water

windy weston plus

2016-09-05T06:05:00.001-07:00

considered interpretation of the sediments

2015-10-10T23:31:00.001-07:00

Curiosity rover: The reward for 'whale watching' on Mars

Jonathan Amos9 October 2015

Image copyrightNASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS

Image captionWhale Rock is about 50cm high and is made from sediment grains that bounced along a rippling stream bed

Whale Rock. It's got quite a story to tell.

When scientists first saw it in images returned from Nasa's Curiosity rover on Mars, they really weren't sure what to make of it.

Sitting proud on top of a stack of finely layered mudstones, this coarser sandstone outcrop seemed a little out of place.

So, the team commanded the robot to drive up and down for a bit, to look at some other enticing geology in Gale Crater.

But each time Curiosity came back for another peek, the head-scratching continued.

What was Whale Rock, and why was it there?

This week the team released its considered interpretation of the sediments observed in Gale during more than a year's roving by Curiosity.

The report, published in Science magazine, describes how these sediments are likely the remains of streams and rivers that flowed over the crater's rim and across its floor, slowing and branching into deltas that ultimately fed a succession of persistent lakes.

And Whale Rock, it turns out, has something of a starring role in this story.

"It's the rock that gives us confidence that we've got our model right," says Sanjeev Gupta, a senior scientist on the mission.

Much of what is in the Science paper was first discussed last December in a mission-team teleconference with reporters.

The intervening months have witnessed the hard graft needed to corral all the evidence into the kind of arguments that will pass muster in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. And those arguments are compelling.

Image copyrightNASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS

Image captionThe dipping rock strata in Gale align with the direction of water flow - towards the mountain

The coarser gravels that the robot saw out on the crater floor, near its landing point, gave way to progressively smaller-grained rocks as it drove south, closer to Gale's dominating central mountain, Aeolus Mons (Mount Sharp). And these dipping strata ended in a thick collection of finely layered mudstones.

The laminations are what you would expect when plume after plume of sediment pulses into a lake, loses energy and settles out of the standing water to build up the bed.

And Whale? It sits above 10m or so of these exquisite mudstones, somewhat nestled in them, and lens-shaped.

Whale has laminations, too, but its larger grains are those of a sandstone, meaning its deposition environment was more energetic. Its sediments were carried in rippling water.

All that head-scratching has concluded that Whale marks the physical edge of a lake - the interface with the delta that was feeding it.

There are two ways it could have formed.

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Media captionSanjeev Gupta: "Our analysis follows many months of detailed debate and argument"

One interpretation is quite straightforward: it is the delta deposits actually encroaching into the lake, filling little gullies.

The second possibility is a bit more involved: it could be where the lake has receded at some point, and the feeding stream from the delta has cut down and eroded a new channel. The stream's own sediments have then rolled into this channel but have later been encased by the finer muds when the lake level has come back up.

Either way, you are looking at a rock recording of events that occurred, perhaps over just a few hours and days, more than three billion years ago on another planet.

Image copyrightNASA/MOLA

Image captionGale Crater sits on the "dichotomy" - the divide between the northern lowlands and the southern highlands

"So, one explanation for Whale is a static model, and the other is a dynamic time model," explains Prof Gupta, from Imperial College London.

"The latter may be right, and that would be really exciting because it is telling us something about the water budget changing. But the important thing is that we are seeing the interface between the rivers and the lakes.

"Whale is a marker for us that they existed at the same time, and that really gives us confidence in particular that we are seeing ancient lake deposits."

Curiosity's big drive to Mount Sharp saw it climb up through 75m of sediments.

What we know of deposition rates in water environments on Earth suggests this stratigraphy took anywhere from 10,000 right up to 10 million years to accumulate.

And if even higher sediments at Mount Sharp (these have not been directly investigated by Curiosity but look the same from satellite imagery) are taken into account, this deposition time becomes even longer.

Image copyrightNASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS

Image captionHigher still: Curiosity is still only in the lower reaches of Mount Sharp

And here is the "whale of a problem" (excuse the pun) that Mars scientists now find themselves grappling.

All the climate models of early Mars have failed to simulate conditions in which liquid water could run and pool on the surface long enough to produce the stratigraphy seen in Gale. The air was too rarefied; it was simply too cold.

But the mudstones and sandstones seen by Curiosity disagree. On their evidence, it is not even as if the ancient lakes were ephemeral. The rover sees no examples of the types of sediments that are associated with dried-out lakebeds, or even the kinds of glacial deposits that might suggest the water was frozen for long periods.

One tantalising consequence of all this is the possibility that the planet may once have featured a large body of water somewhere on its surface. This could have produced the atmospheric humidity, the rains and snows, needed to drive the features seen in Gale.

For decades, researchers have wondered if the flat, northern lowlands could have held an ocean during Mars' early history. The latest Curiosity results are re-igniting interest in this idea, says John Grotzinger, the lead author on this week's paper and the former project scientist on Curiosity.

"The simplest explanation is that there probably was a body of water out there that was creating an environment at the dichotomy (the boundary between Mars' northern lowlands and southern highlands), and at Gale Crater it supplied water moisture to the northern rim that flowed into the crater basin," the Caltech professor speculated.

"Either all of these geological observations, which seem to be adding up in the same direction, are incorrect (and we always have to be open to that possibility); or we're simply missing something. Perhaps, we don't have the greenhouse gas inventory and climate conditions for early Mars correct yet.

"I don't know what we're missing but I think we're headed for a long-lived controversy in the absence of complete information."

Image copyrightThinkstock

Image captionUtah humpback: Whale Rock takes its name from a much larger sandstone feature in Canyonlands National Park

'Substantial' El Nino event predicted

2015-05-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

'Substantial' El Nino event predicted

By Helen BriggsBBC Environment Correspondent

The El Nino effect, which can drive droughts and flooding, is under way in the tropical Pacific, say scientists.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology predicted that it could become a "substantial" event later in the year.

The phenomenon arises from variations in ocean temperatures.

The El Nino is still in its early stages, but has the potential to cause extreme weather around the world, according to forecasters.

US scientists announced in April that El Nino had arrived, but it was described then as "weak".

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Media captionMeteorologist Chris Fawkes explains what El Nino is

Australian scientists said models suggested it could strengthen from September onwards, but it was too early to determine with confidence how strong it could be.

"This is a proper El Nino effect, it's not a weak one," David Jones, manager of climate monitoring and prediction at the Bureau of Meteorology, told reporters.

"You know, there's always a little bit of doubt when it comes to intensity forecasts, but across the models as a whole we'd suggest that this will be quite a substantial El Nino event."

Aftermath of flooding in California put down to El Nino

A strong El Nino was expected during last year's record-breaking temperatures, but failed to materialise.

Prof Eric Guilyardi of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading said it would become clear in the summer whether 2015 might be different.

"The likelihood of El Nino is high but its eventual strength in the winter when it has its major impacts worldwide is still unknown," he said.

"We will know in the summer how strong it is going to be."

Weather patterns

The El Nino is a warming of the Pacific Ocean as part of a complex cycle linking atmosphere and ocean.

The phenomenon is known to disrupt weather patterns around the world, and can bring wetter winters to the southwest US and droughts to northern Australia.

The consequences of El Nino are much less clear for Europe and the UK.

A strong El Nino five years ago was linked with poor monsoons in Southeast Asia, droughts in southern Australia, the Philippines and Ecuador, blizzards in the US, heatwaves in Brazil and extreme flooding in Mexico.

Research suggests that extreme El Nino events will become more likely as global temperatures rise.

The Cataclysm That Erased History 12,000 Years Ago

2014-10-28T10:59:00.002-07:00

The Younger Dryas stadial, also referred to as the Big Freeze, was a geologically brief (1,300 ± 70 years) period of cold climatic conditions and drought which occurred between approximately 12,800 and 11,500 years BP. The Younger Dryas stadial is thought to have been caused by the collapse of the North American ice sheets, although rival theories have been proposed

The Younger Dryas impact event is a contested hypothesis that an air burst from a purported comet above or even into the Laurentide Ice Sheet north of the Great Lakes set all of the North American continent ablaze around 12,900 years ago. The hypothesis attempts to explain the extinction of many of the large animals in North America and the unproven population decreases in the North American stone age Clovis culture about at the end of the Pleistocene epoch. Proponents claim the existence of a charred carbon-rich layer of soil found at some 50 Clovis-age sites across the continent. It has been criticized for not being consistent with paleoindian population estimates.
Impact specialists have studied the claim and concluded that there never was such an impact, in particular because various physical signs of such an impact cannot be found. Evidence supporting the theory however has been further suggested by the 2012 paper presented to the PNAS (T.E. Bunch et al.) which looked at apparent high temperature impact melt products found in multiple sites of the ‘black mat’ across three continents dating to 12 900 years ago, This is further indicated by the discovery (Kurbatov et al. 2010) of the presence of a rich layer of nanodiamonds in the Greenland ice sheet coinciding with this date
The Younger Dryas stadial, also referred to as the Big Freeze, was a geologically brief (1,300 ± 70 years) period of cold climatic conditions and drought which occurred between approximately 12,800 and 11,500 years BP. The Younger Dryas stadial is thought to have been caused by the collapse of the North American ice sheets, although rival theories have been proposed.
http://khemitology.com/

try the sahara dessert as well then we we have a large earth quake

The Cataclysm That Erased History 12,000 Years Ago | Beyond Science

Ocean waves influence polar ice extent

2014-06-01T00:11:00.000-07:00

Ocean waves influence polar ice extent

By Jonathan AmosScience correspondent, BBC News

The team placed sensors on the floes to track the disturbance caused by ocean waves

Large ocean waves can travel through sea ice for hundreds of kilometres before their oscillations are finally dampened, scientists have shown.

The up and down motion can fracture the ice, potentially aiding its break-up and melting, the researchers told Nature magazine.

They say storm swells may have a much bigger influence on the extent of polar sea ice than previously recognised.

The New Zealand-led team ran its experiments off Antarctica.

They placed sensors at various distances from the edge of the pack ice, and then recorded what happened when bad weather whipped up the ocean surface.

For smaller waves, less than 3m in height, the bobbing induced in the floes quickly decayed. But for waves over 3m, the disturbance sent propagating through the pack ice was sustained for up to 350km.

"At the ice edge, it's quite noisy," explained study lead author Alison Kohout, from New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in Christchurch.

"You have lots of waves coming from all directions with a full spectrum of frequencies. But as the waves move into the ice, this all gets cleaned up to produce one beautiful, smooth wave of constant frequency," she told BBC News.

"The ice floes bend with the waves, and over time you can imagine that this creates fatigue and eventually the ice will fracture. Interestingly, the fractures tend to be perpendicular to the direction of the waves, and to be of even widths."

The recent growth in Antarctic sea ice has been a highly regional phenomenon

Computer modellers have been trying to simulate the recent trends in polar sea ice - without a great deal of success.

They have failed to capture both the very rapid decline in summer ice cover in the Arctic and the small, but nonetheless significant, growth in winter ice in the Antarctic.

Dr Kohout and colleagues say their experiments offer some clues - certainly in the south.

When they compared observed Antarctic marine-ice edge positions from 1997 to 2009 with likely wave heights generated by the weather during that period, they found a strong link.

For example, where storminess was increased, in regions like the Amundsen-Bellingshausen Sea, ice extent was curtailed.

In contrast, where wave heights were smaller, such as in the Western Ross Sea, marine ice was seen to expand.

One very noticeable aspect of the recent growth in Antarctic winter sea ice has been its high regional variability.

The team says that if models take more account of wave heights then they may better capture some of this behaviour.

The group did try to look for a similar relationship in storminess and ice extent in the Arctic but found there to be insufficient data to draw any firm conclusions.

The geography at the poles is quite different. The Arctic is in large part an ocean enclosed by land, whereas the Antarctic is a land mass totally surrounded by ocean. Many of the ice behaviours and responses are different as a result.

"I think what's interesting for us in the Arctic is that the 'fetch' is increasing - the distance from the shores to the ice edge is increasing," commented Prof Julienne Stroeve from University College London and the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.

"That would allow the wind to work more on the ocean to produce larger waves that can then propagate further into the ice pack.

"[Another recent paper has already suggested] that wave heights are going to change with increasing distance from the ice edge to the land, and that could have more of an impact on ice break-up."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter:@BBCAmos

The weather pattern, which typically sees rainfall shift eastward away from Australia, is regularly linked to dry years with active fire seasons for southern and eastern parts of Australia

2014-02-17T03:08:00.001-08:00

Sheep eat feed given to them so they survive the drought affecting NSW. Photo: Peter Stoop

Farmers and firefighters, already dogged by a hot, dry summer for much of Australia, may face worsening conditions later in the year as prospects grow for an El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific.

A series of heatwaves and a spreading drought is expected to cut the output of summer crops by 25 per cent for 2013-14 to the lowest level since 2009-10, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) said on Tuesday.

Victorian fire authorities, meanwhile, continued to battle at least two dozen uncontained fires on Tuesday, with 21 homes destroyed and some 330,000 hectares burnt out. The Rural Fire Service in NSW, which has sent 240 firefighters to Victoria for the rest of the month, is also working to suppress 37 fires across the state, four of them uncontained, a spokesman said.

Last six months: rain in Australia falls mainly in the west. Photo: BoM

The outlook for longer-term relief, however, is dimming, with meteorological agencies and researchers raising the odds that an El Nino will form this year.

The weather pattern, which typically sees rainfall shift eastward away from Australia, is regularly linked to dry years with active fire seasons for southern and eastern parts of Australia.

The Bureau of Meteorology said in its fortnightly update on Tuesday that neutral conditions for the El Nino-Southern Oscillation are likely to persist at least until the end of autumn. However, warming of the Pacific is expected in coming months, with "some, but not all, models" indicating temperatures in the central Pacific "may approach El Nino levels by early winter".

Areas to receive NSW government drought help. Photo: NSW government

Researchers in Germany, however, say there is at least a three-in-four chance that an El Nino event will occur this year, according to a study published in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.

Kevin Tolhurst, a fire ecologist at the University of Melbourne, said an El Nino would probably raise fire risks for next summer.

''We're heading back into a dry period again," Professor Tolhurst said, noting that fires were not only spreading further than in recent years but proving harder to put out.

"In El Nino years, you have much larger and more destructive fires because there's much more of the landscape available to burn," he said. Ferny gullies that often slow or stop a fire in normal years have much less moisture.

As a result, fire authorities will need to devote more resources to suppressing fires. That effort doesn't rely on "our big helicopters and the massive numbers of fire trucks - which are all really important in the emergency situation", he said. "This is the hard slog, days after the main fire run has finished, before the next series of bad weather."

Peter Collins, manager of ABARES's agricultural commodities unit, said that while it is too early to say whether El Nino conditions will take hold, farmers are struggling with very low soil moisture levels in many regions.

"A continuation of this dry weather would not be good news for next season's winter crop," Mr Collins said. "If it stays as dry and as hot as it has been recently, then there will be lower production [for the summer crop] than what we have forecast."

While there was a bumper winter crop, land planted for summer crops fell 15 per cent on a year earlier. Output is expected to drop by 25 per cent to about 4 million tonnes of crops ranging from wheat to sorghum and cotton, ABARES said

UK storms:

2014-02-17T03:04:00.000-08:00

UK storms:

2014-02-17T03:03:00.000-08:00

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UK storms: Footage shows deadly waves from cruise ship

16 February 2014 Last updated at 22:37 GMT

Footage has emerged a cruise ship being rocked by a severe storm, around 45 minutes before a passenger on board was killed.

James Swinstead, 85, of Colchester, Essex, died when a huge wave crashed into the British vessel, Marco Polo, on Friday.

His widow, Helen, praised the crew but criticised the vessel as "badly maintained".

Operator Cruise and Maritime Voyages (CMV) said the ship was fully compliant with "strict" maritime regulation.

River Thames

2014-02-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

Police have declared a 'major incident' in east Berkshire as the Environment Agency issues 14 severe flood warnings

UK winter floods

Flooded homes along the River Thames are being evacuated and thousands more are at risk, with water levels expected to rise further over the next 24 hours.

Residents in one Berkshire village say the scenes are from a "horror movie".

Fourteen severe flood warnings are in place in Berkshire and Surrey, while two remain in Somerset.

PM David Cameron - who is in flood-hit Dorset - said it was not the time to change personnel amid criticism of Environment Agency head Lord Smith.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles is answering an urgent question put by Labour in the Commons on the flooding crisis.

Homes in the Berkshire village of Datchet are underwater and thousands more along the lower River Thames, as far as Shepperton, are under threat.

Several Thames gauges are showing their highest levels since being installed in the 1980s and 90s.

AnalysisDavid ShukmanScience editor, BBC News

At the heart of this blame game is the difficult question of who gets defended and who does not.

The blunt truth is the budget has never been big enough to help everyone, so awkward decisions have to be made. The priority is to save people and property.

Calculations are done to assess the value of any flood defence scheme. First, the cost must be outweighed by the benefit - the Treasury insists every pound spent must yield at least eight in economic gain. Second, you add up households at risk and third, you count up deprived households. In all these cases, urban areas are likely to score highest. Farmland is lower in the pecking order.

There are bound to be winners and losers. If the future becomes stormier, and more people are at risk, disputes will become more contentious. And this raises the hardest question of all: how much should we all pay to keep vulnerable areas dry?

Read more from David

Fire crews, who have been rescuing people from their homes in Staines, say they have never known waters so deep or a flood rescue operation on this scale.

In Windsor, Councillor Colin Rayner pleaded for the police and Army for help.

"We've got 50 volunteers here, we've got the vulnerable people out of their homes, now we need to get everyone else out," he said

Nearby, in the Berkshire village of Colnbrook, resident Asif Khan said his whole street was under water, his house was flooded and his fridge "just went bang".

"It's something out of a horror movie," he said, adding that he was now about to try to evacuate with his two small children.

Hurst village resident Paul Palmer said sewers there were blocked and they have been unable to use the toilet since Friday.

"It's starting to back up into the toilet - it's like going back to the dark ages," he told the BBC.

Stranded residents in Staines-upon-Thames are rescued by fire crews

A total of 10,000 sandbags have been distributed in Datchet in Berkshire

Swans wander down a flooded street in Worcester

Speaking from Portland, off the Dorset coast, Mr Cameron said: "I am only interested in one thing and that is making sure that everything government can do is being done and will go on being done to help people through this difficult time.

"There will be time later on to talk about things. Right now everybody's got to focus on the job in hand."

Mr Cameron's comments follow a deepening political row.

Speaking earlier, Lord Smith said his staff knew "100 times" more about flooding than any politician and pointed out that they were bound by rules laid down by government.

He has insisted again he will not resign.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles previously said ministers had been given bad advice by the Environment Agency over river dredging.

Meanwhile, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson and Mr Pickles are thought to be at odds over the performance of the Environment Agency.

No 10 did not deny Mr Paterson had complained about his colleague, who is standing in for him after he had an eye operation, but said both were doing an "excellent job".

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who was in Burrowbridge in Somerset, said dredging should have been done over the last few years but added: "I don't think now is the time to point the finger of blame."

Among other developments:

Environment Agency has issued 14 severe warnings - meaning "danger to life" - along the River Thames, in areas including Staines, Chertsey and Datchet
Two severe warnings are in place for the south-west of England in Salt Moor and East Lyng, in Somerset
Large parts of Worcester city centre could be closed for a weekbecause of flooding, the county council has said. Twenty-nine flood warnings remain in place across Herefordshire and Worcestershire
An earth bank has been built to protect the town of Bridgwater, on the edge of the Somerset Levels, from flooding
Dyfed Powys police have found a body in their search for a kayaker who went missing on the River Usk on Sunday
A meeting of the emergency Cobra committee will take place later. Mr Cameron will take part by phone from the South West.
Essex County Council says it is releasing £1m of emergency funds to tackle road flooding across the county

Major incident

Thames Valley Police have declared a "major incident" in east Berkshire.

Howard Davidson, from the Environment Agency said he expects conditions in Berkshire to deteriorate as more rain falls over the coming days.

"We have issued flood warnings from Datchet down to Shepperton, and we urge people to take heed of the flood warnings. We are anticipating another three or four inches on the Thames over the next 24 hours."

Weather information

Severe delays

The flooding has also caused severe delays on several train lines, National Rail said.

Robin Gisby, managing director of Network Rail, said his team were watching "several hundred" sites across England carefully.

Analysis

Norman SmithChief political correspondent, BBC News Channel

It's certain to infuriate those residents affected by flooding - but the floods crisis now appears to have developed into an ugly 'blame game' among the politicians.

First Communities Secretary Eric Pickles pointed at the Environment Agency and its boss Chris Smith, suggesting he should consider his position and accusing the agency of "misjudgements."

Now Lord Smith has hit back saying his staff know one hundred times more about floods than any politician and accusing ministers of "playing politics".

At the same time, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson has protested to the prime minister over Mr Pickles' bruising criticism of the Environment Agency.

No wonder then that this morning Energy Secretary Ed Davey publicly appealed for an end to the blame game.

What does it tell us? That the floods crisis has all the potential to turn into a serious political crisis - hence the reason politicians are already taking sides.

"What I think is really significant, and it has got worse overnight, is Oxford down to the Thames Valley through Didcot, Reading, Maidenhead and into Paddington.

"This isn't now just flooding, this is groundwater. The land is so saturated we have got water rising up, just as much as flowing on to it. So it is difficult."

The main rail route into Devon and Cornwall via Bridgwater remains cut off because of problems caused by flooding and storm damage.

The line from Paddington to Exeter via Newbury is expected to reopen later following a drop in flood water levels at Athelney.

The line from Waterloo to Exeter via Yeovil, closed due to a landslip at Crewkerne on Saturday, has reopened.

More than 300 less serious warnings and alerts have been issued by the Environment Agency, mostly in southern England and the Midlands.

The Met Office has no rain warnings in place for Monday, but it is warning of ice across much of the UK.

But forecasters say another area of low pressure is expected to reach the UK on Monday night and into Tuesday, bringing more heavy rain.

Peter Sloss, of the BBC Weather Centre, said Monday would be the "driest day of the week" but he warned there would be 20-40mm (1-2in) of rain for many areas by the end of Thursday.

He said some showers would be wintry, with snow likely on higher ground in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England.

Some residents in Staines, which borders the River Thames, were woken by telephone flood alerts

In Burrowbridge, Somerset, sandbags are stacked up ready for use

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg fields questions from reporters nearby in Burrowbridge

Rail services have been cancelled in parts of Surrey and Berkshire

Water Level Management Action Plan

2014-02-07T08:59:00.000-08:00

The Somerset Levels and Moors project has
focussed on the Parrett Catchment, which
represents half of this area of highly engineered
floodplain. The area has a long history of
conflict between stakeholders and a number of
new challenges. As a result, the Wise Use of
Floodplains project (WUF) has targeted
creating a new consensus on how water is to be
managed, in particular looking at new ways to
achieve sustainable benefits for all stakeholders.
The project has worked very closely with the
Parrett Catchment Project (PCP), aiming to
encourage integrated catchment management,
and the Water Level Management Action Plan
(WLMAP), Environment Agency strategy for
the day-to-day management of water in the

Levels and Moors.

Somerset Levels and Moors Stakeholders
Environment Agency
English Nature
RSPB
Somerset County Council
Levels & Moors Partnership (LAMP)

The project aims:
to demonstrate methods to appraise the economic,
social and environmental effects of flood and coastal
plain wetland restoration and management options
to determine how European and national policies might
need to change to facilitate the restoration of flood and
coastal plain wetlands
to facilitate ‘on the ground’ floodplain restoration
across Europe through dissemination of guidelines and
project results

.The Parrett Catchment
The Parrett Catchment is the largest river system in
Somerset, covering 50% of the county and containing five
major rivers: the Parrett, Isle,Tone,Yeo and Cary.

The area is predominantly rural with 70% grassland and
30% arable (cereals and forage maize).The Levels & Moors
covers 64,000 ha and is the most important remaining
lowland wet grassland in England. It is a unique cultural
landscape with farmland criss-crossed by numerous ditches,
and its communities are located on ridges and ‘islands’ of
higher ground.The Levels are a coastal barrier of marine
clays, which lie about 6 m above mean sea level. In contrast,
the Moors are inland and ground levels can be as much as
6 m below peak tide levels.The Moors are prone to
frequent flooding and act as temporary reservoirs during
large flood events.About 10% of the area is designated as a
wetland of outstanding ecological importance in a European
context (a Special Protection Area).
The Somerset issues and focus
The new challenges for Somerset include recent severe
floods and the general crisis in agriculture, exacerbated by
global warming and sea level rise.There is also a drive to
sustainable development and integrated rural development,
as well as new legislation emerging from Europe, such as the
Water Framework Directive.All of these factors affect the
area in different ways.Add in the various interests of all the
stakeholders and the urgent need for an integrated
approach to sustainable water management is evident.
The project has generated the best debate on water
management in 30 years, creating a new consensus
between conservation, farming, drainage and rural
community views. Settlements and strategic assets must
be protected from flooding while securing a farmed
freshwater wetland environment that restores and
maintains biodiversity.
The project area looked at the common ground amongst
stakeholders:
Deep, prolonged floods benefit no-one.
Whole sectors benefit from better flood management.
Wetland habitats should be protected from tidal
inundation.
A combined approach is needed as no single solution
will work.Contacts and Further information:
The Wise Use of Floodplains project is a trans-national partnership, in six project areas
throughout England, Scotland, Ireland and France.The objective of the project is to
demonstrate how floodplain wetlands could contribute to the sustainable management
of water resources within river basins. It highlights the importance of organisations and
communities working together to create a holistic and sustainable approach to the
management of water at catchment level and an important aim is to assist Member
States on the implementation of the Water Framework Directive. For further
information, please refer to the ‘Wise Use of Floodplains Overall Guidance Note’.
For further information regarding this project, please refer to the sponsoring
partners and organisations listed below:
Agence de l’Eau www.eaufrance.com
Birdwatch Ireland www.birdwatchireland.ie
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology www.nwl.ac.uk/ih
English Nature www.english-nature.org.uk
Environment and Heritage Service www.nics.gov.uk/ehs
Environment Agency www.environment-agency.gov.uk
Institution Interdepartmentale pour l’Aménagement du Fleuve Charente
LPO www.lpo-birdlife.asso.fr
Ministère de l’Aménagement du Territoire et de l’Environnement
www.environnement.gouv.fr
Conseil Regionale de Poitou Garonne
Rivers Agency www.dardnt.gov.uk
RSPB www.rspb.org.uk
SEPA www.sepa.org.uk
SNIFFER www.sniffer.org.uk
Thames Water www.thameswater.co.uk
WWF www.panda.org/europe/freshwater
Disclaimer:
The project wishes to stimulate debate on the wise use of floodplains. However, the
views expressed in this document do not necessarily reflect the opinion of all the
Wise Use of Floodplain partner organisations.
Wise Use of Floodplains technical reports:
Hydrological Impact Assessment: Modelling the impacts of floodplain restoration
Participatory Processes: A tool to assist the wise use of catchments.
Policy Analysis:Analysing Barriers to Change: A tool to assist river basin planning
Options Appraisal: Lessons for floodplain appraisal
Further publications available from website or on CD
from partner organisations:
Beneficial use of floodplains: Identification of appraisal techniques (RPA)
Participatory techniques for land use planning – a review (Mark Toogood)
Identification of techniques for appraisal of floodplain wetlands (RSPB)
Analysing barriers to change methodology (WUF)
A review of twelve WWF river restoration projects across Europe
(Christoph Zockler)
Policy and economic analysis of floodplain restoration in Europe – Opportunities
and obstacles (Tim Jones)
Hydrological model scoping study (CEH)
Cherwell catchment restoration scenarios (University of Southampton)
Hydrology guideline: Summary report to modelling the impacts of floodplain restoration
For further information, please visit www.floodplains.org or refer to the partner
organisations listed above.

Water Framework Directive

2014-02-07T08:39:00.000-08:00

WFD CIS Guidance Document No.8
Public participation in relation to the Water Framework Directive
6. DEFRA Stakeholder Sounding Board, England
Key- words
National stakeholder involvement.
Aim/objective of the project
The terms of reference for the Stakeholder Sounding Board says that it is a forum for
stakeholders to:
x provide input to DEFRA (Department for Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs) thinking
on transposition, and related policy issues, of theWater Framework Directive (WFD);
x raise issues relating to the WFD of concern to the group;
x provide input into development of a long-term strategy for the environmental quality of
water - what it should cover, in what detail, risks and opportunities.
Scale/unit of planning
National – the Stakeholder Sounding Board considers WFD-related issues for the whole of
England. To date, no similar groups have been established in Scotland, Wales or Northern
Ireland.
Period
The Stakeholder Sounding Board was established in early 2001 after a request from a group
of stakeholder organisations (including WWF-UK). There is no fixed timescale for the
group’s existence.
Who participated and how (Degree/form of public participation) in what phase of the
planning?
The organisations represented on the Stakeholder Sounding Board are:
Government
DEFRA (Department for Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs)
Statutory agencies
Environment Agency (the government’s statutory agency for environmental protection in
England and Wales)
English Nature (the government’s statutory advisor on, and agency for, nature protection in
England)
Private sector
Confederation of British Industry (CBI)
Chemical Industries Association (CIA)
Crop Protection Association (CPA)
Country Land and Business Association (CLA)
National Farmers’ Union (NFU)
Water UK (the trade association for UK water companies and water authorities)
118WFD CIS Guidance Document No.8
Public participation in relation to the Water Framework Directive
NGOs
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)
WWF-UK
Other stakeholders
UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development (UKCEED)
Office of the National Consumer Council (ONCC)
Participation takes the form of regular meetings (approximately 3 or 4 a year), hosted in turn
by different stakeholder Sounding Board members. The meetings are chaired by a senior
official from DEFRA. DEFRA also undertakes a secretariat function.
Major input of stakeholders
Individual stakeholder organisations, or small groups of stakeholder organisations, can flag
up issues for discussion. They are then invited by the Stakeholder Sounding Board to
prepare a paper on the issue. The paper is discussed at subsequent meetings.
DEFRA may also raise agenda items.
Thus, WWF and UKCEED have prepared a paper on public participation; the RSPB and
others have prepared a paper on Wetlands and the Water Framework Directive; the RSPB,
WWF, Water UK and the NFU are currently preparing a paper on diffuse pollution.
Outstanding issues
It is not clear what status these papers have within the government. Although the papers
include recommendations for action by government and other stakeholders, DEFRA have
not made clear whether they will act on those recommendations, even if all stakeholder
organisations agree with them.
The relationship between the Stakeholder Sounding Board and the UK government’s internal
technical advisory group on implementing the WFD has yet to be clarified.
Lessons learnt
A national forum that allows stakeholders to input directly into policy thinking is genuinely
useful. It allows direct access to government officials and provides a mechanism by which
government can assess the most important issues. For relatively little cost and effort this
enhances the traditional methods of consultation and individual meetings with each
stakeholder organisation.
However, it is important that there is full transparency so that stakeholder organisations can
see how their ideas and concerns are considered and acted on (or not) by the Government.
At the moment, we are still working on this in the Stakeholder Sounding Board.
For more information contact:
WWF UK, David Tickner, DTickner@wwf.org.uk
119WFD CIS Guidance Document No.8
Public participation in relation to the Water Framework Directive
7. The Wise Use of Floodplains Project in Somerset, England
Our work was made possible through the award of a 50% grant from the EU LIFE Environment Fund
programme.
Inspiration points – this example is inspiring because:
In partnership with other initiatives this project facilitated a creative and positive dialogue
on the future management of flood events in a catchment, where previously stakeholder
views had been polarised for decades to the extent where the conflict had become notorious
in national environmental circles.
Aim/objective of the project
The WUF Project’s aim was to encourage the wise use of water resources in river catchments
to benefit, people, their livelihoods and their environment. We set out to achieve this by:
1. Generating new options for the sustainable management of flood events across the
catchment and annual water levels on the floodplain;
2. Testing public participation methods to find out what were the economic, social and
environmental costs and benefits of different options for managing flood events and
floodplain water levels.
The project, through its participatory approach helped to find out how the policies of the
government and European Union needed to be changed to promote sustainable management
of the catchment and its floodplain. Findings were passed to managers of river catchments
across Europe to enable their governments to implement the WFD.
Scale/unit of planning
The River Parrett Catchment in the county of Somerset, South West England. It is the largest
river system in Somerset covering 1665 km2, about half of the county area and containing
five major rivers: the Parrett, Isle, Tone, Yeo and Cary. The floodplain forms a significant
part of the Somerset Levels & Moors: - an area of international importance for wildlife.
Period: January 2000 – March 2002
Objective of Public Participation (Why PP?)
In Somerset, the WUF Project developed new ways of helping stakeholders in the River
Parrett Catchment to find sustainable solutions through participation for the management of
water, both in flood events and throughout the year.
Who participated and how (Degree/form of public participation) in what phase of the
planning?
The Project sought to involve “stakeholders” - anyone or any organisation, at whatever level,
with an interest in the management of water resources in the Parrett Catchment. Above all, it
offered an opportunity for local concerns to be heard. Since the first participatory workshops
120
WFD CIS Guidance Document No.8
Public participation in relation to the Water Framework Directive
started in 2000, a wide range of representatives of communities, local interests and
organisations ranging from local to national government-level were involved.
Methods and tools applied
The WUF Project responded to what communities and individuals wanted. Working closely
with an existing and (in the United Kingdom) unique forum for local democracy, the Levels
& Moors Partnership*, we held participatory workshops to encourage stakeholders to share
views and address problems in partnership. Workshops were managed through facilitative
leadership: with the help of group management techniques, stakeholders were helped to
work together in a non-conflict environment. The WUF Project Officer was the facilitator for
all participatory workshops. Contextual information such as new research on the
effectiveness of present flood management practices was introduced to help all stakeholders
to develop a common understanding of issues.
Participatory working has to be product-orientated to be worthwhile. If a process is not
guided by the need to reach a common goal then it will drift and is unlikely to achieve
results.
Stakeholders came to agree that no one solution would solve the problems of flood and
water management, but that a comprehensive package of measures was needed. Facilitated
dialogue provided the bridge to enable a wide variety of interests to work jointly towards a
common goal.
To reach the desired goal of integrated flood and water management, a variety of solutions
were generated in a series of participatory workshops. These solutions were built into a
Parrett Catchment Action Strategy, which sets out what community and organisational
stakeholders wanted to be achieved by 2050”.
As collaborative working developed between local initiatives, the WUF Project and LAMP
managed participatory workshops under an umbrella initiative, the Parrett Catchment
Project.
It is estimated that the approximate cost of facilitating the dialogue over two years is
approximately €30,000.00 (salary costs of project officer/facilitator). Workshop costs were
additional but low at approximately €150 – 180 for each event (hire of the venue and catering
for around 40 participants). The overall cost is difficult to estimate accurately, because staff
from a variety of organisations donated their time to the initiatives involved. For the LIFE
Project, the budget used to commission new research in Somerset was approximately
€75,000.00 and partnership organisations provided around €36,000 of in-kind time in support
of the Wise Use of Floodplains Project. (Note: all of these figures are provisional.) In
conclusion, the total cost of facilitating such a complex dialogue over a two-year period was
remarkably low and the gains are far greater than the financial investment.
*LAMP serves 86 parish councils with wetland habitats on the Somerset Levels & Moors,
who in turn represent all local community and organisational interests.
Major input of stakeholders at participatory events
We invited 85 representatives of local communities and organisations to our workshops and
regularly saw 30 – 40 people at each event. The organisations ranged from the major

121
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Public participation in relation to the Water Framework Directive
government agencies to single-issue lobby groups. It was the first time in Somerset that
participatory working had taken place on such a scale.
Tangible result (effect) of PP?
A series of 27 facilitated participatory workshops, which began in May 2000, produced:
x A statement of the consensus between all stakeholder interests, which forms the
basis for a vision for the future management of the catchment and floodplain;
x Eleven “components” or potential solutions to manage flood events, a
combination of which will make up an Integrated Flood Management approach;
x A detailed analysis of the policy, funding, administrative and technical barriers
and opportunities involving implementation of the eleven components;
x Appraisal of the social, economic and environmental costs and benefits of each of
the components;
x Enhanced understanding among stakeholders of the implications of the
conservation management objectives necessary to achieve “favourable condition”
of the Special Protection Area (Birds Directive);
x Initiated a productive dialogue on finding a new balance between agriculture and
environmental interests to achieve favourable condition of the Special Protection
Area and Ramsar sites, while helping agriculture and other rural industries to
work towards sustainable management of an internationally important wetland;
x Produced practical sustainability indicators to monitor the effectiveness of
changes in water and land management.
Many of these outcomes are continuing to be implemented beyond the end of the Life Project
and are resulting in practical land management and integrated catchment management for
the area.
Lessons learnt
Positive Lessons
x Make dialogue relevant to people’s lives.
In Somerset the project centred on a major environmental issue that affected a wide range of
stakeholders.
x Dialogue should be gradual and often.
Frequent small-scale dialogue is better than big one-off events. More flexible processes are
better at accommodating changes in views and developing consensus. Continuing dialogue
is better at establishing and maintaining trust and helps to manage participants’ expectations
of outcomes more realistically.
x Maintain the momentum of the process.

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Public participation in relation to the Water Framework Directive
Ensure that the next stage in the participatory process can move on from the last one. Discuss
issues, generate solutions, appraise them, test them for sustainability and evaluate their
effectiveness once implemented.
x Create trust through impartiality.
This was critical to the success of the process in Somerset. It was the first time that water
management had been discussed in a neutral public forum. The WUF Project existed
between its sponsoring organisations (the LIFE Project partners): it was not seen as part of
them. The role of the WUF project officer as an impartial facilitator gave stakeholders
confidence that that they were taking part in a truly participative process and independent
process.
x Work to invest time.
Constantly remind participants or potential participants of the need to invest time: without
commitment the energy of the process will dissipate. Participants have been very committed
to the Somerset process: thirty to forty key stakeholder representatives regularly attended
workshops.
Negative Lessons:
x Expensive one-off events can bring dialogue to a halt by delivering a “verdict” and may
not be appropriate in making progress on a particular issue in a particular context;
x Don’t become a discussion forum without a purpose – manage expectation;
x Avoid any one organisation leading a process so that the process does not have the
necessary impartiality needed to create trust amongst stakeholders.
Contacts for further information:
Barry Phillips, Rural Environmental Facilitation Service, b.phillips@tiscali.co.uk,
+44 (01934) 713864
See also www.floodplains.org

123http://www.floodplains.org/pdf/area_case_studies/SomersetLevelsCaseStudy.pdf

Dutch take legal action over Greenpeace ship in Russia

2013-10-04T10:40:00.000-07:00

Dutch take legal action over Greenpeace ship in Russia

The group was arrested last month over a protest on an Arctic oil rig owned by Gazprom

The Netherlands has launched legal action to free 30 Greenpeace activists charged in Russia with piracy.

The group was arrested last month over a protest on an Arctic oil rig owned by state-controlled firm Gazprom.
Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said he was also acting to free the Dutch-flagged Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise.
Greenpeace calls the charges against the activists, who include two Dutch citizens, "irrational, absurd and an outrage".
Mr Timmermans said the Netherlands had applied to the UN's Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which resolves maritime disputes between states.
He said his country, the first nation to take legal action in the case, viewed the ship's detention as unlawful.
Under the rules of the Hamburg-based Tribunal, the Netherlands may apply for the immediate release of the ship and those on board.
"I really want to consult with my Russian colleagues... to get these people freed as soon as possible," Mr Timmermans said, according to Associated Press.
"I don't understand why this could be thought to have anything to do with piracy; I don't see how you could think of any legal grounds for that."
'Group piracy' The BBC's Anne Holligan in The Hague says the dispute threatens to test the strong diplomatic ties between Russia and the Netherlands.
Citizens of 17 other countries, reported to include Britain, France, Canada and New Zealand, were also among those arrested and detained in the Russian city of Murmansk.
The group was seized during a skirmish with armed Russian security officers after several activists tried to board the Prirazlomnaya platform, Russia's first offshore oil rig in the Arctic.
They were later charged with "piracy of an organised group".
Greenpeace's international executive director, Kumi Naidoo, said earlier this week the charges were "extreme and disproportionate".
The Russian government has not commented on the Dutch legal action. President Vladimir Putin has said the environmental activists broke international law, although he has conceded they were not pirates.
Mikhail Fedotov, who heads the presidential council for human rights advisory body, said on Thursday he did not think there were "the slightest grounds" for a piracy charge.

GM salmon can breed with wild fish and pass on genes

2013-05-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

GM salmon can breed with wild fish and pass on genesBy Rebecca MorelleScience reporter, BBC World ServiceThis image of transgenic salmon next to an unmodified salmon of the same age shows how the GM fish grow far more quicklyContinue reading the main storyRelated Stories

Transgenic salmon steak 'out soon'

GM animals: weird science or food of the future?

Is GM salmon swimming against the tide?

The potential risks of genetically modified fish escaping into the wild have been highlighted in a new study.Scientists from Canada have found that transgenic Atlantic salmon can cross-breed with a closely related species - the brown trout.The fish, which have been engineered with extra genes to make them grow more quickly, pass on this trait to the hybrid offspring.The research is published the Proceedings of the Royal Society B..However, the biotech company AquaBounty, which created the salmon, said any risks were negligible as the fish they were producing were all female, sterile and would be kept in tanks on land.The transgenic salmon are currently being assessed by the US authorities, and could be the first GM animals to be approved for human consumption.Salmon-trout hybridsContinue reading the main story“Start QuoteThe GM hybrids also outgrew the GM salmon”Darek MoreauMemorial University of NewfoundlandIn the wild, Atlantic salmon very occasionally mate with the brown trout, successfully producing offspring.But the researchers found that in the laboratory, the genetically modified salmon could do the same. Of the 363 fish analysed at the start of the experiment, about 40% of the hybrids carried the modified genes.The researchers found that these young fish developed extremely quickly.Dr Darek Moreau, from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, said: "[Under hatchery conditions] the transgenic hybrids grew faster than the wild salmon, wild trout and wild-type hybrids. The GM hybrids also outgrew the GM salmon."In the wild, Atlantic salmon will sometimes mate with the brown troutWhen the fish were placed in a mocked-up stream inside the laboratory, the researchers found that the hybrids were out-competing both the genetically modified salmon and wild salmon, significantly stunting their growth."This was likely a result of competition for limited food resources," explained Dr Moreau.The researchers said this study highlighted the ecological consequences should genetically modified fish get into the wild.They acknowledged that the risks of such an escape and subsequent encounter with a brown trout were low, but said this information should still be taken into account by those who are regulating GM animals.Ron Stotish, CEO of AquaBounty Technologies Inc, said: "It is worth noting that in 1995, Peter Galbreath and Gary Thorgaard of Washington State University published research that the Atlantic salmon-brown trout hybrid is sterile. If this holds true, such a hybrid would pose little ecological threat as the fish would not reproduce."Moreover, AquaBounty has stipulated that we will market only sterile, all female AquAdvantage salmon - with specific tests being performed on every commercial batch of fish to assure our product meets our specifications."He added: "Overall, the study seems to present no new evidence for any added environmental risk associated with the AquAdvantage salmon."The US Food and Drug Administration is currently in the final stages of considering whether the transgenic salmon can go on sale.

Arctic Ocean 'acidifying rapidly'

2013-05-06T03:31:00.001-07:00

Arctic Ocean 'acidifying rapidly'

By Roger Harrabin

Environment analyst, BBC News

The Arctic seas are being made rapidly more acidic by carbon-dioxide emissions, according to a new report.

Scientists from Norway's Center for International Climate and Environmental Research monitored widespread changes in ocean chemistry in the region.

They say even if CO2 emissions stopped now, it would take tens of thousands of years for Arctic Ocean chemistry to revert to pre-industrial levels.

Many creatures, including commercially valuable fish, could be affected.

They forecast major changes in the marine ecosystem, but say there is huge uncertainty over what those changes will be.

It is well known that CO2 warms the planet, but less well-known that it also makes the alkaline seas more acidic when it is absorbed from the air.

The Arctic

The Arctic region contains a vast ice-covered ocean roughly centred on the Earth's geographic North Pole
The Sun doesn't rise at all on the shortest day of the year within the Arctic Circle
Humans have inhabited the Arctic region for thousands of years, and the current population is four million
Geologists estimate the Arctic may hold up to 25% of the world's remaining oil and natural gas

Watch the dramatic retreat of some of the world's largest glaciers

Absorption is particularly fast in cold water so the Arctic is especially susceptible, and the recent decreases in summer sea ice have exposed more sea surface to atmospheric CO2.

The Arctic's vulnerability is exacerbated by increasing flows of freshwater from rivers and melting land ice, as freshwater is less effective at chemically neutralising the acidifying effects of CO2.

The researchers say the Nordic Seas are acidifying over a wide range of depths - most quickly in surface waters and more slowly in deep waters.

The report’s chairman, Richard Bellerby from the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, told BBC News that they had mapped a mosaic of different levels of pH across the region, with the scale of change largely determined by the local intake of freshwater.

“Large rivers flow into the Arctic, which has an enormous catchment for its size,” he said.

“There’s slow mixing so in effect we get a sort of freshwater lens on the top of the sea in some places, and freshwater lowers the concentration of ions that buffers pH change. The sea ice has been a lid on the Arctic, so the loss of ice is allowing fast uptake of CO2.”

This is being made worse, he said, by organic carbon running off the land – a secondary effect of regional warming.

“Continued rapid change is a certainty,” he said.

“We have already passed critical thresholds. Even if we stop emissions now, acidification will last tens of thousands of years. It is a very big experiment.”

The research team monitored decreases in seawater pH of about 0.02 per decade since the late 1960s in the Iceland and Barents seas.

Chemical effects related to acidification have also been encountered in surface waters of the Bering Strait and the Canada Basin of the central Arctic Ocean.

Scientists estimate that the average acidity of surface ocean waters worldwide is now about 30% higher than before the Industrial Revolution.

The researchers say there is likely to be major change to the Arctic marine ecosystem as a result. Some key prey species like sea butterflies may be harmed. Other species may thrive. Adult fish look likely to be fairly resilient but the development of fish eggs might be harmed. It is too soon to tell.

Follow Roger on Twitter @rharrabin

So

2013-05-03T03:40:00.001-07:00

Japan bluefin tuna fetches record $1.7m

2013-01-05T03:45:00.001-08:00

Japan bluefin tuna fetches record $1.7m

Kiyoshi Kimura stumped up almost three times as much as he did last year

A single bluefin tuna has sold in Japan for 155m yen ($1.7m; £1.05m), almost triple the record price set last year.

High bids traditionally mark the year's first auction at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market.

Even the buyer, sushi chain owner Kiyoshi Kimura, who also paid out the record price last year, said the cost was "a bit high".

The sale came amid continued warnings from environmentalists that tuna stocks are dwindling and overfished.

'Encourage Japan'

This year's record-breaking fish was caught off north-eastern Japan and weighed in at 222kg (489lbs), some 47kg lighter than last year's prize-winner, which fetched 56m yen.

The prices do not necessarily reflect quality or size and are more linked to publicity and setting the tone for the business year.

The auction at the market - which trades millions of dollars of products daily and is a popular tourist destination - began at 05:00 local time.

Mr Kimura immediately carted his purchase off to a nearby branch of his Sushi Zanmai chain.

He said he wanted to "encourage Japan" with his bid.

The price works out at about $7,600 per kg ($3,500/lb).

Japan consumes more than half of the world's bluefin.

New figures to be released on Monday are expected to show a continued decline in Pacific bluefin stocks.

Amanda Nickson, of the Pew Environmental Group's global tuna conservation campaign, told Associated Press news agency: "Everything we're hearing is that there's no good news for the Pacific bluefin. We're seeing a very high value fish continue to be overfished."

How the tsunami happened

2012-12-25T23:58:00.002-08:00

Q&A: How the tsunami happened

Thousands of people have died after an earthquake sent huge waves crashing into coastal resorts across south and east Asia. Dr Brian Baptie, a senior seismologist with the British Geological Survey, explained how the wave, or tsunami, was created.In geological terms, what has happened?
Sumatra, or north-western Indonesia, is right on a plate boundary. The earth's surface is made up of lots of different tectonic plates and they are all moving around.
The plate that has the Indian Ocean on it is moving roughly north-east and colliding with Sumatra. And as that collision takes place, the Indian Ocean plate gets subducted underneath Sumatra, and as that plate is subducted it breaks up and that is what causes the earthquake.
This earthquake been one of the largest ever, one of the great earthquakes. There has been a rupture along a fault about 1,000km long, and that has generated a vertical displacement of about 10m. The displacement in the sea floor has generated this huge tsunami.
How does the wave develop?
There's a huge vertical displacement in the sea floor as a result of the earthquake and that displaces a huge volume of water.
You can imagine, if the rupture is 1,000km long with a 10m displacement in the sea floor you get hundreds of cubic kilometres of water and that results in a wave that travels through the ocean.

GIANT EARTHQUAKES

1960 - Chile, 9.5 magnitude

1964 - Alaska, 9.2

1957 - Alaska, 9.1

1952 - Russia, 9.0

2004 - Indonesia, 9.0

In the deep ocean the height of the wave can be a few metres, maybe 5-10m, and it travels at a few hundred kilometres per hour.
That means it travels relatively slowly compared with the seismic waves from the earthquake, and it has arrived quite a few hours later at surrounding coastal areas all around the Indian Ocean.
As the tsunami wave approaches the shore it slows down, because the water gets shallower and what that means is the wave increases dramatically.
When it hits the shoreline it can be 10-20m, and that is probably what has happened in this case.
Why was there no warning this was happening?
There is a tsunami warning system in place in the Pacific Ocean because there is a historical precedent of lots of earthquakes causing tsunamis like this, throughout the 20th Century.
But there is no real precedent for a tsunami like this in the Indian Ocean. So this is the first time this has happened, and there is no warning system as far as I know in the Indian Ocean.
Could there be more waves on a similar scale?
Unlikely there will be further tsunamis of the same size. What normally happens when you get a very large earthquake is you get aftershocks that continue for many days.
They are usually a bit smaller than the main shock, although it is not impossible that there could be another one. But there may be aftershocks and they may generate smaller tsunamis.

whale

2012-12-07T02:54:00.000-08:00

Beached whale at Carlyon Bay 'too sick to save'

The animal was reported to coastguards as thrashing about in the shallow water

A whale washed up on the beach in Cornwall will be put down after vets said it was too sick to be refloated.

Rescuers were called to the scene in Carlyon Bay where the 65ft (20m) whale was reported stranded at 04:45 BST.

Emergency services cordoned off the area to avoid causing the fin whale more distress.

But vets from the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) said there was no hope of refloating the animal which was stranded on an outgoing tide.

Insp Dave Meredith, of Devon and Cornwall Police, tweeted: "Sadly the whale at Carlyon bay is too sick for recovery. It is going to be humanely destroyed. Very sad."

'Distressing scene'

Coastguards said the animal was reported to them as thrashing about in the shallow water at the beach near St Austell.

Brixham Coastguard watch manager Paul Myers said: "It's obviously a very distressing scene and we would ask the public to stay away from the beach to allow the rescue unit to do their work and save the whale from further distress."

The fin whale, the second largest animal on the planet, is a globally endangered species.

The BDMLR is a voluntary network of trained experts who respond to calls by the public and emergency services when whales are stranded.

7.3 magnitude quake

2012-12-07T02:51:00.002-08:00

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield Hayes said he felt his building shake "violently"

A 7.3 magnitude quake has struck off Japan's eastern coast, triggering a small tsunami and sparking evacuations.

A one-metre wave hit Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture and many people heeded calls to move to higher ground before all alerts were later lifted.

The quake epicentre was about 245km (150 miles) south-east of Kamiashi at a depth of about 36km, the US Geological Survey said.

Miyagi was hit by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

Swaying violently

The US-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center had said there was no threat to the wider Pacific Ocean but had warned a local tsunami could be destructive for local coastlines.

There have been no reports of deaths or injuries, and all tsunami warnings were cancelled at 19:20 local time (10:20 GMT), broadcaster NHK said.

Warnings of the tsunami height had varied between 50cm and 2m.

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield Hayes in Tokyo says any such height would represent a far lower risk of devastation than the 10-11 metre tsunami that struck in 2011 but that, since then, the country has clearly become jittery about any shaking of the earth.

The tsunami warnings had extended from the top of the main island of Honshu down towards Tokyo and evacuations were ordered from some of the affected areas.

With Japan's early warning system, NHK was able to break off its regular programming and issue an alert about the earthquake shortly before it struck.

A presenter on state broadcaster NHK then told viewers: "Remember last year's quake and tsunami. Call on your neighbours and flee to higher ground now!"

Buildings swayed violently in Tokyo.

“Start Quote

We're now at an official evacuation centre with about 50 other people waiting to hear what to do next”

John HeritageTeacher, Miyagi Prefecture

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda cancelled campaigning for the 16 December election to return to his office.

Communications to Miyagi have proven difficult, with the high volume of telephone calls. Trains in the prefecture have been halted and the runway at Sendai airport closed.

English teacher John Heritage, who is in Tagajo in Miyagi Prefecture, told the BBC the earthquake was not as powerful as some he had experienced but was worrying as it went on so long.

"We're now at an official evacuation centre with about 50 other people waiting to hear what to do next," he said.

Other people reported being alerted to the earthquake prior to its arrival by Japan's mobile phone-based warning system.

One tweeted that he was given 10 seconds and was able to slow his car before the shaking struck.

The USGS reported three aftershocks in the same area, of 6.2, 5.5 and 4.7 magnitudes.

The 9.0 magnitude quake that struck on 11 March 2011 caused a devastating tsunami and left more than 15,000 people dead, with more than 3,200 missing.

That quake triggered a meltdown of fuel rods at the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing radiation leaks and mass evacuations.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power, told Agence France-Presse there were no reports of problems there this time, although workers had moved to higher ground.

Eyeless goby fish 10,000km apart share common ancestor

2012-09-02T02:59:00.001-07:00

Eyeless goby fish 10,000km apart share common ancestor

By Jonathan BallBBC News

Eyeless and colourless, Madagascan cave goby relatives were living "down-under".

A pair of eyeless, cave-dwelling fish species, separated millions of years ago, have turned up on either side of the Indian Ocean.

A study published in PLoS One showed that blind Madagascan and Australian cave fish share a common ancestor.

Their forebears probably lived in caves on the prehistoric southern super-continent Gondwanaland.

Then continental drift tore this family apart - transporting them to their current locations.

On his voyages of discovery, Darwin noted eyeless, colourless cave-dwelling creatures whose appearance was so bizarre and primitive he thought they were "wrecks of ancient life".

Prosanta Chakrabarty, assistant professor and curator at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science, and his colleagues were particularly interested in two populations of goby fish living in Madagascar and north-western Australia.

Gobies form one of the largest families of fish, containing about 2,000 different species.

Though living in different parts of the world the cave fish shared important features: they were small - under 10 cm in length - eyeless, colourless and lived in freshwater, limestone caves.

How such similar fishes came to be living on different sides of the world was the question the researchers wanted to answer.

In the genes

One possibility was that the cave fishes had evolved independently, from terrestrial counterparts.

“Start Quote

That they're 6,000 km apart in Madagascar and Australia is pretty remarkable”

Prosanta ChakrabartyLouisiana State University Museum of Natural Science

Species adapt to environmental challenges and opportunities and - through a process of natural selection - only the fittest survive.

When separate species are exposed to the same selective pressures they often come up with the same solutions - a process known as convergent evolution.

For example, the elongated fingers of both the aye aye lemur of Madagascar and the striped opossum of Australia evolved so they could probe nooks and crannies for their favourite insect food.

In the case of the cave fishes, an alternative possibility was that the cave-fishes' odd features - or traits - were adaptations inherited from an ancestor common to both.

To determine which scenario was most likely, Dr Chakrabarty and his team used phylogenetic analysis - a study of the historical record held deep within their DNA sequences - to rebuild the goby family tree.

The researchers compared DNA sequences from more than 100 different goby species, including those from Australian and Madagascan cave fish that the researchers had collected.

Though separated by thousands of kilometres of ocean, the cave-dwelling fish of Madagascar and north-western Australia were genetically more similar to each other than to any other goby: they shared a common ancestor.

"That they're 6,000 km apart in Madagascar and Australia is pretty remarkable," observed Dr Chakrabarty.

Lost continents

But when and where did their ancestors live?

To answer this, the researchers used goby fossil records to calibrate their trees.

The newly chronicled evolutionary history of the fish showed that their shared ancestor was swimming in subterranean pools 45 - 110 million years ago, when the Earth looked very much different to how it looks today.

Underground caves on either side of the Indian Ocean hide a fishy secret

Australia and Madagascar formed part of a super-continent, called Gondwanaland, which also included what are now Antarctica, Africa, South America and India.

Around 180 million years ago, America and Africa broke away from this super-continent. Then, about 60 million years later in the early Cretaceous period, Australia-Antarctica started to split from India-Madagascar.

It was this separation that ultimately led to the descendants of the Gondwanaland cave fish living on opposite sides of the Indian Ocean.

Dr John Sparks, a co-author from the American Museum of Natural History explained: "The sister-group relationship between obligate cave fish from Madagascar and Australia is a remarkable example of Gondwanan vicariance - a split dating back to the Late Cretaceous."

But the study threw up some anomalies.

The authors believe that the common ancestor was dispersed throughout eastern Gondwanaland - which would include India - yet this country is devoid of similar gobies.

"Antarctica could have provided the connection [between Gondwanaland-locked Madagascar and Australia], or gobies could have been present in India but became extinct," suggests Dr Chakrabarty.

A more controversial possibility is that our knowledge of Gondwanaland might need updating - the kind of change to geology that very recently saw the presumed history of the isthmus of Panama adjusted by millions of years.

The study also threw up another surprise: one of the Australian caves explored by the team contained a fish that had developed pigment.

John Sparks, another curator at the museum, observed: "Our results, and the fact that we have recently discovered new cave fish species in both Madagascar and Australia belonging to these genera, in particular a fully pigmented form from Madagascar, are intriguing from another perspective - they show that caves are not evolutionary dead-ends."

World Water Week

2012-08-30T07:15:00.003-07:00

World Water Week: It's Not Just About Water

Available in: 中文, العربية, Français, Español

Aug. 24, 2012

Often neglected, the world’s sanitation crisis needs urgent attention across multiple sectors to meet the basic needs of 2.5 billion people without access. Creating demand for sanitation and behavior change will be critical.

While food and water top the list of essentials for health and human development, around 1 billion people still go hungry, and nearly 1 billion still lacked access to an improved water source.
The opportunity to explore the relationship between these two essentials is drawing thousands of academics and practitioners from the food and water sectors to Stockholm for World Water Week, August 26-31. This year, the annual conference will focus on “Water and Food Security.” It’s an important topic. Access to food and safe, clean water is critical to every aspect of human life—agriculture, education, energy, health, and many others. However, there is another urgent issue that gets less attention but is equally critical: sanitation.

Sanitation—a fundamental means for preventing disease and elevating quality of life—has long been considered neglected in the sector. Since 2002, when sanitation was added to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), sanitation activities and practitioners have increased global awareness of the role sanitation plays in improving human health and well-being.
"The issue of sanitation is about health and economic loss, but it’s also an issue of equity and human rights," said Lead Sanitation Specialist Eddy Perez of the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) of the World Bank. "It’s the poorest people who do not have basic access, which contributes to keeping them poor."
An estimated 1.7 million people die each year because of unsafe water, lack of sanitation, and unhygienic practices; about 90 percent of those deaths are children under age five. Improvements to sanitation and access to clean drinking water could reduce diarrheal disease by nearly 90 percent. The economic toll of poor sanitation is equally staggering, as high as 7 percent of GDP in some countries. And while sanitation has received more attention in recent years, there is still more learning needed on the most effective approaches and at-scale service delivery models.
Old problem, new solutions
The solutions can’t happen in silos or with business-as-usual models. New approaches are being tested, and they show tremendous promise. The current World Bank sanitation portfolio is about US$1.7 billion, with approximately 7.4 million people expected to benefit in more than 30 countries.
WSP is working with governments on national-scale rural sanitation programs targeted at increasing access to and use of sanitation facilities. The Scaling up Rural Sanitation Project is credited with contributing to around 9 million people gaining access in India, Indonesia, and Tanzania.

A hardware store in Peru sells sanitation supplies. Photos: Water & Sanitation Program.

More emphasis has been placed on the idea that ownership begins when people invest time, effort, and resources into building a latrine. The importance of changing behaviors and the factors that influence behaviors, such as pride, convenience, well-being, and status, is now recognized. Increasingly, a combination of approaches that ultimately lead to changing behaviors and increasing demand and supply are understood as critical for success.
In the past five years, the Scaling Up Rural Sanitation Project has focused on learning what works to scale up access to sanitation.
Among the lessons:

Efforts to improve sanitation should target community-wide behavior change, stimulate demand for sanitation products and services, and increase supply to ensure that new demands are met.
Scaling innovative programmatic approaches requires an effective and sustainable service delivery model in which national, state, and local governments; communities; the local private sector; and development partners all participate.
Changing social norms around open defecation and latrine use through sanitation and hygiene promotion is important for long-term sustainability of behaviors.

Across sectors
With water and sanitation at the nexus of so many areas, the water and sanitation crises have implications for the entire development community. We encourage you to follow us on Twitter @wspworldbank to join the discussion in Stockholm at World Water Week. Share your ideas, ask the hard questions, tell us how your work is affected by the crises, and work with us towards the solutions.

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Gloucestershire gets new rapid response water rescue centre

2012-08-13T11:30:00.001-07:00

Gloucestershire gets new rapid response water rescue centre

A new water rescue centre in Gloucestershire will enable rescue teams to attend incidents anywhere in the county within 30 minutes, Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service (GFRS) said.

The centre at Moreton Fire Station "completes the provision of strategically-placed water rescue teams in Gloucestershire".

The need for such a facility was highlighted in the service's Integrated Risk Management Plan (IRMP) and DEFRA provided £56,000 funding for it.

The IRMP advised an improved water rescue response was necessary in the event of further major flooding in the area.

A similar centre was set up at Tewkesbury Fire Station in 2011.

Deputy chief fire officer Geoff Sallis said: "Since the floods in 2007, we have significantly increased the number of swift water rescue technicians located around the county."

Firefighters have completed specialist water and mud rescue training and now have technical rescue equipment designed to perform rescues from water.

The water response team is also trained to support the large animal rescue team and to work alongside the rescue boats and the GFRS hovercraft.

Greenpeace said they intended to close about a dozen stations across the capital

2012-07-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

Protesters draped a Greenpeace banner over the Dalry Road petrol stationRio summit jargon buster

Use the dropdown for easy-to-understand explanations of key terms:

Brundtland Commission and Report

Commission chaired by Norwegian politician Gro Harlem Brundtland that published report in 1987 concluding that humanity was on an unsustainable development track. Coined the most commonly used definition of sustainable development.

Environmental campaigners are threatening to shut down every Shell petrol station in Edinburgh in a protest against the company's plans to drill in the Arctic region.

Greenpeace said they intended to close about a dozen stations across the capital.

One of the first to be targeted was in Dalry Road, in the west of the city.

Shell said it recognised the right of individuals to express their point of view.

Activists said they were using the emergency shut-off switch, which stops petrol going to the pumps, to close the stations.

They also draped a large banner showing images of animals Greenpeace believes are threatened by oil exploration in the Arctic, and used tape carrying the slogan Save the Arctic to close access to the station.

Protesters could be seen on the roof of the Shell station in Dalry Road early on Monday morning, and a man in a polar bear outfit chained himself to a pump before being cut free and led away by police.

Greenpeace also claimed to have shut the Maybury Shell station in ‪Edinburgh‬, and said five of its activists had been arrested in the city by 09:00.

The protesters said they planned to spend the rest of the day touring the city using a combination of low-emission cars, bikes and public transport while shutting off the petrol supply to other Shell pumps.

Blocked access

Greenpeace also said it would broadcast live video of the protest on its website.

A similar direct action protest is being carried out in London, where Greenpeace activists said they were aiming to shut about 100 Shell stations.

Greenpeace's Sara Ayech said: "The oil giant Shell is preparing, for the first time, to unleash a drilling fleet of huge vessels upon the fragile and beautiful Arctic, home of the polar bears.

"It's time to draw a line in the ice and tell Shell to stop. That's why today we're going to shut down all of Shell's petrol stations in the capital cities of London and Edinburgh. We've got dozens of people who will hit over 100 Shell garages throughout the day.

"An oil spill in the Arctic would be catastrophic for wildlife such as walruses and whales, and Shell knows full well that it would be impossible to clean up after such devastation. The Arctic must be saved, and made a global sanctuary where oil drilling is banned."

The protest comes after more than a dozen people were detained as Greenpeace activists blocked access to Shell's headquarters in The Hague in the Netherlands on Friday.

A spokesman for Shell said: "Shell recognises that certain organisations are opposed to our exploration programme offshore Alaska, and we respect the right of individuals and organisations to engage in a free and frank exchange of views about our operations.

"Recognising the right of individuals to express their point of view, we only ask that they do so with their safety and the safety of others, including the general public and Shell personnel in mind.

"Shell has met with numerous organisations and individuals who oppose drilling offshore Alaska. We respect their views and value the dialogue. We have extended this same offer for productive dialogue to Greenpeace."

A man dressed as a polar bear chained himself to a pump

Greenpeace launched a Save The Arctic campaign last month to preserve the land mass from oil exploration and industrial fishing.

The group has called for an agreement to ban environmentally damaging activities in the Arctic region, just as they were banned in the Antarctic 21 years ago under a protocol added to the Antarctic Treaty.

In May, the Greenpeace's activists temporarily halted several icebreakers heading for the Arctic in a bid to block Shell's plans to drill for oil in the region.

And last month the environmental group called for more use of renewable energy and greener cars in what it said would help protect the Arctic and other areas from being spoiled by oil drilling.

According to the US Geological Survey, the Arctic is believed to hold 13% of the planet's undiscovered oil reserves and 30% of its undiscovered natural gas.

Panama Canal traffic protection

2012-07-06T05:45:00.000-07:00

Satellite-tagged humpbacks show just how often whales cross paths with ships

Shipping lanes into and out of the Panama Canal are likely to be constrained in order to protect whales.

Humpback whales breed around Las Perlas archipelago 60km (40 miles) from the canal's southern entrance, and are disturbed and even killed by shipping.

Panamanian officials and scientists have developed a plan that would corral vessels into narrow lanes.

They plan to present it for discussion and maybe adoption by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) next year.

Details of the proposal were presented at theInternational Whaling Commission (IWC) annual meeting in Panama City.

Hector Guzman from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute drew up the plans following research comparing movements of ships with those of 15 humpback whales fitted with satellite tags.

Maps show the whales swimming throughout the Gulf of Panama, which lies outside the canal entrance on the Pacific Ocean side, repeatedly crossing the ships' tracks.

"We recorded 98 interactions between whales and ships during an 11-day period," he told BBC News.

"Just over half of the whales had encounters; one particular whale had 45 encounters in just four days."

An "interaction" was defined as approaching within a distance of 200m - though the area has seen 13 whale deaths in the last two and a half years, some of which were probably as a result of being hit by a ship.

Watching brief

Humpbacks migrate northwards from their summer feeding grounds around Antarctica, arriving in the region around late June.

They breed in the fertile Las Perlas waters, where an upwelling of nutrient-rich water produces an annual plankton bloom.

Altogether, about 900 animals are thought to be involved. There are also visitors from a Northern Hemisphere humpback population.

Some 17,000 large ships pass through Panamanian waters each year, the majority international cargo vessels using the canal.

Data shows one particular vessel routinely passing right through the Las Perlas protected area in order to excavate sand from the sea bed and bring it to land for construction.

Las Perlas is becoming an important area for tourists, with whale-watching trips one of the attractions on offer.

Tomas Guardia, director-general for international organisations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Panama's commissioner to the IWC, said the changes were stimulated both by economic factors and a burgeoning environmental awareness.

"The New York Times selected Panama as their number one tourist destination for 2012; so when you add on an additional activity such as whale-watching, it all helps to promote Panama outside the country," he said.

"Also, many Panamanians were previously not aware of the resource we have close to our city, and in fact one of the reasons for hosting the IWC was to raise awareness of our marine environment."

Channel solutions

The government proposes funnelling ships into parallel lanes 65 nautical miles long, one approaching the canal entrance and one leaving it, separated by distance of about 2-3 nautical miles.

Dr Guzman calculates this would reduce the total area of sea where the whales would be at risk of collision by about 95%.

During the whale breeding season, ships would also be obliged to slow down to 10 knots on their way in and out.

Similar schemes have been implemented in several US ports, and the IMO has produced an advisory booklet based on the US experiences.

Vessels travelling west along the coast would be constrained into a couple of further corridor sections.

This would push them further offshore than they currently tend to travel, reducing the chance of collision with fishing boats.

"You can imagine; you have these small artisanal fishing boats and these huge vessels - it's just chaos, the way they come in and out of the country," said Dr Guzman.

"So [under the new scheme] they'll have their vessels, they'll be apart from the heavy traffic lanes - more important still is we're increasing the buffer of protection between the mainland and the shipping lanes in a region where we have five different protected areas including World Heritage Sites."

On the northern side of the country on the Atlantic Ocean side, where there is no significant presence of whales, the government is proposing a system involving three separate corridors leading in different directions.

Panama took over ownership of the canal from the US in 1999. The lock system is currently being upgraded, which will see vessels larger than the current 300m-long limit able to pass through.

Japan's tsunami dock washed up in US state of Orego

2012-06-10T09:59:00.001-07:00

Japan's tsunami dock washed up in US state of Oregon

A huge dock torn from a Japanese port by the 2011 tsunami has washed up 8,050km (5,000 miles) away on the US West Coast after crossing the Pacific.The 165-tonne structure made of concrete, metal and tyres, and studded with starfish and barnacles, arrived on a beach south-west of Portland, Oregon.It has tested negative for radiation, but scientists say a host of invasive marine species may have hitched a ride.Police are guarding the dock while officials decide what to do with it. A plaque on the 20m-long (66ft) structure, which was first mistaken for a barge, shows it came from the port of Misawa in northern Japan.

It has taken 15 months to drift across the Pacific to Agate beach since the earthquake and resulting tsunami shook it loose. Two other docks from the same port are still missing.

The structure is one of a number of items that have washed up on north American shores. Experts expect a surge of debris in the coming months, with the bulk of it due in the winter.

Danger to shipping?

The senior senator for Oregon, Ron Wyden, has asked the body tracking the debris to redouble its efforts saying something as big as a dock could pose a danger to ships at sea.

This April, the US Coast Guard used cannon to sink a crewless Japanese ship that drifted to Alaska after the tsunami.

A month later, a Japanese owner of a Harley-Davidson motorbike swept away by the tsunami was amazed to find out that it had been washed up inside a container on a beach in Canada - about 6,400km away.

Japanese scientists estimate that some 20 million tonnes of debris were generated by the earthquake and the incoming rush of water.

Most would have stayed on land, and a fair proportion pulled out to sea would have sunk rapidly. But it is possible a million tonnes of debris is still afloat.

A starfish native to Japan was among the marine life still clinging to the structure.

John Chapman, a research scientist at Oregon State University said hundreds of other organisms, such as tiny crabs and algae, posed a "very clear threat".

"It's exactly like saying you threw a bowling ball into a china shop. It's going to break something. But will it be valuable or cheap glass? It's incredibly difficult to predict what will happen next."

Police have been deployed to stop people climbing on it.

Traffic jams

A spokesman for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, Chris Havel, said two options were being considered for its removal.

The dock could be towed off the beach and floated somewhere for disposal, or cut up on the beach. The plaque has been put in storage.

A derelict Japanese fishing boat was sunk by the coastguard after drifting to the coast of Alaska

"We're working with some salvage experts to get advice on whether it's even possible to move it, whether we have to wait for some certain conditions, like another high tide, or whether there's some other way to do it," he said.

The owners of the port in Misawa have said they do not want it back.

Meanwhile, local residents have been causing traffic jams in the beach car park as they come to see it for themselves.

Kirk Tite, who was visiting the beach with his son, said: "It's kind of scary seeing this wash up here because we all surf.

"If this crossed the Pacific Ocean and it's this big, that means that just about anything of our worst nightmares could cross the Pacific Ocean. So we're kind of frightened of what's to come".

Nearly 16,000 people were killed by the quake and tsunami in Japan.

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considered interpretation of the sediments

Curiosity rover: The reward for 'whale watching' on Mars

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'Substantial' El Nino event predicted

'Substantial' El Nino event predicted

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try the sahara dessert as well then we we have a large earth quake

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The weather pattern, which typically sees rainfall shift eastward away from Australia, is regularly linked to dry years with active fire seasons for southern and eastern parts of Australia

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Dutch take legal action over Greenpeace ship in Russia

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Japan bluefin tuna fetches record $1.7m

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How the tsunami happened

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7.3 magnitude quake

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Eyeless goby fish 10,000km apart share common ancestor

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