Earth ChangesS


Radar

US: Quakes hit Mt. St. Helens, rattle Portland area

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Portland, Oregon - Two earthquakes hit the Mount St. Helens area Monday morning, and one was strong enough to be felt in the Portland-Vancouver area.

KATU received many reports from viewers in the Portland area who said they felt the 10:35 a.m. temblor.

The initial quake measured 3.5 and was followed by a 2.5., but then the first quake was re-evaluated as a 4.3 - a fairly robust temblor. A 2.3 aftershock struck just before noon.

Quakes are now measured on a "magnitude scale" instead of the Richter Scale, according to KATU News Meteorologist Dave Salesky.

Radar

Earth opening up: Erupting volcanic vents found in Antarctic waters

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© National Oceanography Centre.One of the new deep sea vents.
British researchers say the discovery of deep-sea volcanic vents in the Antarctic's Southern Ocean suggests they're more common than previously thought.

Deep-sea vents are hot springs on the seafloor, where mineral-rich water nourishes colonies of microbes and animals.

Around 250 such vents have been discovered worldwide in the three decades since scientists first encountered them in the Pacific. Most have been found on a chain of undersea volcanoes called the mid-ocean ridge but very few are known in the Antarctic, a release from the U.K. National Oceanography Center said Monday.

Sun

2nd M-Class Flares Now Earth Directed

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A second M-class in as many days has been unleashed from a different sunspot region named as 1158.

Equation: Sunspots => Solar Flares (charged particles) => Magnetic Field Shift => Shifting Ocean and Jet Stream Currents => Extreme Weather and Human Disruption (mitch battros 1998)

Watch for extenuating extreme weather over the next 72 hours. However, if further regions become active with M-class or larger flares, extreme weather phenomena will continue as related to time-linked means.

Bad Guys

Study Finds Massive Flux of Gas, in Addition to Liquid Oil, at BP Well Blowout in Gulf

BP oil spill aerial shot
© unknown
A new University of Georgia study that is the first to examine comprehensively the magnitude of hydrocarbon gases released during the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil discharge has found that up to 500,000 tons of gaseous hydrocarbons were emitted into the deep ocean. The authors conclude that such a large gas discharge - which generated concentrations 75,000 times the norm - could result in small-scale zones of "extensive and persistent depletion of oxygen" as microbial processes degrade the gaseous hydrocarbons.

The study, led by UGA Professor of Marine Sciences Samantha Joye, appears in the early online edition of the journal Nature Geoscience. Her co-authors are Ian MacDonald of Florida State University, Ira Leifer of the University of California-Santa Barbara and Vernon Asper of the University of Southern Mississippi.

The Macondo Well blowout discharged not only liquid oil, but also hydrocarbon gases, such as methane and pentane, which were deposited in the water column. Gases are normally not quantified for oil spills, but the researchers note that in this instance, documenting the amount of hydrocarbon gases released by the blowout is critical to understanding the discharge's true extent, the fate of the released hydrocarbons, and potential impacts on the deep oceanic systems. The researchers explained that the 1,480-meter depth of the blowout (nearly one mile) is highly significant because deep sea processes (high pressure, low temperature) entrapped the released gaseous hydrocarbons in a deep (1,000-1,300m) layer of the water column. In the supplementary online materials, the researchers provide high-definition photographic evidence of the oil and ice-like gas hydrate flakes in the plume waters.

Cloud Lightning

Australia: Towns in WA's east flooded after heavy rains

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© unknownWarburton received twice its monthly rainfall in a day
More than 20 residents in the Eastern Wheatbelt town of Nungarin have been forced from their homes by flash flooding.

The town has received more than 100 millimetres of rain in five hours.

The Shire of Nungarin says the heavy rain has caused damage to local infrastructure and inundated the entire road network.

Nungarin Shire's Chief Executive, Bill Fensome, says many residents had to sandbag their properties.

"Like a river that you wouldn't believe, we had to drag one of our residents out of his house, an elderly gentleman, the water pressure trying to get him out was unbelievable," he said.

Local farmer Garry Coombs says the rain is continuing to fall.

"And I went and looked in the gauge at 7pm. It hasn't let up for the last two and a half hours, it's just been constant rain," he said.

Meanwhile, residents of the remote Aboriginal community of Warburton are in recovery mode after a flash flood inundated the community.

83 millimetres of rain fell on the town yesterday flooding parts of the town to two metres.

Bizarro Earth

4.3-Magnitude Earthquake Near Mount St. Helens is Biggest in 30 years

Mount St. Helens
© Bruce Ely/The Oregonian/2010View of Mount St. Helens from the north side at Johnston Ridge after sunset.

Fault line, won't you be my Valentine?

The second largest earthquake since Mount St. Helens erupted -- a magnitude 4.3 shaker -- rocked a fault line six miles north of the volcano Monday morning. People felt it as far away as Astoria, Lake Oswego, Hood River and even Bremerton, Wash., near Seattle.

The last one, as it happens, was 30 years ago also on Valentine's Day, a magnitude 5.5 temblor.

That 1981 earthquake appeared to be the result of the earth's crust readjusting after magma oozed up through the fault and blew the mountain's top on May 18, 1980.

Monday's quake was of the "strike-slip variety," said seismologist Seth Moran of the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver.

The large tectonic Juan de Fuca plate is diving beneath the North American plate. At places, the plates get stuck together. An earthquake occurs when the plates slip past each other, releasing energy, he said.

Sheeple

Living in a Fantasy: The Weather Isn't Getting Weirder (??)

Comment: Editor's Note: Normally comments are reserved till the end of an article in hopes of illuminating the foregoing text with nuggets of truth and/or links for further reading. The following article is so riddled with falsehoods, we recommend reading this article, Global Warming and the Corruption of Science in advance, to prepare yourself for this particular bit of nonsense that passes for science reporting today.


Cyclone Yasi
© Getty ImagesSome climate alarmists claim that cyclones, such as Cyclone Yasi, are a result of man-made CO2 emissions.
Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions. In addition to the latest weather events, they also point to recent cyclones in Burma, last winter's fatal chills in Nepal and Bangladesh, December's blizzards in Britain, and every other drought, typhoon and unseasonable heat wave around the world.

But is it true? To answer that question, you need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.

Anne Jolis, editorial writer for WSJ Europe, has the surprising data on extreme weather events.

As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."

In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. "There's no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather," adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.

Bizarro Earth

Active Auroras

Solar wind buffeting Earth's magnetic field is sparking bright Valentine's auroras around the Arctic Circle. Øystein Lunde Ingvaldsen sends this picture of the sweet lights over Bø in Vesterålen, Norway:

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© Øystein Lunde IngvaldsenImage Taken: Feb. 14, 2011. Location: Bø in Vesterålen, North of Norway
"It was a short but beautiful blast of Northern Lights," says Ingvaldsen. "Perhaps this is a preview of bigger things to come later this week." Indeed, CMEs en route to Earth from exploding sunspot 1158 are expected to arrive on Feb. 15th-17th, sparking brighter lights at even lower latitudes. Sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

Bizarro Earth

Strong Solar Flare May Charge Up Northern Lights Tonight

Aurora
© ISS Crew Earth Observations/Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space CenterThis striking aurora image was taken during a geomagnetic storm that was most likely caused by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun on May 24, 2010. The ISS was located over the Southern Indian Ocean.
A powerful solar flare, hurled into space when superhot gases erupted on the sun yesterday (Feb, 13), might cause a display of the aurora borealis for parts of the northern United States overnight tonight (Feb. 14).

The sun unleashed the solar flare yesterday at about 12:30 p.m. EST (1730 GMT) from a sunspot region that was barely visible last week. Since then, it has grown in size to more than 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) across - nearly eight times the width of our Earth.

The flare was categorized by the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado as a Class M6.6 and is the strongest solar flare observed in 2011. It could ramp up northern lights displays for skywatchers living in northern latitudes and graced with clear skies.

Such a flare, covering more than 1 billion square miles of the sun's surface (called the photosphere), was described as "moderate" in intensity. Class M flares are stronger than the weakest category (Class C). They are second only to the most intense Class X solar flares, which can cause disruptions to satellites and communications systems and pose a hazard to astronauts in space.

NOAA's Prediction Center has forecast the possibility of additional solar flares from the same sunspot region over the next two or three days.

Bizarro Earth

Chile Feels Aftershocks of Last Year's Massive Temblor

Chilean Quake Aftermath
© Science/AAASLast year's huge earthquake raised Chile's coast. The quake is still sending aftershocks through the region.
With five earthquakes rattling the coast over the past four days, Chileans are still feeling the aftershocks of a huge earthquake that ruptured one year ago.

A magnitude 6.8 earthquake offshore of Bío-Bío, Chile, on Feb. 11 sent thousands running for higher ground, the Associated Press reported. That quake triggered at least two dozen aftershocks, including earthquakes of magnitudes 6.0, 5.8 and 5.6, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The rumbling continued today with a magnitude 6.6 temblor underwater near Maule, Chile.

"Chile is an active place so we always have a lot of earthquakes going on," said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist with the USGS in Golden, Colo.

That seismic activity is created as one of the Earth's rocky plates dives under another one. Near Chile, the Nazca plate is thrust under the much larger South American plate at a rate of about 2 inches (6 centimeters) per year.

Friday's magnitude 6.8 quake is thought to be an aftershock from the devastating magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck Concepcion, Chile, last year, said Michael Bevis, a geophysicist at Ohio State University, who has studied how the earthquake last year changed Chile's coast. [See images of Chile's raised coast.]

"That's a huge earthquake, so it's going to have more aftershocks that last longer," than other, smaller earthquakes, Bevis told OurAmazingPlanet.