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What is causing many California sea otters to become weak, disoriented, and even unable to eat properly? The answer may hint at trouble for humans too.
The possibility is growing that Britain in 2007 may experience a summer of unheard-of high temperatures, with the thermometer even reaching 40C, or 104F,a level never recorded in history.
The likelihood of such a "forty degree summer" is being underlined by the tumbling over the past year of a whole series of British temperature records, strongly suggesting that the British Isles have begun to experience a period of rapid, not to say alarming, warming. This would be quite outside all historical experience, but entirely consistent with predictions of climate change.
The Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, in a joint forecast with the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, has already suggested that 2007 will be the hottest year ever recorded globally.
The death toll of seals washed ashore on the oil-rich Caspian in Kazakhstan since March 31 has risen to 724, the Central Asian state's emergencies ministry said Saturday.
"The overall number of dead seals as of Friday night reached 724, including 528 baby seals," the ministry said. "The coast is continuing to be monitored."
The dead seals have been found along the seashore between two major oil fields in western Kazakhstan. But officials in Kazakhstan cite weather conditions as a possible reason.
"Until February 20, most of the northeastern Caspian did not freeze, and on February 21-22 the northern Caspian had a covering of thin ice that melted by March 20. It could have had a negative effect on the baby seals," the Ministry of Environmental Protection said earlier.
A minor earthquake measuring five on the Richter scale struck Kent County in southeast Britain Saturday morning, causing damage but no injuries, British television said.
Sky News quoted witnesses as saying that houses had been damaged and chimneys torn from roofs. The earthquake alarmed many local residents because tremors are rare in Britain. Many thought the jolt was an explosion wave.
"We were virtually thrown out of bed at 8:15 a.m., we thought something had exploded in our house," Andrei Ostalsky, head of the Russian BBC Service, said over the phone from Folkestone, Kent, adding that the town had no electricity, the trains had stopped, and telephones were not working.
Philip Pullella
ReutersFri, 27 Apr 2007 11:03 UTC
The message that God wants believers to be green is emerging from a Vatican conference on climate change in the latest sign of growing concern by religious groups around the world over the fate of the planet.
A mysterious affliction is killing fish once again in the Shenandoah River region.
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| An aerial view from March, 2007 shows mud that oozed and covered some 600 hectares (1,482 acres) in the area of Porong, a district of Sidoarjo in East Java.
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Jakarta - Workers were racing Thursday to repair a massive wall holding back sludge spewing from Indonesia's "mud volcano" that has already flooded hundreds of homes, an official said. Cracks started to appear in the man-made embankment around the disaster area in east Java on Wednesday, prompting authorities to declare the area off limits.
The UK Met Office has released figures showing that this month is set to be the warmest April since records began in England more than 300 years ago.
The data has been compiled from observations that go into the Central England Temperature record.
This series, which dates back to 1659, is the world's longest running temperature series.
APFri, 27 Apr 2007 10:22 UTC
JAKARTA, Indonesia A powerful earthquake has struck the province in Indonesia that was hardest hit by the 2004 tsunami.
A UCSF researcher who found the SARS virus in 2003 and later won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" for his work thinks he has discovered a culprit in the alarming deaths of honeybees across the United States.
