Archive for the ‘Climate’ Category
September 10, 2011 | Climate
The remnants of Tropical Storm Lee dumped more rain on the already saturated areas in the Northeast, shutting off several inland cities and cutting off many interstates. Orders to evacuate were issued to more than 100,000 people in three states to escape the flooding caused by rising Susquehanna River.
According to the National Weather Service, the Susquehanna River crested just over the 38 feet mark on Thursday night, which is below the top mark of the levees protecting the cities in the northeastern Pennsylvania.
The impact of Tropical Storm Lee was felt extensively in already swamped Pennsylvania, as authorities shot down innumerable roads and thoroughfares. Several emergency shelters were opened for the displaced residents. Similar situations were observed in Maryland and New York. The wrath of diminishing storm was also felt in other areas spreading from Connecticut to Virginia. State officials were calling in resources from the National Guard, neighboring fire departments and specialized flood cleanup contractors to assist with the storm devastation.
States of emergency were declared in Pennsylvania and New York early Friday by President Obama.
Officials told the evacuees that they should expect to stay at the shelters until Sunday or Monday. It is going to take sometime before authorities begin to manage the damage, which included a fractional bridge collapse in the north Pennsylvania, automobiles, homes and other buildings as well as inundated sewage processing plants.
Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton said, "We're going to have some damage, but you won't know until it's over."
In certain parts of Pennsylvania up to inches of total rainfall has been recorded in just over a week. People in many rural areas and small towns of central Pennsylvania scurried to move their families and their possessions out of danger as water levels sometimes rose at alarming speed.
About 6,000 to 10,000 people were evacuated from the low-lying regions of Harrisburg. In Luzerne County, Pa., including Wilkes-Barre, all communities along the surging river that witnessed flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 were ordered to evacuate.
In Wilkes-Barre, crews used sandbags to close the holes in the intricate flood control system of the city. Lee is blamed for at least four deaths in Pennsylvania.
In Binghamton, New York, waters from Susquehanna River swamped the streets. The water levels at a downtown plaza were reported to have climbed to the middle of the lampposts. Buses and after that boats were pressed into action to evacuate the stranded residents. Helicopters of National Guard were put on standby.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, “It is going to get worst.” He warned residents to leave when the evacuation order is issued.
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"We will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000," said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). "By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable" if current trends continue, Clay said.
"More people, more money, more consumption, but the same planet," Clay told AFP, urging scientists and governments to start making changes now to how food is produced.
Population experts, meanwhile, called for more funding for family planning programs to help control the growth in the number of humans, especially in developing nations.
"For 20 years, there's been very little investment in family planning, but there's a return of interest now, partly because of the environmental factors like global warming and food prices," said Bongaarts.
"We want to minimize population growth, and the only viable way to do that is through more effective family planning," said Casterline.
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May 30, 2010 | Climate
In Ecuador, the Tungurahua volcano exploded into action on Friday, forcing evacuation of at least seven villages and closing down the airport and public schools in Guayaquil, the country’s largest and most populated city.
On the same day in Guatemala the Pacaya volcano erupted killing three and prompting President Alvaro Colom to declare a 15-day state of emergency. Guatemala’s La Aurora International Airport was closed because the runways and surrounding areas had to be cleaned of ash.
The airport closures were reminiscent of the massive blanket of ash Iceland’s Eyjafjoell volcano spewed out last month causing the biggest aerial shutdown in Europe since WWII. According to the International Air Transport Association the number of passengers in Europe slumped 11.7% in April and a global drop of 2.4%. As a result airliners have suffered tens of millions of euros in lost revenues.
Even though Eyjafjoell has not spewed ash since the beginning of the week, experts say it is too early to declare the end of the volcano’s eruption.
Meanwhile, a report from the University College London institute pointed out Friday that Eyjafjoell’s neighboring volcano Katla could erupt in the near future.
(Source: Dispatches)
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April 18, 2010 | Climate
http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-valahnjuk/
Any the Eyjafjallajökull volcano information check out Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres - http://metoffice.com/aviation/vaac/index.html
The Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres are part of an international system set up by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) called the International Airways Volcano Watch (IAVW).
The IAVW comprises observations of volcanic ash from volcano observatories and other organisations, satellites and aircraft in flight, the issue of warnings in the form of NOTAM and SIGMET messages and, since the mid 1990s, the issue of volcanic ash advisory messages from the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres identifying areas of volcanic ash and their predicted movement.
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March 8, 2010 | Climate
According to Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego the ocean falls ill. For more than 100 years, fisheries around the world have been mismanaged due to an inaccurate evaluation of the true state of marine ecosystems. Lack of a full historical perspective, particularly the extent of impacts from overfishing in the oceans, has led to this incomplete picture. Jeremy Jackson, a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, contends that understanding the stark magnitude of historical overfishing is the first step in developing scientifically rigorous and bold strategies for the restoration and sustainable development of the oceans. In a symposium he organized for the 2002 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston, Jackson will stress the importance that recent groundbreaking research bears upon strategies for protecting sea life and restoring their richness.
The danger signals are everywhere, some related to climate change and greenhouse gases and others not:
Every eight months, 11 million gallons of oil run off the nation's roads and driveways into waters that eventually reach the sea, the Pew Oceans Commission said in 2003. That's the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez-size oil spill.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the oceans have absorbed 525 billion tons of carbon dioxide. They're now absorbing about 22 million tons of carbon dioxide a day. As that happens, the oceans become more acidic, threatening the marine food chain. The acidity could eat away the shells of such animals as the petropod, a nearly microscopic snail with a calcium carbonate covering that's eaten by krill, salmon and whales.
•More than 60 percent of the nation's coastal rivers and bays are moderately to severely degraded by nutrient runoff from products such as fertilizer, creating algae blooms that affect the kelp beds and grasses that are nurseries for many species of fish.
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Is 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile really serious warning for USA? Everyone has to think about. One of the really "Big Ones" to shake the United States was a magnitude-9.0 earthquake along the Pacific Northwest coast more than 300 years ago, before the arrival of huge numbers of people and development, that sent a catastrophic tsunami to Japan. According to Professor Bill McGuire of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre there are subduction zones all around the world, but mainly they occur around the rim of the Pacific. The so-called Ring of Fire. Most of the world's big, really destructive earthquakes occur here. A subduction zone is where a continental plate is sliding below an adjoining plate causing a build-up of friction. When this friction builds to a critical point, the plate breaks free of the friction and slips. This slippage causes a mega-thrust earthquake.
As most mega-thrust earthquakes occur near, or below, the sea the huge energy release causes a tsunami. A tsunami is different from a normal wave, in that with a normal wave only the surface water is moving, with a tidal wave the whole water column is moving. Millions of tons of water! The combination of massive earthquakes and tsunamis makes subduction zones a deadly geological hazard. So, it should have been a cause for some concern that the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 600 mile long fault, lies right off the Pacific north-west coast. The strange thing was, that Cascadia didn't seem to be a danger at all.
For years, scientists have been studying seismic activity along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. They found that, unlike other subduction zones, it was virtually silent. If the adjoining plates were sliding smoothly then no friction would build and no earthquakes would occur. This appears to be backed up by 200 years of records, for as long as Europeans have lived here, there is no record of earthquakes from Cascadia.
• The state of Oregon last month announced 13 school buildings and 11 emergency management facilities would be retrofitted to withstand earthquakes. More than 1,000 such buildings are at high or very high risk of collapse during an earthquake, according to a 2007 report from the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries.
• Washington state's Department of Transportation announced in 2008 a two-year project to retrofit 19 bridges on Interstate 5 to current seismic standards, part of a plan to improve more than 900 bridges to withstand earthquakes.
• Naval Hospital Bremerton completed a seismic retrofit project in 2007 to improve its ability to withstand a large earthquake and provide medical care during and after a crisis, according to the hospital public affairs division.
The spate of recent earthquakes, starting with the magnitude-9.3 Indian Ocean event in 2004, follows a 50-year cycle of earthquake activity, McNutt says. The last cycle, in the 1960s, produced the two other record holders for recorded earthquakes — the magnitude-9.5 quake near Valdivia and a magnitude-9.2 quake in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
"We know earthquakes are not uniformly distributed in time; they cluster," McNutt says. "Now suddenly the earthquakes are lighting up again."
Even with the knowledge that a Big One is inevitable, retrofitting buildings and requiring better building practices is a tough sell, even in parts of the country where quakes are facts of life, says Mark Benthien of the Southern California Earthquake Center at the University of Southern California.
"Improvements to our building codes have often followed the earthquakes that we have had," Benthien says. "They are very difficult to pass in other times."
A report commissioned recently by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that many of the deaths in Haiti's earthquake could have been prevented by using earthquake-resistant designs and construction, as well as improved quality control in concrete and masonry work of affected buildings.
"The massive human losses can be attributed to a lack of attention to earthquake-resistant design and construction practices, and the poor quality of much of the construction," according to the report. It added: "Indirect evidence suggests that the earthquake did not produce ground motions sufficient to severely damage well-engineered structures."
Chile shows that earthquake-resistant building codes don't mean that people will be able to return to buildings, "just that they won't fall on them," Christian adds. The unfolding scenario of millions of displaced Chileans would likely occur in the USA as well, after a major earthquake, he says.
"We could build things to completely survive earthquakes," Christian says. "They would all look like nuclear power plants. And cost as much."
No predictions are possible for when an earthquake will strike, but the pattern of recent events does worry U.S. planners.
McNutt points to Alaska as the closest copy to Chile on U.S. shores. With a very active fault in the Aleutians and a population hugging the coasts, Anchorage and Juneau are susceptible to similar "subduction" earthquakes, where the Pacific Ocean plate dives under the North American crust.
But it is Puget Sound, with its population and potential to funnel in a tsunami, which is being watched closely.
"Seattle is another area of concern," McNutt says.
Off Washington state's coast, large earthquakes have struck every 500 years or so, with the 1700 quake the last major one. The resulting tsunami tore cedar trees from the ground along Puget Sound and was written about in Japan. The Juan de Fuca plate moves about 40 feet in a century, which means about 120 feet worth of energy is coiled up in the fault now, says Brian Atwater, a U.S. Geological Survey expert on historical tsunamis.
"That gives you about a one in 10 chance of (another large quake) across the next 50 years," he says. "That's enough for society to make some serious decisions about how we build schools and hospitals."
via http://www.usatoday.com/
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January 14, 2010 | Climate
Republic of Haiti is a Creole- and French-speaking Caribbean country, highest point of the country is Pic la Selle, at 2,680 metres (8,793 ft). The total area of Haiti is 27,750 square kilometres (10,714 sq mi) and its capital is Port-au-Prince.
As you know Tuesday's the 7.0-magnitude quake left a landscape of collapsed buildings — hospitals, schools, churches, ramshackle homes, even the gleaming national palace — the rubble sending up a white cloud that shrouded the entire capital.
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December 21, 2009 | Climate
How do you think? The most thrilled. Let's try to recall. It's funny but first what it occurred to me is many terrible things that happened last year - air planes crashes, changing for the worse climate and environment, spreeing H1N1, still lasting economical recession finally. Frankly saying I would not like to put it in my list. Was something good?
1. Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States
2. Iranian election
3. Gay marriage
4. MJ death
5. Olympic Games 2009
What else.... Just don't know, I have to think. Any ideas?
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General Secretary of Inited Nation Ban Ki-moon challenged world leaders on Wednesday to cleanse the globe of nuclear weapons, tackle the threat of catastrohic climate change and combat growing poverty from the global financial crisis, warning presidents, prime ministers and diplomats from the U.N.'s 192 member states that "no nation, large or small, can violate the human rights of its citizens with impunity."
He called for greater efforts to achieve peace in Darfur and Somalia. He urged a revival of negotiations to achieve a Mideast peace with Israel and Palestine live side-by-side in peace. And he pledged to see the Afghans "through their long night" and stand as well with the people of Pakistan.
"Amid many crises — food, energy, recession and pandemic flu, hitting all at once — the world looks to us for answers," Ban said in the the opening address to the General Assembly's 64th ministerial session.
"If ever there were a time to act in a spirit of renewed multilateralism, a moment to create a United Nations of genuine collective action, it is now."
A day after about 100 heads of state and government, in the largest-ever summit on global warming, exchanged views on how to reach a new global accord to combat climate change, Ban again exhorted the leaders to "rise to the greatest challenge we face as a human family."
"This year I have traveled from the ice rim of the Arctic to the steppes of Mongolia," Ban said. "I have seen, first-hand, the effects of climate change on our planet and its people."
General Assembly President Ali Treki, of Libya, echoed the need for international unity.
"The international community has learned from experience that transnational threats and the multiple crises facing the world today can only be addressed through responsible international cooperation," he told the audience in the assembly chamber that included about 120 world leaders.
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The secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide, British Observer reports.
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters. A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
"These are one-metre resolution images, which give you a big picture of the summertime Arctic," said Thorsten Markus of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre. "This is the main reason why we are so thrilled about it. One-metre resolution is the dimension that's been missing."
"Our primary focus is maintaining the continuity of climate observations, and those are at great risk right now because we don't have the resources to have satellites at the ready and taking the kinds of information that we need," said Lubchenco, who was appointed by Obama. "We are playing catch-up."
The satellite would have measured carbon emissions at 100,000 points around the planet every day, providing a wealth of data compared to the 100 or so fixed towers currently in operation in a land-based network.
'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
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