Earth ChangesS


Attention

Did Magnetic Blip Trigger Mass Extinction?

It was a dying on a scale never seen before or since on Earth. The slaughter was everywhere; the fertile ocean and balmy supercontinent Pangea were transformed into killing fields, littered with the bodies of ancient animals. By the time the dust had settled on the Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago, 90 percent of life on the planet had been snuffed out.

Now a new theory suggests the catastrophe was set in motion 15 million years earlier, deep in the Earth. On the edge of the molten outer core, a plume of super-hot material began rising through the mantle, upsetting convection in the core and throwing the planet's magnetic field into disarray.

Cloud Lightning

UK : Coldest start to winter since 1976

Image
© Christopher PledgerDeer graze in the early hours in Richmond Park, London, after a heavy overnight frost.
Since December 1, the meteorological start to the season, the average UK temperature has been only 35.1F (1.7C), well below the long-term 1971-2000 average of 40.5F (4.7C) for the first 10 days of the month.

It is the coldest start to December since 1976, when the average was 33.4F (0.8C).

Arctic and continental winds have dominated the weather since mid November, bringing colder conditions than normal.


Igloo

New Orleans snow earliest ever recorded

For the first time in nearly four years, snow fell across the New Orleans region this morning, with flurries reported on the north shore and in the city, Metairie, Kenner, LaPlace and other parts of the south shore. By around 10 a.m., the snow had mostly stopped, replaced by freezing rain in many places, making driving treacherous. By noon, the precipitation had mostly ceased altogether.

By mid-morning, enough snow had accumulated on the ground in some areas to lure children and adults onto their front lawns to build snowmen or have snowball fights. In the city, neutral grounds remained blanketed in white, though the streets generally remained clear as the wet stuff melted upon hitting the pavement.

Igloo

Houston: Surprise snow ties 64 year old record

Falling snowflakes glimmered in streetlights, so wide that they billowed to the ground like parachutes, and so tantalizing that even awestruck adults reached out their hands or stuck out their tongues to catch one.

By Wednesday evening, the flakes were big enough to hold their shape for a moment on the street before melting into the pavement, and a dusting had collected on parked cars in some parts of town.

The flurries tied a record for Houston's earliest snowfall ever and warmed the hearts of winter weather lovers who have pined for snow since it last made an appearance on Christmas Eve 2004.

Cloud Lightning

Ice storms knock power out for millions across NY, New England

Boston - A powerful ice storm knocked out power to more than 1 million homes and businesses across New York and New England on Friday, closing roads and forcing the state of Maine to shut government offices.

"This is a very, very serious situation right now," New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch said after declaring an emergency in his state, where as many as 320,000 customers lost power in what local authorities describe as the worst outages in three decades.

"I don't think anyone anticipated it would be as bad as it is," Lynch said.

Heart - Black

Zoo life is killing elephants: study

Zoo life can be deadly for elephants, researchers concluded in a study that found wild elephants live longer than their captive sisters. The average African female elephant lived to be just under 17 in a zoo but female elephants living natural lives in Amboseli National Park in Kenya lived an average of 56 years, they found.

Hourglass

Oscillation Rules as the Pacific Cools

Pasadena, Calif. -- The latest image of sea-surface height measurements from the U.S./French Jason-1 oceanography satellite shows the Pacific Ocean remains locked in a strong, cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a large, long-lived pattern of climate variability in the Pacific associated with a general cooling of Pacific waters. The image also confirms that El Niño and La Niña remain absent from the tropical Pacific.

PDO
© NASA/JPL

Pacific Decadal Oscillation
© NASA/JPLA cool wedge of lower-than-normal sea-surface heights continues to dominate the tropical Pacific, ringed by a horseshoe of warmer waters. The continuation of this long-term cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation stacks the odds against a wetter-than-average winter/spring in the southwestern United States.

The new image is available online here.

The image is based on the average of 10 days of data centered on Nov. 15, 2008, compared to the long-term average of observations from 1993 through 2008. In the image, places where the Pacific sea-surface height is higher (warmer) than normal are yellow and red, and places where the sea surface is lower (cooler) than normal are blue and purple. Green shows where conditions are near normal. Sea-surface height is an indicator of the heat content of the upper ocean.

Target

Moderate earthquake hits Pakistan

Islamabad: A moderate 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck mountainous southwestern Pakistan today, seismologists said, but there were no immediate
reports of any casualties.

The shallow quake, at a depth of just 10 kilometres, was centred 46 kilometres from Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, the US Geological Survey said.

Better Earth

Solar Link to 50% of Warming During the Past 100 Years?

There is a new paper 'in press' in Geophysical Research Letters by Eichler et al entitled, 'Temperature response in the Altai region lags solar forcing.'

The Abstract states:

The role of the sun on Earth's climate variability is still much debated. Here we present an ice core oxygen isotope record from the continental Siberian Altai, serving as a high-resolution temperature proxy for the last 750 years. The strong correlation between reconstructed temperature and solar activity suggests solar forcing as a main driver for temperature variations during the period 1250-1850 in this region. The precisely dated record allowed for the identification of a 10-30 year lag between solar forcing and temperature response, underlining the importance of indirect sun-climate mechanisms involving ocean induced changes in atmospheric circulation. Solar contribution to temperature change became less important during industrial period 1850-2000 in the Altai region.

Magnify

UN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore.