Earth ChangesS


Igloo

Giant South Dakota hailstone breaks US records


Associated Press
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:24 UTC
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© AP Photo/National Weather ServiceThis photo taken July 24, 2010 provided by the NOAA National Weather Service shows a hailstone that was found by a ranch hand in Vivian, S.D., on June 23, 2010. The hailstone has set U.S records. It measured 8 inches in diameter and weighed 1 pound, 15 ounces. The previous record for diameter was 7 inches for a hailstone found in Aurora, Neb., in 2003. The previous record for weight was 1.67 pounds for a stone in Coffeyville, Kan., in 1970.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says a giant hailstone that fell in central South Dakota has broken U.S. records, even though the man who found it says it melted somewhat while waiting to be evaluated.

The NOAA's National Climate Extremes Committee says the hailstone found in the town of Vivian on July 23 measures 8 inches in diameter and weighs 1 pound, 15 ounces. The committee says the South Dakota ice chunk breaks records set by hailstones discovered in Nebraska and Kansas.

Ranch hand Leslie Scott says the hailstone was about 3 inches larger when he found it. Scott says he put it in the freezer but that he couldn't prevent some melting because of an hours-long power outage that followed the storm.
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Camera

Northern lights and noctilucent clouds over Alberta, Canada


Spaceweather.com
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:28 UTC
A high speed solar wind stream is buffeting Earth's magnetic field, and this is causing geomagnetic activity around the poles. Zoltan Kenwell of Edmonton, Alberta, witnessed this display on July 27th:

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© Zoltan Kenwell/InFocus Imagery Inc.
"It was a beautiful night on the Alberta prairies," says Kenwell. "Aurora activity was subtle, but definitely present. The full Thunder Moon was lighting up the canola fields and the arrival of a few noctilucent clouds just put the icing on the cake!"

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© Zoltan Kenwell/InFocus Imagery
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Arrow Down

Five Killed as Wildfires Sweep Central Russia

Alfred Kueppers
Reuters
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:41 UTC
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© Mikhail Voskresensky/ReutersMen walk in front of a burning building outside the town of Vyksa, some 150 km (93 miles) southwest of the Volga city of Nizhny Novgorod, July 29, 2010.
Forest fires swept across central Russia on Friday, killing at least five people and forcing the evacuation of thousands during the hottest summer since records began 130 years ago, officials said.

Fanned by strong winds, raging fires ripped through woods and fields already scorched by the heatwave, complicating the efforts of firefighters.

"We don't know where to go," said Galina Shibanova, 52, standing outside the charred remains of her family home in the town of Maslovka in the Voronezh region, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) south of Moscow.

"We called the emergency services, and not one person answered the phone," she said, adding at least 50 homes had been destroyed.
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Bizarro Earth

Floods Kill 100 People in Pakistan as Monsoon Hits

Rob Crilly and Ashfaq Yusufzai
The Telegraph
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:01 UTC
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© Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesLocal residents remove wood from their collapsed huts in a flood-hit area of Nowshera
At least 100 people have been killed by rivers bursting their banks in north-west Pakistan as the country was hit by its worst floods for 80 years.

Floodwater destroyed a dam and washed away countless bridges in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, leaving an estimated 400,000 people stranded, after two days of monsoon rains.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the regional information minister, said the deluge made it difficult to reach people in need of shelter and clean drinking water.

"A rescue operation using helicopters cannot be conducted due to the bad weather, while there are only 48 rescue boats available for rescue," he said.

The province's deputy health director, Ali Khan, added that he feared there may be as many as 500 casualties. Medical workers had launched a programmed to immunise people against cholera and typhoid, he said.

Ten of the victims died when their homes collapsed in the provincial capital Peshawar.
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Arrow Down

China: Zoo Accidentally Gasses Giant Panda to Death

Malcolm Moore
The Telegraph
Tue, 27 Jul 2010 06:52 UTC
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© Getty ImagesWorkers had been disinfecting an air raid shelter inside the zoo when the gases leaked through the ventilation system into the panda house.
A Chinese zoo accidentally killed one of its giant pandas after a faulty ventilation system pumped toxic gas into its enclosure.

Quan Quan, a 21-year-old panda at Jinan Zoo in Shandong province, in eastern China, died after inhaling a mixture of chlorine, chlorine hydride and carbon monoxide, according to a spokesman.

The panda, which had given birth to seven cubs, arrived on loan at the zoo in 2007 from the Wolong panda reserve in Sichuan province. Quan Quan was one of the zoo's star attractions, helping to boost visitor numbers to around 30,000 a day.

Workers had been disinfecting an air raid shelter inside the zoo when the gases leaked through the ventilation system into the panda house.

"The ventilation system was built in 1995," said a spokesman. "It was used to keep the panda house cool, but it fed large amounts of smoke into the panda enclosure."
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Binoculars

World's Most Ancient Creatures Found in Scottish Field

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:55 UTC
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© Edmund Fellowes/Press AssociationThe tadpole shrimp, Triops cancriformis, which was part of two colonies found at Caerlaverock on the Solway Coast of Dumfriesshire.
Two colonies of age-old and endangered tadpole shrimps discovered alive and well near Solway coast

A field near Gretna in Dumfriesshire might not be an obvious place to find the world's oldest living creatures, but a team of scientists has done just that.

Two colonies of a prehistoric shrimp that evolved when the dinosaurs ruled the Earth have been found alive and well in the Caerlaverock nature reserve on the Solway coast.

The discovery has led experts to think there could be more of the little crustaceans, which are listed as endangered species, elsewhere in the area.

The ancient creatures, known as Triops cancriformis or tadpole shrimps, are thought to have the oldest pedigree of any living animal. Fossil evidence suggests they have hardly changed in the more than 200m years that they have been around.
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Arrow Up

Researchers Find Ocean Temperatures Rising, Even in the Depths

William K. Stevens
The New York Times
Fri, 24 Mar 2000 04:31 UTC
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© ReutersUnderwater "Submarine" Volcano Erupts near Japan
An important piece of the global-warming picture has come into clearer focus with a confirmation by scientists that the world's oceans have soaked up much of the warming of the last four decades, delaying its full effect on the atmosphere and thus on climate.

The warming of the deep oceans had long been predicted, and the consequent delaying effect long thought to exist.

But until now the ocean's heat absorption had not been definitively demonstrated, and its magnitude had not been determined.

The finding, by scientists at the National Oceanographic Data Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, is based on an analysis of 5.1 million measurements, by instruments around the world, of the top two miles of ocean waters from the mid-1950's to the mid-1990's.

Comment: The oceans are not soaking up the warming from above, they are heating from below.

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Igloo

Selection and substitution of data: Blame the cold on natural cycles, but the rain is humanity's fault!

Dick Ahlstrom
Irish Times
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:48 UTC
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© Irish TimesA pedestrian battles the elements in Dunboyne, Co Meath, Ireland in January
Last winter's weather might have been extreme but according to a new report it was within 'normal variability'

The heavy rainfalls and the resultant floods they caused last November were not triggered by climate change. Nor does the big chill that froze things solid at the turn of the year mean that global warming has somehow passed us by.

Both events - though certainly extreme - were within the range of "natural variability", according to a study published this morning by the Royal Irish Academy.

Comment: Oh, so when there is a heatwave, it is down to man-made global warming, but when there is a deep freeze, it is down to natural cycles. What passes for consistency in mainstream "science" today is breathtaking!

The widespread flooding along the west coast from Galway down to Cork sparked considerable public concern. There were fears that submerged homes would now be the norm due to climate change.

These fears are misplaced however, according to Prof Ray Bates, chairman of the RIA's climate change sciences committee.

"We are not saying global warming is not significant, it is very significant," he said in advance of the report's launch. Climate change induced by human activity remains "a long-term threat", he says.

Comment: Just you wait Henry Higgins, just you wait! Sott.net's 4-year weather forecast: floods, lots of them. Droughts and sudden localised heatwaves too, but predominantly deluges of rain, later turning to storeys-high snow and ice with a risk of psychopaths-induced Ice Age.

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Bizarro Earth

Russia: Earthquake Magnitude 6.2 - Off The East Coast of Kamchatka


USGS
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:16 UTC
Kamchatka Quake_300710
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Friday, July 30, 2010 at 03:56:14 UTC

Friday, July 30, 2010 at 03:56:14 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
52.535°N, 159.919°E

Depth:
21 km (13.0 miles)

Region:
OFF THE EAST COAST OF KAMCHATKA, RUSSIA

Distances:
101 km (63 miles) ESE (122°) from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia

333 km (207 miles) NE (50°) from Severo-Kuril'sk, Kuril Islands, Russia

496 km (308 miles) SW (236°) from Nikol'skoye, Komandorskiye Ostrova, Rus.

2455 km (1526 miles) NE (34°) from TOKYO, Japan
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Attention

Plankton, Base of Ocean Food Web, in Big Decline

Seth Borenstein
The Associated Press
Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:01 UTC
Washington - Despite their tiny size, plant plankton found in the world's oceans are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web, produce half the world's oxygen and suck up harmful carbon dioxide.

And they are declining sharply.

Worldwide phytoplankton levels are down 40 percent since the 1950s, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The likely cause is global warming, which makes it hard for the plant plankton to get vital nutrients, researchers say.

The numbers are both staggering and disturbing, say the Canadian scientists who did the study and a top U.S. government scientist.
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