Earth ChangesS


Cloud Precipitation

Heavy rain brings floods and road chaos to southern England

Haroon Siddique
Guardian
Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:26 UTC
Heavy rainfall England
© Lewis Whyld/PAHeavy rainfall has brought flooding and transport problems to parts of southern England.
Up to 4cm of rain falls in just a few hours overnight - more than half the normal monthly total - as gale force winds also strike

Heavy rain has brought localised flooding and transport disruption to southern England, with forecasters warning of further heavy rainfall to come.

Up to 4cm (1.5in) of rain - more than half the normal monthly total - fell on parts of the south in just a few hours overnight, and there were also gale force winds in places.
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Satellite

Best of the Web: US Official: Satellite Failure Means Decade of Global Warming Data Doubtful

John O'Sullivan
Climate Change Fraud
Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:41 UTC
Image
© Unknown
US Government admits satellite temperature readings "degraded." All data taken offline in shock move. Global warming temperatures may be 10 to 15 degrees too high.

The fault was first detected after a tip off from an anonymous member of the public to climate skeptic blog, Climate Change Fraud (view original article) (August 9, 2010).

Caught in the center of the controversy is the beleaguered taxpayer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA's Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis has now confirmed that the fast spreading story on the respected climate skeptic blog is true.

However, NOAA spokesman, Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis declined to state how long the fault might have gone undetected. Nor would the shaken spokesman engage in speculation as to the damage done to the credibility of a decade's worth of temperature readings taken from the problematic 'NOAA-16' satellite.
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Info

South Pacific sea levels - Best records show little or no rise?!

Jo Nova
joannenova.com.au
Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:04 UTC
Are the small islands of the South Pacific in danger of disappearing, glug, under the waves of the rising ocean? Will thousands of poor inhabitants be forced to emigrate, as desperate refugees, to Australia and New Zealand? Has any of this got anything to do with man-made emissions of CO2?

By looking closely at the records, it turns out that the much advertised rising sea levels in the South Pacific depend on anomalous depressions of the ocean during 1997 and 1998 thanks to an El Nino and two tropical cyclones. The Science and Public Policy Institute has released a report by Vincent Gray which compares 12 Pacific Island records and shows that in many cases it's these anomalies that set the trends... and if the anomaly is removed, sea levels appear to be more or less constant since the Seaframe measurements began around 1993.

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© UnknownSea levels: The El Nino / tropical storm anomaly in 1997-1998 is clear. A long sustained rise is not. [Click to enlarge]
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Bizarro Earth

Activity At Sakurajima Volcano Intensifies


Space Daily
Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:56 UTC
Sakurajima Volcano
© Space DailyRoughly 7,000 years ago Sakurajima erupted with a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) of 6, equivalent to the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
By mid-August, Sakurajima Volcano-one of Japan's most active-had erupted ash at least once every week during 2010.

On August 19, 2010, an ash plume was sighted at 9,000 feet (2,700 meters), according to the Tokyo Volcanic Ash Advisory Center.

This natural-color satellite image shows the gray plume moving west (towards image top) from the volcano's summit. Simultaneously, a pyroclastic flow descended the eastern slopes.

Although Sakurajima's activity since 1955 has been characterized by frequent small eruptions, the volcano still poses a danger to the densely-populated surroundings.

Roughly 7,000 years ago Sakurajima erupted with a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) of 6, equivalent to the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

The image was acquired by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.
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Better Earth

Watch out for Yellowstone bears - they're hungry

Matthew Brown
Associated Press
Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:20 UTC
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© AP Photo/Yellowstone National Park, James PeacoIn this June 7, 2005 file photo released by Yellowstone National Park a grizzly bear moves through the brush in the park in Wyoming. Yellowstone's grizzlies are going to be particularly hungry this fall, and that means more dangerous meetings with humans in a year that is already the area's deadliest on record.
Yellowstone's grizzlies are going to be particularly hungry this fall, and that means more dangerous meetings with humans in a year that is already the area's deadliest on record.

Scientists report that a favorite food of many bears, nuts from whitebark pine cones, is scarce. So as grizzlies look to put on some major pounds in preparation for the long winter ahead, scientists say, they will be looking for another source of protein - meat - and running into trouble along the way.

Wildlife managers already report bears coming down off the mountains and into areas frequented by hunters, berry pickers and hikers.

"Pack your bear spray: there's going to be run-ins," said grizzly researcher Chuck Schwartz with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Two people have been fatally mauled by grizzlies so far this year in Wyoming and Montana. Experts said that's the most in one year in at least a century for the Yellowstone region, which also includes parts of Idaho.
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Bizarro Earth

Severe Weather Warning Issued for Southern England


The Guardian
Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:02 UTC
Image
© Peter Macdiarmid/Getty ImagesA severe weather warning has been issued for southern England.
The Met Office says heavy rain is forecast tonight from Land's End to the Wash raising fears of flash floods

The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for parts of southern England, with up to 8cm (3in) of rain expected to fall and fears of flash flooding.

The swath of the country running diagonally from Land's End to the Wash, in East Anglia, will also get battered by strong winds, causing widespread travel disruption and affecting thousands of people holidaying in south coast resorts.

"Heavy rainfall overnight may give 20-30mm of rain quite widely and 50-80mm locally," a spokesperson for the Met Office said. "This rain will be accompanied by strong, possibly gale force winds.

"The heavy rain could lead to flooding in some areas and cause disruption to outdoor events and transport networks."
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Cloud Precipitation

Floods Cut Off North Korean City

Peter Foster
The Telegraph
Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:45 UTC
Image
© ReutersA helicopter flies over flooded houses in the North Korean city of Sinuiju
North Korea has been forced to deploy military units to rescue 5,000 people who were left stranded by a fresh wave of flooding along the impoverished state's border with China.

Pyongyang's official news agency said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had dispatched the units to the city of Sinuiju, which had been inundated after the Yalu river overflowed.

The floods, caused by 11.8 inches of rain falling in nine hours on Saturday, have also forced the evacuation of 127,000 people on the Chinese side of the border in the port city of Dandong, the main gateway for North Korea's limited trade with the world.

Chinese weather forecasters were warning of a further 10 inches of rain to fall by this morning. On Sunday it was confirmed that four people had died in the flooding in China.

Pictures from the country showed people being airlifted by helicopter from the rooftops of damaged buildings as water swirled around them.
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Better Earth

Great Barrier Reef's great-grandmother is unearthed


New Scientist
Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:02 UTC
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© Naoi/ Flickr/GettyAge before beauty, when it comes to coral?
Just 600 metres away from the Great Barrier Reef, the jewel in Australia's crown, a less spectacular but more ancient reef has been discovered.

The first hint of its existence came in 2007, when seismic and sonar measurements revealed odd ridges and lagoons on the seabed. Confirmation arrived in February this year, when an international team extracted 34 sediment cores from three sites on the seabed, revealing a fossilised coral reef that reaches 110 metres into the sea floor. Preliminary dating of the core indicates that the coral is up to 169,000 years old.

"This is the great-grandmother of the Great Barrier Reef," says John Pandolfi of the University of Queensland, who was not on the mission. It is "a very important discovery", he says, and should provide new insights into the genesis of the reef.
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Bizarro Earth

Mystery of the Atlantic's missing plastic flotsam

Cian O'Luanaigh
New Scientist
Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:43 UTC
The amount of floating plastic trapped in a north Atlantic current system hasn't got any bigger in 22 years, despite more and more plastic being thrown away.

Since 1986 students taking samples of plankton in the Atlantic and Caribbean Oceans have also noted when their nets caught plastic debris. Kara Lavender and colleagues at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, analysed the data, and found that of 6136 samples recorded, more than 60 per cent included pieces of plastic, typically just millimetres across. The areas of highest plastic concentration are within the north Atlantic subtropical gyre, where currents gather the debris.

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Ambulance

More than 120,000 people evacuated in flood-hit China


Press TV
Sun, 22 Aug 2010 07:23 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Fresh floods in China's northeastern Liaoning province have forced more than 120,000 people to evacuate their homes and thousands to relocate in North Korea.

China's Civil Affairs Ministry said late Saturday that 127,000 people had been evacuated in Liaoning province in just three days due to the rains, AFP said.

Heavy summer downpours have dangerously swollen the Yalu River, which forms the boundary between China and neighboring North Korea. Chinese forecasters have warned of more heavy rains in parts of Liaoning.

In Dandong city alone, which borders North Korea, more than 94,000 residents were evacuated and some power and transport links were cut off, China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
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