Earth Changes
San Francisco - A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Navy to lessen the harm its high-power sonar does to whales and other marine life during exercises off the Southern California coast.
© BBC
And polar bears? For once, they are not mentioned, but scientists agree that they are doing well, with a rebound in their numbers of up to 500 per cent since hunting was banned in the 1970s
And polar bears? For once, they are not mentioned, but scientists agree that they are doing well, with a rebound in their numbers of up to 500 per cent since hunting was banned in the 1970s
First there came the computer-generated polar bear in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth; then that heartrending photo, syndicated everywhere, of the bears apparently stranded on a melting ice floe; then the story of those four polar bears drowned by global warming (actually, they'd perished in a storm).
A major earthquake hit northern Chile on Wednesday, and local television showed cars crushed under a section of collapsed building and terrified, confused residents in the streets.
Ricardo Lagos Weber, minister of government affairs, who spoke from Santiago an hour after the quake hit, said there were no immediate reports of injuries. But he said information from isolated areas in the far north had yet to come in.
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| ©TVN Chile |
| A car lies crushed under part of a building Wednesday in Antofagasta. |
Ricardo Lagos Weber, minister of government affairs, who spoke from Santiago an hour after the quake hit, said there were no immediate reports of injuries. But he said information from isolated areas in the far north had yet to come in.
The slopes of Chenjialing Village have shuddered and groaned lately, cracking and warping homes and fields, and making residents fear the banks of China's swelling Three Gorges Dam may hold deadly perils.
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| ©REUTERS/David Gray |
| A boat sails past on the Yangtze River as an old lady sits in the courtyard of her apartment block in the area known as Old Badong county in the Hubei Province near the town of Badong in central China, Nov. 5, 2007. |
Something strange is happening in the atmosphere above Africa and researchers have converged on Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss the phenomenon. The Africa Space Weather Workshop kicked off Nov. 12th with nearly 100 scientists and students in attendance.
Cyclone Sidr, currently in the Bay of Bengal and headed towards India or Bangladesh, recently became the 15th Category 4 or 5 storm of 2007, with sustained winds estimated at 115 knots or more than 130 miles per hour. Now, it's all a matter of where and when.
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| ©Naval Research Laboratory |
There has been increased seismic activity, confirmed as volcanic tremors, in the Sulu area in West New Britain province but authorities said there were no threats that Mt Pago volcano might erupt soon.
The provincial disaster office said the resurgence of the seismic activity was felt at 10pm last Monday night in the Sulu/Silanga area. Acting disaster director Peter Morlin said the Rabaul Volcano Observatory had already been informed and disaster officers in Kimbe were observing the activities.
He said earth tremor data coming from Mt Pago stations were indicating a build-up of seismic activity again.
The provincial disaster office said the resurgence of the seismic activity was felt at 10pm last Monday night in the Sulu/Silanga area. Acting disaster director Peter Morlin said the Rabaul Volcano Observatory had already been informed and disaster officers in Kimbe were observing the activities.
He said earth tremor data coming from Mt Pago stations were indicating a build-up of seismic activity again.
A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.
The team, led by James Morison of the University of Washington's Polar Science Center Applied Physics Laboratory, Seattle, used data from an Earth-observing satellite and from deep-sea pressure gauges to monitor Arctic Ocean circulation from 2002 to 2006. They measured changes in the weight of columns of Arctic Ocean water, from the surface to the ocean bottom. That weight is influenced by factors such as the height of the ocean's surface, and its salinity. A saltier ocean is heavier and circulates differently than one with less salt.
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| ©NASA |
| This shows contours of the trend in ocean bottom pressure from 2002 to 2006 as measured by GRACE along with hypothetical trends that would apply at the circles if ocean salinity reverted from 1990s values to climatological conditions over the same period. |
The team, led by James Morison of the University of Washington's Polar Science Center Applied Physics Laboratory, Seattle, used data from an Earth-observing satellite and from deep-sea pressure gauges to monitor Arctic Ocean circulation from 2002 to 2006. They measured changes in the weight of columns of Arctic Ocean water, from the surface to the ocean bottom. That weight is influenced by factors such as the height of the ocean's surface, and its salinity. A saltier ocean is heavier and circulates differently than one with less salt.
GENEVA - The world's smallest bear species faces extinction because of deforestation and poaching in its Southeast Asian home, a conservation group said Monday.
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| ©AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File |
| A 9-month-old baby Asian sun bear reaches out through his cage at his new home at the Wildlife Division of the Thai Forestry Department in Banglamung. |
BEIJING - Giant pandas are being forced to move from a remote mountainous area in southwestern China due to food shortages as their staple bamboo withers, an animal expert said Monday.
