Earth Changes

One Dead as Typhoon Whips Northern Philippines

Mynardo Macaraig
Agence France-Presse
Sun, 17 Oct 2010 03:00 UTC

Super Typhoon Megi slammed into the northern Philippines Monday causing landslides in mountainous areas, tearing roofs off houses, whipping up huge waves along the coast and killing at least one person.

Schools were closed and thousands of people were evacuated across the north of the Philippines' main island of Luzon ahead of the strongest storm to pummel the country this year, rescue and relief officials said.

The northeastern provinces of Isabela and Cagayan were the first to feel the typhoon's fury on Monday morning, chief government weatherman Graciano Yumol said.

"There are landslides in the mountains, we have swells, storm surges and big waves along the coast line, and now we have flood alerts," Yumol said in an interview with GMA 7 television.

Indonesia: Earthquake Magnitude 6.1 - 16th Oct 10

USGS
Sat, 16 Oct 2010 13:31 UTC

Date-Time:
Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 15:44:32 UTC

Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 12:44:32 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
7.343°S, 125.662°E

Depth:
20.6 km (12.8 miles)

Region:
KEPULAUAN BARAT DAYA, INDONESIA

Distances:
135 km (85 miles) N of DILI, Timor-Leste

385 km (240 miles) NE of Kupang, Timor, Indonesia

395 km (245 miles) ESE of Baubau, Sulawesi, Indonesia

795 km (495 miles) NW of DARWIN, Northern Territory, Australia

Possible threat to Earth by asteroids among issues at UN debate on outer space

The Sofia Echo
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 09:03 UTC

A United Nations working group is currently looking into how the UN should respond to possible threats to the planet from near-earth objects, such as asteroids, Mazlan Othman, the Director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), told reporters at UN Headquarters in New York on October 14 2010, the UN News Service said.

She said that the working group - within the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space - is expected to come up with recommendations which would be presented to the General Assembly for UN member states to make a decision on response to near-earth objects.

"We now have a working group that has a multi-year work plan in the committee to discuss this, and this working group will come up with a draft on how the UN should deal with this situation," said Othman, who was in New York to attend the Assembly's discussions on international co-operation on the peaceful uses of outer space.

She said the Vienna-based Committee is also discussing space debris, among other issues, and long-term sustainability of space exploration.

Snow, 50-mph winds in picture for Northeastern US

MSNBC
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:29 UTC

© Matt Rourke/AP
The first rain from the systems moving into the Northeast started falling Thursday evening in places such as downtown Philadelphia, Pa.

Nor'easter expected to make for messy evening commute, and up to 16 inches of snow in high elevations

Strong winds, heavy rain and even snow moved into the Northeast on Friday, with the weather expected to get worse for evening commutes and overnight.

By late Friday morning, flights into La Guardia and Newark airports were being delayed by more than an hour due to the wind and rain.

Killington, Vt., had five inches of snow Friday morning and other areas above 4,000 feet saw the white stuff as well, Jim Cantore of weather.com reported for MSNBC. By the time the storm blows through on Sunday, he added, some Vermont and New Hampshire mountains could see 16 inches of snow.

Forecasters say two low pressure systems will combine to create a strong nor'easter covering most of the northeastern half of the nation, stretching from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes.

The system will pull moisture and energy in from the Atlantic Ocean, kicking up winds up to 50 mph and rainfall ranging between 1 to 3 inches in most areas.

New species of fish discovered in ocean's deepest depths

Hilary Duncanson
The Independent
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:04 UTC

© PA
The snailfish was found living at a depth of 7,000m in a trench in the South East Pacific Ocean, which was previously thought to be free of fish

A new species has been discovered in a part of the ocean previously thought to be entirely free of fish, scientists said yesterday.

The new type of snailfish was found living at a depth of 7,000m in the Peru-Chile trench of the South East Pacific Ocean.

Mass groupings of cusk-eels and large crustacean scavengers were also discovered living at these depths for the first time, scientists said. The findings, in one of the deepest places on the planet, were made by a team of marine biologists from the University of Aberdeen and experts from Japan and New Zealand.

The team took part in a three-week expedition, during which they used deep-sea imaging technology to take 6,000 pictures at depths between 4,500m and 8,000m within the trench.

The mission was the seventh to take place as part of HADEEP, a collaborative research project between the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab and the University of Tokyo's Ocean Research Institute, supported by New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research (NIWA).

Drought Return Forecast

Pete Aleshire
Payson Roundup
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:43 UTC

The Colorado River watershed may face a dry winter - and water rationing, according to several recent, unsettling studies.

In fact, Lake Mead may soon fall below the mark that will trigger a reduction in the supply of water for Arizona and Nevada, according to an alarming study by researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles published in the October issue of the Journal of the American Water Resources Association.

The researchers said that the overlap of ocean currents and temperatures in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans will deliver a dry winter, with Lake Mead already just half full and only nine feet above the level that will trigger rationing.

Most of the studies suggesting a dry winter and serious drought have focused on the upper Colorado River watershed, rather than Rim Country. Fortunately, a wet winter last season filled Roosevelt Lake, which will give the Valley a cushion if drought results in a cutoff of water through the Central Arizona Project.

US: Earthquake Magntitude 3.8 - Arkansas

US Geological Survey
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:56 UTC

Date-Time
Friday, October 15, 2010 at 10:20:19 UTC

Friday, October 15, 2010 at 05:20:19 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
35.276°N, 92.323°W

Depth:
5 km (3.1 miles) set by location program

Region:
ARKANSAS

Distances:
25 km (15 miles) NNE of Conway, Arkansas

55 km (35 miles) W of Searcy, Arkansas

60 km (35 miles) N of LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas

70 km (40 miles) SSW of Mountain View, Arkansas

Global Warming Causes Snow to hit Britain!

Telegraph UK
Thu, 14 Oct 2010 23:13 UTC

Winter will come early to Britain next week as snow is forecast for the north while the south will shiver in frosty sub-zero nights.

The cold snap will seem worse after temperatures soared to 75F (23C) last weekend.

Forecasters warned snow is due in Scotland and possibly northern England next week, with frost as far south as southern England, which will see bitter 48F (9C) daytime maximum temperatures.

"A northerly air stream in the middle part of next week means coldest conditions will probably be in Scotland, with sleet or snow showers and snow settling on higher ground," said forecaster Brian Gaze of independent forecasters The Weather Outlook.

"Even southern England will feel distinctly chilly."

Forecasters Positive Weather Solutions have already predicted a 'white-out' winter almost as harsh as last winter - with widespread snow, temperatures down to -4F (-20C) and transport chaos.

The Weather Outlook, which has an accurate seasonal forecasting record, warned the UK is now being gripped by a bitter series of winters comparable with the harsh 1939-42 winters which made conditions so horrendous during the Second World War.

A Whale of a Journey, Captured in Photos

Sindya Bhanoo
New York Times
Wed, 13 Oct 2010 21:23 UTC

© F. Johansen, via Associated Press
The image above, taken in 2001, was used to identify a female humpback whale who traveled more than 6,000 miles from Brazil to Madagascar.

If you cruise the Web you can find long-lost friends, high school sweethearts and ... far-traveling humpback whales.

With the help of Flickr, a photo-sharing site, Peter Stevick, a biologist at the College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Me., and colleagues have identified a whale that made an unprecedented journey, an epic 6,000 miles from Brazil to Madagascar, about 10 years ago. The whale's adventure is described in Biology Letters.

Carole Carlson, an author of the paper and a researcher at the College of the Atlantic, often checks Flickr for whale photos because humpbacks can be identified by their tails, which are as individual as fingerprints. An amateur photographer had taken a photo on a film camera in 2001 and only recently posted it. That photo matched one taken by researchers of a whale off the coast of Brazil in 1999.

Photo shows leak in reservoir months before Hungarian sludge spill

Pablo Gorondi
Associated Press / Toronto Star
Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:05 UTC

© BAKO GABOR/AP PHOTO/INTERSPECT
Picture taken in June 2010 by Hungarian air photo company Interspect shows the dam of the reservoir in Kolontar, Hungary, with red stains that allegedly indicate red sludge leaking through - nearly four months before the wall broke on October 4 killing at least eight people .

An aerial photo taken months before a gigantic reservoir unleashed torrents of toxic sludge shows a faint red trail trickling through the container wall - part of a growing body of evidence that inspectors who gave the pit a clean bill of health may have missed warning signs.

Police were examining the photo Tuesday as part of an investigation into how part of the wall containing the 10 million cubic metres of caustic slurry could have given way without structural weaknesses being detected by a team of inspectors from the government environmental agency who inspected the container pond less then two weeks before the spill. The flood of red sludge killed eight people.

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Earth Changes

One Dead as Typhoon Whips Northern Philippines

Indonesia: Earthquake Magnitude 6.1 - 16th Oct 10

Possible threat to Earth by asteroids among issues at UN debate on outer space

Snow, 50-mph winds in picture for Northeastern US

New species of fish discovered in ocean's deepest depths

Drought Return Forecast

US: Earthquake Magntitude 3.8 - Arkansas

Global Warming Causes Snow to hit Britain!

A Whale of a Journey, Captured in Photos

Photo shows leak in reservoir months before Hungarian sludge spill

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