Global Weather News

Severe storms, large hail pummel parts of South

2013-03-18T16:03:00.001-07:00

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Severe thunderstorms have raked across a wide area of the South, packing strong winds, driving rain and some baseball-size hail.

In Mississippi, authorities reported two people were hit on the head by large hail as the enormous storm front crossed the region Monday. Fire official Tim Shanks said baseball-sized hail smashed windows in several vehicles in Clinton, where the two people were hit. He had no immediate word on their condition.

The National Weather Service in Jackson said an off-duty employee measured a piece of hail the size of a softball.

Large hail was reported in several areas with smaller hail reported around the metro Jackson area. Some parking lots and sidewalks were coated in white chunks of ice.

Emergency officials in the state say there were reports of homes damaged in at least five Mississippi counties.

Meteorologists issued tornado warnings for parts of northwest Georgia and severe thunderstorm warnings around the state.

Elsewhere, Alabama Power officials said 198,000 customers were without power as of 5 p.m.

Katrina-Like Storm Surges Could Become Norm

2013-03-18T13:03:00.001-07:00

Last year's devastating flooding in New York City from Hurricane Sandy was the city's largest storm surge on record. Though Hurricane Sandy was considered a 100-year-event - a storm that lashes a region only once a century - a new study finds global warming could bring similar destructive storm surges to the Gulf and East Coasts of the United States every other year before 2100.

Severe storms generate both high waves and storm surge, which can combine to erode beaches and dunes and flood coastal communities. Storm surge is seawater pushed ahead of a storm, mainly by strong winds. Onshore, the surge can rise several feet in just a few minutes. High waves travel on top of the surge, and cresting waves raise the sea's height even more.

Looking at extreme events, which researchers called 'Katrinas' after the 2005 hurricane that flooded the Gulf Coast, a new model predicts Katrina-like storm surges will hit every other year if the climate warms 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).

That would be 10 times the rate seen since 1923, after which there has been a Katrina-magnitude storm surge every 20 years, the study, published in the March 18 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,found.

In 2009, the world's nations agreed to try to limit climate change to a 2 C increase by 2100, but recent studies show temperatures could rise 7.2 F (4 C) before the century ends.

But the tenfold increase in Katrina-like storm surges does not have to translate into a tenfold increase in disasters, said Aslak Grinsted, a climate scientist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the lead study author. 'Every Katrina-magnitude event is not necessarily going to be a Katrina-magnitude disaster. It's all about planning smartly,' he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Warmer seas spin stronger storms

Scientists know that warmer oceans will change how the Atlantic Ocean spawns hurricanes. More heat means more energy, and many models predict global warming will bring bigger, stronger storms, though the details between the model scenarios differ. But the models could be biased by changes in hurricane observational methods, such as the switch to satellites from planes and ships, which may impact records of wind speed and other storm data, Grinsted said.

Many studies have looked at how the frequency and size of hurricanes will change as global warming raises ocean temperatures, but few have investigated their impact on the Atlantic coast.

To better assess which model does the best job of divining the future, Grinsted and his colleagues constructed a record of storm surges from tide gauges along the Atlantic coast dating back to 1923. 'Big storm surges give me a new view of hurricane variability in the past,' Grinsted said.

Grinsted weighed each statistical model according to how well they explained past extreme storm surges. One way scientists test climate models is by seeing how well they predict the weather in the past.

Of the competing models, the top performer was one of the simplest. It relied on regional sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean hurricane birthing ground. The researchers also created a new global 'gridded' model, incorporating ocean temperatures around the world. Grinsted said the top models agree roughly on the magnitude of the increase in storm surges, giving him confidence in the results. [Hurricanes from Above: See Nature's Biggest Storms]

A 0.4 C warming corresponded to doubling of the frequency of extreme storm surges, the study found. 'With the global warming we have had during the 20th century, we have already crossed the threshold where more than half of all 'Katrinas' are due to global warming,' Grinsted said.

James Elsner, a climate scientist at the University of Florida, said he agrees with the study's main finding, but thinks the modeling underestimates the effects of climate factors such as the El Niño/ La Niña Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index, and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Studies have shown that the warm El Niño events mean fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic, while the NAO influences storm tracks across the ocean basin.

'As the planet warms up and the oceans get warmer, the chances of stronger storms goes up,' Elsner said. 'I think it's an interesting exercise, but I think statistically, it's got some issues,' he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Storm surges and sea level rise

Grinsted is concerned about the combined effects of future storm surge flooding and sea level rise, which adds to the base of the storm surge.

'I think what will be even more important is the background sea level rise, and that is something that is very hard to model,' he said.

Hurricane Sandy brought an 11.9-foot (3.6 meters) surge to southern Manhattan, plus a boost from the high tide, creating a storm tide as high as 13.88 feet (4.2 m).

Hurricane Katrina caused storm surge flooding of 25 to 28 feet (7.6 to 8.5 m) above normal tide level along portions of the Mississippi coast and 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6.1 m) above normal tide levels along the southeastern Louisiana coast.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Egypt sees domestic wheat output of 9.475 mln tonnes this season

2013-03-18T10:03:00.001-07:00

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt expects wheat production of around 9.475 million tonnes this season if good weather conditions continue, the state news agency quoted Agriculture Minister Salah Abdel Momen as saying on Monday.

Abdel Momen added that Egypt needed 9 million tonnes of wheat to guarantee production of the cheapest form of subsidised bread that is sold for less than 1 U.S. cent per loaf.

Egypt harvested 8.69 million tonnes of wheat in summer 2012, up 4 percent from the 8.37 million tonnes in 2011, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Egypt has endured more than two years of political and economic instability, making it harder for the country to arrange payment for wheat imports. Its pace of purchases has slowed since the start of the year.

The country's strategic stocks of wheat, both imported and local, have fallen to 2.207 million tonnes, enough to last 89 days, a cabinet report said last week. This compares to 2.292 million tonnes, or 95 days' cover, reported on February 27.

International traders say that even with a brighter harvest outlook, the country will need to buy further significant amounts to maintain minimum stock levels prior to its harvest being ready for consumption.

Food supply is a politically-sensitive issue in Egypt, where rising food prices are being passed on to struggling consumers and shortages have provoked unrest in the past.

Dry weather in Ivory Coast dashes hopes for bumper cocoa harvest

2013-03-18T05:04:00.001-07:00

By Ange Aboa

SAN PEDRO (Reuters) - Ivory Coast is unlikely to harvest a bumper cocoa crop this year as dry and hot weather hampers the development of the upcoming mid-crop in the world's biggest producer, farmers and exporters said on Friday.

Output from the current October-to-March main crop was down around 6 percent by March 10 compared to the same period last season, according to exporters' port arrivals estimates. Traders had been expecting a large harvest from the mid-crop, which opens April 1 and runs through September, to help offset the deficit.

May cocoa future on ICE was down $13, or 0.6 percent, at $2,117 a tonne, after recovering from a nine-month low of $2,034 on March 7 largely on optimism for the West African light crop harvest.

But many of the flowers and small pods that will become the pods harvested in the early stages of mid-crop were killed by extremely hot and dry conditions during the dry season that is now ending, exporters said.

'People have been talking about 450,000 to 500,000 tonnes for the mid-crop, but I don't believe it, simply because we're not seeing it on the trees,' said the director of an Abidjan-based export firm.

'We should hit 350,000 or even 400,000, which is Ivory Coast's normal (mid-crop) production level, but I don't see it above that,' he said.

Though the last two seasons have seen harvests of 1.51 million and 1.47 million tonnes, Ivorian cocoa output over the past decade has averaged around 1.3 million tonnes, with around 350,000 tonnes coming from the mid-crop.

Other exporters and pod counters contacted by Reuters also projected output for the April-to-September mid-crop at around 350,000 tonnes if current weather conditions hold, with estimates rising above 400,000 with improved rainfall.

'I don't yet see the record season we were expecting for the mid-crop. The rains arrived late, and the heat killed lots of flowers and cherelles,' said Ben Sylla, a cocoa merchant based in the western town of Duekoue.

LATE FLOWERING

The marketing season for the mid-crop opens on April 1, but growers are predicting a late start to harvesting.

A Reuters reporter who visited the Ivory Coast's principal growing regions saw that crops had yet to attain the level of development typically seen at this stage in the season.

While trees on plantations in most regions were flowering and cherelles were visible on many trees, mid-sized pods were largely absent, an indication that the mid-crop peak will likely not be reached before late July or early August, a month later than normal.

Cocoa flowers require around 22 weeks to develop into ripe pods.

The main cocoa producing regions of Daloa, Vavoua, Bouafle and San Pedro, all exhibited an abundant setting of flowers and cherelles, according to the Reuters reporter. Total seasonal output in Daloa and Vavoua averages around 250,000 to 280,000 tonnes.

'We can't really talk much about the harvest yet,' said Adou Kouadio, who farms 4 hectares in Meagui, around 50 km (32 miles) north of San Pedro.

'We'll need to wait until May or June to see what pods we have on the trees to have a real idea. It's not yet clear. The flowers could still fall off if we don't get good rains,' he said.

The western region of Duekoue, with seasonal output averaging 250,000 tonnes, and the southwestern region of Soubre, which produces 300,000 to 320,000 tonnes, showed more advanced mid-crop development and some mid-sized pods were visible.

'There are some pods that we will harvest at the end of April, but not many, just a few,' said Augustin Koffie, who works five hectares of cocoa in Fengolo, about 5 km (3 miles) north of Duekoue.

'It will be in July and August that we will see more, because it's only now that the flowers and cherelles are coming out,' he said.

Exporters said a lack of plantation maintenance could also impact production, particularly on older plantations in the country's east where ageing trees are less resistant to harsh weather and disease.

Seasonal output from Abengourou and Aboisso, the two principal eastern growing regions, averages between 125,000 and 150,000 tonnes.

Fluorescence Could Indicate Health of Corals

2013-03-17T12:03:00.001-07:00

Corals are well-known for the brilliant colors they sport, but less well-known is the light, or fluorescence, that most coral species give off. Monitoring the levels of this fluorescence could be an easier way for scientists to monitor the health of coral reefs around the world, a new study finds, as these reefs are subjected to stress from climate change and other factors.

Coral fluorescence, produced by special fluorescent proteins, is a relatively poorly understood phenomenon, but researchers think it could help protect the coral from damaging sunlight, or possibly other forms of stress.

Marine biologists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego monitored the levels of fluorescence and fluorescent proteins in a common branching coral from the Indo-Pacific region called Acropora yongei as the coral was subjected to both cold and heat stress. These stresses both affect corals in nature, with cold snaps sometimes killing corals, and global warming heating up the oceans overall.

Fluorescence levels from the coral in the study declined rapidly in response to both types of stress, initially, but the outcomes of the two tests eventually differed. The coral was able to adapt to the cold temperatures and their fluorescence levels rebounded, but the heat stress caused the corals to bleach, or lose the symbiotic algae that provides corals with the bulk of their nutrition.

Under the heat stress conditions, the fluorescence levels declined at first as they did under the cold stress, but the coral couldn't adapt and the algae were expelled from the corals, study researcher Melissa Roth, now at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley, told OurAmazingPlanet in an email. When the bleaching happened, there was actually a spike in fluorescence caused by the fact that the algae had previously been shading the fluorescence and now no longer were.

'This is the first study to quantify fluorescence before, during and after stress,' said Scripps researcher Dimitri Deheyn in a statement.

The results show that fluorescence can be a good marker of the health of corals. In fact, it could be an easier, less invasive method of monitoring corals than those currently used, including analyzing corals collected from reefs back in labs. Fluorescence can be monitored without disturbing the coral and directly at the reef site, and could indicate that the coral is in poor health before it bleaches. [Video: Humans Hit the Oceans Hard]

Roth said that the coral the study tested, Acropora yongei, would be a good one to monitor in the field because branching corals like it are 'very susceptible to bleaching.'

'It would make sense to monitor the corals on the reef that are most sensitive as an indicator for the reef as a whole,' Roth said.

The findings were detailed in the March 12 issue of the journal Scientific Reports.

Follow Andrea Thompson @AndreaTOAP, Pinterestand Google+. Follow OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+. Original article at LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Sampdoria - Inter clash postponed due to bad weather

2013-03-17T06:03:00.001-07:00

?>Y! SPORTS

Space trio lands in Kazakhstan after bad weather delay

2013-03-16T08:03:00.001-07:00

ALMATY (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz capsule made a 'bull's eye' landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Saturday, delivering a Russian-American trio from the International Space Station, a day after its originally scheduled touchdown was delayed by foul weather.

NASA's Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who had manned the $100 billion orbital outpost since October as Expedition 34, landed in cloudy weather at 7:06 a.m. Moscow time (0306 GMT) northeast of the town of Arkalyk.

They had spent 144 days aboard the multinational ISS on their space journey of almost 61 million miles (98 million km).

'The landing was energetic and exciting,' Russian TV showed Novitskiy as saying.

NASA television said the deorbit burn and other events during the descent had gone flawlessly. It said the capsule had landed upright, almost hitting its bull's eye target in thick fog.

'Oleg Novitskiy reported to search and recovery teams that the crew is feeling good,' NASA television said. 'Everything seems to be in order.'

Due to hampered visibility, it took a few minutes before helicopters with Russian search and recovery teams could locate the Soyuz capsule after its landing.

The first images shown by Russia's Vesti-24 television featured rescue workers standing in a snow-covered steppe opening the hatch of the capsule.

The three smiling astronauts were seated on semi-reclined chairs and covered with blue thermal blankets. They were then carried to a nearby inflatable medical tent.

On Friday, fog and freezing rain at the landing site in Kazakhstan prevented helicopters from setting up for the crew's return to Earth.

In preparation for their departure, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield took the helm of the space station on Wednesday, becoming the first Canadian to take command of the outpost.

It is only the second time in the 12-year history of the station, a project of 15 nations that has been permanently staffed since November 2000, that command has been turned over to someone who is not American or Russian.

Hadfield will be part of a three-man skeleton crew until NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin arrive later this month.

(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Colo. fire burns in warm weather, threatens homes

2013-03-15T15:03:00.001-07:00

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) - A 40-acre wildfire burning in gusty winds and warm weather in northern Colorado was threatening homes west of Fort Collins and has caused about 50 people to leave the area.

The fire started burning near the visitors' center in Lory State Park in an area near where a large wildfire burned 259 homes last summer. Firefighters were also battling another smaller fire nearby.

Crews appear to have made some progress stopping the fire's advance toward homes to the north and were focusing on the fire's southern end.

Poudre Fire Capt. Patrick Love said aircraft have been requested to fight the fire but he doesn't believe any are in the area so early in the year.

Temperatures are in the 70s along Colorado's Front Range but part of a reservoir near the fire is still frozen.

Global warming may have fueled Somali drought

2013-03-15T09:03:00.001-07:00

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Global warming may have contributed to low rain levels in Somali in 2011 where tens of thousands died in a famine, research by British climate scientists suggests.

Scientists with Britain's weather service studied weather patterns in East Africa in 2010 and 2011 and found that yearly precipitation known as the short rains failed in late 2010 because of the natural effects of the weather pattern La Nina.

But the lack of the long rains in early 2011 was an effect of 'the systematic warming due to influence on greenhouse gas concentrations,' said Peter Stott of Britain's Met Office, speaking to The Associated Press in a phone interview.

The British government estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people died from the famine. But the new research doesn't mean global warming directly caused those deaths.

Ethiopia and Kenya were also affected by the lack of rains in 2011, but aid agencies were able to work more easily in those countries than in war-ravaged Somalia, where the al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremist group al-Shabab refused to allow food aid into the wide areas under its control.

The peer reviewed study will appear in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Senait Gebregziabher, the Somalia country director for the aid group Oxfam, said climate change is increasing humanitarian needs.

'In the coming decades, unless urgent action is taken to slash greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures in East Africa will continue to rise and rainfall patterns will change. This will create major problems for food production and availability,' Gebregziabher said.

Stott said that the evidence is 'very strong' that the planet is warming due to an increase in greenhouse gases. He noted that the study indicates that both natural causes - La Nina and the short rains - and man-made causes contributed to Somalia's drought.

The Met Office's computer modeling study found that between 24 percent and 99 percent of the cause of the failure of the 2011 rains can be attributed to the presence of man-made greenhouse gases, Stott said.

Global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - which sends heat-trapping gases, such as carbon dioxide, into the air, changing the climate, scientists say.

Ahmed Awale works for the non-profit group Candlelight, which is dedicated to improving conservation and the environment. He believes Somalia's climate has been changing for many decades, with rainfall patterns becoming more erratic.

'If you miss one of the two rainy seasons we have a very severe drought. The other indicator is that there is a rise in temperature,' he said, adding later: 'This all negatively impacts the livelihood of the people. Most of Somalis depend mostly on pastoral production.'

Arctic Storm Shatters Thin Sea Ice

2013-03-15T08:04:00.001-07:00

Though every day brings more sunlight, February is still one of the coldest months in the Arctic. The sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is now nearing its winter maximum, but the effects of a February storm markedly illustrate the changes that have happened with the Arctic sea ice cover under the effects of climate change.

In past decades, winter meant thick, years-old pack ice would extend over much of the Arctic Ocean. But the modern Arctic's thinner ice cover is more easily pushed by wind, according to Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University. Other factors, such as global warming, weather patterns and solar heating, also play a role in the loss.

As the Feb. 8 storm passed over the North Pole, it created a strong offshore ice motion, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The fracturing progressed through relatively weak, thin, year-old pack ice during February, as seen in a series of images from the NSIDC.

Similar patterns were observed in early 2011 and 2008, but the 2013 fracturing is quite extensive, the NSIDC said in a statement. The fractured area extends through the Beaufort Sea from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic to Barrow, Alaska.

The overall February ice extent remains below average, in part due to warmer-than-average temperatures, the NSIDC said. The average sea ice cover in February was 5.66 million square miles (14.66 million square kilometers), the seventh-lowest on record for the month.

Overall, the Arctic has lost more than 606,000 square miles (1.57 million square km) of winter sea ice since 1979, an area slightly smaller than Alaska, the biggest state.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Human climate change big factor in Somali famine

2013-03-15T05:04:00.001-07:00

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Human-induced climate change contributed to low rain levels in East Africa in 2011, making global warming one of the causes of Somalia's famine and the tens of thousands of deaths that followed, a new study has found.

It is the first time climate change was proven to be partially to blame for such a large humanitarian disaster, an aid group said Friday.

Three climate scientists with Britain's national weather service studied weather patterns in Somalia in 2010 and 2011 and found that yearly precipitation known as the short rains failed in late 2010 because of the natural effects of the weather pattern La Nina.

But the lack of the long rains in early 2011 was an effect of 'the systematic warming (of Earth) due to influence on greenhouse gas concentrations on the long rains,' said Peter Scott of Britain's National Weather Service, known as the Met Office.

The British government estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people died from the famine. But the new research doesn't mean global warming directly caused those deaths.

Ethiopia and Kenya were also affected by the lack of rains in 2011, but aid agencies were able to work more easily in those countries than in war-ravaged Somalia, where the al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremist group al-Shabab refused to allow food aid into the wide areas under its control.

Still, the new research proves for the first time that climate change was one of the triggers for the drought, which was one of the causes of the famine, said Senait Gebregziabher, the Somalia country director for the aid group Oxfam.

'Climate change is not a threat that may hurt us in the future, because it is already causing a rise for humanitarian needs,' Gebregziabher said. 'In the coming decades, unless urgent action is taken to slash greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures in East Africa will continue to rise and rainfall patterns will change. This will create major problems for food production and availability.'

Scott said that the evidence is 'very strong' that the planet is warming due to an increase in greenhouse gases. He noted that the study found that both natural causes - La Nina and the short rains - and man-made causes contributed to Somalia's drought.

The study found that between 24 percent and 99 percent of the cause of the failure of the 2011 rains can be attributed to the presence of man-made greenhouse gases, Scott said.

The study was not able to predict how climate change will affect Somalia's rainfall in coming years, but some Somali leaders are concerned. Ahmed Awale works for the non-profit group Candlelight, which is dedicated to improving conservation and the environment. He said Somali's climate has been changing for many decades, with rainfall patterns becoming more erratic.

A study by his group has found tree species dying on the coast because of the hotter weather. What he called 'mist forests' exist in Somalia's highlands, he said, but they too are drying out because of decreasing rain and increasing temperatures. That led his group to carry out a study called 'Climate Change Stole Our Mist.'

'If you miss one of the two rainy seasons we have a very severe drought. The other indicator is that there is a rise in temperature,' he said, adding later: 'This all negatively impacts the livelihood of the people. Most of Somalis depend mostly on pastoral production.'

Space Station Crew's Landing Delayed by 'Horrible' Earth Weather

2013-03-14T17:03:00.001-07:00

An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts are stuck in space for one more day after freezing rain and fog on Earth prevented them from landing in Central Asia on Thursday (March 14), NASA officials say.

The foul weather, which one Russian space agency official described simply as 'horrible,' means NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin had to delay their return from the International Space Station for at least 24 hours. The three men have been living in space for 141 days and were preparing to enter their Soyuz spacecraft for a landing on the frigid steppes of Kazakhstan tonight.

'We are waving off landing,' NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said during live mission commentary. 'No Soyuz landing tonight.'

The rain and fog in Kazakhstan is not a threat to the Soyuz spacecraft and crew, Navias said. But the recovery helicopters essential for retrieving the astronauts after landing would not be able to make it to their staging grounds for the landing because of bad weather conditions. [See photos of the Expedition 34 space station mission]

'I talked to our colleagues in Kazakhstan last night and the weather is really horrible, and a decision was made not to risk, and we suggest that we delay the landing.' chief Russian flight director Vlademir Solovyev said through a translator on NASA TV.

Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin were originally scheduled to undock their Russian-built Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft at the International Space Station tonight at 8:30 p.m. EDT (0030 GMT), with an expected landing of 11:56 p.m. EDT (0356 GMT).

Landing is now scheduled to occur on Friday (March 15) at 11:06 p.m. EDT (0206 March 16 GMT), NASA officials said.

This is not the first time weather has affected a Soyuz spacecraft's landing. In 2009, another Soyuz craft had its return to Earth delayed by a day because snowy conditions on the ground made the landing potentially unsafe.

Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin have spent nearly five months on board the station. The mission is Ford's second spaceflight and the first trip to space for Novitskiy and Tarelkin.

When Ford and his two crewmates depart the station, three other spaceflyers - Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, Russian Roman Romanenko and American Tom Marshburn - will remain aboard orbiting lab to await a new set of crewmembers.

That new crew will launch on March 28 to ferry cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy to the space station.

NASA has relied on Russia's Soyuz crafts ferry astronauts between the Earth's surface and orbit since the retirement of the agency's shuttle program in 2011. Officials with the space agency hope to instead depend on privately built unmanned and crewed spacecraft to bring people and cargo to and from the space station.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Bad weather postpones return of 3 astronauts

2013-03-14T15:03:00.001-07:00

MOSCOW (AP) - Bad weather is delaying the return of three astronauts from the International Space Station.

The astronauts were scheduled to land in a Soyuz capsule in central Kazakhstan early Friday morning. But fog and freezing rain prevented Russian rescue helicopters from flying to the touchdown site.

NASA's Kevin Ford and Russians Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin will stay at the space station for at least another day. They've been in space for nearly five months.

The astronauts had already climbed into their capsule and where waiting to close the hatch when Russian officials called off their departure at the last minute. Their return trip is now set for Saturday, when the weather is expected to be better.

Three other astronauts will remain at the space station.

Dropping in the Polls, Obama Seeks to Rally the Grassroots

2013-03-14T12:03:00.001-07:00

Leaking political capital amid continued dysfunction in Washington, President Obama delivered a pep talk Wednesday to supporters of his new advocacy group trying to lift a gridlock-defying agenda of immigration reform, gun control, and climate change.

In a speech to the recently launched Organizing for Action, Obama acknowledged some "suspicion' over the nonprofit group that's replaced his campaign to further his policy goals.

'Because the usual idea is, well, this must just be a mechanism to try to win the next election in 2014,' he told an audience of about 75 donors, former campaign staffers, and volunteers gathered at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington for a two-day conference. "And what we've tried to explain to people is, is that, no, I actually just want to govern-at least for a couple of years-but I also want to make sure that the voices of ordinary people are heard in the debates that are going to be taking place.'

Yet tacitly acknowledging the intersection of policy and politics, Obama suggested the group could provide cover to vulnerable members of Congress. 'If you have a senator or a congressman in a swing district who is prepared to take a tough vote-or what they consider to be a tough vote-on immigration reform, or legislation around background checks for guns, I want to make sure that they feel supported,' he said.

Earlier Wednesday, OFA leaders insisted the group is focused on passing legislation, not winning elections. 'We are not a partisan organization," OFA Executive Director Jon Carson said. "We are here to move this shared progressive agenda forward."

The kickoff coincided with two new polls suggesting Obama's second honeymoon is waning, which could force him to scale back his ambitions. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows the president's approval has dropped to 50 percent, down 5 points from his inauguration two weeks ago. His ratings were upside-down in a new McClatchy-Marist poll, which found 45 of voters approving of his job performance and 48 percent disapproving.

Obama's drop in the polls is not surprising, considering how the glow of his second inauguration gave way to the partisan bickering that forced $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester. OFA Chairman Jim Messina said OFA hosted 1,200 parties around the State of the Union speech and has organized 100 gun-control rallies so far.

"That's the power of the grassroots and that's what's going to pass this president's legislative agenda," Messina said. "For every dollar a lobbyist puts on the air tearing down the president's agenda, an OFA volunteer will mobilize across the country to counter that."

Obama's ratings are lower than most other recent presidents at this point in their second terms, according to The Washington Post. Of the seven second-term presidents who have served since Harry S Truman, only George W. Bush's rating was as low as 50 percent at this point.

"I think the window of any second term-president is 18 months, max," said John Morgan, a leading Obama donor from Florida. "He might not get gun-control legislation, but he might get background checks. I think he'll get immigration reform because Republicans understand that they can't be the party that opposes that again."

Morgan, like other donors, gave $50,000 to attend the conference, sparking criticism from Republicans and campaign finance watchdogs that OFA was selling access to the president. 'President Obama promised to change Washington, but these actions just perpetuate the pay-to-play politics he has repeatedly deplored,' Common Cause President Bob Edgar said in a statement.

Besides preserving Obama's image, perhaps the biggest challenge facing OFA will be transitioning its volunteers from a fast-paced campaign to the legislative slog of an advocacy group. "The excitement should be the same, but the politics complicate things and that weighs on you," said Marc Casillas, a 19-year-old student at the University of Arizona attending the conference. Asked about Obama's dwindling popularity, he blamed the standoff on Capitol Hill over taxes and spending. "When there's partisan gridlock, people start to hate both sides," he said.

The good news for Obama, so far, is that voters vastly prefer him to Congress, which received only 16 percent approval in the Washington Post poll.

Jay Lloyd's Getaway: Mind The Weather Alerts

2013-03-14T05:03:00.001-07:00

s:fb='http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml' xmlns:addthis='http://www.addthis.com/help/api-spec' > Jay Lloyd’s Getaway: Mind The Weather Alerts « CBS Philly

Wacky weather Wednesday across NE Ohio

2013-03-13T12:04:00.001-07:00

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Four Russians killed in U.N. helicopter crash in Congo

2013-03-12T10:03:00.001-07:00

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Four Russians were killed when a U.N.-contracted cargo helicopter crashed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday.

The helicopter crashed on Saturday on a thickly wooded mountainside around 20 km (12 miles) west of Bukavu airport.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said it was an Mi-8 helicopter owned by UTair and blamed the crash on adverse weather conditions.

A U.N. rescue team was only able to reach the crash site on Tuesday.

In a statement Ban, offered 'his sincerest condolences and sympathy to the families and friends of the victims, and to the Government of the Russian Federation' and said the U.N. mission in Congo was investigating the cause of the crash.

The United Nations has an estimated 17,000 peacekeepers in Congo, and operates an extensive aviation network to counter an almost total lack of roads in the vast central African country.

The peacekeepers have been stretched thin by a rebellion in the resource-rich east of Congo and the U.N. Security Council is considering creating a special intervention force, which one senior council diplomat has said would be able to 'search and destroy' the M23 rebels and other armed groups in the country.

Air accidents are common in Congo and in 2011 a U.N. passenger plane crashed in the capital, Kinshasa, killing all but one of the 33 people on board.

At least five people were killed when a twin-propeller plane crashed last week as it tried to land in bad weather in the town of Goma, north of Bukavu.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Christopher Wilson)

Uganda coffee exports up 35 pct yr/yr in Feb on good weather

2013-03-12T05:04:00.001-07:00

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda's coffee exports rose 34.5 percent year-on-year in February to 328,643 60-kg bags on favourable weather and greater stock availability, the state-run Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) said on Tuesday.

'The higher exports were driven by two factors: we had a dry weather which helped in quickening the drying process for the beans and also since students were going back to school, farmers released more than the usual amount of stocks to earn enough money to get school fees,' said a source at UCDA.

Coffee harvest is underway in the east African nation's central and eastern regions, which account for 55 percent of production of the beans in Africa's top coffee exporter.

Good Reads: Saving the Amazon, Kenya's 'Iron Lady', drones, Depardieu the Russian

2013-03-11T16:03:00.001-07:00

In efforts to reduce deforestation levels in the Amazon region, Brazil is at the forefront of an experimental climate-change prevention strategy known as "reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation," or REDD.

In Foreign Affairs, Jeff Tollefson describes the REDD system, which places monetary value on the amount of carbon dioxide that can be stored in trees. Wealthy nations or corporations pay countries to protect their rain forests, and thus offset carbon emissions.

Through its Amazon Fund, Brazil received funding from Norway starting in 2010. Spending almost $152 million, Brazil executed projects that paid landowners to preserve forests and educated farmers and ranchers on sustainable practices. The result: Brazil has seen a plunging rate of deforestation, registering record lows from 2009 to 2012.

Despite the remaining challenges for implementing a universal plan, Mr. Tollefson writes, "at a time when expectations for progress on climate change are falling, Brazil has given the world a glimmer of hope. In many ways, the hard work is just beginning, but the results so far more than justify continuing the experiment."

KENYA'S 'IRON LADY'

During the run-up to Kenya's March 4 presidential election, the media focused on the two front-runners, Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta. But among the six other candidates, there is one to keep watching: Martha Karua, Kenya's own "Iron Lady."

A profile by Al Jazeera details Ms. Karua's rise in national politics, from a magistrate to a member of parliament and minister for justice under President Mwai Kibaki. She was the only woman to run in this year's election, during which she pledged to create a universal health-care system and increase Internet access to 50 percent of Kenyans within five years.

"Her manifesto, perhaps reflecting her legal background, emphasises 'a new spirit of constitutionalism', prioritising the fight against corruption and respect for national diversity," Al Jazeera writes.

RECOMMENDED: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.

Her outspoken condemnation of her fellow candidates, particularly those implicated in stoking the postelection violence in 2007, best explains her Iron Lady nickname. She accuses Mr. Odinga of ethnic cleansing, and Mr. Kenyatta is facing charges of crimes against humanity from the International Criminal Court.

She said he should be cleared of those charges before he can be elected president.

"How do you seek votes, yet grave accusations of causing death, arson and mass displacements are on your head?" she told reporters. "If your cow's leg is broken, do you strap a plough on it and head to the farm - or do you first get it treated and allow it time to heal?"

FUTURE OF DRONES

Drones have drastically changed the strategy of modern warfare, playing an effective, albeit controversial, role in the US fight against Al Qaeda. The government and private companies are now looking homeward for the next development in drone technology. Potential uses include crop dusting, traffic control, border patrol, and weather forecasting, reports John Horgan in National Geographic. But even with these benefits, people are worried about potential breaches in privacy - and the possibility for errors.

As new, more sophisticated drones take to the skies in the United States, and in other countries where drones are manufactured (such as China, Israel, and Iran), Mr. Horgan says that limiting risk is crucial.

"The invention that escapes our control, proliferating whether or not it benefits humanity, has been a persistent fear of the industrial age - with good reason," Horgan writes. "Nuclear weapons are too easy an example; consider what cars have done to our landscape over the past century, and it's fair to wonder who's in the driver's seat, them or us.'

DEPARDIEU AND INCOME INEQUALITY

As Gérard Depardieu takes up residency in his newly adopted countries (Belgium and Russia), Lauren Collins in The New Yorker explains why the French have dismissed the once beloved actor.

Mr. Depardieu famously renounced his French citizenship after the government promised to impose a new supertax on the wealthy - 75 percent on incomes greater than 1 million euros. French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called Depardieu's move "pathetic."

This was the ultimate insult for a man who came from a poor background and built his wealth through acting and entrepreneurial ventures. He's leaving France, he said in a letter to Mr. Ayrault, "because you believe success, creation, talent, anything different, to be grounds for sanction."

But 60 percent of his former countrymen support the supertax, drawing "on the republican ideal of taxation as an institution that would foster social cohesion,"writes Ms. Collins. Taxes on the rich are seen as a way to prevent income disparities.

"There's a very egalitarian idea of what society should be, whatever hypocrisy it entails," Christine Ockrent, a veteran journalist, told Collins. "It dates back to the French Revolution, which, by the way, was a very bourgeois revolution. The myth of equality is something which strangles any discussion about income."

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Spring Weather Springing This Week

2013-03-11T08:03:00.001-07:00

s:fb='http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml' xmlns:addthis='http://www.addthis.com/help/api-spec' > Spring Weather Springing This Week « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

Sea level rise could threaten Miami facilities

2013-03-11T07:04:00.000-07:00

MIAMI (AP) -- Three major sewage plants in South Florida could be reduced to shrinking islands in less than 50 years due to climate change, according to a group of climate scientists.

The scientists believe rising sea level will threaten some of the region's most vital facilities. It will also flood land, streets and neighborhoods nearby, The Miami Herald reported Sunday.

The scenario was drawn up by five experts from the University of Miami, Florida International University and Florida Atlantic University retained by Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper. The clean-water advocacy group is challenging Miami-Dade's $1.5 billion plan to repair the county's troubled sewage system.

Most of the money would go toward repairing the county's aging, spill-plagued sewage system. Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper contends it would make more sense to move the plants to more protected inland sites.

'At some point, and I hope it's this year, Miami-Dade government and everybody has to start truly recognizing that we're in for it, that this is coming,' University of Miami geology professor Harold Wanless told the paper.

The scientists believe the plants in coastal Southern Miami-Dade, North Miami and Virginia Key would remain dry for several more decades - but could be damaged by a two-foot rise in the sea level projected to arrive in less than 50 years.

The county Water and Sewage Department drafted its proposal under the pressure of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lawsuit and potentially millions in fines. However, the plan doesn't contain any information about dealing with flooding tides, storm surge and other environmental and climate change risks.

Wanless hopes the data will result in changes before the final plan is sealed.

University of Miami atmospheric science professor Brian Solden said many communities will face difficult and expensive decisions in South Florida as sea levels continue to rise. Even a one foot increase in Miami Beach could worsen high tide flooding there and inundate much of South Miami-Dade.

'If you look at downtown Miami, where all the new places have gone up, all the new condominiums, the billions going in there, those places are at some of the lowest levels,' Soden told the paper. 'It's a broader impact all of South Florida is going to be facing sooner or later. Right now, a lot of people are choosing not to look at it.'

The deputy director of the county water and sewer department defended the plans. Doug Yoder said they are addressing the most pressing concersn and in a cost-effect manner and could build another plant in another 20 or 30 years if needed.