Earth ChangesS


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Thousand of new volcanoes revealed beneath the waves

The true extent to which the ocean bed is dotted with volcanoes has been revealed by researchers who have counted 201,055 underwater cones. This is over 10 times more than have been found before.

The team estimates that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes, 39,000 of which rise more than 1000 metres over the sea bed.

Cloud Lightning

Cold snap kills three people in Argentina and Chile

A cold snap sent thermometers plunging in South America in recent days, killing three people in Chile and Argentina while Buenos Aires saw snow on Monday for the first time in 89 years.

The temperature dropped to minus 22 degrees Celsius (7.5 Farenheit) in Bariloche, in Argentina's southern Andes mountains, while snow flakes fell for the first time in Buenos Aires since 1918.

Question

Petless family forced to flee mysterious flea invasion

CICERO, N.Y. - Jeanne Sokolowski was watching television in her home around midnight last week when she had some minuscule intruders.

"I looked at the window and, all of a sudden, these bugs were all over the windows and were coming into the house. There were thousands of them," she said. "It was like a horror movie. It was unbelievable."

Hordes of fleas infested the Sokolowskis' home after a heavy rainfall, coming into the white ranch house through gaps in the windows, she said. She and her husband, Bill, immediately started scrubbing walls and windows and vacuuming their wall-to-wall carpeting.

Bizarro Earth

Flashback The Hidden History of Human Evolution

RECENTLY ARCHAEOLOGISTS have come to recognise that the way we see the past is to a large extent influenced by our present conceptions, particularly our present conception of time. They have therefore come to see the value of looking at the past through different time lenses.

I proposed to examine the entire archaeological record through a time lens derived from the ancient Sanskrit writings of India, especially the Puranas, or histories. The writings contradict the dominant view that anatomically modern humans arose between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago from more ape-like ancestors.

Bizarro Earth

Million-year-old human tooth found in Spain

Spanish researchers on Friday said they had unearthed a human tooth more than one million years old, which they estimated to be the oldest human fossil remain ever discovered in western Europe.

Snowman

First major snow in Buenos Aires since 1918




Thousands of Argentines cheered in the streets of Buenos Aires on Monday as the capital saw a rare snowfall, the first of its kind since 1918.

Wet snow fell for hours in the Argentine capital without accumulating on Monday, after freezing air from Antarctica collided with a moisture-laden low pressure system that blanketed higher elevations in western and central Argentina with snow.

Argentina's National Weather Service said it was the first major snow in Buenos Aires since June 22, 1918, though sleet or freezing rain have been periodically reported in decades since.

The snow followed a bitter cold snap in late May that saw subfreezing temperatures, the coldest in 40 years in Buenos Aires. That cold wave contributed to an energy crisis and 23 deaths from exposure.

Two more exposure deaths were reported on Monday.

Attention

Status of Indonesia volcano on full alert, thousands evacuated



©AFP

Indonesian authorities have raised the status of Mt. Gamkonora in eastern Indonesia to top alert since Monday after it spewed ash and smoke, while thousands of people living on its slope have been evacuated, the Center of Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation said Tuesday.

Bulb

Florida Raises Ill-Fated Artificial Reefs

MIAMI -- When people began dumping used tires in the ocean 40 years ago to create artificial reefs, they gave little thought to the potential environmental cost, or to how difficult it would be to pick them up.

Cloud Lightning

Much of US under oppressive heat

Much of the US is dealing with some oppressive heat. And for some parts of the country extreme heat isn't something people are used to.

Forget about the three H's: hazy, hot, and humid fails to sum up the sizzling, sweltering, steamy summer across much of the country. The scorching heat that gripped the western end of the country for the past week is now blanketing the east as well.

Cloud Lightning

Parched Everglades Need More Than Rain

One hard rainfall won't even come close to solving the unprecedented drought withering much of Florida.

Lake Okeechobee, the heart of the Everglades and a backup drinking water source for millions of South Florida residents, has been hitting a record low almost weekly. Its main artery, the Kissimmee River starting near Orlando, hasn't flowed south in more than 240 days, depriving the lake of 50 percent of its water.

Water managers say the Kissimmee River basin needs about 5 feet of rain - just to catch up.