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US: Bull Sharks Making Homes in Waters of South Alabama

Ben Raines
Alabama Live
Fri, 01 Oct 2010 04:00 UTC
Image
© Wikipedia Commons/Albert kok
Bull sharks born in waters around south Alabama are staying in the area and using the rivers as they get larger.
Bull sharks are common in Dog River, Fowl River and the rivers of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, according to a tracking effort conducted by the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.

During the last two years, 34 newborn sharks have been fitted with radio tags that transmit signals to receivers set up in the rivers around Mobile Bay.

While last year's data suggested that the babies were making use of the coastal rivers, it has now become apparent that sharks coming into their second year are staying in the area and using the rivers as they get larger.

The researchers said they also routinely catch adult bull sharks in Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound, some longer than 6 feet.
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Magnify

Roundup: Climate Science in 2009


The Guardian, UK
Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:00 UTC
For climate science, the year 2009 brought significant discoveries and startling controversies.

Warming goes global

The year started out with some sobering, if not altogether surprising, news: overall, the Antarctic continent is warming. Although some of the Antarctic Peninsula had previously shown rapid warming, parts of the continent - especially near the South Pole - seemed to be unaccountably cooling.

In January, climatologist Eric Steig of the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues reported (Nature 457, 459 - 462; 2009) that warming was widespread across the continent. Using satellite measurements combined with historical weather station data to interpolate Antarctic temperatures over the last 50 years, they found that the average temperature in West Antarctica had increased 0.1 °C per year. The previous apparent cooling resulted from the fact that prior to the use of satellites, data existed for only a relatively small number of weather stations.

Their findings were backed up by a study published in October. Writing in Geophysical Research Letters (36, L20704; 2009) Liz Thomas and colleagues from the British Antarctic Survey reported that an ice core taken in the southwestern Antarctic Peninsula showed warming of 2.7 °C over the last 50 years.
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Magnify

New Predictions for Sea Level Rise


PhysOrg
Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00 UTC
Fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements have been used to place better constraints on future sea level rise, and to test sea level projections.

The results are published today in Nature Geoscience and predict that the amount of sea level rise by the end of this century will be between 7- 82 cm - depending on the amount of warming that occurs - a figure similar to that projected by the IPCC report of 2007.

Placing limits on the amount of sea level rise over the next century is one of the most pressing challenges for climate scientists. The uncertainties around different methods to achieve accurate predictions are highly contentious because the response of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to warming is not well understood.

Dr Mark Siddall from the University of Bristol, together with colleagues from Switzerland and the US, used fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements to reconstruct sea level fluctuations in response to changing climate for the past 22,000 years, a period that covers the transition from glacial maximum to the warm Holocene interglacial period.

Comment: This is a press release about the study, "Constraints on future sea level rise from paleo reconstructions" as published in the journal Nature Geoscience, which has been retracted in February 2010. See "Climate Scientists Withdraw Journal Claims of Rising Sea Levels" for further detail.

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Bizarro Earth

Canada, Quebec: Nun dies in Sherbrooke flooding


CBC News
Fri, 01 Oct 2010 17:51 UTC
Image
© CBC
Authorities closed major roads into Sherbrooke because of flooding.
Torrential rain over the past two days has caused major flooding across Quebec's Eastern Townships, killing at least one person.

More than 95 millimetres of rain have fallen in the region, which includes the city of Sherbrooke in the last 24 hours, causing nearby rivers to spill their banks.

A 66-year-old Sherbrooke nun plunged to her death Friday morning while trying to track down a leak on her roof. The woman, who lived on Évangéline Street, fell several metres from a ladder as she tried to climb down, according to eyewitnesses.

About 100 people were forced out of their homes because of high water levels in the Saint-François River, which rose to seven metres on Friday.

Transport authorities shut down at least two major arteries into the downtown core, Saint-François North Street and Grandes-Fourches Street because of water accumulation.
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Attention

Germany: Evacuations begin amid record flooding in Brandenburg


The Local
Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:40 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Emergency services in Brandenburg are preparing to evacuate the towns of Elsterwerda and Bad Liebenwerda amid flooding caused by record high water levels on the Elster River, officials said Wednesday.

Students of the Elsterschloss secondary school in Elsterwerda were forced to evacuate the school building on Wednesday, a police spokesman said.

In Bad Liebenwerda, the water level had already exceeded the maximum stage four flood alert by 30 centimetres. According to the state's Environment Ministry, the situation was intensifying in that town, with flood waters spilling over the dykes.

"This is no normal flood. We have the highest-ever measured water levels on the Elster," said ministry head Matthias Freude.

In places the flood waters could no longer be contained, making evacuations unavoidable, he said.

In particular danger was the area around the town of Pulsnitz in Saxony and the Schwarzer Elster River.

More than 800 emergency workers have been deployed and 150,000 sandbags transported to the area to contain the rising water.

The head of Ministry for the Cottbus region, Wolfgang Genehr, described the situation as "extremely critical."
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Attention

New Zealand: 1311 aftershocks following Canterbury quake


Radio New Zealand
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 14:50 UTC
Christchurch has now experienced 1311 aftershocks since the magnitude 7.1 earthquake on 4 September.

A magnitude 3.9 quake was recorded at 10.05am on Saturday.

It lasted for about five seconds and was centred 30km south-east of Darfield, at a depth of 12km.
      Read More...
Magic Wand

The Royal Society: Still Embarrassing Science

Indur M. Goklany
Watts Up With That
Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:31 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Guest post by Indur M. Goklany

Although it is encouraging that the Royal Society now acknowledges that climate science may not be as settled as it previously implied, the Society's new report still stands as an embarrassment to science because it fails to offer justifications based on science (and policy analysis) for a number of its (politically correct) statements.

First, it claims in its opening sentence, "Changes in climate have significant implications for present lives, for future generations and for ecosystems on which humanity depends." But two paragraphs later it acknowledges that, "[T]he impacts of climate change ... are not considered here." Hence, the RS has no scientific (or other basis) for this claim. At most it could say, "ALTHOUGH WE DID NOT CONSIDER THEIR IMPACTS, changes in climate COULD have significant implications for present lives..., IF SUCH CHANGES ARE VERY LARGE." [Suggested INSERTIONS in the RS's original language are in UPPERCASE letters.]
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Better Earth

Top Science Body Cools on Global Warming

Graham Lloyd and Matthew Franklin
The Australian
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 12:00 UTC
There are gaps in scientific understanding making predicting the extent of climate change and sea level rises impossible.

That's the claim of Britain's highest scientific authority, the Royal Society.

The society's revised Guide to the Science of Climate Change has been interpreted as a retreat from politics by an organisation regarded as the world's most authoritative scientific body following the scandal that engulfed the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The society's new guide does not dismiss climate change or the need for co-ordinated global action to combat it.

Comment: The cracks in the facade are appearing when even the Royal Society expresses some uncertainty about climate change. They still cannot quite bring themselves to actually bite the hand that feeds them through research grants, but they are slowly moving closer to admitting that climate change is not man made.

      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

US: Mighty Rains Deluge Cars, Close Roads in Northeast

Frank Eltman and Jim Fitzgerald
The Associated Press
Fri, 01 Oct 2010 10:04 UTC
Image
© Matt Rourke/AP Photo
Amel Sincere empties out her car after receded floodwaters submerged the parking lot of the Waterford Apartments in Havertown, Pa., Friday.
Torrential downpours from a faded tropical storm inundated the Northeast on Friday, forcing evacuations, toppling trees, cutting power to thousands and washing out roads during a snarled morning commute. Water pooled so deeply in a Philadelphia suburb that a car literally floated on top of another car.

The storm that killed five people in North Carolina on Thursday soaked a great swath of the Northeast by the Friday morning commute, including New York City and Philadelphia. Flights coming into LaGuardia Airport in New York City were delayed three hours and traffic coming into Manhattan was delayed by up to an hour under a pounding rain.

Firefighters in the Philadelphia area used a ladder truck to pull residents through the upper-floor windows of a building. Cars were submerged up to their windows, and a graphic artist found another vehicle floating atop his car.

Rainfall totals in the Philadelphia area topped 10 inches.
      Read More...
Binoculars

East Africa: Rare Pink Hippo Spotted


The Telegraph, UK
Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:45 UTC
Image
© Burrard-Lucas/Barcroft
The rare pink hippopotamus stands next to a river in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya
Rare pictures of a pink hippopotamus have been captured by British photographers.

Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas, were visiting the Masai Mara in Kenya, hunting the wildebeest migration, only to find a pink hippo.

"Our guide had mentioned that he had heard rumours of this rare hippo from a fellow guide, however, he was not told where it lived and he had never come across it before," said Will, 26.

"After a rather uneventful morning, we stopped on the banks of the Mara River for a picnic breakfast.

"After a while, to our great surprise, we spotted the pink hippo emerge onto the far bank of the river."
      Read More...
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