Apocalypse News

Backyard bandit: ‘Rocksy’ the raccoon knocks on door when she wants food (VIDEO)

2015-09-14T13:22:00.001-07:00

Backyard bandit: ‘Rocksy’ the raccoon knocks on door when she wants food (VIDEO)

Sea Level Rise Accelerating For US East Coast

2012-11-19T17:06:00.000-08:00

A striking image of Verrazano Bridge in Brooklyn as Hurricane Sandy approaches on Oct. 29, 2012.

CREDIT: Carlos Ayala

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — This summer the North Carolina Senate passed a bill banning researchers from reporting predicted increases in the rate of sea level rise. But the ocean, unbound by legislation, is rising anyway — and in North Carolina this rise is accelerating, researchers reported here yesterday (Nov. 6) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.

On the coast of North Carolina and at other so-called "hotspots" along the U.S. East Coast, sea levels are rising about three times more quickly on average than they are globally, researchers reported during a session devoted to sea level rise.

That's the fastest rise in the world.

"What we're seeing here is unique," said Asbury Sallenger, an oceanographer at the U.S. Geological Survey in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The accelerating rise

And this rise is accelerating, said Tal Ezer, a researcher at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va.

His colleague, Larry Atkinson, said computer models suggest that if this acceleration continues at the same pace, the rise along the East Coast — from North Carolina to Massachusetts — could be 5.3 feet (1.6 meters) by 2100.

Sea levels on this stretch of land have climbed as much as 1.5 inches (3.7 centimeters) per decade since 1980, while globally they've risen up to 0.4 inches (1.0 cm) per decade, according to a study by Sallenger published in June.

Why is the rise accelerating? Researchers said it's due in part to the sinking of land in the mid-Atlantic, a process called subsidence. Also, warming oceans have decreased the flow rate of the Gulf Stream, a current that ferries warm water from the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico northeast across the Atlantic. With a less intense Gulf Stream, water is backed up toward the shore, causing sea level rise. Differences in coastal geography, temperature and salinity (salt content) cause different rates of rise along the East Coast, Atkinson said.

Sea levels worldwide are rising due to melting of glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic, as well as expansion of water caused by heating, researchers said. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]

All too vulnerable

Although the original bill by the North Carolina Senate was rejected by the state House of Representatives in June following international outcry, a compromise was reached that bans state agencies from making plans or laws based on exponential extrapolations of sea level rise for the next three to four years, according to local news reports.

North Carolina lawmakers were the butt of jokes at this session on sea level rise, but underlying the humor was a sense of anxiety, even desperation.

One session titled "Does acceleration matter?" concluded that yes, of course it does, but current efforts to deal with the problem are completely insufficient.

Robert Young, a scientist at Western Carolina University, said that by developing low-lying coastal areas, we are all too vulnerable to storms at current sea levels, as was made clear last week in the New York area by the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy.

"We cannot expect as a society to respond to accelerating sea level rise if we can't even respond to linear sea level rise and storms," he said. "Every single storm is an opportunity to take a step back from the coast. Instead, coastal development continues."

Young cited the example of Dauphin Island, Ala., which has been inundated by storms eight times in 26 years. Each time, he said, the federal government has stepped in and paid to rebuild the island's infrastructure. "That's crazy," Young said.

Some uncertainty

There is some uncertainty and disagreement between scientists about the particulars of the accelerating sea level rise. One of the biggest questions is how long this acceleration might last. Sallenger's calculations suggest it could continue for about a century, while others are less certain.

But there is no question that sea levels are rising and that this rise has significant impacts. An internal study by the Hunting Ingalls shipyard in Newport News, Va., the sole builder of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, found that squalls capable of bringing threatening storm surges near its facility have become more common. These storms once occurred every 80 years; now they are likely to happen every two years, Atkinson said.

Sea levels are measured by tidal gauges are various points along the East Coast. One gauge at Sandy Hook, N.J., was reporting a 0.15 inch (3.9 mm) rise per year, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

But it won't be collecting any more data, said John Boon, a researcher at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. It was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.

Douglas M. Main, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer

http://www.livescience.com/

Viet Nam: Serious Land subsidence in Lam Dong

2012-11-19T16:57:00.000-08:00

Viet Nam: Serious Land subsidence in Lam Dong province- Length; 656ft, Width; 66ft, Depth; 23~33ft

Nov 15, 2012
Lam Dong province examined the phenomenon of subsidence occurred from 3-10 in irrigation reservoir Dak Long Thuong (Loc Ngai, Bao Lam district).
Subsidence location identified in the coffee garden of 1.5 hectares of family Ms. Nguyen Thi potential, cardiac irrigation dam about 250m northwest.
Area subsided lost about 5.000m ², the average width of 20 m, the arc length of about 200 m, a depth of 7-10m. Locations around many local rift subsidence 10-50cm wide.

poleshift.ning.com

Incredible UFOs Filmed Over Denver, Colorado USA

2012-11-19T16:49:00.000-08:00

According to FOX 31 News channel, they first learned about these sightings when a metro area man, who does not want to be identified brought us his home video. He captured the images on his digital camera from a hilltop in Federal Heights looking south toward downtown Denver.

He said, "The flying objects appear around noon or 1:00 p.m. at least a couple of times a week." The strangest part is they are flying too fast to see with the naked eye, but when we slowed down the video, several UFOs appear.

http://www.ufo-blogger.com/

Sun BELCHES twice, mighty plasma loops miss Earth - NASA vid

2012-11-19T16:35:00.004-08:00

The Sun lashed out with two plasma eruptions one after the other early on Friday morning.

NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) spotted the solar flares, when red-hot loops of plasma burst out of the surface of the Sun.

The flares both happened within a four-hour window between 6am and 10am GMT, when prominences in the Sun became unstable and belched out hot gas made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium.

During a flare, the plasma flows out along a tangled and twisted structure of magnetic fields generated by the Sun's internal dynamo.

According to NASA:

The action was captured in the 304 Angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. It seems possible that the disruption to the Sun’s magnetic field might have triggered the second event since they were in relatively close proximity to each other.

Luckily, the flares were not aimed at Earth, but spewed out into space. Had the resulting particle clouds been headed for us, there could have been issues for spacecraft and astronauts in orbit, though the only effect normally seen for most of us is boosted polar aurorae. ®

By Brid-Aine Parnell
http://www.theregister.co.uk/

Mystery Sighting Spooks Soldiers

2012-11-19T16:28:00.000-08:00

Units of the Indian Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force (ITBP) have reported Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.

An ITBP unit based in Thakung, close to the Pangong Tso Lake, reported over 100 sightings of luminous objects between August 1 and October 15 this year. In reports sent to their Delhi headquarters in September, and to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), they described sighting "Unidentified Luminous Objects" at day and by night. The yellowish spheres appear to lift off from the horizon on the Chinese side and slowly traverse the sky for three to five hours before disappearing.

These were not unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), drones or even low-earth orbiting satellites, say Army officials who have studied the hazy photographs taken by ITBP. Drone sightings are verified and logged separately. The Army has reported 99 sightings of Chinese drones between January and August this year: 62 sightings were reported in the western sector, the Ladakh region, and 37 in the eastern sector in Arunachal Pradesh. Three of these drones intruded into territory claimed by India along the 365-km-long border with China in Ladakh, manned by ITBP.

Such mysterious lights have been sighted before in Ladakh, a barren, 86,000 sq km heavily militarised zone wedged between Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and Chinese-occupied Aksai Chin. The persistent sightings by the ITBP this year, however, worried the Army's Leh-based 14 Corps. The ITBP, did not respond to a detailed India Today questionnaire.

In September, the Army moved a mobile ground-based radar unit and a spectrum analyser-that picks up frequencies emitted from any object-to a mountaintop near the 160-km-long, ribbon-shaped Pangong Lake that lies between India and China.

The radar could not detect the object that was being tracked visually, indicating it was non-metallic. The spectrum analyser could not detect any signals being emitted from them. The Army also flew a reconnaissance drone in the direction of the floating object, but it proved a futile exercise. The drone reached its maximum altitude but lost sight of the floating object.

In late September this year, a team of astronomers from the Indian Astronomical Observatory at Hanle, 150 km south of the lake, studied the airborne phenomena for three days. The team spotted the flying objects, Army officials say, but could not conclusively establish what they were. They did, however, say that the objects were "non celestial" and ruled out meteors and planets.

Scientists however say, the harsh geography and sparse demography of the great Himalayan range that separates Kashmir Valley from Ladakh, lends itself to unusual sightings. "The region is snowbound in winter, has few roads and is one of the most isolated places in India," says Sunil Dhar, a geologist at the government Post Graduate College in Dharamshala, who has studied glaciers in the region for 15 years.

Yet, none of the experts from the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO)-in charge of technical intelligence-and Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO), has been able to identify the objects. This has caused embarrassment rather than fear in the establishment. "Something is clearly wrong, if our combined scientific resources can't explain the phenomena," says a senior Army official in Delhi. Intelligence officials say these objects could be a crude psychological operation by China, or sophisticated probes attempting to ascertain India's defences in Ladakh.

"We can't ignore these sightings. We need to probe what new technology might have been deployed there," says former Indian Air Force (IAF) chief Air Chief Marshal (retired) P.V. Naik.

In 2010, the IAF probed and dismissed Army sightings of such luminous objects as "Chinese lanterns". 'UFO' sightings have been endemic to Ladakh over the past decade. In late 2003, 14 Corps sent a detailed report on sightings of luminous objects to Army headquarters. Army troops on posts along Siachen had seen floating lights on the Chinese side. But reporting such phenomena risks inviting ridicule. When told about them at a northern command presentation in Leh, the then army chief, General N.C. Vij, had angrily dismissed the reports as hallucinations.

Scientists say the mysterious objects are not necessarily from outer space. "There is no evidence of 'ufos' being of extra-terrestrial origin," says reputed Pune-based astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar. "The implication of them being alien objects is fancy, not fact," he says.

There is still no explanation, however, for what is believed to be the clearest 'UFO' sighting yet, in the Lahaul-Spiti region of Himachal Pradesh less than 100 km south of Ladakh in 2004. A five-member group of geologists and glaciologists led by Dr Anil Kulkarni of the isro's Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad were on a research trip through the barren Samudra Tapu Valley. They filmed a four-foot tall 'robot-like' figure, that 'walked' along the valley, 50 m away from them. The humanoid object then rapidly became airborne and disappeared. The encounter lasted 40 minutes. It was seen by 14 persons including the six scientists. Kulkarni then interviewed each expedition member separately to verify what the team had seen. Copies of his detailed report were circulated to the PMO, ISRO, the Army and several intelligence agencies. Kulkarni established his team hadn't seen natural phenomenon. The matter, however, was buried soon after.

Sunil Dhar, who was part of the 2004 expedition, terms the sighting of the unidentified object an unforgettable experience. Locals, he says, have reported sighting mysterious objects for many years. "These are unsolved mysteries that need more intensive study," he says. Left unexplained, the Ladakh sightings risk slipping into the crack between fact and science fiction.

By Sandeep Unnithan. India Today

http://in.news.yahoo.com

Warming Temperatures Will Change Greenland's Face, Experts Predict

2012-11-18T20:16:00.000-08:00

Professor Marco Tedesco balances at the edge of a supraglacial lake. (Credit: Copyright M. Tedesco/WWF)

Global climate models abound. What is harder to pin down, however, is how a warmer global temperature might affect any specific region on Earth.

Dr. Marco Tedesco, associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at The City College of New York, and a colleague have made the global local. Using a regional climate model and the output of three global climate models, they can predict how different greenhouse gas scenarios would change the face of Greenland over the next century and how this would impact sea level rise.
The resulting fine-scale model gives a high-resolution picture of the island's future. "We put Greenland under a microscope to see what accounts for melting and for ice mass changes in different regions," said Professor Tedesco.
He and his colleague, Xavier Fettweis of the University of Liege, Belgium, reported their results online November 8 in Environmental Research Letters.
They compared two possible future CO2 scenarios: a concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere projected for the end of the century of 850 parts per million (ppm) versus a more aggressive projection of 1370 ppm. The first approximates the current rate of increase.
The Greenland ice sheet would lose more ice and snow to melting than it would accumulate in both scenarios. Basins on the southwest and north coasts would suffer the greatest losses. Temperatures would only have to increase by 0.6 to 2.16 degrees Celsius (1.8-3.9 ° F) to tip the balance into more loss than gain.
The new model shows how a melting would alter the topography of "one of the world's refrigerators," potentially affecting adjacent ocean circulation and salinity, and speeding further melting.
Though dramatic, Professor Tedesco said the predictions he reported might be too conservative. "They don't take into account progressive effects of the changing elevations and topography and the acceleration of ice sheet movement." These results, however, represent a step forward toward understanding the potential repercussions of warming temperatures; an improvement on models that give a much coarser view into the future, he added.
"Some areas will be 400 meters below the current elevation just because of melting. This might very well impact the speed and amount of ice that is flowing to the ocean. It would increase the rate of melting, because conditions get warmer at lower elevations" he noted. "Imagine an ice cream that is melting much faster in one area. This will change the shape of the ice mass over Greenland."
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation.

www.sciencedaily.com

An extremely brief reversal of the geomagnetic field, climate variability and a super volcano

2012-11-15T20:02:00.000-08:00

An extremely brief reversal of the geomagnetic field, climate variability and a super volcano

41,000 years ago, a complete and rapid reversal of the geomagnetic field occured. Magnetic studies of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences on sediment cores from the Black Sea show that during this period, during the last ice age, a compass at the Black Sea would have pointed to the south instead of north. Moreover, data obtained by the research team formed around GFZ researchers Dr. Norbert Nowaczyk and Prof. Helge Arz, together with additional data from other studies in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific and Hawaii, prove that this polarity reversal was a global event. Their results are published in the latest issue of the scientific journal "Earth and Planetary Science Letters".

What is remarkable is the speed of the reversal: "The field geometry of reversed polarity, with field lines pointing into the opposite direction when compared to today's configuration, lasted for only about 440 years, and it was associated with a field strength that was only one quarter of today's field," explains Norbert Nowaczyk. "The actual polarity changes lasted only 250 years. In terms of geological time scales, that is very fast." During this period, the field was even weaker, with only 5% of today's field strength. As a consequence, the Earth nearly completely lost its protection shield against hard cosmic rays, leading to a significantly increased radiation exposure.

This is documented by peaks of radioactive beryllium (10Be) in ice cores from this time, recovered from the Greenland ice sheet. 10Be as well as radioactive carbon (14C) is caused by the collision of high-energy protons from space with atoms of the atmosphere.

The Laschamp event

The polarity reversal now found with the magnetisation of Black Sea sediments has already been known for 45 years. It was first discovered after the analysis of the magnetisation of several lava flows near the village Laschamp near Clermont-Ferrand in the Massif Central, which differed significantly from today's direction of the geomagnetic field. Since then, this geomagnetic feature is known as the 'Laschamp event'. However, the data of the Massif Central represent only some point readings of the geomagnetic field during the last ice age, whereas the new data from the Black Sea give a complete image of geomagnetic field variability at a high temporal resolution.

Abrupt climate changes and a super volcano

Besides giving evidence for a geomagnetic field reversal 41,000 years ago, the geoscientists from Potsdam discovered numerous abrupt climate changes during the last ice age in the analysed cores from the Black Sea, as it was already known from the Greenland ice cores. This ultimately allowed a high precision synchronisation of the two data records from the Black Sea and Greenland. The largest volcanic eruption on the Northern hemisphere in the past 100 000 years, namely the eruption of the super volcano 39400 years ago in the area of today's Phlegraean Fields near Naples, Italy, is also documented within the studied sediments from the Black Sea. The ashes of this eruption, during which about 350 cubic kilometers of rock and lava were ejected, were distributed over the entire eastern Mediterranean and up to central Russia. These three extreme scenarios, a short and fast reversal of the Earth's magnetic field, short-term climate variability of the last ice age and the volcanic eruption in Italy, have been investigated for the first time in a single geological archive and placed in precise chronological order.

Source: Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres

http://www.sciencecodex.com

Guatemala earthquake: Dozens killed, says Perez Molina

2012-11-07T16:02:00.001-08:00

Thirty-nine people have been killed and many more are missing after a 7.4-magnitude quake hit off the Guatemala's Pacific coast, the president has said.

Firefighters were searching the rubble for survivors in San Marcos region

Otto Perez Molina declared a national alert and advised people to evacuate tall buildings as a precaution.

Officials said landslides had buried roads and it would take 24 hours to restore links to the quake-hit area.

Frightened people fled from offices and homes around the region, as buildings shook from Mexico City to San Salvador.

Quake officials said the tremor hit at about 10:35 local time (1635 GMT) about 23km (15 miles) from the Guatemalan town of Champerico.

Mr Perez Molina has given several news conferences, each time raising the number of casualties.

He was touring the affected area and said 39 deaths had now been confirmed in what he called a tragedy.

He had earlier said 15 people were believed to be trapped under ground and about 100 people were missing.

The national voluntary fire service gave details on its twitter feed of the damage across the San Marcos region, describing how firefighters had pulled five bodies from the rubble including that of an 11-year-old boy.

The service said 14 houses had been destroyed in Quetzaltenango, a city that houses dozens of language schools popular with tourists.

Firefighters earlier said a school had collapsed in San Pedro Sacatepequez, also in the San Marcos area.

The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a statement there was no threat of a destructive widespread tsunami.

But it added: "Earthquakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within a hundred kilometres of the earthquake epicentre."

The region is often hit by quakes, which have periodically caused huge damage and many deaths.

Are you in the region? Have you been affected by the earthquake? You can contact the BBC using the form below.

Send your pictures and videos to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to 61124 (UK) or +44 7624 800 100 (International).

www.bbc.co.uk

Land subsidence – flooding is the “global warming”

2012-11-07T15:55:00.001-08:00

Land subsidence – flooding is the “global warming“.

The story of climate change is no less interesting. Because now it has turned more and more to talk about this enough. Become subject to it. With the change of climate variability and change things around. Affect many. The story will be told today, there is another interesting story about land subsidence – caused flooding and many are caught off guard by it.
The “global warming” and its impact on the broader story is spread around. I had a talk entitled “The impact of global warming. That affect coastal Thailand “, there is another interesting story. The current growth of the industry. The amount of gas in the 21st century, it is expected that high temperature of 6 degrees Celsius, leading to the occurrence of hurricanes and natural disturbances that occur with. Polar ice is completely melted. Impact on the high seas rise with it. Will result in the production of natural food. Water in the summer is out there. Mosquitoes can be a severe disease with increased earthquake faults will be affected more and more by the earthquake, tsunami. Volcano to blow it up. There are also mega tsunami itself. Consequences to the Internet. There is more rain in flood bar high. This is an interesting story. Should be aware that we do more with it.
Although global warming may not affect us directly to Thailand at this time that But the effect is stronger the wind, waves, coastal erosion, 2815 km long, covering 23 provinces in the Gulf of Thailand have discovered that there is a crisis that has eroded the average over 5 meters / year that it is. areas with erosion rates of 1-5 m / year in 14 provinces.
The Andaman is a crisis that has eroded areas average more than 5 m / year in 5 provinces in areas with erosion rates of 1-5 m / year in the province was 90.5 km from exploiting it. appropriate Sediment accumulation less. The development of the information system based on land use change processes natural high enough.
This is a fascinating story that we come together today itself.

Thanks great article from writer.dek-d.com.
www.naomitosy.com

Asteroid 'Nibiru' On Collision Course With Earth, According To NASA Whistleblowers

2012-11-07T13:31:00.000-08:00

According to leaks by unnamed NASA employees and scientists, an asteroid dubbed 'Nibiru' is heading in a direct path towards earth, with up to 30% chance of collision. Understandably NASA is keeping quiet for the moment as to not incite panic, and to get all the facts before making an official press release.
Though some unconfirmed rumours include the asteroid being the size of texas, and the estimated date of collision being some time during November-December 2012. NASA has neither confirmed or denied any of these claims.

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-872812

Heavy rain and floods in Slovenia

2012-11-06T12:37:00.000-08:00

Heavy rain in Slovenia has caused several regional roads, mostly in western Slovenia, to be closed due to flooding rivers, minor landslides and a number of fallen trees.

www.demotix.com

Floods in Slovenia caused a lot of trouble and fear among the population. Water has flooded many buildings and roads and triggered a series of landslides. It is closed several roads and rail links. Red alarm for large parts of the country. Centenary water: Severe clock on the Drava river, sirens and record levels of river flow. Dravograd suffered great disaster, black cut off from the world.Traffic information center for the State Highway on its website indicates that almost half of the roads in our country crippled by flood.

www.siol.net, poleshift.ning.com

Ancient Supervolcano Affected the Ends of the Earth

2012-11-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

About 74,000 years ago, the Toba volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumatra erupted with catastrophic force. Estimated to be 5,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, it is believed to be the largest volcanic event on Earth in the last 2 million years.

Sumatra, Earth's sixth-largest island, spied from space. CREDIT: NASA.

Toba spewed enough lava to build two Mount Everests, it produced huge clouds of ash that blocked sunlight for years, and it the left behind a crater 31 miles (50 kilometers) across. The volcano even sent enough sulphuric acid into the atmosphere to create acid rain downpours in the Earth's polar regions, which researchers have found evidence of in deep ice cores.

"We have now traced this acid rain in the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica," glaciologist Anders Svensson, of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement.

"We have long had an idea of at what depth the Toba eruption could be found in the Greenland ice cap, but we found no ash, so we could not be sure," Svensson added. "But now we have found the same series of acid layers from Toba in the Greenland ice sheet and in the ice cap in Antarctica. We have counted the annual layers between acid peaks in ice cores from the two ice caps and it fits together."

The ice cores could offer more evidence about how the changed Earth's climate was drastically changed in the years after the colossal eruption. Researchers had previously estimated that such an event would have prompted a cooling of up to 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) in the global temperature for decades, but the ice cores show the cooling was probably short and not consistent across the globe.

"In the temperature curves from the ice cores we can see that there is no general global cooling as a result of the eruption," Svensson said. "There is certainly a cooling and large fluctuations in temperature in the Northern Hemisphere, but it becomes warmer in the Southern Hemisphere, so the global cooling has been short."

The new evidence also promises to settle some archaeological debates. The Toba eruption occurred at a critical point in early human history when Homo sapiens were first venturing out of Africa into Asia. However, there is wide disagreement about how early human were affected and whether large parts of the population were wiped out by the blast.

Layers of ash from the Toba eruption have been found in Asia and serve as a very important reference horizon for ancient archaeological clues from this period that are too old to be carbon dated. The ice cores now provide another backdrop against which to place ancient finds.

"The new precise location of the Toba eruption in the ice cores will place the archaeological finds in a climatic context, which will help to shed light on this critical period of human history," Svensson said.

The study is detailed in the journal Climate of the Past.

by LiveScience Staff, www.livescience.com

Greenland May Soon Disappear

2012-11-05T19:20:00.000-08:00

A panel of scientists told Congress the entire ice mass of Greenland will disappear from the world map if temperatures rise by as little as 2C --3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, with severe consequences for the rest of the world.The fall-out would be felt thousands of miles away from the Arctic, unleashing a global sea level rise of 23 feet. Low-lying cities such as New Orleans would vanish.

Rapid changes in the Earth's core: The magnetic field and gravity from a satellte perspective

2012-11-05T19:09:00.000-08:00

Annual to decadal changes in the earth’s magnetic field in a region that stretches from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean have a close relationship with variations of gravity in this area. From this it can be concluded that outer core processes are reflected in gravity data. This is the result presented by a German-French group of geophysicists in the latest issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States).
The main field of the Earth’s magnetic field is generated by flows of liquid iron in the outer core. The Earth’s magnetic field protects us from cosmic radiation particles. Therefore, understanding the processes in the outer core is important to understand the terrestrial shield. Key to this are measurements of the geomagnetic field itself. A second, independent access could be represented by the measurement of minute changes in gravity caused by the fact that the flow in the liquid Earth’s core is associated with mass displacements. The research group has now succeeded to provide the first evidence of such a connection of fluctuations in the Earth’s gravity and magnetic field.

They used magnetic field measurements of the GFZ-satellite CHAMP and extremely accurate measurements of the Earth’s gravity field derived from the GRACE mission, which is also under the auspices of the GFZ. “The main problem was the separation of the individual components of the gravity data from the total signal,” explains Vincent Lesur from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, who is involved in the study. A satellite only measures the total gravity, which consists of the mass fractions of Earth’s body, water and ice on the ground and in the air. To determine the mass redistribution by flows in the outer core, the thus attained share of the total gravity needs to be filtered out. “Similarly, in order to capture the smaller changes in the outer core, the proportion of the magnetic crust and the proportion of the ionosphere and magnetosphere need to be filtered out from the total magnetic field signal measured by the satellite,” Vincent Lesur explains. The data records of the GFZ-satellite missions CHAMP and GRACE enabled this for the first time.
During the investigation, the team focused on an area between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, as the determined currents flows were the highest here. Extremely fast changes (so-called magnetic jerks) were observed in the year 2007 at the Earth’s surface. These are an indication for sudden changes of liquid flows in the upper outer core and are important for understanding the magneto-hydrodynamics in the Earth’s core. Using the satellite data, a clear signal of gravity data from the Earth’s core could be received for the first time.
This results in consequences for the existing conceptual models. Until now, for example, it was assumed that the differences in the density of the molten iron in the earth’s core are not large enough to generate a measurable signal in the earth’s gravitational field. The newly determined mass flows in the upper outer core allow a new approach to Earth’s core hydrodynamics.

scienceblog.com

Found: The Climate Change Trigger For Earth's Last Big Freeze

2012-11-05T18:56:00.000-08:00

Did the flood waters from melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet in the last major cold episode on Earth about 12,900 years ago flow northwest into the Arctic firs, or east via the Gulf of St. Lawrence to weaken ocean thermohaline circulation and have a frigid effect on global climate?

It's a debate that has gone on for decades but new, high-resolution global ocean circulation models claim to have an answer/ The researchers report that the flood must have flowed north into the Arctic first down the Mackenzie River valley. They also say that if it had flowed east into the St. Lawrence River valley, Earth's climate would have remained relatively unchanged.

Events leading up to the sharp climate-cooling period known as the Younger Dryas, colloquially known as the "Big Freeze," unfolded after glacial Lake Agassiz, at the southern edge of the Laurentide ice sheet covering Hudson Bay and much of the Canadian Arctic, catastrophically broke through an ice dam and dumped thousands of cubic kilometers of fresh water into the ocean in a short time.

This massive influx of frigid fresh water injected over the surface of the ocean is assumed to have halted the sinking of very dense, saltier, colder water in the North Atlantic that drives the large-scale ocean circulation, the thermohaline circulation, that transports heat to Europe and North America. The weakening of this circulation caused by the flood resulted in the dramatic cooling of North America and Europe.

A new model of flood waters from melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and large glacial lakes along its edge that covered much of North America from the Arctic south to New England over 13,000 years ago, shows the meltwater flowed northwest into the Arctic first. This weakened deep ocean circulation and led to Earths last major cold period. A new model of flood waters from melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and large glacial lakes along its edge that covered much of North America from the Arctic south to New England over 13,000 years ago, shows the meltwater flowed northwest into the Arctic first. This weakened deep ocean circulation and led to Earths last major cold period. Credit: Alan Condron, UMass Amherst

"This episode was the last time the Earth underwent a major cooling, so understanding exactly what caused it is very important for understanding how our modern-day climate might change in the future," University of Massachusetts Amherst geoscientist Alan Condron said in their statement.

They say their global, ocean-ice circulation model is 10 to 20 times more powerful than previously attainable, and it allowed them to compare how meltwater from the two different drainage outlets was delivered to the sinking regions in the North Atlantic. They found the original hypothesis proposed in 1989 by Wally Broecker of Columbia University suggesting that Lake Aggasiz drained into the North Atlantic down the St. Lawrence River would have weakened the thermohaline circulation by less than 15 percent.

Condron and Winsor say this level of weakening is unlikely to have accounted for the 1,000-year cold climate event that followed the meltwater flood. Meltwater from the St. Lawrence River actually ends up almost 1,900 miles (3,000 km) south of the deep water formation regions, too far south to have any significant impact on the sinking of surface waters, which explains why the impact on the thermohaline circulation is so minor.

By contrast, their model says that when the meltwater first drains into the Arctic Ocean, narrow coastal boundary currents can efficiently deliver it to the deep water formation regions of the sub-polar north Atlantic, weakening the thermohaline circulation by more than 30 percent. They conclude that this scenario, showing meltwater discharged first into the Arctic rather than down the St. Lawrence valley, is "more likely to have triggered the Younger Dryas cooling."

Condron adds, "Our results are particularly relevant for how we model the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice sheets now and in the future. It is apparent from our results that climate scientists are artificially introducing fresh water into their models over large parts of the ocean that freshwater would never have reached. In addition, our work points to the Arctic as a primary trigger for climate change. This is especially relevant considering the rapid changes that have been occurring in this region in the last 10 years."

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

www.science20.com

Whales stranded near King Island, north-west Tasmania

2012-11-05T18:47:00.000-08:00

Whale stranding on New Year island, off coast of King Island, off north-west Tasmania coast, on November 3, 2012.

Deceased dolphins after stranding at King Island, Tasmania, November 4, 2012. About 100 whales and dolphins lay beached for up to two nights in one of Tasmania's largest strandings since 2009.

www.abc.net.au

More health woes for some meningitis patients

2012-11-05T18:41:00.000-08:00

Bottles containing injectable steroids distributed by the New England Compounding Center

(CNN): Some patients who developed fungal meningitis in an outbreak linked to a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy are experiencing more health woes, officials said.
Patients are not only developing meningitis, inflammation of the thin tissue surrounding the brain and spinal cord; some are also developing an epidural abscess, which is a collection of pus between the outer covering of the brain and spinal cord and the bones of the skull or spine.
Meningitis is a known complication of an epidural abscess, but what's puzzling some health experts is that some patients were first diagnosed with and treated for meningitis and then developed an abscess.
"This is not typical for fungal disease," says Dr. Tom Chiller, who serves as deputy chief of the CDC's Mycotic (fungal) Diseases Branch. While he and other health officials have been hearing about epidural abscesses since the beginning of the outbreak, it is unclear how many patients have had the abscesses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now lists meningitis, epidural abscess and stroke among the 409 cases of fungal infection; it also says 10 people have suffered peripheral joint infections from New England Compounding Center products.
As of Monday, the total number of illnesses linked to tainted steroid injections produced by the NECC had risen to 419. One more person has died, bringing the total fatalities to 30.
Abscesses are usually found using an MRI. Some meningitis patients underwent an MRI where no abscesses were found, and then two or three weeks later, another MRI detected an abscess after patients reported back pain.
In Michigan, which has the most illnesses connected to the tainted NECC medications, nearly half of the patients have developed an abscess.
As of Monday, the state health department is reporting a total of 119 cases -- 61 cases of meningitis, 51 cases of epidural abscesses, six peripheral joint infections and one stroke. All seven of Michigan's deaths were reported in meningitis patients.
All of the epidural abscesses in Michigan were diagnosed before some patients developed meningitis, according to Angela Minicucci, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Community health. She says none of the Michigan cases developed meningitis first and abscesses later.
Tennessee has the second-highest case count, with 79 cases and 12 deaths. However, health officials there have not yet tallied how many patients had epidural abscesses and when.
The fungal infection cases are unprecedented, said the CDC's Chiller, because usually fungal infections caused by black mold usually trigger sinusitis or skin infections -- the fungus isn't injected into the central nervous system with a steroid.
"We're learning as we go," he says, adding that patients are presenting with illness in completely new ways.
According to the CDC, symptoms have appeared between one and four weeks after an injection. Since the NECC products were recalled just about a month ago, one would think that window would be closing.
But given that some patients are developing secondary infections such as abscesses and others are reporting symptoms after longer periods of time, Chiller says patients need to be vigilant for at least several months.
Bottom line: If patients know they've been given injections from the three tainted lots of the preservative-free steroid methylprednisolone acetate (MPA) distributed by NECC, they need to see their doctor with any new symptoms or concerns.
In the meantime, lawmakers are continuing to look for answers about how the outbreak occurred.
On Monday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced that the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will convene a hearing on November 14 to further investigate what went wrong at the NECC and why the company, which had a history of problems, was able to continue to function.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg is scheduled to testify. James Coffey, director of Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy, and Barry Cadden, owner and director of the New England Compounding Center, have also been invited.

edition.cnn.com

Man-Eating Leopard Devours 15 So Far

2012-11-05T18:13:00.000-08:00

A rogue leopard believed to have killed – and eaten – up to 15 villagers, including 10 small children over the past year is being hunted by Nepalese wildlife officials.
The severed head of the latest victim, a 4-year-old boy, was found on Saturday in a forested area nearly 400 miles west of the capital, Kathmandu. The Kathmandu Post reported the boy was playing in the courtyard of his house when the leopard struck, killing the boy then dragging the body into the forest.
Police say at least one leopard with a taste for human flesh is on the loose, but that there could be others.
Last week, Nepalese officials offered a bounty of 25,000 rupees (approximately $280) for anyone who could bring in the animal dead or alive. The bounty amounts to several months wages for an average Nepali villager. Of the 15 victims so far, two-thirds are children from remote villages. So far, there is no indication that any adult males have been attacked.

abcnews.go.com

40 whales die in mass stranding on Indian island

2012-11-05T18:04:00.000-08:00

In this handout photograph released by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Department of Environment and Forestry on October 25, 2012, over 40 short-finned pilot whales lie on the beach in a mass stranding on the west coast of the remote Indian Andaman islands in the Bay of Bengal on October 25, 2012. PHOTO: AFP

NEW DELHI: About 40 whales died in a mass stranding on the west coast of India’s remote North Andaman island in the Bay of Bengal, wildlife officials said on Thursday.
“The short-finned pilot whales were found by fishermen who alerted us and investigations show it was a case of mass stranding,” said Ajai Saxena, a wildlife official in Port Blair, capital of the islands.
Saxena said no previous mass stranding had been reported in the Andamans, but that it was a natural phenomenon that occurs when whales get disoriented and are unable to swim back into deep water.
Stranding is also thought to occur when a pod follows a sick or an injured whale into the shallows, experts say.
Emergency teams and local volunteers headed to the beach near Elizabeth Bay on the North Andaman island where the whales were stranded, but they were unable to help.
“The mammals are so heavy, it is impossible to move them back to the waters,” Saxena told AFP.
A post-mortem has been conducted on one of adults, which weighed two tonnes.
The Andaman and Nicobar islands are Indian territory, though they are at least 600 miles (1,000 kilometres) from the mainland and are closer to the coast of Myanmar.

tribune.com.pk

Google Earth Finds More Strange Patterns in the Chinese Desert

2012-11-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

Google Earth reveals an 8 km line of artificial grid-like structures in the Chinese desert. Now one researcher says she know why it's there.

Google Earth has a history of revealing strange objects in the deserts of China.
ast year, various websites reported the discovery of giant kilometre-sized concentric circles of military objects including jets in the Gobi desert. Analysts think these may be missile target zones.

Others websites reported the discovery of mysterious networks of lines in the Gobi desert. Some analysts believe these are designed to look like the networks of roads in a city and have been laid out in tehdesert so that nuclear missile guidance systems can use them for target practice.

Today, Amelia Carolina Sparavigna at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy reveals another mysterious pattern in a remote part of China, this time the Taklamakan desert in western China.

In the last few years, Sparavigna has pioneered a form of armchair archaeology using Google Earth and open source image processing software to hunt for interesting structures in remote regions of the planet. She regularly posts her results on the arXiv and we've discussed several of them on this blog, here for example.

Today, Sparavigna highlights an 8km line of dots in the Taklamakan desert near Ruoqiang Town. When she zooms in on these dots, they turn out to be 40 metre grids of faint point-like structures, arranged in a chess-board-like style.

Google Earth's images data back to 2004 and the grids are visible in all the images. However, Sparavigna points out that the grids are not visible in older images on Bing Maps or Nokia maps. In this way, she has been able to date them.

At first sight, it's hard to work what this structure could possibly be for. But Sparavigna says she has recently discovered a clue in the form of an announcement by the Chinese government of the discovery of a 1.28 million nickel ore reserve in the region.

She says the grid is the result of a comprehensive geological survey of the region. This process begins with the identification of a geological anomaly associated with the ore, then the widespread digging of trenches and boreholes to identify the ore and map it. It is this second stage that have produced the grids.

That sounds like a reasonable explanation although the sheer number of boreholes dug over such a wide area beggars belief.

One possibility is that there was some element of training involved in which large numbers of students practiced their surveying techniques in the desert.

However, wouldn't we be able to see the results of similar exercises elsewhere in China or indeed in other places on Earth?

Sparavigna says that if she is right, this region of China is likely to become an important centre for mining in the next few years.

That means her form of armchair archaeology can be used to determine not only what the planet was like in the past but also get a sense of what regions will be like in future.

Of course, her analysis may also be wrong. Alternative suggestions in the comments section please.

http://www.technologyreview.com

Massive Black Hole May Exist Near Earth

2012-11-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

The strange behavior of stars in the Sword of Orion may be due to the presence of a black hole about 200 times larger than our sun.

Overview image of the Orion Nebula with the star cluster at its center. The possible black hole would reside somewhere between the four bright stars which mark the cluster's center. These stars form the famous Trapezium of the Orion Nebula Cluster. (NASA/ESA/Hubble Space Telescope)

Using computer modelling, an international team of astronomers studied these fast-moving stars that form the Orion Nebula Cluster.
There appear to be too few high-mass stars in the cluster relative to low-mass stars, and they are moving at high speeds as if the whole group is flying apart.
“These properties have been a puzzle to astronomers, given all the knowledge that they have about how stars are formed and distributed,” said study co-author Holger Baumgardt at Australia’s University of Queensland in a press release.
The model consisted of a dense cloud of interstellar gas with the right proportion of heavy and light stars. Thus their motion could be calculated, showing that the cluster expands as the gas moves outwards.
Many heavy stars were thrown out, and some moved to the center, colliding with the most massive star there.
“Our scenario neatly accounts for virtually all observed properties of the Orion Nebula Cluster, that is, its low number of high-mass stars, and its rapidly-moving central stars, and suggests that the massive stars near the center of this cluster are bound by a black hole,” said study lead author Ladislav Subr at Charles University, Prague, in the release.
The black hole would have formed when the massive star became unstable.
“Having such a massive black hole at our doorstep would be a dramatic chance for intense studies of these enigmatic objects,” said study co-author Pavel Kroupa at Germany’s University of Bonn in the release.

The study was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

www.theepochtimes.com

Raw: Salmon Swimming Upstream on Road

2012-11-01T15:55:00.000-07:00

www.youtube.com, AssociatedPress: Salmon are seen swimming upstream on a road near Seattle, Washington. A dog walking along catches one of the fish in its mouth, then moseys along the watery road. (Nov. 1)

Dawn to Dusk: Hurricane Sandy, October 29, 2012, Super Rapid Scan

2012-11-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

This time-lapse video shows the evolution of Hurricane Sandy from dawn to dusk on October 29, 2012. The video was compiled from satellite images taken every minute from 6:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. EDT.

The images were collected in "super rapid scan" mode by the GOES-14 satellite, which observes Earth from geostationary orbit (35,800 km or 22,300 miles) over the Western Hemisphere. The changing angles of sunlight highlight the motions and different structures in the clouds. GOES satellites are built by NASA and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NASA animation by Kevin Ward, using images from NOAA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov

NASAEarthObservatory - www.youtube.com

Video of extreme global weather events and other weird phenomena in October 2012

2012-11-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

Snow in Springtime in Australia; deluge in the UK, Nigeria, southern Spain and the US; fireballs seen everywhere; tornadoes and strong winds in southern France; another zombie cannibal attack, this time in China; a hurricane in northeastern US; UFOs diving into volcanoes; large earthquakes; sudden sinkholes swallowing and killing people in China ...it's been another bizarre month here on the Big Blue Marble.

fidockave213
YouTube