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Hottest air of season may follow record chill in Central U.S.

Alex Sosnowski
Accuweather.com
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 19:52 UTC
After record-challenging chill this week, temperatures could rebound to their highest level of the summer so far in parts of the North Central states next week.

A forecast shift in the jet stream will set into motion a marked temperature turnaround this weekend into next week over portions of the northern Plains and Midwest. The jet stream is a river of high-speed winds high above the ground that guides storms and air masses along.
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Hardhat

Miami is drowning while the powers that be look away

Robin McKie
The Guardian
Fri, 11 Jul 2014 00:00 UTC
Low-lying south Florida, at the front line of climate change in the US, will be swallowed as sea levels rise. Astonishingly, the population is growing, house prices are rising and building goes on. The problem is the city is run by climate change deniers
Miami Coastline
© Joe Raedle/Getty
The Miami coastline: there are fears that even a 30cm rise in the sea level could be catastrophic.
A drive through the sticky Florida heat into Alton Road in Miami Beach can be an unexpectedly awkward business. Most of the boulevard, which runs north through the heart of the resort's most opulent palm-fringed real estate, has been reduced to a single lane that is hemmed in by bollards, road-closed signs, diggers, trucks, workmen, stacks of giant concrete cylinders and mounds of grey, foul-smelling earth.

It is an unedifying experience but an illuminating one - for this once glamorous thoroughfare, a few blocks from Miami Beach's art deco waterfront and its white beaches, has taken on an unexpected role. It now lies on the front line of America's battle against climate change and the rise in sea levels that it has triggered.

"Climate change is no longer viewed as a future threat round here," says atmosphere expert Professor Ben Kirtman, of the University of Miami. "It is something that we are having to deal with today."
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Sun

20 Signs the epic drought in the western United States is starting to become apocalyptic, as food prices continue to rise at an alarming rate

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Tue, 15 Jul 2014 09:46 UTC
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When scientists start using phrases such as "the worst drought" and "as bad as you can imagine" to describe what is going on in the western half of the country, you know that things are bad. Thanks to an epic drought that never seems to end, we are witnessing the beginning of a water crisis that most people never even dreamed was possible in this day and age. The state of California is getting ready to ban people from watering their lawns and washing their cars, but if this drought persists we will eventually see far more extreme water conservation measures than that.

And the fact that nearly half of all of the produce in America comes out of the state of California means that ultimately this drought is going to deeply affect all of us. Food prices have already been rising at an alarming rate, and the longer this drought goes on the higher they will go. Let us hope and pray that this drought is permanently broken at some point, because otherwise we could very well be entering an era of extreme water rationing, gigantic dust storms and crippling food prices. The following are 20 signs that the epic drought in the western half of the United States is starting to become apocalyptic...
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Sun

Where did all the sunspots go? Eerie quiet descends on the sun


Spaceweather.com
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 11:58 UTC
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This week, solar activity has sharply declined. There is only one numbered sunspot on the Earth-facing side of the sun, and it is so small you might have trouble finding it. Click to enlarge this July 17th image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Obervatory and see if you can locate AR2113:

In case you couldn't find the sunspot's tiny decaying core, here it is.

Long-time readers absorbing this image might be reminded of 2008-2009, years of spotlessness when the sun plunged into the deepest solar minimum in a century. The resemblance, however, is only superficial. Deep inside the sun, the solar dynamo is still churning out knots of magnetism that should soon bob to the surface to make new sunspots. Solar Max is not finished, it's just miniature.

Until the sunspots return, solar flares are unlikely. NOAA forecasters estimate the odds of an M-flare today to be no more than 1%. Updates on Twitter @spaceweatherman.
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Attention

Dead and lost boobies: More than 6,000 dead seabirds found on Peruvian beaches, with thousands more in Chile

Katie Langin
National Geographic
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 11:13 UTC
Image
© Ronny Peredo
Dead seabirds—mostly Peruvian boobies—appeared along the northern Chilean coast in late June.
On June 20, naturalists aboard the National Geographic Endeavour spotted an unusual bird - a Peruvian booby - while exploring seabird colonies on the Galápagos Islands. What made seeing this bird so unusual? It was the first record ever made of the species in the eastern Pacific archipelago.

Peruvian boobies normally live along the western coastline of South America from Chile to southern Ecuador (some 600 miles - 966 kilometers - to the east of the Galápagos) where they feed on anchovies that thrive in the cold, productive water of the Humboldt Current.

In a typical year, the birds don't stray much farther than 40 miles (64 kilometers) from their homes. But it may not be a typical year. Instead, a growing El Niño weather pattern in the Pacific may have stirred up the boobies. And that could be bad news, leading to the starvation of thousands of seabirds.

Peruvian boobies are known for abandoning their normal feeding grounds when strong El Niños hit, sometimes traveling as far as Panama (850 miles, or 1,368 kilometers, to the north) in search of food.

"During El Niño conditions the likelihood of citing vagrant [Peruvian boobies] is much higher than during normal, non-El Niño conditions," said Carlos Zavalaga, a seabird biologist at the Universidad Cientifica del Sur in Lima, Peru.
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Cloud Lightning

At least 18 killed in China rainstorms


English.news.cn
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 23:36 UTC
china flooding
© Xinhua/Peng Biao
Rescuers evacuate people trapped in flood water in Jishou, central China's Hunan Province, July 16, 2014.
Continuous rainstorms have battered several provinces in China this week, killing at least 18 people and affecting several million.

In southwest China's Guizhou Province alone, 7 people were killed in floods, when their homes collapsed or by lightning strikes, the provincial civil affairs bureau said in a press release Wednesday. Three others were reported missing and more than 91,000 were relocated.H Heavy rain, which began on Sunday night and lasted through Wednesday, destroyed 5,800 homes and damaged another 16,300 in Guizhou.

In Tongren City, the Jinjiang River overflowed into many downtown streets, flooding homes and stores. Firefighters were mobilized to pump the floodwater from downtown areas.

Power supplies were cut off in nearly 300,000 homes in Tongren, Zunyi and Bijie. As of Wednesday night, about 100,000 homes were still without power.
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Cloud Lightning

Family of four struck by one lightning bolt during unusually high numbers of "fierce thunderstorms" in Norway


thelocal.no
Tue, 15 Jul 2014 10:33 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
Large lightning bolt at night
Four members of the same family were all struck by a lightning bolt on Saturday in Rennebu, South Trøndelag.

Around 5pm on Saturday, a married couple, both 57 years old, and their son, 24, and daughter, 23, were all admitted to St Olav's Hospital.

The couple and their daughter suffered only minor injuries from the lightning attack, but the young man was seriously injured. He was taken to intensive care at the hospital where his condition is said to be stable. He received vital heart and lung rescue at the scene of the incident after having a heart attack.

Tore Kyllo, operation leader with the local police, confirmed to NTB: "It is a family of four that is struck. One of them got a cardiac arrest, but resuscitation made his heart beat again."
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Attention

Deep water melon-headed whale was sick before it stranded on Perdido Key, Florida

Kimberly Blair
Pensacola News Journal
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 10:12 UTC
Image
© Ben Twingley
Workers take the dead melon-headed whale off the Perdido Key beach Tuesday afternoon.
A melon-headed whale that died Tuesday on Perdido Key was sick, and NOAA scientists will try to determine if it died from the same illness being blamed on a mass die-off of dolphins.

The small melon-headed whale that died Tuesday after stranding on Gulf Islands National Seashore's Perdido Key beach showed clear signs of suffering from some type of illness, initial findings from a necropsy revealed.

Exactly what made it sick won't be known for weeks or months, after pathologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service analyze tissue, blood samples and other data collected by Steve Shippee, stranding coordinator for Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge in Fort Walton Beach.

"Our dolphin, which we continue to believe is a melon-headed whale (Peponocephala electra), most likely had a chronic illness that should be detectable by pathology and lab analysis," he said. "On gross necropsy exam, we are able to describe lesions and injuries that an animal sustained, but the findings of the tissue analysis will take a while to be returned. Sadly, the animal was in the prime of life as a mature breeding age member of his species."
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Snowflake

Russian scientists: Forget global warming

Translated from Russian
ITAR-TASS
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 08:29 UTC
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Kazan Federal University: intense cold snap is to replace a long period of intense warming.

According to Russian scientists of Kazan Federal University (Republic of Tatarstan, Russia), air temperatures increase in the Northern Hemisphere registered during the past 37 years has slowed down.

"We analyzed the average long-term values and fluctuation of air temperatures, barometric pressure and wind speed in the Northern Hemisphere in 1948-2013 respectively, and found that after a long period of intense warming, a period of intense cold snap began" told Yuri Perevedentsev, staff member of the Meteorology Department at Kazan Federal University, to ITAR-TASS reporter. He explained that this data does not support the hypothesis of global warming, but rather reflects cyclical climatic processes.

The scientists also found that "the temperature curve resembles wind speed curve, only with some delay", and in some regions "the contribution of wind component to temperature fluctuation reaches 60 percent."

In recent years, said Yuri Perevedentsev, the wind speed started slowing down, and with a lag of about 8 years the average air temperature also went down. Analysis of a large array of meteorological data revealed uneven temperature changes in the midland, tropics and circumpolar regions. During the temperature increase amounting to more than 30 years in the mid-latitudes (30-70° N), the temperatures grew by 0.75 degrees, in the tropics the increase was less: by 0.54 degrees only, and the highest temperature increase (2.38 degrees) was registered in the circumpolar regions.

Comment: Read the following articles to learn more: Also, watch Habibullo Abdusomatov's speech:

Part 1


Part 2



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Alarm Clock

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 6.0 - 95km NNW of Yakutat, Alaska


U.S. Geological Survey
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 07:23 UTC
Earthquake in Yakutat Alaska
© USGS
Event Time
2014-07-17 11:49:37 UTC
2014-07-17 04:49:37 UTC-07:00 at epicenter

Location
60.217°N 140.550°W depth=14.8km (9.2mi)

Nearby Cities
95km (59mi) NNW of Yakutat, Alaska
300km (186mi) W of Whitehorse, Canada
411km (255mi) NW of Juneau, Alaska
512km (318mi) E of Knik-Fairview, Alaska
523km (325mi) E of Anchorage, Alaska

Scientific data
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