Earth Changes

The plasticisation of the oceans

John Paul Cauchi
Malta Today
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:33 UTC

Turtles often confuse clear plastic bags with jellyfish and ingest them, choking to death in the process

With 7.3 billion people on the planet, fast rising to nine billion, we treat the ocean as a garbage dump at our peril

It so happens that during these hot, sweltering days we go down for a quick dip into our clear, blue seas, inviting under the shimmering sunlight in the relative quiet of the afternoon. We slowly immerse ourselves into the refreshing waters, entering the marine world while skimming the surface, enjoying the freshness of it all, oozing relaxation...

... until we feel something clingy and papery sticking to our legs. Plastic! Ugh!

All too often, we are greeted by waste on our shores, left by irresponsible sea-goers clearly not giving a hoot about others. Our seas are fast becoming full of plastics and others forms of waste. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, one refuse truck's-worth of plastic is dumped into the sea every minute, and the situation is getting worse. These figures are astounding, and recently it has been estimated that there will be more plastic in the sea by weight than fish by 2050. In recent years, reports have been published on a so-called "great garbage patch" in the Pacific, where all currents eventually lead to, leading to a vast expanse of plastic waste the size of France floating far from human eyes.

Whale washes up beach in Aceh, Indonesia

Tempo.co
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:26 UTC

A dead whale has been found washed up in Alue Naga Beach, Syiah Kuala Sub-district, Banda Aceh City.

A number of locals and fishermen at the beach Thursday, August 4, 2016, said that the whale was roughly seven-meter-long.

"Several fishermen saw the already dead whale in the waters two miles off the beach. The whale was washed ashore by the waves," local resident Muhammad said.

According to locals, they had yet to see any relevant government institution coming to the scene and examining the whale to determine the cause of death.

Alberta Canada experiences wettest July weather in 89 years

Huffington Post
Canadian Press
Tue, 02 Aug 2016 17:59 UTC

© Jeff McIntosh/CP
Calgary Stampede visitors huddle under an umbrella as a storm sweeps over the grounds on July 9, 2016.

In a country known for episodes of extreme weather, even Environment Canada's senior climatologist is shaking his head over the flurry of bad weather hitting the Prairies this year — most notably in Alberta.

David Phillips, who has been on the job for five decades, said the 2016 weather season isn't likely to be one that especially Albertans and others on the Prairie will look back on fondly.

He said the number of tornadoes, winds, hail, thunderstorms and humidity are up in all three Prairie provinces but nobody has had it worse than those living in northern and southern Alberta.

"You saw the terrible thing in Fort McMurray. My God, I'm sure they were wondering would the locusts be next. I mean, it's so Biblical,'' said Phillips.

"They had the fires and the drought and now the floods. They clearly had more than a month's worth of rain in Fort McMurray in two hours, and it's almost as if they couldn't get rain when they prayed for it back in April and May.''

Comment: There was also recent flooding reported in the northern Alberta city of Grande Prairie.

Flights disrupted after 3 volcanoes erupt in Indonesia within 2 days

Globalnews.ca
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 16:43 UTC

© Tibta Pangin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A general view of spewing pyroclastic lava is seen during Mount Sinabung volcano eruption, seen from Tiga Pancur village in Karo, North Sumatra, Indonesia on July 28, 2016.

Eruptions at three volcanoes in Indonesia have darkened skies in parts of the archipelago and disrupted some flights.

Mount Rinjani on Lombok Island near Bali, the Sinabung volcano on Sumatra Island and Mount Gamalama in the Moluccas chain of islands have all erupted in the past couple of days.

No one has been injured, but flights at two airports have been disrupted.

Sultan Babullah airport in Ternate, the capital of North Maluku province, was closed Wednesday and Lombok's international airport was closed for several hours on Tuesday.

The three mountains are among about 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia. The archipelago of 250 million people is prone to earthquakes and volcanoes because it sits along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a string of faults that lines the Pacific Ocean.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for Indonesia's Disaster Mitigation Agency, said that Gamalama and Sinabung erupted again late Tuesday, blasting debris high into the air. Hot ash tumbled down the Sinabung slopes as far as 2,000 metres (yards) southward into a river.

Rare ball lightning caught on video in Siberian city

The Siberian Times
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 19:50 UTC

Like an approaching UFO, the bright white luminous ball glides over a field, before heading into woodland.

A local caught on camera this unusual example of ball lightning near his dacha (country house) outside Novosibirsk, Siberia's largest city. His grasp of his cell phone was shaky but his analysis of the phenomenon - as heard on the commentary - was accurate, say experts.

'What is it there?' a female voice asks from a distance.

'Fireball lightening,' answered the man with the mobile phone camera, Roman Tregubov, a graduate of the Novosibirsk State Technical University.

'Look, look, what is it?' another man asks.

'Argh it's moving away,' the cameraman says. 'This is fireball lightening, it's the first time I see one in my life. It's going to move away. Lost it. Where it is? There is it. I wonder if it'll blow off soon. Yep, it blew off.'

Bear chases man inside his home in Mammoth Lakes, California (VIDEO)

Ben Hooper
UPI
Mon, 01 Aug 2016 19:24 UTC

Bear breaks into house

A California man who came home to find a mother bear and her cubs in his home captured video of the mother running toward him up the stairs.

Rodney Ginn said in a Facebook post he arrived at his Mammoth Lakes home after work Friday night to discover two doors to his residence were open and the mother bear and her cubs were in his kitchen.

"I came home from work my roommate was asleep both doors wide open so I shut them and looked in my kitchen and there she was with her two cubs so I booked it upstairs," he wrote.

The video shows Ginn filming from the top of a staircase when the mother bear comes bounding up the steps toward him.

Ginn quickly runs into a room and shuts the door before the bear can reach him.

He said the mother bear eventually let herself out by opening a sliding door. He said his roommate was oblivious during the whole affair.

"Pretty much she opened the sliding door and her and the two cubs got out. My roommate was sleeping and said he heard it going on for about 45 minutes and thought I was cooking a late night snack lol and when I got home they were still here for another 30 minutes before they finally [left]," he wrote.

Horse killed by lightning bolt in Leesburg, Georgia

Mike Fussell
walb.com
Tue, 02 Aug 2016 19:06 UTC

Pretty Boy's owners believe that he was struck by lightning.

Two Lee County horses were stuck by lightning on Monday when thunderstorms rolled through the area.

Dallas was killed, but Pretty Boy's owners said he is shaken but recovering.

Riders and horses alike at the Star K Equestrian Center are still reeling after the incident.

When the clouds had cleared after the storm had passed, owner Norma Karst noticed something was off.

"Acted very unusual," said Karst. "Walking around in an unusual way, acting like he couldn't see, twitching his mouth, we knew something was wrong with him."

Pretty Boy was among four horses that refused to come back inside at the Star K Equestrian Center when the storm rolled through Monday.

Lightning bolt kills 14 cows in Cambodia

Pav Suy
Khmer Times
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 18:54 UTC

Lightning struck a villager's cow stable in Kratie province's Kbal Damrey commune on Tuesday night killing 14 cows, according to the Water Resources Ministry and local police.

"At about 8pm on August 2, 2016, there was a case of lightning killing 14 cows in a stable located in O Tanoeng village, Kbal Damrey commune, Sambo district, Kratie province," the ministry's statement said.

The ministry's statement then moved on to request that people pay close attention to the dangers caused by extreme weather.

Lim Bona, a Sambo district police official, said: "It hit the herd of 14 cows in the stable. All of them died, there was not one left. After that, the owner sold the dead cows at reduced prices. When the lightning struck, it was rainy and windy."

Keo Vy, cabinet chief and a spokesman for the National Committee for Disaster Management, told Khmer Times late last month that lightning had killed 78 people, injured nearly 100 and caused the death of 60 head of cattle from January to July this year.

Hurricane drought in Gulf of Mexico hits a new record

Knvul Sheikh
Scientific America
Sun, 31 Jul 2016 17:22 UTC

A hurricane has not appeared in the Gulf of Mexico in almost three years

Saturday was a quiet day across the Gulf of Mexico, but not one without note, because a strange record was set: It has been 1,048 days since a hurricane developed in or entered the Gulf. That is the longest streak in the past 130 years, since formal record-keeping began in 1886.

The Atlantic hurricane season starts in June and lasts through the end of November. But the last storm in the Gulf was Hurricane Ingrid, which made landfall in northeastern Mexico in September 2013. "You have to have conditions just right for a hurricane to form, and the conditions haven't been ideal in the Gulf of Mexico in the last two years," says Robbie Berg, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center. The last long Gulf hurricane drought was from October 1, 1929, to August 13, 1932. It was broken by Hurricane 2, which came ashore in Freeport, Texas, as a category 4 storm.

Hurricanes usually form when ocean water has been warmed over the summer months to around 25 degrees Celsius or higher. As humid air and clouds accumulate, light, sweeping winds moving westward from Africa can steer the clouds across the mid-Atlantic toward the Gulf. In some cases, the mass of moisture can begin rotating as it advances. This early stage is known as a tropical depression, which can strengthen to become a tropical storm if the wind direction and speed throughout all levels of the atmosphere remain relatively constant. To be considered a category 1 hurricane or higher, the wind speed inside the rotating storm needs to be at least 119 kilometers per hour (74 miles per hour).

Comment: Elsewhere within the past year some record-breaking and rare storms include:

April 2016: Cyclone Fantala became the Indian Ocean's most powerful storm on record

February 2016: Cyclone Winston caused devastation in Fiji as the most-potent cyclone on record in the Southwest Pacific

January 2016: Hurricane Pali became the earliest-forming hurricane in either the Central or Northeastern Pacific, forming unusually close to the equator

January 2016: Hurricane Alex, a rare January storm in the Atlantic and the first storm of the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season

October 2015: Hurricane Patricia became the strongest-known storm in the Northeast Pacific

Large sinkhole swallows car in Albany, New York

Daniel Uria
UPI
Tue, 02 Aug 2016 16:04 UTC

Sinkhole swallows car in Albany

A car in Albany, N.Y., was swallowed by a large sinkhole that formed as a result of heavy rains and a water main break.

According to News10, the Albany Water Department reported a large water main break that swallowed a vehicle and left it resting on top of a main gas line.

Water Commissioner Joe Coffey told WNYT that the water from the broken pipes cleared out ground underneath the street, creating the sinkhole.

Crews worked to lift the red Ford Explorer, owned by an Albany Medical College student, from the hole using a crane.

Several roads were closed as a result of the incident and officials said the water main break could cause residents to experience lower water pressure.