Soaring carbon emissions will amplify the risk of conflict, hunger, floods and mass migration this century, the UN's expert panel said Monday in a landmark report on the impact of climate change.

Left unchecked, greenhouse gas emissions may cost trillions of dollars in damage to property and ecosystems, and in bills for shoring up climate defences, it said, adding the impact would increase with every additional degree that temperatures rise.

"Increasing magnitudes of warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts," a summary said, in a stark message to policymakers.

The report is the second chapter of the fifth assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up in 1988 to provide neutral, science-based guidance to governments.

March came in like a lion, and it looks like the lion isn't leaving, but you can't blame the "polar vortex" this time.

As a massive winter storm at sea known as a Nor'easter prepares to skirts the Northeast coast of the USA, bringing with it high seas and bitterly cold weather in its wake, Dr. Ryan Maue writes:

Massive Nor'easter will develop a warm-core thru a seclusion process.

Compare previous image w/Hurricane Sandy - same 850-mb Wind speed & MSLP. Nor'easter wind field much stronger/larger.

[It is] maybe 4 times more powerful than Sandy based on integrated KE of wind field.

The image of the storm is quite stunning for it's sheer size.

Floods caused by torrential rains have killed at least 32 people and displaced thousands of others in South Africa.

Andries Nel, South African deputy minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, said on Monday that the heavy raining had displaced 3,000 people from their homes in the Lephalale Local Municipality in the northern part of the country.

"Regrettably, the present disaster events have resulted in 32 fatalities. These include 25 drownings. Six fatalities were also caused by lightning and one person died due to a collapsed wall," Nel stated.

The South African official also said rescue operations were underway as a number of people were still trapped in their homes due to flooding. In addition, search efforts have begun to find people reported missing.

Over the past two weeks, torrential and persistent rains have pounded most parts of South Africa. The most affected areas are in the north and eastern parts of the country.

Floods of the European Alps

Background

The authors write that "severe floods triggered by intense precipitation are among the most destructive natural hazards in Alpine environments, frequently causing large financial and social damage," and they say that "potential enhanced flood occurrence due to global climate change would thus increase threats to settlements, infrastructure, and human lives in the affected regions." However, they note that, currently, "projections of intense precipitation exhibit major uncertainties" and that "robust reconstructions of Alpine floods are limited to the instrumental and historical period," giving one reason to question whether global warming would lead to such a consequence.

What was done

In a study designed to reduce these uncertainties and extend reconstructions back in time beyond the instrumental period, Glur et al. developed "a multi-archive Alpine flood reconstruction based on ten lacustrine sediment records, covering the past 2500 years." More specifically, they studied ten lakes situated north of the Central Alpine arc along a montane-to-Alpine transect, spanning an elevation gradient from 447 to 2068 m asl," which allowed "the extraction of a synoptic, rather than a merely local rainfall signal revealed by a single-lake study." And to verify their approach to the subject, they compared the last 500 years of their Central Alpine flood reconstruction with an independently established flood record for that period that was based on historical documents, as developed and described by Schmocker-Fackel and Naef (2010).

What was learned

"Regarding the best-characterized climatic periods during the past 2500 years," the eight researchers report that "flood activity was generally enhanced during the Little Ice Age (1430-1850 C.E.; LIA) compared to the Medieval Climate Anomaly (950-1250 C.E.; MCA)." And they say that "this result is confirmed by other studies documenting an increased (decreased) flood activity during the LIA (MCA) in the Alps," citing the studies of Schmocker-Fackel and Naef (2010), Czymzik et al. (2010), Wilhelm et al. (2012) and Swierczynski et al. (2012).

This video compiles footages of strange phenomena of all kinds, including awesome natural events or beautiful phenomena from around the world in the last few weeks. Just a small sample of what we've seen already this year!

In the past month or so we have seen: Unusual solar activity including an X class flare - Aurora Borealis much further south than usual, including southern UK - Huge waves off coast of California, Brazil, UK - England battered by record storms, floods and sinkholes - Severe drought in California, followed by extreme storms and floods - US cities in the East frozen still - Strange skies over Europe - Ecuador Tungurahua volcano erupts - Strange 'hailstone' falls over Nevada - Weird pulsating orange Earth phenomena melts ice and boils water - Amazing sinkhole in the Corvette Museum - New York sinkhole swallows car - Popocatelpetl Volcano, Mexico eruptions - Sakurajima, Japan spectacular volcanic eruption - Large fireball over Maine, USA - Huge eruption from Volcano Pacaya in Guatemala

The satellite image above shows the powerful storm that brought gale force winds and 36 hours of heavy rainfall to New Zealand, triggering what has been described as a 100-year flood in the city of Christchurch.

The city has been beset by flooding before, as well as a devastating magnitude 6.3 earthquake in 2011 that killed 185 people.

Authorities warned residents to consider the floodwaters contaminated. It's unclear how many homes were flooded. One account puts the number at up to 100.

Like a boxer who knocked his rival to the mat and who then gets down on his knees to keep pummeling the poor guy, the wicked winter of 2014 may not be done with us yet.

Federal officials Wednesday marveled at the size of the ice sheet that as of this week covered 91 percent of the Great Lakes. That ice cover could produce problems long into the spring.

A fast melt could produce ice jams in rivers and streams that in turn cause flooding, said George A. Leshkevich, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

And even if that doesn't happen, Leshkevich said, this winter's deep freeze could make the spring colder than usual, as winds whipping off the frozen lakes continue to chill communities just when it's supposed to be getting warmer.

Leshkevich and Keith Kompoltowicz, chief of watershed hydrology for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Detroit, joined reporters on a conference call Wednesday to discuss the effect all the snow, ice and cold might have on lake levels.

Heavy snowfall in Europe causes misery - 6.0 earthquake in Greece, followed by a 6.1 a week later - More fireballs - Mt. Etna eruption - Deep freeze in America, heavy snowfall in south East, children stranded in schools - Bizarre tumbleweed invasion in Mexico - Massive floods in Italy, 2 meters of snow in the north - Indonesia volcano eruption kills 16 people - Heaviest snow in 50 years in Iran, 1.5 meters - 400 dead dolphins in Peru - Blizzards turn Slovenia to ice, and disrupt Serbia Croatia, Germany - 30 ft sinkhole in Buckinghamshire - Britain battered by a swath of storms, causing yet more extreme flooding, worst in 250 years - Blizzards blast north west US, while california suffers heavy flooding - Worst snowstorm in Japan in decades kills 13 people, heaviest in 78 years - Huge sinkhole swallows car museum - 130 year record broken for storms in Philadelphia - 49 out of 50 states covered in snow - Another eruption on Java island, Indonesia leaves 2 people dead - Carolina earthquakes - 103 earthquakes in Oklahoma. Mysterious boom in Philadelphia blows out windows - New jersey lake turns blood red - 22 Tornadoes strike states in Midwest...

Recent storms worldwide have been destroying records with an onslaught of precipitation leading to more 100 year events which devastated populated areas. This video includes rare, strange and extreme weather that had taken place over the last month or so and it's not getting any better since my last upload, it only worsen!


*This series does not mean the world is ending! These are documentaries of series of extreme weather events that are leading to bigger earth changes. If you are following the series, then you are seeing the signs.

A TV news employee trying to report from the scene of an unstable Azusa hillside Friday got stuck in waist-high mud and had to be rescued.

The man was reporting in the hillside above the home of Dennis Sanderson on Ridge View Drive when he got stuck in the mud. Sanderson aided authorities in the rescue.

According to Sanderson, the news employee had intentionally waded into a pool of mud Friday afternoon to demonstrate how thick it was. A rescuer could be seen using a shovel.

[Updated, 9:46 p.m.: Fire officials said they believe the reporter they helped rescue was Miguel Almaguer from "NBC Nightly News."Almaguer reported live from Azusa on Friday's broadcast with Brian Williams. Almaguer's live shot showed him wedged into a shelf of thick mud that had slid down from the hillside. The mud went up to this thighs.]

After the rescue, Azusa police ordered news media and residents of all 26 homes on Ridge View Drive to evacuate. According to Azusa police Sgt. Sam Fleming, thick mud had poured into the backyards of two homes, rising 2 to 3 feet high.

But some residents were reluctant to leave. Two people called out to firefighters to help divert rising water from their flooded backyards, but firefighters refused, saying the neighborhood was already under an evacuation order.

The residents were later able to divert the water on their own.

The hillside near Ridge View Drive burned in the Colby fire in January.

The terrible loss of lives and homes has been well documented, but the damage to populations of birds, mammals, fish and insects, and habitats, will also have a long-term impact on the ecosystem

Seals, moles, hedgehogs, badgers, mice, earthworms and a host of insects and seabirds are among the unseen casualties of the floods, storms and torrential rains of the last few weeks, say wildlife groups.

As the waters started to subside across England, conservationists reported that about 600 guillemots, puffins, razorbills, kittiwakes and gulls have been washed up on the south coast and 250 seals drowned in Norfolk, Cornwall and the Channel Islands. A further 11,000 seabirds are reported to have been found dead on the French coast.

"The relentless storms hitting our coast have had a cumulative effect on animals, which can usually cope with bad weather, but are now on really low reserves and are dying in large numbers," said Niki Clear from Cornwall Wildlife Trust, which has reported that dozens of seal pups were washed up on beaches.