Earth Changes
I decided to do myself something that so far NOAA has refused to do: give a CONUS average temperature for the United States from the new 'state of the art' United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN). After spending millions of dollars to put in this new network from 2002 to 2008, they are still giving us data from the old one when they report a U.S. national average temperature. As readers may recall, I have demonstrated that old COOP/USHCN network used to monitor U.S. climate is a mishmash of urban, semi-urban, rural, airport and non-airport stations, some of which are sited precariously in observers backyards, parking lots, near air conditioner vents, airport tarmac, and in urban heat islands. This is backed up by the 2011 GAO report spurred by my work.
© SWNS
Naomi Sheldon with some of the seaweed deposited in the front garden of her neighbour's house in Berkeley, Gloucestershire.
Naomi Sheldon with some of the seaweed deposited in the front garden of her neighbour's house in Berkeley, Gloucestershire.
Weather experts believe the seaweed was picked up from Clevedon Beach in North Somerset by a twister during freak weather conditions on the coast.
It was then carried through the air - before being deposited on the quiet street in Berkeley, near Cheltenham, Glos.
Stunned engineer Dr Richard Overton, 55, and his wife Kay, collected an entire bucket full of the green slime from their front garden.
He said: "I looked out of the window after a very big storm finished and to my amazement there were lots of flakes of seaweed scattered over the garden.
"I've heard stories of fish being picked up and dumped by storms but never seaweed. I was just so surprised."
Other residents on 'The Common', an up-market lane which overlooks acres of fields, also found seaweed in their gardens.
It's not the sky that's falling, but the earth opening up in a couple of spots in Bay Ridge, that has some of its residents rattled.
Mimi Carroll lives near the giant sinkhole on 79th Street that came close to swallowing a car last Wednesday.
"Thank God there wasn't a car going down the street at the time," she said. "So then it's not just damage to the street, and property, it's people."
But the mother of all sinkholes in the neighborhood was the cave-in at 92nd Street and Third Avenue at the end of June. Workers have yet to reach the damaged portion of the sewer main 70 feet below street level. It's expected to be weeks before the work is completed and the street reopened.
"We have to deal with keeping the hole structurally sound. We have to deal with buildings around us being shaken, and we have a lot of concerns from gas lines to electric," said construction worker George Aragona.
© USGS
It was centered about 5.5 miles (9 km) beneath the surface. The earlier temblor occurred at about 9:20 p.m. on Tuesday in about the same area at about the same depth, and was followed by more than a dozen smaller aftershocks overnight, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The two 4.5-magnitude quakes were both felt as far away as downtown Los Angeles, about 35 miles (56 km) away, where rattling and rumbling was felt for several seconds at a time.
USGS Data
© USGS
Wednesday, August 08, 2012 at 14:05:19 UTC
Wednesday, August 08, 2012 at 06:05:19 AM at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location
54.980°N, 161.222°W
Depth
55.5 km (34.5 miles)
Region
ALASKA PENINSULA
Distances
71 km (44 miles) SW of Sand Point, Alaska
972 km (603 miles) SW of Anchorage, Alaska
1006 km (625 miles) SW of Knik-Fairview, Alaska
1338 km (831 miles) SW of College, Alaska
© USGS
There was a magnitude-2.7 aftershock about a minute later. The quake was felt throughout the Los Angeles area, including the San Fernando Valley some 50 miles from the epicenter. Los Angeles firefighters found no damage after a citywide assessment completed early Wednesday. The epicenter is about 35 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
USGS data
If true, the vast expenditure of global, national, state, county and municipal funds to attenuate its effects have failed.
If false, the current climate shift is the result of natural processes over which mankind has no control.
These options suggest that the current efforts to regulate the global climate are either ineffective or misdirected.
I doubt that this short note will diminish the strongly held belief within the county that these efforts are effective. Redirection of some funds spent in Boulder County on the study and regulation of the Earth's climate might be better spent on an Annual Tooth Fairy Festival, as the Tooth Fairy is a much cheaper abstraction based on similar logic.
The remainder of the funding should be terminated to aid in balancing the city, county, state and federal budgets.
Storms wreaked havoc in Austria and northern Italy over the weekend, causing landslides that killed two people, authorities said Sunday.
An 84-year-old woman was killed when a landslide hit a farm in Afens, on the Italian side of the border with Austria.
In nearby Tulfer, the body of another woman who had been declared missing after her house was struck by a mud flow, was uncovered on Sunday morning.
Major storms lashed much of Austria and German-speaking northern Italy late Saturday, causing flooding and power cuts, and disrupting rail and road connections.
About 1,000 homes were without electricity Sunday morning in the Virgental valley in southern Austria.
An 84-year-old woman was killed when a landslide hit a farm in Afens, on the Italian side of the border with Austria.
In nearby Tulfer, the body of another woman who had been declared missing after her house was struck by a mud flow, was uncovered on Sunday morning.
Major storms lashed much of Austria and German-speaking northern Italy late Saturday, causing flooding and power cuts, and disrupting rail and road connections.
About 1,000 homes were without electricity Sunday morning in the Virgental valley in southern Austria.
© Don Swanson, 1984 (U.S. Geological Survey)
The snow-capped Ngauruhoe cone of New Zealand's Mount Tongariro volcano is one of the youngest and more active parts of the volcano.
The snow-capped Ngauruhoe cone of New Zealand's Mount Tongariro volcano is one of the youngest and more active parts of the volcano.
Details were slow to emerge because of the lateness of the eruption and cloudy weather conditions that blocked some monitoring efforts, but as daylight broke, scientists were able to shed more light on what happened.
Michael Rosenberg, the duty volcanologist at GeoNet (run by New Zealand's GNS Science and the Earthquake Comission), wrote that the eruption at the Te Māri craters was a short-lived phreatic one. Phreatic eruptions are stream-driven eruptions that happen when water beneath or above the ground is heated up, potentially causing it to boil and "flash to steam," creating an explosion, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. These eruptions can send ash and rocks flying, which this eruption seemed to do.
© News24
South Africans have taken to social networks sharing pictures of snow falling in Joburg and surrounding areas. Share your snow photos with us.
South Africans have taken to social networks sharing pictures of snow falling in Joburg and surrounding areas. Share your snow photos with us.
"It's amazing, Merry Christmas!" said Roger Gibbs, driving through a leafy suburb where the trees were frosted in white.
Snow falls annually in the mountains of South Africa and Lesotho, which even hosts a ski resort, but the high plains around Johannesburg haven't seen snow in five years.
The snowfall swept north across Johannesburg, coating southern neighbourhoods in the early morning and then moving toward the Sandton and Pretoria.
"Amazing! Never happened in my life," said Mizundile Eseu, 23, a security guard.
Authorities urged motorists to take care on the roads, with few drivers used to travelling on snowy streets, but no accidents had been reported by midday.
