Earth ChangesS


Sun

World registers hottest-ever day

sunrise
© Getty Images / Brook MitchellThe sun rises at Bondi Beach ahead of a hot day on November 28, 2020 in Sydney, Australia
The world registered its hottest ever day on Monday as temperatures surged across the globe, according to data released by the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP).

The United States governmental body, which delivers national and global climate guidance and forecasts from its headquarters in Maryland, said on Tuesday that it recorded an average global temperature of 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62F) on Monday. This surpasses the previous high of 16.92 degrees Celsius (62.46F) from August 2016.

"This is not a milestone we should be celebrating," climate scientist Friederike Otto said on Tuesday. "It's a death sentence for people and ecosystems."

The warning comes as many southern US states remain in the grips of extreme heat in recent days. Corpus Christi, a city in Texas, registered a record temperature in June of 51 degrees Celsius (125F). Similar temperatures have also been recorded in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Louisiana.

Cloud Lightning

Lightning strikes kill 21 people in Uttar Pradesh, India, with one bolt killing 4 (UPDATE)

MMMMMMM
Six people died in the last 24 hours after being struck by lightning in Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh district.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has expressed condolence over the loss of lives and has instructed officials to give ex-gratia of Rs 4 lakh each to the kin of the deceased.

In the first incident, five people who had gone to the fields along with their cattle, were struck by lightning in Niyamatpur village of Mehnagar police circle.

Four died on the spot.

Comment: Update July 6

The Hindustan Times reports:
Twenty-one people were killed and several injured in lightning strikes in different parts of Uttar Pradesh.

Eight people were killed after being struck by lightning in Bundelkhand and Fatehpur on Wednesday. Six of the victims were women.

Four people died in Fatehpur district. The victims include two teenage girls who had taken the goats to graze. Two other girls were injured and undergoing treatment, said the police. Two more persons were hit by lightning in their field and died, the police said.

In Hamirpur, lightning struck a house and went through the roof to hit a woman, Sunita, 38. She died on the spot.

Two people, including a woman, died in Chitrakoot. A man was hit in a mango orchard in Bahilpurwa and the woman in Ram Nagar. A woman died in Jalaun after lightning fell on her when she was on her way back to the house from the fields.

In Prayagraj and Kaushambi districts, three persons, including a girl and a boy, died while two received burns in separate incidents of lightning strikes, on Wednesday. The injured were admitted to the nearby hospital.

In Bhui village of Handia, Kajal Bind, 12 and her younger brother, Atul, 8, were returning home from a nearby shop when lightning struck. The duo was rushed to hospital where Kajal was declared dead.

In Araw village of Handia, Ramji, 65, was grazing his buffaloes when he was injured due to lightning strike. Ramji was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.

A brick kiln owner, Amar Bahadur Singh, was injured when lightning struck in Rajapur of Ghoorpur area.

In another similar incident in Kaushambi, 12-year-old Ankaj Kumar, son of Chandrashekhar, was grazing cattle on the banks of the Yamuna in Bunda village of Pipri area. Ankaj died on the spot when lightning struck.

Four people died in separate incidents of lightning strikes in Ghazipur, officials said on Wednesday. Naseeruddin, alias Babu, (55) and Ikram Ansari (28) were struck by lightning at Cheetnath Ghat on the banks of the Ganga on Tuesday, they said.

Suraj Rajbhar (10) and Durga Devi (48) were struck by lightning in the Shadiabad area, the officials said. The district administration said family members of the victims will be given financial assistance as per the norms after the post-mortem examination of the bodies.

Six people were killed and one child was injured after being struck by lightning in Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh district on Tuesday. The district administration said that five people died in Barwa Sagar which comes under Mehnagar police station, and in another similar incident, one person died in the Maharajganj area of the district.

"So far, six people have been electrocuted in the district. One child is injured, who is being treated. Family members of all the deceased will be provided with a fixed amount within 24 hours," district magistrate Vishal Bhardwaj said.

M Devraj, chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL), has issued directives to prevent accidents, involving especially outsourced workers of the electricity department during the monsoon season and has directed officials to ensure strict compliance with the directives.

Earlier, on Tuesday, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed grief over the deaths that occurred in the Azamgarh and Ghazipur districts, due to lightning strikes.

The chief minister also announced a relief amount of ₹4 lakh for the deceased's family members. In addition, he also directed for proper treatment of the injured.



Boat

Evacuations underway as severe flooding hits parts of China

Rescue workers evacuate stranded residents
© ReutersRescue workers evacuate stranded residents on a flooded street after heavy rainfall in Wanzhou district of Chongqing, China on July 4, 2023.
South-west China's Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality have been hit by severe flooding triggered by heavy rainfall over the past month.

According to state broadcasters, authorities dispatched rescue personnel to evacuate residents from the affected areas.

Rising water levels have caused landslides and submerged homes and infrastructure in water, hindering evacuation efforts.


Comment: Flooding across China displaces thousands after weeks of torrential rain


Cloud Precipitation

Italy: Milan streets flooded after Lombardy hit by two weeks' rainfall in just 3 hours

mmmmmmm
A 'water bomb' that pummelled parts of the northern Italian region of Lombardy with rain and hail over the course of several hours on Tuesday night felled trees and flooded homes, national media reported.

The region's capital of Milan recorded 40mm of rainfall between 11pm and 2am, with the Città Studi, Isola, Maggiolina and Corbetta neighbourhoods and the roads around the Navigli canals reported to be worst affected.

The northern city experienced more rainfall on Tuesday night than it would typically receive in the first two weeks of July combined, meteorologist Mattia Gussoni of the weather site meteo.it told reporters.

Firefighters were reportedly called to the scene in at least 20 different locations, to move fallen trees and branches and carry out interventions on flooded basements.


Fire

Ash spews out of Peru's Ubinas volcano

nnnnnnn
Ubinas, a southern Andean volcano which has been dormant since 2019, was on Tuesday coughing out ash onto nearby villages.

The ash - which rises to around 5,000 meters (16,404 feet) is carried from the volcano to nearby villages and in 2019 even reached as far as neighboring Bolivia.

Approximately 2,000 people live near the volcano and the alert level in these areas has increased from yellow to orange.

The Ubinas volcano is part of a group of seven volcanoes in southern Peru located within a volcanic zone that extends from southern Peru to northern Chile.


Attention

57 people died in encounters with elephants in last 3 months across the Indian state of Odisha - 50% increase over same the period in 2022

nnnn
Odisha has seen a 50% increase jump in human casualties in encounters with wild elephants in the first three months of 2023-24, with 57 deaths compared to 38 deaths in the same period last year.

This year's April, May and June, when human-elephant encounters are typically at their peak with the pachyderms raiding mango, bael and jackfruit orchards, have been the most lethal in past 10 years. The quarter also saw a 26% rise in the number of human-elephant encounters, which resulted in more injuries than ever before.

Asian elephants are attracted to food crops because they are more palatable, more nutritious and have lower secondary defences than wild plants, wildlife expert Biswajit Mohanty said. Crop damage by elephants is the root cause of human-elephant conflicts across states, he added.

Eye 1

Woman killed in alligator attack while walking dog, South Carolina sheriff's office says

An American alligator swimming in a swamp.
© CINDY LARSONAn American alligator swimming in a swamp.
A South Carolina woman was killed Tuesday after an alligator attacked her and her dog.

A 69-year-old resident of the Spanish Wells neighborhood of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, was reportedly walking her dog Tuesday morning near the edge of a lagoon in the area, according to the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office.

When officials responded around 9:30 a.m., they found the woman unresponsive near the water. They were also confronted by an alligator, which was guarding the woman's body and impeding rescue attempts, the statement said.


Popcorn

Best of the Web: Solar maximum could hit us harder and sooner than we thought

solar maxmium minimum cycle
© NASA/Solar Dynamics ObservatoryThis image shows how the sun's appearance changes between solar maximum (on the left) and solar minimum (on the right). The sun is quickly approaching a major peak in solar activity. Experts warn it could potentially begin by the end of 2023, years before initial predictions suggested.
From a distance, the sun may seem calm and steady. But zoom in, and our home star is actually in a perpetual state of flux, transforming over time from a uniform sea of fire to a chaotic jumble of warped plasma and back again in a recurring cycle.

Every 11 years or so, the sun's magnetic field gets tangled up like a ball of tightly wound rubber bands until it eventually snaps and completely flips — turning the north pole into the south pole and vice versa. In the lead-up to this gargantuan reversal, the sun amps up its activity: belching out fiery blobs of plasma, growing dark planet-size spots and emitting streams of powerful radiation.


This period of increased activity, known as solar maximum, is also a potentially perilous time for Earth, which gets bombarded by solar storms that can disrupt communications, damage power infrastructure, harm some living creatures (including astronauts) and send satellites plummeting toward the planet.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:


Hardhat

Damaging hail storm in Killam, Alberta

mmmmm
The town of Killam is cleaning up after a damaging hail storm over the weekend. The storm -- about 170 kilometres southeast of Edmonton -- left a trail of destruction and injured at least one person. Sarah Reid reports.


Tornado2

Two waterspouts are reported near the city of Cienfuegos, Cuba

nnnnnnnn
Two waterspouts were sighted from different places in the northwest of the city of Cienfuegos, possibly between the towns of Caunao and Palmira, local meteorological services reported on Monday.

"The conditions of the Troposphere this afternoon have been favorable for the occurrence of severe phenomena," the Cienfuegos Provincial Meteorological Center explained on social networks. "Up to this moment, no damages have been reported," he indicated.

Waterspouts are a type of tornado that forms over bodies of water, such as seas or lakes. If they touch land, they become tornadoes. They are composed of a rotating column of air, which makes them visually impressive.

Last September, the formation of one was reported in the Avilés de Cumanayagua dam , Cienfuegos. The Forecast Center of the Cuban Institute of Meteorology (INSMET) confirmed the incident and assured that the waterspout could be observed for more than 20 minutes. There were also no material or human damages.