Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Lucky strike: San Francisco photographer captures dramatic lightning on early morning drive

Claire Bates
The Daily Mail
Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:00 UTC
If woken by a tumultuous storm outside, most of us will wisely pull the covers over our heads and try to go back to sleep. For one plucky photographer though, it was the chance to dash outside and capture some truly electric images.

Frank Fennema, 56 from California made the trip from his home in Tiburon, north of San Francisco, down to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Image
© Frank Fennemma
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Bizarro Earth

Satellite Data Look Behind the Scenes of Deadly Earthquake


ScienceDaily
Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:00 UTC
Surface
© Jianbao Sun; ALOS data: JAXAAn ALOS Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) interferogram that shows the surface deformation associated with the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.
Using satellite radar data and GPS measurements, Chinese researchers have explained the exceptional geological events leading to the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake that killed nearly 90,000 people in China's Sichuan Province.

"One of the very fundamental issues for understanding an earthquake is to know how the rupture is distributed on the fault plane, which is directly related to the amount of ground shaking and the damage it could cause at the surface," said Dr Jianbao Sun of the Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration (IGCEA).

To learn this, Sun and Prof. Zhengkang Shen of IGCEA and Peking University's Department of Geophysics, and collaborators acquired two kinds of satellite radar data: Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) data in C-band from ESA's Envisat satellite and Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) data from Japan's ALOS satellite.

Applying a technique called SAR Interferometry (InSAR) on the data, the researchers produced a set of 'interferogram' images covering the entire coseismic rupture region and its vicinity. This interferometric map revealed the amount and scope of surface deformation produced by the earthquake.
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Bizarro Earth

5.7 Earthquake Hits Andaman, Santa Cruz Islands


Bernama
Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:27 UTC
A moderate earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale hit Andaman Islands region at 5.29pm on Wednesday, the Malaysian Meteorological Department said.

In a statement, it said the quake's epicentre was 65km northeast of Little Andaman, India and 908km northeast of Langkawi, Kedah.

Meanwhile, a weak 4.8-magnitude earthquake struck Santa Cruz Islands at 5.35pm.

The earthquake's epicentre was 751km southeast of Honiara, Solomon Islands and 5,627km southeast of Kunak, Sabah.
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Bizarro Earth

Philippines: 4.1 Earthquake Hits Batangas


Inquirer
Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:09 UTC
A 4.1 magnitude earthquake shook Batangas province at 5:15 p.m. Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The inland tremor struck 55 kilometers northwest of Batangas and 65 kilometers south-southwest of Manila at a depth of 217.7 kilometers.

The Philippines sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" where continental plates collide causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity.
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Cloud Lightning

Weather Geeks Champion New Armageddon-Worthy Cloud

Mike Olson
Wired
Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:24 UTC
undulatus asperatus
© Danielle Maxwell
In hill country from Iowa to the Scottish Highlands, sky-gazers have reported some strange, ominous-looking clouds of late. Dubbed undulatus asperatus (turbulent undulation), the atmospheric anomaly could be headed where only 80-odd clouds have gone before: into the International Cloud Atlas. If it makes the cut, asperatus will be the first new addition in more than 50 years.
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Cloud Lightning

US: Southern California storm menaces neighborhoods near burn

Raquel Maria Dillon
Associated Press
Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:34 UTC
California storm
© Associated Press/Russel A. DanielsA person walks with an umbrella in San Francisco as the first major storm of the season hits the area on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009. Residents across California worried Tuesday about possible flash floods and mudslides as a storm began showering areas devastated by wildfires
A powerful fall storm packing strong winds, drenching rain and heavy snow has moved into Southern California where residents near fire-scarred hillsides braced for possible mudslides and debris flows.

The storm prompted evacuation warnings earlier Tuesday near Santa Cruz and disrupted power across the state.

Officials urged residents to evacuate from about 60 homes in the town of Davenport in the Santa Cruz Mountains, 50 miles south of San Francisco, where more than six inches of rain fell on an area that burned in August.

Residents in the area of the massive Station Fire in Los Angeles County were on guard. The wildfire burned into the backyards of foothill homes in September, and stripped the steep mountains of vegetation that holds the soil to the slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains.
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Better Earth

Chimps happy to help - you just have to ask

Ewen Callaway
New Scientist
Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:35 UTC
If you're looking for help from a chimp, don't forget to say please. Captive chimpanzees readily help others obtain an out-of-reach snack, but only if they beg for it, a new study shows.

Researchers have long debated whether chimpanzees act altruistically. In the wild, the great apes exchange grooming duties, and occasionally food such as meat, but whether these transactions fit the definition of altruism is controversial.

"It is difficult to evaluate the cost and benefit of behaviours in the wild and actually impossible to control the situations, and therefore it is disputable to say that it is altruistic behaviour," says Shinya Yamamoto, a primatologist at the Kyoto University in Japan, who led the new study.

Studies of captive chimps, meanwhile, found little consistent evidence for altruism, though one report showed that chimpanzees will lend humans a helping hand.
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Cow

Animals feel the pain of religious slaughter

Andy Coghlan
New Scientist
Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:29 UTC
Image
© Alex Segre / Rex FeaturesBrain signals have shown that calves appear to feel pain when slaughtered according to Jewish and Muslim religious law.
Brain signals have shown that calves do appear to feel pain when slaughtered according to Jewish and Muslim religious law, strengthening the case for adapting the practices to make them more humane.

"I think our work is the best evidence yet that it's painful," says Craig Johnson, who led the study at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Johnson summarised his results last week in London when receiving an award from the UK Humane Slaughter Association. His team also showed that if the animal is concussed through stunning, signals corresponding to pain disappear.

The findings increase pressure on religious groups that practice slaughter without stunning to reconsider. "It provides further evidence, if it was needed, that slaughtering an animal without stunning it first is painful," says Christopher Wathes of the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council, which has long argued for the practice to end.
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Igloo

US: Western Montana cold breaks records


Montana's News Station
Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:32 UTC
If you've spent any time outdoors the past four days in Western Montana, you could probably guess that we've hit record low temperatures, without your local weather guy confirming this fact.

We haven't just set new records, we've blown them out of the water. The lowest have been 10, 11 and 8 the last three mornings in Missoula, and we've gone at least nine degrees lower than the old record each morning.

In addition, wind chill values have been in the teens during the afternoon Saturday and Sunday.

Not that it's any comfort, the lowest average temperature for the entire year comes in late December and early January. That number is 15 degrees.
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Bizarro Earth

Philippines: Typhoon deaths now at 669

Elena L. Aben
Manila Bulletin
Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:21 UTC
The collective death toll from storms "Ondoy" and "Pepeng" which devastated huge areas of Luzon in the past two weeks has reached 669, with 462 injured and 87 missing, authorities said Monday.

Damage to infrastructure and agriculture was also placed at more than P15 billion, with more reports still to come in.

Field reports showed that the number of people who died from the onslaught of typhoon Pepeng (international codename Parma) now stands at 332.

The latest official report from the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) put the confirmed deaths only at 199, broken down as follows: 137 from the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), 53 from Region 1, four in Region 3, one in Region 4A, and four in Region 4B.
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