Earth ChangesS


Seismograph

Shallow 5.9 magnitude earthquake hits 145 km from the Solomon Islands

graph
An earthquake of 5.9 magnitude jolted 145 km SE of Kirakira, Solomon Islands on Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The epicenter, with a depth of 23.5 km, was initially determined to be at 11.1957 degrees south latitude and 163.0205 degrees east longitude.

Attention

Swimmer bitten in fourth sea lion attack at San Francisco Aquatic Park in a month

sea lion
© Nicole Boliaux, The Chronicle
A sea lion bit a woman swimming at San Francisco's Aquatic Park on Thursday in the fourth such attack in about a month.

The woman apparently was not badly hurt, but authorities are worried about further attacks.

A retired San Francisco firefighter also swimming in the bay around 7 a.m. helped the woman as she came out of the water, said Fire Department Lt. John Baxter, but the woman was able to walk on her own. She was taken to a hospital.

Alice Ma said she and the victim are members of the South End Rowing Club, and that they were swimming together when the sea lion latched onto her friend and tried to drag her underwater.

"It chomped down onto her," said Ma, who lives in San Jose. "It bit her and pulled."



Water

South Africa's Cape Town may become first major city in world to run out of water

Cape Town drought
© ESA ALEXANDER/SUNDAY TIMESDead fish lay in the cracked mud in the now dry bed that is the Gamka Dam in Beaufort West in November 08, 2017.
As the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, residents of Cape Town, South Africa, ushered in 2018 - the start of a new year and the start of the city's stringent new water regulations.

The Level 6 restrictions came into effect to combat an unprecedented drought which threatens to make Cape Town the first major city devoid of water.

The slew of new measures include limiting individuals municipal water usage per day and threatening to impose fines on those who exceed it.

They also reduce agricultural water use by 60 percent and commercial use by 45 percent, compared to pre-drought allocations.

The drought and water stress across most of South Africa follows a strong El Niño in 2015 and 2016.

The weather pattern - characterized by warmer-than-normal ocean water in the equatorial Pacific - resulted in extreme heat and spells of dry weather.

Beneficial rain eventually returned in late fall for much of the country, including the drought-stricken western Cape.


Comment: South Africa's Cape Town contends with worst drought in over a century


Bizarro Earth

Scientists say a fluctuating jet stream may be causing extreme weather events

Large waves crash at Brighton Pier
© Peter Macdiarmid/Getty ImagesWaves crash onto the beach near Brighton Pier in England, in January 2007. Gale force winds and heavy rain brought disruption to large parts of the country. Severe weather events like this one may be linked to more frequent fluctuations in the polar jet stream, according to a new study.
A new study suggests that the polar jet stream has been fluctuating more than normal as it passes over the parts of the Northern Hemisphere, and that's affecting weather in Europe and North America.

The jet stream is like a river of wind that circles the Northern Hemisphere continuously. That river meanders north and south along the way, however. When those meanders occur over the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, it can alter pressure systems and wind patterns at lower latitudes in Europe and North America. And that affects how warm or rainy it is on those continents.

Researchers at the University of Arizona and the Swiss Federal Research Institute studied tree rings to get a fix on how widely and how often the jet stream meanders.

Biologist Valerie Trouet took samples from four species of trees in Europe, including Scots pine, dating back to 1725. These revealed what kind of weather Europe had each year. And that helped them establish the normal pattern of the jet stream's fluctuations.

What surprised the scientists was that the jet stream's meandering has become more frequent. "Since 1960 we get more years when the jet is in an extreme position," Trouet says, either in its northernmost or southernmost position. She adds that this pattern of more frequent, extreme shifts north and south has never been seen before in her 290-year record.

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers say these more dramatic fluctuations may be responsible for some recent extreme weather events, not just in Europe, but also North America.

Comment: A couple of years ago scientists reported that Northern Hemisphere jet streams crossed the equator and linked with others in the south.

A recent study predicts the next solar cycle phase will bring on a 'Mini Ice Age' as early as 2020, as according to the models, there will be a "huge reduction" in solar activity for 33 years between 2020 and 2053. This will cause global temperatures to decrease drastically.

There is a current lull in solar activity (The sun goes blank for the second time this month in the weakest solar cycle in more than a century). Jet Stream meanderings, and much more, are explained by Pierre Lescaudron in his book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection:
So since about 1998, when the solar activity started to drop, the Arctic jet stream has shown signs of weakness (lower speed and more southerly location). Jet stream latitudinal oscillations have been acknowledged by mainstream science for years. They are allegedly due to changes in the Arctic oscillation. [561] So far, no convincing explanation has been provided for the causes of this 'oscillation'. However, if the electric nature of our solar system is taken into account, shifts in the jet stream begin to make sense...

Therefore, if solar activity is weak, the jet stream should be observed at abnormally low latitudes. This is what has happened in recent years, particularly over Europe, with the jet stream as low as 15° north in winter (above North Africa) when it should be around 60° north (above Scotland)...

In this way, a lasting decrease in solar activity would induce an overall cooling of the 'temperate' latitudes that would be increasingly less separated from Arctic air by a more frequently and abnormally south-shifting polar jet stream. This could be an aggravating factor in the quick onset of an ice age.



Snowflake Cold

SOTT Focus: Enough With the Global Warming Nonsense: It's Freezing Out Here!

frozen Buzzards Bay
© Ryan Canty / YouTubeNo that's not the north pole; that's just outside Boston last week.


"
Children just aren't going to know what snow is." Thus spake 'climate science' at the turn of the new millennium.

And then the cold waves came on so hard and so fast that 'climate scientists' had to invent a new term for them: 'polar vortex'. The current one over the eastern half of North America has broken records left and right - and I mean century-old records. It's so cold on Mount Washington in New Hampshire that it's literally out of this world: it's colder there than on Mars. And what about that superpowerful storm in the US northeast? They had to invent a new name for that too.

The weather they told us would 'soon never happen again' is not just happening in spades in North America. The UK had its heaviest snowfall in four years in early December. It's freezing cold in India too, where some 70 people have died from exposure, and the Sahara Desert (yes, one of the hottest places on Earth) just got a substantial snowfall for the second winter running.


Ice Cube

'Heavy, yellow ice' crashes into roof of Chicago home

Yellow ice in Chicago
© YouTube/CBS News - Chicago
This time of year, finding ice on your roof is no big surprise. But for a woman in the northwest suburbs, it brought investigators to her home.

For 41 years, nothing out of the ordinary has occurred at Dawn Scarpulla's split-level home, until now.

She recently heard a big boom, she says.

"I found ice - yellow ice - on my roof," she tells CBS 2's Vince Gerasole.


Attention

Mysterious 'big boom' rattles windows in eastern Minnesota

Lake Elmo Inn
© Fox9
Many in the east metro are talking after a mysterious "big boom" rattled windows and nerves Tuesday night.

Now, communities in Lake Elmo are asking, just what was that sound?

Washington County Sheriff Dan Starry said the first call came in just before 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. Deputies looked for the source, but couldn't find anything. And Xcel Energy said it didn't come from the Bayport power plant, either.

In Lake Elmo if you didn't hear it, you sure heard about it. Sometime after 5:15 p.m. Tuesday, the conversations quickly turned to whatever just boomed outside.

Question

100 Rare parrots found dead on road in New South Wales, Australia

Photo: Superb parrots are being hit and killed by motorists near Murrumbateman.
© Dr Saan EckerSuperb parrots are being hit and killed by motorists near Murrumbateman.
Environmentalists are concerned motorists are hitting and killing flocks of highly endangered parrots feeding around a New South Wales road.

Ecologist Saan Ecker estimated more than 100 superb parrots had been found dead on a road off Barton Highway, near the town of Murrumbateman, in recent days.

Yesterday she saw dozens of the dead birds surrounded by live ones, and said several motorists had alerted Wildcare of similar sightings in the area.

"For every dead body was one or two live birds sitting between each and [they] are getting hit [by cars] as well."

Wolf

2 Rottweilers kill owner's elderly mom in Tamil Nadu, India

The two Rottweilers had blood on their paws and fangs, a police officer said.
The two Rottweilers had blood on their paws and fangs, a police officer said.
Two pet Rottweilers mauled to death a 68-yearold woman early on Thursday in a gruesome attack that left the victim scalped and her face disfigured.

The dogs attacked Gowri, a resident of Govardhanagiri in Avadi, around 1.30am when she went to the terrace of the house she shared with her husband Chandrasekar, 82, their son and his family, investigators said.

The elderly couple's son Santhosh, who lived on the first floor of the house with his wife and raised the two Rottweilers, aged one and five, said his mother suffered from depression and rarely left the house, an investigating officer said.

"Santhosh said his mother was probably not aware that the dogs were on the terrace," he said. "Other members of the family were asleep when the dogs attacked the woman. Gowri's husband Chandrasekar is hard of hearing and does not recall when she left their bedroom on the ground floor of the house."

Sun

First sunrise in 40 days: Arctic Russian city finally greets daylight as polar night ends (PHOTOS)

Sunrise
© Pavel Lvov / Sputnik
Having seen no sunlight for more than a month, the northern Russian port city of Murmansk has finally greeted a sunrise and a glimpse of daylight that lasted little more than half an hour.

Crowds of local residents gathered on top of a hill to watch the sun emerge from the horizon on Thursday, marking the end of the polar night. Despite sub-zero temperatures, people came to celebrate the end of 24-hour darkness, which began in early December.

The sight of the first sunrise has been drawing locals since 2007 for the annual event on the hill, which is appropriately named "Sunny mountain." People cheered and raised their cameras to capture the moment, as the first sunbeams appeared at 12:39pm.

The first daylight of the year does not last long, and Thursday's glimpse of sunlight had disappeared again within 34 minutes.