Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

El Nino intensifies Latin America drought

From a devastating food crisis in Guatemala to water cuts in Venezuela, El Nino has compounded drought damage across Latin America this year.

The occasional seasonal warming of central and eastern Pacific waters upsets normal weather patterns across the globe and occurs on average every two to five years. Typically lasting around 12 months, El Nino reappeared once again in June.

Guatemalan authorities blamed it for the nation's worst drought in 30 years, which has left almost 500 people dead from hunger since the start of the year. Around 36,000 hectares (90,000 acres) of corn and bean crops were lost, officials said.

Bizarro Earth

5.1 Earthquake Jolts Mexico Pacific Coast

An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale struck Jalisco, a state on Mexico's Pacific coast on Monday, the state-run National Seismology Service said.

It was recorded 8 minutes and 41 seconds after midnight as was 192 kilometers (km) southwest of Cihuatlan, a town in Jalisco. There have been no reports so far of harm to people or damage to property.

The quake was 30 km deep and was located at 18.05 degrees north and 105.88 degrees west in longitude. The U.S. Geological Survey reported the magnitude as 5.2.

Frog

New Chameleon Species Discovered in East Africa

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© University of YorkKinyongia magomberae (the Magombera chameleon)
Dr Andrew Marshall, from the Environment Department at the University of York, first spotted the animal while surveying monkeys in the Magombera Forest when he disturbed a twig snake eating one.

The specimen was collected, tested and compared to two others found by scientists in the same area and has now been named Kinyongia magomberae (the Magombera chameleon) in research published in the African Journal of Herpetology.

Dr Marshall is co-author of the study alongside researchers from the Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali, the South African National Biodiversity Institute, Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Stellenbosch.

Fish

Sea Stars Bulk Up to Beat the Heat

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© Nancy SeftonOchre sea stars (Pisaster ochraceus) are voracious predators in the intertidal zone. Feeding on mussels and other mollusks, they limit the range of these species.
A new study finds that a species of sea star stays cool using a strategy never before seen in the animal kingdom. The sea stars soak up cold sea water into their bodies during high tide as buffer against potentially damaging temperatures brought about by direct sunlight at low tide.

"Sea stars were assumed to be at the mercy of the sun during low tide," said the study's lead author, Sylvain Pincebourde of François Rabelais University in Tours, France. "This work shows that some sea stars have an unexpected back-up strategy."

The researcher is published in the December issue of The American Naturalist.

Sea stars need to endure rapid changes in temperature. During high tide, they are fully submerged in cool sea water. But when tides receded, the stars are often left on rocky shorelines, baking in the sun.

Cloud Lightning

England: 'Rain like this happens once every 1,000 years'



The full and devastating impact of England's worst recorded day of rain was still emerging last night as tributes were paid to a policeman swept away by floodwaters while trying to save others.

PC Bill Barker was helping motorists stranded on a bridge over the Derwent in the Cumbrian town of Workington when it collapsed. His body was discovered hours later on a nearby beach.

The Environment Agency said that the flooding across the region was so severe that such an event was likely to happen only once in 1,000 years. The rainfall, on to an already saturated terrain, was the highest level measured in England since records began. Meteorologists recorded 314mm (12in) of rain in 24 hours and flood warnings remained in place across the North West of England, parts of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Bizarro Earth

Colombia volcano eruption subsides, evacuation continues

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© Channel News Asia File PictureGaleras volcano
A volcanic eruption has eased enough to allow a local airport to open, but thousands of people are staying clear of Colombia's most active volcano as more activity is feared, authorities warned on Sunday.

Ashes are still falling near the Galeras volcano in the south, after Friday's eruption, but a colour-coded alert has been lowered from red to orange, the Colombia Institute of Geology and Mining (Ingeominas) said.

An orange alert means a new eruption was possible "in days or weeks," rather than imminently, it added.

Friday's eruption caused no casualties, but some 1,000 people were evacuated from around the volcano to Pasto, the capital of Narino department.

Another 8,000 people defied evacuation orders, refusing to leave their homes.

Authorities are urging people living in the Galeras foothills to leave for Pasto, 920 kilometres south of Bogota, as the danger of new eruptions is still quite high, warned Ingeominas deputy director Martha Calvache.

Better Earth

East Antarctic Ice Sheet May Be Losing Mass

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© UnknownThe mass loss is probably driven by processes occurring on the coast.
The East Antarctic ice sheet has been losing mass for the last three years, according to an analysis of data from a gravity-measuring satellite mission.

The scientists involved say they are "surprised" by the finding, because the giant East Antarctic sheet, unlike the west, has been thought to be stable.

Other scientists say ice loss could not yet be pinned on climate change, and uncertainties in the data are large.

The US-based team reports its findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The data comes from Nasa's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission.

Grace has previously shown that the smaller West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing mass.

Control Panel

Stunning Deception and Misconduct at UK Warming Research Center Revealed

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© Universal Studios
Climate researchers at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit may have intentionally and artificially skewed temperature data in studies

The field of global warming is a fascinating facet of atmospheric science. Unfortunately, few are approaching the topic from an unbiased perspective -- the majority is dead set on proving it, while other are equally passionate about disproving it, or at least removing the implication that man may play a role in global warming. Both sides have been found to falsify data, withhold information, or otherwise distort views on the topic, reportedly. Notably internal investigations found that the Bush administration worked to silence climatologists at NASA who published pro-warming papers. Likewise, James Hansen, the leading climate scientist at NASA, was found to be engaging in an equally deceptive game of altering temperature data to make warming look more serious than it was.

Light Saber

Best of the Web: Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

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Polar bear in the 'Plane Stupid' ad released in cinemas
If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files - including 1079 emails and 72 documents - you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be "the greatest in modern science". These alleged emails - supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory - suggest:
Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.
One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:
"In an odd way this is cheering news."

Butterfly

Tree-Eating Bugs Threaten Monarch Butterfly in Mexico

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© PhysOrgMonarch butterflies in the Mexican state of Michoacan.
The mysterious Monarch butterfly, which migrates en masse annually between Canada and Mexico, is now facing a new peril: another insect thriving in Western Mexican forests.

Some 8,000 oyamel fir trees - the butterflies' unique mountain habitat each winter -- were cut down in July in a bid to remove beetles that threaten the Monarch's ages-old migration.

But now another small beetle has since taken to devouring the savory tree trunks, further endangering the butterflies' winter colonies.

"We are working to determine how many trees have been affected," said Homero Gomez, president of El Rosario Sanctuary, a premier migrating spot for the Monarch in the western Mexican state of Michoacan.