Earth ChangesS


Igloo

102 cm of snow disrupts rail, traffic in south Austria

Vienna - Record snowfall in parts of southern Austria disrupted traffic and rail services Friday and prompted authorities to declare the highest-level avalanche alert.

In the Gailtal valley, in the southern province of Carinthia, about 102 centimetres of snow fell in just 48 hours, marking an 80-year record, according to the Austrian national weather centre ZAMG.

The Lesachtal valley meanwhile saw between 160 and 200 centimetres of fresh snow, according to unofficial data.

Igloo

Freak Snowstorms Cut Power In France

Tens of thousands of people have been left without power or transport by freak snowstorms in south-central France.

Up to 100,000 were left without electricity in the largely hilly region, with some losing their phone lines, according to regional power company ERDF.

Traffic has been blocked on several highways, while heavy snow in the elevated Massif Central region near the Alps cut train lines between Béziers and Clermont-Ferrand.

Snowman

U.S. hit by blizzards and avalanche (video)

A skier dies after an avalanche and blizzards paralyse towns and cities in parts of the western United States.

The 20-year-old skier died in hospital after she was buried by a rare avalanche at a resort in Utah.

The same storm front that created the avalanche conditions also brought blizzards to major cities, closing roads and halting transport systems.

Arrow Down

Colorado, US: New record low temperatures in Denver for December

New record low temperatures in Denver for December 14th and 15th.

Play

Video: Al Gore sued by over 30.000 Scientists for fraud


Better Earth

As Ice Melts, Antarctic Bedrock Is On The Move

POLENET GPS site
© Ohio State UniversityEric Kendrick, a senior research associate at Ohio State, shown at a POLENET GPS site in West Antarctica. He is standing in front of solar panels, battery boxes, and wind generators used to power the GPS station.
As ice melts away from Antarctica, parts of the continental bedrock are rising in response -- and other parts are sinking, scientists have discovered.

The finding will give much needed perspective to satellite instruments that measure ice loss on the continent, and help improve estimates of future sea level rise.

"Our preliminary results show that we can dramatically improve our estimates of whether Antarctica is gaining or losing ice," said Terry Wilson,* associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University.

These results come from a trio of global positioning system (GPS) sensor networks on the continent.

Wilson leads POLENET, a growing network of GPS trackers and seismic sensors implanted in the bedrock beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). POLENET is reoccupying sites previously measured by the West Antarctic GPS Network (WAGN) and the Transantarctic Mountains Deformation (TAMDEF) network.

Frog

Flashback Australia: Crocodiles wiped out by invasion of the toxic toads

Cane Toad
© APThe cane toad is famed for its indestructibility

In a contest between a toad and a crocodile, it seems obvious the croc will win. Not, though, if its adversary is a cane toad - the poisonous pests laying waste to Australian wildlife.

Researchers have found that, in some waterways in the Northern Territory, numbers of freshwater crocodiles have more than halved over the past two years. The reason is cane toads, which are fatal when eaten.

Cloud Lightning

US: More power loss possible in ice-ravaged Northeast

Joined by people seeking shelter from the bitter cold, parishioners at the Jaffrey Bible Church on Sunday thanked God for a warm place to sleep and for the utility crews struggling to repair power lines snapped by New England's devastating ice storm.

"Your fellow Jaffrey residents have stepped up and made this a more bearable situation," Walt Pryor, recreation department director for the town of 5,700, told the congregation Sunday morning.

Umbrella

Cold weather sets records in several cities

Several places in the state have already shattered daily record lows, and more are expected to be broken as the sub-zero temperatures continue through Sunday night.

White Sulphur Springs reported 29 degrees below zero to the National Weather Service today, stretching way beyond the last daily record low of 17 degrees below zero set in 1922.

"We're waiting for a lot of reports to come in still," said Scott Coulston, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Great Falls.

Better Earth

Flashback 32,000 Global Warming Deniers

That's the number of scientists who are outraged by the Kyoto Protocol's corruption of science.

climate petition
© unknownFreeman Dyson is one of the world’s most eminent physicists.

How many scientists does it take to establish that a consensus does not exist on global warming?

The quest to establish that the science is not settled on climate change began before most people had even heard of global warming. The year was 1992 and the United Nations was about to hold its Earth Summit in Rio. It was billed as - and was - the greatest environmental and political assemblage in human history. Delegations came from 178 nations - virtually every nation in the world - including 118 heads of state or government and 7,000 diplomatic bureaucrats. The world's environmental groups came too - they sent some 30,000 representatives from every corner of the world to Rio. To report all this, 7,000 journalists converged on Rio to cover the event, and relay to the public's of the world that global warming and other environmental insults were threatening the planet with catastrophe.

In February of that year, in an attempt to head off the whirlwind that the conference would unleash, 47 scientists signed a "Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming," decrying "the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action."