Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Sixth cyclone of the season about to hit Madagascar


UNICEF
Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:29 UTC
450,000 people already affected. Natural disasters continue hitting Madagascar, affecting hundreds of thousands of people with another cyclone, Jaya, on the way.

Since December 2006, approximately 450,000 people have become the victims of natural disasters across Madagascar. These families urgently require shelter, food, potable water, medication and school supplies.
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Bizarro Earth

More dead found in Pakistan avalanche


Shanghai Daily
Mon, 02 Apr 2007 15:25 UTC
The death toll from avalanches in northwestern Pakistan rose to 38 after rescue workers found more bodies yesterday in the rubble of demolished homes in a remote village, police said.

The weekend avalanches struck Pakistan's rugged Chitral district, near the border with Afghanistan. Flooding and avalanches have killed more than 50 people over the past 10 days in the region.
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Bizarro Earth

Tsunami devastates western Solomons

GEORGE HERMING
AP / Yahoo! News
Mon, 02 Apr 2007 11:02 UTC
HONIARA, Solomon Islands - Tsunami waves churned by an undersea earthquake crashed ashore in the Solomon Islands on Monday, wiping away entire villages and triggering alerts from Australia to Hawaii, officials said. At least 13 people were killed, and the prime minister warned that the toll would likely grow.

Comment: If entire villages were wiped away, expect the number of death people to rise significantly.

Comment: First Somalia, now the Solomons. Something is going on in that part of the world.

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Arrow Down

As drought continues, South Florida's water restrictions to tighten

Andy Reid
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Mon, 02 Apr 2007 05:43 UTC
Even with the vast Atlantic Ocean lapping at its shores and more yearly rainfall than most of the country, South Florida once again finds itself wanting for water.

South Florida typically gets 52 inches of rain a year -- 14 inches more than soggy Seattle -- but doesn't have the storage capacity to capture enough water to quench the thirst of a growing population.

Comment: A simple solution utilized in many other tropical areas, and formerly a standard feature in old Florida, is for each home to have a cistern that captures rainwater for bathing and watering plants.

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Arrow Down

Los Angeles suffers longest dry spell in 130 years


Agence France Presse
Mon, 02 Apr 2007 05:42 UTC
Los Angeles is going through its longest dry spell in at least 130 years, the National Weather Service said Sunday, fueling fears of rampant wildfires which have plagued the US west coast in recent years.

"The rain season is currently the driest to date in downtown Los Angeles since records began in 1877," the weather service said in a statement.
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Attention

NBC, Reuters, AFP Reports: 8.0 Earthquake Triggers Tsunami in Solomons - Whole villages 'wiped out'


MSNBC
Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:20 UTC
UPDATE: Quake upgraded to 8.0

HONIARA, Solomon Islands - A powerful magnitude-7.6 earthquake struck off the Solomon Islands on Monday, sending a tsunami wave crashing into the country's west coast and prompting region-wide disaster warnings, officials said.

Sgt. Godfrey Abiah said police in the capital, Honiara, reported a wave several yards high had crashed ashore in the western town of Gizo shortly before communication lines with the region were cut.

©AP
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Attention

Alarming Decline of Sharks Causing Other Species to Vanish

Andrea Thompson
Live Science
Sun, 01 Apr 2007 11:37 UTC
The precipitous decline in large predator sharks in the Atlantic Ocean in the past decade has made ecologists worry about a trickle-down effect on the ocean ecosystem.

A new study supports the case. With the large predators gone, their prey - smaller sharks and rays - are free to feast on lower organisms like scallops and clams, depleting valuable commercial stocks.
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Attention

Flowers and fruit crops facing disaster as disease kills off bees

Jasper Copping
The Telegraph
Sun, 01 Apr 2007 09:13 UTC
Devastating diseases are killing off vast numbers of bees across the country, threatening major ecological and economic problems. Honeybee colonies have been wiped out this winter at twice the usual rate or worse in some areas.
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Cloud Lightning

Argentina Floods Claim 7 Lives

MAYRA PERTOSSI
Associated Press
Sat, 31 Mar 2007 23:31 UTC
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Rising rivers in three rain-soaked provinces have forced some 38,000 people to flee their homes and floodwaters have claimed seven lives, authorities said Saturday.

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Cloud Lightning

Abrupt climate change more common than believed


University of Wisconsin-Madison / Physorg.com
Fri, 30 Mar 2007 14:38 UTC
It came on quickly and then lasted nearly two decades, eventually killing more than one million people and affecting 50 million more. All of this makes the Sahel drought, which first struck West Africa in the late 1960s, the most notorious example of an abrupt climatic shift during the last century.

Dramatic as this single event was, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have now uncovered 29 other regions worldwide that endured similarly precipitous climatic changes during the 20th century - far more than scientists previously thought. Their study publishes today (March 30) in the online edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
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