Earth ChangesS


Attention

Monaco: Three 'mini-quakes' hit the the Cote d'Azur

Monaco Port
© The Riveria TimesThe quakes happened around the coast of Monaco
Just days after a minor earthquake was recorded off the coast of Menton, three further tremors have been registered in Monaco.

The Geo-Azur Laboratory confirmed that the first of these latest rumbles was registered at around 10.32am on the 8th February and hit 2.3 on the richter scale. The second, felt at about 2.02pm, had increased to 2.4 in its maginitude and finally came the third and strongest quake, which reached 2.8 ML.

Although the fire department in Menton did not receive any emergency calls at the time of the first minor tremor, several residents in Monaco, from Fontviellle and Monte-Carlo in particular, phoned police two days ago to find out what was happening.

Jena Luc Berenguer, Professor of the European Center of Valbonne, told press that the seismologists who recorded the movement under the Mediterranean Sea are not sure if all four were caused by the same fracture in the sea bed or if there is any link between the Menton and Monaco tremors at all. He added that although it is impossible to make any predictions, there was no great cause for concern at present. In fact if the technology was not in place to register signs of these 'mini-quakes', most of the region's residents would not be aware that they were even happening.

Attention

Hawaii: Second earthquake hits Big Island in two days

A magnitude 2.6 earthquake shook the Big Island at about 8:37 a.m. Thursday, the second small earthquake to hit the island in as many days.

The epicenter of the quake was at a depth of 1.7 miles and 5 miles from the town of Volcano, according to the U.S. Geological Survey website, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on the Big Island.

On Wednesday, a quake registered a magnitude 3.0 and occurred about 2 miles south of the Kilauea summit.

Cloud Lightning

Tropical Cyclone Threat to Madagascar

Madagascar Cyclone Bingiza
© Joint Typhoon Warning CenterTropical Cyclone Bingiza east of northern Madagascar early on February 10, 2011
Tropical Cyclone Bingiza poses the threat of damaging wind and flooding rain to the southwestern Indian Ocean island of Madagascar.

Early Thursday morning, EST, the center of the new tropical cyclone lay about 580 miles, or 930 km, northeast of Antananarivo. Highest sustained winds were estimated by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center to be 45 knots, or almost 85 km/h. T.C. Bingiza was nearly stationary.

Forecasters at AccuWeather.com believe that T.C. Bingiza will strengthen and drift mostly southwestward over open water through at least Saturday. Thereafter, a landfall on eastern Madagascar could take place. Faster movement than anticipated would make the landfall threat earlier than currently forecast.

If Bingiza were to veer southeastward, on the other hand, it could ultimately threaten the Mascarene Islands of La Reunion and Mauritius. However, this scenario would take several days to unfold.

Fish

Massive Fish Die Off In The Whangamarino Wetlands of New Zealand

Image
© UnknownWhangamarino wetland
The deaths of thousands of fish over the past week in the Whangamarino wetland have been caused by very low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water, The Department of Conservation [DOC] says.

Department spokesperson Kevin Hutchinson said numerous reports had come in from concerned residents and wetland users about the deaths, numbering possibly in the hundreds of thousands. While most are pests such as koi carp and catfish, native species mullet, bullies and eels have also been found dead.

"The drought at the end of 2010 exposed large areas of the wetland and rapid plant growth occurred in areas usually under water. High rainfall in January compounded by the baked dry ground in the catchment meant water rapidly ran off into the wetland and water levels remained consistently high for about three consecutive weeks."

Kevin Hutchinson says the decomposing plant matter started a bacterial process which depletes oxygen in the water. The warm humid weather experienced over summer has kept water temperatures and thus enhancing bacterial growth. Tests conducted with an oxygen meter by DOC rangers yesterday confirmed the very low levels of oxygen present in the water.

Question

Something Is Rotten Across States: US Officials Search For Source Of Strange Odor

Reports Received In Prince George's, Frederick, Montgomery Counties.

Maryland and West Virginia officials said they've had no luck finding the source of a mysterious odor reported in both states.

MEMA director Richard Muth told WBAL-AM on Thursday that the number of reports about the smell had decreased but that the investigation continues.

West Virginia's state director of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said Maryland authorities alerted his office about a possible gas leak Wednesday.

Jimmy Gianato said people in Maryland were calling to report they'd smelled mercaptan. That's the substance added to natural gas to make it smell like rotten eggs.

Gianato said the state Department of Environmental Protection checked with gas facilities and pipelines on the West Virginia side, but no one reported any leaks.

Magic Wand

Best of the Web: The Shiny Harbingers of Change, More Frequent and Brighter: Mysterious Noctilucent Clouds As Seen from Space

Mysterious "night shining" or noctilucent clouds are beautiful to behold, and are usually seen during the summertime, appearing at sunset. They are thin, wavy ice clouds that form at very high altitudes and reflect sunlight long after the Sun has dropped below the horizon. Scientists don't know exactly why they form, but continue to observe them - both from Earth and from space. These images were taken by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite.

Image
© NASPolar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) observed by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on the Aura satellite. Maps by Robert Simmon
Also called polar mesospheric clouds, they are puzzling scientists with their recent dramatic changes. They used to be considered rare, but now the clouds are growing brighter, are seen more frequently, are visible at lower and lower latitudes than ever before, and - as these satellite image reveal - they are now even appearing during the day.

Comment: The article mentions Matthew DeLand's measurements of a long-term trend towards more and brighter noctilucent clouds linking to rising greenhouse gases. And we would like to clarify, just in case there is anyone left who's not been paying attention, that it has nothing to do with Global Warming.

What we suspect has really been happening, based on our research thus far, is that the upper atmosphere is cooling because it is being loaded with comet dust, which shows up in the form of noctilucent clouds and other upper atmospheric formations. The comet dust is electrically charged which is causing the earth's rotation to slow marginally. The slowing of the rotation is reducing the magnetic field, opening earth to more dangerous cosmic radiation and stimulating more volcanism. The volcanism under the sea is heating the sea water which is heating the lower atmosphere and loading it with moisture. The moisture hits the cooler upper atmosphere and contributes to a deadly mix that inevitably leads to an Ice Age, preceded for a short period by a rapid increase of greenhouse gases and "hot pockets" in the lower atmosphere, heavy rains, hail, snow, and floods.

Expect this trend to continue but don't believe in "man-made Global Warming". Whatever warming there has been, it's really a prelude to the way Ice Ages begin. Let's hope that there aren't any catastrophically large chunks in that stream of comet dust cycling through our solar system.


Control Panel

Oklahoma sees record cold: -31

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© Kevin Pieper/AP Snow-covered cows stand in a field in Baxter County, Ark., on Wednesday.
An icy blast tugged temperatures well below zero in a large swath of the South on Thursday, setting records for cold by late morning.

Forecasters had predicted lows of minus 11 degrees in northwest Arkansas and minus 10 degrees in parts of Oklahoma. But temperatures instead dipped to minus 18 in Fayetteville and to minus 28 in Bartlesville, Okla.

Nowata, Okla., recorded 31 degrees below zero - setting a new record low for the state. The previous lowest temperature in Oklahoma history was 27 below in 1930 and 1905, said Gary McManus, associate state climatologist with the Oklahoma Climatological Survey.

"We just had a very cold arctic air mass and a heavy snow pack and that allowed the temperatures to plummet when the wind died down," said McManus. "We got much colder temperatures than anyone thought would occur."

Igloo

Snow in Southern U.S.

Snow Covered Southern US
© Earth Observatory, NASANASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.
The icy fingers of winter 2010-11 reached down into the south central U.S. for the second time in a week, breaking many local records for snowfall in a month that is still only 10 days old.

Snowfall totals topped 20 inches (50 centimeters) in parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas, just one week after a Groundhog Day storm coated the region with several inches. Meanwhile, temperatures dropped into the single digits in the American Plains and in Colorado. The storms moved east to dump more snow, ice, and rain in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and the Carolinas.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite captured this clear view of the nation's mid-section at 1:25 Central Standard Time on February 10, 2011. Nearly all of the white in this image is snow and ice, except for a bit of clouds in the lower right (southeast) corner. In the larger image file, the outlines of the Ouachita and Ozark mountain ranges darken the snowy landscape, while river valleys such as the Mississippi appear brighter due to fewer trees. Gray-white areas are often developed, urban landscapes that have been coated by snow; some, however, are just rural areas that received less snow.

Hourglass

Huge volcano under Yellowstone Park rising

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© National Park ServiceHydrothermal fluids, just like the ones shooting from Old Faithful, could be pushing up the Yellowstone supervolcano.
It's building quickly, but that doesn't mean doomsday eruption is imminent.

The huge volcano under Yellowstone National Park has been rising at an unprecedented rate during the past several years, according to a new study.

In the ancient past, the Yellowstone volcano produced some of the biggest-known continental eruptions, but the recent rising doesn't mean another doomsday eruption is looming, scientists say.

The recent rising is unprecedented for Yellowstone's caldera - the cauldron-shaped part of the volcano - but it's not uncommon for other volcanoes around the world. The new study has simply revealed a more active caldera at Yellowstone than scientists realized.

Binoculars

Volcano alert on Iceland

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© ReutersA column of steam and ash rises out of an erupting volcano near Eyjafjallajokull.
Another volcano could be about to erupt on Iceland, threatening to spew out a blanket of dust that would dwarf last year's eruption and ground hundreds more passenger flights.

Geologists say there is a high risk of the island's second-largest volcano Bárdarbunga erupting after an increase in the number of earthquakes around it.

Pall Einarsson, a professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, says the increased activity provides "good reason to worry". The sustained tremors to the north-east of the remote volcano range are the strongest recorded in recent times and there was "no doubt' the lava was rising.