Scientists have spotted a mysterious uptick in the appearance of unexplained patches of white water in the shallow waters off the coast of the Bahamas, reports a new study based on satellite observations.

For almost a century, people have observed these so-called "whiting" events, which typically cover an area equivalent to a few hundred football fields, but nobody knows the exact cause of this phenomenon. Samples show that the discoloration is caused by fine-grained calcium carbonate that floats over the Bahama Banks, which are carbonate structures that surround the archipelago, but it's not clear why the grain clouds sporadically appear in the ocean.

To shed light on this enigma, researchers from the University of South Florida compiled the longest and most detailed space-down view of the Bahama Bank whiting events using observations captured by NASA's Aqua satellite between 2003 and 2020.

The team also trained a machine learning tool to analyze the images, an approach that revealed a "mysterious increase" in whiting events over the past decade, which peaked in 2015, as well as seasonal patterns in these discolorations, according to a recent study in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment.

The number of flood victims seeking shelter in relief centres in Johor state rose to 1,093 in the late afternoon on Tuesday, as several districts were inundated with rising river waters amid the heavy rain. Johor's State Disaster Management Committee had earlier said some 422 victims were forced to move to relief centres.

Most of the victims were from the northern district of Segamat, with 975 people from 273 families placed at eight relief centres, officials said.

Other districts hit by the flood were in Kluang in central Johor and Kota Tinggi in the east of the Malaysian state. Many of the victims were villagers who live close to rivers that have overflowed their banks after days of non-stop rains.

Arctic skies are filling with color today--but it's not the aurora borealis. A rare outbreak of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) is underway. Jónína Óskarsdóttir photographed the display from Fáskrúðsfjörður, Iceland:
"We have been seeing these clouds for a couple of days," reports Óskarsdóttir. "In this picture, Mt. Jökultindur is silhouetted by a sky-full of nacreous color."

Algeria witnessed rare snowfall on Tuesday in a number of desert areas in the south-west of the country. Images published by the Bechar province authorities on Facebook showed "Beni Ounif in white" as sand dunes acquired a blanket of snow.

This was the first heavy snowfall in the area since 2012. Happy local residents have been sharing their own photos and video clips on social media.

The state-run Meteorological Office issued alerts on Monday morning of snowfall in Bechar in areas between 800 and 1,000 metres above sea level. Snow is expected to continue to fall on Thursday evening in other desert provinces, including Ghardaia, which is 700 km south of Algiers.

The two men killed by an avalanche while heli-skiing near Revelstoke, B.C., on Monday have been identified as brothers and business leaders from Pennsylvania.

Timothy and Jonathan Kinsley were near Mount McCrae, in an area known as Chocolate Bunnies, with a heli-skiing guide when the avalanche struck and buried them in snow.

The three men were airlifted to Kelowna and rushed to hospital, but the Kinsleys could not be saved. Their guide, an employee of CMH Heli-Skiing, remained hospitalized Tuesday in stable condition.

Timothy Kinsley was the president of Kinsley Properties, a Pennsylvania real estate developer, while his brother was an executive at Kinsley Enterprises, a management company that oversees their family's business assets.

The coldest air mass of the season continues to bring snow, mainly to areas along the Sea of Japan coast from western to eastern Japan. The mercury has dropped below zero Celsius across the country.

Weather officials are advising people to refrain from non-essential outings and watch out for icy road conditions. They also warn that water pipes could freeze.

The Meteorological Agency says a strong winter pressure pattern is bringing an influx of cold air.

Okuizumo Town in Shimane Prefecture saw 18 centimeters of snow during the three hours through 4 a.m. on Wednesday.

As of 4 a.m., snowfall had reached 1.54 meters in Daisen, Tottori Prefecture, and 1.05 meters in Nozawaonsen Village, Nagano Prefecture.

Disaster authorities in Indonesia report severe flooding and landslides in areas of Sumatra island which began after heavy rainfall on 21 January 2023. As of 24 January, almost 100,000 people and 15,000 homes have been affected. Three fatalities were reported.

Areas in Aceh Province in the far north of Sumatra Island were severely impacted, with flooding reported in the regencies of Pidie Jaya, Aceh Tamiang, East Aceh, Bireuen, Pidie and North Aceh.

One person died in Aceh Tamiang Regency, where floods affected almost 45,000 residents and displaced around 3,000.

Flooding and landslides also struck in Deli Serdang in North Sumatra Province and in Padang Pariaman Regency in West Sumatra Province where 2 people died and 5 were injured.

The minimum temperature in Mohe, China's northernmost city, fell to minus 53 degrees Celsius Sunday, marking the lowest temperature ever recorded, according to the local weather bureau.

The figure broke the previous record of minus 52.3 degrees Celsius. Temperatures in Mohe, Heilongjiang Province, have dropped to below minus 50 degrees Celsius for a consecutive of three days.

As a new round of extreme cold hit Heilongjiang, a number of areas in the Greater Khingan Range have recorded their coldest ever temperatures.

Mohe has an annual ice and snow period of up to eight months, with the annual average temperature being around minus 3 degrees Celsius.

As the travel peak season arrived during the Spring Festival, tourists and local citizens are advised to keep warm and safe as the low visibility might cause traffic accidents, according to Xu Liling, head of the Mohe meteorological station.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 jolted 33 km WSW of Campo Gallo, Argentina, at 18:37:00 GMT on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The epicenter, with a depth of 601.024 km, was initially determined to be at 26.6892 degrees south latitude and 63.165 degrees west longitude.

Whisper it quietly - and don't tell Al 'Boiling Oceans' Gore - but the Northern hemisphere may be entering a temperature cooling phase until the 2050s with a decline up to 0.3°C. By extension, the rest of the globe will also be cooled. These sensational findings, ignored by the mainstream media, were released last year and are the work of six top international scientists led by Nour-Eddine Omrani of the Norwegian Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. Published in the Nature journal Climate and Atmospheric Science, the scientists say that the North Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, an important sea current that has been pumping warmer water into the Arctic, is weakening and that's leading to a cooler North Atlantic area and lower temperatures, as was observed in the period 1950-1970.

Certainly, current observations back up these suggestions. As we reported recently, Arctic summer sea ice stopped declining about a decade ago and has shown recent growth. The Greenland surface ice sheet grew by almost 500 billion tonnes in the year to August 2022, and this was nearly equivalent to its estimated annual loss. Of course, climate alarmists have not quite caught up with these recent trends, with Sir David Attenborough telling his BBC Frozen Planet II audience that the summer sea ice could all be gone within 12 years.

Interestingly, the six scientists, whose work has helped debunk the 'settled' science myth, still attribute some global warming to human causes. The Northern hemisphere is characterised by "several multidecadal climate trends that have been attributed to anthropogenic climate change". But producing work that predicts 30 years of global cooling puts them outside the 'settled' narrative that claims human-produced carbon dioxide is the main - possibly the only - determinant of global and local temperatures. At the very least, it dials down the hysteria pushing for almost immediate punitive net-Zero measures. Lead author Omrani is reported to have said that the expected warming pause "gives us time to work out technical, political and economic solutions before the next warming phase, which will take over again from 2050".

Needless to say, such thinking was absent at last week's Davos climate freak show, with elite delegates ramping up the fearmongering to record heights. Former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore went into full meltdown, ranting about "rain bombs" and "boiling oceans". Current U.S. climate envoy, and private jet owner, John Kerry described the gathering as a "select" group of people trying to "save the planet", while chief UN carnival barker Antonio Guterres claimed we were flirting with climate disaster and every week brought a new horror story. Of course, some might suggest that in the circumstances this was an all-round excellent effort to whip up more money - ahem, I mean more genuine climate concern - at a time when corals, Arctic sea ice, the Greenland ice sheet, polar bears and now global warming are having to be retired from the poster-alarm portfolio.