New Delhi: Several tourists on had a narrow escape when a part of a mountain near Chandigarh-Manali highway collapsed.

   

Watch: Tourists defy death at Manali-Chandigarh highway

Last Updated: Monday, December 7, 2015 - 15:50

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Several tourists on had a narrow escape when a part of a mountain near Chandigarh-Manali highway collapsed. The 31-second video, recorded by a mobile phone camera, shows tourists running for their lives. Initially, it was said that the landslide was caused due to an earthquake today in the region, but later it was clarified that the incident has no connection with the earthquake.

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A recent study found that the historical occurrence of earthquakes in the eastern Mediterranean Sea has been much more plentiful than previously thought.

 

Earthquakes in the Eastern Mediterranean? Much More Plentiful in Past Than Thought

By Catherine Arnold

Dec 01, 2015 03:03 PM EST

 

 

A recent study found that the historical occurrence of earthquakes in the eastern Mediterranean Sea has been much more plentiful than previously thought. They have suggestions for precautions to take, considering that. (Photo : Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

There is more seismic activity in the eastern Mediterranean than was previously thought, and a study about this was recently accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Historically in the long stretch of geological time, seismic activity near and around Crete has stirred up bursts of earthquakes, and this may increase the region's future risk of earthquakes and tsunamis, according to a release.

Several tectonic plates are in the Mediterranean basin, caused by the African and Eurasian Plates crashing together there. While scientists have been aware that the collision between the two plates can make the eastern part of that sea and land area susceptible to earthquakes, they've also been confused by the region having gone through only two (known) earthquakes larger than 8 on the Richter scale in 4,000 years.

The African Plate goes under the Aegean microplate just south of Crete. This occurs in an area shaped like an arc, which is called the Hellenic margin. The scientists in the study looked at the history of earthquakes in this subduction zone, to learn what could drive mega-earthquakes in the area.

"We study the Hellenic subduction margin going back to about 50,000 years, which is about 10 times the time window of paleo-earthquake observations in the eastern Mediterranean that we had before," Vasiliki Mouslopoulou, at the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, and study lead author, in the release. "For the first time ever, we were able to chart the spatial and temporal pattern with which mega-earthquakes rupture the Hellenic margin."



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In the last few weeks NASA has revealed the overall amount of ice has increased at the Antarctic and the amount of sea ice has also extended. ANTARCTIC temperatures have cooled over the past six years, study finds.

GLOBAL WARMING? NASA says Antarctic has been COOLING for past SIX years

ANTARCTIC temperatures have cooled over the past six years, according to US space agency NASA.

 

By Jon Austin

 

PUBLISHED: 07:51, Sat, Nov 28, 2015 | UPDATED: 12:58, Sat, Nov 28, 2015

 

 

NASA

Heimdal Glacier southern Greenland, from NASA's Falcon 20 aircraft at 33,000 feet above sea level.

An intensive scientific study of both Earth's poles has found that from 2009 to 2016 overall temperature has dropped in the southern polar region.NASA’s Operation IceBridge is an airborne survey of polar ice and has finalised two overlapping research campaigns at both the poles.In the last few weeks NASA has revealed the overall amount of ice has increased at the Antarctic and the amount of sea ice has also extended.Coupled with the latest announcement of slight cooling in the area, it has fuelled claims from climate change deniers that human industrialisation is not having the huge impact on global tenperature as often is claimed.

 

 

 

NASA

Map showing the extent of ice during the NASA studies

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Examiner.com

New paper claims no pause in warming, but unaltered data says otherwise

Thomas Richard

Boston Environmental Policy Examiner

 

November 25, 2015 9:20 AM MST

Photo by Aaron Harris

Environmental activists have plundered Nature's Scientific Reports and released a paper yesterday that they claim removes all doubt there is a global warming pause. After examining 40 peer-reviewed papers that show a global warming hiatus, they claim the papers didn't examine a long enough period of time. In fact, the authors—Stephan Lewandowsky, James Risbey, and Naomi Oreskes—broke the golden rule of science: they started with a predetermined outcome and then cherry-picked the data to fit their conclusion. It also runs counter to the unaltered datasets from leading climate institutions.
The paper assessed the "magnitude and significance of all possible trends up to 25 years duration looking backwards from each year over the past 30 years." Unsurprisingly, the authors thought the papers didn't use a long enough time frame to show a clear global warming pause over the entire global warming "record." Here we document how this extended global warming record has been tampered, altered, and utilized for politicized "green ideology," and how massive alterations were made to both NASA and NOAA's temperature data series.

According to the satellite record (the most accurate), weather balloons, radiosonde data, sea surface temperatures, and weather stations (least accurate), previously unadulterated data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute of Space Studies (NASA GISS) data showed a long-term definitive trend: no increase in tropospheric temperatures when the Industrial Revolution began in earnest after World War II.

We do have weather station temperature data, albeit spotty, that goes back to 1881 and it shows regular intervals of warming and cooling, and not the popular upward slope in temperatures used by environmentalists and governments to illustrate dramatic global warming. More on that shortly.

Read More Here



Next: How NOAA rewrote climate data to hide global warming pause

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Nasa Earth Observatory

Earth is Cooling…No It’s Warming

In 1967 Hansen went to work for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York City, where he continued his research on planetary problems. Around 1970, some scientists suspected Earth was entering a period of global cooling. Decades prior, the brilliant Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch had explained how our world warms and cools on roughly 100,000-year cycles due to its slowly changing position relative to the Sun. Milankovitch’s theory suggested Earth should be just beginning to head into its next ice age cycle. The surface temperature data gathered by Mitchell seemed to agree; the record showed that Earth experienced a period of cooling (by about 0.3°C) from 1940 through 1970. Of course, Mitchell was only collecting data over a fraction of the Northern Hemisphere—from 20 to 90 degrees North latitude. Still, the result drew public attention and a number of speculative articles about Earth’s coming ice age appeared in newspapers and magazines.

Initial efforts to observe Earth’s temperature were limited to the Northern Hemisphere, and they showed a cooling trend from 1940 to 1970 (jagged line). Scientists estimated the relative effects of carbon dioxide (warming, top curve) and aerosols (cooling, bottom curve) on climate, but did not have enough data to make precise predictions. (Graph from Mitchell, 1972.)

But other scientists forecasted global warming. Russian climatologist Mikhail Budyko had also observed the three-decade cooling trend. Nevertheless, he published a paper in 1967 in which he predicted the cooling would soon switch to warming due to rising human emissions of carbon dioxide. Budyko’s paper and another paper published in 1975 by Veerabhadran Ramanathan caught Hansen’s attention. Ramanathan pointed out that human-made chlorofluorocarbons (or CFCs) are particularly potent greenhouse gases, with as much as 200 times the heat-retaining capacity of carbon dioxide. Because people were adding CFCs to the lower atmosphere at an increasing rate, Ramanathan expressed concern that these new gases would eventually add to Earth’s greenhouse effect and cause our world to warm. (Because CFCs also erode Earth’s protective ozone layer, their use was mostly abolished in 1989 with the signing of the Montreal Protocol.)

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Climate change: How do we know?

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO₂ has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.)

 

The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.¹
 
Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. This body of data, collected over many years, reveals the signals of a changing climate.

Read More Here

 

The evidence for rapid climate change is compelling:

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  Republic of Maldives: Vulnerable to sea level rise

  Photograph by Shahee Ilyas  
  

  Malé, capital of Maldives  Wikipedia.org

  Sea level rise

  Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.⁴

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  Global temperature rise

  All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880.⁵ Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years.⁶ Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase.⁷

   

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  Warming oceans

  The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.⁸

   

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  Flowing meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet

  Shrinking ice sheets

  The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005.

  
  

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Forecasters say a band of rain, sleet and snow will whip across Northern and Eastern Scotland on Friday, reaching the North East by night

Chronicle

North East braced for cold snap as Met Office warns of snow

• 10:34, 20 Nov 2015
• Updated 10:35, 20 Nov 2015
• ByAgency Staff

Snow falls on the Millennium Bridge in 2009

A cold snap will grip much of the North East throughout this weekend, with forecasters warning of gale-force winds, snow and hazardous driving conditions.

The Met Office has said a band of rain, sleet and snow will move south across Northern and Eastern Scotland on Friday afternoon, reaching North East England at night.

The snow will mainly affect higher ground at first, but by Friday night up to four centimetres could fall at lower levels.

Forecasters warned: “Wintry showers will spread to many Northern areas in particular and night frosts will become much more widespread.”

Chris Hogan, from MeteoGroup, said Friday will deliver blustery showers, but the conditions will deteriorate into Saturday morning.

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Some 11,114 forest fires have already been observed in Amazonas this year, a 47 percent increase over the same period last year, according to INPE.

There have been more than 11,000 fires in just one region of the Brazilian Amazon this year

5th November 2015 / Mike Gaworecki

While climate change can certainly exacerbate drought conditions, leading to more frequent wildfires, this year’s ferocious fire season might also have been heavily influenced by the El Niño event developing in the Pacific Ocean.

 

• Satellite images revealed that on October 4, 2015 there were over 900 fires burning in the Brazilian Amazon at once.
• The region most affected by the fires was the northern state of Amazonas, where some 11,114 forest fires were recorded this year.
• If the Pacific El Niño continues to strengthen, researchers expect fire risk in the Amazon to increase, as well.

 

On October 4, 2015, satellite images revealed that there were over 900 fires burning in the Brazilian Amazon.

 

That figure was reported by Brazil’s Institute for Space Research, known as INPE, which said that the region most affected by the fires was the northern state of Amazonas. Some 11,114 forest fires have already been observed in Amazonas this year, a 47 percent increase over the same period last year, according to INPE.

Amazonas is not alone in dealing with increased incidence of forest fires. More than a quarter of the fires so far this year have occurred in the Cerrado agricultural region, which encompasses parts of the central states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Tocantins and Minas Gerais, for instance.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s southeastern states have been suffering from extreme drought, and a study by researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University determined that the area of the Amazon affected by mild to severe drought is likely to double in the eastern part of Amazonia and triple in the west by 2100, due largely to the impacts of deforestation.

The Carnegie Institution researchers did not factor rising global temperatures into their calculations, however, meaning drought conditions are likely to be even worse than they projected. That does not bode well for future fire seasons being tamer than 2015.

Read More Here

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the guardian

El Niño: food shortages, floods, disease and droughts set to put millions at risk

Agencies warn of unchartered territory as strongest-ever El Niño threatens to batter vulnerable countries with extreme weather for months

Indonesian workers load rice on a truck at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta, Indonesia, on 14 November. Indonesia will import about 1.5m tonnes of rice from Vietnam due to the impact of El Niño. Photograph: Bagus Indahono/EPA

John Vidal and Damian Carrington

Monday 16 November 2015 08.04 EST Last modified on Monday 16 November 2015 13.47 EST

 

The UN has warned of months of extreme weather in many of the world’s most vulnerable countries with intense storms, droughts and floods triggered by one of the strongest El Niño weather events recorded in 50 years, which is expected to continue until spring 2016.

El Niño is a natural climatic phenomenon that sees equatorial waters in the eastern Pacific ocean warm every few years. This disrupts regular weather patterns such as monsoons and trade winds, and increases the risk of food shortages, floods, disease and forest fires.

This year, a strong El Niño has been building since March and its effects are already being seen in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Malawi, Indonesia and across Central America, according to the World Meteorological Organisation. The phenomenon is also being held responsible for uncontrolled fires in forests in Indonesia and in the Amazon rainforest.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization warned in a report on Monday that the current strong El Niño is expected to strengthen further and peak around the end of the 2015. “Severe droughts and devastating flooding being experienced throughout the tropics and sub-tropical zones bear the hallmarks of this El Niño, which is the strongest in more than 15 years,” said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud.

Jarraud said the impact of the naturally occurring El Niño event was being exacerbated by global warming, which had already led to record temperatures this year. “This event is playing out in uncharted territory. Our planet has altered dramatically because of climate change,” he said. “So this El Niño event and human-induced climate change may interact and modify each other in ways which we have never before experienced. El Niño is turning up the heat even further.”

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This year's El Niño could be one of the most powerful on record, experts say.

Business Insider

This year's El Niño is shaping up to be one of the most powerful on record

 

• Tanya Lewis

• Nov. 18, 2015, 5:36 PM

 

NOAA

 

If you've been paying attention to the weather news at all lately, you'll know that it's a big year for a weather event called El Niño.

The complex phenomenon could bring warmer, wetter weather to the Northeast this winter and much-needed rain to California, but worsen cold and drought conditions elsewhere in the US.
And this year's El Niño could be one of the most powerful on record, experts say.

"One of the strongest El Niño events in the past 65 years is likely to bring significant winter weather to the United States," James Aman, senior meteorologist at Earth Networks, said in a statement.

What the heck is El Niño, anyway?

 

El Niño is a weather event characterized by warmer-than-normal temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, with important consequences for global weather and climate, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. By contrast, La Niña refers to colder-than-normal Pacific temperatures.

The effects of El Niño can be seen across the globe, from increased rainfall in the Southern US and Peru to drought in the Western Pacific and brush fires in Australia.

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Study : Most of Earth’s mass extinctions caused by… mineral deficiencies

New Scientist

Daily news

4 November 2015

 

Image credit: Sheila Terry/SPL

 

Are you getting enough minerals? A new theory suggests most of Earth’s mass extinction events could have been caused by a lack of essential trace elements in the world’s oceans, causing fatal deficiencies in marine animals, from plankton to reptiles.

Earth has been hit with five mass extinction events. The two most dramatic ones had pretty clear causes. The dinosaurs were probably wiped out 66 million years ago thanks to a massive meteor falling on modern-day Mexico, while the end-Permian extinction, which wiped out 90 per cent of species 252 million years ago, was probably the result of massive volcanoes in Siberia.
But that leaves three other mass extinctions, with no agreed cause.

“It’s a complex scenario,” says John Long from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. He says there are probably a lot of causes conspiring to drive these mass extinctions. But his latest work suggests fluctuations in essential minerals in the ocean could be an important, and so-far completely unexplored, cause.

Essential selenium

 

Earlier this year, researchers discovered that periods when the ocean had high levels of trace elements – like zinc, copper, manganese and selenium – seemed to overlap with periods of high productivity, including the Cambrian explosion, when most groups of living animals first appeared.

 

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Gulf Stream is slowing down and may affect higher latitude climates in the Northern Hemisphere, according to a NASA

Accuweather

NASA: North Atlantic 'Cold Blob' May be Culprit Behind Ocean Current Slowdown

By Mark Leberfinger, AccuWeather.com Staff Writer

November 17, 2015; 12:34 AM ET

 

A major player in the transportation of heat in the Atlantic Ocean is slowing down and may affect higher latitude climates in the Northern Hemisphere, according to a NASA analysis of satellite data.
The "cold blob" that developed off Greenland may be the drag on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) by producing very chilly to record cold water, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said earlier this year.



Global warming may be responsible for AMOC's slowdown but natural forces may also be at work, NASA said. AMOC is part of the complex circulation of currents that help take the warmer Gulf Stream water and move it through the basin.

Data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites correspond with similar findings that were not satellite-based. The GRACE findings were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

An AMOC slowdown would impact other currents throughout the Atlantic.



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Pluto continues to deliver surprises. Spinning moons, possible ice volcanoes detected on dwarf planet

Science News

News

Planetary Science,

Mission to Pluto

By

Christopher Crockett

5:54pm, November 9, 2015

OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD LANDSCAPE The latest data from the New Horizons mission has helped create topographical maps of Pluto (blue shows lower elevations, brown, higher elevations) that have revealed surprises such as these two possible ice volcanoes, the first of their kind in the outer solar system.

SwRI, JHUAPL, NASA

OXON HILL, Md. — At this point, the only thing unsurprising about Pluto is that it continues to offer up surprises.

A wide variety of landscapes, ongoing surface transformations and a family of wildly spinning moons are among the riddles reported by the New Horizons mission team November 9 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences.

“Pluto is like a graduate course in planetary science,” mission leader Alan Stern said at a news briefing. “It’s going to take the larger planetary science community many years to digest all this.”

The New Horizons spacecraft, which buzzed the dwarf planet on July 14, has so far sent back only about 20 percent of the data it acquired from the Pluto system. And every new nugget continues a story that’s pretty familiar by now: Pluto is a weird place.

Terrains both new and old sit side-by-side on Pluto’s surface. Some heavily cratered regions are roughly 4 billion years old, about as old as Pluto itself. Others, like the now famous heart, appear to have been laid down within the last 10 million years, judging by the total lack of craters.

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Massive magma chamber found below the volcano may reveal clues about future explosions

Deep magma chambers seen beneath Mount St. Helens

Dean J. Koepfler/MCT/Newscom

Geophysicists have imaged the magma chambers that blew the lid off Mount St. Helens in its 1980 eruption.

By

Eric Hand

 

Email Eric

4 November 2015 6:00 pm

 

Geoscientists have for the first time revealed the magma plumbing beneath Mount St. Helens, the most active volcano in the Pacific Northwest. The emerging picture includes a giant magma chamber, between 5 and 12 kilometers below the surface, and a second, even larger one, between 12 and 40 kilometers below the surface. The two chambers appear to be connected in a way that could help explain the sequence of events in the 1980 eruption that blew the lid off Mount St. Helens.

So far the researchers only have a two-dimensional picture of the deep chamber. But if they find it extends to the north or south, that would imply that the regional volcanic hazard is more distributed rather than discrete, says Alan Levander, a geophysicist at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and a leader of the experiment that is doing the subterranean imaging. “It isn’t a stretch to say that there’s something down there feeding everything,” he adds.

Levander unveiled the results on 3 November at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in Baltimore, Maryland—the first detailed images from the largest-ever campaign to understand the guts of a volcano with geophysical methods. The campaign, “imaging magma under St. Helens” (iMUSH), started in 2014 when researchers stuck 2500 seismometers in the ground on trails and logging roads around the volcano. They then detonated 23 explosive shots, each with the force of a small earthquake. “You’d feel this enormous roll in the ground, and everyone would go, ‘Oh wow’,” Levander says.


 

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2015 GSA Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, USA (1-4 November 2015)

Paper No. 181-7

Presentation Time: 9:35 AM

IMUSH: MAGMA RESERVOIRS FROM THE UPPER CRUST TO THE MOHO INFERRED FROM HIGH-RESOLUTION VP AND VS TOMOGRAPHY BENEATH MOUNT ST. HELENS

KISER, Eric¹, LEVANDER, Alan², PALOMERAS, Immaculada¹, ZELT, Colin A.¹, SCHMANDT, Brandon³, HANSEN, Steven³, HARDER, Steven⁴, CREAGER, Kenneth⁵ and VIDALE, John E.⁵, (1)Earth Science, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX 77005, (2)Earth Science, Rice University, 6100 Main Street MS-126, Houston, TX 77005, (3)Earth & Planetary Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, (4)Dept. of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University Ave., El Paso, TX 79968, (5)Earth & Space Sciences, University of Washington, Johnson Hall Rm-070 Box 351310, 4000 15th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98195, alan@rice.edu

 

Seismic investigations following the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens have led to a detailed model of the magmatic and tectonic structure directly beneath the volcano. These studies suffer from limited resolution below ~10 km, making it difficult to estimate the volume of the shallow magma reservoir beneath the volcano, the regions of magma entry into the lower crust, and the connectivity of this magma system throughout the crust. The latter is particularly interesting as one interpretation of the Southern Washington Cascades Conductor (SWCC) suggests that the Mount St Helens and Mount Adams volcanic systems are connected in the crust (Hill et al., 2009).

The multi-disciplinary iMUSH (imaging Magma Under St. Helens) project is designed to investigate these and other fundamental questions associated with Mount St. Helens. Here we present the first high-resolution 2D Vp and Vs models derived from travel-time data from the iMUSH 3D active-source seismic experiment. Significant lateral heterogeneity exists in both the Vp and Vs models. Directly beneath Mount St. Helens we observe a high Vp/Vs body, inferred to be the upper/middle crustal magma reservoir, between 4 and 13 km depth. Southeast of this body is a low Vp column extending from the Moho to approximately 15 km depth. A cluster of low frequency events, typically associated with injection of magma, occurs at the northwestern boundary of this low Vp column. Much of the recorded seismicity between the shallow high Vp/Vs body and deep low Vp column took place in the months preceding and hours following the May 18, 1980 eruption. This may indicate a transient migration of magma between these two reservoirs associated with this eruption.

Outside of the inferred magma bodies that feed Mount St. Helens, we observe several other interesting velocity anomalies. In the lower crust, high Vp features bound the low Vp column. One explanation for these features is the presence of lower crustal cumulates associated with Tertiary ancestral Cascade volcanism. West of Mount St. Helens, high Vp/Vs regions in the upper and middle crust have eastern boundaries that are close to the eastern boundaries of the accreted Siletzia terrain inferred from magnetic data. Finally, a low Vp channel northeast of Mount St. Helens between 14 and 18 km depth correlates well with the location of the SWCC.
 

Session No. 181
 

T59. Advances in Crustal Geophysics and Tectonics I: In Honor of G.R. Keller

 

Tuesday, 3 November 2015: 8:00 AM-12:00 PM

Room 347/348 (Baltimore Convention Center)

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 47, No. 7, p.463

 

 

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Could Mount St Helens be about to erupt? Massive magma chamber found below the volcano may reveal clues about future explosions

• Geologists have discovered a second magma chamber beneath volcano
• They believe this feeds the smaller chamber directly below the mountain 
• Earthquakes in the area may be a sign of magma pumping between them
• Geologists still consider Mount St Helens to be of high risk of erupting 

By Richard Gray for MailOnline

 

Published: 11:16 EST, 5 November 2015 | Updated: 13:59 EST, 5 November 2015 

 

 

Lava, steam and ash began erupting from Mount St Helens in 2004 but it fell silent again in 2008. Geologists have been closely monitoring the volcano for signs that the unrest may begin again

Its scarred and jagged crater is a reminder of the terrible devastation that Mount St Helens wrought over the Washington countryside 35 years ago.

Now a new study of the volcanic plumbing lurking beneath the 8,363ft (2,459 metre) summit suggests the volcano could yet again blow its top in an explosive eruption.

Geologists studying the volcano, which is responsible for the most deadly eruption in US history, have discovered a second enormous magma chamber buried far beneath the surface.

 

The IMUSH project has detected signs that a second larger magma chamber may lie beneath Mount St Helens, filling the chamber directly under the volcano from below (illustrated) through a series of earthquakes. The chamber may also connect Mount St Helens to other nearby volcanoes 

Read More and Watch Videos Here

It Rains Fireballs - Earth is Passing Through a Stream of Debris from Comet Encke

nemesis maturity

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Published on Nov 5, 2015

Exploding fireballs reported all over the globe. It rains fireballs.
http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot...

Earth is passing through a stream of gravelly debris from Comet Encke, source of the annual Taurid meteor shower. Meteoroids the size of pebbles, and larger, are disintegrating as they hit our planet's atmosphere at 30 up to 90 km/s.

Earth runs unto the debris zone of Comet Encke every year around this time. Usually, the encounter produces a minor meteor shower, but 2015 is different. The Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) is seeing stronger Taurid activity than any of the last few years.

Bright fireballs are coming from a "swarm" of gravelly meteoroids that weaves in and out of Comet Encke's dusty debris zone. In some years, Earth hits the swarm; in other years it misses.
2015 appears to be a hit.
http://spaceweather.com/

File Meteor Report here: http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot...

Clips credit: NASA

Music credit: YouTube Audio Library
Cry - Vibe Tracks

One Of The Most Dangerous Volcanoes In North America Is Roaring To Life

End Of The American Dream

The American Dream Is Becoming A Nightmare And Life As We Know It Is About To Change

By Michael Snyder, on November 1st, 2015

 

 

More than 25 million people live in the vicinity of North America’s 2nd-highest volcano, and in recent weeks this volcano has been steadily rumbling and has been spewing out massive amounts of black smoke and ash.  I have previously written about “the most dangerous mountain in the United States” (Mt. Rainier), but if the volcano that I am talking about today experiences a full-blown explosive eruption it could potentially be a cataclysmic event beyond what most of us would dare to imagine.  Popocatepetl is an Aztec word that means “smoking mountain”, and it is also the name of a giant volcano that sits approximately 50 miles away from Mexico City’s 18 million residents. 

“Popo”, as it is called by locals, was dormant for much of the 20th century, but it came back to life in 1994.  And now all of this unusual activity in recent weeks has many wondering if a major eruption may be imminent.

Historians tell us that Popocatepetl had a dramatic impact on the ancient Aztecs.  Giant mud flows produced by massive eruptions covered entire Aztec cities.  In fact, some of these mud flows were so large that they buried entire pyramids in super-heated mud.

But we haven’t witnessed anything like that in any of our lifetimes, so it is hard to even imagine devastation of that magnitude.

In addition to Mexico City’s mammoth population, there are millions of others that live in the surrounding region.  Overall, there are about 25 million people that live in the immediate vicinity of Popocatepetl.  Thankfully, we haven’t seen a major eruption of the volcano in modern times, but at some point that will change.

As most of you already know, Mexico sits on the “Ring of Fire” that stretches along the outer rim of the Pacific Ocean.  Over the past couple of years seismic activity throughout this area has started to really heat up, and according to Volcano Discovery there are dozens of volcanoes associated with the Ring of Fire that have recently erupted.

Read More Here

By the end of the century parts of the Persian Gulf will sometimes be just too hot for the human body to tolerate, a new study says.

An intolerable unimaginable heat forecast for Persian Gulf

By SETH BORENSTEIN

 

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FILE In this June 10, 2010 file photo, an Asian laborer avoids the direct sun by working behind a wooden sign, as he works on a manhole alongside of an under construction road in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Parts of the Persian Gulf by the end of the century will on occasion will be just too hot for the human body to tolerate, if carbon dioxide emissions continue on current trend, a new study says. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — If carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current pace, by the end of century parts of the Persian Gulf will sometimes be just too hot for the human body to tolerate, a new study says. 

How hot? The heat index — which combines heat and humidity — may hit 165 to 170 degrees (74 to 77 Celsius) for at least six hours, according to numerous computer simulations in the new study. That's so hot that the human body can't get rid of heat. The elderly and ill are hurt most by current heat waves, but the future is expected to be so hot that healthy, fit people would be endangered, health experts say.

"You can go to a wet sauna and put the temperature up to 35 (Celsius or 95 degrees Fahrenheit) or so. You can bear it for a while, now think of that at an extended exposure" of six or more hours, said study co-author Elfatih Eltahir, an MIT environmental engineering professor.

While humans have been around, Earth has not seen that type of prolonged, oppressive combination of heat and humidity, Eltahir said. But with the unique geography and climate of the Persian Gulf and increased warming projected if heat-trapping gas emissions continue to rise at current rates, it will happen every decade or so by the end of the century, according to the study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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Arctic birds showing up in Wisconsin

Snowy owls fly south for the fall

By Paul A. Smith of the Journal Sentinel

Oct. 21, 2015

 

A snowy owl rests on a car in the Kohler Corporation parking lot Tuesday morning.

Snowy owls, the big, white birds that nest in the Arctic and sometimes fly south in the fall and winter, have begun showing up in Wisconsin over the last week, captivating wildlife watchers and raising questions among scientists.

About 30 snowy sightings were reported through Wednesday in Wisconsin, according to Ryan Brady, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Natural Resources who oversees the Wisconsin eBird website.

The reports are earlier in the season and higher in number than any year on record.
"It's unprecedented," said Tom Erdman, curator of the Richter Museum of Natural History at UW-Green Bay who began conducting snowy owl research in Wisconsin in the late 1950s. "It's causing us to ask 'Why?"

The first snowy of the season was sighted Oct. 15 near Ashland in Bayfield County on Lake Superior. The next day one was seen in Crawford County in southwestern Wisconsin. On Tuesday lone snowies were reported in Kohler and Milwaukee.

And on Cat Island in Green Bay earlier this week, six snowies were seen at once, Erdman said.
Last year, the first snowy was reported in Wisconsin on Nov. 1. In 2013, the initial observation was Nov. 15.

In recent decades, the first snowies have typically appeared in Wisconsin in mid-November, Brady said.

"This year is completely taking people by surprise," Brady said.
So far this fall, snowy owls have been reported in the western Great Lakes region, but none in the eastern U.S.

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Some experts warn of the potential for unrest due to El Niño this winter.

Discovery News

El Nino May Bring Civil Unrest This Winter

 

Oct 22, 2015 09:50 AM ET // by Emily Sohn

 

When an unusually powerful El Niño struck in 1997, civil conflicts erupted across the tropics, from Sudan to Peru -- as floods, droughts and fires devastated crops, fisheries and livelihoods.
It wasn’t an isolated case, suggests growing evidence that links El Niño’s extreme weather with a spike in violent conflicts in tropical regions. As one of the strongest El Niño events in recorded history gains steam this fall, some experts are warning of the potential for more unrest to come – and the urgent need to take preventive action.

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It's an El Nino Year, So ... What's an El Nino?

Some fairly nutty and violent weather can occur during El Nino years.

DCI

“Half the world’s population is exposed to a higher risk of violence this year,” says Solomon Hsiang, professor of public policy at Berkeley. “Now that we know what to expect, we shouldn’t necessarily sit back and watch sparks fly. There are a lot of things we can do.”

Civilizations That Withered in Drought

Collapses of entire civilizations have been linked to climate shifts, with examples that go back centuries. The Little Ice Age in the mid-1600s, for example, has been blamed for widespread wars and political crises that occurred around much of the world at the time.

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Near Earth Objects - Tuesday, October 14th, 2015

by Dr. Tony Phillips.

All Sky Fireball Network

 

Every night, a network of NASA all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.

On Oct. 14, 2015, the network reported 37 fireballs.

(29 sporadics, 5 Southern Taurids, 1 epsilon Geminid, 1 Orionid, 1 lambda Draconid)

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]

Near Earth Asteroids

 

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.


On October 15, 2015 there were 1623 potentially hazardous asteroids.Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Asteroid	Date(UT)	Miss Distance	Size
2015 TN21	Oct 10	2.3 LD	17 m
2015 TB25	Oct 11	9.5 LD	55 m
2015 TK21	Oct 12	4.8 LD	24 m
2015 TG24	Oct 12	4 LD	19 m
2015 TC25	Oct 13	0.3 LD	5 m
2015 TC179	Oct 14	12.3 LD	25 m
2015 TG144	Oct 16	13.3 LD	32 m
2011 QD48	Oct 17	67.5 LD	1.0 km
2014 UR	Oct 18	3.8 LD	21 m
2011 SE97	Oct 18	11.9 LD	50 m
2015 TD144	Oct 20	11.7 LD	131 m
2001 UY4	Oct 21	58.2 LD	1.0 km
2015 TZ143	Oct 22	4.2 LD	24 m
2015 TB145	Oct 31	1.3 LD	455 m
2015 TD179	Nov 4	10.6 LD	52 m
2005 UL5	Nov 20	5.9 LD	390 m
2003 EB50	Nov 29	48.8 LD	2.2 km
2007 BG29	Dec 1	54.1 LD	1.1 km
1998 WT24	Dec 11	10.9 LD	1.1 km

Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach.