Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Campi Flegrei supervolcano raising anxiety among Italian residents


The Extinction Protocol
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:58 UTC
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A restive supervolcano west of Naples is raising nervousness in the local Italian population. The ground of the Campi Flegrei "burning fields," also known as the Phlegraean Fields, has risen more in recent weeks than it has in a long time. This does not necessary indicate a heightened risk of an eruption, however, said Thomas Wiersberg, a scientific drilling expert for the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam. The Phlegraean Fields are a large caldera, or volcanic crater, lying mostly underwater off the Italian coast. The caldera is thought to have been formed by a massive eruption some 35,000 to 40,000 years ago. The last major eruption in the fields of boiling mud and sulphurous steam holes, one of a few dozen super volcanoes worldwide, occurred in 1538.

Wiersberg is part of an international research team that began drilling into the ground not far from the caldera last summer to monitor possible early warning signs of an eruption. The team has drilled a pilot hole to a depth of 500 meters but no data has been gathered yet, Wiersberg said in an interview with dpa. Italy's Department of Civil Protection recently raised the alert level for the Phlegraean Fields, where Wiersberg said the ground was rising by about three centimeters a month. There are concerns that a magma chamber under the fields, presumably connected to the one under Mount Vesuvius, east of Naples, is filling up, the rising pressure possibly heightening the danger of an eruption.
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Control Panel

Argentina freezes supermarket prices in attempt to break inflation spiral brought on by skyrocketing food prices

Almudena Calatrava
myfoxny.com
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 06:22 UTC
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Supermarket looting in Argentina in December 2012
Argentina announced a two-month price freeze on supermarket products Monday in an effort to break spiraling inflation.

The price freeze applies to every product in all of the nation's largest supermarkets - a group including Walmart, Carrefour, Coto, Jumbo, Disco and other large chains. The companies' trade group, representing 70 percent of the Argentine market, reached the accord with Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno, the government's news agency Telam reported.

The commerce ministry wants consumers to keep receipts and complain to a hotline about any price hikes they see before April 1.

Polls show Argentines worry most about inflation, which private economists estimate could reach 30 percent this year. The government says it's trying to hold the next union wage hikes to 20 percent, a figure that suggests how little anyone believes the official index that pegs annual inflation at just 10 percent.

Comment: Supermarket looting spreads in Argentina

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Arrow Up

Higher than expected food prices increase Turkish inflation in January

Asad Naeem
Business Recorder
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 06:17 UTC
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Turkish inflation rose in January more than analysts had forecast due to higher food and tobacco prices, data showed on Monday, although the market impact was limited as the central bank had flagged a rise.

The consumer price index rose 1.65 percent month-on-month in January, above a Reuters poll forecast of 1.14 percent, for year-on-year inflation of 7.31 percent, the data from the Turkish statistics institute showed.

The lira stood at 1.7487 against the dollar by 0823 GMT, slightly firming from 1.7494 late on Friday. The yield on the two-year benchmark bond inched down to 5.81 percent from 5.84 percent earlier.

Central Bank Governor Erdem Basci warned last week that there would be a limited rise in January inflation due to tobacco price adjustments. But analysts said food prices also contributed to the increase.
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Bizarro Earth

Potential for 'superquakes' underestimated, recent earthquakes show

Becky Oskin
OurAmazingPlanet
Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:14 UTC
Sumatra Earthquake
© U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Philip A. McDanielA village near the coast of Sumatra lays in ruin, Jan. 2, 2005, as a result of the tsunami that struck South East Asia Dec. 26, 2004.
The earthquakes that rocked Tohoku, Japan in 2011, Sumatra in 2004 and Chile in 1960 - all of magnitude 9.0 or greater - should not have happened, according to seismologist's theories of earthquake cycles. And that might mean earthquake prediction needs an overhaul, some researchers say.

All three earthquakes struck along subduction zones, where two of Earth's tectonic plates collide and one dives beneath the other. Earlier earthquakes had released the pent-up strain along Chile's master fault, meaning no big quakes were coming, scientists had thought. Japan and Sumatra both sat above on old oceanic crust, thought to be too stiff for superquakes.

And records of past quakes, combined with measurements of the speed of Earth's tectonic plates, suggested the Tohoku and Sumatra-Andaman regions couldn't make quakes larger than 8.4, almost nine times smaller than a magnitude 9.0 temblor.

"These areas had been written off as places incapable of producing a great earthquake," said Chris Goldfinger, a marine geologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

But the events of 1960, 2004 and 2011 showed that these faults were capable of producing some of the most destructive earthquakes in recorded history, suggesting earthquake researchers need to re-think aspects of how they evaluate a fault's earthquake potential.

"It's time to come up with something new," Goldfinger told OurAmazingPlanet.
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Bizarro Earth

Seismologist warns of megathrust earthquake threat for New Zealand

Patrick O' Sullivan
Hawke's Bay Today
Mon, 04 Feb 2013 07:37 UTC
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Less than 100km off the coast of Hawke's Bay is a deep-water trench that could be the site of a potential megathrust earthquake similar to the 2011 Japan earthquake, says seismologist Kevin Furlong.

Despite the Hikurangi Trench's potential, he said very little was known about the underwater valley, where the Pacific plate was dragged underneath the Australian plate.

Professor Furlong, of Pennsylvania State University, said the worst-case scenario for the East Coast was not yet known.

"Many, if not most, scientists working on these megathrust earthquake plate boundaries would argue that, although it is very, very unlikely, until we can demonstrate otherwise we should expect that major segments of these boundaries could rupture simultaneously.

"Most of the time, as was the case in Japan for the past several hundred years at least, segments rupture individually and so maximum earthquakes are in the mid-to high magnitude 7 range. But on rare occasions, such as in 2011 in Japan, bigger ruptures can occur.
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Arrow Up

January food prices rise in Kenya

Peter Kiragu
allAfrica.com
Fri, 01 Feb 2013 07:03 UTC
Kenyans paid higher prices for most goods last month compared to December, official figures show, an indication than further reduction in lending rates may be halted.

Higher prices of commodities such as milk, wheat flour and sugar saw the overall rate of inflation rising to 3.67 per cent in January, up from 3.20 in December. Price rises were also noted in house rents, cooking gas and other cooking fuels which offset noted lower costs of electricity and kerosine.

For the month, the average price of 500ml packet of milk cost Sh38.31 up from Sh35.89 in December while the cost of a 2-kg wheat flour went up to Sh139.60 up from Sh138.34 the previous month. Prices of commodites such as sifted maize flour went down.

Consequently, the food and non alcoholic drinks' index rose by 1.24 per cent. The housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels' index went up 1.06 per cent.

The transport index went up by 0.61 per cent despite lower costs of petrol and diesel. "This was mainly due to higher costs of taxi, bus and matatu fares," a statement from the bureau of statistics said.
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Attention

In just one month, more than 40 huge sinkholes open up all over Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital, but the city is too broke to fix them

Damian Ghigliotty
Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 04 Feb 2013 06:43 UTC
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Harrisburg sinking: Pennsylvania's capital is riddled with sinkholes
  • Pennsylvania's state capital Harrisburg is struggling with 41 massive sinkholes running as wide as 50 feet
  • The city is too broke to fix them as it deals with ongoing fiscal problems
  • It could cost nearly half of Harrisburg's $50 million budget to permanently fix the holes
Officials in Pennsylvania's state capital are dealing with an abysmal issue they can't afford to fix: 41 massive sinkholes throughout the city as wide as 50 feet and as deep as a typical grave.

The mix of loose sandy soil and century-old leaking water pipes under Harrisburg's streets have made the area susceptible to such holes, city officials say.

But the city is too broke to replace many of the aging pipes and repave its roads as it deals with ongoing budget woes and the looming threat of bankruptcy, according to media reports.
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Bizarro Earth

Is fracking responsible for the flooding of an Upper Egyptian village?

Steven Viney
Egypt Indepedent
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:16 UTC
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© Abu El Fadl
The village of Fares, located about 75km north of the city of Aswan near Kom Ombo, is currently being destroyed by severe flooding of contaminated water caused by controversial oil drilling practices performed over the past four years, according to residents.

Fares is an agricultural village home to approximately 25,000 residents.

While they rely on arable land to survive, the continuous destruction of farms, trees, water supplies and even housing has forced many to try move away from the village into the desert, or onto higher terrain in the mountains.

However, government officials have been preventing evacuees from relocating onto what they claim is "private land," leaving many of Fares' residents homeless.

According to Sheikh Ahmed Abdel Hameed, a resident of Fares and key community activist, the initial floodings started in 2009 when oil drillers from DanaGas started test drilling on residential land in Fares without local consent.

"Not long after the drillers left, contaminated water started to pump out of the ground from the holes they had made, destroying everything," says Abdel Hameed, adding that now over 500 feddans of land and housing has been destroyed by constant flooding.

"It's poisonous water, and even small amounts destroy the plantations and trees, instead of hydrating them ... and sometimes it can get up to five feet high, destroying our houses too."
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X

Seabird death toll rises in mystery oil spill


The Independent
Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:06 UTC
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© Press AssociationThe pollution spill may affect thousands of seabirds
Investigators were today still trying to identify the source of a pollution spill that may yet kill thousands of seabirds along a stretch of the South Coast from West Sussex to Cornwall.

Hundreds of birds were washed ashore over the weekend covered with a sticky, oily substance. Experts say a change in the wind direction yesterday blew many birds out to sea and it is feared they will die of cold and exhaustion.
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Cloud Precipitation

Extreme weather events and Earth changes in January 2013

fidockave213
Youtube
Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:26 UTC
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