Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

NASA Satellites Detect Unexpected Ice Loss in East Antarctica


ScienceDaily
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:00 UTC
Image
© University of Texas at Austin Center for Space ResearchGrace estimate of changes in Antarctica's ice mass, measured in centimeters of equivalent water height change per year.
Using gravity measurement data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, a team of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin has found that the East Antarctic ice sheet-home to about 90 percent of Earth's solid fresh water and previously considered stable-may have begun to lose ice.

The team used Grace data to estimate Antarctica's ice mass between 2002 and 2009. Their results, published Nov. 22 in the journal Nature Geoscience, found that the East Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass, mostly in coastal regions, at an estimated rate of 57 gigatonnes a year. A gigatonne is one billion metric tons, or more than 2.2 trillion pounds. The ice loss there may have begun as early as 2006. The study also confirmed previous results showing that West Antarctica is losing about 132 gigatonnes of ice per year.

"While we are seeing a trend of accelerating ice loss in Antarctica, we had considered East Antarctica to be inviolate," said lead author and Senior Research Scientist Jianli Chen of the university's Center for Space Research. "But if it is losing mass, as our data indicate, it may be an indication the state of East Antarctica has changed. Since it's the biggest ice sheet on Earth, ice loss there can have a large impact on global sea level rise in the future."
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Bizarro Earth

Torrential Rains Kill 48 in Saudi Arabia


RIA Novosti
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:46 UTC
Image
© Eontarionow
Heavy rains have left 48 people dead in a number of provinces in Saudi Arabia, the Al Riyadh paper said on Thursday.

Rains lashed Jeddah and the adjacent holy places of Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafath, where pilgrims spent their first day of Hajj on Wednesday.

Traffic in Jeddah, located 80 km (50 miles) west of Mecca, was logged, and the sewage system was severely affected.

Meanwhile, the number of foreign pilgrims gathering for today's Hajj in Mecca has exceeded 1.6 million, Prince Naif, Saudi Arabia's second deputy prime minister, said in a telegram to Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz on Thursday.
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Bizarro Earth

Heavy Storm Kills 11 in Southern Brazil


Xinhua
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:32 UTC
A total of 11 people were killed due to the heavy rain that has been lashing southern Brazil since last week, authorities confirmed on Wednesday.

The most recent death occurred in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, when 45-year-old Luiz Alberto Carvalho Nene was struck by lightning.

On Wednesday, the towns of Cacapava do Sul, Cerrito and Manoel Viana in the state declared a state of emergency. So far, 48 of the 496 municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul have declared a state of emergency.

Over 14,000 people in Rio Grande do Sul had to leave their homes due to the floods, and a power cut affected almost 10,000 people in the state.
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Sun

Extreme drought forces thirsty kangaroos to invade Aussie town


New Tang Dynasty Television
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:29 UTC
Thargomindah, in the outback of Queensland, Australia, is a quiet small town with a population of 203. That is, until nightfall when the town's population doubles with the arrival of hundreds of other Australians...kangaroos and emus desperate to find food and water.

Some 700 miles west of Brisbane, Thargomindah is suffering its worst drought in 50 years. Both the wildlife and grazers are suffering. But as kangaroos reach plague proportion, farmers complain that the animals are eating any new growth available.

[Scott Fraser, Local Farmer]:
"It's possible to shoot seven-hundred a night, they're that thick. They're swarm proportions, you have no idea, it gives you a creepy feeling when you see them that thick."
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Cow Skull

6,000 Thirsty Camels Face Bullet After Terrorising Australian Town


The Guardian
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:03 UTC
Camel Oz
© Northern Territory government/EPA
Northern Territory officials plan mass cull after 6,000 wild camels run amok in Docker River in search of water

Australian authorities plan to round up about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and shoot them after they overran an outback town in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies.

The Northern Territory government announced its plan yesterday for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving every day for weeks because of drought conditions.

"The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding, wild camels," the local government minister, Rob Knight, said in Alice Springs, 310 miles (500km) north-east of Docker. "This is a very critical situation out there, it's very unusual and it needs urgent action."
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Arrow Up

Ireland: Fears of more floods as water level rises

Eimear Ni Bhraonain, Anita Guidera, Conor Kane & Kathryn Hayes
Independent.ie
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:53 UTC
Ireland flood
© Irish IndependentMary Keenan is distraught after visiting her house for the first time since the start of the floods in Caherlea, Claregalway
Towns and villages in the path of the River Shannon were unable to take a breath last night after the worst rainfall ever recorded.

Levels continued to rise on the lower and mid-Shannon where there has already been unprecedented increases in Lough Ree and Lough Allen.

Experts warned that a third of the rainfall normally experienced in one year had fallen in November alone so far -- and on land that was already "seriously saturated".

Lough Ree is being blamed for the latest floods that forced more than 100 residents out of their homes in Athlone in two days. Twenty-five homes had to be evacuated in Parnell Square in Athlone. Families were also taken from 22 houses in Deerpark and from eight houses in Iona Villas.

Taxi man and local councillor Kevin 'Boxer' Moran has been driving around Athlone in his four-wheel-drive vehicle rescuing people.
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Better Earth

Atlantic Hurricane Season Quietest Since 1997

David Bird
The Wall Street Journal
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:16 UTC
The Atlantic Hurricane season, which officials ends Nov. 30, will go into the record books as the quietest since 1997, due to the impact of the El Nino weather phenomenon, forecasters at Colorado State University said Thursday.

The season featured nine named storms, three hurricanes and two major hurricanes, with sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or greater. Long-term averages are 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 major hurricanes per season.

In their far-forward December 2008 forecast, experts at Colorado State projected an above-average season, with 14 named storms and seven hurricanes. The forecasters said the impacts of El Nino, unforeseen at the time, sharply reduced hurricane formation, and they reduced their storm expectations as the season progressed.
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Better Earth

US: El Nino to keep us warm this December

Alex Piazza
Traverse City Record-Eagle
Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:09 UTC
A snowy November 2008 kept Adam Orth busy plowing driveways and parking lots. But this year, Orth hasn't used his plow. Instead, he's cutting lawns and building retaining walls.

"You do whatever the weather gives you," said Orth, president of AMO, Inc. Outdoor Services in Traverse City. "Last year kind of caught us off-guard. It's nice for us to have a couple extra weeks to prepare for winter this year."

Orth could receive more than a couple of winterless weeks. The National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center calls for above-normal temperatures throughout December. The average temperature for December in Traverse City is 27 degrees, but locals could experience warmer temperatures this year.
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Fish

Dumbo of the deep: Discovered in the ocean abyss, the elephant-eared octopod


Mail Online
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:55 UTC
Dumbo Fish
© PAThe Grimpoteuthis has been nicknamed 'Dumbo' because of the large 'ears' it uses to swim with
What do you get if you cross an octopus with an elephant?

Well, in reality, probably nothing but a squashed octopus.

But with its elephant-like appearance, it's easy to see why this odd creature, found more than a mile beneath the ocean, has been nicknamed Dumbo by scientists.

Never before seen by man, it is a cirrate octopod, and the 'ears' that saw it named after Disney's cartoon elephant are actually fins that it uses to swim.

Marine biologists found the six-foot-long creature on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in their quest to record and name every living thing in the seas.
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Mr. Potato

George Monbiot sees no evil

George Monbiot
Guardian.co.uk
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:25 UTC
Image
© Unknown
It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

Comment: If Monbiot thinks an email will EVER surface that plainly and explicitly reveals the conspiracy to misinform the public about global warming, he needs to retire and drink warm milk.

The aspect of 'conspiracy' revealed by these emails is not a case of some people getting together and saying "Oh, let's have a conspiracy!" Conspiracy in this context simply means that a group of people act in certain ways that they KNOW are dishonest at a fundamental level, and they use what Lobaczewski termed "subconscious selection and substitution of premises" to explain things in their own minds. This is a predominantly subconscious process though it certainly has to be conscious in some respects.

It is definitely a conspiracy where these scientists are concerned because they have all made a decision to support a particular world view that has been "decided before hand, be damned to the data". Sure, there is no widespread conspiracy by all climatologists to cook the data for global warming, but there are a few "top" scientists lacking in conscience that have been leading the "human-made global warming" campaign and have been doing so for at least 10 years.

Here's a recent sample email:
From: Kevin Trenberth trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
To: Michael Mann mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider shs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Myles Allen allen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, peter stott , "Philip D. Jones" , Benjamin Santer santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Tom Wigley wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Thomas R Karl Thomas.R.Karl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Gavin Schmidt gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, James Hansen jhansen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Michael Oppenheimer omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

[...]

The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.


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