reports of about 1,000 dead fish floating in parts of the Normanby River, at the Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park, last week.

Most of the dead fish were barramundi and jewfish.

The department has been testing the river's water quality but says acidity, salinity and dissolved oxygen levels are all normal, and there is no evidence of contamination.

A spokesman says fish deaths can occur naturally in water courses with rapid changes to water temperature.

He says there is no evidence the fish pose a risk to public health.

Samples of the fish have been tested and results are expected next week.
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Sun

Heat-Wave "Kills 13 People" Across US Heartland


BBC News
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:13 UTC
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© Getty ImagesThe National Weather Service has placed nearly 20 states throughout the US under a heat warning, watch or advisory.
A heat-wave blanketing the US heartland in humidity has claimed the lives of 13 people, according to US media.

The National Weather Service put 18 states stretching from Montana to Texas to West Virginia under a heat warning, watch or advisory, with the heat index topping 38C (100F) in most locations.

The heat is expected to move east in the next several days.

More than 1,000 US heat records have been broken this month, officials said.

Though many US states have recently seen temperatures over 90F, some regions saw heat indexes - a combination of air temperature and relative humidity - up to 131F.
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Igloo

Southern Chile Buried in Heavy Snow


Reuters
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:25 UTC
Chile Heavy Snow_1
© The Weather NetworkThe snow is so thick, you can barely see the dog.
Araucania Region, Chile - Heavy snow storms bury southern Chile in six feet of snow leaving communities isolated with blocked roads and downed power lines.

A massive snowstorm dumped some six feet of snow on Chile's Araucancia region, leaving many without power and communities completely cut off from the rest of the country.

Residents of the mountainous region of the Andes were forced to dig out from massive piles of snow and television footage showed homes almost completely burried in the snow.

A heavy snow season has disrupted highways and mountain passes connecting the southern Chilean region with Argentina via snowy Andes Mountain passes.

Chile Heavy Snow_2
© The Weather NetworkThe snow has piled up on roads, cutting resident off from everything.
"The problem is the roads, that's all. We are cut-off from everything, but they're going to have to open it," said one resident of the Araucania region on Monday (July 18).

Emergency crews were removing snow from vital highways to allow for transportation to continue in and out of the secluded area as residents said they were also facing communication complications.
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Ambulance

US: Mom, 3 daughters from Colorado killed in Wyoming washout


Associated Press
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:19 UTC
a van
© AP Photo/Wyoming Highway PatrolIn this photo provided by Wyoming Highway Patrol, a van which was carrying four members of a family who died, is seen downstream from washed-out section of Wyoming Highway 130 in the Medicine Bow Mountains in southern Wyoming on Tuesday, July 19, 2011. They were fleeing torrential rains at a national forest campground.
Cheyenne. - Four members of a Colorado Springs family died after their vehicle drove into a washed-out section of a mountain highway in Wyoming and was swept downstream by a raging creek as they fled torrential rains at a national forest campground.

A mother and her three young daughters were killed; only the husband and father managed to escape as the van was carried away.

Officials said debris in the creek blocked large culverts that run under the highway and the water then tore through the roadway, opening a 25-foot-wide, 9-foot-deep breach about 20 miles from Saratoga in the southern part of the state.

The van went into the creek sometime between 1:15 a.m. and 1:40 a.m. and was swept about 75 yards downstream and submerged up to its rooftop, patrol spokesman Stephen Townsend.

Minutes later, a local emergency management official who was responding to the accident hit the same washout and plunged into the creek.
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