Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Antarctic Ozone Hole 5th Largest on Record

Ozone Hole
© NOAAShown here is the total ozone concentration over the South Pole on Sept. 14, 2011. The "hole" is designated as the area where the total ozone concentration is below 220 Dobson units (a measure of thickness) and shown in red.

The ozone hole above the Antarctic has reached its maximum extent for the year, revealing a gouge in the protective atmospheric layer that rivals the size of North America, scientists have announced.

Spanning about 9.7 million square miles (25 million square kilometers), the ozone hole over the South Pole reached its maximum annual size on Sept. 14, 2011, coming in as the fifth largest on record. The largest Antarctic ozone hole ever recorded occurred in 2006, at a size of 10.6 million square miles (27.5 million square km), a size documented by NASA's Earth-observing Aura satellite.

The Antarctic ozone hole was first discovered in the late 1970s by the first satellite mission that could measure ozone, a spacecraft called POES and run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The hole has continued to grow steadily during the 1980s and 90s, though since early 2000 the growth reportedly leveled off. Even so scientists have seen large variability in its size from year to year.

Bizarro Earth

Russia - Earthquake Magnitude 6.1

Russia Quake_141011
© USGSEarthquake Location.
Date-Time:
Friday, October 14, 2011 at 06:10:15 UTC

Friday, October 14, 2011 at 04:10:15 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
54.114°N, 123.724°E

Depth:
15.3 km (9.5 miles)

Region:
AMURSKAYA OBLAST', RUSSIA

Distances:
130 km (80 miles) SSW of Tynda, Russia

211 km (131 miles) NNW of Tahe, Heilongjiang, China

265 km (164 miles) E of Mogocha, Russia

5154 km (3202 miles) NE of MOSCOW, Russia

Cloud Lightning

Bangkok braced for devastating floods

bangkok floods
© ReutersA woman gestures towards passing boats as her dog stands on a fence in flooded Pathum Thani province
Anxiety and uncertainty seized Thailand's low-lying capital on Friday as residents waited apprehensively to find out if their city would be swamped by the rising flood waters that have shut factories and devastated rice crops across a swath of the country.

Conflicting official information sowed the seeds of doubt about the risk faced by city of 12 million as troops and an army volunteers rushed to shore up sandbag barriers crumbling under the deluge lapping at the periphery of the metropolis.

Stocks of food and bottled water have started to run low.

Panicked residents left bare supermarket shelves in buying sprees and trucks had difficulty making deliveries from outlying areas of the city.

Bizarro Earth

Papua New Guinea - Earthquake Magnitude 6.7

PNG Quake_141011
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Friday, October 14, 2011 at 03:35:15 UTC

Friday, October 14, 2011 at 01:35:15 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
6.626°S, 147.927°E

Depth:
45.4 km (28.2 miles)

Region:
EASTERN NEW GUINEA REG, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Distances:
103 km (64 miles) E of Lae, New Guinea, PNG

184 km (114 miles) WSW of Kandrian, New Britain, PNG

323 km (200 miles) NNE of PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea

2372 km (1473 miles) NNW of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia

Bizarro Earth

Indonesia: Dozens Injured In Bali Earthquake

A strong earthquake struck off the Indonesian island of Bali on late Thursday morning, seismologists said, collapsing a number of buildings and injuring dozens of people. There were no immediate reports of fatalities.

The 6.8-magnitude earthquake at 11.16 a.m. local time (0316 GMT) was centered about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of Denpasar, the capital city of Bali. It struck about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) deep, making it a shallow earthquake, according to Indonesia's seismological agency (BMKG).

The United States Geological Survey (USGS), which measured the strength of the earthquake at 6.1 on the moment magnitude scale, estimated that some 641,000 people in the region may have felt moderate shaking. Another 4.6 million people may have felt light shaking.

Image
© Google/IWOEpicentre of Thursday's earthquake in Bali.

Bizarro Earth

Clue to Climate-Changing Super Volcanic Eruptions Found

St.Helens Volcano
© ReutersFile photo from July 22, 1980 showing the eruption plume from Mount St. Helens.

Researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) claim to have found the possible cause for "super-eruptions" in massive volcanoes on the Earth that occur every 100,000 years and are known to induce planetary climate change.

A model presented by researchers at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis suggest that a combination of temperature influence and the geometrical configuration of the magma chamber is a potential cause for these super-eruptions, OSU said in a news release Wednesday.

According to Patricia Trish Gregg, the lead author of the modeling study, the creation of a ductile halo of rock around the magma chamber allows the pressure to build over tens of thousands of years, resulting in extensive uplifting in the roof above the magma chamber and eventually causing eruption.

Researchers of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, said the super-eruption of major volcanic systems on the Earth could trigger climate change by inducing Ice Ages and other impacts.

Bizarro Earth

Canary Islands: Two New Eruptions Observed in Subsea Volcano

Image
© UnknownTwo new volcanic eruptions were confirmed on Wednesday off the south coast of the Canary Island of El Hierro.
Two new volcanic eruptions were confirmed on Wednesday off the south coast of the Canary Island of El Hierro.

Nearly 600 people from the southernmost village, La Restinga, remained out of their homes Thursday after they were evacuated on Tuesday.

Seismologists have found two separate fissures less than 2.3 miles and 1.7 miles from La Restinga.

"I confirm the existence of two points of volcanic eruption at El Hierro," Laura Otero, a spokeswoman for the local authorities, told AFP.

The first eruption occurred at a depth of 700 meters (2,300 feet) and the other at a depth of 200 meters (655 feet).

Scientists from ING, CSIC, and the University of Cadiz are trying to determine if the subsea volcanic vent is widening and, if so, if it is widening in the direction of El Hierro.

Question

New Zealand: Is That a Geep? Ewe Must be Kidding... it's a Shoat

Geep
© Otago Daily TimesThe geep (front) has a lamb's body and a goat's head, legs and bleat.

No kidding - it's a geep.

When Taieri farmer Graeme Wallace brought a mob of ewes and lambs in for tailing this week, he thought the wool was being pulled over his eyes.

"I thought, 'what the hell is this? Is it a goat or is it a lamb?'

"No, it's a 50/50," Mr Wallace recalled. He thought fleetingly that the ewe mothering the mystery animal could have had a dead lamb and adopted a kid, but decided against it.

With the body of a lamb, but the head, legs and bleat of a goat, the rare male hybrid was definitely "a cross between the two".

Mr Wallace, who did not notice the animal during earlier daily lambing rounds - not that he was looking out for a geep - said it would have been sired by one of the many feral goats on the property, near Allanton.

His father told him there might be such a thing as a geep. So he looked it up on the internet that night and "sure enough" there was.

A report on the natural mating of a doe with a ram which produced a female hybrid - believed to be the first authenticated report of a sheep-goat hybrid in New Zealand - was published in the New Zealand Veterinary Journal in 1990.

Bizarro Earth

Indonesia - Earthquake Magnitude 6.1 - South of Bali

Bali Quake_131011
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 03:16:29 UTC

Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 11:16:29 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
9.378°S, 114.628°E

Depth:
35.1 km (21.8 miles)

Region:
SOUTH OF BALI, INDONESIA

Distances:
100 km (62 miles) SW of Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia

168 km (104 miles) SE of Jember, Java, Indonesia

182 km (113 miles) WSW of Mataram, Lombok, Indonesia

931 km (578 miles) ESE of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia

Bizarro Earth

Experts warn over Iceland volcano

Image
© Unknown
Experts are warning that an eruption could be imminent at an even more powerful Icelandic volcano than the one that paralysed air traffic last year.

Seismologists are nervously watching rumblings beneath Katla which could spew an ash cloud dwarfing the 2010 eruption that cost airlines two billion dollars (£1.27 billion) and drove home how vulnerable modern society is to the whims of nature.

Brooding over rugged moss-covered hills on Iceland's southern edge, Katla is a much bigger beast than the nearby Eyjafjallajokul volcano, which blasted ash all over Europe for several weeks in an eruption that local scientist Pall Einarsson describes nonetheless as "small".

Named after an evil troll, Katla has a larger magma chamber than Eyjafjallajokul's.

Its last major eruption in 1918 continued more than a month, turning day into night, starving crops of sunlight and killing off some livestock.