SIO15: Natural Disasters

Source: Steve Newman at the San Diego Union Tribune

Earthwatches

December 27, 2021

December 20, 2021

December 13, 2021

December 06, 2021

November 29, 2021

November 22, 2021

November 15, 2021

November 08, 2021

November 01, 2021

October 25, 2021

October 18, 2021

October 11, 2021

October 04, 2021

September 27, 2021

September 20, 2021

September 13, 2021

September 06, 2021

August 30, 2021

August 23, 2021

August 16, 2021

August 09, 2021

August 02, 2021

July 26, 2021

July 19, 2021

July 12, 2021

July 05, 2021

June 28, 2021

June 21, 2021

June 14, 2021

June 07, 2021

May 31, 2021

May 24, 2021

May 17, 2021

May 10, 2021

May 03, 2021

April 26, 2021

April 19, 2021

April 12, 2021

April 05, 2021

March 29, 2021

March 22, 2021

March 15, 2021

March 8, 2021

March 1, 2021

February 22, 2021

February 15, 2021

February 08, 2021

February 01, 2021

January 25, 2021

January 18, 2021

January 11, 2021

January 04, 2021

December 27, 2021 (for the week ending Dec 24)



Earthquakes

• A [magnitude 5.6] temblor along the Laos-Thai border cracked a 425-year-old statue of Buddha.
• Northwestern California was jolted by an offshore [magnitude 6.2] quake that caused minor damage and landslides.
• Earth movements were also felt in south-central Alaska [magnitude 5.9], northern Arizona [3.0], southwestern Iceland [4.9], northern Italy [4.5] and Fiji [6.3].



Tropical Cyclones

• Super Typhoon Rai left a humanitarian crisis across central and southern provinces of the Philippines after carving out a path of destruction as one of the deadliest typhoons ever to strike the country.
  At least 375 people perished, with dozens more left missing.
  Outer bands of the storm later lashed coastal parts of Vietnam and South China.
• An unnamed tropical depression unleashed catastrophic flooding as it passed over peninsular Malaysia, displacing more than 21,000 people from their homes.



Java Eruption

Indonesian officials warned [that] Java’s Mount Semeru volcano could still produce further deadly blasts after a sudden eruption on Dec. 4 killed 48 people and left 36 others missing in areas buried beneath volcanic debris.
Subsequent explosive eruptions have occurred since then, but earlier evacuations prevented additional fatalities.



Arctic Beavers

Beavers are slowly migrating farther north into the Arctic due to the warming climate, producing what a new U.S. government report says is a “significant impact” on the landscape.
NOAA’s Arctic Report Card 2021 says western Alaska has seen a doubling of its beaver population to more than 12,000 during the past 20 years, compared to none between 1949 and 1955.
Their dams are increasing surface water and adding to the rate of permafrost melt, which in turn releases the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide.
The ponds are also said to be helping new fish and invertebrate species move in.



Deforestation Heat

Workers in the tropics have increasingly been exposed over the past 15 years to heat that makes their outdoor labors unhealthful and even hazardous. Scientists say this is due to a combination of deforestation and climate change.
But Luke Parsons of Duke University found that the most challenging conditions for outdoor workers are occurring in areas where forests have been felled.
“The trees in the tropics seem to limit the maximum temperatures that the air can reach. Once we cut those trees down, we lose that cooling service from the trees, and it can get really, really hot,” Parsons says.
He adds that the increased heat and humidity in deforested areas increase the risk of heat-related illnesses, including deadly heat stroke.



Unrelenting Heat

Simultaneous heat waves are now seen seven times more frequently in summer around the Northern Hemisphere than in the 1980s.
Washington State University scientists found that concurrent heat waves the size of some medium-size countries also grew hotter and larger during the period.
The team said the heat waves occurred on almost all of the 153 warm days from May through September somewhere in the middle and high latitudes.
“More than one heat wave occurring at the same time often has worse societal impacts than a single event,” said Cassandra Rogers.



True Millipede

A new species of millipede was unearthed 200 feet beneath the surface in a mining region of Australia’s Eastern Goldfields province, sporting a total of 1,306 legs.
While all but one of the 7,000 known species of millipedes worldwide don’t come close to having 1,000 legs, Eumillipes persephone has far more.
Writing in the Nature publication Scientific Reports, scientists say its body has up to 330 segments and can measure 3.8 inches in length.
Its new scientific name, “Eumillipes” translates into “true-thousand-foot” while “persephone” references the Greek goddess of the underworld.


• Extreme Temperatures: -67°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 114°F Jervois, S. Australia

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December 20, 2021 (for the week ending Dec 17)



Earthquakes

• Islands around Indonesia’s Flores Sea were rocked by a powerful [magnitude 7.3] undersea quake that injured one person.
• Earth movements were also felt on far southern South Korea’s Jeju Island [magnitude 4.9], greater Tokyo [4.9] and along the Ohio-Kentucky border [3.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• Former Category-5 Typhoon Rai slammed into the southern Philippine island of Siargao as a Category-4 storm. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated before one of the world’s strongest storms of the year made landfall.
• Category-1 Cyclone Ruby weakened to tropical storm force over the Coral Sea just before soaking New Caledonia.



Volcanic Record

La Palma's Cumbre Vieja volcano suddenly fell silent only two days after its nearly three-month eruption broke the record as the longest running on the Spanish Canary island since records began in 1500.
Experts caution that the lack of tremors and only minimal lava flows do not necessarily mean the eruption has ended.
Lava flows have damaged or destroyed nearly 3,000 homes and other structures since Sep. 19. Large areas of farmland have also been blanketed with lava.



Arctic Alarm

A new NOAA report warns that the loss of sea ice, thawing permafrost and the melting of Greenland’s ice cap due to human-caused climate change are part of an “alarming and undeniable” trend in climate change.
The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than the rest of the planet.
The report coincided with the U.N. World Meteorological Organization’s confirmation that the previous summer’s all-time record Arctic heat of 100 degrees Fahrenheit was accurate.
The reading at the Siberian community of Verkhoyansk on June 20, 2020, was the result of an exceptional and prolonged Siberian heat wave, which was accompanied by expansive wildfires.



Plastic Eaters

Scientists say they have found evidence that microbes in the soil and sea are evolving to eat plastic.
Scientists at Sweden’s Chalmers University say the evolution is occurring most rapidly in places containing the most plastic pollution.
The global proliferation of plastic over the past 70 years has given the microbes enough time to evolve and to produce enzymes to degrade different plastics.
“Currently, very little is known about these plastic-degrading enzymes, and we did not expect to find such a large number of them across so many different microbes and environmental habitats,” said systems biologist Aleksej Zelezniak.
He added that further research could potentially create new, powerful microbial enzymes designed to eat specific types of plastic.



Rodent Resistance

Efforts to entirely eradicate invasive mice from a remote South Atlantic island appear to have failed, causing the project’s leader to say he is “heartbroken.”
Gough Island is roughly midway between the southern tip of Africa and South America, and is home to one of the world’s largest seabird nesting colonies.
Mice brought there by sailors in the 19th century have since eaten untold numbers of eggs and chicks. Early this year, scientists targeted the mice with poison. But footage from a remote camera recently revealed that at least one mouse had survived.



Undersea Light Pollution

A new survey of the world’s coastal waters has found that up to 730,000 square miles are being exposed to “biologically significant” levels of artificial light at night.
While many species are accustomed to the regular changes in light that occur naturally through the day, the researchers say light from coastal developments can scatter a long way out to sea, and its color temperatures are quite different from those of the stars, moon and sun.
They say the intensity of the artificial light offshore is “alarming” in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and South China Sea. Previous studies found the light harms the ability of some species to use the moon and stars to find food, but the study says further research is needed.


• Extreme Temperatures: -62°F Shologonsky, Siberia; 113°F Mardie, W. Australia

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December 13, 2021 (for the week ending Dec 10)



Earthquakes

• A wide area of Kansas was jolted for a few seconds by a magnitude 4.3 quake that was centered near Salina.
• Earth movements were also felt in far eastern Turkey’s Van province [magnitude 4.9], a wide stretch of South Asia’s Hindu Kush region [4.4], northeastern Taiwan [5.3] and islands of southern Japan [6.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Teratai became the third such cyclone to form in the same area of the northeastern Indian Ocean in as many weeks.



Volcanic Misery

The area around Java's Mount Semeru suffered devastation as the volcano spewed searing ash and gas that killed at least 34 people and left 16 others missing.
Ash up to 3 feet deep from the explosive eruption covered homes, roads and farmland.
The force of the volcanic debris cascading down Semeru’s slopes destroyed homes as well as downing trees and power lines.
The volcano, also known as Mahameru, has produced numerous eruptions during the past two centuries of recorded history.



Orca Intrusion

Decreasing sea ice around the North Pole and a rapidly warming Arctic climate appear to be driving orcas, also known as killer whales, deeper into the Arctic Ocean, where they could be a threat to the region’s ecosystem.
While a common sight in many of the world’s oceans, orcas have historically not ventured to waters covered in ice most of the year because of the danger of becoming trapped beneath it.
But using underwater microphones to record and date orca vocalizations, Brynn Kimber at the University of Washington and her colleagues found that the marine mammals are now arriving early in summer near the Bering Strait.



Ice-free Hunger

Winter sea ice has reformed off Siberia so rapidly this year that it has trapped ships and blocked supplies to Russian cities, but Canada’s Hudson Bay now has an extreme lack of ice, threatening the region’s polar bears.
The massive Arctic bay typically begins to freeze in November, but temperatures about 11 degrees above normal have left it virtually ice-free into December.
Peter Convey, an ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey, says this is not good for the polar bears, which need the ice to hunt seals.
“The longer they don’t have sea ice, they get a gradual loss in (health) condition. Fewer will survive.”
Bears are now left standing along the Hudson Bay shores in a season that is second only to 2010 for the lack of ice in early December.



Dead Forests

A combination of the drought and heat waves that led up to the massive wildfires that ravaged southeastern Australia in 2019 and 2020 have left up to 60% of the trees that escaped the blazes dead.
Western Sydney University researchers, along with a vast team of citizen scientists, found that even species that are “superbly adapted” to Australia’s harsh conditions had died. They say that the record heat and drought of 2019 were just too much for many common varieties.
If the trees don’t grow back, experts say their absence threatens the availability of food and other resources for insects, birds and other species.



Plastic Resistance

Broken-down microplastics from discarded food containers are not only providing a cozy home for microbes and chemical contaminants, but researchers say they also attract free-floating genetic material that can deliver antibiotic resistance to bacteria.
An international team says it found that micro-plastics broken down by the sun’s ultraviolet light make perfect homes for antibiotic-resistant microbes that can be passed on to people, lowering their ability to fight infections.
Writing in the Journal of Hazardous Materials , the scientists say this can happen even in the complete absence of antibiotics.
“Enhanced dissemination of antibiotic resistance is an overlooked potential impact of microplastics pollution,” said civil and environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez.


• Extreme Temperatures: -62°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 113°F Dampier, W. Australia

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December 06, 2021 (for the week ending Dec 03)



Earthquakes

• One of the world’s most powerful quakes this year [, a magnitude 7.5 quake,] injured at least 12 people and damaged hundreds of homes in northern Peru’s Amazon region.
• Earth movements were also felt in southwestern Turkey [magnitude 4.9], the India-Myanmar border region [6.2] and central parts of Tibet [5.4].



Tropical Cyclones

• Late-season Typhoon Nyatoh formed just west of Guam and then curved northward over the central Pacific.
• Tropical Storm Teratai formed briefly just south of Sumatra.



Eruption Surge

The 10th week of La Palma's volcanic eruption saw hundreds of powerful seismic tremors lead to new lava vents opening up, releasing fresh streams of lava.
One flow from the Cumbre Vieja volcano threatened a Canary Island neighborhood that had already been evacuated three times since the intense eruption began on Sept. 19.
Volcanologists say the greatest volume of lava is now coming from a new, secondary cone.
Satellite images reveal that nearly 2,750 buildings have so far been destroyed by the eruption.



Hybrid Salmon

Canadian officials say a new hybrid species of coho and Chinook salmon has been found between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland, possibly the result of climate change.
Andres Araujo at Fisheries and Oceans Canada says the hybrids look like a mix of the two species, and genetic markers confirm that they are indeed hybrids.
He and colleagues point out that dry conditions in recent years have lowered the water level of the Cowichan River spawning area, which delayed the Chinook’s late-summer spawning.
This probably brought those fish into contact with the coho and allowed them to interbreed later in autumn.



La Niña Cooling

Unusually warm weather should prevail in many regions of the world during the coming months despite the La Niña ocean cooling in the Pacific, according to the U.N. weather agency.
“The cooling impact of the 2020/2021 La Niña, which is typically felt in the second half of the event, means that 2021 will be one of the 10 warmest years on record, rather than THE warmest year,” World Meteorological Organization (WMO) chief Petteri Taalas said in a statement.
However, he added this will be only a short-lived respite from the trend of hotter conditions predicted in the years to come due to greenhouse gas emissions.
The WMO predicts a 70% to 80% chance of La Niña through March of 2022.



Rabbit 'Hotels'

Plummeting rabbit populations across the United Kingdom have prompted its National Heritage organization to ask landowners to create innovative rabbit “hotels” to help the bunnies survive.
A new rabbit hemorrhagic viral disease has seen rabbit numbers decrease by 88% in the East Midlands and 83% in Scotland between 1996 and 2018. Across all of Britain, populations fell by 43% between 2008 and 2018.
The Shifting Sands project asks people to arrange piles of branches around rabbit warrens to provide safety from predators and to create new sites for females to give birth.
Experts say the grazing rabbits promote wildlife diversity, helping rare plants and invertebrates to thrive.



Different Meltdown

An underground ice wall that was created to contain contaminated groundwater seepage at Japan’s melt-down-plagued Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has itself partially melted, according to operators.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. says it is launching “remedial work” to strengthen the wall of frozen ground.
Large amounts of radioactive water have been stored at the facility since a 2011 combined earthquake and tsunami disaster knocked out power to the plant’s cooling units, triggering reactor meltdowns.
Residents in the region are concerned about plans to release stored water still contaminated with tritium more than a half-mile off-shore in the spring of 2023.


• Extreme Temperatures: -50°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 109°F Dampier, W. Australia

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November 29, 2021 (for the week ending Nov 26)



Earthquakes

• Eastern Azerbaijan’s Shamakhi region was jolted by a magnitude 5.1 quake. It occurred near the epicenters of more powerful and deadly temblors in 1667 and 1859.
• Earth movements were also felt in northwestern Sumatra [magnitude 5.0], western India’s Rajasthan state [4.6] and eastern Turkey’s Erzurum province [5.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Paddy formed over the Indian Ocean, to the south of Australia’s remote Christmas Island. It was a threat only to shipping at minimal tropical storm force.



Volcanic Gas Hazard

High concentrations of carbon dioxide spewing from volcanic vents on the Italian island of Vulcano have prompted officials to order hundreds of residents to leave home at night for fear of them being suffocated in their sleep.
While the island’s volcano, located off the northern coast of Sicily, hasn’t erupted since 1890, CO₂ levels six times higher than normal from it have already caused breathing difficulties for some residents and health issues for pets.
Since the heavy gas can hug the ground on windless nights, officials fear it could seep into homes, killing those sleeping in the low-lying areas around Porto di Levante.



Gone in a Flash

Researchers say they have found a new and effective way to kill bacterial superbugs and viruses without harming human cells — ultrashort pulses of lasers.
A team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis says its findings could lead to new ways to sterilize wounds and blood products.
“At a certain laser power, we’re inactivating viruses. As you increase the power, you start inactivating bacteria,” said first author Shaw-Wei (David) Tsen. “But it takes even higher power than that, and we’re talking orders of magnitude, to start killing human cells.”
He proposes that scanning a wound with tuned lasers could reduce the chances of infection.



La Niña Outbreak

A pronounced cooling of the tropical Pacific in recent weeks between the coasts of South America and Indonesia has prompted Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology to declare that a La Niña weather event has begun.
The opposite of El Niño, the ocean cooling typically causes much wetter weather for eastern, northern and central parts of Australia. It has also historically been responsible for potent storms in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, which are currently suffering weather disasters from wet storms this month.
Despite the ocean cooling already in place across the Pacific, the World Meteorological Organization has yet to declare La Niña’s return.



Wayward Voyager

One of the world’s rarest birds of prey appears to be taking a hemispheric grand tour after being spotted almost half a world away from its typical home in Far East Russia, China and Japan.
The lone Steller’s sea eagle has so far been spotted this year by birdwatchers in Alaska, Texas and the Canadian Maritime provinces.
Larger than the bald eagle, the Steller’s sea eagle usually feeds on salmon and trout, but ornithologists say it will feast on what protein it can find, living or dead.
Experts believed it migrated the wrong way, was blown off course or is just looking for a better home.



Seafood Distress

It may one day be illegal to boil lobsters and crabs alive after a new report claims they and other types of popular seafood have the capacity to feel pain.
A British government study concludes that those animals can not only experience pain, but they also suffer distress when harmed.
“After reviewing over 300 scientific studies, we concluded that cephalopod mollusks and decapod crustaceans (octopuses and squids) should be regarded as sentient, and should therefore be included within the scope of animal welfare law,” said lead investigator Jonathan Birch of The London School of Economics Center’s Foundations of Animal Sentience project.


• Extreme Temperatures: -50°F Batamay, Siberia; 109°F Rivadavia, Salta, Argentina

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November 22, 2021 (for the week ending Nov 19)



Earthquakes

• Residents just east of Istanbul rushed into the streets as a moderate [magnitude 4.8] quake rocked the Turkish province of Duzce.
• Earth movements were also felt in southern Iran [magnitude 6.3], western Scotland [3.1], Iceland [5.1], southeastern Spain [2.2], western Australia [5.3], southern Sumatra [4.9], southeastern Missouri [4.0] and the San Francisco Bay Area [3.9].



Tropical Cyclones

• An unnamed tropical storm brought locally heavy rain to southern India’s Tamil Nadu state.
• A weaker disturbance drenched the same region six days later.



Volcanic Blasts

The Philippines’ restive Taal Volcano produced three blasts that sent vapor and ash into the sky, 30 miles south of Manila.
The steam explosions were caused by groundwater coming in contact with magma beneath the surface.



Eruption Survivors

While several beehives on La Palma in the Canary Islands have been lost to lava flows and ash from the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano since September, thousands of bees were rescued from the ash still alive after 50 days of being trapped.
Beekeepers dug out six hives from beneath more than 3 feet of ash and found that five had survived. The thousands of bees rescued had sealed themselves in with a resinous material they can produce, and survived on their honey food reserves.
Cumbre Vieja continues to erupt with vast amounts of lava, but with less force than in previous weeks. The eruption’s first human victim was a 70-year-old man who died when his ash-covered roof collapsed.



Dangerously Hot

Exposure to extreme heat has tripled among the world’s population since 1983, according to an analysis of population and temperature data from Columbia University.
The Associated Press analysis looked at the period from 1983 to 2016 and found that the more extreme heat now affects about a quarter of the world’s population.
Instead of using the more common heat index, the study looked at what is known as the wet-bulb globe temperature, which takes into account temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover.
This more accurately measures the amount of stress created for workers and others who must endure the hotter conditions outside.
South Asia is seeing the most added heat stress, with the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka suffering 50 more dangerously hot days each year than in 1983.
But nearly half of urban centers around the world are also experiencing an increasing amount of heat exposure, the analysis found.



Stinging Attacks

Scorpions forced into people’s homes by heavy rain and flooding around Aswan, Egypt, stung about 450 residents, with three reportedly dying from the venom.
Those stung suffered severe pain, fever, sweating, vomiting, diarrhea and muscle tremors.
The Arabian fat-tailed scorpions that inhabit the region are among the most dangerous scorpions in the world. Their venom can kill an adult within an hour of being stung.



Arboreal Deaths

Drying soils from climate change are causing trees to die at an increasing rate in forests across Europe.
A new study led by Jan-Peter George and colleagues at the Tartu Observatory in Estonia used millions of ground observations rather than satellite data to exclude tree losses from felling, disease and pests.
They found that the Norway spruce has been the hardest hit, with mortality rates 60% higher on average between 2010 and 2020 than between 1995 and 2009.
But they say all species in every European region are seeing higher mortalities since 2012, mainly due to unusually low soil moisture.
The tree deaths increase wildfire risks and cut down on the amount of carbon dioxide soaked up by forests.


• Extreme Temperatures: -70°F Vostok Station, Antarctica; 116°F Hardap, Namibia

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November 15, 2021 (for the week ending Nov 12)



Earthquakes

• Much of central New Zealand was jolted by a magnitude 5.5 temblor.
• Earth movements were also felt in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands [magnitude 4.3] and Sikkim state [4.3], southwestern Turkey [5.1] and western Nicaragua [6.2].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Wanda dissipated to the northwest of the Azores.
• Tropical storms Sandra and Terry formed briefly over the eastern Pacific.



Debris Damage

The massive amount of floating pumice spewed in August from an undersea volcano in southern Japan’s remote Ogasawara island chain has damaged boats and ports as far north as Okinawa and Kyushu.
Japanese scientists have begun to analyze the composition of the pumice and the ocean currents that carried it far from the eruption.
A eruption of the same volcano in 1986 also carried pumice stones to Okinawa.



Naturally Abundant

Wind and solar could provide enough electricity to meet most of the current demand in the U.S., according to an international study.
Writing in Nature Communications, researchers say batteries and other storage methods could provide even more reliable round-the-clock power.
“Wind and solar could meet more than 80% of demand in many places without crazy amounts of storage or excess generating capacity, which is the critical point,” said co-author Steve Davis of the University of California, Irvine.
“But depending on the country, there may be many multi-day periods through- out the year when some demand will need to be met by energy storage and other non-fossil energy sources in a zero-carbon future.”



Wild Bee Bonanza

The last descendants of England’s wild honeybees have been discovered in pristine ancient woodlands just outside Oxford, long after the species was thought to have been wiped out.
The wild bees are smaller, darker and with more fur than bees in managed hives, according to bee conservationist Filipe Salbany. He says they also nest among branches located high above the ground, which is why they had never been spotted before.
The woodlands in which they were found are not open to the public, and there is no gardening, beekeeping or planting allowed, so there is “very little human interaction,” Salbany told The Guardian.
He said one of the tree nests he spotted is at least 200 years old.



Leak Detection

Satellite data has revealed nearly 800 major methane leaks from four countries.
While methane accounts for only 16% of all greenhouse gas emissions, it is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing global heating. Cutting those emissions is crucial to combat climate change.
Scientists from the U.S. and Europe used data from two satellites to detect the most methane leaks from oil and gas facilities in the United States, Algeria, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
They say the leaks could be repaired or prevented with better fossil fuel infrastructure maintenance.



Unbridled Warming

A new report warns that even with all the pledges made at the Glasgow climate conference, roughly twice as much carbon will be emitted by man-made sources by 2030 than will be needed to push global heating past the 1.5-degree Celsius mark.
Under “business as usual,” without any of the new pledges, the world will warm up by 2.7 degrees this century, said Climate Action Tracker. Chief Executive Officer Bill Hare said there are no plans in place to achieve many of the 2030 targets.
Scientists say to keep warming to the aspirational goal of 1.5 degrees, global greenhouse gas emissions must fall 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 to hit “net zero” by 2050.
The British Met Office warns that 1 billion people will face deadly heat with just 2 degrees of warming.


• Extreme Temperatures: -69°F Vostok Station, Antarctica; 114°F Tete, Mozambique

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November 08, 2021 (for the week ending Nov 05)



Earthquakes

• [With a 6.0 magnitude,] Northern Sumatra was jolted by one of the strongest temblors in years.
• Earth movements were also felt in eastern Indonesia’s Seram Island [magnitude 5.7], central India’s Telangana state [4.3], Tunisia [4.2], northwestern Spain [4.4] and along the central Chile-Argentina border [5.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• The Atlantic hurricane season has been so busy that all of the names used for the storms have yet again become exhausted.
• Tropical Storm Wanda formed in the mid-Atlantic, then skirted the Azores.



Lava and Ash

Residents and workers on Spain’s La Palma Island are fighting a losing battle to clean the vast clouds of ash that almost continually rain down on their neighborhoods from the ongoing eruption of the Cumber Vieja volcano .
Relentless flows of lava have rushed to the sea, and the entire island was rocked by a magnitude 5.1 volcanic quake — the strongest of an eruption that has caused chaos in the Canary Islands for well over a month. Vulcanologists cautioned that a decrease in tremors and emissions late in the week does not mean the eruption is ending.



Melt Floods

Increased runoff from the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet is heightening the risk of global coastal flooding, according to new research.
Scientists from Britain’s University of Leeds say Greenland’s runoff has risen by 21% over the past four decades, and has become 60% more erratic from one summer to the next.
They found that global heating has melted 3.5 trillion tons of ice during that period, which flowed into the ocean. Over the past decade alone, that melt has lifted sea levels by 0.4 inches.
The study concludes that the rising sea levels from that melt heighten the risk of flooding for coastal communities worldwide, and disrupt marine ecosystems of the Arctic Ocean.



Quieter Spring

The natural soundscape of chirping birds across much of North America and Europe appears to have become quieter and less diverse over the past 25 years, in which researchers say bird numbers have plummeted.
Simon Butler of Britain’s University of East Anglia analyzed sound clips with acoustic modeling of more than a thousand bird species that were recorded in Europe and North America between 1996 and 2018.
He and colleagues found there was a sharp decline in both the diversity and intensity of birdsongs, mirroring the loss of bird populations during the study period.
It has been documented that the calls and other sounds made by the winged creatures can have a positive effect on human well-being and connect us with the natural world.



Climatic Famine

The deepening food crisis affecting Madagascar after five years of extreme weather events is being dubbed the first climate-induced famine by the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP).
About 1.3 million people there are suffering from acute hunger, with 30,000 in the grip of famine due to loss of crops and livestock. Some are eating cactus leaves and insects to survive.
WFP Deputy Country Director in Madagascar Aduino Mangoni said huge numbers have moved to urban centers in search of help. He added that while famines elsewhere have mainly been driven by conflict, “This is basically the only, maybe the first climate-change famine on Earth.”



Cricket Confusion

Light pollution has been found to make crickets chirp during the day instead of nocturnally, which researchers fear is disrupting their breeding success.
Male crickets typically chirp at night as an invitation for females to come and mate with them.
A team from Tel Aviv University and the Open University of Israel found that field crickets exposed to 12 hours of light followed by 12 hours of darkness began to chirp when the lights went out and stopped when the light returned.
But those exposed to more light during 24-hour periods lost their natural rhythms and developed a different synchronization with their environment, or they lost all natural rhythm when exposed to constant light.


• Extreme Temperatures: -74°F Vostok Station, Antarctica; 108°F Linguere, Senegal

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November 01, 2021 (for the week ending Oct 29)



Earthquakes

• Several were injured when a magnitude 6.5 temblor caused scattered damage across northeastern Taiwan.
• Earth movements were also felt in northern New Zealand [magnitude 5.9], Los Angeles [3.6], California’s central coast [4.7] and around the West Texas cities of Midland and Odessa [3.6].



Tropical Cyclones

• High winds and downpours from Hurricane Rick uprooted trees and damaged roads in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
• Typhoon Malou passed directly over the remote Japanese island of Iwo Jima.



Eruption Desperation

The relentless flow of lava from the most violent and damaging eruption in Spain’s history claimed more structures and land.
The collapse of La Palma’s Cumber Vieja volcanic dome was accompanied by earthquakes and surges of lava that have so far covered 3.5 square miles and destroyed well over 2,000 structures.
One local official pleaded with the military to bomb the volcano in a desperate attempt to stop the lava.
The U.S. bombed Hawaii’s erupting Mauna Loa volcano in 1935 with dubious success.



La Niña Impacts

The strengthening La Niña ocean cooling across the Pacific may add to Asia’s energy crisis as the pattern typically brings below-normal temperatures during the Northern Hemisphere winter.
China and other countries are already grappling with surging fuel prices and power shortages that have curbed some industrial production.
A bitterly cold winter could increase the demand for heating and make the energy shortage even more acute, industry experts warn.
NOAA predicts La Niña will peak at moderate strength early next year, bringing cooler and wetter weather to parts of the northern U.S. and much of western Canada. Drier and possibly warmer weather may prevail in the south, forecasters say.



Climate Warnings

The world is now on track for 2.6 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels based on current pledges by world leaders to cut emissions, according to the United Nations.
The prediction comes as a survey of nearly 90,000 climate-related studies revealed that 99.9% of all atmospheric scientists agree that global heating is being caused by human activities, especially greenhouse gas emissions.
“This report is another thundering wake-up call. How many do we need? The emissions gap is the result of a leadership gap,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters. “The era of half measures and hollow promises must end.”



Nasty Invaders

Dozens of troublesome buzzards have mysteriously laid siege to a North Carolina town, where their acid vomit, toxic feces and general carousing have become a nightmare for residents.
Droppings of the scavengers that have invaded the town of Bunn can strip paint from a car, and their seemingly intentional projectile vomit is often aimed at approaching people or other creatures, according to the News and Observer daily.
Local naturalist Kathy Schlosser says the practice is a means of escape as it lessens the birds’ weight to allow a quick takeoff.



Migration's End

Climate change appears to be causing many migratory birds to spend between 50 and 60 fewer days in their historic African wintering homes, and new research says some may soon stop migrating southward from Europe entirely.
Writing in the journal Global Change Biology, scientists from Britain’s Durham University say records from 1964 to 2019 reveal that some species are arriving at their wintering grounds later in autumn and departing earlier in spring.
“In the traditional migration destinations of sub-Saharan Africa, a reduction in the time migratory birds spend there could have implications ... such as insect consumption, seed dispersal and pollination,” said lead author Kieran Lawrence.


• Extreme Temperatures: -74°F South Pole, Antarctica; 108°F Oodnadatta, S. Australia

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October 25, 2021 (for the week ending Oct 22)



Earthquakes

• At least three people perished in Bali when a strong [magnitude 5.1] temblor triggered landslides and destroyed dozens of homes.
• A powerful [magnitude 5.9] quake beneath the Mediterranean was felt widely from Greece to Jerusalem and Cairo.
• Earth movements were also felt in central Iran [magnitude 5.1], central Nepal [4.7], northeastern Taiwan [5.2], the Cayman Islands [5.3] and Trinidad and Tobago [5.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Flash flooding triggered by the remnants of Hurricane Pamela swept two to their deaths in a Texas creek near San Antonio.
• Months of high tropical cyclone activity across the North Pacific, North Atlantic and Indian Ocean basins came to a sudden end



Spanish Eruption

Vast amounts of lava have spewed from Spain’s La Palma volcano for more than a month in a historic and unusually destructive eruption for the volcanic Canary Islands.
Accompanied by strong tremors, the eruption has flattened nearly 2,000 buildings as it engulfed almost 2,000 acres in deep lava, the size of 1,000 soccer fields.
Scientists say they have no idea how long the eruption will continue.



CO2 Surge

On the eve of the COP26 climate conference, established under the Paris Agreement to cope with the climate crisis, scientists say emissions from rich nations have risen sharply in 2021.
The Climate Transparency Report says emissions will rise 4% in the world’s 20 largest economies in 2021 after dropping about 6% last year due to COVID.
With the world currently around 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial times and with the goal to keep warming to only 1.5 degrees, the report says nations will have to put ambitious policies in place to curb the worst of global heating.



Humpback Return

The population of humpback whales in the South Atlantic has made a sharp recovery in recent years, with an estimated 24,543 of the marine mammals feeding in sub-Antarctic waters each southern summer. More than that number were slaughtered by whalers there between 1900 and the 1950s.
The species was rarely seen in the three decades after whaling ended in the 1960s. But scientists say the whales are increasingly feeding in the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands during summertime.
“Good news environmental stories have sadly become rare these days, so we are very pleased to confirm the recovery of the humpback whale population in the southwest Atlantic,” said lead researcher Mick Baines.



Roaming Carriers

Domestic cats may be infecting wild animals with a potentially fatal parasitic infection, especially creatures living around cities.
Scientists from the University of British Columbia say that toxoplasmosis infects between 30% and 50% of the human population and can lead to chronic illness and death in humans and animals with weak immune systems.
They say people who let their house cats roam freely could be helping to spread the parasite into the wild.



Nuclear Aftermath

Wildlife around Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have survived exposure to radiation from the meltdowns of the plant’s three nuclear reactors without serious consequences, according to a new international study.
Massive releases of radioactive material from the March 2011 disaster contaminated the Fukushima landscape and forced the evacuation of over 150,000 residents.
But scientists writing in the journal Environment International say DNA and other markers in the region’s wildlife did not show any adverse health effects.
They did find unusually low levels of cortisol, a stress indicator, in some wild animals living in the evacuated Exclusion Zone.


• Extreme Temperatures: -89°F Vostok, Antarctica; 110°F Podor, Senegal

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October 18, 2021 (for the week ending Oct 15)



Earthquakes

• A magnitude 6.1 quake after dark on Oct. 7 near Tokyo injured more than 20 people and caused scattered damage
• A powerful [magnitude 6.2] temblor centered near the Big Island was felt widely across Hawaii.
• Earth movements were also felt in the Alaska Peninsula [magnitude 6.9], the Spain-Andorra border area [3.6], Crete [6.3], islands of the Molucca Sea [5.7] and central New Zealand [5.3].



Tropical Cyclones

• Landslides and floods from Tropical Storm Kompasu killed at least 19 people in the Philippines. It later lashed China’s Hainan Island, on a path similar to Tropical Storm Lion-rock’s just days earlier.
• Northwestern Mexico was drenched by late-season Hurricane Pamela.
• The Pacific was churned by Tropical Storm Namtheun.



Volcanic Destruction

The ongoing violent eruption of Spain’s La Palma volcano saw chunks of lava the size of buildings spewed from its craters.
Erratic and powerful lava flows forced an additional 800 residents from their homes as molten rock approached their municipalities. Nearly 7,000 people have evacuated since the Canary Island volcano began erupting on Sept. 19.
Lockdowns have been imposed when toxic gases from the eruption have threatened to blow over populated areas.
Lava has destroyed more than 1,400 buildings on La Palma, including homes, farms and a cement factory.



A Very Close Call

A Canadian woman says she is lucky to be alive after a meteor crashed through her roof and wound up on a pillow inches from her head.
Ruth Hamilton of Golden, British Columbia, said she was sound asleep the night of Oct. 4 when a loud crash and the feeling of debris falling on her face caused her to leap from her bed.
A large stone and smaller bits were scattered on her bed. “Everything about the story was consistent with a meteorite fall, and the fact that this bright fireball had occurred basically right at the same time made it a pretty overwhelming case,” said astronomer Peter Brown.



Cyclone Refuge

Scientists have new insight into how birds and insects become trapped inside the eyes of hurricanes.
Ship logs as far back as the 19th century detail how vessels became resting places for birds, exhausted from such entrapments.
But studies by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln of weather radar “bioscatter” echoes during hurricanes show in detail how the storms can turn a free bird into a whirlybird.
Researchers found that the stronger the hurricane, the more birds appeared to be in the eye. And with the increasing intensity of the storms, the more difficult it will be for the birds to leave the relative safety of the eye.
That could mean they need to spend as much as a week flying in circles across thousands of miles.



Coldest Cold

The U.S. Snow and Ice Data Center says that the last six months in Antarctica, most of it spent in the southern winter’s polar darkness, were the coldest on record.
It calculated that the average temperature during the period was minus 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station also recorded its second-coldest June-August period on record, behind only 2004 in the station’s 60 years of weather records.
The chill was due to two periods of very strong winds encircling the continent, and a strong polar vortex.



Climate Impacts

Nearly all of the world’s population may already be affected by the climate emergency, according to an analysis of tens of thousands of scientific studies.
Researchers from Berlin’s Mercator Research Institute and Climate Analytics say they used machine learning to comb through vast amounts of research between 1951 and 2018.
After teaching a computer to identify climate-relevant studies, they gleaned results that include changes in butterfly migration, heat-related deaths, loss of forest cover-age and other changes.
They say data covering 80% of the globe show 85% of the human population is already being impacted.


• Extreme Temperatures: -84°F Vostok, Antarctica; 111°F Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

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October 11, 2021 (for the week ending Oct 8)



Earthquakes

• At least 20 people were killed and hundreds injured when an over-night [magnitude 5.9] temblor wrecked mud homes in central Pakistan.
• Earth movements were also felt in northern Afghanistan [magnitude 5.1], metropolitan Tokyo [5.9], northeastern Japan [5.6], the Big Island of Hawaii [4.6], the north-western Philippines [5.3] and southwestern Switzerland [4.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• The remnants of Tropical Storm Gulab, which earlier lashed India’s Bay of Bengal coast, regenerated into Cyclone Shaheen over the Arabian Sea. It then triggered dust storms and severe flooding from southern Iran to Oman.
  At least 36 people were killed by the cyclone from India to the Saudi Peninsula.
• Typhoon Mindulle brought heavy rain and gales to the east coast of Japan.
• Bermuda was pounded by heavy surf from passing Hurricane Sam, which still maintained tropical storm force as its remnants eventually skirted Iceland.



Historic Eruption

The eruption of the La Palma volcano in the Canary Is-lands became the most destructive in Spain’s history after parts of the massive volcanic dome col-lapsed, sending thick lava cascading into the Atlantic.
Nearly 1,000 homes have been lost in the 10% of La Palma hit by the lava.



Heat Islands

Heat stored in buildings, roads and other man-made objects is causing the nearly quarter of the world’s population that lives in cities to suffer increased health hazards and economic hardships caused by global heating.
And researchers write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that as metropolitan areas grow larger, they will become even greater heat traps.
During the past 40 years, hundreds of millions of people have moved from rural areas to cities in search of a better life. The heat there worsens preexisting health conditions and the ability to work, the report says.
About 40 major cities in the United States alone saw exposure to extreme heat grow “rapidly,” mainly in the Gulf Coast states from Florida to Texas.



Rodent Resurgence

Australia’s disastrous mouse plague is growing rapidly again as the country leaves wintertime and approaches the summer growing season.
Following a lull in recent months, experts warn that farmers could again be forced to destroy their crops if they become contaminated by the pests’ droppings or decaying bodies.
The losses and emotional toll inflicted last autumn by untold hundreds of millions of the marauding mice created economic and mental health crises for many growers.
Wildlife experts say that the poisons used by farmers to help control the ravenous hordes have also killed large clusters of cockatoos and other creatures.



Water Warnings

Much of the world appears unprepared for the hazards that global heating will bring, with increased flood-ing, hurricanes and drought.
A new report by the World Meteorological Organization says that well over half of the 100 countries surveyed need better weather forecasting systems to cope.
The report documents that since 2000, flooding disasters rose by 134% compared with the last two decades of the 20th century. Drought-related disasters rose by 29% during the same period.
Asia suffered most from increased flooding, while African nations recorded the most drought-related deaths.
A quarter of all cities around the world already experience water shortages



Earth Dimming

Global heating during the past two decades has caused the planet to appear dimmer from space, scientists say.
Less low-lying cloud cover over parts of the warming oceans is said to be the main cause of a 0.5% drop in the amount of light reflected by the planet.
Most of the dimming observed by satellites was across the vast Pacific and during the last three years of the 1998-2017 study.
Scientists at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in New Jersey write in Geophysical Research Letters that the changes in Earth’s reflectiveness did not match changes in the sun’s brightness during recent solar cycles.


• Extreme Temperatures: -91°F Vostok, Antarctica; 114°F Omidiyeh, Iran

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October 04, 2021 (for the week ending Oct 1)



Earthquakes

• A sharp [magnitude 5.8] temblor on the Greek island of Crete killed one person and injured about 20 others as it caused significant damage.
• Earth movements were also felt in central Pakistan [magnitude 4.3], India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands [5.2], a wide area of Japan’s Honshu Island [6.1], eastern Taiwan [5.7] and southeastern Dominican Republic [4.3].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Gulab uprooted thousands of trees and utility poles while flooding parts of India’s central Bay of Bengal coast and interior areas.
• Typhoon Mindulle was predicted to skirt Japan’s eastern coast days after Tropical Storm Dianmu soaked central Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.
• Hurricane Sam, Tropical Storm Teresa and Tropical Storm Victor spun over various parts of the North Atlantic basin.



Eruptions

• Many residents of Spain’s La Palma Island were told to seal doors and windows with tape and wet towels to protect against potentially toxic gases emitted by the eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano .
  Almost 600 homes have been lost to lava since the Canary Island volcano be-gan erupting on Sept. 17.
• Guatemala’s Fuego volcano spewed ash and lava during a 32-hour eruption just southwest of the capital.
• Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupted with fountains of lava in its summit crater.



Arctic Minimum

The sea ice surrounding the North Pole reached its lowest coverage of the year on Sept. 17.
While not a record low this year, sea ice cover has dropped by about 50% since the 1980s, which scientists say has been a direct result of greenhouse gas emissions.
This summer’s more stubborn ice forced Russia to use icebreakers to clear a path through its summertime Northern Sea Route after it remained blocked for the first time since 2008.



Arboreal Confusion

Extreme weather events brought on by climate change have disrupted the annual fall foliage season, especially in parts of North America.
The leaves of deciduous trees from eastern Cana-da and New England to the Rockies typically transform into hues of yellow and red at this time of year.
But heat waves, drought and leaf-stripping hurricanes have shocked some trees into a state of arboreal confusion.
“Instead of trees doing this gradual change, they get thrown these wacky weather events. They change all of a sudden, or they drop leaves early,” Colorado arborist Michael Sundberg told The Associated Press.



Deadly Stings

Dozens of endangered African penguins were stung to death by a swarm of honeybees on a beach near Cape Town.
The South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds told reporters the bees appeared to target the eyes of the 63 dead penguins.
“We checked the other bodies again and found stings still embedded around the eyes in almost all of the birds,” said foundation president David Roberts.
It is possible a nearby beehive was disturbed, causing the bees to become defensive and attack the birds.



'Cooked' Mussels

Some of Greece’s hottest summer weather in decades decimated parts of the country’s mussel harvest and the baby mussel seeds that would have grown into next year’s mature population.
Fisherman Stefanos Sougioultzis told Reuters that it was “as if they boiled in their own environment.”
The high water temperature in the Thermaic Gulf near Thessaloniki in northern Greece not only caused the mussels to suffer heat stress, but it also encouraged a thick white mass, described as a kind of tube worm, to cling to the mussels and gradually kill them.
Many fishermen feel the gulf will become too warm for the mussels in the hotter summers to come.


• Extreme Temperatures: -105°F Vostok, Antarctica; 114°F Adrar, Algeria

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September 27, 2021 (for the week ending Sep 24)



Earthquakes

• [At magnitude 5.9], a rare and unusually strong temblor for south-eastern Australia caused scattered structural damage around Melbourne.
• Earth movements were also felt in the India-Myanmar border region [magnitude 5.1], western Nicaragua [6.5], southern Idaho [4.0], the eastern San Francisco Bay Area [3.2] and the low deserts of Southern California [3.2].



Tropical Cyclones

• Late reports say remnants of Typhoon Chanthu left six people injured across Japan.
• Tropical storms Odette, Peter and Rose churned the open waters of the Atlantic.



Volcanic Disaster

Hundreds of structures were destroyed by a volcanic eruption on Spain’s Atlantic island of La Palma, in the Canary Island archipelago.
Some of the thousands of residents in the path of lava had less than an hour to prepare to evacuate as lava surged toward densely populated areas and the ocean.
Experts warned that the lava could produce toxic gases if it comes in contact with Atlantic waters.
Island residents have also been warned of strong tremors, ash and acid rain, with scientists predicting the eruption could last for months.



Climate Dithering

Despite promises by world leaders to curb the greenhouse gases responsible for the worsening climate emergency, the U.N. warns that the world is now on track to heat up to dangerous levels.
Inaction by industry and governments to reduce carbon emissions now means there is likely to be a rise of 2.7 degrees Celsius this century above preindustrial levels, according to Patricia Espinosa, the U.N.’s chief climate negotiator.
Climate experts had hoped to keep the temperature rise to only 1.5 degrees, thus avoiding the worst consequences of global heating.
“The disruption to our climate and our planet is already worse than we thought, and it is moving faster than predicted,” warned U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.



Ozone Hole

The annual hole in the layer of stratospheric ozone over Antarctica has surged in size to now cover an area larger than the continent itself.
Stratospheric ozone helps protect the Earth’s surface from dangerous ultraviolet radiation.
While a worldwide ban on the chemicals responsible for ozone depletion is showing signs of helping the hole to heal, scientists say it will still take decades because those chemicals are slow to break down.
The European Space Agency says this year’s hole is now larger than 75% of those since the late 1970s.
The ozone holes typically reach their largest size between mid-September and mid-October.
NB: The ozone hole had its biggest size in the mid-1990s and was healing, thanks to the implementation of the Montreal protocol. But some countries have increased their output of ozone-damaging substances such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) in recent years, so progress may slow or even revert. Check out Wikipedia for an entry on ozone depletion.



Orcas vs. Boats

An increasing number of boats off Spain and Portugal are mysteriously being attacked by orcas, with one sailboat being bashed by about a dozen of the “killer whales” for two hours.
A total of 41 attacks were reported in July alone, with most near Gibraltar.
Orcas had previously been known to lurk around fishing boats and steal tuna that had been caught. But the new encounters are stumping marine scientists, who are not sure they are actual attacks.
“I don’t think we can consider them attacks if we can’t fully understand their motivation,” said cetacean expert Susana García-Tiscar.
NB: A list of wild and captive orca attacks on Wikipedia can be found at this link.



Wildfire Emissions

The firestorms that raged across parts of Siberia, North America and the Mediterranean this summer released a record amount of CO₂, according to Europe’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS).
The unprecedented blazes were triggered by heat waves, drought and parched soil, which experts say were amplified by global heating.
“What stood out as unusual were the number of fires, the size of the area in which they were burning, their intensity and also their persistence,” said CAMS senior scientist and wildfire expert Mark Parrington.
He added that summers with disastrous firestorms are now more likely, due to global heating.


• Extreme Temperatures: -97°F Vostok, Antarctica; 113°F Yanbu, Saudi Arabia

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September 20, 2021 (for the week ending Sep 17)



Earthquakes

• At least three people were killed by a powerful [magnitude 5.4] temblor in China’s Sichuan province.
• Earth movements were also felt in the northern Windward Islands [magnitude 5.0], northern Pakistan [4.7], Taiwan [5.6], north-western Argentina [6.2], interior Alaska [4.9] and Los Angeles [3.6].



Tropical Cyclones

• Former Category-5 Typhoon Chanthu skirted the far northern Philippines, Taiwan and mainland China before drenching a long stretch of Japan as a tropical storm.
• Category-1 Hurricane Nicholas drenched parts of coastal Texas and neighbor-ing Louisiana with more than a foot of rainfall.
• Newfoundland was pounded by Category-1 Hurricane Larry , which downed trees and knocked out power before its remnants moved on to produce blizzard conditions in southern Greenland.
• The southern tip of Baja California escaped serious damage when Hurricane Olaf briefly made landfall.



Popo Blasts

Mexico's Popocatépetl volcano produced a series of moderate to strong blasts that sent ash soaring above the state of Puebla.
Observers say fountains of lava bombs could be seen spewing from the crater as superheated debris cascaded down “Popo’s” slopes.



Oil Untouched

A new study says that oil and gas production around the world must fall by 3% each year, with 58% of known petroleum reserves remaining in the ground, to hold global heating to the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal in the Paris Agreement.
“There’s a good likelihood the rates of decline are going to have to be even larger, and the total amount of carbon that’s going to stay in the ground is also going to be larger,” said James Price at University College Lon-don, involved in the analysis.
While some oil companies have cut their plans for future oil and gas extraction as they transition to low-carbon energy, Price says the outlook is bleak for cooperation from countries that rely on revenue from oil and gas.



Bug Food

Finnish researchers say Europe can reduce global warming associated with its food consumption by switching, at least in part, to edible insects, such as crickets, flies and worms.
The team from the University of Helsinki and LUT University, Finland, proposes eating them fresh or drying and processing them into flour for bread and pasta.
It adds that directly eating the insects will contribute less to climate change than using them for livestock feed instead of soy.
The expanding use of soy in animal feed has led to rampant deforestation around the world to meet the demand.



Ape COVID Tests

Experts in Malaysia’s part of Borneo conducted antigen tests on 30 orangutans to see if the endangered primates had been infected with the coronavirus.
All of the samples collected by vets wearing protective suits came back negative, but the team says it will continue to monitor the apes and test them regularly.
Some domestic animals have become infected with COVID-19, and the Atlanta zoo just announced several of its gorillas had tested positive.



Bovine Urinals

A team of German and New Zealand researchers say they have successfully “potty trained” a herd of cows in an attempt to slash greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental damage linked to the ruminant animals’ excreta.
Using a system of reward and mild punishment, 11 cows were taught to urinate in an assigned area, where the pee could be collected and treated.
The ammonia produced in untreated cow urine is converted by microbes in the soil into nitrous oxide — the third-most significant greenhouse gas after methane and carbon dioxide.
Other nitrates produced in the process often wind up in rivers and streams through runoff from the soil.


• Extreme Temperatures: -95°F Vostok, Antarctica; 114°F Adrar, Algeria

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September 13, 2021 (for the week ending Sep 10)



Earthquakes

• At least one person was killed as a powerful [magnitude 7.0] temblor caused scattered damage and power failures around Acapulco.
• Earth movements were also felt in West Texas [magnitude 3.5], New Zealand’s North Island [4.9], eastern Taiwan [5.9] and Bali [4.5].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Conson knocked out power in parts of the Philippines.
• Typhoon Chanthu briefly reached Category-5 force east of the Philippines.
  
• Newfoundland was on alert for Hurricane Larry.
• Tropical Storm Olaf clipped Baja California.
• Tropical Storm Mindy doused northern Florida and southern Georgia.



Solar Meltdown

Earth’s reliance on electronics could make the planet vulnerable to a global internet “meltdown” should a solar storm as powerful as the one that occurred in the pre-hi-tech year of 1859 knock out that technology.
The Carrington Event of Sept. 1-2, 1859, caused serious damage to telegraph systems of the day.
Speaking to WIRED, researcher Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi said that while local and regional fiber networks probably wouldn’t be badly affected by such a large-scale solar storm, she is concerned about the repeaters used to connect the world’s vast undersea cable system.
Earlier studies have warned that other technology, especially orbiting satellites, could be fried by an intense solar storm.



Babbling Bats

The infants of one bat species in Latin America have been found to make a babbling sound not unlike those of human babies.
While it is known that the early vocalizations of human babies are integral to their language development, there has been little evidence of the behavior in other species.
But researchers from the Museum of Natural History in Berlin found that baby greater sac-winged bats are especially loquacious, mouthing 25 different types of syllables.
Study co-author Martina Nagy says that as in speech, the bat babbles are a precursor to the sounds adults of the species use to communicate. Bouts of the bat babbles can last up to 43 minutes, according to Nagy.



Dwindled Giant

South America’s once-mighty Paraná River is now at its lowest level since 1941, causing thousands of acres of wetlands to dry up as well as threatening public water supplies and the livelihoods of fishermen and farmers.
Experts say they don’t know if this is part of a natural cycle or climate change. But there has been a three-year period of below-normal rainfall at the river’s source in southern Brazil.
Low water levels have also created a 50% drop in hydroelectric power at generating plants along the Argentina-Paraguay border.



Climatic 'Shapeshift'

A new study reveals that some warm-blooded animals are getting larger beaks, legs and ears to better regulate their body temperatures as the planet gets hotter.
Researcher Sara Ryding of Australia’s Deakin University says that the physical evolution of some species is occurring across many regions and among a variety of species. She says this means climate change is probably the only common factor behind the evolution.
“Shapeshifting does not mean that animals are coping with climate change,” said Ryding. “It just means they are evolving to survive it.” But she adds that not all species may evolve rapidly enough to survive global heating.



Pollution Kills

A new report highlights how air pollution, mainly from coal, is impacting life expectancy far greater than diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, and even behavior such as smoking cigarettes and waging war.
The Air Quality Life Index reveals that unless particulate pollution is reduced to meet World Health Organization guidelines, the average person will lose about 2.2 years of his or her life.
Even though China has slashed its air pollution, dirty air is still cutting about 2.6 years off its life spans.
India has made no such efforts, and its citizens lose 5.9 years off their lives, especially in the highly polluted north of the country.


• Extreme Temperatures: -96°F South Pole, Antarctica; 120°F Yanbu, Saudi Arabia

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September 06, 2021 (for the week ending Sep 03)



Earthquakes

• Western Turkey was jolted by a [magnitude 5.1] temblor in Kütahya province.
• Earth movements were also felt in areas from Corinth to Athens in southern Greece [magnitude 4.4], northern Sicily [4.3], Trinidad [4.6] and California’s southern Sierra Nevada [3.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• At least 14 people were killed from Louisiana to the Northeast as Hurricane Ida inflicted the most costly damage of any natural disaster in U.S. history.
  NB: as damage assessment is still underway, to-date and at $50 billion, this hurricane was the third-costliest, not the costliest.
• The Mexican states of Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco were drenched by Hurricane Nora .
  
• Hurricane Larry churned the eastern Atlantic as Tropical Storm Julian formed briefly off New England.



Island Rumblings

Hundreds of tremors and ground deformation continued at Hawaii’s Kilauea caldera for a third week, but with decreasing intensity.
The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory had raised the alert level to a watch in mid-August due to the rumblings, which could have meant magma was intruding into the southern parts of the caldera. That alert level has since been lowered to an advisory.
Kilauea erupted nearly continuously from January 1983 to April 2018, destroying two towns on the Big Island and causing other damage to the area.



Northernmost Isle

Members of a Danish research expedition to Greenland’s northern coastal waters say they accidentally discovered what is now believed to be the northernmost island on the planet.
While unsuccessfully trying to locate and land on Oodaaq Island to collect samples, they instead “landed on a strange unvegetated bunch of mud, moraine deposits and gravel surrounded by sea ice on all sides.”
After checking their position, they found they were not on Oodaaq, but on land about 3,600 feet farther north than what was previously thought to be the island nearest to the North Pole.
The team wants the newly discovered island to be named Qeqertaq Avannarleq, which means “the northern-most island” in Greenlandic.



Disasters Soar

Natural disasters such as deadly heat waves and floods are now occurring five times more often than they did 40 years ago, which the U.N. weather agency says is directly linked to human-driven global heating.
The World Meteorological Organization’s new “Atlas” reviews the human tragedies and economic losses from weather extremes and water, and is said to be the most detailed ever produced.
It shows that such disasters have killed more than 2 million people since 1970 and have cost $3.64 trillion in losses.



LED Losses

The switch to more energy-efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in many of the world’s street lamps has not only disrupted insect behavior, but researchers say it is also leading to a decline in at least some insect populations.
Researchers from the U.K. Center for Ecology & Hydrology say they found 50% fewer moth caterpillars living immediately around the LED lights along rural roads in southern England, compared to their numbers near traditional illumination.
The scientists say the trend is alarming since small birds, hedgehogs and predatory insects feed on the caterpillars, while larger birds and bats eat the adult moths.



Nuclear Tunnel

Contaminated water now stored in about 1,000 tanks at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant will be released offshore into the Pacific through a newly planned undersea tunnel.
Operators say they will drill through bedrock beneath the seabed and begin releasing the water about 40 feet below the ocean’s surface beginning in the spring of 2023. They say the scheme is designed to avoid interfering with local fishing.
The stored water from the plant’s meltdowns will first be diluted with large amounts of seawater to reduce the concentration of the radioactive material.
NB: The contaminated material stems from the aftermath of the meltdown disaster after the 11 March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.


• Extreme Temperatures: -98°F South Pole, Antarctica; 124°F Bordj Badji Mokhtar, Algeria

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August 30, 2021 (for the week ending Aug 27)



Earthquakes

• A stretch of India’s southeast coast was jolted by a magnitude 5.1 temblor, centered beneath the Bay of Bengal.
• Earth movements were also felt in India’s Assam state [magnitude 4.0], northern Mongolia [4.5], Trinidad [4.1], southeastern Oklahoma [3.7] and near the California-Baja California border [4.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• Hurricane Henri weakened to a tropical storm just before drenching parts of New York, New Jersey and New England with some of the area’s heaviest rainfall on record.
• Quickly moving Hurricane Grace left at least eight people dead and three missing after making landfall as the strongest tropical cyclone on record in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Remnants of the storm later regenerated into Tropical Storm Marty off Mexico’s Pacific coast.
• Tropical Storm Omais drenched Japan’s southernmost islands before its remnants doused South Korea.



Vog Warning

Toxic sulfur dioxide gas being emitted by Taal volcano, about 40 miles south of Manila, prompted Philippine officials to warn surrounding residents to protect themselves from the volcanic smog, or vog. It can cause irritation to the eyes, throat and respiratory tract.



Greenland rain

The second freakish heat wave to blow across Greenland so far this summer caused rain to fall at the highest point of the country’s ice sheet for the first time in recorded history.
The instruments at Greenland’s Summit Station, established in 1950, recorded temperatures above freezing for more than nine hours on Aug. 15, with rain falling off and on for 13 hours.
But since there are no rain gauges at the typically frigid location, the research staff were unable to say how much rain actually fell.
Parts of the ice cap were 32 degrees Fahrenheit above average on that day, triggering a massive melting event that was seven times above the average for mid-August.



Snowless Andes

South America’s majestic Andes Mountain range is in the grip of a decade-long drought that has left many slopes between Ecuador and Argentina with only patches of snow, or no snow at all.
Currently in the depth of the Southern Hemisphere winter, the Andes should be at the peak of the snow season. But satellite images from this July and a year ago show a significant decrease in snow cover, threatening ski resorts and the communities that depend upon the mountains for water.
“The glaciers are in a very dramatic process of retreat that is much more accelerated than we have seen before,” Ricardo Villalba of the Argentine Institute of Snow, Glacier and Environment Science Studies told Reuters.



Giant Return

Blue whales are being spotted again off Spain’s Atlantic coast after a more than a 40-year absence.
The world’s largest mammal was hunted to near extinction, including from whaling ships out of Spain’s Galician ports until the country banned whaling in 1986.
The first returning blue whale was spotted in 2017 by Bruno Diaz, head of the Bottle Dolphin Research Institute in Galicia. Another was seen a year later, then they both were joined this summer by yet another.
Diaz believes they have returned to the region out of a form of homesickness, or ancestral memory.



Warmer & Wetter

With unprecedented rainfall occurring this summer from Asia and Europe to the eastern United States, scientists say global heating has made such rain events and their subsequent catastrophic flooding in Europe between 3% and 19% more powerful and up to 9 times more likely.
An international group of climate scientists at World Weather Attribution says that human-caused climate change has made downpours in the region up to 20% heavier.
They add that as the atmosphere warms further and can hold even more moisture, Western and Central Europe will suffer even more extreme rainfall.


• Extreme Temperatures: -98°F south Pole, Antarctica; 117°F Adrar, Algeria

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August 23, 2021 (for the week ending Aug 20)



Earthquakes

• More than 2,000 people perished and 10,000 others were injured when an intense [magnitude 7.2] temblor caused devastation in Haiti.
• Earth movements were also felt in Canada’s south-eastern Saskatchewan province [magnitude 3.9], the Alaska Peninsula [6.9] and northern Vanuatu [6.9].



Tropical Cyclones

• Florida and parts of the neighboring Southeast received downpours and local severe flooding as Tropical Storm Fred passed northward from the Gulf of Mexico and dissipated.
• Haiti’s earthquake disaster zone was drenched by Tropical Depression Grace , which strengthened to hurricane force before lashing the Yucatán Peninsula.
• Tropical Storm Henri looped around Bermuda.
• Hurricane Linda peaked at Category-4 force while tracking over the Pacific.



Temporary Island

Japan’s Coast Guard found a newly formed island about 750 miles south of Tokyo when a surveillance flight spotted an active eruption in a remote area south of Iwo Jima . The Japan Meteorological Agency says previous eruptions created islands in 1904, 1914 and 1986, with all eventually being eroded by waves and currents.



Fish Bake

With record summer heat and drought threatening wild salmon in California, the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia and Atlantic Canada this summer, experts say many commonly eaten fish could face extinction as global heating makes waters too hot for them to survive.
A report in the journal Nature Climate Change warns many species will struggle to keep pace with the deepening climate emergency.
“Warming waters are a double whammy for fish, as they not only cause them to evolve to a smaller size, but also reduce their ability to move to more suitable environments, said co-author Chris Venditti of Britain’s University of Reading.
He warns this could threaten global food security.



La Niña returns?

A La Niña watch has been issued for the tropical Pacific as the ocean-cooling phenomenon now has a 70% chance of developing from November to January.
The sea surface between South America and Indonesia is now in a “neutral” phase between El Niño warming and La Niña. La Niña typically pushes the polar jet stream northward, bringing wetter weather to the Pacific Northwest, western Canada and the Ohio Valley.
But it may also bring on-going dry conditions to California and the Desert Southwest, worsening droughts and wildfire threats.
La Niña’s cooling can also contribute to an extended and active hurricane season [in the Atlantic].



Tobacco Kills

The first species of wild tobacco plant known to kill insects was discovered next to a remote highway truck stop in Western Australia.
Previously unknown to science, the newly named Nicotiana insecticida is covered in sticky glands that entrap and poison small insects such as flies, aphids and gnats.
British scientists who discovered the plant say there is no evidence Nicotiana insecticida extracts any nutrients from insects it traps, but its poison does seem to prevent damage from the pests.
The team says the plant is easy to grow and may one day be used to kill aphids and fungus gnats in greenhouses.



Hottest Month

July was the world’s hottest month globally on record, according to the U.S. environment agency NOAA, which said the month’s “unenviable distinction” was a cause for concern.
The agency calculated that the combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.68 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees.
That put the month 0.02 degrees hotter than in the previous hottest Julys of 2016, 2019 and 2020.
“This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement.


• Extreme Temperatures: -90°F Vostok, Antarctica; 120°F Agadir, Morocco

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August 16, 2021 (for the week ending Aug 13)



Earthquakes

• A powerful [magnitude 5.4] temblor wrecked several homes and damaged other structures in eastern Taiwan.
• Earth movements were also felt in north-central Kansas [magnitude 3.5], much of the southern Philippines [7.1] and from northern Sumatra to neighboring Malaysia [4.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Fred drenched Hispaniola and northeastern Cuba after forming just to the south of Puerto Rico. It was predicted to threaten parts of Florida during the following weekend.
• Tropical Storm Lupit brought rain and gales to parts of Japan as Mirinae and Nida remained well off-shore before dissipating.
• Hurricanes Hilda and Linda, as well as Tropical Storms Jimena and Kevin, churned the waters of the Eastern Pacific.



Etna Grows

Six months of intense activity at Sicily’s Mount Etna caused Europe’s tallest and most active volcano to grow in height. The most dynamic and youngest of the volcano’s craters has risen to a new record of 11,014 feet above sea level, which is higher than the previous record of 10,990 feet for the northeast crater set in 1981.
NB: the volcano has 5 distinctive craters.



Decarbonize Now

Because the world ignored for decades the calls from climate scientists to curb carbon emissions, a new U.N. climate assessment warns that global heating is now at “code red” for humanity.
It says the deepening climate crisis will see Earth’s average temperature reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by around 2030, a decade earlier than predicted three years ago.
With increasing heat waves, wildfires and floods making headlines around the world, calls for immediate and decisive climate action are growing louder.
“This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement.



Current Collapse

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), of which the Gulf Stream is a key component, is now weaker than at any other time in the past 1,000 years, causing alarm among scientists.
Experts say the complex of warm and cold currents began to destabilize in the 20th century and could cause even more weather chaos should it collapse.
The AMOC transports warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic, where it moderates the climate of the Northern Hemisphere.
A key reason for the AMOC becoming weaker is the inflow of the lighter freshwater feeding into the Atlantic due to Greenland’s melting ice sheet. Increased rainfall from a warming atmosphere also contributes.



Winged Victims

The pall of smoke from Greece’s catastrophic firestorms is killing migratory storks heading south to Africa.
The country’s animal welfare group Anima says the birds are losing their way, sometimes plunging to their deaths after crashing into power lines and pylons.
Many of the iconic birds gather each year just southeast of Athens, where they await favorable wind conditions to cross the Mediterranean.
“We have many storks. It is the first time we have had so many dead storks in Athens,” said Anima President Maria Ganoti. “People in Athens are picking up dead storks from their lawns.”



Record Smoke

Huge clouds of smoke from wildfires that have blackened parts of Siberia again this year have been blown northward 1,800 miles, reaching the North Pole for the first time in recorded history.
Forestry officials says almost 35 million acres have burned so far this summer, making it the second-worst fire season this century.
Some of the blazes have raged on top of permafrost in Russia’s largest and coldest region.
Environmental advocates say Russia is not fighting the vast majority of the fires because it is cheaper just to let them burn in areas where human settlements are not threatened.


• Extreme Temperatures: -110°F Vostok, Antarctica; 122°F Kairouan, Tunisia

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August 09, 2021 (for the week ending Aug 06)



Earthquakes

• A strong [magnitude 6.2] temblor damaged buildings in northwestern Peru.
• Earth movements were also felt in New Zealand’s lower North Island [magnitude 5.1], eastern Japan [5.8], northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan [5.3], Kuwait [4.2], Turkey’s Aegean islands [5.7], northeastern Morocco [4.6] and east-central Wyoming [3.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Lupit brought rain to China’s Guangdong and Fujian provinces as Tropical Storm Mirinae threatened Japan.
• Hurricane Hilda churned the eastern Pacific.



Volcanic Therapy

Philippine scientists say they have dis-covered that the slopes of the country’s Mayon volcano contain bacterial species that show potential antibiotic and anti-colorectal cancer properties.
Kristel Mae Oliveros and colleagues from the University of the Philippines Los Baños say the most promising of 30 bacteria found in the volcanic soil really caught their attention.
“Streptomyces sp. A1-08 stood out because it has shown antagonistic effects on all test microorganisms and the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or simply MRSA,” they said in a statement. Should the researchers confirm it to be a new bacterial species, they will rename it Streptomyces mayonensis A1-08, after the volcano.



Wild COVID

A U.S. survey of wild deer in four states found that many of the animals showed signs of being infected with the COVID-19 virus.
The finding suggests that even if the virus is brought under control in the human population, wild animals could act as reservoirs for the virus in the future.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the percentage of deer with antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 ranged from a low of 7% in the samples from Illinois to a high of 60% in Michigan’s deer.
In total, a third of the deer tested positive. None of the infected animals appeared to be ill, and it is not certain how they were exposed.
Experts say those wanting to feast on cooked wild game are unlikely to contract COVID-19 from eating infected animals.



Brazilian Snow

A wide swath of southern Brazil received a blanket of extremely rare snowfall and freezing rain that shocked many residents accustomed to a more temperate climate.
“I am 62 years old and had never seen the snow,” truck driver Iodor Goncalves Marques told Globo TV.
The Antarctic chill also reached Rio de Janeiro, causing the city’s homeless to struggle to keep warm.
It also brought freezing temperatures to São Paulo and Minas Gerais states, which are major producers of commodities such as sugar, citrus and coffee.
The last time southern Brazil received significant snowfall was in 1957, when more than 4 feet accumulated on the ground in the state of Santa Catarina.



Massive Melt

A midsummer heat wave across parts of the northern Atlantic caused enough of Greenland’s ice cap to melt in a single day to submerge the entire state of Florida beneath 2 inches of water.
The warmest temperatures on record across the world’s largest island caused a weeklong “massive melting event,” according to Danish researchers.
They say the area melting this summer is larger than during the record summer melt of 2019 and is averaging about 8 billion tons of loss per day.
Greenland’s ice would raise sea levels by 20 to 23 feet if completely melted.



Climate Perils

New studies find that Earth will suffer a growing number of devastating floods and deadly heat waves.
Chinese and U.K. scientists say that unless greenhouse gas emissions are significantly curbed, wet regions such as the tropics and areas with monsoons will not only get wetter, but they will also swing widely between wet and dry.
More frequently stalled weather patterns will bring prolonged periods of heavy rain and their resulting flood disasters, such as those this summer in China and Western Europe.
The stalled patterns will create more frequent “heat domes,” such as those triggering firestorms in western North America and south-eastern Europe this summer.


• Extreme Temperatures: -96°F South Pole, Antarctica; 126°F Death Valley, California

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August 02, 2021 (for the week ending Jul 30)



Earthquakes

• An 8.2 magnitude temblor caused violent shaking on the Alaska Peninsula and triggered a brief tsunami warning. Only a small tsunami was reported.
• Earth movements were also felt in northern Myanmar and neighboring Thailand [magnitude 5.5], south of Manila [6.7], Trinidad [3.9] and Edinburgh, Scotland [2.5].



Tropical Cyclones

• Typhoon In-fa swamped communities and up-rooted trees in China’s Zhejiang province and brought shipping, transport and most other outdoor activities to a standstill in Shanghai.
• Tropical Storm Nepartak mainly spared the competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games when it shifted northward from its earlier predicted path directly into Tokyo. The storm later soaked parts of northern Honshu Island.



Sumatran Eruption

Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung erupted for 12 minutes with a massive column of ash that soared above North Sumatra province. Residents were told to remain outside a 3-mile zone that has been evacuated since the mountain reawakened in 2010.



Earth's Vital Signs

An international coalition of more than 14,000 scientists has signed an initiative declaring that world leaders are consistently failing to cope with the main causes of climate change and the deepening climate emergency.
Writing in the journal BioScience, the group calls for the elimination of fossil fuel use, the slashing of pollutants, the restoration of ecosystems, a switch to plant-based diets and the stabilization of the planet’s human population.
They say the planet’s vital signs are deteriorating at a record rate, and also call for climate change to be included in core curricula in schools for the generation that will have to cope with the hotter decades to come.



Primate vs Primate

Deadly unprovoked attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas have for the first time been observed in the West Africa nation of Gabon.
Researchers at Loango National Park say two dozen chimps went after five gorillas in December 2019. An infant separated from its mother didn’t survive the assault.
Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists say more research is needed to determine what is behind the new lethal behavior.
”At first, we only noticed screams of chimpanzees and thought we were observing a typical encounter between individuals of neighboring chimpanzee communities,” author Lara M. Southern said in a statement. “But then, we heard chest beats, a display characteristic for gorillas, and realized that the chimpanzees had encountered a group of five gorillas.”



Bird Bins

The new ability of sulfur-crested cockatoos to open trash bins in search of food appears to be spreading to more cities across southeastern Australia because the birds are copying each other’s behavior.
The complicated process was first observed in 2018 and has since spread around metropolitan Sydney. It has been seen by citizen observers and researchers alike in 44 suburbs, where the birds are causing a growing mess by flinging out the rubbish they don’t want to eat.
The birds have learned to grab a bin lid with their beaks, pry it open, then shuffle far enough along the edge to cause the lid to fall backward, revealing the tasty trash.



Sapphire Bonanza

Workers digging a well in Sri Lanka for a gem trader unearthed a massive sapphire cluster worth at least $100 million.
The 1,000-pound pale blue cluster, dug up in Ratnapura, has been dubbed the “Serendipity Sapphire” and is 39 inches long and 28 inches wide.
It measures 2.5 million sapphire carats and is the largest such cluster ever found.
Sri Lanka is a major source of sapphires, and experts say the find is likely to bring in a fifth of the country’s annual gem income.
The BBC reports that the gem trader informed authorities about the find eight months ago, but it took until now to remove mud and other impurities before it could be analyzed and certified.


• Extreme Temperatures: -103°F Vostok, Antarctica; 122°F Al Qaysumah, Saudi Arabia

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July 26, 2021 (for the week ending Jul 23)



Earthquakes

• Costa Rica and Panama were jolted by what some described as the strongest and longest quake to be felt there in years. The quake had a magnitude of 6.7.
• Earth movements were also felt in Pakistan’s Punjab province [magnitude 5.1], northern Mongolia [4.2], southwestern Iran [5.4], the far southern Philippines [5.4] and northwestern California [5.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Typhoon In-fa lashed some of Japan’s southernmost islands as a Category-2 storm.
• Typhoon Cempaka soaked far southern China after making landfall in Guangdong province.
• Hurricane Felicia weakened as Tropical Storm Guillermo formed off Mexico.



Climate Disasters

Atmospheric experts concede that they were shocked by the intensity of the recent European floods and the North American heat dome, saying their computer models are not yet able to project such extremes.
Some scientists say the next official predictions due out in August by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will already be outdated when released due to the rapidly intensifying climate emergency.
Freak weather events are now happening with greater frequency, ranging from the heaviest rain on record in parts of Japan and China this month to the record-breaking June heat across parts of India, Pakistan and Libya.



Acidic Infestation

Unusually heavy summer monsoon rainfall over the southwestern U.S. has brought out an acid-squirting creature in Texas’ Big Bend National Park that a Houston Chronicle reporter described as a “land lobster from hell.”
Officials in the park say the vinegaroons, or whip scorpions, can shoot well-aimed but nonpoisonous vinegar acid from their tails if threatened. They also have large pincers but are typically nocturnal and can’t see very well.
Park visitors are advised not to worry too much about the vinegaroons unless they happen to annoy one.



Flamingo Tragedy

The dried-up lake bed of central Turkey’s Lake Tuz is littered with the remains of thousands of flamingos that became the victims of a devastating regional drought and what some say were reckless irrigation practices this summer.
Environmental advocates say a canal that usually feeds the shallow lake was redirected for use by farmers.
Typically, as many as 10,000 flamingo chicks hatch at Lake Tuz each year, but most of the 5,000 that hatched this year died.
Visitors to the UNESCO-protected lake say not a single live flamingo could be seen.



Baboon Raids

Ferocious baboons are terrorizing farmers in western Kenya with such intensity that conventional weapons such as clubs and spears cannot keep the marauders at bay.
The Nation reports that some of the primates have invaded homes to scavenge for food without fear of humans. This has forced some farmers to gather packs of dogs to protect their crops and other property. “My dogs sometimes sustain serious injuries,” Nicanor Odongo told the daily.
Other farmers complain that the Kenya Wildlife Service is not doing enough to protect them from the baboons, but local officials say the agency is making plans to relocate the aggressive animals to a game park.



Nuclear Monitors

A new study finds that a species of snake native to Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster zone can be used to monitor the level of radioactive contamination 10 years after the world’s worst nuclear disaster there.
Writing in the journal Ichthyology & Herpetology, researchers from the University of Georgia and Fukushima University say rat snakes travel only short distances, have long life spans and can accumulate high levels of radionuclides from contaminated soil.
The researchers say this makes the snakes better monitors for radioactive contamination than the more mobile species like East Asian raccoon dogs, wild boar and songbirds.


• Extreme Temperatures: -100°F South Pole, Antarctica; 122°F Adrar, Algeria

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July 19, 2021 (for the week ending Jul 16)



Earthquakes

• At least five people were killed when a magnitude 5.8 temblor wrecked dozens of homes in central Tajikistan.
• A swarm of shakers in quake-prone eastern Taiwan caused scattered damage around Hualien County. [The largest quake was a magnitude 5.3.]
• Earth movements were also felt in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula [magnitude 5.3], northwestern Laos [4.7] and Indonesia’s North Sulawesi Province [6.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Hurricane Felicia reached Category-2 force late in the week as it churned the open waters of the Pacific between Mexico and Hawaii.



Earth's Hottest Day

The deadly and destructive heat wave baking much of the western U.S. and Canada this month also caused the mercury to soar to record levels in the recurrent hot spot of Death Valley, California.
Not only did the desert hellhole reach a blistering 130 degrees Fahrenheit on the afternoon of July 9, but two days later it also saw the hottest 24-hour period ever measured reliably.
A combination of a morning low of 107.7 degrees and a maximum of 128.6 degrees on that date produced the highest daily average temperature ever recorded on the planet — 118.1 degrees.



A Flooded Future

In less than 15 years, every stretch of U.S. coastline will experience more severe high-tide flooding, which a new NASA report says will be amplified by climate change and the moon.
Nuisance floods of lesser magnitudes are already swamping parts of some coastal cities, especially around Miami.
But as sea level continues to rise and the moon moves into a part of an 18.6-year cycle that elevates high tides, NASA warns that coastal flooding will be far more severe in the mid-2030s.
While the planet is now experiencing such a peak in the moon’s gravitational influence on ocean tides, most U.S. coastlines have not yet seen enough of a sea level rise to suffer significant tidal flooding.



Canine Altruism?

Dog owners who believe their pets might toss them a treat if they could would likely be disappointed, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna trained 37 dogs to operate a food dispenser by pressing a button.
They found there was no difference in the dogs’s tendency to press the button for humans who had earlier given them treats and for those who had not.
Previous studies have found dogs will help other dogs that have helped them. However, that “reciprocal altruism” apparently doesn’t extend to humans.



Heat Victims

Wildlife experts are expressing concern over recent avian behavioral changes and the deaths of birds due to excessive heat.
The international organization Hot Birds Research Project says that in Australia, the southern U.S. and Africa’s Kalahari Desert, the mounting episodes of excessive heat are having profound effects on birds.
Record heat in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal state last November saw scores of birds fall dead, the country’s first reported bird fatalities from heat.
Ornithologist Susan Cunningham of the Hot Birds Research Project says, “Some bird species are spending more time trying to stay cool as they deal with increased numbers of hot days. Birds are forced to shelter in the shade when they should be foraging.”



Rodent Empathy

A new study finds that rats undergo the same type of brain activity as humans when they rescue a member of their own social group.
Scientists say the finding may bring a better understanding of why humans tend to help people they know over strangers.
Researchers at Tel Aviv University placed rats of the same kind, as well as different kinds of rats that had never met, in cages with one being trapped.
Brain activity was monitored and showed the rats that helped their fellow group members seemed to demonstrate “an empathetic response” to their friends’ distress.
The study concludes that similar brain activity in other animals may drive comparable social biases to help their own over others.


• Extreme Temperatures: -98°F Vostok, Antarctica; 130°F Death Valley, California

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July 12, 2021 (for the week ending Jul 09)



Earthquakes

• California and western Nevada were rocked by a strong [magnitude 6.0] temblor in the Sierra Nevada.
• Earth movements were also felt in India’s Gujarat and Assam states [magnitudes 3.7 and 5.3], Taiwan [5.4], the Big Island of Hawaii [5.2] and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico [5.6].



Tropical Cyclones

• At least four people were killed as Hurricane Elsa raked parts of the Caribbean. After drench-ing eastern Cuba, the weakened storm passed well off Florida’s west coast, spar-ing the state significant dam-age. Elsa later soaked a long stretch of the eastern U.S..



Eruption

Days of rising magma from the Philippines’ Taal volcano sent plumes of steam soaring into the sky and lava streaming from its main crater.
The activity, about 30 miles south of Manila, prompted officials to evacuate more than 6,500 nearby families.
Volcanologists warn that the volcano has the potential to produce stronger explosive eruptions.
An eruption in 1911 killed more than 1,300 people.



Seafood Bake

The deadly heat wave that roasted the U.S. Pacific Northwest and western Can-ada also cooked more than a billion seashore animals to death, leaving a putrid stink near Vancouver, B.C.
University of British Columbia experts say the heat, combined with low tides in the middle of the afternoon, created dangerous combinations for animals like clams and mussels for more than six hours at a time.
Observers say temperatures above 122 degrees Fahrenheit occurred on some rocky shoreline habitats.
Professor Dave Sauchyn of Canada’s University of Regina says this summer’s unprecedented heat occurred years earlier than predicted by models, in a sign that the climate emergency is deepening faster than expected.



'Eye of Fire'

A rare combination of events near a Mexican oil platform in the Bay of Campeche created a massive ocean-surface fire that took hours to extinguish.
Mexico’s state-owned Pemex oil company, which has a long history of major accidents at its facilities, says the leak of an underwater pipeline allowed natural gas to accumulate on the ocean floor, and was probably ignited by a lightning bolt when it rose to the surface.
Once a brief video of the fire went viral on social media, the orange bubbling mass on the water’s surface was dubbed “eye of fire.”
Pemex said swift action by its workers prevented any environmental damage, a claim disputed by environmental groups and activists.



Trout 'Addicts'

A new study reveals that low levels of methamphetamines present in wastewater runoff, flushed into the environment from treatment plants, can cause at least one species of fish to become addicted to the illicit drugs.
Researchers at Czech University in Prague found that after spending two months in holding tanks laced with tiny amounts of methamphetamines, brown trout (Salmo trutta) became addicted, experienced withdrawal and sought out even tiny amounts of the drug to get a “fix.”
The addiction even caused the fish to prefer more polluted water if it contained the drug. The researchers say the addicted trout were less active than a control group of fish and appeared to be less fit for survival.



Avian Handouts

Ornithologists have reassured bird lovers that they can continue to feed song-birds in their backyards without worrying their feathered friends will become too dependent on their generosity.
But writing in the Journal of Avian Biology, experts said the feeding can spread diseases if the feeders are not kept clean, and possibly change migration and local distributions of the birds.
“There’s still much we don’t know about how intentional feeding might induce changes in wild bird populations, but our study suggests that putting out food for small birds in winter will not lead to an increased dependence on human-provided food,” said study co-author Jim Rivers.


• Extreme Temperatures: -101°F Vostok, Antarctica; 124°F Death Valley, California

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July 05, 2021 (for the week ending Jul 02)



Earthquakes

• The eastern Turkish city of Bingöl and surrounding areas were jolted by a magnitude 5.2 quake.
• Earth movements were also felt around the Afghan capital of Kabul [magnitude 5/1], on the Philippine island of Mindanao [5.4] and in western Cuba [4.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• Resorts and other communities along Mexico’s Pacific coast, as well as the southern tip of Baja California, were drenched by passing Hurricane Enrique.
• Tropical Storm Danny formed just off the South Carolina coast, then later drenched a wide swath of the southeastern U.S..
• Tropical Storm Elsa formed over the western Atlantic and threatened to strike Cuba and Florida during the following week.



Eruption

Costa Rica’s Rincón de la Vieja volcano produced one of its biggest outbursts in years, spewing ash and debris in a three-minute eruption.
Ash and sulfuric odors were reported in the nearby communities of Gavilán de Dos Ríos and Bromelias.



Record Heat

The punishing heat wave that has baked much of western Canada up to the Arctic and down to the northwestern U.S. is being made more intense by hotter temperatures at night in areas that normally cool down after sunset.
Experts say that this is making nights much warmer than the normal daytime temperatures.
Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia said the hot nights are like a fingerprint of climate change. “This is exactly a specific sort of prediction that scientists have been making — that we would have warmer nights,” said Donner.
The “heat dome” has caused hundreds of deaths and set an all-time heat record for Canada’s west.



Avian Mystery

Birds from Washington, D.C., to Kentucky have recently been found suffering from a mysterious illness that causes them to have crusty eyes and swollen faces that prevent them from flying.
The affected species have so far been blue jays, common grackles and European starlings. People who have discovered the ill birds say they act like they are blind and are not afraid of people.
Since bird feeders and birdbaths can spread disease among feathered creatures, experts advise residents in the affected region to stop feeding the birds and to clean their feeders and baths with a 10% beach solution, wearing gloves to avoid exposure to any pathogens.



Epic Flight

A species of butterfly migrates thousands of miles from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe during years when the weather is favorable. The painted lady’s 8,700-mile migration is the longest known in the insect world.
“We know that the number of painted lady butterflies in Europe varies wildly, sometimes with 100 times more from one year to the next,” said Tom Oliver of England’s University of Reading.
That variability can now be explained by the weather, which may also affect other insects as the climate warms. “We enjoy seeing the beautiful painted lady butterflies in our gardens in Europe, but climate change will also lead to shifts in invasive species that are crop pests or those that spread diseases,” Oliver warns.



Loving the Heat

Rattlesnakes are one of the few species that may actually benefit from global heating, according to a new study by the California Polytechnic State University.
Since rattlesnakes depend on the sun and ambient temperatures to warm themselves, researchers say the hotter conditions will give the rattlers a longer active season and more time to hunt and feed.
“We are so used to climate change studies that forecast negative impacts on wildlife — it was interesting to see such starkly different findings for these snakes,” said researcher Hayley Crowell.
“A warmer climate may help these snakes heat up to temperatures that are more optimal for digestion or reproduction,” he added.


• Extreme Temperatures: -108°F Vostok, Antarctica; 124°F Death Valley, California

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June 28, 2021 (for the week ending June 25)



Earthquakes

• Panicked residents in western Peru rushed into the streets during a strong [magnitude 5.8] offshore quake.
• Earth movements were also felt in Japan’s Hokkaido Island [magnitude 5.3], India’s Assam state [4.5], northwestern Pakistan [4.7] and metropolitan Istanbul [3.9].



Tropical Cyclones

• At least 14 people perished in the southeastern United States as Tropical Storm Claudette unleashed flooding that also destroyed dozens of homes.
• Mexico’s central Pacific coast was drenched by minimal Tropical Storm Dolores .
• Typhoon Champi passed northward over the Pacific.



Climate Crisis

Earth is now trapping nearly twice as much heat due to mounting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from carbon emissions than it did in 2005, according to a new report by NASA and the U.S. environment agency NOAA.
It describes the surge in warming as alarming, unprecedented and gaining in strength.
The study used satellite sensors that measured how much of the sun’s radiant energy was absorbed by the planet compared to how much of the heat was reflected back into space.
About 90% of the excess heat is now being stored in the oceans, with the rest heating up the land, melting ice and snow, and warming the atmosphere, the report concluded.



Planetary Pulse

Earth experiences a cycle of strong geologic activity that researchers say can be considered like a “pulse.”
Writing in the journal Geoscience Frontiers, scientists at New York University say new advances in radio-isotope dating techniques allowed them to reexamine the last 260 million years of Earth’s turbulent past.
Events during that period include extinctions on land and in the water, major outpourings of volcanic lava, oxygen depletion of the oceans, sea-level fluctuations and changes in the Earth’s tectonic plates.
They found that the events were clustered in groups of peaks roughly 27.5 million years apart. Since the last peak was 7 million years ago, the next isn’t likely for another 20 million years.



Prison Mice

The vast mouse plague that has ravaged Australian agriculture and wildlife for more than a year has also infested a New South Wales prison so badly that the entire prison population and staff had to be evacuated to other facilities.
The rodents gnawed through wiring and ceiling panels, and littered the prison with their dead carcasses.
“The mice start decaying, and then the next problem is mites, and we just don’t want to expose staff and prisoners to anything that could cause harm to their health,” said Peter Severin, commissioner of the state’s corrective services department.



Relocation Aftermath

Native penguins and other seabirds were wiped out on a small Australian island after Tasmanian devils not infected with a deadly mouth cancer were introduced there to help save the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial from extinction.
The conservation effort backfired on Maria Island, just off the coast of Tasmania, as the initial 28 devils sent there in 2012 grew to the current population of 100 and devoured the birds.
“Every time humans have deliberately or accidentally introduced mammals to oceanic islands, there’s always been the same outcome ... a catastrophic impact on one or more bird species,” said Eric Woehler of the group BirdLife Tasmania.



Siberian Sizzle

A heat wave baking Siberia on June 20 saw ground temperatures reach 118 degrees Fahrenheit in an area that often records the world’s coldest temperatures during winter.
The reading near Verkhoyansk was measured by Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel satellite system.
While the air temperature recorded in Verkhoyansk was only 86 degrees that day, many Siberian temperature records were broken.
The scorching ground heat was also observed across a wide area of Siberia in a development that does not bode well for Russia’s rapidly melting permafrost and the potent greenhouse gases the melt is releasing.


• Extreme Temperatures: -107°F Vostok, Antarctica; 125°F Death Valley, California

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June 21, 2021 (for the week ending June 18)



Earthquakes

• A strong [magnitude 5.8] undersea temblor jolted Indonesia’s Seram Island.
• Earth movements were also felt in the far southern Philippines [magnitude 5.7], Taiwan [5.3], southern Yemen [5.5], southern Israel and Jordan [4.2], the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo [5.0] and around California's Salton Sea [4.3].



Tropical Cyclones

• Much of northern Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa province was drenched when minimal Tropical Storm Koguma made landfall from the Gulf of Tonkin.
• Tropical Storm Bill formed off the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, then later skirted Newfoundland.



On Thinning Ice

The sea ice surrounding the North Pole is probably thinning up to twice as fast as previously thought, according to research by University College London.
Writing in the journal The Cryosphere, scientists say earlier estimates on the depth of the ice cap were based on data collected by the Soviets between 1954 and 1991, which are now outdated.
They say their new modeling of temperature, snow-fall and ice floe movements provides a better understanding of how fast the Arctic sea ice is actually disappearing.
“Sea ice thickness is a sensitive indicator of the health of the Arctic. And when the Arctic warms, the world warms,” said lead researcher Robbie Mallett.



Sargassum Belt

Beaches in Florida, the Caribbean and tropical Atlantic are being overwhelmed by masses of sargassum , a seaweed now growing explosively because of fertilizer runoff.
While the seaweed is key to the marine environment, excessive nitrogen and phosphorus in coastal waters from the fertilizers have caused the proliferation.
This poses a health risk as rotting sargassum creates toxic hydrogen sulfide gas that can be dangerous for people with asthma and other respiratory problems.
Florida Atlantic University professor Brian Lapointe says levels of fecal bacteria can also be high around the decaying blooms. He adds that runoff from the Mississippi River and others from the Amazon to the Congo are responsible for the new great "Atlantic Sargassum Belt".



Warming Bites

Global heating may soon mean that mosquitoes will become active all year round in places where they normally disappear during winter.
Researchers from the University of Florida compared how different types of mosquitoes respond to changes in temperatures. They found that the mosquitoes’ ability to tolerate swings in temperature changes through the seasons.
“That tells us that as climate change makes our autumns and winters warmer, mosquitoes in more temperate regions are well prepared to be active during those times,” said lead researcher Brett Scheffers.



Wind Power Resistance

The expansion of wind farms to generate power could reach a point of diminishing returns if too many are placed near each other, new research finds.
This is a real threat for coastal areas of Northern Europe, where limited space is seeing the turbines being built in clusters. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers say wind speeds up to 60 miles down-wind of the farms are significantly slowed down by them under some weather conditions.
This means output from neighboring wind farms could be reduced up to 25% if they are placed too close together.



Dawdling Dumbo

A herd of wayward elephants that has mysteriously trekked about 300 miles across southern China this spring took a break to rest and to wait for an errant youngster to catch up.
State broadcaster CCTV reports that despite repeated calls from the impatient adults, the 10-year-old doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to reunite with the main group.
Before the pachyderms’ respite, hundreds of trucks were dispatched to keep the 15 ambling migrants out of populated areas.
Officials say they are planning to use food bait and roadblocks to help guide the herd to a new suitable habitat once it is moving again.


• Extreme Temperatures: -104°F Vostok, Antarctica; 119°F Nok Kundi, Pakistan

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June 14, 2021 (for the week ending June 11)



Earthquakes

• Southern California, near the Mexico border, was rocked by more than 600 earthquakes, punctuated by a magnitude 5.3 quake.
• Earth movements were also felt in northern Oregon [magnitude 3.9], the South Dakota-Nebraska border area [3.1] and New Zealand’s central North Island [4.8].



Java Eruption

Indonesia’s Mount Merapi volcano erupted four times, with flows of lava and plumes of ash, in the heart of Java.



Climate Vintage

Earth’s hotter climate is forcing some European winemakers to change strategies to maintain the quality of their wines.
“With warmer temperatures, the vine cycle has been shorter and we’ve been harvesting earlier, on average,” Dom Perignon Champagne maker Daniel Carvajal Perez told the CNA news network.
He added that the warmer climate had actually brought higher quality to his grapes.
Germany’s riesling growers also like the new climate reality. Twelfth-generation family winery Weingut Peter Jakob Kuhn says it no longer has to suffer seasons when the grapes don’t achieve enough sweetness.



New CO2 Record

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a level 50% higher than at the dawn of the industrial age.
The U.S. agency NOAA says the average CO₂ level during May was 419.13 parts per million (ppm). That’s 1.82 ppm higher than last May.
The level is also 120 ppm higher than back when the greenhouse gas was relatively stable without the impact of the polluting fuels that have driven the global economy since the 1700s.
“We are adding roughly 40 billion metric tons of CO₂ pollution to the atmosphere per year,” said Pieter Tans of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory. “That is a mountain of carbon that we dig up out of the Earth, burn and release into the atmosphere as CO₂ — year after year.”



Tropical Med

Global heating is said to be turning the Mediterranean into a tropical sea, with native species driven out by some of the 1,000 more exotic ones that have adapted to the warmer waters.
The Italian branch of the World Wildlife Fund says the trend will have damaging consequences for fisheries, tourism and what seafood is on the menu.
Maritime director of the branch Giulia Prato said in a report: “Climate change is not a problem of the future; it is a reality that scientists, fishermen, divers, coastal communities and tourists are already experiencing today.”



A Hero Retires

A giant African pouched rat named Magawa is retiring after five years of detecting 71 landmines and 38 other unexploded ordnance.
The Belgian charity APOPO says Magawa is “beginning to slow down” after a very successful assignment in Cambodia.
The organization trains the rodents in their native Tanzania to detect the chemicals in explosives.
The rats are light enough to scurry across minefields without detonating the explosives, doing in just 30 minutes what a metal detector would accomplish in four days.
APOPO gave Magawa a hero’s medal and says he will retire eating his favorite treats of bananas and peanuts.



Viral Hot Spots

New research has found parts of the world where conditions are ripe for new coronaviruses to make the jump from bats to humans.
An international team of scientists identified regions where forest fragmentation, agricultural expansion and intense livestock production have concentrated horseshoe bat habitats to the point that the so-called zoonotic viruses could easily infect humans from the wild.
Most hot spots are now clustered in China. But parts of Japan, the northern Philippines, Indochina and Thailand may see hot spots develop in the future if live-stock production increases, according to the research.
Human encroachment into bat habitats is also said to greatly increase the chances of people becoming infected with new, or novel, coronaviruses.


• Extreme Temperatures: -109°F Vostok, Antarctica; 122°F Tindouf, Algeria

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June 07, 2021 (for the week ending June 04)



Earthquakes

• A wide area of Alaska from Fair-banks to Anchor-age and Homer was jolted by an unusually sharp [magnitude 6.1] temblor.
• Earth movements were also felt in Lake Tahoe [magnitude 4.2], Los Angeles [3.0], Cyprus [4.4], the India-Bangladesh border [4.1] and New Zealand’s Canterbury region [4.2].



Tropical Cyclones

• Weak and disorganized Tropical Tropical Storm Choi-wan left at least eight people dead in central and northern areas of the Philippines as it triggered floods and mudslides.
• Tropical Storm Blanca, the second of the eastern Pacific hurricane season, churned the open waters well off the Mexican coast.



Urban Microbiomes

Every city has been found to have its own unique “fingerprint” of viruses and bacteria that researchers say can probably be used by authorities to determine where someone is from with about a 90% accuracy.
A team led by Cornell genomics expert Christopher Mason asked colleagues around the world to collect swabs from urban transport systems and conducted a genetic analysis on each.
Besides finding that the larger the city, the more complex its diverse microbial life, they also discovered 10,928 viruses and 748 bacteria that were previously unknown to science.
“I think it’s a wonderful affirmation of how much left we have to discover about the world,” said Mason.



Unabated Warming

The U.N. warns there is now a 40% chance that global temperatures will in rise within the next five years, at least temporarily, to surpass the key global temperature limit of 1.5 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels.
But the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that natural climate variability could mean there would be a brief cooling for another decade or two after that, before even more greenhouse gas emissions cause that limit to be crossed permanently.
WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said that the new study is “yet another wake-up call” to slash green-house gas emissions.
A separate study concludes that nearly 40% of all heat-related deaths around the world from 1991 to 2018 can be attributed to human-caused climate change.



Lake Suffocation

Earth’s deepening climate crisis is causing oxygen levels in freshwater lakes around the world to decline rapidly in a trend that threatens freshwater biodiversity and drinking water quality.
As global heating warms the waters, they cannot hold as much oxygen. And the recent intense summer heat has reduced how much surface water mixes with and delivers oxygen to the deep.
A research team found that the oxygen decline has been between three and nine times faster during the past 40 years, falling 19% in deep waters and 5% at the surface.



Rodent Crisis

Australia’s worst mice plague in decades has become so acute in recent weeks that the rodents have begun eating each other after devouring crops and exhausting other food sources.
With hordes of the ravenous pests causing “unprecedented” losses for farmers, the government has placed an order with India for the banned poison bromadiolone to help cull the surging house mouse population.
“We’re at a critical point now where if we don’t significantly reduce the number of mice that are in plague pro-portions by spring, we are facing an absolute economic and social crisis in rural and regional New South Wales,” Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall told reporters.



Wayward Jumbos

A herd of 15 wild Asian elephants that left a Chinese nature reserve in April has destroyed crops, wrecked barns and wandered through communities as it trekked relentlessly for nearly 300 miles toward Yunnan’s provincial capital of Kunming.
No one knows why the pack of pachyderms has made the journey, but elephant expert Chen Mingyong told China’s official Xinhua news agency that the leader possibly “lacks experience and has led the whole group astray.”
Officials have been tracking the animals with drones and a task force in 76 cars, and have used roadblocks and tons of food in an attempt to shift the elephants’ course.


• Extreme Temperatures: -104°F Vostok, Antarctica; 122°F Sibi, Pakistan

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May 31, 2021 (for the week ending May 28)



Earthquakes

• At least three people were killed by a strong [magnitude 7.3] temblor in southwestern China's Yunnan Province.
• Earth movements were also felt in China’s Qinghai province [magnitude 6.1], far northern India [4.3], far southern Philippines [5.5], Hawaii [4.2], western Nicaragua [5.5], northwestern Oklahoma [4.1] and southern Quebec [3.9].



Tropical Cyclones

• Powerful Cyclone Yaas battered India’s Odisha and West Bengal states, killing at least nine people as it destroyed thousands of mud homes.
• Subtropical Storm Ana formed east of Bermuda as the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.



Congo Eruption

Fastflowing lava and accompanying tremors from Nyiragongo volcano in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least 32 people around the provincial capital of Goma.
The lava flows destroyed scores of suburban homes but stopped just short of the partially evacuated city.
Strong tremors continued for days, damaging numerous buildings and causing the ground to break open. That released toxic gas, which killed several of the victims.
Mount Nyiragongo is considered one of the world’s most active and dangerous volcanoes.



Tree Farts

Forests along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard that are being killed by saltwater intrusion are releasing greenhouse gases that scientists have nicknamed “tree farts.”
These “ghost forests,” have been created by rising sea levels and storm surges that force salt water to seep into the coastal soil.
A North Carolina State University study has measured how much carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide the trees are emitting as they decay.
“Even though these standing dead trees are not emitting as much as the soils, they’re still emitting something, and they definitely need to be accounted for,” said lead researcher Melinda Martinez.



Sea Snot Invasion

Climate change and pollution are being blamed for the growing marine threat known as sea snot, mucus-like organic matter that currently threatens coral and the fishing industry in parts of the Mediterranean.
Globs of sea snot can also be found elsewhere in the planet’s waterways, and it can host dangerous bacteria such as E. coli.
Sea snot’s coverage is currently exploding in Turkey’s Marmara Sea near Istanbul, where fishermen have not been able to cast their nets for months.
When the marine mucilage forms a layer over the water’s surface, it prevents fish from being able to breathe. This kills them and depletes oxygen levels in the water, eventually choking other marine life.



Antarctic Giant

A huge iceberg, similar in shape to Manhattan but 73 times larger, is likely to drift around the Southern Ocean and South Atlantic for years, having broken off from Antarctica’s Ronne Ice Shelf.
Dubbed A-76, it is currently the world’s largest, measuring about 1,670 square miles as it oats on the Weddell Sea. It was spotted in satellite images by the British Antarctic Survey in mid-May.
A larger iceberg, A-68, calved from the Larsen C ice shelf in 2017 and finally disintegrated earlier this year.



Devilish Births

The first Tasmanian devils to be born on the Australian mainland in more than 3,000 years brought hope that the world’s largest surviving marsupial carnivore could reestablish its former habitats.
The animals, notoriously bad-tempered when threatened, were wiped out on the mainland by dingos and have since been confined to the island of Tasmania. But the group Aussie Arc released 26 adults into the wild in late 2020, and they have since produced seven new joeys.
Those devils relocated to New South Wales’ fenced-in Barrington Wildlife Sanctuary are free of the contagious mouth cancer that has decimated up to 90% of the wild population on Tasmania.


• Extreme Temperatures: -101°F Vostok, Antarctica; 117°F Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia

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May 24, 2021 (for the week ending May 21)



Earthquakes

• Six people were injured and two dozen homes damaged by a strong [magnitude 5.3] central Nepal temblor.
• Earth movements were also felt in Costa Rica [magnitude 4.9], southern Wales [2.9], northwestern Sumatra [6.6], northern Japan’s Hokkaido Island [5.7] and around Lake Tahoe [3.6].



Tropical Cyclones

• The worst cyclone to strike western India in three decades left more than 100 dead as the region also battled COVID-19.
  Cyclone Tauktae was one of a growing number of Arabian Sea cyclones that meteorologists say are also increasing in intensity because climate change is rapidly warming the sea.



Psychedelic Frenzy

Some of the billions of Brood X cicadas that are emerging from the soil in the eastern United States for the first time in 17 years are infected with a fungus that eats away at their abdomens as it increases their sex drive.
The Massospora cicadina fungus lies dormant until the 17-year periodical cicadas begin to stir. It’s laced with the same chemical as in psychedelic mushrooms and causes the males to emit the mating sounds of both males and females. This attracts more potential partners and spreads the fungus.
Since the fungus effectively castrates the males as it eats away at their bodies, it acts as a natural population control, making it impossible for the infected insects to mate successfully.



Methane Surge

Concentrations of the powerful greenhouse gas methane increased more last year than since records began in 1983, and scientists say they aren’t sure why.
After plateauing in the early 2000s, atmospheric methane has been increasing steadily since 2007. The gas is 28 times more potent in causing global warming than carbon dioxide and is responsible for about 16% of the planet’s temperature rise.
“2020’s increase was double the 2007 growth. It’s even higher than the early 1980s, when the gas industry was going crazy. It’s really scary,” geophysicist Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway, University of London told New Scientist.
The increase is far greater than atmospheric scientists had earlier predicted.



Mobile Monitors

Smartphones could soon help scientists measure how solar activity is affecting Earth’s magnetic field and determine where navigation devices may be most affected by solar storms.
Writing in the journal Space Weather, researchers say that an app using the magnetometers in most Android and iOS mobile phones could create a vast global observatory.
Solar storms can affect compass readings and have been observed degrading the accuracy of GPS navigation systems.



Human Domination

A new study finds that human activities have transformed nearly a fifth of the planet’s land surface since the 1960s, roughly equivalent to the areas of Europe and Africa combined.
During that period, Earth’s forest cover alone has been reduced by nearly a million square kilometers, with farmland and grazing pastures increasing by about the same amount. While forests have actually expanded in the Northern Hemisphere during the past 60 years, they have been disappearing at an alarming rate to the south.
This is because of the growing production of beef, sugar cane and soybean in the Amazon, palm oil in Southeast Asia and cocoa in Nigeria and Cameroon.



Zombie Fires

The relatively new and rare fires that have been observed smoldering over the winter months in the peaty soil across some Arctic regions are predicted to become more frequent and potentially catastrophic as global heating becomes more pronounced.
Writing in the journal Nature, researchers from Alaska and the Netherlands say these “zombie” fires accounted for just 0.8% of the total burned areas between 2002 and 2018.
But the percentages swung widely, depending on how hot the summers were, rising to 38% in one region.
The researchers say the fires will become more ferocious as the landscapes dry out due to climate change.


• Extreme Temperatures: -97°F Vostok, Antarctica; 118°F Matam, Senegal

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May 17, 2021 (for the week ending May 14)



Earthquakes

• The Philippine capital of Manila and nearby areas were jolted by a [magnitude 5.7]temblor that was unusually strong for the region.
• Earth movements were also felt in eastern India’s Assam state [magnitude 3.7], Los Angeles [3.7] and a wide area from the northern Sierra Nevada to the Sacramento Valley [4.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Andres became the earliest tropical cyclone to form in the eastern Pacific on record. It beat Tropical Storm Adrian’s formation in 2017 by 12 hours but was weak and short-lived.



Royal Breeding

Western monarch butterflies from the Pacific Northwest to California may not be going extinct as earlier feared, but are instead changing their breeding habitats and adapting to climate change.
A Washington State University expert says last winter’s count of the colorful insects revealed a sharp drop, especially across much of Southern California, where the number plunged from about 300,000 three years ago to just 1,914 in 2020.
But entomologist David James says large populations were observed by citizen scientists in metropolitan Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, where they had seldom been seen wintering before.



Methane Warning

The U.N. announced that cutting emissions of methane from farming, fossil fuel operations and landfills is urgently needed to help combat the deepening climate emergency.
While methane doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere, it is many times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The U.N. says that global industry could easily and inexpensively slash methane emissions by 30 percent within a decade, with a 45 percent cut possible by using other readily available methods.
Some of the biggest sources are the growing mountains of human trash buried in landfills around the world that generate the gas as they decompose.
Plugging leaky oil wells, coal mines and pipelines could also help curb methane emissions.



Forest Recovery

Areas of felled forest around the world, collectively the size of France, have regrown naturally during the past 20 years, potentially soaking up more carbon emissions than the United States creates each year.
But the World Wildlife Fund, which led the survey, says far more areas of forests are being lost each year through deforestation than are recovering.
“The data show the enormous potential of natural habitats to recover when given the chance to do so,” said John Lotspeich, executive director of Trillion Trees, the coalition group behind the study.



Chernobyl Smolder

Fission reactions appear to be occurring in an inaccessible chamber of Ukraine’s crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which exploded 35 years ago.
Scientists say they don’t know if the slow rise in neutron emissions will fizzle out or increase, forcing them to find ways to prevent another catastrophe.
“It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit,” said nuclear chemist Neil Hyatt of the University of Sheffield. He says the new rates of fission are very low and believes they probably will not lead to an explosion.
But scientists on the scene say they are not sure since there is no direct way to monitor what is happening inside the sealed and intensely radioactive chamber.



'Stratoshrink'

One unexpected consequence of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions is that they have shrunk the stratosphere — a thinning that could eventually affect life on Earth, satellites and GPS.
Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, scientists say the high and rarified layer of the atmosphere has contracted by about 1,300 feet since the 1980s and is likely to shrink another 3,300 feet by 2080 without sharp cuts in carbon emissions.
Global heating of the troposphere, the atmosphere’s lowest layer, has caused it to expand, pushing up the bottom layer of the stratosphere.
And when carbon dioxide emissions mix into the stratosphere, they cause that layer to cool and shrink.


• Extreme Temperatures: -111°F Vostok, Antarctica; 120°F Kufra, Libya

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May 10, 2021 (for the week ending May 07)



Earthquakes

• At least three people were injured during a strong [magnitude 6.8] quake that struck off northeastern Japan.
• Earth movements were also felt in Panama [magnitude 5.1] and southwestern Australia [3.3].



Lava Geyser

• Iceland’s spectacular Geldingadalir-Meradalir volcanic eruption intensified, with fountains of lava shooting 1,000 feet into the air — clearly visible from the capital, Reykjavik.
  Scientists say the eruption is now behaving more as originally predicted.



Manatee Deaths

An average of seven manatee deaths have been reported each day in Florida so far this year as the U.S. government and local marine mammal experts try to find what’s behind the spike in fatalities.
About 675 manatee carcasses were found from January 1 to mid-April, compared to 637 in all of last year.
Nearly half of the sea cow fatalities occurred around the Indian River Lagoon. Recent algae blooms and pollution have killed off the area’s sea-grass beds, which the manatees feed on.
Development and habit loss are also adding stress to the animals, as is chronic exposure to pesticides such as glyphosate, a key ingredient in Roundup. Red tide outbreaks from the widespread use of fertilizers are also polluting manatee habitats.



Vanishing Glaciers

A new study of the world’s glaciers reveals that they are melting at a faster pace than previously estimated, posing an increasing threat of inundation to coastal communities and low-lying islands around the world.
The research found that other than the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, glaciers lost 676 gigatons of ice per year on average between 2000 and 2019. The losses were said to have accelerated sharply during the period as global heating became more acute.
Some glaciers have already vanished, with others expected to do so by the end of the century.
This is a particular threat in South Asia, where mountain glaciers are an important source of fresh water to rivers such as the Ganges, Brahmaprutra and Indus.



New Normal

The U.S. environment agency NOAA issued its latest calculations of what is now the climatic “normal,” which is based on temperature averages from the past three decades.
The previous normals were based on weather data from 1981 to 2010. But because of the unprecedented warmth of the past two decades, evidence of the current climate emergency is clearly evident in the new 1991-2020 calculations.
The average temperature in the 48 contiguous United States for the past 30 years is now almost a half-degree Fahrenheit hotter than between 1981 and 2010.



Wayward Cetacean

A young gray whale, born in California’s coastal waters, has been wandering around the western Mediterranean in recent weeks as the first of its species to ever appear there.
Marine biologists believe it got lost while feeding in the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea and eventually wound up in the Atlantic rather than its Pacific home waters.
While apparently healthy, the whale looks unusually thin because the Mediterranean doesn’t have the kind of food it is used to.
Experts hope the lost whale can make it down the Spanish coast, through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic, where it has a better chance of survival.


• Extreme Temperatures: -102°F Vostok, Antarctica; 113°F Birni-N'Konni, Niger

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May 03, 2021 (for the week ending Apr 30)



Earthquakes

• A [magnitude 6.0] temblor in eastern India’s Assam state cracked walls and floors, but there were no reports of injuries or fatalities.
• A moderate [magnitude 4.8] quake caused scattered damage on Indonesia’s Flores Island.
• Earth movements were also felt in south-central Alaska [magnitude 4.8], northern New Hampshire [2.0] and the Sierra Nevada resort of Lake Tahoe [3.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Jobo spared Tanzania the flooding and wind damage that were predicted before the cyclone weakened prior to making landfall just south of the capital, Dar es Salaam.
  Only two other cyclones have struck the coast of Tanzania in modern times. The Zanzibar Cyclone roared ashore in 1872, and Cyclone Lindi killed 34 people in 1952.
• Former Category-5 Typhoon Surigae lost force over the open waters of the western Pacific after skirting the eastern Philippines.



Japanese Eruption

• A strong blast from southwestern Japan’s Sakurajima volcano spewed ash high above Kagoshima prefecture. Clouds of superheated debris also cascaded down the mountain but did not threat-en any populated areas.



Lightning capital

Florida, especially around the Tampa Bay Area, has long been renowned as the capital of lightning strikes in the United States.
But researchers from the Finland-based environmental monitoring company Vaisala say that Oklahoma has narrowly surpassed the Sunshine State for that distinction.
Its research found there were 83.4 lightning events per square kilometer in Oklahoma between 2016 and 2020 compared with 82.8 in Florida.
But Vaisala meteorologist Chris Vagasky says with statistics that close, it’s hard to say that one state has truly overtaken the other.



Melting Hazards

Boulders and rocks long frozen in place high across the world’s mountainous regions are now tumbling downslope due to the glacial melt brought on by global heating.
A tragic example occurred in February when rock and ice broke loose from a Himalayan peak, killed more than 200 people and destroyed a hydroelectric dam.
Researchers in Switzerland have begun releasing “test rocks” from high in the Alps to better understand the dangers posed to humans and the landscape by the growing phenomenon.
“Where a rock will land, how it will bounce, how high it will jump ... we can answer all that,” said physicist Andrin Caviezel, one of the scientists involved in the experiments.



Lion Famine

A protracted drought and unbridled livestock grazing, which have parched parts of Namibia, are also causing desert-adapted lions to perish or appear emaciated near human settlements in the southwest African nation.
There was an outcry after images of an emaciated lioness, too weak to get up next to a goat enclosure on a communal farm, appeared on social media.
Philip Stander of Desert Lion Conservation told The Namibian daily that the hyper-arid conditions have caused several of the big cats to either die from starvation or be euthanized by the environment ministry.



Polar Drift

Earth’s axis is being shifted by the human activities causing the current climate emergency and the redistribution of water resources through the pumping of groundwater for irrigation.
An international team of researchers says the shift started in the 1990s when global heating began to melt glaciers, sending much of the runoff into the oceans.
Earth’s axis naturally drifts a little bit each year due to changes in winds, ocean currents and atmospheric pressures. But the redistribution of water from land to the oceans accelerated the drift between 1995 and 2020 by about 17 times.
Vincent Humphrey of the University of Zurich says the drift is tiny and imperceptible to humans.


• Extreme Temperatures: -93°F South Pole, Antarctica; 115°F Kayes, Mali

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April 26, 2021 (for the week ending Apr 23)



Earthquakes

• Quake-prone Taiwan was rocked by an unusually strong and prolonged swarm of tremors, centered near Hualien. [The largest quake had a magnitude 6.2].
• Earth movements were also felt in northeastern Japan [magnitude 5.6], the Indian state of Sikkim [4.3], southwestern Iran {5.8] and the Greek island of Santorini [4.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• Supertyphoon Surigae broke several records, including as the earliest tropical cyclone to reach 190 mph in the Northern Hemisphere and for undergoing one of the most rapid typhoon intensifications ever observed.
  Surigae passed well east of the Philippines but battered the coast with storm surge, high surf and downpours.
• Tropical Storm Jobo threatened the Comoros and coastal Tanzania late in the week. No Indian Ocean cyclones have taken such a path in memory.



Volcanic Crisis

• St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves pleaded with the U.N. to help with the unfolding humanitarian crisis as his country’s La Soufrière volcano continued to spew massive amounts of ash. He described the impact of the ash as “apocalyptic.”
  Satellite images show that some of the ash was carried halfway around the world to India by jet stream winds.



Whitest White

Painting rooftops with a new type of super-reflective white paint could help reduce the effects of global heating in buildings and curb the need for air conditioning.
Researchers at Purdue University say the paint they made with barium sulphate pigment rather than conventional titanium dioxide does not absorb any UV light and reflects 98% of all sunlight.
Roofs have been painted white for centuries, but traditional paint reflects only about 80-90% of sunlight and still absorbs the warming UV light.
While further tests for durability are needed, the developers say the super-white paint could be on the market within two years at a price comparable to conventional products.



Carbon Surge

The International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that there is likely to be a major surge in greenhouse gas emissions from energy generation this year as the world’s economy continues to recover from the pandemic.
The Paris-based independent intergovernmental agency predicts in its annual Global Energy Review that CO₂ emissions will increase by almost 5% to 36 billion tons by the end of 2021.
The IEA believes there will be a 4.5% jump in coal demand, exceeding that of 2019 and rivaling the all-time peak from 2014.
The agency says this will be the greatest contributor to the predicted surge in CO₂ emissions.



Melted Giant

A massive iceberg that broke away from Antarctica in 2017 and threatened the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia earlier this year is no more.
Satellite images of what was known as iceberg A68 reveal it is now broken up into so many small fragments that scientists say they are no longer worth tracking.
A68 once covered an area of nearly 2,300 square miles but was eventually unable to survive the warm waters and higher air temperatures of the South Atlantic.
“Death by hydrofracture, ‘slush puppies,’” said expert Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado Boulder.



Core Discovery

Scientists say they have found evidence of a new, deeper inner core of the planet, which they say could point to an unknown and dramatic event in Earth’s geologic history.
“Traditionally, we’ve been taught the Earth has four main layers: the crust, the mantle, the outer core and the inner core,” said Australian National University geophysicist and lead researcher Joanne Stephenson.
The newly discovered “innermost inner core” was revealed by using a search algorithm to examine decades of seismic data on how different levels of the Earth cause sound waves to slow down.


• Extreme Temperatures: -96°F Vostok, Antarctica; 114°F Matam, Senegal

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April 19, 2021 (for the week ending Apr 16)



Earthquakes

• Eight people were killed and three others were seriously injured in East Java when a magnitude 6.0 temblor struck offshore.
• Earth movements were also felt in far southern Japan [magnitude 5.3], Greek islands of the southern Aegean [5.2], Wyoming [3.9] and Los Angeles [4.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• Category-1 Cyclone Seroja caused widespread damage to several towns when it roared ashore in western Australia.
• Typhoon Surigae, the season’s first, formed near the island of Yap.



Volcanoes

• Violent explosions from La Soufrière volcano on St. Vincent prompted a massive evacuation and coated most of the island in ash. The eruptions also knocked out pow-er and water, creating a humanitarian crisis for the southern Caribbean country.
• The world’s largest volcano was rocked by a swarm of tremors that scientists say could mean Mauna Loa is approaching an eruption on the Big Island of Hawaii. Its last eruption was in 1984.



In Hot Water

Oceans have become so warm under global heating that temperatures are now too high near the equator for some marine species to live, new research finds.
Scientists from New Zealand and Australia write in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that location analysis of nearly 50,000 marine species between 1955 and 2015 found that many were moving away from the equator, “on a global scale.”
While the number of species living on the equatorial ocean floor remained unchanged, there are now fewer free-swimming creatures near the surface, such as fish.“
These species haven’t disappeared, they’ve just gone from the tropics,” said coauthor David Schoeman.



Climate Elite

British researchers say the world’s wealthiest are “at the heart” of the climate emergency and that they must make major changes in life-style to curb global heating.
The Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behavior Change says that the wealthiest 5% caused 37% of carbon emission growth from 1990 to 2015.
Peter Newell of Sussex University told the BBC: “We have got to cut overconsumption and the best place to start is overconsumption among the polluting elites who contribute, by far, more than their share of carbon emissions.”
He adds that those who drive SUVs and fly frequently are misguided in thinking that planting trees and improvements in technology will offset their behavior.



Space Dust

The Earth gains quite a bit of weight each year as dust from comets and asteroids rains down on the planet.
Writing in the journal Earth & Planetary Science Letters, researchers say their 20-year study collected samples of the space debris, ranging from 30 to 200 micrometers in size, near the Franco-Italian Concordia research station in Antarctica.
The scientists from France’s National Center for Scientific Research then calculated that Earth receives about 14 tons of the micro-meteorites each day.
They believe 80% comes from comets and the remainder from asteroids.



Plastic Winds

The scattering of plastic pollution in the world’s waterways and atmosphere is now resulting in the “plastification” of the planet, with the debris “spiraling around the globe” in the wind.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that smaller microplastics can remain in the atmosphere for nearly a week, which is long enough for them to be carried across an ocean or a continent.
A lot of the airborne particles are from decades-old, broken-down items such as plastic bags, wrappers and bottles.
But the biggest sources are roadways, where the tires of large trucks and other vehicles degrade into tiny bits as they rumble along and are picked up by the wind.


• Extreme Temperatures: -95°F Vostok, Antarctica; 117°F Matam, Senegal

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April 12, 2021 (for the week ending Apr 09)



Earthquakes

• Los Angeles was jolted by a moderate [magnitude 4.0] earthquake that awakened residents well before dawn.
• Earth movements were also felt in Indonesia’s Banda Sea [magnitude 5.9], the far southern Philippines [4.0] and the Bhutan-India-Nepal border region [5.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• Developing Cyclone Seroja triggered catastrophic flash floods in East Timor and two adjacent provinces of Indonesia. The inundations killed at least 182 people, washed out bridges and submerged thousands of homes.
• A weak and unnamed tropical storm churned the eastern Indian Ocean.



Breakout Lava

• Two new fissures began spewing lava and steam near where Iceland’s Mount Fagradalsfjall awakened with dramatic lava flows in late March.
  Hikers and other visitors who had come to the country’s latest tourist attraction were ordered to evacuate.
  But Iceland’s disaster agency said the new cracks are not a serious threat and are not expected to affect traffic at the nearby Keflavík International Airport.
  Scientists say new fissures could mean the eruption is moving northward from its original break-through location.



Eagles Soar

America’s iconic bald eagles have recovered from the brink of extinction brought on by the once-widespread use of the pesticide DDT half a century ago.
The U.S. Fish and Wild-life Service says the national symbol now numbers nearly 317,000 individual birds with an estimated 74,400 nesting pairs.
Only about 417 pairs had survived by 1963 because of the eggshell-thinning phenomenon caused by the now-banned DDT.
Martha Williams, deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, called the recovery “one of the most well-known conservation success stories of all time.”
She says she hopes all Americans get the chance to see at least one majestic bald eagle in flight.



Food and Climate

While the volume of food produced by farms around the world has increased significantly over the past 60 years, new research finds that agricultural productivity has actually fallen by 21% due to Earth’s warming climate since the 1960s.
Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, researchers say climate change has “basically wiped out about seven years of improvements” during the period.
“It is equivalent to pressing the pause button on productivity growth back in 2013 and experiencing no improvements since then,” said lead author Ariel Ortiz-Bobea.
The study points to the danger global heating poses in feeding the planet’s growing population.



Easter Bunny Hunt

New Zealand hunters resumed their annual tradition of shooting thousands of invasive bunny rabbits over the Easter weekend after a four-year break in the slaughter. The fundraising event was launched more than 25 years ago with teams gathering from across the country.
Organizers say a total of 11,968 rabbits were shot, but they concede the cull isn’t expected to make much of a dent in the massive bunny population.
The animals were brought to New Zealand in the 1800s and quickly overran the landscape, ravaging the native biodiversity and agriculture.



Cosmic Glitches

Cosmic rays have been found to be responsible for a huge number of malfunctions in computers and other electronic devices.
The high-energy protons and atomic nuclei that move through space at nearly the speed of light often strike Earth’s atmosphere.
Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Company has determined that 30,000 to 40,000 malfunctions happen in its network alone each year due to the phenomenon.
The problems arise when electronics are struck by neutrons produced when the cosmic rays collide with oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere. This can cause devices from computers to mobile phones to freeze.


• Extreme Temperatures: -91°F South Pole, Antarctica; 115°F Matam, Senegal

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April 05, 2021 (for the week ending Apr 02)



Earthquakes

• Tokyo and surrounding areas were jolted by a moderate [magnitude 5.8] quake centered beneath the Pacific.
• Earth movements were also felt in northern Taiwan [magnitude 5.2], central New Guinea [4.7] and along the California-Baja California border [4.8].



Stronger Cyclones

• An international analysis of 90 studies on global heating and tropical cyclone intensity found evidence that climate change from carbon emissions is probably fueling more powerful hurricanes and typhoons.
  Writing in the journal ScienceBrief Review, researchers say the recent trend of explosive tropical cyclone strengthening along with their formation and paths across new regions are consistent with the predictions for our warming planet.
  They say that since about 1980, the intensity of tropical cyclones has increased globally, especially in the North Atlantic basin.



Eruptions

• The eruption of Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano has continued for two months, with its ash destroying avocado and coffee crops and blanketing villages.
• The latest eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Merapi sent lava and superheated clouds of ash and vapor down its flanks in central Java.



Ursine Illness

California wildlife officials warn that a new unexplained neurological illness is causing some black bear cubs in the state to exhibit overly friendly “doglike” behavior with humans. Several have been fearlessly eating and camping out in backyards as humans look on.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) [see also direct CDFW link] says one young bear that was picked up was lethargic and underweight, displaying head tremors and a subtle head tilt. Encephalitis, or brain inflammation, appears to be the cause.
“At this point, we don’t know what causes the encephalitis, so we don’t know what, if any, health risks these bears might pose to other animals,” said CDFW wildlife veterinarian Brandon Munk.



Arctic Lightning

With the region around the North Pole heating up much faster than any other area of the planet due to climate change, atmospheric and space physicists from the University of Washington say the amount of lightning in the Arctic has grown by more than 300% during the past 11 years.
They made the conclusion by looking at data from the World Wide Lightning Location Network.
While the scientists say they have no proof of a link between the warming and lightning increase, it is well known that the Arctic has typically been far too cold in the past to support the kind of updrafts that create thunderstorms and the accompanying lightning.
NB: see also lightningmaps.org



Towering Disease

The Kenya Wildlife Service is investigating a mysterious skin disease that has killed more than 10 giraffes in the far northeast of the country.
The illness was first reported last May, with six of the animals dying within the following five months. It eventually spreads to the mouth, where it interferes with the giraffes’ ability to eat.
The local reticulated giraffes, also known as Somali giraffes, have been recently under threat from poaching because livestock markets in the region have been closed due to the pandemic. Locals also believe the animals’ meat boosts libido, making them a target for slaughter.



Coldest Ever

A U.S. research satellite detected a record-low temperature for the planet, which occurred atop a supercharged thunderstorm in the tropical Pacific just over three years ago.
Sensors aboard the NOAA-20 spacecraft found the temperature in an “over-shooting top” of a soaring cumulonimbus cloud plunged to -168 degrees F.
While overshooting tops are common in thunderstorms, intense updrafts inside a thunderhead on Dec. 29, 2018, about 300 miles south of Naura Island in Micronesia, sent the top of the cloud punching into the lower stratosphere. This was in part due to the very warm ocean waters below.
Such intense storms have become more frequent.


• Extreme Temperatures: -82°F Vostok, Antarctica; 114°F Nawabshah, Pakistan

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March 29, 2021 (for the week ending Mar 26)



Earthquakes

• A sharp [magnitude 7.0] temblor centered off Japan’s northeastern coast was felt widely across Honshu Island, including Tokyo.
• Earth movements were also felt in northeastern New Zealand [magnitude 5.3], northeastern Turkey [4.2] and interior parts of metropolitan Los Angeles [3.1].



Volcanic Eruptions

• Iceland’s Mount Fagradalsfjall erupted with spectacular fountains and flows of lava for the first time in 6,000 years, only 25 miles southeast of the capital, Reykjavik. Scientists and sightseers roasted marshmallows and hot dogs from the heat of the lava, but the foul smells of the volcanic gasses were said to curb most everyone’s appetite.
• Flights in and out of Guatemala’s main international airport were briefly halted as crews removed runway ash from the latest in a series of eruptions from nearby Pacaya volcano.



Bovine emissions

Feeding beef cattle a small supplement of red seaweed each day could sharply cut the amount of the greenhouse gas methane that the animals expel into the atmosphere through burps and flatulence, scientists say. Methane is 30 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO₂, making cows important contributors to global heating. Researchers from the University of California, Davis say that after feeding cows about 3 ounces of the marine plant per day for 21 weeks, they saw an 80 percent reduction in methane produced by the ruminant animals. The team is working on ways to make it easier to feed the cows seaweed and to cut its cost to farmers.



Plastic pathogens

Researchers say they have found that the vast amounts of microplastics released into the environment from wastewater treatment plants each day may be “hubs” for antibiotic-resistant bacteria and other pathogens. A team from the New Jersey Institute of Technology says the plastic pollution forms a slimy layer of film on the surface of wastewater, which collects dangerous microorganisms and allows them to commingle and mix with antibiotic waste. The scientists say this poses a threat to marine life and human health if the plastic-borne pathogens bypass the treatment process, which is typically not designed to remove the plastics.



Horns down

Wildlife experts in Africa say they have found it is safer to relocate the critically endangered black rhinoceros upside down, sedated and blindfolded by helicopter rather than by land.
It is sometimes necessary to move rhinos from local overcrowding and to make them less vulnerable to poaching.
Their blood oxygen levels are higher when they are upside down, compared to lying on their side on a flatbed truck. Nearly 98 percent of black rhinos disappeared in the wild after the 1960s, when more than 100,000 roamed the deserts, shrublands and savannas from Kenya to Namibia.



Heat imbalance

One half of Earth is emitting heat from the planet’s interior faster than the other, which scientists say has probably been going on for 400 million years.
University of Oslo says the lopsided heat loss is probably a leftover effect of when all the world’s landmasses were joined in a supercontinent, dubbed Pangaea. Scientists believe it was centered around today’s Africa. Since ocean areas trap less heat from Earth’s interior than land, the vast Pacific is losing more heat.



Flood of pests

Southeastern Australia’s worst floods in 50 years have forced thousands from their homes and driven a frightening number of snakes and spiders into populated areas. Other wildlife are also scrambling for higher ground, including skinks, ants and crickets. The hordes of spiders invading people’s homes have proven to be the most traumatic for many residents. But they are advised not reach for insecticides because the arachnids will eventually leave when the waters recede.


• Extreme Temperatures: -82°F Vostok, Antarctica; 113°F Mainé-Soroa, Niger

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March 22, 2021 (for the week ending Mar 19)



Earthquakes

• Dozens of school-girls were injured in a stampede after a magnitude 4.7 temblor struck along the Kenya-Tanzania border on March 11.
• More than 40,000 tremors have shaken southwestern Iceland since late February due to rising magma.
• Earth movements were also felt in central Greece [magnitude 5.6], northeastern Algeria 6.0], north-eastern New Zealand [4.8], Tokyo [5.0], Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula [6.6], eastern Ontario [3.2] and around Wichita, Kansas [3.9].



Congo lava

• Increased activity within the incandescent lava lake of East Africa’s Mount Nyiragongo has officials worried that another deadly eruption might be approaching.
  The volcano, located within Virunga National Park of the Democratic Republic of Congo, killed 250 people and left 120,000 others homeless in 2002 when it spewed a rapid stream of alkaline lava that raced downslope at up to 60 mph.
  Experts say recent activity is almost identical to what occurred before that eruption and another in 1977.



Seismic Sinkholes

Small villages in central Croatia have become riddled with nearly 100 sinkholes since the area was rocked by a deadly magnitude 6.4 temblor in December. Seven people perished and massive structural damage occurred during the quake.
Villagers are now watching as the holes cave in next to their homes.
While sinkholes are not uncommon in the area, scientists say the sheer number of them would have taken years if not decades to appear without the powerful earthquake.



Pulverized Plastic

Scientists say they have found a way to cleanly, efficiently and cheaply break down polystyrene, a type of plastic used in packaging material, food containers, cutlery and other items.
A team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and Clemson University says it has found a way to grind up the polystyrene with metal ball bearings until a desired chemical reaction occurs.
This type of “mechano-chemistry” deconstructs the plastic through chemical events in which the metal bearings and oxygen in the air act as co-catalysts. The resulting debris can be used to create other products.
“We think this proof of concept is an exciting possibility for developing new recycling technologies for all kinds of plastics,” said senior scientist Viktor Balema.



Quietly disappearing

An Australian songbird is slowly fading into extinction as it loses its mating song crucial for its survival.
Scientists at the Australian National University say the young regent honeyeaters are struggling to learn mating calls because the adult birds are disappearing and not passing on the tunes.
“This lack of ability to communicate with their own species is unprecedented in a wild animal,” said researcher Dejan Stojanovic. He adds that the honeyeaters are now so rare that some younger birds never find an adult male to teach them their love song.



Early blossom

Japan’s renowned cherry blossoms are in full bloom again, bursting forth in vivid pink at the earliest date on record around Tokyo.
The first blooms were observed in the capital on March 14, the same date as during last year’s record early appearance.
The early blossoms are said to be the result of the ongoing global heating that brought Japan unusual February warmth.



Blinding sand

China and Mongolia have suffered the worst sandstorm in a decade, whipped up by high winds that killed at least 10 people and left nearly 400 others missing amid very low visibility.
Health experts said levels of the tiny particles of airborne sand, which have been linked to respiratory disease, soared to 9,350 micrograms per cubic meter in Beijing, 180 times the daily maximum exposure recommended by the World Health Organization.
China has been trying to reforest and restore the ecology upwind from Beijing to create a “great green wall” that can hold back the sand.


• Extreme Temperatures: -92°F Vostok, Antarctica; 110°F Mainé-Soroa, Niger

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March 15, 2021 (for the week ending Mar 12)



Earthquakes

• A brief Pacific-wide tsunami alert was issued after a magnitude 8.1 temblor rocked New Zealand’s remote Kermadec Islands, but only small rises in sea level were observed.
• Another sharp [magnitude 7.3] quake just off northeastern New Zealand triggered a brief local tsunami alert on the North Island.
• As earthquakes continued to indicate rising magma near Iceland’s capital of Reykjavik[, the largest being of magnitude 5.2], the prime minister assured residents that any eruption that may follow would be minor and would not endanger the population or critical infrastructure



Tropical cyclones

• Cyclone Niran skirted New Caledonia as a Catego-ry-3 storm.
• Tropical Storm Iman formed briefly south of Reunion and Mauritius .
• Cyclone Habana churned the remote central Indian Ocean with Category-4 force.



Sumatran eruption

• Mount Etna's colorful eruption continued with lava flowing down its flanks and ash raining down.
• Four blasts from a sudden eruption of Nicaragua’s San Cristóbal volcano blanketed some nearby villages and crops with a layer of ash.
• Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano remained very active, tossing lava bombs and spewing ash from its crater.



Space 'Hurricane'

Scientists say they have observed a hurricane-like feature spinning in the highest levels of the atmosphere.
An international team of scientists analyzed 3D satellite data from 2014 and found a cyclone of plasma swirling above the polar ionosphere and magnetosphere that resembled a hurricane at the surface.
But the 650-mile-wide feature, hundreds of miles above the North Pole, rained electrons rather than water.
The space hurricane had multiple spiral arms and lasted almost eight hours before gradually breaking down.
“Until now, it was uncertain that space plasma hurricanes even existed, so to prove this with such a striking observation is incredible,” said Mike Lockwood of the University of Reading.



Geriatric mom

The world’s oldest known wild bird has hatched yet another chick at the ripe old age of at least 70.
The Laysan albatross known as Wisdom was first tagged in 1956 and is believed to have had at least 30 to 36 chicks during her life-time.
Since the species mates for life, it’s believed Wisdom has outlived previous partners before mating with Akeakamai (“lover of wisdom” in the Hawaiian language) in 2012.
Wisdom’s latest hatchling emerged in February at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the mid-Pacific, where Wisdom and Akeakamai are feeding and caring for it jointly.



Rat recovery

The ecology of a remote Alaskan island once known as Rat Island has quickly recovered from the damage inflicted by the invasive rodents just over 10 years after a coordinated effort eradicated them.
Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, University of California San Diego researcher Carolyn Kurle reveals that native species on what is now known as Hawadax Island have since thrived and are restoring the landscape’s natural balance.
Rats were introduced there by a Japanese shipwreck sometime before 1780, and they quickly ravaged native birds and other wildlife.



Greenhouse surge

Global carbon emissions have already rebounded to levels higher than before the pandemic, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The Paris-based independent intergovernmental organization says worldwide emissions during December 2020 were up 2% from December 2019.
“The rebound in global carbon emissions toward the end of last year is a stark warning that not enough is being done to accelerate clean energy transitions worldwide,” Fatih Birol of the IEA said in a statement.
There was a 4.9% fall in emissions worldwide in 2020 due to the pandemic.


• Extreme Temperatures: -83°F Vostok, Antarctica; 110°F Dori, Burkina Faso

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March 8, 2021 (for the week ending Mar 05)



Earthquakes

• Iceland’s Met Office says a swarm of quakes jolting the island’s Reykjanes peninsula probably means magma is building up there beneath a mountain just to the southwest of the capital, Reykjavik. [The magnitude of the largest most recent quake was 4.6.]
• A strong [magnitude 6.3] temblor in central Greece caused scattered damage and was felt in neighbor-ing Balkan countries.
• Earth movements were also felt in southern Oman [magnitude 4.3], Taiwan [5.8], south-central Alaska [5.3], California’s Simi Valley [3.2] and western North Carolina [2.2].



Tropical cyclones

• Cyclone Niran spun up off the coast of Queensland, then quickly strengthened to Category-4 force. It was predicted to weaken and skirt New Caledonia as a Category-2 storm.
• Cyclone Marian churned the open waters of the eastern Indian Ocean.



Sumatran eruption

• Far western Indonesia’s Sinabung volcano erupted with 13 separate blasts within a single day, spewing ash thousands of feet into the sky of North Sumatra province. Nearby residents were forced to remain indoors to avoid the falling debris



Waning Stream

The Gulf Stream is at its weakest in more than 1,000 years, which scientists say could curb its climate-moderating effects for Europe and disrupt the overall North Atlantic Ocean circulation.
Several studies have linked the slowdown to climate change brought on by human activity. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, a research team says it found the slow-down began about 1850 but has undergone a dramatic decline since the 1960s. “If we continue to drive global warming, the Gulf Stream System will weaken further — by 34% to 45% by 2100, according to the latest generation of climate models,” said team member Stefan Rahmstorf.



Antarctic split

An iceberg more than 20 times the size of Manhattan and nearly 500 feet thick has broken off from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf. The British Antarctic Survey said it was the largest calving there since 1917 but cannot be directly linked to climate change.
Warning signs of the split began last November when a chasm in the ice appeared and ripped toward another major crack 21 miles away. In January, the chasm began to expand in that direction at about a half-mile a day until the separation occurred.
While it is a huge chunk of ice, scientists say it is dwarfed by Iceberg A68a, which broke off from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in 2017 and recently threatened to collide with South Georgia Island.



Saharan Fallout

As a huge plume of Saharan dust cast a pall over parts of Spain and France in early March, a leading expert warned that the desert particles can still contain residual radioactivity from the 1960s French nuclear tests in southern Algeria.
Radiation protection expert Pierre Barbey of France’s University of Caen Normandy says he analyzed Saharan dust that fell on his car in the Alps during a recent episode and found it contained minute amounts of cesium-137 created by the blasts.
While the radiation is now too weak to harm humans, Barbey says the finding “does say a lot about the persistence of radioactive pollution.”



Carbon 'Red Alert'

Leading climate scientists warn that the promised moves to greener technologies to supply the world’s energy needs will not happen fast enough to stave off the climate catastrophes predicted if the world warms more than 2 degrees Celsius.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change says nations must cut their carbon emissions in half within the next 10 years to keep global heating within the 1.5-degree “safe” threshold.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the warning a red alert for our planet, adding that “it shows governments are nowhere close to the level of ambition needed to limit climate change."


• Extreme Temperatures: -79°F Vostok, Antarctica; 109°F Kédougou, Senegal

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March 1, 2021 (for the week ending Feb 26)



Earthquakes

• Iceland’s capital of Reykjavik was jolted by a strong [magnitude 5.6] quake and several sharp aftershocks.
• Earth movements were also felt in northeastern New Zealand [magnitude 4.3], central Costa Rica [4.1] and along the Kansas-Oklahoma border [4.2].



Pacaya eruption

• Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano continued its latest eruptive phase with blasts that sent ash soaring high into the sky south of the capital and blanketing nearby villages.



Open Arctic

Global heating has melted so much of the thick multi-year ice off the coast of Siberia that Russia has for the first time been able to navigate a cargo ship from Asia to a home port on the Arctic Ocean in winter.
By using the newly opened Northern Sea Route (NSR) instead of the traditional path around Asia and the Middle East, through the Suez Canal and around Europe, the Sovcomflot shipping company saved millions of dollars and days of travel time.
Traffic through the NSR has exploded during summer in recent years but has remained closed from November until July.
Russia now has plans to use its expanding fleet of civilian nuclear-powered ice- breakers to make the path available year-round.



Porcupine Gamers

Researchers have found that pigs can be trained to play video games, using only their snouts to manipulate a joystick in front of a computer monitor.
Scientists at Pennsylvania State University tested two Yorkshire pigs named Hamlet and Omelette, and two Panepinto micro pigs, Ebony and Ivory.
They found that the highly intelligent swine plowed through levels of difficulty to excel at the game. But Hamlet and Omelette were forced to retire after 12 weeks because “they had grown too large to stand long enough to complete sessions.”
The Penn State team plans to expand its research by using touch screens and other technology to test the pigs’ abilities.



Orange 'juice'

Seville is launching a project to generate electricity from the thousands of bitter oranges that frequently litter the Spanish city’s streets.
The Guardian reports that about 35 tons of the fruit will be added to the other organic matter currently generating energy to fuel the city’s water purification plants.
It’s hoped that the methane put out by the fermenting fruit can also generate enough surplus energy to be put into the power grid, powering about 73,000 homes.
“We hope that soon we will be able to recycle all the city’s oranges,” said Benigno López of the Seville water utility.



Power Line Hazard

The electrocution of 11 giraffes from low-hanging transmission lines in a Kenyan conservation area has the country’s power company promising to raise the cables and check its entire network for safety.
Conservationists demanded immediate action after three rare Rothschild’s giraffes were killed in the Soysambu Conservancy within three days.
Only about 1,600 of the species, which do not have spots on their legs, roam freely in the wild. The Soysambu Conservancy currently hosts about 125 giraffes.



Meltdown Legacy

Scientists have discovered more and different highly radioactive particles were released into the environment around Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant when meltdowns occurred after the March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
While it was known that particles containing radioactive cesium were widely distributed at the time, reaching as far away as Tokyo, larger such particles from the hydrogen explosion of reactor unit 1 were deposited within a narrow zone.
Little is known about the environmental and human health impacts of these particles. But an international team of scientists says that because of their large size, they are likely to mainly pose a threat when they come in sustained contact with skin.


• Extreme Temperatures: -71°F Vostok, Antarctica; 109°F Rivadavia, Salta, Argentina

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February 22, 2021 (for the week ending Feb 19)



Earthquakes

• A powerful [magnitude 7.1] after-shock of Japan’s devastating 2011 temblor injured more than 150 people as it caused widespread damage in the region around the meltdown-plagued Fukushima nuclear power plant.
• A [magnitude 6.2] temblor centered in Tajikistan was felt widely across South Asia, as far away as India and Pakistan.
• At least 37 people were injured when a strong [magnitude 5.4] quake struck southwestern Iran.
• Earth movements were also felt in Armenia [magnitude 4.9], eastern India’s Assam state [4.7], southern Vanuatu [6.2] and the Canadian resort of Banff [4.4].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Guambe formed off the coast of Mozambique and was expected to loop around southern Madagascar.
• Tropical Storm Dujuan formed to the southeast of the Philippines.



Etna eruptions

• Sicily’s Mount Etna dusted the nearby city of Catania with ash after the mountain produced one of the strongest eruptions in its current eruptive phase.
  The city’s airport was temporarily closed, and bicycles and motorbikes were prohibited on roads affected by the falling ash.



Sonic explorers

The songs of fin whales are the loudest in the sea and may soon be used to help map the world’s ocean floor.
A seismologist at Oregon State University says he and colleagues have found the sound waves generated by the whale species are strong enough to penetrate several feet into the ocean floor, where they reverberate off sediment and layers of rock.
“After each whale call, if you look closely at the seismometer data, there is a response from the Earth,” said researcher John Nabelek.
Blasts from high-energy air guns are now the main tools used to explore the ocean floor, but they are expensive, require permits and contribute to noise pollution harmful to marine creatures.



Bitcoin fuel

Electricity used to operate Bitcoin’s “mining” operations around the world now exceeds that used by the entire nation of Argentina.
Experts told the BBC that the energy consumed by the cryptocurrency’s operations increased sharply as its value soared to ever-higher record levels during February.
The complex puzzles that run on a vast network of computers, required to keep Bitcoin secure and verify its transactions, consume an enormous amount of power.
The operators of those “mining” efforts earn a small amount of bitcoins for the tasks, with some filling warehouses with computers that operate continuously to maximize profits.
Some suggest imposing a carbon tax on all cryptocurrencies to offset the greenhouse gas emissions that result from their operations.



Ozone healing

The level of ozone-depleting chemicals banned by the 1987 Montreal Protocol to stop the annual ozone hole from forming over the Antarctic is once again falling.
The illicit use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the manufacture of polyurethane insulation foam in China, discovered in 2018, had caused the levels of atmospheric CFCs to be higher than expected.
This caused the healing of the ozone layer to be slower than what scientists had predicted. But now that China has reined in the use of those compounds, their levels in the atmosphere are once again declining.



Predator chow

British researchers say that feeding domestic cats a meaty diet can help prevent the felines from killing as many birds and other wildlife when roaming outside.
Robbie McDonald at the University of Exeter says playing with your cat for five to 10 minutes each day can also result in the pets killing 25% less prey.
It’s estimated that domestic cats kill at least 1.3 billion birds each year in the U.S. alone, along with 6.3 billion small mammals. Cats introduced into New Zealand and Australia since colonial times have also ravaged native species there.
“Our work shows that noninvasive methods, like food and play, can change cats’ inclination to hunt and be positive for cats and their owners,” says McDonald.


• Extreme Temperatures: -68°F Vostok, Antarctica; 107°F Kaolack, Senegal

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February 15, 2021 (for the week ending Feb 12)



Earthquakes

• A powerful [magnitude 7.7] undersea temblor south of Vanuatu generated a small South Pacific tsunami.
• Earth movements were also felt in the far southern Philippines [magnitude 6.0], Taiwan [6.1], Armenia and Georgia [5.1], the Virgin Islands [5.0], northern Oklahoma [4.2], the San Francisco Bay Area [3.2] and Portland, Oregon [4.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Faraji briefly attained Category-5 force as it looped in the central Indian Ocean
• Tropical Storm Twenty formed briefly south of Fiji.



Java eruptions

• Explosions within Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano sent plumes of ash high into the sky south of the capital city and streams of lava flowing down its southern flank.
  Officials issued a yellow alert to aviation due to the ash, which also fell on nearby communities and farms. The eruption was not a threat to populated areas other than from the falling volcanic debris.
  Pacaya is the most active of the 32 volcanic cones that dot the Central American nation. A powerful eruption in May 2010 killed a TV journalist who was covering Pacaya’s rumblings.



Ocean noise

The racket of human activity beneath the ocean surface is drowning out the natural noises made by marine creatures, which researchers say is as harmful as overfishing, pollution and climate change.
A University of Exeter team made the conclusion after reviewing more than 500 studies on marine noise. The review says while military sonar and oil exploration blasts are obvious sources of distress and deafness in the ocean, noise from shipping has increased by 32 times in the past 50 years.
The study says the din of offshore wind farms, bottom trawling and other sources are drowning out the calls many species use to communicate, spawn and migrate.



Saharan red

One of the strongest in a series of powerful winter storms raging across parts of Europe drew in a massive plume of Saharan dust, which coated Pyrenees and Alpine ski resorts with an orange hue.
The airborne particles also triggered respiratory problems in humans from Barcelona to southern France.
Originating in Algeria, the dust turned skies red as far north as the German city of Stuttgart. The dust contained particles of calcite, ferric oxide, quartz and clay.



Rodent invasion

Parts of southeastern Australia have been overrun by a massive infestation of mice, with untold numbers of the ravenous rodents swarming into people’s homes and threatening crops.
The center of the infestation is in rural New South Wales, but the pests have also spread into parts of Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.
Researcher Steve Henry blames abundant rainfall and a good harvest for allowing mice to spike in numbers starting last year. He says all that is needed to start killing the mice off is a cold, heavy rain to flood their nests in the ground.



COVID climate

New research points to man-made climate change as a key component in the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, and warns of other such animal-to-human transmissions of new pathogens in the future.
Scientists found [that] large-scale changes in vegetation driven by climate change across China’s Yunnan province over the past century allowed 40 new bat species to move into the area, carrying 40 new types of viruses.
“As climate change altered habitats, species left some areas and moved into others, taking their viruses with them,” wrote zoologist Robert Beyer of the University of Cambridge.
With the human population growing and expanding into the new bat habitats, it becomes more likely people will encounter those animals and their viruses, the study concludes.


• Extreme Temperatures: -59°F Fort Reliance, NT, Canada; 106°F Rivadavia, Salta, Argentina

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February 08, 2021 (for the week ending Feb 05)



Earthquakes

• A [magnitude 4.4] aftershock of a temblor that killed 105 people in Indonesia’s western Sulawesi Island on Jan. 15 caused residents to again flee their homes.
• Earth movements were also felt in southern Tibet and eastern Nepal [magnitude 5.2], southern Iran [4.9], western Turkey [4.8], northwestern Argentina [5.1], the Guyana-Brazil border area [5.7] and the Big Island of Hawaii [4.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• At least one person was left dead and five others missing in Fiji by Cyclone Ana. It was the second strong tropical cyclone to hit the island nation within a month. The remnants of Tropical Storm Bina drenched Fiji two days after Ana.
• Cyclone Lucas briefly attained hurricane force over the Coral Sea, then drenched parts of Vanuatu and southern New Caledonia as a tropical storm.



Java eruptions

• Indonesia’s highest volcano spewed hot ash down its slopes in eastern Java. Residents around Mount Semeru were warned of possible slides of wet debris should heavy rains arrive. Java’s Mount Merapi shot out a river of lava and 4.1 clouds of ash a week earlier.



Rising faster

Scientists warn that sea level rise for the remainder of this century is likely to be far greater than current models are predicting. Writing in the journal Ocean Science, a team from the University of Copenhagen says that rises are likely to be faster and greater, possibly reaching 3.3 feet higher by 2100.
Using a technique called hindcasting, or comparing the predictions of different models against what actually happened in the past, the researchers found that many of the models are underestimating current and future rates of sea level rise.
Oceans are expected to rise significantly due to the melting of ice caps as well as thermal expansion due to the warming oceans. This would swamp many coastal areas around the world.



Net zero

California scientists say the goal of reaching zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from industry and energy production in the U.S. can be accomplished by 2050 by shifting energy infrastructure to operate mainly on renewable energy. The team says the transition would cost about $1 per day for each U.S. resident, but it is crucial to averting the worst effects of climate change.
“It means that by 2050 we need to build many gigawatts of wind and solar power plants, new transmission lines, a fleet of electric cars and light trucks, millions of heat pumps to replace conventional furnaces and water heaters, and more energy-efficient buildings,” said lead researcher Margaret Torn.



Squared off

Researchers say they have finally solved the mystery of why the poop of Australia’s iconic wombats comes out in cubes rather than in rounded forms. The fecal phenomenon has long puzzled scientists.
Writing in the journal Soft Matter, a team from the U.S. and Australia found the cubes are formed within the last section of the intestines as the dung dries out in the extremely long wombat colon.
The sculpting of the poop into cubes happens as stiff and flexible regions of the colon contract in tandem.
“Our research found that ... you really can fit a square peg through a round hole,” said Scott Carver of the University of Tasmania.



Shark-ray decline

A new study reveals overfishing has decimated the populations of sharks and rays in the world’s oceans, with numbers dropping more than 70 percent on average between 1970 and 2018.
Oceanic whitetip sharks are now near extinction, dropping in numbers by 98 percent in 60 years. Sharks and rays take years to reach sexual maturity and have few offspring, contributing to their dwindling numbers.
Scientists say the loss of the top predators leaves a “gaping hole” in the marine food web.
Those predators have been described as the lions, tigers and bears of the sea, keeping its ecosystem in balance.


• Extreme Temperatures: -69°F Verkhoyansk, Siberia; 109°F Learmonth, W. Australia

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February 01, 2021 (for the week ending Jan 29)



Earthquakes

• The strongest in an intense swarm of temblors [a magnitude 4.4 quake] that shook Spain’s Granada province for days cracked buildings, tossed items off shelves and sent residents fleeing their homes.
• Earth movements were also felt in Cyprus [magnitude 4.9], South Asia’s Hindu Kush region [5.2], China’s Yunnan province [5.0], the Antarctic Peninsula [6.9], Fiji [5.1], west-central Colombia [4.9], northwestern Ohio [2.4] and coastal Southern California [3.5].



African Cyclone

• Unprecedented Tropical Cyclone Eloise killed at least 21 people across five southern African countries after raking Madagascar the previous week. Eloise submerged large tracts of southern Mozambique before producing widespread severe flooding across Zimbabwe, Botswana, Eswatini (Swaziland) and South Africa. Its flooding created chaos in areas farther south in Africa than any other such storm on record.



Java eruption

• Indonesia’s most active volcano sent a wide stream of lava and pyroclastic clouds flowing down its slopes in the heart of densely populated Java. It was the strongest eruption since officials raised Mount Merapi's danger level in November.



Snowless Fuji

Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji, the highest mountain in the country and visible on clear days from parts of Tokyo, has only a scant snowcap this year in a development that is concerning climate experts and average citizens alike. Satellite images reveal that the snow cover in December was the lowest in 20 years, with average daily snowfall only about 10 percent of normal this winter. While Fuji received a modest amount of snow from a storm in late December, it soon melted or was blown away by high winds. A warming climate in the last four decades has also caused the 12,388-foot mountain’s timberline to expand upslope about 100 feet.



Record melt

Earth has lost an estimated 28 trillion metric tons of ice due to global heating since the mid-1990s as the rate of melting accelerated at a record pace. This is in line with the worst-case scenarios experts with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have warned of in earlier projections. Writing in the journal The Cryosphere, lead author Thomas Slater said the melt will contribute to significant rises in ocean levels. “Sea level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century,” Slater said.



Disappearing bees

About a quarter of all known bee species haven’t been seen since the 1990s even though efforts by scientists and amateurs to survey them have increased by about 55 percent since the turn of the century. Eduardo Zattara and Marcelo Aizen of Argentina’s National University of Comahue found that the decline isn’t the same for all bee populations, and the lack of sightings for those missing doesn’t mean the species have gone extinct. The researchers say it just means those bees are now rare enough that people who tend to report bee sightings aren’t coming across them. The destruction of natural habitats, heavy use of pesticides and climate change are likely to be causing the decline, according to Zattara.



Dwarf giraffes

Two separate giraffes with a condition that makes them about half the height of an average giraffe have been spotted thousands of miles apart in Uganda and Namibia — the first time dwarfism has been observed in giraffes. Their discovery in recent years was just published in the British Medical Journal. The one discovered in Uganda, Gimli, measured 9.3 feet in height, while the Namibia dwarf, Nigel, was only 8.5 feet tall. Their diminutive size is caused by skeletal dysplasia, which affects humans and domestic animals, but the report points out that it is rarely observed in wildlife.


• Extreme Temperatures: -72°F Nyurba, Siberia; 109°F Port Augusta, S. Australia

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January 25, 2021 (for the week ending Jan 22)



Earthquakes

• At least 90 people perished and 932 others were injured when a magnitude 6.5 temblor struck Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island.
• Earth movements were also felt in Taiwan [magnitude 5.4], India’s western state of Maharashtra [3.5] and northern territory of Jammu and Kashmir [4.1], southern Iran [5.5], southwestern Turkey [4.4], northwestern Argentina [6.4] and Los Angeles [3.5].



Tropical cyclones

• Southern Mozambique, Zimbabwe and northeastern South Africa were on alert late in the week for strengthening Cyclone Eloise , which earlier soaked the northern third of Madagascar. The storm appeared to be taking a course that could be unprecedented in modern tropical cyclone history.
• Queensland’s Coral Sea coast was lashed by Tropical Storm Kimi, which spun up just offshore.
• Tropical Storm Joshua churned the central Indian Ocean and was a threat only to shipping lanes in the remote region.



Java blast

• Indonesia’s Mount Semeru volcanospewed vapor and ash almost 3 miles above the island of Java as clouds of superheated debris cascaded down from its summit crater. No damage or injuries were reported.



AI dog training

Colorado State University scientists say they are working to use artificial intelligence (AI) to train pet dogs. Jason Stock and Tom Cavey programmed an AI to recognize when dogs were sitting, lying down or standing. After achieving 92 percent accuracy, they created an automated trainer by combining a movable camera to observe the dogs, a speaker to bark out commands and a treat delivery tube to reward good behavior. But some animal experts caution that computers can’t recognize and promote the welfare of dogs or encourage their positive emotional state like humans can.



Carbon capture

Researchers are urging governments and industry to develop systems to collect carbon dioxide pollution at power plants and factories, condense it and then pump it into deep wells to prevent the greenhouse gas from worsening climate change. They say it needs to be a priority to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord. “Carbon capture and storage is going to be the only effective way we have in the short term to prevent our steel industry, cement manufacture and many other processes from continuing to pour emissions into the atmosphere,” said Stuart Haszeldine of Edinburgh University. Research is also under way to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, but the process is expensive and would require an enormous investment to curb global heating.



Plausible alibi

A tagged racing pigeon once believed to have flown from a competition in the United States to the Australian city of Melbourne, 8,000 miles away, briefly faced a death sentence as officials deemed it a foreign biohazard. Since the bird had seemingly bypassed the country’s strict quarantine regulation forbidding the importation of live animals or birds, plans were made to euthanize it. But sharp eyes from racing experts saw that the tag, allegedly from a U.S. bird organization, was not authentic. So “Joe,” named after new U.S. President Joe Biden, was found innocent and will be given the chance to fly freely around the neighborhood where it was first spotted.



Tropical shift

Earth’s tropical rain belt is being significantly shifted by climate change, which a NASA-National Science Foundation team says will eventually lead to profound but uneven changes in the planet’s weather patterns. Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, the researchers say the rain belt will move north in parts of the Eastern Hemisphere but will move south in areas in the Western Hemisphere because of the different and complex regional consequences of global warming. Lead author Antonios Mamalakis says the shifts will have “cascading effects” on water resources and agriculture. The team calls for future studies to pinpoint what those effects will be and where they will occur.



Creepy climbers

One species of invasive brown tree snakes in Guam has learned a previously unknown way of climbing trees and tall poles to find food, which scientists describe as “lassoing” their bodies to ascend. The ability was discovered as researchers were studying the native birds on the Pacific Island that have been decimated since the snakes were inadvertently introduced in the 1940s and 1950s. While monitoring a nest of Micronesian starlings that had been placed on a tall pole to protect them, Colorado State University and University of Cincinnati researchers were shocked to see the lasso technique, which they say probably evolved to help the snakes reach food.


• Extreme Temperatures: -89°F Verkhoyansk, Siberia; 112°F Learmonth, W. Australia

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January 18, 2021 (for the week ending Jan 15)



Earthquakes

• The Azores archipelago was jolted by an unusually powerful [magnitude 5.4] quake.
• Earth movements were also felt in the Turkish capital of Ankara [magnitude 4.5], India’s Jammu and Kashmir territory [4.5], northern Mongolia [6.7], Bali [5.5], northwestern Argentina [6.1] and western Yukon [3.6].



Java eruption

• Clouds of superheated volcanic debris cascaded down the slopes of Indonesia’s Mount Merapi, sending 500 people who live and work on the restive volcano’s slopes fleeing for safety.
  Many had returned after evacuating in November when authorities warned of building seismic unrest. Volcanologists have placed Merapi under the second-highest warning level.



Greenhouse climbers

Levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide will become 50 percent higher in the atmosphere this year than before the Industrial Revolution due to ongoing manmade emissions, according to the British Met Office. It predicts the average CO₂ concentration will exceed 417 parts per million (ppm) at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory sometime between April and June. That will be 50 percent higher than the 278 ppm that prevailed in the late 18th century before a burgeoning industrial economy began spewing clouds of CO₂ into the atmosphere.



Marine record

Temperatures of the world’s oceans between the surface and about 6,500 feet deep during 2020 reached the warmest levels ever measured, according to a report in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. “Over 90 percent of the excess heat due to global warming is absorbed by the oceans, so ocean warming is a direct indicator of global warming,” said lead researcher Lijing Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The past five years have been the hottest on record for the world’s vast oceans, with the rate of heating eight times higher than from 1960 to 1985. The warmth is said to be harming marine life and supercharging extreme weather conditions.



Warmest year

Year-end calculations reveal that 2020 was effectively the planet’s hottest year in human history, virtually tying with the previous record set in 2016. Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service says that last year was about 2.25 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average. The Japan Meteorological Agency’s calculations came to a similar conclusion. Some places on Earth recorded an average temperature of 10.5 degrees above that average. Copernicus scientists note that 2016 was made warmer by a strong El Niño ocean warming, while last year was cooled slightly by an emerging La Niña. This means climate change was even more powerful in 2020 despite the pandemic’s economic slowdown around the world.



'Ghastly future'

An international group of scientists warns that Earth is headed for a “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals” because of ignorance and dithering. Writing in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science, experts say that the scale of the threat is so great that it’s difficult even for experts to grasp. The report warns that climate-induced mass migrations, more pandemics and conflicts over resources will become inevitable unless urgent action is taken. It asks world leaders to meet the challenges posed by the climate emergency.



Creepy climbers

One species of invasive brown tree snakes in Guam has learned a previously unknown way of climbing trees and tall poles to find food, which scientists describe as “lassoing” their bodies to ascend. The ability was discovered as researchers were studying the native birds on the Pacific Island that have been decimated since the snakes were inadvertently introduced in the 1940s and 1950s. While monitoring a nest of Micronesian starlings that had been placed on a tall pole to protect them, Colorado State University and University of Cincinnati researchers were shocked to see the lasso technique, which they say probably evolved to help the snakes reach food.


• Extreme Temperatures: -89°F Verkhoyansk, Siberia; 112°F Learmonth, W. Australia

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January 11, 2021 (for the week ending Jan 08)



Earthquakes

• Croatia was hit on Dec. 29 by a magnitude 6.4 temblor that killed at least seven people and inflicted extensive damage.
• Earth movements were also felt in Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island [magnitude 6.1], eastern Taiwan [4.2], southeastern Idaho [4.2] and around Southern California’s Salton Sea [5.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• At least seven people died from severe weather that Tropical Storm Chalane brought to Madagascar, Mozambique and Zimbabwe during the closing days of 2020 and the beginning of 2021.
• Tropical Storm Imogen swamped parts of far northern Queensland after spinning up over Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria.
• Cyclone Danilo briefly attained Category-1 force as it churned the open waters of the central Indian Ocean.



Caribbean rumble

• Officials in St. Vincent and the Grenadines warned its residents living near La Soufrière volcano to be prepared to evacuate. The volcano produced strong tremors as it began forming a new lava dome and spewed gas emissions for the first time in years.
• Martinique’s Mount Pelée began rumbling in December, prompting French territorial officials to issue a yellow alert.



Baked-in warming

A new report warns that the amount of global warming already “baked in” to the atmosphere due to surging greenhouse gases is now enough to warm the planet more than the 2.0-degree Celsius cap outlined in the Paris climate agreement. Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, a team from Texas A&M University, California’s Lawrence Livermore National Lab and China’s Nanjing University says the atmosphere is now set to warm to about 2.4 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
But they say that amount of warming can be delayed for centuries if the world quickly stops spewing extra greenhouse gases from the burning of carbon fuels.



CO2 fuel

Oxford University researchers say they have found a way to cheaply and simply convert the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into jet fuel. The technique uses heated citric acid, hydrogen and an iron-manganese-potassium catalyst to turn the CO₂ into a fuel that would power jet aircraft. Even though the process would include capturing carbon emissions, the Oxford team says the process could be the most viable option for many commercial airline fleets to go carbon neutral until they can convert to electric propulsion or other greener options.



Shorter days

Planet Earth was spinning on its axis during 2020 more rapidly than at any other point in modern history, and experts believe it could rotate even faster during 2021. Scientists at the International Earth Rotation Service, based in Paris, say the spin peaked last year on July 19, with Earth completing its rotation 1.4602 milliseconds faster than the average daily rate of 86,400 seconds. They say the previous shortest-day record, which occurred in 2005, was beaten 28 times during 2020. The rate of Earth’s rotation is not constant and is affected by quakes, tropical cyclones and other factors.



Please help me

Kangaroos have shown they can use body language to ask humans for help, busting earlier beliefs that only domesticated animals have such an ability. Alan McElligott and colleagues at the City University of Hong Kong tested 16 roos living in captivity with the same methods used to study horses, dogs and goats. After blocking food from the kangaroos with a transparent box door that made it impossible for the marsupials to get it, they observed the animals’ behavior. The roos almost always turned to a nearby human for help. “They’d look straight up at my face, like a dog or a goat would do, and back at the box, and some even came up and scratched my knee like a dog pawing [for attention],” said McElligott.


• Extreme Temperatures: -64°F Toko, Siberia; 110°F Dampier, W. Australia

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January 04, 2021 (year 2020 in review)



Earthquakes

• Despite all of the misery suffered around the world from COVID-19 and various natural disasters, the magnitude of deaths and damage from earthquakes was at the lowest level in memory during 2020.
• The most deadly temblor killed 118 people around the Turkish city of Izmir on Oct. 30, where many buildings collapsed. [The quake had a magnitude 7.0]/
• At least 41 people died when a massive [magnitude 6.7] quake struck southeastern Turkey’s Elazığ province on Jan. 24.
• Ten people perished on Feb. 23 when a sharp [magnitude 6.0] temblor struck the Iran-Turkey border region.
• Ten people were found dead in the rubble of a magnitude 7.4 quake in Mexico’s Oaxaca state on June 23.



Tropical Cyclones

• The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season ended with a record-breaking 30 named storms and the second-highest number of hurricanes ever observed.
  One feature of this year’s cyclones is that many of the same areas were hit by them again and again. This was especially true in the central U.S. Gulf Coast, the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and the Korean Peninsula.



Ice losses

Sea ice surrounding the North Pole was at a record low extent for October due to unusually warm Arctic Ocean temperatures.
Danish researchers say the ice was slow to reform following the summer’s melt, and coverage was at the lowest of the past 40 years of satellite data.



Avian Tragedy

Scientists believe that the untold thousands of migratory birds that fell from the sky dead or dying across parts of the southwestern U.S. in September were probably victims of smoke from the West’s catastrophic firestorms.
The songbirds could have either choked in the massive pall of toxic smoke and gas or used up their fat reserves trying to fly around it.



Greenhouse Earth

Scientists predict that Earth’s atmosphere will soon contain the same high level of carbon dioxide that existed at the peak of the Pliocene Epoch warmth 3 million years ago. That’s when temperatures were 5 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer and sea levels were 65 feet higher.



Magnetic mystery

Scientists are struggling to understand a new weakening of Earth’s magnetic field in a region that stretches from South America to Africa and is causing technical problems in some of the satellites orbiting the planet.
The anomaly is allowing the inner Van Allen radiation belt to dip to an altitude of about 120 miles, sometimes exposing satellites to several minutes of higher-than-normal radiation.
Astronauts have reported disturbances in their eyesight, known as cosmic ray visual phenomena, when passing through it.



Light Pollution

Humanity’s pervasive use of artificial light is causing widespread impacts on the world’s animals and plants, and researchers say it should be limited where possible.
Scientists at Britain’s University of Exeter say their studies reveal light pollution causes changes to animal behavior and physiology, especially hormone levels and patterns of waking, sleeping and activity.



Global quieting

The plunge in human activities due to the pandemic brought the longest and most pronounced quiet period of seismic noise in history.
The relative quiet has allowed scientists to detect previously hidden earthquake signals.



Massive hole

The ozone hole in the stratosphere above Antarctica reached its annual peak on Oct. 1, which scientists say was the largest and deepest in 15 years. This was in contrast to an unusually small and short-lived ozone hole in 2019, caused by unusual weather conditions.


• Extreme Temperatures: -108°F Vostok, Antarctica; 130°F Death Valley, California

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