Earth Changes
The quake hit 740 km northeast of Papua New Guinea's capital of Port Moresby at 11:03 a.m. local time Tuesday (0103GMT) and the depth is 128 km below the earth's surface.
Waves reaching up to 11 metres devastated France's Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean when it slammed into the southern port of Saint Pierre on 12 May. Six days later waves created from the same storm measuring as high as seven metres began crashing into Indonesia coastlines from Sumatra to Bali, killing at least one person and causing some 1200 people to flee their homes.
Dr Bertrand Chapron of IFREMER, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea, and Dr Fabrice Collard of France's BOOST Technologies in Brest located and tracked the swells using standard processed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) ESA Wave Mode products, as shown in the animation below.
In Spitzing in Germany, locals have been forced to wrap up after ten centimetres of snow brought out the snowploughs for the first time this year.
By a consensus vote, Alaska Natives and the indigenous people of Chukotka, Russia, were allocated a shared catch limit of 280 bowhead whales over a period ending in 2012. The proposal maintained previous catch limits.
The whaling commission is holding its annual meeting near the icy coasts where Alaska Natives use whale meat as a staple in their diet and for cultural practices. The commission's U.S. delegation said its top priority was to obtain a renewal of their quota.
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©Roland Hilgartner / Mamisolo Raoilison |
The moth uses its barbed proboscis (close-up below) to penetrate the eyelid of sleeping birds and drink tears |
"The long-term forecast from the National Weather Service, the outlook for the summertime here, are for above normal temperatures centered pretty much right over Arizona, so we can expect most of this summer to be in the 100-degree range and above," said Arizona State University climatologist Randy Cerveney.
"At 4:00 p.m. Moscow time (noon GMT), a temperature of 32.1 degrees Celsius was recorded, surpassing a reading of 31.8 degrees Celsius (89.2 degrees Fahrenheit) set in 1891," the service said.
"We will only know this evening by how much that record has been beaten, as temperatures will continue rising several tenths of a degree," it said.
The lizard didn't bite anyone, but police officers were authorized to kill it because of the potential danger it posed to small children and animals.
An officer shot the reptile twice Sunday but wasn't close enough to catch it before the animal scampered into a retention pond, said Lt. Dennis Stewart of the Casselberry Police Department.
"If they did shoot it, I'm sure it's going to be angry if it comes out now," said Ilene Gothelf, whose home borders the pond about 10 miles from Orlando. "I want to know that it is safe for the kids to come out."