Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Three killed, 90,000 evacuated in Jakarta floods


terradaily.com
Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:00 UTC
Three people have been killed and nearly 90,000 forced to evacuate their homes in the Indonesian capital due to heavy floods, officials said Saturday.

The health ministry said 88,261 people had abandoned flooded homes in Jakarta, where heavy rain also forced the international airport to close for about six hours on Friday.

"A three-year-old boy and a 21-year-old man drowned yesterday (Friday). Another woman, 50, was also killed but we don't know what the cause is," an officer from the national disaster management centre Setyo told AFP.
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Alarm Clock

Rain Forests Fall at 'Alarming' Rate

Edward Harris
Associated Press
Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:36 UTC
Abo Ebam, Nigeria - In the gloomy shade deep in Africa's rain forest, the noontime silence was pierced by the whine of a far-off chain saw. It was the sound of destruction, echoed from wood to wood, continent to continent, in the tropical belt that circles the globe.
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Cloud Lightning

Scotland: January wettest on record in Edinburgh

Hazel Mollison
news.scotsman.com
Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:49 UTC
Edinburgh has had its wettest January for more than 100 years, with nearly three times the average amount of rainfall.

Met Office forecasters say 178 millimetres of rain have fallen in the Capital since the start of the month, the highest since they began measuring in the 1890s.
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Snowman

For third day in a row, severe winter conditions batter Canada

Matt Hartley
The Canadian Press
Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:42 UTC
With the power out in her hometown of O'Leary, PEI, last night, Ella Lewis and her husband Harry donned extra sweaters and gathered as many blankets as they could find to prepare for the cold night ahead.

The small town of about 870 is just one of dozens of communities left in the dark after heavy ice from a recent storm brought down trees and power lines, causing blackouts across Prince Edward Island.
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Cloud Lightning

Nigeria: Dry season dust storms 'worst in living memory'

Imam Imam
allAfrica.com
Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:16 UTC


©Unknown

For residents of Zamfara State and in fact the North West geo-political zone of the country, the past few weeks have brought about some of the most difficult weather conditions seen in recent years. The dry season, known in this part of the world as Harmattan, has been in its worst form in living memory, bringing socio-economic activities to a halt.
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Bizarro Earth

Havoc as gales and blizzards hit Britain


UK Guardian
Sat, 02 Feb 2008 16:19 UTC
Mountainous seas are threatening to sink four stranded ships after a series of dramatic rescues saw more than 40 crew and passengers winched to safety or taken off in lifeboats as gales swept over Britain.
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Snowman

China's snow storms cause $7.5 billion damage


RIA Novosti
Sat, 02 Feb 2008 15:39 UTC
China's heaviest snow storms in 50 years have wreaked havoc on the country's economy causing damage of $7.5 billion, a senior official said.

"The snow has taken a toll on the Chinese economy," the Xinhua news agency cited Zhu Hongren, deputy director of the Bureau of Economic Operations with the National Development and Reform Commission.

Crops and farmland have been particularly badly hit with around 17.5 acres of agricultural land affected. The Ministry of Agriculture was cited as saying that 14.4 million poultry had died from the cold, as well as over 870,000 pigs, 450,000 sheep and 85,000 cattle.
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Life Preserver

UK Blizzards: Dozens Of Trapped Motorists Rescued


Sky News
Sat, 02 Feb 2008 11:54 UTC
Dozens of motorists who were trapped in blizzards in County Durham have been rescued.

Many are likely to spend the night in temporary accommodation.

At one point 150 cars carrying around 200 motorists were stranded in drifting snow along the A66 near the village of Bowes.

©Unknown
A trapped car in County Durham

Heavy snow hit the north of the country on Friday afternoon, catching many motorists out.

Bob Baldwin of the Highways Agency, told Sky News up to half a metre of drifting snow had accumulated on parts of the road in a very short amount of time.
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Cloud Lightning

US: Storm Makes Drivers Slip, Fliers Wait

Carla K. Johnson
Associated Press
Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:43 UTC
Chicago, Illinois - A heavy, wet winter snowstorm made travel treacherous on Friday in the Midwest and Northeast and was blamed for at least 10 traffic deaths.
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Attention

Western Water Supplies Already Altered by Global Warming

Andrea Thompson
livescience.com
Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:47 UTC
When it rains, it sometimes still pours out West. But it's not enough.

Changes in the western U.S. water supply, such as a declining snowpack and rivers running dry in the summer, can mostly be attributed to human-caused climate change, a new study finds. These changes will require a new approach to water management in the West in the future, scientists say.

©David W. Pierce, SIO; land image courtesy of NASA's Earth Observatory
Observations throughout the western U.S. show snowpack is decreasing, rivers are flowing earlier in the year, and spring temperatures are increasing. A formal detection and attribution study of these changes shows the majority of these trends are due to human effects on the climate.
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