Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Flashback Manchester, England, shaken by sixth earthquake in a month

A small earthquake rumbled through the city centre of Manchester this morning, the sixth to hit the area this month.

Arrow Up

Greece suffers more fires in 2007 than in last decade, satellites reveal

Greece has experienced more wildfire activity this August than other European countries have over the last decade, according to data from ESA satellites. The country is currently battling an outbreak of blazes, which began last Thursday, that have spread across the country killing more than 60 people.

ESA's ERS-2 and Envisat satellites continuously survey fires burning across the Earth's surface with onboard sensors - the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) and the Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) respectively, known as the ATSR Word Fire Atlas, which is available to users online in near-real time.

The ATSR World Fire Atlas is the longest worldwide fire atlas available. Even if the atlas is not supposed to pick up all fires due to satellite overpass constraints and cloud coverage, it is statistically representative from one month to the other and from one year to the other.

Stop

Illegal traders drug elephant in bid to sell herd

A male elephant from Southwest China's Yunnan Province has been cured of its addiction to drugs and will soon return to the Xishuangbanna Tropical Rainforest in Yunnan.

Before April 2005, the elephant, named Big Brother, lived peacefully with its herd near the Sino-Myanmar border. But in that year, several illegal elephant traders set their sights on Big Brother and its herd. To control it so that it could lead the herd to where they wanted, the traders kept feeding it bananas laced with drugs.

In less than one month, Big Brother became so addicted that it began to drool and twitch when not given the drugs.

Cloud Lightning

New Lightning Sensors Warn of Hurricane's Power From Far Away

A NASA-supported study has introduced a new way to detect lightning outbreaks inside a hurricane from thousands of miles away, giving forecasters new insight into just how powerful an oncoming storm will be.

As a result, researchers can now investigate with greater accuracy how the rate of lightning strikes produced within a hurricane's eyewall is tied to the changing strength of that hurricane. A hurricane's eyewall is the inner heat-driven region of the storm that surrounds the "eye" where the most intense rainfall and most powerful winds occur. By monitoring the intensity of lightning near a hurricane's eye, scientists will be able to improve their forecasts of when a storm will unleash its harshest conditions.

©NASA
On Sept. 22, 2005, Hurricane Rita threatened the U.S. Gulf Coast. NASA's TRMM satellite helped create this three-dimensional view of the storm; storm clouds shown here in white.

Black Cat

Cat faeces 'may be killing whales'

Pet owners who flush cat faeces down the lavatory may be responsible for the deaths of whales, dolphins and porpoises around Britain's coast, according to academics and public health experts.

Bell

Update! 8.4 Quake triggers tsunami in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia - A massive earthquake shook Indonesia on Wednesday, killing seven people, injuring 100 and triggering a small tsunami that hit one city on the island of Sumatra, authorities said. Tsunami warnings were issued for much of the Indian Ocean region.

The 8.4-magnitude quake off Sumatra badly damaged buildings along the coast and could be felt in at least four countries, with tall buildings swaying as far as 1,200 miles away.

No Entry

'Killer bees' descend on New Orleans

MERAUX, La. - Africanized honeybees, a fierce hybrid strain sometimes referred to as "killer bees," appear to have established themselves in the New Orleans area, the state agriculture commissioner said.

A swarm of the bees was captured about five miles from where demolition workers found a colony of Africanized bees in January, commissioner Bob Odom said Tuesday.

Bell

Powerful 7.9 quake hits Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia - A powerful earthquake hit Indonesia on Wednesday, causing buildings to sway strongly in the capital, and authorities issued a tsunami warning for much of the Indian Ocean region.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.9 and hit at about 6:10 p.m. (7:10 a.m. EDT). It was centered 9.7 miles underground in the southern Sumatra area, the USGS said.

©USGS

Magic Wand

Spiders Spin Giant Web in Texas

WILLS POINT, Texas - A variety of spider species built on one another's work to create a sprawling web that blanketed hundreds of yards of trees and shrubs at a North Texas park, according to entomologists who studied the unusual formation.

Bulb

This year could be warmest on record in eastern Arctic

This year could be the warmest on record since climate monitoring in the Arctic Ocean began, a meteorological official said Tuesday.

"This year, the water is unusually warm in the Arctic Ocean and the summer ice has significantly declined, and is further to the north than usual with only one-year ice present. The ice, due to the influence of warm air and water, has been greatly reduced," Sergei Balyasnikov, the press secretary of the Russian hydrometeorological service's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said.