Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Ghostly Figure Appears in the Clouds

Brocken Spectre
© Caters News AgencyPhenomenon: The Brocken Spectre figure was captured in the Chatyr-Dag, a mountainous region in Crimea near the Ukraine by university lecturer Mikhail Baevsky.

At first glance it may look like a ghostly shape silhouetted against a rainbow.

But this is the Brocken Spectre phenomenon, an optical illusion created when low sun shines behind someone looking down into fog from a ridge.

The atmospheric conditions throw the person's shadow forward, creating this spectral apparition.

On this occasion, the image was captured by 59-year-old Mikhail Baevsky. Handily, he teaches Organic Chemistry at a university and realised the phenomenon was probably caused by the weather.

Mr Baevsky was in the Chatyr-Dag, a mountainous region in Crimea near the Ukraine, when he took the shot.

'I had only read about this phenomenon before in books but had never seen it before myself,' he said.

'I was scanning the horizon for a good shot and while turning my head I noticed the dark ghostly figure - so I quickly reached for my camera.

'I took as many shots as possible before it disappeared. It does look amazing.'

Black Cat

Over 200 Pelicans Wash Up Dead at Topsail Beach, NC - Preliminary Necropsies Inconclusive

Preliminary necropsies by the University of Georgia on some of the more than 200 Brown Pelicans that have washed up on the shores of Topsail Beach on the coast of southeastern North Carolina are inconclusive and do not yet support concerns that foul play was responsible. Complete toxicology and pathology reports are expected to be available soon.

A taskforce including officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as state officials, has been formed and has been meeting to investigate the deaths, but so far has not determined a cause. The first dead birds began washing up on shore in November.

pelican
© Mike RichardsonBrown Pelican, from the surfbirds galleries.

Bizarro Earth

Large Taupo earthquake felt across North Island

A magnitude 5.9 earthquake early Friday morning was felt widely across the North Island, causing some people to leap out of bed.

GNS Science said the quake was located 30 km north of Taupo at a depth of 150 km.

It struck at 4:02 am and was felt widely felt across the North Island.

There were reports on social media that some people could hear it coming.

The quake was strong enough to get people out of bed and lots of comments were flowing on sites such as Twitter.

"Someone's just had a sizable quake. Felt strongly in Napier. Anyone else get the shakes?" wrote one Twitter user, with plenty of replies that it had been felt.

Bizarro Earth

Lightning and fire: Japan on alert after volcano's biggest eruption in 50 years

A one-mile cordon has been established around a volcano on Mount Kirishima after it erupted scattering rocks and ash across southern Japan and sending smoke billowing 5,000ft into the air.

The Meteorological Agency raised the volcanic alert to level 3 as ash today continued to spew from Shinmoedake on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu, and residents have been banned from going within a mile of the volcano following its worst eruption in 50 years.

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© ReutersForce of nature: Lightning strikes as Shinmoedake erupts, scattering ash and rocks across a wide swathe of southern Japa
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© ReutersVolcanic lightning or a dirty thunderstorm is seen above Shinmoedake peak as it erupts

Bizarro Earth

Southeastern Iran: Earthquake Magnitude 6.0

Iran Quake_270111
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time
Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 08:38:28 UTC

Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 12:08:28 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
28.185°N, 58.968°E

Depth
10.7 km (6.6 miles) set by location program

Region
SOUTHEASTERN IRAN

Distances
241 km (150 miles) SW (232°) from Zahedan, Iran

287 km (178 miles) ENE (67°) from Bandar-e Abbas, Iran

296 km (184 miles) SE (141°) from Kerman, Iran

509 km (316 miles) N (4°) from MUSCAT, Oman

Igloo

Another Storm Batters Northeast

Image
© Steve Berman/The New York TimesA limousine, unable to drive uphill going west on 57th Street in Manhattan, was pushed back onto 6th Avenue by passersby.
For at least the fifth time this season, a major snowstorm crawled up the eastern seaboard and swept across the Northeast early Thursday, dumping fresh snow on top of streets already covered in icy slush and disrupting the commutes of millions of people.

The powerful storm, appearing as a giant white smudge over the Northeast on radar maps, arrived in two parts, coating the region with rain and several inches of snow early Wednesday and then dumping up to an additional foot of snow in some places overnight Thursday.

In New York City, the wintry one-two punch caused all non-emergency city government offices to close on Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced through Twitter. The Department of Education said that all public schools across the five boroughs would be closed for the day.

Across the New York region, hundreds of flights were canceled, and the Port Authority later closed Newark, Teterboro, and John F. Kennedy Airports. The Metropolitan Transit Authority suspended all of its bus services across New York City and Long Island early Thursday. The Long Island Rail Road said it would operate a reduced weekday morning schedule, while the Metro-North Railroad said its Harlem and Hudson lines would run on a Saturday schedule. The Nor'easter created a fresh sense of snow fatigue in a region that has been unusually battered by storms. Trying to prevent a repeat of the problems associated with a late December blizzard, when streets went unplowed for days, New York City sent out more than 2,000 salt spreaders, snow plows and other vehicles to clear the streets.

Bizarro Earth

Indonesia Mount Bromo volcano erupts

Mount Bromo volcano
© Unknown
Jakarta - Several international flights to and from the resort island of Bali were cancelled or diverted Thursday to avoid dangerous ash spewing from an Indonesian volcano, officials said.

Ash from rumbling Mount Bromo, a popular attraction in East Java province, had spread to the island popular with foreign tourists and surfers.

"We received information from Darwin that the ash from Bromo has reached 5,500 metres in the southeast direction and has affected some parts of Bali," transport ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan told AFP.

"As a safety precaution, we've sent out an advisory to airlines to warn them about the ash situation so air crew can avoid the affected areas," he added.

Indonesian aviation authorities were monitoring the situation but there were no plans to temporarily close the airport yet, he added.

"The airport is still open, some flights are still landing. We're checking how bad the situation is and how much worse it can get before deciding what the next step will be," Ervan said.

Igloo

Himalayan glaciers not melting because of climate change, report finds

Image
© AlamyThe key factor affecting the advance or retreat of the Karakoram glaciers is the amount of debris strewn on their surface. The Passu glacier in the Karakorum region of Pakistan
Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century.

Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.

The discovery adds a new twist to the row over whether global warming is causing the world's highest mountain range to lose its ice cover.

It further challenges claims made in a 2007 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the glaciers would be gone by 2035.

Although the head of the panel Dr Rajendra Pachauri later admitted the claim was an error gleaned from unchecked research, he maintained that global warming was melting the glaciers at "a rapid rate", threatening floods throughout north India.

Question

Night-Shining Clouds are Getting Brighter

Mesopheric Clouds
© Jan Erik PaulsenIncrease of Polar Mesospheric Clouds, 1979–2010.
Mesopheric Clouds_1
© Robert SimmonAdapted from Latitude-dependent long-term variations in polar mesospheric clouds from SBUV version 3 PMC data. - January 1, 1979 - December 31, 2010
After the Sun sets on a summer evening and the sky fades to black, you may be lucky enough to see thin, wavy clouds illuminating the night, such as these seen over Billund, Denmark, on July 15, 2010. Noctilucent or polar mesospheric clouds, form at very high altitudes - between 80 and 85 kilometers (50 - 53 miles) - which positions them to reflect light long after the Sun has dropped below the horizon. These "night-shining" clouds are rare - rare enough that Matthew DeLand, who has been studying them for 11 years, has only seen them once in person. But the chances of seeing these elusive clouds are increasing.

DeLand, an atmospheric scientist with Science Systems and Applications Inc. and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, has found that polar mesospheric clouds are forming more frequently and becoming brighter. He has been observing the clouds in data from Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet instruments that have been flown on satellites since 1978. The graph shows how the brightness of the clouds has changed in the Northern Hemisphere. For reasons no one fully understands, the brightness wiggles up and down in step with solar activity, with fewer clouds forming when the Sun is most active. The biggest variability is in the far north. Underlying the changes caused by the Sun, however, is a trend toward brighter clouds. The upward trend in brightness, says DeLand, reveals subtle changes in the atmosphere that may be linked to greenhouse gases.

Polar mesospheric clouds are extremely sensitive to changes in atmospheric water vapor and temperature. The clouds form only when temperatures drop below -130 degrees Celsius (-200 Fahrenheit), when the scant water freezes into ice clouds. This happens most often in far northern and southern latitudes (above 50 degrees) in the summer when, counter-intuitively, the mesosphere is coldest.

Bizarro Earth

"Gooey" New Mud Volcano Erupts From Arabian Sea

Mud Volcano
© esse Allen and Robert Simmon, EO-1/NASASatellite pictures of the Pakistani coast in February (left) and November 2010.
There's a new island in the azure waters off Pakistan, but you might want to hold off on vacation planning: The tiny dot is a mud volcano that will likely disappear before it sees 1,001 Arabian nights.

Pakistani fishers reported the new mud volcano in the Arabian Sea in late November, and NASA's Earth Observing-1 satellite snapped a picture of it (above) on January 11. The volcano was not in a satellite picture of the same region taken last February.

According to NASA, mud volcano "islands" have appeared in the Arabian Sea before, and most have washed away within a few months. In fact, the January picture shows tan sediments steaming from the new mud volcano, suggesting it is eroding and will soon vanish.

Mud volcanoes, which can appear on land or underwater, form when underground layers of silt or clay become pressurized either by tectonic activity or by a buildup of hydrocarbon gases.