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New Zealand - Snow hits farmers big time


Meat Trade News Daily
Tue, 05 Oct 2010 00:29 UTC
sheep
© Unknown
Following a reasonably benign winter, the Southland region of New Zealand (NZ) has in the past week been hit by "the worst spring storm in living memory" according to the NZ Herald.

Six days of blizzards have caused deaths among new lambs numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and raised concern over the welfare of ewes yet to lamb.

Besides the effect of the cold weather itself, the continued snowfall has not allowed snow on the ground to thaw, making it much harder for stock to feed.

This makes ewes about to lamb particularly susceptible to metabolic illnesses from a lack of nutrients.

Reportedly, lamb mortality in the area may be as high as 15% for some farmers. With average prices for lambs expected to be around NZ$80/head this season (NZ Herald), the financial loss to NZ producers will be significant, estimated to exceed NZ$50 million (NZ Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry).

Source: MLA.com
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Cloud Lightning

Coldest winter in 1,000 years on its way


Russia Times
Tue, 05 Oct 2010 00:20 UTC
After the record heat wave this summer, Russia's weather seems to have acquired a taste for the extreme.

Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years.
Image

The change is reportedly connected with the speed of the Gulf Stream, which has shrunk in half in just the last couple of years. Polish scientists say that it means the stream will not be able to compensate for the cold from the Arctic winds. According to them, when the stream is completely stopped, a new Ice Age will begin in Europe.

So far, the results have been lower temperatures: for example, in Central Russia, they are a couple of degrees below the norm.

"Although the forecast for the next month is only 70 percent accurate, I find the cold winter scenario quite likely," Vadim Zavodchenkov, a leading specialist at the Fobos weather center, told RT. "We will be able to judge with more certainty come November. As for last summer's heat, the statistical models that meteorologists use to draw up long-term forecasts aren't able to predict an anomaly like that."
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Red Flag

Report Casts World's Rivers in 'Crisis State'

Terry Devitt
Physorg.com
Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:37 UTC
Image
© Barry Carlsen
The world's rivers, the single largest renewable water resource for humans and a crucible of aquatic biodiversity, are in a crisis of ominous proportions, according to a new global analysis.
The world's rivers are in crisis, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology and the City College of New York (CCNY) that is published in the Sept. 30, 2010 issue of the scientific journal Nature. The study, led by UW-Madison limnologist and professor of zoology Peter McIntyre and CCNY modeler Charles Vörösmarty, combines, for the first time, indices of water security and biodiversity for all of the world's rivers, many of which are severely degraded due to issues of pollution, water diversion and introduced species.

The report, published today in the journal Nature, is the first to simultaneously account for the effects of such things as pollution, dam building, agricultural runoff, the conversion of wetlands and the introduction of exotic species on the health of the world's rivers.

The resulting portrait of the global riverine environment, according to the scientists who conducted the analysis, is grim. It reveals that nearly 80 percent of the world's human population lives in areas where river waters are highly threatened posing a major threat to human water security and resulting in aquatic environments where thousands of species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction.
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Bizarro Earth

Japan: Earthquake Magnitutde 6.3 - Southwestern Ryukyu Islands


USGS
Mon, 04 Oct 2010 12:19 UTC
Jaoan Quake_041010
© USGS
Earthquake Location
Date-Time:
Monday, October 04, 2010 at 13:28:39 UTC

Monday, October 04, 2010 at 10:28:39 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
24.268°N, 125.149°E

Depth:
35 km (21.7 miles) set by location program

Region:
SOUTHWESTERN RYUKYU ISLANDS, JAPAN

Distances:
115 km (70 miles) E of Ishigaki-jima, Ryukyu Islands, Japan

320 km (200 miles) SW of Naha, Okinawa, Japan

350 km (220 miles) E of Su-ao, Taiwan

1875 km (1170 miles) SW of TOKYO, Japan
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Bulb

Dolphin species attempt 'common language'

Matt Walker
Earth News
Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:50 UTC
dolphin
© L.May-Collado
A Guyana dolphin leaps to escape the attention of a bottlenose dolphin

When two dolphin species come together, they attempt to find a common language, preliminary research suggests.

Bottlenose and Guyana dolphins, two distantly related species, often come together to socialise in waters off the coast of Costa Rica.

Both species make unique sounds, but when they gather, they change the way they communicate, and begin using an intermediate language.

That raises the possibility the two species are communicating in some way.
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Bizarro Earth

Death Toll Rises As Storm Lashes Eastern U.S.


Reuters
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 16:25 UTC
Tropical storm Nicole lashed the eastern United States with heavy rain and high winds again on Friday, causing more flooding and leaving one Pennsylvania woman dead in a weather-related traffic accident.

The woman drove her car into a rain-swollen creek, bringing the U.S. death toll from the storm to at least six, after five people were killed earlier this week in North Carolina.

The governor of North Carolina declared a state of emergency, with officials there warning that creeks and rivers would continue to rise even after the storm passed.

Flood warnings were in effect for parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C.

The deluge that started on Wednesday set records in several areas, said Dan Peterson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
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Bizarro Earth

Tropical Storm Nicole Kills Nine in Jamaica

Kevin Gray
Reuters
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 05:43 UTC
Short-lived Tropical Storm Nicole triggered flash flooding that killed at least nine people in Jamaica and dumped heavy rain on Florida, Cuba, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas on Wednesday.

The broad and ragged storm formed on Wednesday morning and dissipated Wednesday afternoon. U.S. and Cuban meteorologists disagreed on whether it ever actually became a tropical storm at all.

Forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami pegged its peak sustained winds at 40 miles per hour, just over the 39 mph threshold to become a named storm.

Cuban forecasters put the top winds at 37 mph and disagreed that it was a tropical storm when it crossed the island. "No tropical storm exists," Cuba's top meteorologist, Jorge Rubiera, said on national television.

U.S. forecasters said Nicole had a poorly defined center of circulation and had been "a marginal system."
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Arrow Down

China Experts Say Panda Suffocated to Death in Japan


Agence France-Presse
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 09:00 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse
Male giant panda Kou Kou
Chinese experts sent to Japan to investigate the death of a giant panda on loan to a zoo have determined that the animal died of asphyxiation, state media reported Saturday.

Kou Kou died last month at the Oji zoo in the western port city of Kobe after it had received an anaesthetic so that veterinarians could extract semen from the 14-year-old male panda to impregnate his partner, Tan Tan.

Experts found that Kou Kou had suffocated when "objects in its stomach went into its lungs, leading to asphyxiation," the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Earlier, reports suggested the experts believed that the death could have been caused by an overdose of sedatives and were questioning why Japanese veterinarians were extracting semen outside the animal's mating period.

A breeding agreement between Beijing and Tokyo includes the stipulation that Japan pay 500,000 dollars in compensation if a panda dies due to human error, state media reported previously.
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Attention

US: Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Ravaged by Disease

Laura Zuckerman
Reuters
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 17:29 UTC
Image
© Ryan Hagerty/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Bighorn sheep are pictured in Montana in this photograph taken on February 27, 2006 and obtained on October 2, 2010.
Across the northern Rocky Mountains, bighorn sheep are dying by the hundreds from pneumonia and alarmed wildlife officials are hunting and killing the majestic animals to halt the spread of the disease.

Since winter, nine disease outbreaks across five states in the West have claimed nearly 1,000 bighorns, prized as a game animal for the prominent curled horns of the adult males, or rams.

Scientists recently confirmed what they long suspected -- the cause of the plague is contact between the wild bighorns and domestic sheep flocks.

Putting the blame on domestic sheep has heightened a furious debate between advocates of the wild bighorns and sheep ranchers -- one skirmish in a bigger war between proponents of economic interests and those seeking protection of remaining wild areas and species in America's West.
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Binoculars

US: Bull Sharks Making Homes in Waters of South Alabama

Ben Raines
Alabama Live
Fri, 01 Oct 2010 04:00 UTC
Image
© Wikipedia Commons/Albert kok
Bull sharks born in waters around south Alabama are staying in the area and using the rivers as they get larger.
Bull sharks are common in Dog River, Fowl River and the rivers of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, according to a tracking effort conducted by the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.

During the last two years, 34 newborn sharks have been fitted with radio tags that transmit signals to receivers set up in the rivers around Mobile Bay.

While last year's data suggested that the babies were making use of the coastal rivers, it has now become apparent that sharks coming into their second year are staying in the area and using the rivers as they get larger.

The researchers said they also routinely catch adult bull sharks in Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound, some longer than 6 feet.
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