Earth Changes
Last Friday's magnitude 5.2 earthquake in southern Illinois is a reminder that earthquakes are a national hazard.
Today, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are revealing how shaky the nation is by releasing an updated version of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Maps.
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| ©U.S. Geological Survey
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| Colors on this map show the levels of horizontal shaking that have a 2-in-100 chance of being exceeded in a 50-year period. Shaking is expressed as a percentage of g (g is the acceleration of a falling object due to gravity).
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Earthquakes remain a serious threat in 46 of the United States. For some areas such as western Oregon and Washington, the new maps contain higher estimates for how hard the ground will shake compared to earlier versions of the maps released in 1996 and 2002.
AFPFri, 18 Apr 2008 17:40 UTC
Talks among major carbon emitters aimed at speeding negotiations towards a new pact on climate change ended Friday after making some headway but failing to remove roadblocks ahead of a summit in July.
"We achieved a consensus on the need for long-term and medium-term goals for reducing greenhouse-house gases... but we have not quantified targets at this stage and we regret this," said France's secretary of state for European affairs, Jean-Pierre Jouyet.
The two-day talks in Paris gathered ministers from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States.
AWIMon, 21 Apr 2008 13:45 UTC
The Antarctic deep sea gets colder, which might stimulate the circulation of the oceanic water masses. This is the first result of the Polarstern expedition of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association that has just ended in Punta Arenas/Chile. At the same time satellite images from the Antarctic summer have shown the largest sea-ice extent on record. In the coming years autonomous measuring buoys will be used to find out whether the cold Antarctic summer induces a new trend or was only a ,slip".
The Polarstern expedition ANT-XXIV/3 was dedicated to examining the oceanic circulation and the oceanic cycles of materials that depend on it. Core themes were the projects CASO (Climate of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean) and GEOTRACES, two of the main projects in the Antarctic in the International Polar Year 2007/08.
Under the direction of Dr. Eberhard Fahrbach, Oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute, 58 scientists from ten countries were on board the research vessel Polarstern in the Southern Ocean from 6 February until 16 April, 2008. They studied ocean currents as well as the distribution of temperature, salt content and trace substances in Antarctic sea water. ,We want to investigate the role of the Southern Ocean for past, present and future climate," chief scientist Fahrbach said. The sinking water masses in the Southern Ocean are part of the overturning in this region and thus play a major role in global climate. ,While the last Arctic summer was the warmest on record, we had a cold summer with a sea-ice maximum in the Antarctic. The expedition shall form the basis for understanding the opposing developments in the Arctic and in the Antarctic," Fahrbach said.
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| ©AWI
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| Recovery of mooring 207 in heavy sea ice.
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At least 22 people have died from severe heat in east India's state of Orissa as temperatures touched 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in some areas, local TV said on Tuesday.
Soaring temperatures have affected the region for the past three weeks hitting an average of 40 degrees Celsius (103 Fahrenheit), around 7-8 degrees higher than normal.
Officials said sunstroke has been confirmed as a cause of death for only three people so far, and warned that the intense heat would continue for another four to five days.
Boosted by the influence of a larger climate event in the Pacific, one of the strongest La Niñas in many years is slowly weakening but continues to blanket the Pacific Ocean near the equator, as shown by new sea-level height data collected by the U.S.-French Jason oceanographic satellite.
This La Niña, which has persisted for the past year, is indicated by the blue area in the center of the image along the equator. Blue indicates lower than normal sea level (cold water). The data were gathered in early April.
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| ©NASA/JPL
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| This La Niña is indicated by the blue area in the center of the image along the equator. Blue indicates lower than normal sea level (cold water).
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That's how many are expected to inhabit the world by 2050. Experts worry over looming food shortages.
The world is an odd place. A tight global food situation with record-high grain prices presents the possibility of increasing malnutrition, perhaps famine, in parts of Africa and South Asia. Yet an estimated 1.6 billion adults, about a quarter of the world's 6.7 billion people, are overweight, some of them obese.
As a result, chubby Americans are spending roughly $1 billion a year to lose a few pounds with special diets, treadmills, etc., while hundreds of millions in poor nations are scrambling to buy enough food to add a little weight. "You couldn't write any stranger fiction," says Joseph Chamie, former head of the United Nation's Population Division.
A large avalanche buried a street near a popular Austrian ski resort beneath up to 4 meters (13 feet) of snow Tuesday, but authorities said a search turned up no victims.
Officials said the avalanche struck around 10:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) Tuesday and piled snow over a 100-meter (300-foot) stretch of roadway just outside the town of Soelden in the western Alpine province of Tyrol.
Rescue workers poked through the mass of heavy snow, but police later issued a statement saying no people or vehicles were caught in the avalanche.
So much for global warming. Earth Day festivities went ahead despite the blast of frigid weather yesterday.
XinhuaMon, 21 Apr 2008 09:14 UTC
Nicosia -- Cyprus will import from Greece some 8 million cubic meters of water this summer to tackle the serious drought the east Mediterranean island is facing, Agriculture Minister Michalis Polynikis said on Monday.
Under a contract the government signed with a local shipping company, Greek water will be ferried to Cyprus from June to November to ease the shortage.
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