SIO15: Natural Disasters

Source: Steve Newman at the San Diego Union Tribune

Earthwatches

December 26, 2022

December 19, 2022

December 12, 2022

December 05, 2022

November 28, 2022

November 21, 2022

November 14, 2022

November 07, 2022

October 31, 2022

October 24, 2022

October 17, 2022

October 10, 2022

October 03, 2022

September 26, 2022

September 19, 2022

September 12, 2022

September 05, 2022

August 29, 2022

August 22, 2022

August 15, 2022

August 08, 2022

August 01, 2022

July 25, 2022

July 18, 2022

July 11, 2022

July 04, 2022

June 27, 2022

June 20, 2022

June 13, 2022

June 06, 2022

May 30, 2022

May 23, 2022

May 16, 2022

May 09, 2022

May 02, 2022

April 25, 2022

April 18, 2022

April 11, 2022

April 04, 2022

March 28, 2022

March 21, 2022

March 14, 2022

March 07, 2022

February 28, 2022

February 21, 2022

February 14, 2022

February 07, 2022

January 31, 2022

January 24, 2022

January 17, 2022

January 10, 2022

January 03, 2022 (year 2021 in review)

December 26, 2022 (for the week ending Dec 23)



Earthquakes

• The worst temblor to strike northwestern California in more than 40 years killed two and caused widespread damage. [The quake had a magnitude of 6.4.]
• Earth movements were also felt in the San Francisco Bay Area [magnitude 3.6], West Texas [5.4], the far northern Philippines [5.3], central Nepal [4.5], the Turkey-western Syria border area [4.7] and southwestern Morocco [4.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Darian quickly intensified to Category-4 force as it moved across the eastern Indian ocean, near Australia’s remote Cocos Islands.



Andean Eruption

A blast from Ecuador’s towering Cotopaxi volcano dusted the capital of Quito and surrounding areas with a thin layer of ash.
The ash cloud soared 3,600 feet above the volcano’s crater, where it was mainly blown to points south of Quito.
The 19,347-foot mountain resumed low-level activity in late October with emissions of vapor and ash. Its last comparable activity was in 2015.



Planetary Pact

A new U.N. framework to protect 30% of Earth’s land, oceans and inland bodies of water by the end of the decade was agreed to in Montreal at a long-delayed summit of world policymakers.
The COP15 conference of almost 200 countries wrestled with how much funding should be sent by developed countries to the third world, which is home to most biodiversity.
Poorer countries argued that first-world nations had grown rich by exploiting their natural resources, and should pay to protect them in the future.
Similar to the Paris climate agreement, the new pact still faces an uphill battle to be implemented.



Stormier South

Researchers say they have figured out why the Southern Hemisphere has the reputation of being much stormier than areas north of the equator.
By examining satellite data, a new study led by University of Chicago climate scientist Tiffany Shaw found that ocean circulation and large mountainous areas in the Northern Hemisphere are the main forces behind the differences.
Tall mountain ranges disrupt air flow in a way that diminishes storms, and the Southern Hemisphere has only one — the Andes.
The second factor has to do with the dynamics of the powerful conveyor belt of ocean currents that travel to and from the Arctic and Antarctica.



Chili Defense

Zimbabwe farmers have developed a unique and nature-friendly way to fend off attacks from elephants that threaten their crops and homes. They create items known as chili bricks, bombs and strings to deter the jumbos.
The bricks and bombs are made by mixing elephant or buffalo dung with cow dung and chili powder to make a thick paste, which is then moulded into bricks or balls. When burned, they release a strong odor known to repel the pachyderms.
Chili strings are soaked with a mixture of used oil and chili, and have a smell that keeps the animals away.



Is That Me?

Researchers say they have observed that Adélie penguins appear to recognize themselves in their mirror reflections, a trait that could indicate some degree of self-awareness.
The mirror test was developed in the 1970s and includes placing a mark on a test animal’s face or other parts of the body to see if it touches or investigates it when seen in a mirror.
Very few animals have “passed” this test aside from some primates, dolphins and Asian elephants.
Indian researchers say Adélie penguins study their images in the mirror and make movements as if to see if it is themselves.
But they did not pass other parts of the test, such as recognizing foreign objects placed on them or blocking the view of themselves.


• Extreme Temperatures: -66°F Toko, Siberia; 108°F Rivadavia, Salta, Argentina

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December 19, 2022 (for the week ending Dec 16)



Earthquakes

• A wide area from Mexico City to southern Mexico was jolted by a strong magnitude 6.0] temblor, centered just to the north of Acapulco.
• Earth movements were also felt in Sicily [magnitude 4.5], northern Algeria [4.5], southern Greece [4.2] and Bali 5.2].



Tropical Cyclones

• Remnants of Tropical Storm Mandous from the Bay of Bengal reformed into Tropical Storm Seven over the Arabian Sea.
• ropical Storm Pakhar formed briefly over the open waters of the Pacific, northeast of the Philippines.



Eruptions

• Guatemala’s restive Fuego volcano erupted with a flow of lava and columns of ash that forced authorities to close a major highway.
  Lava from an 2018 eruption devastated the former village of San Miguel Los Lotes, killing 215 people.
  Fuego is one of the most active volcanoes in Central America.
• An eruption of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano ended suddenly after just two weeks of lava flows and ash clouds.
  Earth’s largest active volcano spewed between 260 million and 325 million cubic yards of lava, beginning on Nov. 27.



Brokeback Whale

A humpback whale with a back apparently broken during a vessel strike has completed a 3,000-mile journey from Canada to Hawaii by doing what researchers describe as the breaststroke.
Named Moon, the lone humpback appeared to be in “considerable pain” during the journey, according to the research group BC Whales.
It has tracked Moon for the past decade, usually when she was feeding on krill around British Columbia’s Fin island.
In 2020, they observed her birthing a calf and teaching it to feed and migrate. But in September, they noticed her body had become twisted, leaving her unable to propel with her tail.
Her recent journey was said to have left her emaciated and covered in whale lice.



Vanishing Plants

Scientists at Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew say that nearly 800 plant species around the world have disappeared since the 18th century, while thousands of others are so diminished that they are rare or can no longer reproduce.
“Most plant extinctions happen silently,” with plant populations often disappearing without notice until their absence begins to affect nature, said Kew conservation researcher Eimear Nic Lughadha.
She adds that little is known about what other species in the wild might depend on from the vanishing plants, or the long-term effects of their disappearances.
A study published in 2019 said about two plant species vanish each year on average — 500 times the average rate of extinction in nature.



Good Vibrations

Australian engineers have developed a way to create green hydrogen 14 times faster through electrolysis.
By using high-frequency vibrations in the process, the team from RMIT University says the development could accelerate the global shift toward cheap hydrogen fuel for transportation and other uses.
“With sound waves making it much easier to extract hydrogen from water, it eliminates the need to use corrosive electrolytes and expensive electrodes such as platinum or iridium,” said Amgad Rezk.
He added that the new process will allow the use of much cheaper electrode materials such as silver.



Climate Moves

Vanuatu has become the latest country to draw up plans to relocate villages as they face the threat of being swamped by rising sea level.
The South Pacific island nation says residents of dozens of long-established communities will have to move to higher ground on its chain of islands.
“It’s going to be a huge challenge and a huge tragedy for many people who would have to leave their ancestral land to move to other places, but that’s the reality,” said Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu.
Mountainous Vanuatu is more fortunate than low-lying island countries threatened by rising tides because it has higher terrain where people can relocate.


• Extreme Temperatures: -78°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 116°F Mandora, W. Australia

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December 12, 2022 (for the week ending Dec 09)



Earthquakes

• Tall buildings swayed in Jakarta and residents ran out of their homes as a magnitude 5.8 temblor struck Indonesia’s West Java province.
• Earth movements were also felt in the eastern Solomon Islands [magnitude 5.7], Samoa [6.7], the northern Bay of Bengal [5.2], southern Iran [5.7] and Gabon [5.5].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Mandous was predicted to bring heavy rain to parts of India’s southern Bay of Bengal coast.



Eruption

Heavy monsoon rains caused the dome of East Java’s Mount Semeru volcano to collapse, triggering an avalanche of superheated gas and volcanic debris down the mountain.
Houses and mosques were buried to their rooftops by tons of the debris.



Restoring Earth

Delegates from nearly 200 nations gathered in Montreal to seek ways to reverse the loss of nature, hoping to put the world on a path of restoring the environment by the end of the decade.
The U.N.’s COP15 summit is designed to do for biodiversity what the Paris agreement is attempting to do for climate change.
As the summit began, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged countries to stop treating nature “like a toilet.” He added, “Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction.”
Goals of the summit include reducing the extinction risks of one million species, protecting 30% of the land and sea, and restoring degraded ecosystems.



Ozone Hole Alert

Residents of Argentina’s Patagonia region were warned to avoid the early summertime sunshine because the stratospheric ozone hole over Antarctica was predicted to extend northward over populated areas for the third time this year.
That would allow higher levels of ultraviolet rays from the sun to potentially cause skin damage and even cancer.
Such events are particularly harmful during October, November and December, when the sun is high above the horizon and the intensity of ultraviolet radiation is already increasing considerably.
In October, the ozone layer over far southern Argentina was providing only about 50% of its normal protection.



Rogue Wave

One person died and four others were injured when a giant wave hit a cruise ship en route to Antarctica.
The owners of the Viking Polaris said the ship sustained only limited damage by the rogue wave, but several windows were smashed.
The wave hit as the ship was approaching the port of Ushuaia in Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego province.
Rogue waves, which scientists call “extreme storm waves,” are at lease twice the size of surrounding waves.
They often come from different directions than the wind and existing waves.



Ill Winds

A new study describes how bacteria can travel thousands of miles on airborne dust before settling in new locations, altering the environmental chemistry and possibly threatening the well-being of people and animals.
Writing in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences , researchers say these airborne bacteria make up aerobiomes, which attach to dust particles.
Israeli scientists used DNA to identify the likely source of the dust-borne bacteria in the country and found that about one-third of them came from far-off locations.
It’s not yet known if wind-blown antibiotic-resistant genes could affect human and livestock health, or if traveling on the dust lessens or eliminates that threat.



Seal Tragedy

The corpses of 2,500 seals were found along Russia’s Caspian Sea coast, where experts were rushing to find out what was killing the marine mammals.
Caspian seals have been classified as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list since 2008.
Experts of Russia’s Federal Fisheries Agency said there was no immediate evidence of pollution, and that they are waiting for analysis of samples taken in the area.


• Extreme Temperatures: -70°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 112°F Oodnadatta, S. Australia

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December 05, 2022 (for the week ending Dec 02)



Earthquakes

• Canada’s Alberta province was soundly jolted by its strongest earthquake and aftershocks on record. [The main shock was a magnitude-5.8 event.]
• Earth movements were also felt in western Vancouver Island [magnitude 4.8], the Philippine island of Mindanao [5.0], Bosnia and Herzegovina [4.4], central Greece [5.0], Trinidad [4.9] and New Zealand’s North Island [5.4].



Hawaiian Eruptions

The world’s largest active volcano, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa , awakened from nearly 40 years of slumber, spewing lava as well as plumes of ash and vapor.
It joins Kilauea in erupting across the Big Island. But Mauna Loa is much taller and steeper than Kilauea, meaning it can produce faster lava flows.



Endangered Bats

The United States declared that the northern long-eared bat is endangered because the species has been driven to the brink of extinction by white-nose syndrome , a fungal disease.
“White-nose syndrome is decimating cave-dwelling bat species like the northern long-eared bat at unprecedented rates,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams.
The disease was first identified in 2006 and has since infected 12 different types of bats, killing millions.
It attacks bats’ wings, muzzles and ears when they hibernate in caves and mines.
Spinning wind turbines are also killing large numbers of the species.



Pelican Deaths

An outbreak of avian influenza in Peru in recent weeks has resulted in the deaths of more than 5,500 pelicans.
They join more than 7,500 other birds in Peru that have been killed by the H5N1 avian influenza strain, according to biologists.
H5N1 can spread extremely quickly between birds through their droppings and saliva.
There have also been large outbreaks of bird flu in Asia, Europe and the United States, forcing the culling of millions of poultry during the past two years.
But globally, large numbers of wild birds have also been killed by the virus this year, with sea birds being especially hard hit.



Key Birds

A new study finds that some of the most unusual birds are among the most threatened with extinction.
Researchers at Imperial College London say that those species have important and specialized roles in the environment, such as seed dispersal, pollination and hunting.
“If we do not take action to protect threatened species and avert extinctions, the functioning of ecosystems will be dramatically disrupted,” said Jarome Ali.
Such specialized species may be less able to adapt to a changing environment, including human impacts on their habitats.



More Lakes

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and other institutions say there was a particular increase between 1984 and 2019 in the number of the world’s small lakes, which emit large amounts of greenhouse gas.
More than half of increased global lake surface area was due to the creation of reservoirs, or artificial lakes. The other half has been primarily created by melting glaciers or thawing permafrost due to global heating.
Bacteria and fungi feeding on dead plants and animals at the bottom of a lake can emit vast amounts of CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. Some of these gases end up in the atmosphere as the lakes act like greenhouse gas factories.



La Niña Lingers

The very rare “triple-dip” La Niña ocean cooling in the Pacific is now expected to linger into February or even March, according to the U.N. weather agency.
For three consecutive years, the phenomenon has brought disastrous flooding to southeastern Australia as well as various other weather disasters around the world.
“The first ‘triple-dip’ La Niña of the 21st century will continue to affect temperature and precipitation patterns and exacerbate drought and flooding in different parts of the world,” the World Meteorological Organization said in a statement.


• Extreme Temperatures: -59°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 109°F Rivadavia, Salta, Argentina

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November 28, 2022 (for the week ending Nov 25)



Earthquakes

• An intense [magnitude 5.6] earthquake killed hundreds of people and left many hundreds of others injured in Indonesia’s West Java province.
• One of the most powerful temblors to strike the Solomon Islands in recent memory[, a magnitude 7.0 temblor,] knocked out power and telephone service while causing scattered damage on Guadalcanal.
• Earth movements were also felt in northern Taiwan [magnitude 5.1] and southern Iran [5.2].



Russian Rumbling

Russia’s Shiveluch volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula became extremely active in mid-November, threatening to produce a powerful eruption.
“At night, the dome glows almost over its entire surface. Hot avalanches with a temperature of 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit roll down the slopes,” said Alexei Ozerov, the director of the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.



Reproduction

Drops in sperm counts of more than 60% in North American, European and Australian men between 1973 and 2018 means humans could face a reproductive crisis.
Writing in the journal Human Reproduction Update, researchers warn the decline is accelerating and that declines were also occurring in Central and South America, Africa and Asia.
It’s unclear what might be behind the apparent trend, but exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals or other environmental factors could be factors.



Melting Microbes

Scientists warn that huge amounts of harmful bacteria could be released into rivers and lakes as the world’s glaciers melt due to climate change.
Researchers at Aberystwyth University in Wales say their findings only amplify the urgent need to quickly curb global heating.
They base their findings on meltwater they analyzed from eight glaciers across Europe and North America, as well as from two different sites in Greenland.
They found that thousands of different microorganisms are growing on glaciers, or stored inside, with some that may be harmful to humans. As the flow of microbes into rivers, lakes, fjords and seas increases, there could be “significant impacts for water quality,” said microbiologist Arwyn Edwards.



From Brink

An exotic bird thought to have gone extinct 140 years ago has been “rediscovered” by researchers on a tiny island off Papua New Guinea.
The black-naped pheasant pigeon was spotted in images from remote cameras on Fergusson Island.
“It is the kind of moment you dream about your entire life as a conservationist and birdwatcher,” said expedition co-lead John Mittermeier.
The team initially had help from one local who reported seeing the pheasant-pigeon several times in an area with steep ridges and valleys, and described hearing the bird’s distinctive calls.



Shark Protection

Representatives attending the world’s largest wildlife summit have voted for the first time to regulate the hunting of sharks, which kills millions of the fish each year to meet the huge demand for shark fin soup.
The 186-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, signed an agreement to regulate the commercial fishing of 54 shark species, including tiger, bull and blue sharks, which are the most targeted for the fin trade.



Octopus Toss

Highly intelligent octopuses have been observed deliberately throwing debris, sometimes toward others.
Writing in the journal PLOS One, researchers say the behavior among gloomy octopuses in Australia’s Jervis Bay appears deliberate. Both sexes were observed throwing, but 66% of throws were performed by females.
Around half of throws occurred during or around the time of interactions with other octopuses, such as arm probes or mating attempts, with about 17% of throws hitting other octopuses.


• Extreme Temperatures: -60°F Vostok, Antarctica; 110°F Rivadavia, Salta, Argentina

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November 21, 2022 (for the week ending Nov 18)



Earthquakes

• A wide area of western Texas and southeastern New Mexico was rocked by one of the strongest quakes on record there. [The quake had a magnitude 5.3].
• An intense [magnitude 4.3] undersea temblor near Tonga generated small tsunamis that washed up on nearby islands.
• Earth movements were also felt in central Japan [magnitude 6.1], northern Thailand [3.2], northern India’s Amritsar district [4.1], western Nepal [5.7], Montreal [3.0] and northern Utah [2.5].



Tropical Cyclones

• Late reports say 11 people were killed as Hurricane Nicole raked Florida, Alabama and Georgia.
• Late-season Tropical Storm Yamaneko formed briefly just north of Wake Island in the Pacific.



Seabed Eruption

Scientists say a remote undersea volcano has likely been erupting in the Pacific waters of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands since about mid-October.
Due to the remoteness, they have only seismic data and satellite observations of the ocean’s surface appearance as clues.
But the potential threat is high enough that mariners have been advised to sail clear of the area.



Greenland Ice Loss

A new study finds that Greenland’s ice sheet is disappearing faster and sliding into the sea more quickly than earlier predicted, threatening greater sea level rises.
“It’s not something that we expected,” said Danish glaciologist Shfaqat Abbas Khan. ”Greenland and Antarctica’s contributions to sea level rise in the next 80 years will be significantly larger than we have predicted until now.”
The main contributor to Greenland’s ice loss is the increasing flow of two fast-moving glaciers, which drain about 12% of the interior ice sheet into the sea.



Earth's Thermostat

Earth appears to have a climate-stabilizing process that keeps global temperatures within a habitable range over the long term.
A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at a process called “silicate weathering,” which over hundreds of thousands of years draws carbon dioxide out of the air and stores it in ocean floor sediment.
This helps explain how life on Earth has survived dramatic global temperature swings in the past.
“On the one hand, it’s good because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be canceled out through this stabilizing feedback,” said study author Constantin Arnscheidt. “But on the other hand, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to happen, so not fast enough to solve our presentday issues.”



bovine High

While the use of leftover hemp clippings from the cannabis industry to feed livestock could potentially ease the current animal feed shortage, scientists caution that cows can get “high” with potential health hazards if the level of THC in the waste hemp is too high.
And that compound can be passed on to humans who might drink their milk.
German researchers fed cows hemp debris with various levels of the psychoactive compound.
Those fed high doses had altered breathing and heart rates, with some yawning while standing still in odd postures for long periods.



Emissions Rise

As leaders met in Egypt to find a way to curb carbon emissions, a comprehensive study finds that instead of declining, carbon emissions will reach yet another record high by the end of 2022.
A report by the Global Carbon Project says there are no signs of the decline needed to meet the warming limit goal of 1.5 degrees C.
It projects fossil fuel CO2 emissions will rise another 1% worldwide this year, while China’s emissions are, in contrast, likely to drop by 1% in 2022.
“If governments respond by turbocharging clean-energy investments and planting, not cutting down, trees, global emissions could rapidly start to fall,” said Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia, who was part of the study.


• Extreme Temperatures: -70°F Vostok, Antarctica; 108°F Rivadavia, Salta, Argentina

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November 14, 2022 (for the week ending Nov 11)



Earthquakes

• At least six people were killed by a powerful [magnitude 5.6] temblor that also injured five others and wrecked homes in western Nepal.
• Earth movements were also felt in South Asia’s Hindu Kush Mountains [magnitude 5.4], central New Zealand [5.3], southeastern Australia [4.0], Indonesia’s North Sulawesi province [6.1] and northwestern Mexico [6.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Hurricane Nicole formed north of Puerto Rico, then drenched parts of the northern Bahamas and a wide area of Florida.



Andean Blasts

Ecuador’s Sangay volcano spewed columns of ash and vapor high above its 17,160-foot summit in the south of the country during 122 explosions in one day.
Ash later rained down and destroyed 4,500 acres of crops while sickening more than 23,000 cattle.
“There are many greenhouses that are covered with ash and the weight can cause the structures to collapse,” local Governor Iván Vinueza told El Universo.
Sangay is one of the country’s 50 volcanoes and has been active since 2019.



Viral "Spillover"

The melting Arctic could soon become “fertile ground” for new viral pandemics to emerge, according to a Canadian study of an Arctic lake bed.
A team from the University of Toronto sequenced DNA and RNA from samples taken at Lake Hazen and looked at the family tree of its viruses to determine the threat they pose to other organisms as polar melt allows them to mingle.
Altered landscapes have been proven to push pathogens, parasites and hosts together in new ways. The new study suggests that increased melting in the Arctic could similarly bring greater chances of viruses “spilling over” into other hosts.



Climate Refugees

Latin America’s first residents to be moved by the government due to rising sea levels will soon abandon Panama’s Gardi Sugdub Island as it is slowly engulfed by the Caribbean.
“When the tide goes up, the water enters some houses and the people have to move their belongings to higher ground,” said local teacher Pragnaben Mohan.
Students and teachers on the tightly packed small island already have to wade through floodwaters with rubber boots at times.
The move to modern homes in the new mainland community of La Barriada late next year has been planned for more than a decade, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Three other nearby islands will also soon have to be evacuated.



Paintball Aversion

Wolves in one area of the Netherlands have become so unafraid of humans that authorities are authorizing the use of paintballs to scare them away.
The move followed the emergence of a video that showed a wolf confidently walking past a clearly nervous young family in the Hoge Veluwe national park.
The animal-rights group De Faunabescherming says wolves are naturally wary of humans and believes park wardens are taming them by deliberately feeding the predators to keep them away from sheep and other animals.



Chronicle of Chaos

U.N. chief António Guterres told those attending the COP27 climate summit in Egypt that the world must quickly cooperate to curb global heating or face “collective suicide.”
He also described the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) provisional 2022 State of the Global Climate report as a “chronicle of chaos” because it details the catastrophic speed of a changing climate that is devastating lives and livelihoods on every continent.
Since little is being done to eliminate carbon emissions and reduce the likelihood of more climate disasters and extreme weather events around the world, Guterres says there must be a rush to develop early warning systems to prepare before they strike.
“We must answer the planet’s distress signal with action — ambitious, credible climate action,” he urged.


• Extreme Temperatures: -72°F Vostok, Antarctica; 108°F Wyndham, Western Australia

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November 07, 2022 (for the week ending Nov 04)



Earthquakes

• Northeastern areas of quake-prone Taiwan were jolted by three tremors in a single day, the strongest registering a magnitude of 5.7.
• Earth movements were also felt in central South Korea [magnitude 4.1], western Nepal [4.3], central India’s Madhya Pradesh state [4.5], central Georgia [2.3] and parts of South Carolina [2.5].



Tropical Cyclones

• At least 110 people died in the Philippines from flooding and landslides triggered by Typhoon Nalgae, which later doused Hong Kong.
• Tropical Storm Banyan formed near Palau.
• Tropical Storm Lisa buffeted an area from Belize to the Bay of Campeche, while Tropical Storm Martin spun up in the mid-Atlantic.



Volcanic Alarm

Residents of Hawaii’s Big Island were warned that Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, is showing signs of a possible eruption.
Rumblings began in mid-September and have increased from 10 to 30 per day to 40 to 50 per day.
Volcanologists believe the unrest is caused by magma rising into the volcano’s summit reservoir system.
Mauna Loa’s first recorded eruption was in 1843, and it has since erupted 33 times, typically spewing lava at a high rate.



Emissions Peak

An accelerated push toward clean energy following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means carbon emissions are now likely to peak in 2025.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) calls the trend a “historic turning point” in the shift from fossil fuels.
The Paris-based agency cited contributions from the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, the European Union’s emissions reduction package and actions by Japan, South Korea, China and India for the improved outlook.
But the IEA also warns that current government policies could still lead to global temperatures rising by 2.5 degrees Celsius, bringing catastrophic climate impacts in the decades to come.



Ozone Hole

Earth’s natural sunscreen against ultraviolet radiation continues to slowly heal after suffering significant damage from now-banned human-made chemicals manufactured in decades past.
NASA scientists say the ozone hole was slightly smaller at its annual peak from early September until mid-October, but its size varies each year.
“We see some wavering as weather changes and other factors make the numbers wiggle slightly from day to day and week to week. But overall, we see it decreasing through the past two decades,” said Paul Newman, chief scientist for Earth sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The hole in 2021 was one of the largest and deepest in recent years, but Newman says the 1987 Montreal Protocol is still working.



Long-Haul Flight

A tagged bar-tailed godwit set a new nonstop flight record by winging 8,435 miles from Alaska to Tasmania.
The 11-day marathon initially went on a southwesterly course toward Japan, then the bird turned to a more southerly course along the International Date Line to New Caledonia before making a sharp right turn to its final destination at Tasmania’s Ansons Bay.
Guinness World Records lists the previous longest migration by a bird without stopping for food or rest as 7,580 miles by a satellite-tagged male bar-tailed godwit flying from Alaska to New Zealand.



Horn Reduction

The average size of prized rhinoceros horns appears to have shrunk during the past 130 years, most likely due to poaching techniques, according to a study that examined photos spanning more than a century.
The horns are lucrative for poachers, prompting them to target rhinos with the largest horns to be sold for traditional Chinese and Vietnamese medicines.
Targeting only rhinos with the largest horns has encouraged the survival and breeding of small-horned rhinos. However, hunters will now have to shoot more rhinos if they want the same amount of horn, researchers say.


• Extreme Temperatures: -70°F Vostok, Antarctica; 110°F Rivadavia, Salta, Argentina

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October 31, 2022 (for the week ending Oct 28)



Earthquakes

• At least 36 people were injured during a magnitude 6.4 temblor that rocked the northern Philippine island of Luzon.
• The San Francisco Bay Area was shaken by the strongest tremor since 2014. [It registered a magnitude of 5.1.]
• Earth movements were also felt in Indonesia’s West Papua province [magnitude 4.8] and Panama [6.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Sitrang killed at least 36 people across Bangladesh as it destroyed homes and crops, and left 28 million people without power.
• Two people perished as Tropical Storm Roslyn brought significant damage to Mexico’s Pacific coast, near Puerto Vallarta.



Ecuadorian Unrest

Increased activity at Ecuador’s Cotopaxi volcano prompted officials to issue a yellow alert and suspend access to the conical, snowcapped mountain’s slopes.
Scientists say steam clouds rising above the summit have been the result of moisture from recent precipitation seeping into the hot interior of the mountain.
The last major eruption of the volcano occurred on June 26, 1877.
In 2015, Cotopaxi showed signs of renewed activity but did not erupt.



Greenhouse Rise

Levels of greenhouse gases have reached record highs, according to a new report by the World Meteorological Organization.
The U.N. agency warns that the world is “heading in the wrong direction” by not tackling climate change.
The recent surge in methane was the biggest annual rise since measurements began nearly 40 years ago. The spike is blamed on higher temperatures increasing microbial activity in wetlands, melting tundra and rice paddies, as well as that in the guts of ruminant animals.
The latest annual increase in carbon dioxide is said to be the largest of the past decade and coincided with greenhouse warming increasing by 50% since 2021.



Shipping bubbles

Maritime traffic has been an oversized contributor to carbon emissions being spewed into the atmosphere, but the industry has recently adopted a novel method to increase fuel efficiency while reducing its emissions.
The new technology blows a continuous layer of tiny bubbles beneath ship hulls to reduce friction between the ship and water.
“Air lubrication” was envisioned in the 19th century but only recently caught industry attention.
There are currently 78 large vessels using it, and experts say 155 more should soon hit the high seas.
Cruise ships are seeing a 4% improvement in fuel efficiency from the new system, while container ships and tankers see about an 8% increase in fuel economy.



Blasts From the Past

Scientists have long warned that our modern electronics could be zapped by high-energy blasts from the sun similar to one in 1859 that caused serious damage to telegraph networks, then the world’s most advanced form of communication.
A blast similar to that Carrington Event could knock out satellites, long-distance power lines, transformers, computers and other devices, throwing the world deeper into chaos.
But now astrophysicist Benjamin Pope of the University of Queensland says blasts up to 100 times more powerful have occurred at least six times during the past 10,000 years, according to evidence stored in Tasmanian tree rings.
While probably harmless to humans, these Miyake events are possibly caused by unknown solar or galactic phenomena and could be catastrophic to our modern technology-dependent life should one occur today.


Non-Recycled

Greenpeace claims that about 95% of plastics used in U.S. households are not being recycled and wind up in landfills.
The environmental advocacy group says it is not entirely due to the lack of recycling efforts, but that only a few types of plastic are actually recyclable.
The sorting and collection of plastic items deposited in bins is also problematic, according to Greenpeace. It says a significant portion of the debris is contaminated with toxic materials.
Because plastic containers and wraps are so cheap and easy to use, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates their global use and resulting waste could triple by 2060.


• Extreme Temperatures: -81°F Vostok, Antarctica; 110°F Victoria River, N. Territory, Australia

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October 24, 2022 (for the week ending Oct 21)



Earthquakes

• Aftershocks of a magnitude 5.0 quake on Oct. 14 continued to rattle the area around Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the planet’s most active volcano.
• Earth movements were also felt in northern Thailand [magnitude 4.2], central New Zealand [5.7], India’s eastern Rajasthan state [4.9], northeastern Nepal [3.7], Russia’s Lake Baikal region [5.9], coastal Ecuador [4.7] and northwestern Oregon [4.4].



Tropical Cyclones

• Developing Typhoon Nesat drenched the northern tip of the Philippines, then weakened to a depression just before reaching Vietnam.
• Tropical Storm Sonca had soaked the same Vietnamese coast days earlier.
• Tropical Storm Haitang formed briefly off Japan.



Arctic Soundscape

A team of scientists and one artist are deploying a network of underwater microphones off Greenland to record the sounds of melting icebergs and other natural occurrences.
The hydrophones will capture the soundscape of the Davis Strait for two years, which will then be compiled by Irish artist Siobhán McDonald.
The artistic endeavor will include sounds of earthquakes, landslides, wildlife, pollution and meltwater.
But scientists say the acoustic research, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s polar program, will also study the ocean’s salinity, whale migration, ice flows and other phenomena.



Wildlife Collapse

Human activities since 1970 have caused animal populations to decline on average by almost 70%, according to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report.
Researchers working to create the WWF Living Planet Index looked at data from 32,000 populations of more than 5,000 species of mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and fish.
They found that in areas rich in biodiversity, such as the Caribbean and Latin America, including the Amazon, animal population loss was as high as 94%.
The report points to habitat degradation due to development and farming, exploitation, the introduction of invasive species, pollution, climate change and disease as the main drivers of the wildlife loss.



Bluefish 'Blitz'

Beachgoers on North Carolina’s Outer Banks were startled and amazed by the sight of thousands upon thousands of terrified fish throwing themselves onto an Ocracoke Island beach to escape the sharp teeth of ravenous migrating bluefish.
Social media videos showed the baitfish causing the surf to seemingly boil as they frantically tumbled over each other while tourists watched. Some visitors collected the free fish in buckets for later meals.
The Tradewinds Tackle Shop said the “bluefish blitz” went on for a few days.



Plastic Peril

A new U.N. report documents how plastic contaminants are building up in the soil around the world.
“We are starting to understand that the buildup of plastic can have wide-ranging impacts on soil health, biodiversity and productivity,” said co-author Elaine Baker of the University of Sydney.
The report warns that as plastic breaks down, it interferes with the ability of plants to absorb water and nutrients in their roots and for water to be stored in the soil.
Plastics are used extensively in agriculture, from plastic-coated seeds to protective wraps used over crops to modify soil temperature and prevent weed growth.



Septic Tide

Home septic systems in communities near the coast are becoming less practical as rising sea levels cause ocean water to seep into the soil needed for wastewater to be treated and flushed into the environment, a new report warns.
“Typically, when you permit the septic systems ... they want to have about one and a half feet of unsaturated soils below the system,” Michael O’Driscoll of East Carolina University told the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.
But as groundwater rises with the sea, coastal septic systems no longer work well, with a mix of groundwater and untreated waste being pushed to the surface.


• Extreme Temperatures: -94°F Vostok, Antarctica; 105°F Tillabéri, Niger

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October 17, 2022 (for the week ending Oct 14)



Earthquakes

• The Afghan-Tajik border region was jolted by a powerful [magnitude 5.1] quake that was also felt in Pakistan.
• Earth movements were also felt in eastern Taiwan [magnitude 5.7], Bali [4.2], south-central Turkey [5.0], southern Greece [5.2], north-western Oregon [5.0] and interior Southern California [3.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Floods and mudslides left dozens of people dead in Venezuela as Hurricane Julia formed off the coast of South America. The storm later killed dozens more in similar disasters across Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
• Tropical Storm Karl looped across Mexico’s Bay of Campeche.
• Tropical Storm Balita formed briefly over the eastern Indian Ocean.



Eruption

Italy’s Stromboli volcano spewed plumes of ash and fountains of lava during several explosions off the coast of northern Sicily.
One of the blasts caused part of the crater rim to collapse, allowing lava to flow into the Tyrrhenian Sea.



Unbearably Hot

The deepening climate crisis is likely to make many regions of the world so hot within decades that they will become uninhabitable, according to a new report from the United Nations and the Red Cross.
This year’s deadly heat in South Asia and Somalia are only previews of what the joint report warns are likely to become regular occurrences due to the failure to curb carbon emissions.
“There are also likely to be levels of extreme heat beyond which societies may find it practically impossible to deliver effective adaptation for all,” the report says.
The regions most threatened by the heat are sub-Saharan Africa and the Horn of Africa, as well as southern and southwestern Asia.



Grounded

Tree-dwelling monkeys have been observed spending more time on the forest floor to escape rising temperatures caused by global heating and deforestation.
A team of researchers says the thermal threat is in addition to habitat loss and other factors threatening the survival of many primates.
It studied 47 tree-dwelling monkeys at nearly 70 different sites in Madagascar and the Americas.
“In most tropical countries where these species live, humans log the forest,” said Giuseppe Donati of Britain’s Oxford Brookes University. “This creates gaps and it opens the canopy of the forest. That causes an increase in temperature.”
Some species may be able to partially adapt their lifestyles to the warming climate, at least for a while, but others may not.



'Sea' Batteries

A new type of electric battery containing material harvested from seaweed could someday ease the planet’s reliance on mining lithium for energy storage. The new type of sodium-metal battery still works after being charged 1,000 times.
The use of material from seaweed prevents the build-up on electrodes that stood in the way of switching to batteries that use sodium instead of lithium.
University of Bristol developers say since sodium itself can easily be harvested from seawater, it means the most important parts of these new batteries can be “made out of the sea.”



Methane Surge

A flurry of blasts in late September on undersea gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany are believed to have caused history’s single largest release of methane into the atmosphere.
An expedition rushed to the Nord Stream leaks by Sweden found that methane levels in the Baltic Sea there were about 1,000 times higher than normal.
Methane is a much more powerful, but more short-lived, contributor to global heating than carbon dioxide.
It can dissolve in water, but when it reaches the surface, methane transforms back into a gas and is absorbed by the atmosphere.
The Kremlin has dismissed accusations that it wrecked the pipelines.


• Extreme Temperatures: -92°F Vostok, Antarctica; 111°F Skukuza, South Africa

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October 10, 2022 (for the week ending Oct 07)



Earthquakes

• One person was killed and nine others were injured by a shallow [magnitude 5.9] quake that damaged homes in northern Sumatra.
• The second quake to rock far northwestern Iran within a week, [a magnitude 5.6 temblor], injured about 500 people while damaging hundreds of homes.
• Earth movements were also felt in southwestern Turkey [magnitude 4.7], Taiwan [5.3], southwestern Japan[5.9] and islands of the northeastern Caribbean [4.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• Hurricane Orlene drenched western Mexico along the border of Sinaloa and Nayarit states, including the popular resort of Mazatlán.
• Category-4 Tropical Storm Paine formed briefly south of Baja California.
• Typhoon Roke churned thePacific to the east of Japan.



Ibu Eruption

Eastern Indonesia's Mount Ibu volcano spewed ash several thousand feet above Halmahera Island, prompting officials to warn nearby residents to wear face masks.



Arctic Rain

While more snow than rain currently falls in the Arctic each year, a new study warns that the trend is likely to be reversed by the end of this century.
Lead researcher Tingfeng Dou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences says that the frequency of rainy days in the Arctic could roughly double by 2100 as Earth’s climate heats even further.
“In the past, rainfall was primarily limited to the edges of the Greenland ice sheet,” Dou said.
More rain will increase the melting of the tundra and Greenland’s glaciers, releasing more greenhouse gases.



Rewilding Europe

With wildlife suffering dramatic declines due to climate change and habitat loss, conservation efforts across Europe have seen several mammal species make strong comebacks.
A new report by the Zoological Society of London, BirdLife International and the European Bird Census Council for Rewilding Europe documents “exciting” recoveries.
Brown bears began to decline during the Roman Empire, but the report says their numbers have increased by 44% to more than 50,000 since 1960.
Europe’s beavers started to decline in the 17th century due to hunting, with only about 1,200 still living by the 20th century. But between 1960 and 2016, their numbers increased by 16,000% as their range expanded.



Bird Flu Victims

The ongoing global bird flu epidemic has begun killing another wild bird species — African penguins living on a beach near Cape Town, South Africa.
At least 28 of the endangered seabirds have become infected and either died or needed to be euthanized, according to clinical veterinarian David Roberts.
The species lives exclusively along southern African coasts, with the deaths reported among a population of 3,000 at the Boulders Beach penguin colony.
The virus was first detected in South Africa during May 2022 and has since infected other seabirds.



Crabs vs. Mussels

Warming waters of the English Channel due to climate change have allowed the normally migratory and ravenous spider crabs to infest the French coast most of the year and ravage its mussel population.
Mussel farmers in Normandy and Brittany are demanding they be allowed to use dredging nets to drag the crabs farther out to sea to protect their shellfish and livelihoods.
“They are like a carpet moving slowly across the seabed, ravaging anything on the ground and leaving nothing in their wake,” said Vincent Godefroy, the president of the National Mytiliculteurs (mussel farmers) Group.
He said his members first noticed the invasion about five years ago, with the number of crabs doubling each year since.


• Extreme Temperatures: -98°F Vostok, Antarctica; 111°F Kharga, Egypt

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October 03, 2022 (for the week ending Sep 30)



Earthquakes

• A sharp [magnitude 5.4] temblor in far northwestern Iran was also felt strongly in neighboring Armenia.
• Earth movements were also felt in northeastern Turkey [magnitude 5.3], central New Zealand [5.2], the southern Philippines [5.4], Hawaii’s Big Island [4.5] and the coast of south-central Chile [6.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Super Typhoon Noru tore roofs off homes in Vietnam and Laos after causing at least eight deaths and wide-spread flooding in the northern Philippines.
• Category-4 Hurricane Ian destroyed crops and knocked out power across Cuba before bringing severe floods and wind damage to parts of Florida.
• Hurricane Fiona ravaged parts of the Canadian Maritimes while creating the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in the country.
• Tropical Storm Hermine caused local flooding in Spain’s Canary Islands.
• Hurricane Kulap churned in the Pacific as Tropical Storm Ashley formed in the Indian Ocean.



Temporary Island

The recent eruption of an undersea volcano in Tonga created a new, small landmass that has grown to about 50 feet in height, covering approximately 9 acres.
The new island, in an area known as Home Reef, is not expected to withstand the waves and wind of the South Pacific for very long.



Fall Colors

Despite the deepening effects of climate change, scientists say autumn leaves in North America and Europe are not changing color later, but they may be becoming duller.
“Warmer temperatures in September and October reduce anthocyanin production in leaves, which could mean that fall colors would become less brilliantly red or purple,” said Susanne S. Renner of Washington University in St. Louis. She adds that only if the first frost comes later than it used to, would the brilliant foliage appear later.
“The end result is that leaves still start to die after about the same amount of time on the tree as they have in years and even decades past,” Renner said.



Amped El Niño

New research finds that the El Niño ocean warming episodes across the tropical Pacific will become more frequent as the Arctic becomes more ice-free in the warmer decades to come.
Writing in the Journal Nature Communications, lead author Jiping Liu of the University of Albany says that as the ice loss continues in the Arctic to the point that it is ice-free in summer, strong El Niño events will increase by more than a third.
Arctic sea ice cover is now about 50% less in summer than a century ago.
The rapidly warming Arctic is already altering weather, and the predicted increase in strong El Niños would mean there will be even stronger climate impacts later this century, Liu says.



Seismic Echoes

Reverberations of a powerful temblor in southwestern Mexico on Sept. 19 caused water to slosh against the surrounding limestone rock 1,500 miles away in a Death Valley National Park pool just a few minutes later.
Experts call the phenomenon a “desert tsunami.” It also has been caused by strong quakes as far away as Japan, Indonesia and Chile.
“It depends on the depth, magnitude and location around the world,” said National Park Service aquatic ecologist Kevin Wilson. He said the waves from the Mexican quake lasted about 30 minutes.



Rare Ebola

A rare strain of the Ebola virus has killed at least 23 people in Uganda as health officials scrambled to cope with the Sudan variant, for which there is no treatment or vaccine.
They worry that the outbreak may already be spreading rapidly because many of the infected victims so far were buried in traditional ceremonies, with large gatherings that included touching the deceased.
The World Health Organization says the virus is transmitted to people from fruit bats and spreads among humans through direct contact with bodily fluids.


• Extreme Temperatures: -99°F Vostok, Antarctica; 114°F Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

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September 26, 2022 (for the week ending Sep 23)



Earthquakes

• One person was killed and more than 160 others injured in Taiwan when a magnitude 6.9 quake and its aftershocks derailed trains and wrecked buildings.
• A [magnitude 7.6] quake along Mexico’s Michoacan coast killed at least two people and jolted many parts of the country.
• Earth movements were also felt in central Alaska [magnitude 4.5], southwestern Utah [4.4] and far northwestern Iran [5.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Hurricane Fiona unleashed catastrophic and deadly flooding, and knocked out power to all of Puerto Rico. It then moved on to lash the neighboring Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
• At least four people perished in Japan as Typhoon Nanmadol roared ashore, triggering mudslides, flash flooding and wind damage.
• Tropical Storm Lester drenched parts of southern Mexico’s Pacific coast as Madeline churned the ocean south of Baja California.
• Tropical Storm Gaston looped to the west of the Azores archipelago.



Taupo Rumblings

New Zealand volcanologists are concerned by swarms of tremors beneath the caldera lake that was the site of Earth’s largest eruption of the past 5,000 years. That eruption ofTaupo volcano devastated a large area of the North Island.
NB: the largest eruption of Taupo in the last 5000 years occurred about 1800 years ago.



Earlier Melt

Winter ice on more than 117 million lakes at higher latitudes is melting about eight days earlier due to global heating.
Iestyn Woolway of Bangor University in Wales says the earlier melt is affecting plants and wildlife while altering the local climate.
Ice currently forms on more than half of the world’s lakes, with 90% of them located north of 30 degrees in latitude.
Woolway says lakes will eventually be free of ice somewhere between 15 and 45 days earlier, which will bring local warming of between 2 and 6 degrees surrounding the lakes.



Rise & Sink

A new study finds that parts of many coastal cities are sinking more quickly than the rise in sea level.
The finding means that those communities are now doubly threatened, and not just from the rising tides caused by glacial melt and the thermal expansion of the waters due to global heating.
An international team of researchers used satellite-based radar to measure how much the land is sinking around 48 of the world’s largest seaside cities. They found that all of the cities studied had some amount of land subsidence, with some areas sinking faster than the seas were rising.
Land subsidence is caused by the extraction of groundwater and natural gas, and by the massive weight of tall buildings and other structures.



Ant Kingdom

German and Chinese researchers say they know the approximate number of ants currently crawling across the planet.
Based on data from 489 ant studies, they determined there are 20 quadrillion individual ants, with a dry weight far heavier than that of all the wild birds and mammals on the planet combined. The number 20 quadrillion is 20 followed by 15 zeros.
For every human, there are nearly 2.5 million ants scurrying, eating and breeding across the landscape.
“They are very important for nutrient cycling, decomposition processes, plant seed dispersal and the perturbation of soil,” said entomologist Patrick Schultheiss of Germany’s University of Würzburg.



Arctic Blooms

Blooms of algae that were observed in the Arctic Ocean during 2014 may have been amplified by smoke from wildfires that year.
“For a bloom that large to occur, the area would need a substantial influx of new nitrogen supply, as the Arctic Ocean is nitrogen-depleted,” says Douglas Hamilton of North Carolina State University.
He and colleagues determined the nitrogen likely came from smoke emitted by Siberian blazes.
“The wildfires were located in rapidly warming boreal regions, which have a lot of peat in the thawing permafrost,” Hamilton says.
Peat is rich in nitrogen, and he believes it was the source of the element that stimulated the algae blooms.


• Extreme Temperatures: -100°F Vostok, Antarctica; 114°F Adrar, Algeria

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September 19, 2022 (for the week ending Sep 16)



Earthquakes

• At least seven people died in a magnitude 7.6 temblor that damaged buildings in eastern Papua New Guinea.
• Earth movements were also felt in southeastern Taiwan [magnitude 5.3], the French-Swiss-German border area [4.3], the desert resorts of Southern California [3.4] and the northern San Francisco Bay Area [4.3].



Tropical Cyclones

• Typhoon Muifa lashed Japan’s southernmost islands before making landfall near the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai and pounding a string of coastal provinces.
• Typhoon Nanmadol formed near Iwo Jima and was taking aim on southern Japan late in the week. It was predicted to reach Category-4 force before arrival.
• Typhoon Merbok moved over open waters of the northwestern Pacific.
• Hurricane Kay skirted Mexico’s Baja California peninsula and then triggered flash flooding and mudslides in Southern California.



Popo Blast

A series of explosions at Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano spewed ash high into the sky about 40 miles southeast of Mexico City.
The columns of debris soared to about 23,000 feet, posing a threat to aviation.



Climate 'Carnage'

The U.N. weather agency warns that the impacts of global heating are entering “uncharted territories of destruction” because countries are failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
A World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report says that climate-related disasters have increased five-fold over the past 50 years and now cost an estimated $200 million daily.
“There is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters. They are the price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.
He described Pakistan’s current flood catastrophe as “climate carnage.”



'Blue Exposure

The switch to energy-efficient but blue-tinted LED street lamps across parts of Europe could pose a threat to human and animal health.
It’s known that exposure to blue light from TV monitors and mobile phones can interfere with sleep as our eyes control the release of the sleep hormone melatonin based on the colors seen.
Studies have shown that blue light may also contribute to such conditions as diabetes and obesity.
Researchers at Britain’s University of Exeter have recently used images from the International Space Station to reveal that the orange-colored light from older sodium lights is rapidly being replaced by the cooler colors produced by LEDs.
Beyond its effects on humans, blue light can also change the behavior of animals such as bats and moths.



New Iron Age

Iron may soon be used as a source of clean and renewable energy. The element has an energy density higher than gasoline in powder form but produces no carbon emissions. It can easily be transported for use in heavily polluting industrial plants and ships.
After iron is burned, it leaves behind iron oxide, which can be turned back into iron. However, other energy is needed for that chemical reaction.
“But if that energy is obtained from renewable hydrogen produced by solar energy, for example, you have completed the circle with zero emissions,” Carmen Mayoral at the Spanish National Research Council’s Institute for Carbon Chemistry told El País.



Osprey Triumph

British wildlife experts say they are “over the moon” happy with the successful return of ospreys to a nation where they had been extinct for more than 100 years.
They were once hunted out of existence for sport and taxidermy, and their eggs were prized by collectors. But the reintroduction project has now led to about 1,500 of the powerful raptors soaring across England, Wales and Scotland.
Chicks recently hatched in England for the first time in two centuries at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire.
“There are only around 30 breeding pairs of ospreys in England, so to have a pair on our land breeding and raising (two) chicks is so exciting,” environmental project manager Beth Dunstan told The Guardian.


• Extreme Temperatures: -102°F Vostok, Antarctica; 115°F Al Qaysumah, Saudi Arabia

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September 12, 2022 (for the week ending Sep 09)



Earthquakes

• An intense [magnitude 6.6] temblor in China’s Sichuan province killed at least 74 people and damaged homes.
• Eight people perished during an overnight [magnitude 5.1] quake in eastern Afghanistan.
• Earth movements were also felt in southern Iran [magnitude 5.4], Crete [5.3], around the Greek capital of Athens [4.4] and in Sierra Leone, from a temblor beneath the mid-Atlantic [6.9].



Tropical Cyclones

• Super Typhoon Hinnamnor hammered Japan’s southernmost islands before killing at least 10 people in South Korea.
• Tropical Storm Javier and Hurricane Kay formed off Mexico’s Pacific coast.
• Hurricanes Danielle and Earl churned the Atlantic.



Alpine Melt

Swiss scientists say the country has lost half of its glacier volume since 1931.
The researchers say they “reconstructed” the topography of Swiss glaciers of 1931 and then followed how they slowly disappeared over nearly 100 years of melting.
Writing in Cryosphere, they describe their analysis of about 21,700 photos of the glaciers taken between 1916 and 1947 in the process.
They say the Fiescher Glacier, for example, was a massive sea of ice in 1928 but is now only a few tiny specks of white.
Glaciers in eastern Switzerland shrank faster than those in the south, home of the famed Matterhorn.



Tree Extinction

An international group of scientists issued a “warning to humanity” over the prospect of losing about a third of the world’s tree species.
Writing in the State of the World’s Trees report, it says that more than 100 known tree species have already become extinct, with billions of individual trees being lost each year to pests, disease, invasive species, drought, climate change and industrial-scale deforestation.
It adds that further losses will lead to major biodiversity disruptions in a world where forests provide homes to about 75% of all bird species, 68% of mammal species and as many as 10 million species of invertebrates.
“If we don’t look after trees, there’s no way we can look after all the other life there,” said lead author Malin Rivers.



'Hottest Ever'

The brutal heat wave that threatened power blackouts and sparked wildfires in California also brought the world’s hottest September day ever recorded.
The temperature briefly reached 127 degrees Fahrenheit at Death Valley’s Furnace Creek thermometer on Sept. 1. That broke the previous global September record of 126 degrees.
While historic, Death Valley’s record-setting heat is not expected to break the world’s highest-ever recorded temperature of 134 degrees, also set at Furnace Creek (formerly Greenland Ranch), on July 10, 1913.



Famine Warning

The U.N. warns that the drought across the Horn of Africa is likely to push Somalia into famine by the end of this year.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) chief Martin Griffiths told reporters that parched conditions in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts of south-central Somalia could lead to a crisis similar to that of 2010-11, when nearly 260,000 people died of starvation, with half being children.
“Today, we are in the last minute of the 11th hour to save lives. The clock is running, and it will soon run out,” Griffiths said.



Heat Pollution

The U.N. weather agency warns that the world’s more frequent heat waves and wildfires will make the air we breath even more unhealthful in the future.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a statement that air pollution already contributes to about 7 million deaths each year, and global heating is likely to make that number soar even higher.
Smog in urban areas has also been worsening due to the growing number of “heat domes” that bring stable atmospheric conditions and low wind speeds under bright summertime sunshine. That combination contributes to a chemical process that generates smog.


• Extreme Temperatures: -104°F Vostok, Antarctica; 127°F Death Valley, California

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September 05, 2022 (for the week ending Sep 02)



Earthquakes

• Southern Sumatra residents rushed to higher ground after a sharp [magnitude 6.2] temblor rocked the region, but no tsunami was generated.
• Earth movements were also felt in the far northern Philippines [magnitude 5.2], Guam [5.3], Bosnia and Herzegovina [3.8], and northeastern Arkansas [3.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Super Typhoon Hinnamnor became the world’s most powerful cyclone so far this year when it briefly reached Category-5 force east of Okinawa.



Bug 'Meat'

Mealworm larvae are being touted as a flavorful new supplement by researchers, who say it could be mixed with fast food to add a cheap, meat-like flavor.
Since meats of large animals contribute to climate change, the South Korean scientists told the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago that mealworms can help feed a growing global population while lowering the greenhouse gas stress on climate.
Hee Cho and colleagues cooked up mealworms with sugar, which they say created a tasty protein-rich product.
Steamed mealworms were said to have even stronger, sweet corn-like aromas while roasted and deep-fried versions had shrimp-like and fried oil-like qualities.



'Zombie' Ice

A sea-level rise of at least 10.6 inches this century is already “baked” into the atmosphere due to greenhouse gas emissions, with that amount of rise said to be fully due to the future melting of Greenland’s “zombie ice.”
The term refers to ice that has yet to melt and is no longer being replenished due to climate change.
“It’s dead ice. It’s just going to melt and disappear from the ice sheet,” said glaciologist William Colgan of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
The new projection, based on revised melt estimates, is more than twice that of earlier predictions for Greenland.
Writing in Nature Climate Change, Colgan and colleagues say the equilibrium whereby Greenland’s mountain snowfall constantly recharges the glaciers that flow into the ocean has been disrupted by global heating.



'Biblical' rains

Pakistan says it is overwhelmed by the unprecedented flooding catastrophe that has killed at least 1,100 people and affected more than 33 million others. Sindh province just received 784% of its average August rainfall from incessant and powerful monsoon rains.
Cloudbursts with an intensity never before seen have destroyed even sturdy homes.
One homeowner who lost his family and some neighbors when his roof collapsed told Aljazeera that the building techniques used for generations are no longer a match for the new kind of super- charged downpours brought on by climate change.



Triple Threat

The La Niña ocean-cooling in the Pacific is likely to last at least until the end of the year, causing further weather disruptions around the world, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
This marks the first time this century that the tropical Pacific Ocean cooling has spanned three consecutive Northern Hemisphere winters.
“It is exceptional to have three consecutive years with a La Niña event. Its cooling influence is (only) temporarily slowing the rise in global temperatures,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.



Arctic Draining

A new study finds that lakes around the Arctic have disappeared at an alarming rate over the past 20 years as the area around the North Pole warmed four times faster than the rest of the world.
Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, researchers from the University of Florida document how lakes in northern parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, Scandinavia and Alaska have either gotten smaller or entirely dried up.
“The vanishing lakes act as cornerstones of the Arctic ecosystem,” the team said in a news release.
“They provide a critical source of fresh water for local Indigenous communities and industries. Threatened and endangered species, including migratory birds and aquatic creatures, also rely on the lake habitats for survival,” it added.


• Extreme Temperatures: -108°F Vostok, Antarctica; 123°F Death Valley, California

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August 29, 2022 (for the week ending Aug 26)



Earthquakes

• Bali was soundly jolted by a [magnitude 6.2] quake that caused scattered damage.
• Earth movements were also felt in southern Sumatra [magnitude 5.5], Vietnam’s Central Highlands [4.8], the western India-Nepal border region [5.2], western Australia [4.5], northern New Zealand [4.5], coastal Ecuador [5.5] and in northeastern Venezuela and neighboring Trinidad [4.6].



Tropical Cyclones

• After soaking parts of the northern Philippines, Tropical Storm Ma-on brought some drought relief to South China.
• Typhoon Tokage churned the Pacific off northeastern Japan and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.
• Parts of eastern India were drenched by an unnamed tropical storm.



Melting Roads

The unprecedented heat that baked the Northern Hemisphere this summer has caused railroad tracks to contort, forced airport runways to be shut down and made roadways warp.
The transport woes that followed have affected areas from Africa to China and even a busy highway in Cambridge, England.
Infrastructure experts warn that the world’s transportation system was, for the most part, built for a much cooler era.
Flash floods from the now-frequent extreme rainfall triggered by the warmer and moister atmosphere are also eroding paved roadways and obliterating those made of gravel and dirt.



Cicada Silence

This summer’s extreme European heat that has melted glaciers, caused rivers to dry up and destroyed crops has also silenced the singing cicadas of southern France.
“We have observed that the cicadas don’t sing almost ever in the afternoon when the temperature exceeds 36 degrees Celsius (97 F) in the shade. It’s too hot for them,” said agro-climate specialist Serge Zaka.
The cigale, or cicada, has been mentioned in literature for centuries and represented death and rebirth to the ancient Greeks.
But Zaka warned that if Europe continues to get hotter in summer, the Provençal cicadas will be forced to migrate northward or toward the higher elevations of the Pyrenees and southern Alps.



Straight & Far

Insects have for the first time been monitored maintaining perfectly straight flight paths as they migrate long distances even in unfavorable and windy conditions.
Using tiny radio tags attached to hawk moths, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior tracked their migration in real time for up to 50 miles, the longest distance that any insect has been continuously monitored in the wild.
The team found the insects used “sophisticated strategies” to maintain their straight migration paths, similar to those used by some species of birds.



Duller Birds

A new European study finds that at least one species of bird is becoming less colorful under the influence of global heating.
Basque and French researchers recorded the colors of Europe’s blue tits between 2005 and 2019 at sites near Montpellier and in Corsica and found that year after year, both sexes of the birds lost some of their distinctive blue and yellow colorations.
“The change in plumage color seems to be the result of a combination of a rise in temperature (2.2 F) and a fall in rainfall (0.025 inch), said lead researcher David López-Idiáquez of the University of the Basque Country.



History's Hottest

This summer’s drought and heat in China have become the most severe ever recorded in the world.
The nearly stationary heat dome has lasted longer than any other in history and has forced factories to shutter, threatening further global supply chain disruptions.
The heat has evaporated reservoirs and rivers, knocking out the hydroelectric turbines that provide power to many Chinese.
China’s autumn harvest may now be lost, which could worsen the already acute global food crisis.
“There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable to what is happening in China,” said climatologist Maximiliano Herrera.


• Extreme Temperatures: -98°F Vostok, Antarctica; 120°F Death Valley, California

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August 22, 2022 (for the week ending Aug 19)



Earthquakes

• Coastal Ecuador was shaken by a magnitude 4.8 offshore temblor.
• Earth movements were also felt in far northern Japan [magnitude 5.4], far southern Philippines [5.8] and southern Portugal [4.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Central Japan was soaked by Tropical Storm Meari.
• Remnants of an unnamed Arabian Sea storm triggered flooding along the India-Pakistan border.
• Ivette formed briefly off Baja California.



Cyclone Victims

A subtropical cyclone swirling off the coast of southern Brazil washed ashore hundreds of Magellan penguins that were migrating northward to breed.
Most of the 620 penguins driven onto the sandy beaches along the Santos Basin were found dead.
“Penguins can’t fly and ended up drowning since the wind and waves were too strong,” said Andre Barreto, head of the cleanup operation. “We underwent a cyclone with gales of over 100 kilometers per hour (62 mph) along the Santa Catarina coast.”
The cyclone also caused flooding and wind damage.



African Thirst

The deaths of more than 7 million head of livestock due to the worst East African drought in four decades is causing a humanitarian disaster to unfold.
The World Health Organization warns that more than 80 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia now suffer from food insecurity.
Beyond the loss of livestock, vast swaths of cropland have been parched, and communities are being torn apart as families migrate in search of food and grazing.
Even Kenya’s nomadic Masai now struggle to preserve their way of life as they are forced to travel farther than before in search of grazing land and water.



Burning Forests

Hotter and drier weather brought on by climate change has nearly doubled the amount of forest cover burned around the world during the past 20 years.
The worst year for forest losses due to fire was 2021, which saw an area the size of Portugal being blackened.
Of the 35,750 square miles of trees destroyed by wildfires last year, more than half were in Russia.
“It is kind of astonishing just how much fire activity has increased over such a short amount of time,” said James MacCarthy, an analyst with Global Forest Watch (GFW).
The forests may grow back in about a century, but their burning spews vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.



Western Rewilding

A new study suggests that increasing the numbers of wolves and beavers in federal lands across the western United States could help re-establish habitats lost during the past two centuries.
The proposed Western Rewilding Network would cover nearly 190,000 square miles in Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Only a small fraction of the former wolf and beaver populations still exists across the region, with no beavers left in many waterways.
Lead author William Ripple of the Oregon State University College of Forestry says that by felling trees and shrubs to construct dams, beavers enrich fish habitats, increase water and sediment retention and maintain water flows during drought.



Deep Energy

The dream of tapping the unlimited geothermal energy a few miles beneath the surface may be a little closer to reality, thanks to the same new laser technology developed to spark nuclear fusion.
Efforts to drill down the 7 miles or so have been blocked by layers of granite or basalt that are five times harder than the sedimentary rock just below ground.
But Quaise Energy has plans for a test project in 2024 that will use millimeter-wave beam technology to vaporize those hard layers into glass boreholes. The startup says that if successful, the technology could be deployed on a global scale.
It adds that if wells were drilled beneath existing coal or gas plants, their steam turbines could easily be retrofitted to generate deep geothermal energy as cheaply as 1 cent per kilowatt-hour.


• Extreme Temperatures: -99°F Vostok, Antarctica; 120°F Death Valley, California

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August 15, 2022 (for the week ending Aug 12)



Earthquakes

• A wide area from northern Australia to East Timor was jolted by a magnitude 5.6 quake, centered beneath the Banda Sea.
• Earth movements were also felt in southern Sumatra [magnitude 4.8], far northern Japan [5.4], Pakistan’s Swat district [4.3], southwestern Turkey [4.2] and along the central California-Nevada border [4.4].



Tropical Cyclones

• While the Atlantic hurricane season remained quiet, Tropical Storm Howard formed off Mexico.



Volcanic Fumes

Icelandic officials warned residents downwind of the Fagradalsfjall volcanothat noxious gases from the eruption could make air quality “unhealthful for the sensitive.”
They added that the danger could even extend to the capital, Reykjavik.
The volcano roared to life with a swarm of volcanic tremors on Aug. 3 after nearly eight months of slumber. Last year’s eruption lasted six months.



Climate Diseases

More than half of diseases that infect humans from pathogens such as viruses and bacteria have been made worse by the deepening climate emergency, according to a new report.
Researchers at the University of Hawaii reviewed more than 70,000 studies of all known infections and pathogenic diseases that have ever affected humanity, and looked at how global heating has affected them.
Writing in Nature Climate Change, they say diseases such as Zika, Malaria, Dengue and even COVID-19 have been made more severe to humans by climate-related events such as extreme rainfall, floods, drought, heat waves and wildfires.
They add that altered rainfall patterns have expanded the ranges of disease-carrying pests such as ticks, fleas and mosquitoes, which carry Malaria, Lyme disease, West Nile virus and other illnesses.



Unhealthful Rain

It is no longer safe to drink rainwater anywhere on the planet, even in the most remote areas around the poles and high on the Tibetan Plateau, according to a new Stockholm University and ETH Zurich study.
Researchers found rainwater is adulterated with fluorine-based PFAS, which accumulate in the body and are very slow to degrade.
They are used in nonstick pans, firefighting foam, water-repellent clothing and scores of other products.
The contamination of rainwater “greatly exceeds” safety levels virtually everywhere on Earth.
“I’m not saying that we’re all going to die of these effects. But we’re in a place now where you can’t live anywhere on the planet and be sure that the environment is safe,” said Ian Cousins of Stockholm University.



Antarctic Retreat

Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached its lowest extent on record for July, according to data from Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
A record low coverage was also reached in June, following several months of below-average extent.
C3S says Antarctic sea ice covered just 15.3 million square miles in July, or 7% below the 1991-2020 average for the month.
The floating ice had steadily increased from 1979 until a general decline began after a record high coverage was reached in 2014.



Gelatinous Find

A “magnificent” and ornate jellyfish believed to be new to science was filmed by a scuba diver in the waters off Papua New Guinea’s New Ireland province.
Some experts first thought it was the second sighting of the mysterious Chirodectes maculatus – seen only once decades ago following a cyclone on the Great Barrier Reef. But others say the one filmed by Dorian Borcherds is much smaller and has different markings.
The Guardian reports Borcherds said he saw three or four of the jellyfish and was struck by their intricate detail and the way they seemed to move decisively through the water.


• Extreme Temperatures: -97°F Vostok, Antarctica; 121°F Hofuf, Saudi Arabia

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August 08, 2022 (for the week ending Aug 05)



Earthquakes

• Around 450 buildings were damaged when a magnitude 5.1 quake shook eastern Nepal.
• Earth movements were also felt in southwestern Pakistan [magnitude 5.6], East Timor and Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province [4.9], the far southern Philippines [5.6] and northwestern Honduras [5.4].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Songda spun up briefly over the Yellow Sea, while Trases brought moderate rain to the Korean Peninsula.
• Hurricane Frank and Tropical Storm Georgette lost force over the Pacific.



Icelandic Eruption

More than 10,000 tremors shook Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula during a three-day period, leading to a fresh eruption of Fagradalsfjall volcano, which became a spectacular tourist attraction for months last year.
The strongest quake registered magnitude 5.4 and was felt strongly in the capital, Reykjavik, knocking items off shelves nearby.
The renewed eruption is in an uninhabited valley near Iceland’s main international airport.
NB: the tremors did not cause the eruption. Rather, the tremors are the manifest of magma activity in the magma chamber and movements in the volcano's conduits. Therefore, recording seismic activity is often used to monitor a volcano's activity and imminent eruptions.



Bird Flu Victims

The avian influenza outbreak that has ravaged poultry and wild birds around the world this year now seems to be killing seals along Canada’s St. Lawrence River.
At least 15 of the 100 marine mammals found dead along the waterway since January have tested positive for the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the virus.
Stéphane Lair of the University of Montreal says the seals most likely contracted the virus from infected eider ducks, with which they share the same islands to give birth at the beginning of summer.
A spokesman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada says these are the first cases of the virus being passed from wild birds to marine mammals ever reported in Quebec.



The Shortest Day

Earth spun on its axis just an itsy bitsy teenie weenie bit faster on June 29, causing us to experience the shortest day since measurements began in the 1960s.
By using high-precision atomic clocks, scientists determined that Earth completed its spin that day just 1.59 millisecond shy of 24 hours.
Influences such as earthquakes, El Niño, the moon’s gravity, storms and even vanishing glaciers can affect earth’s rotation.
There have been several unusually shorter days in recent years, including 2020, when 28 were among the shortest in the past 50 years.
But in the long term, Earth’s rotation is actually slowing down about one-74,000th of a second each year, mainly due to the gravitational tug of the moon.



Marine Heat Wave

The blistering heat waves that have scorched much of Europe this summer have also brought excessive heat to the Mediterranean, which experts warn could wipe out several marine species.
The sea between Spain and Italy has been up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit above normal this summer, and it is feared the warmth has already ravaged ecosystems.
Less severe marine heat waves also hit the Mediterranean during the past several years, leading to mass die-offs of marine life.
Relentless heat and drought have also ravaged crops, including the prized olive trees of Spain and Italy.



Whaling 'Collapse'

Japan’s whaling industry appears to be struggling to stay in business due to cut-backs in government subsidies and younger Japanese turning their backs on what was once a staple food.
The industry has faced condemnation for using a loophole in International Whaling Commission rules that allowed it to hunt the marine mammals under the guise of scientific research.
But without subsidies, Kyodo Senpaku Co., the only offshore whaling company in Japan, has recently been selling whale meat below the break-even cost.
“Even the Japan Fisheries Agency has now abandoned any pretense that commercial whaling can be profitable,” said Patrick Ramage, head of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.


• Extreme Temperatures: -82°F South Pole, Antarctica; 119°F Death Valley, California

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August 01, 2022 (for the week ending Jul 29)



Earthquakes

• Five people were killed by a magnitude 7 temblor that caused wide-spread destruction in the Philippine province of Abra.
• A [magnitude 5.7] quake on the Ecuador-Colombia border injured 8 people and wrecked homes.
• Earth movements were also felt along the Mexico-California border [magnitude 4.3], Spain’s Costa del Sol [3.1], southern Iran [5.4], central Nepal [4.2], the India-Myanmar border area [4.6] and southern Vanuatu [5.5].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Frank was predicted to reach hurricane force while moving northwestward in the Pacific.
• Georgette later formed just ahead of Frank’s predicted course.



Japanese Evacuations

An eruption of southern Japan’s Sakurajima volcano prompted the evacuation of nearby residents as the mountain spewed lava and tossed large stones into the sky.
The warning level was raised to the highest level of 5, prompting the evacuations of residents of Arimura-cho, Furusato-cho and Kagoshima who live within a 2-mile range of the crater.
Officials said vibrations from the eruption could break windows in those communities.



Plastic Eaters

British researchers have identified naturally occurring lake bacteria that grow faster and more effectively by eating plastic bags, breaking them down to natural carbon compounds.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications, Cambridge scientists suggest that enriching waters with particular species of bacteria could be a natural way to remove plastic pollution from the environment.
They add that “plastic pollution is stimulating the whole food web in lakes, because more bacteria means more food for the bigger organisms like ducks and fish.



Alpine Heat

Swiss scientists say the freezing point in the Alps has risen to a record altitude above the summits this summer as Europe bakes in unprecedented heat.
Weather balloons had to rise 17,008 feet above sea level to reach freezing, 230 feet higher than the previous record set in 1995.
Glaciologist Matthias Huss says accelerating global heating, especially in July, has caused freshwater glaciers to melt faster than ever.
Wild species accustomed to cold climates are migrating higher and are reaching a point where they have nowhere else to go.
A melting glacier has shifted the border between Switzerland and Italy, putting a mountain lodge that was once entirely in Italy now technically two-thirds in Switzerland.



Pink Giant

An extremely rare pink diamond unearthed in Angola is believed to be the largest ever found during the past three centuries.
The 170-carat stone discovered in the Lulo alluvian mine has been dubbed the “Lulo Rose” and will be sold through the state-owned diamond firm Sodiam.
It’s a Type IIa diamond, one of the rarest and purest forms of natural stones.
Colored diamonds have recently sold for record-setting prices, including the De Beers Cullinan blue diamond that was auctioned for about $57.7 million at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in April.



Violent Marauders

Nearly 50 people have been attacked and injured in the western city of Yamaguchi by a gang of Japanese macaques that initially waged assaults on children and adults before going on to target the elderly.
Residents have resorted to carrying umbrellas and sharp garden tools to fend off the simians.
Authorities managed to capture and eventually put down one member of the gang that was identified as an attacker.
But eyewitnesses say monkeys involved in the assaults are of different sizes, meaning more of the suspects are still at large.
Macaques are commonly seen across Japan, sometimes eating crops and invading homes.


• Extreme Temperatures: -97°F Vostok, Antarctica; 121°F Death Valley, California

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July 25, 2022 (for the week ending Jul 22)



Earthquakes

• A sharp [magnitude 5.1] temblor injured 55 people and destroyed 600 homes in the same region of Afghanistan still recovering from a stronger June 22 quake.
• Earth movements were also felt in northern South Africa [magnitude 4.8], southern Sumatra [5.3], the northern Philippines [4.6], El Salvador [4.4] and California’s Mojave Desert [4.6].



Tropical Cyclones

• Former Hurricane Darby lost force as it passed to the south of Hawaii’s Big Island.
• Hurricane Estelle remained well off Mexico.



Antarctic Pink

Antarctic researchers captured sublime images of pink skies over the frozen landscape brought on by Tonga’s record volcanic eruption in mid-January.
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano spewed an enormous number of fine particles high into the stratosphere, resulting in vivid sunsets in parts of Australia and New Zealand.
The effect in the near-perpetual winter twilight of Antarctica’s Scott Base and McMurdo Station has created a fiery hue over the ice, even at noon.



Dimming Solution

With officials failing to significantly curb carbon emissions as the climate heats, some scientists are suggesting a controversial method of “geoengineering” to dim sunlight as a stopgap way of averting an unbearably hot world.
The Thompson Reuters Foundation reports the technology would mimic the sky-darkening effect of volcanic eruptions.
With special planes spraying chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, its backers say the process would be relatively cheap and simple, costing a few billion dollars a year.
Critics say it could cause serious and unpredictable consequences and are trying to get the process banned.
But with the prospect of the Earth heating more than humans can adapt to, the scheme may become one of the only remaining options.



Winged Tragedy

The worldwide bird flu epidemic that has resulted in the deaths of untold millions of poultry in recent months is also decimating the planet’s wild bird populations.
The Guardian reports the U.K. has suffered its worst-ever infections, with more than 300 outbreaks in the nation’s seabird colonies.
Birds are also dying in many other areas of the world. More than 2,000 of the world’s approximately 8,000 Dalmatian pelicans have already perished.
“We are facing an event of mass extinction of animals. Entire populations are affected by this virus,” says Uri Naveh, a senior scientist at the Israel Parks and Nature Authority.
The international poultry trade, farming and sale of birds, as well as wild migrations, are the leading causes.



Solar Fuel

A European Union-backed project in Spain is demonstrating how a process to create jet fuel out of thin air and water can replace traditional petroleum-based kerosene on an industrial scale.
Aviation accounts for about 5% of human-caused climate change, and a shift to renewable energy sources using other methods has proven challenging for the industry.
A mirror array concentrating sunlight on a solar tower fuels the simple chemical process, which consumes the same amount of carbon dioxide to create the kerosene as is emitted when the fuel is burned in a jet engine.



Big Cat Return

Cheetahs will soon roam the forests of central India for the first time in 70 years.
The country’s indigenous cats were declared extinct in 1952 after decades of hunting, habitat loss and food shortages led to their disappearance.
But a long-anticipated agreement with Namibia will see the world’s fastest land animals transported from Africa to “cheetah-friendly” areas of Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh state.
Asiatic cheetahs once roamed from Afghanistan to the Arabian Peninsula, but only about a dozen still survive in Iran.


• Extreme Temperatures: -100°F South Pole, Antarctica; 125°F Death Valley, California

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July 18, 2022 (for the week ending Jul 15)



Earthquakes

• Far southern Peru was strongly jolted by a magnitude 5.5 temblor.
• Earth movements were also felt in India’s Karnataka and Chhattisgarh states [magnitudes 4.5 and 4.6], southern Java [5.2], the Israel-Lebanon border area [3.4] and around Alaska’s Cook Inlet [4.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• Hurricane Darby attained Category 4 force as it moved steadily westward across the Pacific.



Guatemala Blasts

Guatemala’s Fuego volcano produced between two and five explosions per hour at times in a single day, causing ash and other debris to cascade down its slopes, 20 miles southwest of the capital city.
The country’s Institute of Volcanology says ash also fell across nine communities on the volcano’s slopes.
The institute warned that the increase in activity could be a sign that lava is about to flow down one of several vulnerable ravines.



Arctic Heat Surge

An alternative method of studying climate change on a shorter time scale reveals that the Arctic is heating up more than four times faster than the rest of the world.
The trend was missed by other operational climate models, which also failed to expose one of two distinct surges in Arctic warming — one in 1986 and a previously unknown step-up in 1999.
Climate “normals” are typically calculated over a 30-year period at the beginning of each decade. But researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory decreased the time scale to 21 years.
“We attributed the first step to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the atmosphere, because several models do it correctly,” said climate researcher Petr Chylek. “But the second step we think is due to climate variability because none of the models can reproduce the second step.”



Record Tree Loss

More trees were lost to deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon region during the first half of this year than during the same period in any other year. The loss amounted to a 10.6% increase from January to June of last year.
The country’s national space research agency says 1,540 square miles of Amazon rainforest were lost to logging and land clearing for agriculture or livestock.
Brazil also recorded the highest number of Amazon wildfires in 15 years.
Trees are typically felled by loggers for valuable wood. Ranchers and land speculators then come in to clear the land for agriculture.
Such tree losses release clouds of carbon into the atmosphere, worsening the climate crisis.



Squirrel Birth Control

Scientists say they have developed contraceptives to control Britain’s invasive gray squirrels, which are driving the native and beloved red squirrels to extinction.
The birth control could help eradicate the gray squirrels without killing them.
The massive scheme will lure gray squirrels into feeding boxes that only they can fit into. There, they will find a mixture of hazelnut spread, irresistible to them, spiked with the contraceptives.
The grays first arrived from North America in the late 19th century and have since also damaged Britain’s woodlands by stripping bark from trees for nutrition.



Unsustainable

A new report highlights how unsustainable logging, hunting and fishing are driving extinctions, putting food security at risk in the future.
Established in 2012, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) points out that 1 in 5 humans relies on 50,000 species of wild animals, fungi and plants for food, and all are being over-exploited by the planet’s growing population.
The IPBES assessment also says about a third of ocean fish are being over-fished, more than 10% of trees are threatened by unsustainable logging and more than 1,300 mammals are being pushed to extinction by unbridled hunting.
It says “transformative changes” are needed to halt the overexploitation.


• Extreme Temperatures: -110°F Vostok, Antarctica; 123°F Death Valley, California

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July 11, 2022 (for the week ending Jul 08)



Earthquakes

• At least five people were killed and 44 others injured when Iran’s Hormozgan province was rocked by a strong [magnitude 6.0] temblor.
• Earth movements were also felt in western Myanmar [magnitude 5.1], Indonesia’s North Ma- luku province [5.3] and northwest China’s Xinjiang region [5.3].



Tropical Cyclones

• At least five people died from Tropical Storm Bonnie's passage over Central America. Bonnie later reached hurricane force in the Pacific.
• A tornado spawned by Typhoon Chaba damaged buildings in South China’s Guangdong province.
• Southern Japan was drenched by Tropical Storm Aere and its remnants.
• Colin formed briefly over coastal South Carolina.



Nanoparticle Vax

California researchers say they have developed a new type of vaccine that protects against a spectrum of COVID-like coronaviruses, including those that have yet to emerge.
Caltech’s Pamela Bjorkman says the new nanoparticle vaccine provides protection in monkeys and mice by training the animals’ immune systems to recognize up to eight viruses at a time, even triggering immunity to viruses never seen before.
Bjorkman says if the vaccine works in humans as well, it could even protect against betacoronaviruses that have yet to make the leap from animals to humans. This would eliminate the need to tweak existing vaccine technology once new pathogens emerge.



Climate Shift

Changes in the size and strength of the prevailing high-pressure system over the Atlantic have brought parts of Spain and Portugal their driest climate in over a thousand years.
This expansion of the Bermuda-Azores High came as the western U.S. also developed a worsening “mega-drought” that threatens cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas with critical water shortages.
Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, U.S. researchers say the Mediterranean became drier as the high expanded dramatically during the 20th century in step with global heating.
The vast high-pressure area controls where and when rain falls across Western Europe, typically directing storms into the Iberian Peninsula during winter.



Sandstrom Surge

Global heating is resulting in earlier and more frequent sandstorms across parts of the Middle East. A single storm can swirl for days, causing havoc in a dozen countries.
Storms this summer have caused hospitals to be flooded with patients suffering from respiratory ailments. Schools and businesses have been forced to close many times this year because of choking sand.
Officials and environmental groups say the hotter climate, altered weather patterns and poor management of agriculture and water resources are turning the region’s soil into sand.



Swamped Sydney

The fourth major flood emergency to submerge parts of Australia’s largest metropolitan area since March forced thousands of flood-weary residents to evacuate yet again.
Overflowing dams and sodden ground unable to absorb more water have sent torrents into Sydney’s suburbs, where residents say they are fatigued by months of constant threats to their homes and lives due to an altered climate



Nuclear Returns

Some evacuated residents from near Japan’s meltdown-plagued Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are being told they may return home permanently 11 years after intense radiation from the nuclear disaster forced them to flee.
Police and fire patrols are being reestablished in Okuma, but it is unclear how many residents will return.
About 130 square miles across seven Fukushima municipalities remain off-limits due to high levels of radiation and are likely to remain so well into the future.


• Extreme Temperatures: -104°F Vostok, Antarctica; 121°F El Oued, Algeria

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July 04, 2022 (for the week ending Jul 01)



Earthquakes

• At least one person was killed and more than 30 others were injured when a [magnitude 5.6] temblor struck Iran’s Hormozgan province.
• Quakes were also felt in Bosnia and Herzegovina [magnitude 4.5], northwestern Algeria [5.1] and southwestern Taiwan [5.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• Developing Tropical Storm Bonnie soaked the Leeward Antilles and northern coasts of Venezuela and Colombia, taking aim on Nicaragua or Costa Rica.



Rocket Pollution

Researchers warn that the rapidly increasing number of rocket launches threatens to alter the highest levels of Earth’s atmosphere, and perhaps the planet’s weather.
The sootlike grains of black carbon produced when kerosene is burned as an oxidizer in rocket fuel can accumulate in the stratosphere, where they can trap heat from the sun and potentially damage the ozone layer.
A team from the U.S. environmental agency NOAA looked at what would happen if such launches increase by 10 times their current level by 2040, which is predicted.
They found that the stratosphere could warm by up to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5° C), with jet stream winds increasing by about 11 miles per hour.



Name That Heat

Spain’s southern city of Seville is no stranger to hot summertime weather, but the heat is becoming so excessive that officials have begun naming heat waves in the same way as tropical cyclones and winter storms.
“We are the first city in the world to take a step that will help us plan and take measures when this type of meteorological event happens — particularly because heat waves always hit the most vulnerable,” said Mayor Antonio Muñoz.
The yearlong pilot project will use an algorithm to forecast up to five days in advance how intense the heat will be and how severe its potential impact on human health.
The list will be in reverse alphabetical order, with the first five names chosen as Zoe, Yago, Xenia, Wenceslao and Vega.



Warming Births

Global heating is causing endangered African wild dogs in Botswana to give birth 23 days later than just three decades ago, according to researchers from the University of Washington.
Briana Abrahms and colleagues analyzed observations of when the canines had pups from 1989 to 2020, comparing them with temperature data from a nearby weather station.
The dogs seem to prefer breeding when the weather is the coolest, which is coming later and later each year.
The team says it found an almost parallel link between the shift in birthing dates and the warming climate.



Chicken Pot

Chickens fed with clippings from a licensed medical marijuana farm in northern Thailand appear to benefit from the supplement, which may also help poultry farmers cut antibiotic use.
Researchers from Chiang Mai University worked with Ong-ard Panyachatiraksa to see if leftover pot leaves at his organic farm could improve the quality and taste of his chickens, along with the birds’ overall health.
The Guardian reports the cannabis-supplemented chickens tended to have fewer cases of avian bronchitis. The quality of the birds’ meat was also judged superior, based on fat and moisture content as well as tenderness.



Climate Disasters

Many of the extreme weather events so far this year, such as blistering heat waves and the catastrophic flooding in parts of India, Bangladesh and China, can be directly linked to global heating, scientists say.
Writing in the journal Environmental Research: Climate, an international team says that every heat wave occurring today is more intense due to climate change.
The team reports that such heat waves are now five times more likely on average than in pre-industrial times. However, the World Weather Attribution group says the one in April that baked India and Pakistan was made 30 times more likely by climate change.
The report says attributing drought and wildfires to a warming world is far more challenging.


• Extreme Temperatures: -94°F Vostok, Antarctica; 122°F Bandar-e Deyr, Iran

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June 27, 2022 (for the week ending Jun 24)



Earthquakes

• More than 1,000 people perished around southern Afghanistan’s provincial capital of Khost as the deadliest temblor to strike the country in 20 years caused buildings to crumble. [The temblor had a moderate magnitude of 5.9.]
• Quakes were also felt in central Japan [magnitude 5.1], Taiwan [6.0], northwestern Sumatra [5.2], Costa Rica [4.4], Argentina’s Mendoza province [5.1] and Georgia [3.9].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Celia formed off western Nicaragua and was predicted to reach hurricane force over the open waters of the eastern Pacific late in the week.



Solar Heartbeat

New research suggests that solar storms may cause up to 5,500 heart-related deaths annually in the U.S. alone during years of high solar activity.
Harvard researchers made the conclusion after comparing death records in 263 U.S. cities from 1985 to 2013 with solar data.
They found more deaths occurred from heart attacks and other cardiovascular complications on days when solar storms were disturbing Earth’s magnetic field.Men with diagnosed heart disease were seen to be especially vulnerable to the effect.
Other research links solar storms to higher rates of depression, suicide and even premature birth.



Polar Survivors

As melting polar ice in summer threatens the region’s iconic polar bears with starvation, a previously unstudied population of the bears in southeastern Greenland has been found to survive despite the lack of sea ice much of the year.
The genetically distinctive subpopulation has adapted by using chunks of glaciers calving off Greenland as platforms to hunt seals year-round.
Since there is sea ice in that region only from February to May, the glacial icebergs help the small population of polar bears to survive for the rest of the year.
But that glacial advantage will not be available to polar bears elsewhere in the Arctic as the sea ice around the North Pole disappears due to global heating.



Heat Victims

Spain’s earliest intense heat wave in 40 years killed hundreds of baby swifts after the hatchlings fled their sweltering nests too soon.
The threatened birds were seen littering the streets around the southern cities of Córdoba and Seville. Residents of both communities gathered all of the dehydrated and starving birds they could find so they could be nursed back to health.
“You would walk down the street and there would be 100 chicks, lying at the foot of a building ... some barely alive,” said biologist Elena Moreno Portillo of the urban conservation group Ecourbe.



Climatic Starvation

Hunger brought on by climate change appears to be behind the deaths of hundreds of small kororā penguins that have washed up on the northern shores of New Zealand since May.
Also known as little penguins, they were found through autopsies to have starved to death and were not victims of disease or toxins.
Warming waters now force the small fish the penguins eat to swim deeper to stay cool. Since the kororā can only dive to depths of only 65 to 100 feet, they are increasingly unable to reach their prey, experts say.



Arctic Openings

Melting Arctic sea ice during summer may soon become so pervasive if carbon emissions are not drastically curbed that new shipping lanes not controlled by Russia will open up.
Current Russian law requires that all vessels passing through the Northern Sea Route off Siberia in summer pay tolls, be piloted by Russians and provide advance notice of their plans to use the route.
But a new study by Brown University finds that there will soon be shorter, more eco-friendly maritime routes that bypass Russian control.
Arctic shipping routes between Asia and Europe are 30% to 50% shorter than using the Suez and Panama canals, and are an estimated 14 to 20 days faster.


• Extreme Temperatures: -93°F Vostok, Antarctica; 127°F Al Jahra, Kuwait

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June 20, 2022 (for the week ending Jun 17)



Earthquakes

• A wide area from Cyprus to southern Turkey and Lebanon was jolted by a sharp [magnitude 5.0] quake centered just off Cyprus on June 10.
• Earth movements were also felt in far eastern Turkey [magnitude 5.2], eastern Afghanistan and neighboring parts of South Asia’s Hindu Kush region [5.1], central Nepal [4.7], Java [5.0], eastern Papua New Guinea [5.6] and southwestern Iceland [3.9].



Tropical Cyclones

• Hurricane Blas became the second named storm of the eastern Pacific hurricane season when it spun up just off Acapulco.



Philippine Blast

The second explosion of the Philip- pines’ Bulusan volcano within as many weeks spewed ash over several communities and farms in Sorsogon and neighboring Albay provinces.
At least 1,500 residents in ash-covered towns were ordered to evacuate after the eruption.



Frozen Arctic

Arctic sea ice has been much slower to melt this spring than in the last 10 years, the result of temperatures being closer to the 1981 to 2010 average than the record warmth mainly experienced this century.
Ice coverage in May was almost 5 million square miles, with Hudson Bay, the Beaufort Sea, waters of Arctic Canada and the eastern Siberian Sea still mainly frozen at a time when the ice should have been melting.
While the June 1 sea ice extent was the highest of the last nine years, it was still 16,000 square miles lower than the 1981 to 2010 average and the 16th lowest ever recorded for the date.



Triple La Ni&ntidle;a

Predictions that the La Niña ocean cooling in the Pacific will strengthen for the third consecutive year likely means there will be more severe weather around the world for months to come.
For the past two years, La Niña has brought crop-withering drought to Africa, unprecedented floods to eastern Australia and two very active Atlantic hurricane seasons.
The U.S. environmental agency NOAA says that while La Niñas often come for two consecutive years, it now seems likely there will be a rare “triple La Niña.”
Temperatures across the Pacific where the cooling typically occurs were the coldest since 1950 during April. They were also the coldest since 1988 in May.



Oscillating Core

While scientists have for decades believed that Earth’s inner core consistently rotates faster than the planet’s surface, there is new evidence that the core oscillates and actually changed direction in the six years from 1969 to 1974.
The discovery was made in part by examining seismic data from Soviet underground nuclear tests from 1971 to 1974.
Without such blasts, only the less-revealing quake data are available.
University of Southern California researchers say their findings explain the variations in the length of a day, which has wavered during recent decades.



Plants vs Lighting

A new study documents how artificial light affects the seasonal rhythms of plants around U.S. cities.
Researchers from Iowa State University found that man-made lighting at night alters the natural circadian rhythms of plants, lengthening the pollen season for many of them.
They say this results in urban and suburban residents suffering from sneezing and itchy eyes for longer periods each year.
By comparing nighttime satellite images in the visible spectrum with historic plant data around 3,000 urban sites, they found that artificial light causes leaf budding in the spring about nine days earlier while also delaying the colors of fall foliage by about six days.
The longer growing season could also have implications for crops grown around urban settings.


• Extreme Temperatures: -88°F Vostok, Antarctica; 123°F Death Valley, California

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June 13, 2022 (for the week ending Jun 10)



Earthquakes

• A sharp [magnitude 3.3] quake just off Jamaica jolted many islanders awake at dawn.
• Earth movements were also felt in the Philippine province of Surigao del Sur [magnitude 5.6], northwestern Pakistan [4.6], Kuwait [4.4], western England [3.8], the Brazil-Peru border region [6.5] and the western Aleutians [6.3].



Tropical Cyclones

• Pacific Hurricane Agatha's remnants, which first drenched a wide swath of western Cuba and southern Florida, regenerated into Tropical Storm Alex over the open waters of the Atlantic.



Eruption

A violent blast from the Philippines’ Bulusan volcano dumped ash over farms and several villages in the province of Sorsogon, about 300 miles south of the capital, Manila.
The steam-driven explosion lasted about 17 minutes but did not appear to cause significant damage or any injuries. However, falling ash did reduce visibility to near zero on the region’s highways.
Bulusan produced dozens of similar blasts in 2016 and 2017.



Rescue Rats

Several African giant pouched rats have been trained at a research center in Tanzania to enter earthquake disaster zones and help locate victims buried beneath rubble.
When they are dispatched in a test project to earthquake-prone Turkey, they will wear tiny specialized backpacks containing video gear so handlers can talk to survivors, along with a location tracker.
The fast-learning rodents are being trained by the nonprofit organization APOPO for its “Hero Rats” project.
Other rats of the same species have been trained to sniff out land mines and to identify those infected with tuberculosis.



Antarctic Plastic

Microplastic pollution has for the first time been found in freshly fallen snow across Antarctica’s pristine Ross Ice Shelf.
Researcher Alex Aves from the University of Canterbury says she found at least some of 13 different types of microplastics in all 19 samples collected.
“It’s incredibly sad, but finding microplastics in fresh Antarctic snow highlights the extent of plastic pollution into even the most remote regions of the world,” Aves said.
Such debris has also been found from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest depth of the ocean. It has become so ubiquitous worldwide that it is in the food we eat and the air we breathe.
Experts fear the Antarctic microplastics could accelerate the melting of snow and ice there.



Carnivorous Turkeys

An Australian researcher came across a brush turkey eating roadkill instead of its typical meals of seeds, worms and grubs.
It is the first time the ancient species, which has prehistoric nesting behavior more similar to crocodiles than other birds, has been observed eating meat.
John Martin at the Taronga Institute of Science and Learning found the dominant male fiercely defending the dead bandicoot from other lurking brush turkeys at a beach community near Sydney.
“It literally grabs a chunk of blood-red steak and wolfs it down,” said Martin. “I had never seen that before.



Quake Fears

Images taken by a robotic camera at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power station show that one of the melted-down reactors is in danger of collapse in the event of another strong earthquake in the region.
Images show Reactor No. 1 is now resting precariously on a flimsy frame of corroded supports. The concrete base also appears to have melted, with only a metal frame now holding up the reactor’s pressure vessel.
Three reactors at the Fukushima plant melted down following the magnitude 9.0 temblor and subsequent tsunami in 2011 that knocked out power to the plant’s cooling system.
Should the pressure vessel topple in a quake, experts say it would make the decades-long cleanup efforts, and removing the melted fuel, far more difficult.


• Extreme Temperatures: -91°F Vostok, Antarctica; 120°F Jacobabad, Pakistan

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June 06, 2022 (for the week ending Jun 03)



Earthquakes

• At least four people died during a [magnitude 5.9] temblor that damaged homes in China’s Sichuan province.
• Earth movements were also felt in areas around the Timor Sea [magnitude 6.2], southeastern Queensland [3.0], Hawaii’s Big Island [4.7], Armenia [3.5] and southwestern Iceland [3.5].



Tropical Cyclones

• Hurricane Agatha left at least nine people dead and 20 others missing after inflicting major damage in southern Mexico’s Oaxaca state.
  Most of the deaths were due to flooding and mudslides. Agatha was the strongest named storm in May on record for the Pacific.
• Remnants of Agatha were gaining strength late in the week over the western Caribbean and were predicted to possibly regenerate into a new tropical depression or storm.
  Residents across southern Florida were on alert for this potential development.
  [NB: This storm caused widespread landslides in Cuba and eventually developed into Tropical Storm Alex.]



Eruption

Far East Russia’s Bezymianny volcano erupted with a violent blast that sent ash soaring high above the Kamchatka Peninsula and the far northern Pacific Ocean.



Jumping Worms

Officials in California are warning gardeners to be on the lookout for an invasive snakelike worm that can leap up to a foot into the air and has a voracious appetite.
Amynthas agrestis, or Asian jumping worm, is believed to have entered the U.S. in potted plants from Japan or the Korean Peninsula during the last century.
“True to their name, they jump and thrash immediately when handled, behaving more like a threatened snake than a worm,” the California Department of Food and Agriculture said in a report.
The agency suggests pouring water with yellow mustard into infested ground to drive the worms out, then to cover the soil with plastic sheets and let the sun’s heat destroy the worm’s cocoons.



"Heavenly Pit"

Geologists have discovered a previously undiscovered forest deep in a sinkhole in China’s Guangxi region, where plants and other creatures cover the ground, some possibly new to science.
The state-run news agency Xinhua reports that while giant sinkholes are common in that part of China, the new “bottomless pit” has tall trees blocking its floor.
Geologists rappelled down the wall and hiked through dense thorns and fig plants to explore the discovery. Experts believe that due to the sinkhole bottom’s isolation, small animals and insects never seen before almost certainly live there.



Largest Life

Scientists have discovered that a massive underwater seagrass meadow off Western Australia has cloned itself into the largest single organism on the planet.
Known as Poseidon’s ribbon weed, the plant is about 4,500 years old.
A team from the University of Western Australia found that it has spread from a single seed to now cover about 77 square miles.
The researchers analyzed 18,000 shoots from across the plant and discovered it is a single living thing. The expansive cloning may be due to the extreme conditions of intense sunlight along with large fluctuations in temperature and salinity in its Shark Bay home.



Wild Reclamation

More than a decade after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdowns, wildlife populations are growing across the evacuated landscape, with animals damaging the places humans used to live.
Fukushima Minpo reports that cities and farms in the exclusion zone are also becoming overgrown with vegetation. This makes it difficult for evacuees to consider returning to their homes.
“It hurts to see my house ravaged by animals,” said 65-year-old Hiromi Aizawa, who evacuated from the town of Okuma.
Killing or capturing the animals for food is not an option. A recent study found that radioactive cesium in some of the birds, deer and wild boars caught across Fukushima prefecture exceeds safety standards.
The government restricts the shipment of animals captured there to areas outside the contaminated zone.


• Extreme Temperatures: -90°F South Pole, Antarctica; 120°F Sibi, Pakistan

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May 30, 2022 (for the week ending May 27)



Earthquakes

• A wide area of northern Japan was jolted by an undersea [magnitude 5.5] temblor, centered south of Hokkaido.
• Earth movements were also felt in South Asia’s Hindu Kush region [magnitude 5.0], Trinidad [4.2], southern Mexico [5.5], southern Peru [7.2] and the Big Island of Hawaii [4.7].



Vanishing Birds

Almost half of all known bird species are suffering population losses as the winged creatures die from climate change, habitat loss and overexploitation, according to a new report.
“We are now witnessing the first signs of a new wave of extinctions of continentally distributed bird species,” says conservation biologist Alexander Lees from Britain’s Manchester Metropolitan University.
He and colleagues at Cornell University and other institutions document in the report State of the World’s Birds how approximately 48% of all bird species are believed to be experiencing population declines.
They say climate change is the greatest factor in the bird losses.



Monarch Recovery

Experts at Mexico’s El Rosario butterfly sanctuary say there were 35% more monarch butterflies spending the past winter there than during the previous season.
They suggest the colorful insects could be adapting to the changing climate by adjusting the date they begin migrating northward to the United States and Canada for the summer.
“They left very late. We still had butterflies in April,” said Gloria Tavera of Mexico’s National Commission for Natural Protected Areas.
The migration has been challenged by more extreme bouts of heat and drought, along with a loss of the milkweed that their caterpillars feed on north of the border.
Illegal felling of trees around the sanctuary also threatens the species.



Sandstorms

Many parts of the Middle East have suffered from an unprecedented series of blinding sandstorms this spring, sending thousands of people to hospitals with respiratory problems.
Businesses and schools were forced to close due to the severity of the storms.
Spanish sandstorm expert Carlos Pérez Garcia-Pando says unusual heat and drought this year in East Africa, the Middle East and Asia could have amplified some sandstorms.
Other experts point to climate change and mismanagement of water resources as important factors in the more frequent sandstorms.



Leech Invasion

Months of soggy conditions and floods across southeastern Australia have driven blood-sucking leeches into homes and yards.
While common in the streams and low bushland of New South Wales, they are now popping up all around Sydney.
“I was out fixing the gutters the other day, got inside and found three on my feet and thought I’d better take a bath, found two more, so I had five on me,” parasite expert Alexander Maier of the Australian National University told the Manly Observer. “Then we found another one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom and one coming down my skylight.”



Sleepless Heat

Not losing any sleep over climate change? Think again.
Scientists looking at the impacts of global heating on humans find that the rising temperatures are already negatively affecting sleep patterns around the world.
Analysis of sleep-tracking wristbands from 48,000 people in 68 countries reveals that unusually hot nights are keeping people awake, causing them to lose about 44 hours of sleep on average each year.
Kelton Minor and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen compared the sleep data with the local weather and found that the greatest sleep loss was among those taking longer to fall asleep in the heat.



Heat Wave Surge

Heat waves that have killed at least 90 people this spring across India and Pakistan may soon be ended by the southwest monsoon.
But climate experts at the World Weather Attribution group say global heating has already made such deadly episodes 30 times more likely.


• Extreme Temperatures: -100°F Vostok, Antarctica; 120°F Jacobabad, Pakistan

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May 23, 2022 (for the week ending May 20)



Earthquakes

• A long stretch of central Japan’s Pacific coast was jolted by a [magnitude 5.6]quake, centered well offshore
• Earth movements were also felt in Fiji [magnitude 4.0], central New Zealand [4.7], coastal Peru [5.4], southwestern Guatemala [5.1], southwestern Iceland [4.5] and the desert resorts of Southern California [5.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Yakecan downed trees and power lines, and whipped up pounding seas as it lashed Uruguay and southern Brazil.
  Tropical Storms are rare in South America and never formed before 2000. Catarina in 2004 has been the only hurricane ever recorded in the South Atlantic.
• Tropical storm Gina drenched parts of Vanuatu.



Light Pollution

Soaring energy costs and changing work patterns due to the pandemic have resulted in a drop in the amount of light polluting the night sky, at least in Britain.
The Guardian reports that a survey by the rural charity CPRE found that amateur stargazers have for the past two years been enjoying better views of the heavens.
It points to homes and local agencies switching off artificial lights due to high power bills, and businesses not turning on as many lights because employees are working from home.
CPRE advocates for legal protection of the night sky, asking local agencies to place streetlights where they won’t cause needless pollution, harming wildlife.



Rare and Red

Panamanian researchers say they have discovered a dazzling red salamander in one of the country’s cloud forests that is new to science.
The amphibian was dubbed the Chiriquí fire salamander (Bolitoglossa cathyledecae) after it was found in La Amistad International Park, which Panama shares with Costa Rica. Its Talamanca mountain range is one of the least-explored regions of Central America.
Writing in the journal Zootaxa, the researchers say it is different from other members of its genus because of its color, webbed feet and large number of upper teeth. The salamander lives in a very small high-altitude habitat in the park.



Deadly Heat

South Asia’s blistering heat wave worsened, with temperatures soaring to above 124 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Pakistan.
The heat is evaporating water supplies and causing misery among those who have to work outdoors. “It’s like fire burning all around,” Jacobabad, Pakistan, laborer Shafi Mohammed told AFP.
Farmers in the Cholistan Desert report that some of their sheep have died from heatstroke and dehydration.
But relief could be on the way, with cooling monsoon rains predicted to initially reach southern India earlier than normal on May 27.



Pollutions Kills

Approximately 1 in 10 premature deaths worldwide during 2019 were linked to pollution, according to a new report by the Lancet Commission.
It says 9 million people died during the year due to breathing toxic outside air and from lead poisoning.
Pollution is an “existential threat to human health and planetary health, and jeopardizes the sustainability of modern societies,” the report concludes.
While pollution rarely kills immediately, it does trigger heart disease, cancer, respiratory problems, diarrhea and other serious illnesses, according to the report.



Nature's Victims

The coastlines, forests and wetlands of southern Ukraine have suffered untold destruction and contamination by Russia’s war on the country.
The bombardments and missile attacks have inflicted damage to wildlife and the environment that will take decades to recover once the war ends, according to Yevhenia Zasiadko of the Ukrainian environmental organization Ecoaction. “We are seeing a frightening amount of landscape damage,” Zasiadko told Spain’s RTVE.
Russia’s military has targeted many of Ukraine’s mines, refineries, fuel depots and chemical plants, polluting the surrounding areas.


• Extreme Temperatures: -105°F Vostok, Antarctica; 124°F Jacobabad, Pakistan

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May 16, 2022 (for the week ending May 13)



Earthquakes

• A sharp [magnitude 5.2] temblor in southern Pakistan’s Balochistan province wrecked a large number of houses, leaving more than 200 families homeless.
• Earth movements were also felt in eastern Taiwan [magnitude 6.3], central France [4.1], the Virgin Islands [5.5] and Southern California’s San Diego County [3.6].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Asani weakened to tropical storm force before making landfall on southeastern India’s Andhra Pradesh coast. It brought local relief from the oppressive heat and drought plaguing India.
• Tropical Storm Karim was a threat only to shipping lanes in the eastern Indian Ocean.



Eruption Repercussions

The cataclysmic eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano near Tonga on Jan. 15 had huge effects on the highest levels of Earth’s atmosphere, accord ing to a new NASA study.
Researchers found that the blast was so powerful that it brought hurricane-force winds and unusual electrical currents to the ionosphere. “The volcano created one of the largest disturbances in space we’ve seen in the modern era,” said lead author Brian Harding.
U.S. and European satellites captured images of giant plumes of gases, water vapor and dust soaring toward the edge of space after the blast began.



Warming Threshold

The U.N. weather agency warns that there is now a 50% chance the world will warm past the 1.5 degree Celsius goal at least briefly by 2026.
“We are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement,” said World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, referring to the climate agreements adopted in 2015.
While that occurrence would not mean the aspirational warming goal above pre-industrial levels had been permanently breached, the WMO says it would give a taste of what’s ahead should world leaders fail to curb carbon emissions immediately.



Collateral Damage

Beyond the human casualties, destruction and misery from Russia’s war on Ukraine, Turkish marine life experts say they believe the conflict is also causing a sharp rise in dolphin deaths along the Black Sea coast.
They believe underwater noise pollution from about 20 Russian navy vessels has been driving the marine mammals southward, where they are becoming stranded or caught in fishing nets.
Neighboring Bulgaria also reports an increase in dolphin strandings. “Acoustic trauma is one of the possibilities that come to mind,” said Bayram Öztürk of the Turkish Marine Research Foundation.
He adds that while the underwater noise may not directly kill the dolphins, it could cause them to head into unfamiliar territory.



Record Swarms

Namibia is suffering from the country’s worst brown locust invasion in history, with an estimated 3 million acres of crops already ravaged in one agricultural region alone.
The country is just emerging from a six-year drought that officially ended in 2019.
“The locusts have started feasting on the grass and trees near our cattle outposts and very soon, if they are not brought under control, nothing will be left for our livestock,” farmer Johannes Muhenje told the Namibia Economist.



South Asia Heat

Wildlife rescuers in western India’s Gujarat state say they are picking up large numbers of dehydrated and exhausted birds that have fallen from the sky as the region remains in the grip of unprecedented heat.
Birds that were still alive were treated with water injections into their mouths and fed vitamin tablets.
The heat has also been responsible for the deaths of more than two dozen humans across India.
Since the country suffered its hottest March in more than 100 years, the relentless heat has caused water shortages, power cuts and wide-spread misery, with temperatures soaring well above 100 degrees most days.


• Extreme Temperatures: -101°F Vostok, Antarctica; 118°F Jacobabad, Pakistan

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May 09, 2022 (for the week ending May 06)



Earthquakes

• A rare and very shallow magnitude 2.8 quake jolted metropolitan St. Louis on April 28 without causing damage
• Earth movements were also felt in Cyprus and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean {magnitude 4.8], the Armenia-Georgia border area [4.8] and South Asia’s Hindu Kush region [5.0].



Methane Detection

Analysis of data from sensors aboard a Canadian satellite have for the first time identified an individual farm as the source of methane emissions from cattle.
Aerospace firm GHGSat used one of its three orbiters for the exercise, which demonstrated a new level of precision in identifying where the powerful greenhouse gas is polluting the atmosphere.
With high-resolution images from Feb. 2, 2022, the firm used wind modeling to trace the source of the methane from bovine flatulence and belching to a farm near Bakersfield, California.
The new technology could help regulatory agencies monitor how much methane is being generated by specific cattle ranches.



Butterfly Tags

Scientists have created tiny sensors that can be attached to the backs of monarch butterflies to track their migration.
Millions of the colorful and threatened monarchs migrate each autumn to a cluster of mountain peaks in central Mexico’s Michoacan state.
The new wireless sensing platform called mSAIL includes a chip that weighs only 0.002 ounces and measures only 0.315 inches in width.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh say the sensors store information during the migration until the butterflies arrive at specific checkpoints and their destinations, where the data can be collected wirelessly.
They say the tiny devices do not interfere with the monarchs’ flying ability or other normal activities.



Canine Destruction

Earth’s estimated 1 billion domestic and feral dogs are ravaging the planet’s ecology by killing, eating and scaring wildlife, spreading pathogens to endangered species and poisoning plants.
New Scientist reports the threat is most acute from free-roaming dogs wandering through protected wildlife reserves, including the home of China’s giant pandas and India’s tiger habitats.
But even on leashes, domestic dogs have been found responsible for a “dramatic” reduction in the diversity and abundance of birds around Sydney, Australia.



'Hellish' Roast

South Asia’s annual season of “heat and dust” before the summer monsoon season typically brings relief in June has long caused discomfort at this time of year.
But an unprecedented and early heat wave this year has made life almost unbearable across Pakistan and India.
The heat has sparked huge landfill fires and caused power blackouts as more than 1.5 billion people try to keep themselves and their food cool with air conditioners and refrigerators.
Electricity supplies are cut up to 18 hours each day in some areas. Crops are perishing in the heat and drought, worsening already acute food shortages.



Novel Foods

A switch from the typical Western diets of meat and dairy products to such protein as insects, algae, kelp and lab-grown meat could slash the amount of Europe’s food-related greenhouse gases by more 80%, according to University of Finland researchers.
They also say the cuts could reduce water and land use for food by up to 87%.
“It would be a way for someone to consume their fast-food burger, but save on land use and water use and global warming potential,” said Rachel Mazac.



Climate Insurance

The floods, wildfires and other weather-related disasters that have recently plagued parts of southeastern Australia may soon become so frequent and vast that many homes will be deemed “uninsurable,” experts warn.
The term “uninsurable” means that the risks are so great that insurance is only available at such a high cost that no one can afford it.
The Australian Climate Council predicts that 1 in 25 Australian homes will be uninsurable by 2030.


• Extreme Temperatures: -99°F Vostok, Antarctica; 120°F Jacobabad, Pakistan

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May 02, 2022 (for the week ending Apr 29)



Earthquakes

• One Bosnian woman died near Mostar when shaking from a magnitude 5.7 temblor sent a large boulder crashing into her home.
• Earth movements were also felt in the Indonesian province of Papua [magnitude 5.3], northern Taiwan [4.9], southern Greece [4.9] and Vancouver Island [5.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• Southern Madagascar was hit by pounding surf and local flooding as Tropical Storm Jasmine moved ashore from the Mozambique Channel.”



Krakatau Blast

Indonesian officials issued the country’s second-highest volcanic alert after Mount Anak Krakatau spewed a column of ash 10,000 feet above the Sunda Strait, which separates Sumatra and Java.
Residents living where ash was falling were warned to wear face masks as protection from the falling toxic debris.
Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatau) emerged in 1927 from the caldera left by the 1883 catastrophic eruption of Mount Krakatau.



"Bird Flu Spread"

Massive numbers of wild birds across more than 25 U.S. states and parts of Canada have been made ill or killed by the H5N1 strain of the avian influenza virus, including bald eagles. Tens of millions of domestic poultry have also been culled.
“This outbreak in wild bird populations is a lot more extensive than we saw in 2014 and 2015,” University of Georgia bird flu researcher David Stallknecht told public broadcaster NPR. “Just a lot more birds appear to be affected.”
The virus can fall to the ground in the droppings of passing wild birds, and is easily spread on shoes and even vehicles traveling to and between farms.
The H5N1 strain is also causing France’s worst bird flu crisis in history and infecting wild birds and poultry in other parts of Europe, Africa and Asia.



Plastic Eaters

Chemical engineers in Texas say they have developed a new enzyme variant that can break down plastic in just hours or days, compared to the centuries it takes to degrade in nature.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin say this could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste and bring about true recycling of plastic. Globally, less than 10% of all plastic has been recycled.
Developed through machine learning, the FAST-PETase enzyme was found to break down 51 different types of consumer plastic containers, five different polyester fibers and fabrics, as well as water bottles.
The team plans to scale up the production for industrial use and to experiment with spreading the enzyme across polluted sites.



Reptile Peril

An international study of reptiles by more than 900 scientists across six continents finds that more than a fifth of all species are threatened with extinction.
“If we remove reptiles, it could change ecosystems radically, with unfortunate knock-on effects, such as increases in pest insects,” said researcher Neil Cox.
While many reptiles are found in arid regions, far more live in forests, where they are threatened by climate change, logging and expanding agriculture. Hunting, especially for crocodiles and turtles, is also a major threat.



Carbon Capture

Pulverized rock dust spread on farmland has the potential to remove vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping countries meet their net-zero carbon target by 2050, experts say.
In Britain alone, researchers believe that almost half of the nation’s CO₂ removal goals could be achieved in this way.
Enhanced rock weathering is a process in which basalt and other rocks are ground up, increasing their surface area to better absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
Because no new technology is needed to prepare, distribute and spread the rock dust, it is far more practical and cheaper than other forms of direct air capture and storage under development.


• Extreme Temperatures: -106°F Vostok, Antarctica; 118°F Nawabshah, Pakistan

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April 25, 2022 (for the week ending Apr 22)



Earthquakes

• A mosque and other buildings were damaged by a magnitude 5.1 temblor in Indonesia’s North Maluku province.
• Quakes were also felt in northeastern Japan [magnitude 5.3], the Philippine island of Mindanao [6.1] and western Nicaragua [6.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• Global heating is causing extreme Atlantic hurricane seasons to now be twice as likely as during the 1980s.
  Researchers at Berlin-based Climate Analytics say the warming trend in the Atlantic basin and variations in atmospheric circulation can be directly linked to the “decisive increase.”



Cactus vs. Heat

Global heating is on track to become so intense during the next few decades that the survival of 60% of cactus species may be threatened, a new study finds.
Researchers from the University of Arizona tested the belief that cacti will benefit from the hotter and drought-prone world to come.
They examined data from more than 400 species and projected how the warming climate would affect them.
“Our results suggest that climate change will become a primary driver of cactus extinction risk, with 60% to 90% of species assessed negatively impacted by global warming,” the researchers concluded.
Expanding agriculture and habitat losses also make cacti among the most endangered living things on Earth.



"Bird Cast"

A team from Cornell University has developed an online tool to help bird enthusiasts and scientists in the U.S. track bird migration.
Using weather surveillance radars across the country, the numbers of birds in flight and their migration are plotted on the new BirdCast interactive platform, which can be seen at birdcast.info.
“With this new Migration Dashboard, you get facts and figures about what’s going on in the skies above you at the county level in near-real time,” said Andrew Farnsworth, senior researcher with BirdCast.
The dashboard shows how many birds are estimated to have flown over a particular county in the lower 48 states on any given night during migration.



Hippo Plague

Offspring of the four hippopotamuses brought into Colombia during the 1980s by the late drug cartel boss Pablo Escobar have increased in such numbers that the country has declared them an invasive species.
About 133 descendants of the three animals that allegedly escaped into the wild are now ravaging the ecology and threatening the human population along the banks of the Magdalena River.
The new invasive species declaration means Colombia can draft plans to control the hippo population, or even eradicate them.



Vanishing Insects

Nearly half of insects in parts of the world may have already disappeared due to climate change and intensive agriculture, according to a new report.
In the first global study to measure the effects of hotter temperatures and agricultural practices, University College London scientists looked at nearly 18,000 species, including butterflies, crickets, wasps and beetles.
They found that both insect numbers and diversity declined the most between 1992 and 2012 in tropical regions rather than in higher latitudes, probably because tropical insects are less able to adapt to a warming climate.



Radio Silence?

Scientists at Oxford University warn that current efforts to send high-power radio transmissions into space to say “hello” to extraterrestrial intelligences could actually bring Earth under an alien attack.
Several such transmissions have already been made since the 1970s, with some efforts being approved by NASA. But new digital technology means detailed messages that give the planet’s location, its life forms and examples of human knowledge could prove tempting to extraterrestrials.
Anders Sandberg told The Telegraph that while chances the messages would be received are slim, any responses might not be what we were hoping for.


• Extreme Temperatures: -100°F Vostok, Antarctica; 114°F Nawabshah, Pakistan

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April 18, 2022 (for the week ending Apr 15)



Earthquakes

• Several people were injured and houses damaged when a rare [magnitude 4.9] quake struck the Mozambique-Malawi border area.
• Earth movements were also felt in Athens [magnitude 4.2], southeastern Turkey [5.2], northwestern Pakistan [4.7], India’s Nicobar Islands [5.4], southern Taiwan [5.1], the east coast of South Korea [3.4] and southwestern Iceland [3.9].



Tropical Cyclones

• Flash flooding and mudslides from Tropical Storm Megi killed at least 53 people in the central Philippines and sent more than 13,000 others fleeing to emergency shelters. Some houses were buried up to their rooftops in mud across the hardest-hit province of Leyte.
• Typhoon Malakas attained Category-4 force as it passed over the open waters of the western Pacific.



Without Warning

Volcanologists in Costa Rica say there were no detectible signs that Poás volcano was about to erupt before a blast shot a column of steam and ash high into the air.
They say the steam-driven eruption did not involve any new magma.



Bird Flu

A new strain of avian influenza detected in February has so far led to the culling of nearly 24 million poultry birds in the United States.
The highly contagious strain has been confirmed in at least 24 states, including the country’s largest egg-producing state of Iowa.
Infected migratory birds carry the virus but typically do not become ill. But they can transmit the virus to poultry, especially farmed chickens and turkeys.
The outbreak has created supply shortages of eggs and poultry meat during the past few weeks.
Health officials say the current strain of the virus appears to pose no significant risk to humans.



Record Drought

Chile announced an unprecedented plan to institute water rationing in the capital of Santiago as the country suffers through its 12th consecutive year of drought.
“A city can’t live without water,” said Claudio Orrego, the governor of the Santiago metropolitan region. “And we’re in an unprecedented situation in Santiago’s 491-year history where we have to prepare for there to not be enough water for everyone who lives here.”
Rotating water cuts of up to 24 hours could soon be possible for 1.7 million capital residents.
He added that the effects of climate change may mean that the trend of less rainfall and mountain snow is here to stay.



Locust Plague

Vast swarms of locusts have decimated crops and grassland across southern Namibia in recent weeks and contributed to a deadly traffic accident.
A minibus lost control on a slippery stretch of highway where the ravenous pests were keeping warm on the pavement at night. Three of the 17 passengers died in the accident, with several more sustaining injuries.
Officials say the slime from locusts crushed by traffic triggered the accident.
The country has begun aerial spraying of insecticide to control the swarms.



Methane Surge

Global concentrations of the potent but short-lived greenhouse gas methane soared by a record amount during 2021, according to a new NOAA report.
It marked the second consecutive year that methane increased at a record rate, bringing the amount of the gas in the atmosphere to far more than twice the levels seen in pre-industrial times.
Methane is a large contributor to climate change and comes mainly from livestock, agricultural production and trash landfills.
But some experts point to leaks from oil and gas production as adding to the recent increase in methane levels.
Fortunately, the gas only lasts about nine years in the atmosphere, compared to the tens of thousands of years carbon dioxide lingers.


• Extreme Temperatures: -102°F Vostok, Antarctica; 117°F Matam, Senegal

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April 11, 2022 (for the week ending Apr 08)



Earthquakes

• Southeast India’s Andhra Pradesh state was jolted by a [magnitude 3.6] temblor, which is rare for the region.
• Earth movements were also felt in islands of Indonesia’s Molluca Sea [magnitude 6.0], the southern Philippines [5.6], southern Taiwan [4.8], China’s Sichuan province [5.2] and the Kuril Islands [5.3].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Fili spun up over the Coral Sea and was predicted to pass to the southwest of New Caledonia.



Rumblings

Increasing tremors at New Zealand’s Mount Ruapehu have scientists concerned that pressure is building beneath the volcano.
The strongest rumblings in nine years probably mean gas and fluid are moving through the volcano.
Eruptions of Ruapehu in 1995, 1996, 2006 and 2007 tossed stones more than a mile from the crater, with ash soaring high at times.



Now or Never

A new U.N. report on climate change warns that carbon emissions have never been higher in human history and that we are on a “fast track” to a world so hot that it will be uninhabitable.
“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius; without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” said Jim Skea of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The new IPCC report indicates that while limiting warming to that level is now virtually impossible, capping the warming at 2.0 degrees will require greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 and be slashed by a quarter by 2030.



Migratory Light

Some species of birds are encountering more light pollution at both ends of their migratory routes, potentially confusing them and causing them to crash into buildings, according to a new report.
Writing in the journal Ecosphere, researchers say nighttime light pollution levels are increasing from the southeastern U.S. to Mexico and Central America.
It is estimated that as many as 1 billion bird deaths are caused by collisions each year, with a combination of artificial light at night and the mirrored surfaces of buildings the main causes.
Wildlife advocates are calling for new legislation to require architects to design buildings that are more bird friendly, and for cities to reduce light pollution during key migration periods.



Flood Plagues

Yet another round of severe flooding struck Australia’s southeastern Queensland states, driving rats, cockroaches and snakes into homes and restaurants in search of higher ground.
“It’s just been terrible. All the rats have come out of the drainpipes,” says Carol Mihan from Bruin Pest Control near Brisbane.
Many of the rats are appearing in places where they have never been seen before, and residents say they are making disturbing noises beneath their homes, barns and sheds.
Catastrophic flooding since January has also brought plagues of mosquitoes, midges, spiders and other pests.



'Spillback' Disease

While there are many documented instances of humans catching diseases such as COVID-19, bird flu and other pathogens from animals, a new study finds that humans are giving diseases to animals more frequently than previously thought.
Writing in the journal Ecology Letters, researchers say there have been nearly 100 cases where diseases “spillback” to animals both in captivity and in the wild.
The latest example is COVID-19 being transmitted from people to wild white-tailed deer in North America and spreading among the population.
The majority of the spillback has been from humans to other closely related primates. Mountain gorillas in Uganda have caught several diarrhea-causing bacterial infections from people.
“It brings into question which cross-species transmission events we may be missing, and what this might mean not only for public health, but for the health and conservation of the species being infected,” said lead author Anna Fagre.


• Extreme Temperatures: -95°F Vostok, Antarctica; 113°F Gouré Niger

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April 04, 2022 (for the week ending Apr 01)



Earthquakes

• In an unusually quiet week for seismic activity in populated areas of the world, mild temblors shook northeastern Borneo [magnitude 3.8] and metropolitan Tokyo [4.7].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Halima briefly reached Category-4 force as it looped across the central Indian Ocean.



Rumblings

• Swarms of volcanic tremors in Portugal’s Azores archipelago have farmers and officials there worried that an eruption similar to Spain’s La Palma last year is imminent.
  The rumblings on lush São Jorge have already prompted the evacuation of some elderly and disabled residents near where the seismic activity has been centered. The last eruption there occurred in 1808.
• More than 4,000 people were evacuated from around the Philippines’ Taal volcano as an eruption intensified.



Early Birds

A new study reveals that some birds in the American Midwest are now laying their eggs about a month earlier than they did a century ago, with a steadily warming climate pointed to as the cause.
Led by Chicago’s Field Museum, a team compared century-old eggs preserved in the museum’s unique collection with recent avian observations. Each egg is accompanied by a label, noting the kind of bird and precisely where and when it was collected. A third of the 72 species studied around Chicago now lay their eggs about 25 days earlier than they did a century ago.
The gradual shift to an earlier spring has resulted in large impacts on animal and plant life cycles. Scientists believe this is responsible for the steep decline in bird populations since the 1970s.



Blood Plastic

Dutch researchers say that for the first time, micro-plastics have been found in human blood samples.
Writing in the journal Environment International, they document how a small study detected traces of the plastic pollutants in the blood samples of 17 out of 22 volunteers.
The study suggests the PET plastic and polystyrene particles were likely inhaled or ingested before winding up in the bloodstream. The substances are found in plastic bottles, polyester fibers and other products.
The researchers also emphasize that more studies are needed to determine if the man-made substances pose a public health risk.



Reef Bleaching

Areal surveys of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef reveal that there is now so much new dead coral that scientists believe a serious coral bleaching event is developing.
The worst bleaching has been observed north and south of Townsville. Mild or moderate bleaching has been seen in the far north of the reef.
Rising ocean temperatures due to climate change are blamed for the more-frequent bleaching, which also occurred on a large scale in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2020.
But this bleaching event is occurring during a La Niña ocean-cooling event, which typically helps cool the reef.
Experts say that climate change is now overpowering that process and leaving the reef under constant thermal stress.



Crypto Energy

Bitcoin mining by massive arrays of servers around the world consumes an oversized amount of electricity as its network verifies secure transactions with extremely complex puzzles.
It is estimated that the process already consumes as much energy as Sweden, and its drain on global power grids is growing.
But Greenpeace and other environmental groups say that a coding switch could greatly reduce Bitcoin’s energy consumption.
The campaign, Change the Code Not the Climate, points to the coding soon to be adopted by rival crypto-currency Etherium that will slash its power consumption by 99%.
Campaign spokesman Michael Brune says energy demand from bitcoin mining has been responsible for dirty coal plants and gas power plants being revived at a time when the world is struggling to reduce its carbon footprint.


• Extreme Temperatures: -81°F Vostok, Antarctica; 114°F Nawabshah, Pakistan

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March 28, 2022 (for the week ending Mar 25)



Earthquakes

• Buildings shook across Taiwan when a sharp [magnitude 6.7] temblor struck just off the island’s east coast.
• Earth movements were also felt in the central Philippines [magnitude 5.3], Indonesia’s West Papua province [5.2], Hawaii’s Big Island [4.5], northern Algeria [5.2] and from Scotland to Norway [4.5].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Charlotte spun up between Java and northwestern Australia. It was a threat only to shipping before it dissipated.



Rumblings

Ongoing heat waves currently baking parts of both the Arctic and Antarctic are alarming scientists, who call the events unprecedented.
Record temperatures in Antarctica reached an astounding 72 degrees Fahrenheit above normal in places, while wintertime sea ice around the North Pole began to melt with temperatures 54 degrees above normal.
The polar heat comes just months after many areas of the Northern Hemisphere suffered a series of heat waves that triggered catastrophic firestorms.
Antarctica’s sea ice fell last month to the lowest coverage ever observed. New satellite data shows sea ice around the North Pole is also disappearing more quickly than previously thought.



Pollution Failure

Not one country in the world was able to reduce its air pollution in 2021 to meet the newly established World Health Organization’s (WHO) air quality standard, according to a new report.
The U.N. agency guidelines now state that the tiny airborne particles known as PM2.5 should not average more than 5 micrograms per cubic meter over the year.
Those particles are known to cause significant health problems, even in low concentrations.
But WHO says only 3.4% of cities surveyed met the new standard after it went into effect last year. It reports that as many as 93 cities worldwide saw PM2.5 levels at 10 times the recommended concentration.



Nile Barrier

Egypt has constructed a series of natural sand barriers to hold back the rising Mediterranean from the Nile Delta, which in recent decades has been inundated by winter storm surges and heavy rains.
Such flooding is becoming more frequent in the world’s coastal areas as global heating causes sea levels to rise.
The new dike system is 70% complete and stretches for more than 40 miles across the areas of Egypt’s bread basket that are most vulnerable to seasonal floods.
Reuters reports that reeds and local vegetation have been planted in the sand to hold the barrier together and to promote biodiversity.



Orangutan Slang

A study of orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra reveals that groups of the apes use slang terms to show off their “coolness.”
Writing in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, scientists say that the “kiss- squeak” alarm calls are sometimes altered in pitch and duration by some in the simian social groups in the same way adolescent humans come up with new slang terms.
While some of the so-called slang becomes adopted by others in the group, other sounds quickly become “uncool.”



Fires of War

Forest fires that have erupted around Ukraine’s crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant are burning out of control. The country’s parliament blames “armed aggression” by Russian invaders for sparking them. Ukrainian officials also say the conflict is preventing firefighters from battling the blazes.
Many trees surrounding the plant were killed by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, leaving the area tinder-dry at times.
“Burning around Chernobyl is a concern because the burning may mobilize radioactive particles that were deposited decades ago when the reactors melted down,” said University of California wildfire expert LeRoy Westerling.
Fires near Chernobyl in 2020 caused radiation levels in the region to spike to 16 times above normal.


• Extreme Temperatures: -85°F South Pole, Antarctica; 113°F Gouré, Niger

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March 21, 2022 (for the week ending Mar 18)



Earthquakes

• A [magnitude 7.3] temblor off northeastern Japan killed at least 5 people, derailed a bullet train and knocked out power as far away as Tokyo and beyond.
• Earth movements were also felt in greater Hong Kong [magnitude 4.1], the northwestern Philippines [6.4], central California [4.1] and south-central Alaska [5.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Gombe left at least 15 people dead in Mozambique and 7 other fatalities in neighboring Malawi after roaring ashore as a Category-2 storm.
• Tropical Storm Billy churned the Indian Ocean.



Hornet Sex Traps

The invasive Asian giant hornet that has in recent years ravaged honeybee hives in parts of British Columbia and Washington could possibly be wiped out for good with “sex traps” developed by U.S. and Chinese researchers.
Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say key ingredients in the sex pheromones of the “murder hornets” can be put into traps, luring the males from the queens and preventing them from mating. Test traps have proven successful, attracting only males.
“In two field seasons, we were able to rapidly collect thousands of males that were attracted to the odor,” said biologist and co-author James Nieh.



Farming Shift

Researchers have developed a map that shows where the world’s major food crops could successfully be moved to combat climate change and greatly reduce the need for irrigation.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment , they propose expanding agriculture around the corn belt in the American Midwest and south of the Sahara desert.
This would allow vast tracts of farmland in Europe and India to revert to their natural ecology, allowing CO₂-eating forests to grow back in the process.
By cultivating crops in places where the scientists believe that rainfall would provide all the needed moisture, water resources could be more targeted to the planet’s thirsty and growing human population.



Gorilla Thirst

Climate change is causing East Africa’s two endangered mountain gorilla populations to have to drink more frequently, which seems to make the primates especially susceptible to the region’s warming climate.
The rainforest dwellers typically get most of their hydration from the food they eat. But the warmer weather in recent years has caused them to become more reliant on water from streams, puddles and even swamps.
“In these conditions, drinking water likely helps to maintain a healthy body temperature range,” said Edward Wright of the Max Planck Institute.



Deluge Aftermath

Australian health experts warn that there will likely be a rise in serious mosquito-borne disease, along with more bites from snakes and spiders, as the catastrophic inundation in the southeast subsides.
New cases of Japanese encephalitis have already been reported, prompting authorities to expand vaccinations, especially for pig farm workers and their families due to their increased chances of getting bitten by infected mosquitoes.
With funnel web spiders being discovered in more homes around the flood disaster zones, anti-venom manufacturers have stepped up production as a precaution.



Vanishing Ice

Fresh data from NASA’s ice-monitoring CryoSat-2 and IceSat-2 spacecraft reveal that the sea ice surrounding the North Pole is thinner and disappearing more quickly than previously thought.
Using radar and lidar, the satellites can measure the thickness of the ice with a resolution of about a half-inch. With that data, a new report says that the Arctic Ocean has lost about a third of its winter sea ice cover over the past 20 years.
Scientists say ice that once did not melt over the summer has lost an average of about 1.5 feet in thickness just since IceSat-2 began operating in 2019.
This shrinking leaves only much thinner seasonal ice, which melts completely each summer.


• Extreme Temperatures: -82°F Vostok, Antarctica; 114°F Dampier, W. Australia

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March 14, 2022 (for the week ending Mar 11)



Earthquakes

• Southern Mexico was jolted by three temblors, with the strongest centered in Oaxaca registering a magnitude of 5.7.
• Earth movements were also felt in northwestern Sumatra [magnitude 5.5], Taiwan [5.6] and West Texas [3.1].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Gombe drenched northern Madagascar before nearing Mozambique late in the week.
• An unnamed tropical storm formed briefly in the southwestern Bay of Bengal.



Fiery Eruptions

• A 26-hour surge in activity at Guatemala’s Volcán de Fuego (Volcano of Fire) prompted officials to evacuate nearby residents to shelters. An eruption in 2018 killed 194 people and left another 234 missing.
• Hundreds of people living near Indonesia’s Mount Merapi fled superheated clouds of volcanic debris and lava flows as the mountain erupted multiple times in a single day on Java.



Aging Reversal

A study published in the journal Nature Aging documents how U.S. researchers successfully turned back the biological clock in animals with a form of gene therapy.
While such success in humans is not likely for many years or even decades, mice with equivalent ages of between 35 and 50 in humans that were treated with what are known as Yamanaka factors for several months appeared much younger.
Their skin and kidneys were said to have shown significant signs of rejuvenation. But older mice with ages equivalent to 80 years in humans showed little or no sign of improvement.
The use of Yamanaka factors in humans can trigger cancer, so scientists say far more research is necessary before people can expect a fountain of youth.



Litter Shelters

Octopuses are increasingly being observed and photographed using discarded cans, bottles and other trash as shelter, and even places to safely lay their eggs, hidden from predators.
Writing in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, lead researcher Maira Proietti at Brazil’s Federal University of Rio Grande says her team examined hundreds of images from “citizen scientists” to see how the creatures are literally embracing such trash.
“They clearly see that there’s a lot of litter around, and it can therefore act as a kind of artificial camouflage,” said Proietti.
But she cautions that sheltering or laying eggs in discarded tires, batteries, plastic containers and other man-made items could expose the octopuses to heavy metals or hazardous chemicals.



Avian Adaptation

A long-term study of birds in Europe reveals many species are being profoundly affected by climate change.
By looking at how and when 60 different species lay their eggs, the number of offspring and death rates, researchers found that not all changes have been due to higher temperatures alone.
Garden warblers are now having one-quarter fewer chicks, while some classic songbirds, sparrows and finches are getting smaller.
Some species are laying their eggs up to 12 days earlier than 50 years ago.
Habitat loss, pollution and urbanization could be responsible for some changes.



Carbon Removal

It will now be necessary to efficiently remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to keep global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, the aspirational goal outlined in the Paris climate agreement.
A new report from Britain’s Energy Transitions Commission examines various ways to cleanse the air of carbon emissions, ranging from projects to plant trees around the world to carbon capture and storage.
The current technology for removing CO₂ from the air and safely storing it produces almost as much in carbon emissions as it removes.
The report says much cleaner methods must be developed because a switch to green and renewable energy won’t be enough to meet current climate change goals.


• Extreme Temperatures: -86°F Vostok, Antarctica; 110°F Garoua, Cameroon

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March 07, 2022 (for the week ending Mar 04)



Earthquakes

• At least 11 people perished in western Sumatra on Feb. 25 when a powerful [magnitude 4.3] temblor toppled buildings and sent a landslide tumbling onto a village.
• Earth movements were also felt across a wide area of South Asia’s Hindu Kush region [magnitude 5.2] and in metropolitan Los Angeles [4.3].



Tropical Cyclones

• Parts of northwestern Australia were soaked by Tropical Storm Anika.
• Tropical Storm Vernon formed over the central Indian Ocean while unnamed storms spun up briefly south of Java and north of New Zealand.



Mosquito Attraction

Researchers say they have found that the best way to avoid being targeted by mosquitoes is to shift your wardrobe to colors the biters are not attracted to.
Biologists from the University of Washington found that after the insects catch a whiff of carbon dioxide from human breath, they target anyone wearing the longer-wavelength colors of red, orange, black and cyan for their next blood meals.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications, Jeffrey Riffell says that while the insects are attracted to human breath, sweat and skin temperature, they don’t even bat an eye at those wearing green, purple, blue and white.



Manatee Feeding

Emergency measures to provide lettuce to starving manatees in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon appear to be curbing the record number of deaths that have occurred among the sea cows during the last year.
Such unprecedented human intervention follows more than 1,100 of the manatees dying of starvation due to their usual seagrass diet being depleted because of water pollution caused by agricultural activities.
The manatees initially did not eat the lettuce thrown on the surface for them because they were used to looking down as they grazed on the seagrass.
However, wildlife authorities said the mammals eventually changed their eating habits after they understood the lettuce was good food.



Nuclear War

The spike in radiation levels recorded around Ukraine’s crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant in late February was due to invading Russian military vehicles stirring up radioactive dust, Ukraine authorities said.
The site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster was overrun and captured by Russian forces on Feb. 24, causing radiation dose rates to soar from only 3 microsieverts per hour at one sensor in the days before the invasion to 65.5 microsieverts in the hours afterward.
Ukraine’s nuclear regulators say the buildings containing the wrecked reactor are intact and unaffected.



Rain 'Bomb'

More than three feet of rainfall in parts of eastern Australia over a six-day period unleashed catastrophic flooding that forced tens of thousands from their homes.
At least 13 people died in the aftermath of what was called a “rain bomb” in parts of New South Wales and Queensland.
The New South Wales city of Lismore recorded its worst flooding in history. One of the more distressing images on Australian TV showed nearly half of the 300-cow herd of a Lismore farmer being swept away in surging flood waters, some eventually washing up on coastal beaches.



Atlas of Suffering

The just-released U.N. climate report gives the most dire predictions to date on the future impacts to the planet by global heating if carbon emissions are not immediately curbed.
“The future looks dark if we do not take action,” said Rachel Bezner Kerr, a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “No region will be spared.”
The report warns of simultaneous crop failures in the world’s breadbaskets and massive livestock deaths from the mounting heat waves by 2050.
The panel said in a statement that the pace of increasing deadly heat, wildfires, floods and other weather disasters is unfolding far more quickly than what was predicted only five years ago.


• Extreme Temperatures: -82°F Vostok, Antarctica; 111°F Leonora, W. Australia

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February 28, 2022 (for the week ending Feb 25)



Earthquakes

• A magnitude 5.4 quake cracked buildings at the top of New Zealand’s South Island.
• Earth movements were also felt in New Zealand’s Canterbury region [magnitude 4.4], Guam [5.0] and England’s West Midlands [3.2].



Tropical Cyclones

• Cyclone Emnati spared Madagascar significant damage as the fourth such storm to strike the Indian Ocean island within a month. Cyclone Batsirai killed at least 124 people and left thousands homeless there when it hit on Feb. 5.



Eruptions

• Sicily’s Mount Etna produced another in a series of eruptions that was accompanied by huge, colorful fountains of lava.
  A nearby airport was temporarily closed due to airborne volcanic debris.
• Guatemala’s Volcán de Fuego rumbled violently as it erupted as many as six times an hour, with lava shooting up more than 300 feet into the sky.
  Nearby residents said their roofs and windows were soundly shaken by the eruptions.



Water Cycle Surge

New research suggests that the movement of water between the clouds, land and ocean due to climate change has intensified at twice the rate earlier predicted.
Writing in the journal Nature, scientists say that rising global temperatures have been making this process more extreme, with water moving away from dry regions toward wetter ones.
This is driving more severe droughts in some areas while amplifying heavy rainfall and the resulting flood disasters in others.
The study found that between two and four times more fresh water has shifted since 1970 than what climate models had projected.
“Changes to the water cycle can have a critical impact on infrastructure, agriculture and biodiversity,” says lead author Taimoor Sohail.



A Fiery Future

The likelihood of uncontrollable wildfires is predicted to increase globally by the end of this decade, and the U.N. warns that governments are not prepared to cope with the health and economic consequences.
A new United Nations Environment Program report warns that global heating is bringing more drought and higher temperatures, making it easy for fires to be sparked and spread in areas that had rarely or never burned before.
It says that even with deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, the risk of extreme wildfires will rise 14% by 2030 and 30% by 2050.
As seen in recent years from California to Argentina and parts of Europe, such fires are burning longer and hotter, making them difficult or impossible to control.



Dual 'Harvest'

A new solar power technique being launched in Kenya shows how the sun’s energy can be harvested twice by placing solar panels above rows of crops.
Known as agrivoltaics, the arrangement generates electricity while providing the partial shade some types of crops need. It also helps the soil to retain moisture.
Cabbages grown under the well-placed solar panels were a third larger and appeared healthier than those in control plots with the same amount of fertilizer and water.
The agrivoltaics configuration also allows the panels to collect rainwater to be stored for later use.



Historic Rise

An international team of researchers has determined that the modern trend of sea level rise began globally as early as 1863, when the Industrial Age began to produce the first surge in greenhouse gas emissions.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the scientists say they examined tide records from 36 different regions around the world to find when and where the seas began to rise.
They found it first started in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States between 1872 and 1894, and later in Canada and Europe.
Sea level rise has mainly been driven by the thermal expansion of the oceans as the world warmed, as well as runoff from melting glaciers and ice sheets.


• Extreme Temperatures: -64°F Vostok, Antarctica; 112°F Matam, Senegal

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February 21, 2022 (for the week ending Feb 18)



Earthquakes

• A strong [magnitude 6.2] quake in southwestern Guatemala uprooted trees and triggered landslides that blocked roads.
• Earth movements were also felt in far northern India [magnitude 4.1], the Armenia-Georgia border region [5.3], Portugal’s Madeira archipelago [4.8], islands of the northeastern Caribbean [5.0] and greater Los Angeles [3.5].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Dumako damaged homes and forced thousands to evacuate in northern Madagascar.
• High winds and downpours from the remnants ofCyclone Dovi downed trees, knocked out power and triggered flooding on New Zealand’s North Island.



A Foot Higher

Sea level rise is accelerating along the U.S. coast and is expected to bring an additional hike of up to 12 inches by 2050, according to a new NOAA study.
That will double the amount of sea level rise that has already occurred over the past century.
Such a rise would threaten cities such as Miami, Boston and New York, where flooding is already occurring during the highest astronomical and storm-surge tides.
While the amount of rise will vary from location to location, the new data is a blinking “code red” for the deepening climate emergency, said Gina McCarthy, NOAA’s National Climate Advisor.



Antarctic Greening

Scientists have documented what they call a “striking” expansion of Antarctica’s two native flowering plants, driven mostly by a rapidly warming climate.
Writing in the journal Current Biology, scientists document how Antarctic hair grass and Antarctic pearlwort have expanded on Signy Island, off the Antarctic Peninsula, as the average summer air temperature increased by almost 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit since 1960.
They note that this spread will alter the local ecology, including changes in soil chemistry, the bacteria and fungi content in the soil and how organic material decomposes.



Bird Crash

Hundreds of yellow-headed blackbirds were filmed plummeting to the ground in the northern Mexican city of Cuauhtámoc, with some dying in impact. Others were able to recover from the crash and fly off.
After viewing terrifying security camera video of the incident, some blamed the tragedy on pollution or even new 5G mobile signals.
But experts later said the flock was driven into houses and adjacent pavement by a predatory bird that made them swirl tightly and dive bomb to the surface.



Pharma Pollution

Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) that are being flushed into the world’s rivers in sewage are now a “global threat to environmental and human health.”
Scientists at the University of York say they tested water from more than 1,000 sites in more than 100 countries and found many of them polluted with such APIs as epilepsy and diabetes drugs and painkillers.
The report also warns that the increase in antibiotics found in rivers could also lead to the more “superbugs.”
Hot spots were in Pakistan, Bolivia, Kenya and Ethiopia. But Madrid, Dallas and Glasgow, Scotland, were in the top 20% of contaminated cities.



Arctic Refreeze

Bitter cold around the North Pole so far this year has caused Arctic sea ice to expand to its greatest coverage since 2009.
Despite the rapid expansion during January to 5.20 million square miles, it was still the sixth-smallest January extent in 43 years of satellite observations.
Experts believe it will be only a temporary recovery from the long-term shrinking trend caused by the Arctic warming at up to three times the global average.
This is in contrast to the near record-low January sea ice coverage observed around Antarctica.
NOAA climate scientists say that overall, the planet experienced the seventh-warmest January since reliable records began in 1880.


• Extreme Temperatures: -59°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 111°F Jerramungup, W. Australia

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February 14, 2022 (for the week ending Feb 11)



Earthquakes

• A strong [magnitude 5.7] temblor centered on the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border was felt widely across South Asia, including New Delhi.
• Earth movements were also felt in other parts of northern India [magnitude 4.1], the coast of northern Queensland [3.9] and south-central Alaska [5.2].



Tropical Cyclones

• Category-3 Cyclone Batsirai killed at least 92 people in southeastern Madagascar just weeks after Cyclone Ana ravaged the island.
• Tropical Storm Dovi formed over Vanuatu, then brushed New Caledonia.
• Minimal Tropical Storm Cliff formed briefly in the central Indian Ocean.



Volcanoes

• A blast at Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau (child of Krakatau) sent thick ash soaring into the sky between Java and Sumatra. The volcano has shown signs of increased unrest since mid- January.
• The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Nyiragongo volcano spewed toxic ash near the city of Goma more than eight months after a powerful eruption killed 32 people with burns and asphyxiation.



COVID Weather

A new study finds that when temperatures outside are the most pleasant, fewer new infections of COVID-19 are likely to occur.
Writing in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, University of Florida and University of Maryland researchers conclude that areas with both cold winters and hot summers are likely to experience two COVID case peaks each year.
“Both extremes of ambient temperatures are associated with human activity shifting indoors, promoting exposure to recirculated air,” the paper says.
It points to a number of COVID-19 hot spots in the United States and overseas as examples of seasonality and the rates of infection.



Bug Healing

Chimpanzees have for the first time been observed treating wounds with a balm of crushed insects.
Writing in the journal Current Biology, scientists say they saw the behavior among chimps in the West African nation of Gabon.
They said the apes not only treated their own wounds, but also those of others around them.
One chimp named Suzee was seen inspecting a foot wound of her adolescent son before catching an insect out of the air, putting it in her mouth to squeeze it and then applying it on the wound.
She later extracted the insect from the wound and applied it two more times. Other chimpanzees were also seen treating the wounds of others in the same manner.
Biologist Simone Pika says the insects could contain unknown anti-inflammatory and soothing properties.



Croc Freedom

An Indonesian crocodile trapped with a tire around its neck for five years has finally been freed by rescuers in a Central Sulawesi river.
Conservation workers had tried since 2016 to capture the reptile and free it from the rubber necklace, which was believed to have been deliberately placed to trap the croc as a pet.
But a local bird-seller named Tili eventually used chicken as bait and ropes to catch it. Dozens of nearby residents then pitched in to drag the animal to shore and cut the tire from its neck.
A local conservation agency said Tili will be given a prize for his daring effort to free the croc from its misery.



Subtropical Chills

Warmer Arctic winters due to climate change are triggering freak weather patterns that now chill areas as far south as subtropical parts of Florida and East Asia, a new study reveals.
An international team of researchers found that the new Arctic blasts are damaging the agricultural production of cereals, fruits, root vegetables and legumes in areas unaccustomed to such cold in winter.
“This study highlights how complex the effects of climate change are,” said study co-author Gabriela Schaepman-Strub. “We have now discovered that this (Arctic) warming affects ecosystems thousands of kilometers away.”


• Extreme Temperatures: -57°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 114°F Bamako, Mali

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February 07, 2022 (for the week ending Feb 04)



Earthquakes

• People from Dallas to Kansas City were rocked by a moderate [magnitude 4.5] temblor in north-central Oklahoma.
• Earth movements were also felt across Indonesia’s Banda Sea to far northern Australia [magnitude 5.9], and in South Asia’s Hindu Kush region [4.5], northeastern Egypt [4.5], Cyprus [5.3], Trinidad and Tobago [5.9], Southern California [4.1] and Hawaii’s Big Island [4.0].



Tropical Cyclones

• Category-4 Cyclone Batsirai lashed the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and Réunion while taking aim on Madagascar and the African mainland late in the week.



New Ocean Normal

A study of the past 150 years of ocean observations reveals that the rising temperatures of the world’s seas, including extreme oceanic heat waves, “passed the point of no return” in 2014.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium-sponsored study was published in the journal PLOS Climate and warns that the increasing warmth is devastating the ecosystem.
It documents how extreme sea-surface temperatures occurred just 2% of the time a century ago, but have been happening at least 50% of the time since 2014.
Some hot spots experienced extreme temperatures 90% of the time, ravaging wildlife populations.



Record Flash

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed that a single lightning flash in April 2020 across the southern United States is the new world record-holder.
That “megaflash” on April 29 stretched 477 miles over Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, beating the old record set in 2018 in Brazil.
Both were observed with new satellite sensors that are able to more accurately measure the duration and length of lightning.
WMO experts say even greater lightning extremes are likely to be discovered in the future.
The U.N. agency warns that the record flashes were not isolated events, and occur during active and large-scale thunderstorms, making them more dangerous.



Costly Floods

Climate change will increase the financial costs of flooding across the United States by more than 25% by 2050, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change.
Researchers from England’s University of Bristol used advanced modeling to determine that the annual cost of flood damage will increase from the current $32 billion to $40.6 billion in less than 30 years.
“Climate change combined with shifting populations present a double whammy of flood risk danger, and the financial implications are staggering,” said lead author Oliver Wing.



Orca Prey

Killer whales, also known as orcas, have for the first time been observed killing and eating the much bigger blue whales — the largest animals ever known to exist.
Writing in the journal Marine Mammal Science , scientists documented three separate attacks off the coast of western Australia between 2019 and 2021.
Female-led pods of a dozen or more orcas were seen relentlessly pounding adult blue whales until eventually beginning to feed on them, dining first on their nutritious tongues.
This also could be a return to a normal ecosystem behavior as blue whales recover from centuries of whaling.



Heat and Humidity

A new study finds that the combination of higher heat and humidity is responsible for the more frequent outbreaks of hazardous weather extremes.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers say that deadly floods, storms and rainfall events are related to how much moisture is in the atmosphere.
Using a specialized scale called the equivalent potential temperature, or theta-e, they measured the amount of moisture “energy” in the atmosphere.
Because the warming air now holds more moisture, the resulting stronger energy causes more powerful weather phenomena.
This is creating more dangerous health and well-being impacts on humans and other living things.


• Extreme Temperatures: -57°F Verkhoyansk, Siberia; 114°F Learmonth, W. Australia

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January 31, 2022 (for the week ending Jan 28)



Earthquakes

• Haiti was rocked by a magnitude 5.3 temblor that killed two people and sent residents rushing into the streets.
• A strong [magnitude 6.3] jolt in southern Japan’s Kyushu island left 13 people injured.
• Earth movements were also felt in the far southern Philippines [magnitude 5.4], Maui [4.7], southwestern Australia [4.7], southern Zimbabwe [3.2], northwestern Iran [4.4], northern Israel [4.1] and northwestern Spain [3.4].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Storm Ana killed 34 people as it raked Madagascar before striking southeastern Africa.
  Four others died in flash flooding and mudslides as far inland as Malawi.



Record Blast

The explosive force of the massive volcanic blast off Tonga earlier this month appears to have far exceeded that of the biggest nuclear detonation ever conducted.
The global network of 53 seismic, underwater acoustic and surface infrasound detectors used by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty Organization measured the low-frequency boom, which was heard as far away as Alaska, 6,200 miles to the north.
Those measurements show it was more powerful than the Soviet Union’s 1961 Tsar Bomba.



A Toxic World

A new study suggests chemical pollution has become so pervasive that it has pushed Earth outside the relatively stable environment of the past 10,000 years.
Beyond the widespread use of plastics, researchers say they are also highly concerned about 350,000 synthetic chemicals, including pesticides, industrial compounds and antibiotics.
“There has been a fifty-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950 and this is projected to triple again by 2050,” said research team member Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez of Sweden’s Stockholm Resilience Center.
“Shifting to a circular economy is really important. That means changing materials and products so they can be reused, not wasted,” Villarrubia-Gómez added.



Pollination Stress

Bees, butterflies and other pollinators exposed to common air pollution are significantly impaired in their ability to sniff out the plants that depend upon them, according to new field research.
British scientists say the pollution, combined with land use changes, are also responsible for an up to 70% drop in the number of pollinating insects.
Writing in the journal Environmental Pollution, the team said they exposed a test field to levels of pollution commonly found near highways and observed up to 90% fewer flower visits by the pollinators.
They believe the pollution changes the scents of flowers, making them harder to find.



Massive Melt

Satellite images reveal that a massive iceberg that broke off from Antarctica in 2017 and slowly drifted toward the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia last year has released an astonishing 152 billon tons of fresh water into the South Atlantic as it disintegrated.
“This is a huge amount of melt water, and the next thing we want to learn is whether it had a positive or negative impact on the ecosystem around South Georgia,” said Anne Braakmann-Folgmann, a researcher at the University of Leeds.



Saved by the Light

New research finds that placing LED lights on fishing nets brings a 95% reduction in the number of sharks, skates and rays accidentally snagged, and a 48% drop in the number of unwanted fin-fish accidentally caught.
And writing in Current Biology, researchers say the lights do not bring a drop in the number of fish the fishing crews try to catch.
Gill nets are one of the most commonly used types of fishing gear in the world, but they often catch creatures not targeted by the fishers.
This kills untold numbers of unwanted creatures, which are dumped back into the sea.


• Extreme Temperatures: -66°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 115°F Robertson, S. Africa

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January 24, 2022 (for the week ending Jan 21)



Earthquakes

• Dozens of people were killed in western Afghanistan as two quakes [magnitude 5.3] wrecked hundreds of homes.
• More than a thousand homes were damaged when a magnitude 6.6 temblor rocked western Java.
• Earth movements were also felt in South Asia’s Hindu Kush region [magnitude 5.1], the Armenia-Azeri border area [4.4], the northern Persian Gulf [4.8], northern Greece [5.5], northeastern South Africa [3.3], islands of the eastern Caribbean [4.0] and southeastern Alaska [4.6].



Tropical Cyclones

• Remnants of Cyclone Tiffany battered parts of far northern and north-western Australia with flash flooding and strong winds.



Volcanic Blast

The most powerful volcanic blast anywhere on the planet for more than 30 years was heard thousands of miles away and created a humanitarian disaster in nearby Tonga.
Tsunami from the Hunga Tonga Volcano blast rushed across the Pacific as barometers worldwide recorded the force of the explosion.
The ocean surges also caused “significant damage” in Tonga as falling ash poisoned the landscape, including the rainwater supplies that most Tongans collect on their roofs.
It is feared that ash-filled waters offshore will deprive fish of food and spawning beds, threatening the livelihoods of fishermen.



Air Hazards

Smog and smoke clouds that now frequently plague California and other parts of the West are making breathing more dangerous for residents of the region, according to a new study.
Researcher Deepti Singh of Washington State University, Vancouver and colleagues found that exposure to ground-level ozone and the fine-particle pollution from more frequent wildfires has increased by 25 million “person days” from 2001 to 2020.
Short-term effects from the pollution include breathing difficulties and worsening heart and lung diseases, such as asthma. Exposure to both types of pollution at the same time compounds the health risks, and long-term exposure can have even far more serious consequences.
The study found that in August 2020, 86% of the western U.S. was blanketed by extreme amounts of both.



Methane Alarm

The global level of the potent greenhouse gas methane has reached a record high, growing at twice the rate of the long-term average in what scientists are calling a “fire alarm moment” for curbing climate change.
NOAA says methane concentrations reached a record 1,900 parts per billion in September, the highest in almost four decades of regular monitoring. The gas is 80 times more potent in contributing to global heating than carbon dioxide.
While most of the rise has occurred from the gas being released through changes in wetlands and by agriculture in the tropics, leaks from oil and gas operations are also major contributors.
More than 100 countries pledged to cut their methane emissions at last year’s COP26 climate summit.



Summer Scorch

The height of southern summer has brought some of the hottest weather on record to northern Argentina and parts of western Australia.
The Argentine heat wave caused the power grid around Buenos Aires to collapse, leaving 700,000 without electricity as temperatures in the north of the country approached the hottest ever recorded in South America.
A temperature of 123 degrees Fahrenheit in Pilbara, Western Australia, tied for the hottest ever recorded in Australia, and the entire Southern Hemisphere, since 1960.



History's Hottest

Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service says the past seven years have been the hottest on record, with 2021 coming in as the world’s fifth-hottest year.
A new report says the trend is obvious “by a clear margin” and that the average global temperature last year was 1.1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius above 1850-1900 levels.
Another report, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, says that Earth’s oceans are warming eight times faster than prior to the late 1980s.
Researchers say the top 6,600 feet of the oceans were the hottest on record during 2021 despite the expanding La Niña cooling across the tropical Pacific.
Warmer oceans are helping to supercharge storms and are contributing to more devastating floods worldwide.


• Extreme Temperatures: -61°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 123°F Oodnadatta, S. Australia

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January 17, 2022 (for the week ending Jan 14)



Earthquakes

• A [magnitude 6.6] temblor in China’s Qinghai province caused scattered damage.
• Earth movements were also felt from northern Greece to Albania [magnitude 5.5], Cyprus and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean [6.6], Indonesia’s North Maluku province [5.6], central New Zealand [5.8] and interior Southern California [3.9].



Tropical Cyclones

• Tropical Cyclone Cody, left one person dead and caused significant damage in Fiji as it triggered widespread flooding while forming just to the west of the island nation.
  Remnants of Cody were approaching northern New Zealand late in the week.
• Cyclone Tiffany was the second cyclone to douse Australia’s Queensland state in less than two weeks.
  The storm passed over remote areas of the Cape York Peninsula and Gulf of Carpentaria before bringing much-needed rain to parts of the drought-plagued Northern Territory.



Galapagos Lava

Ecuador's Wolf Volcano, the tallest in the Galapagos archipelago, spewed lava across parts of Isabela Island, home to only 211 surviving pink iguanas.
But officials said the eruption appeared not to have harmed wildlife and occurred far from any human settlements.
The mountain last erupted in 2015 after remaining quiet for 33 years.



Polar Flashes

Scientists say they are alarmed at the sudden and rapid increase in lightning strikes across the high Arctic during the past few years.
Once very rare, the 7,278 lightning bolts north of 80 degrees latitude during 2021 were nearly double the number in the previous nine years combined.
The trend was highlighted by the Finnish scientific instrument manufacturer Vaisala, which issues an annual report on global lightning.
The more frequent lightning bolts are being caused by disappearing sea ice, which means more water is able to evaporate, and the greater atmospheric instability caused by Arctic warming that is occurring at four times the global average.



Methane Alarm

The global level of the potent greenhouse gas methane has reached a record high, growing at twice the rate of the long-term average in what scientists are calling a “fire alarm moment” for curbing climate change.
NOAA says methane concentrations reached a record 1,900 parts per billion in September, the highest in almost four decades of regular monitoring. The gas is 80 times more potent in contributing to global heating than carbon dioxide.
While most of the rise has occurred from the gas being released through changes in wetlands and by agriculture in the tropics, leaks from oil and gas operations are also major contributors.
More than 100 countries pledged to cut their methane emissions at last year’s COP26 climate summit.



Summer Scorch

The height of southern summer has brought some of the hottest weather on record to northern Argentina and parts of western Australia.
The Argentine heat wave caused the power grid around Buenos Aires to collapse, leaving 700,000 without electricity as temperatures in the north of the country approached the hottest ever recorded in South America.
A temperature of 123 degrees Fahrenheit in Pilbara, Western Australia, tied for the hottest ever recorded in Australia, and the entire Southern Hemisphere, since 1960.



History's Hottest

Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service says the past seven years have been the hottest on record, with 2021 coming in as the world’s fifth-hottest year.
A new report says the trend is obvious “by a clear margin” and that the average global temperature last year was 1.1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius above 1850-1900 levels.
Another report, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, says that Earth’s oceans are warming eight times faster than prior to the late 1980s.
Researchers say the top 6,600 feet of the oceans were the hottest on record during 2021 despite the expanding La Niña cooling across the tropical Pacific.
Warmer oceans are helping to supercharge storms and are contributing to more devastating floods worldwide.


• Extreme Temperatures: -63°F Bolshoye Toko, Siberia; 123°F Onslow, W. australia

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January 10, 2022 (for the week ending Jan 07)



Earthquakes

• At least 22 people were injured when a sharp [magnitude 5.5] quake rocked the border region of China’s Yunnan and Sichuan provinces.
• Earth movements were also felt in Taiwan [magnitude 6.2], Hawaii’s Big Island [4.3], South Asia’s Hindu Kush region [5.2], southern Turkey [5.1], southwestern Spain [4.4], South Carolina [2.5], West Texas [4.5] and greater Los Angeles [3.5].



Tropical Cyclones

• Minimal Tropical Storm Seth formed near the Great Barrier Reef, then churned the open waters of the Coral Sea, well off Australia’s Queensland state.



Congo Rumblings

Officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo are warning residents around Goma that the Nyiragongo volcano is still dangerous many months after an eruption and accompanying tremors killed 32 people and destroyed hundreds of homes.
Lava once again filled the volcano’s crater during September, leaving the volcano in an ongoing state of unrest.
The Goma Volcano Observatory warns that toxic gases, which killed several of the victims in May, will continue to be a threat. Frequent ash falls are also poisoning the landscape.
Residents are urged to continue washing their hands and vegetables, and not to use any rainwater that may be contaminated with the ash.



Gravity Effect

A new study documents how all living things on the planet appear to be impacted by the effects of gravity wielded on the planet by the sun and moon.
Writing in the Journal of Experimental Botany, scientists say that beyond the obvious cycles of the tides and their influence on marine life, the rhythms of extraterrestrial gravity “are a perceptible and potent force” in the behavior of all living organisms.
They also point to studies that found how gravity cycles affect seed germination.
Humans kept in the dark tend to establish daily sleep and eating cycles lasting 24.4 to 24.8 hours, in sync with lunar cycles.



Tsunami Alert

New research says the movement of ocean water within a tsunami generates its own magnetic field ahead of the big changes in sea level, which could possibly lead to better warnings of the hazardous phenomena.
Using magnetic and sea level change data from tsunamis that hit Samoa in 2009 and Chile in 2010, the study authors found that the tsunami-generated magnetic fields are so clearly evident that even a wave height of only a few centimeters can be detected.
Writing in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, the researchers say this could lead to more accurate predictions of when a tsunami arrives on land and how large it might be.



Avian Flu

A severe outbreak of avian influenza among some migratory birds in Israel has forced officials there to order the culling of tens of thousands of turkeys and a half-million egg-laying chickens in farms across the country.
More than 5,000 migrating cranes have already died from the virus at the Hula Nature Reserve in what is being called “the worst blow to wildlife” in Israel’s history.
While no humans have so far been infected, those in close contact with infected birds have been treated with antiviral medications.
NB: Wikipedia entry to Israel's Hula Valley.



Marine Heat Wave

The waters off Sydney are approaching their hottest on record for January, with some swimmers and surfers saying the water already feels more like February and March (late in the southern summer) than early January.
Satellite images indicate that the water is almost 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for the month.
University of New South Wales oceanographer Moninya Roughan says the abnormal heat is caused by a combination of overall global heating of the ocean, the current La Niña pushing warmer waters from the tropics southward and some unusual atmospheric conditions.
“Marine heat waves are having severe consequences on ecosystems and they can kill habitats,” said Roughan.


• Extreme Temperatures: -70°F Oimyakon, Siberia; 116°F Rivadavia, Salta, Argentina

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January 03, 2022 (year 2021 in review)



Earthquakes

• Haiti suffered another devastating temblor on Aug. 14 when an intense [magnitude 7.2] quake killed 2,248 people and injured nearly 13,000 others.
• A [magnitude 7.1] aftershock of Japan’s devastating 2011 temblor injured more than 150 people and caused widespread damage around the meltdown-plagued Fukushima nuclear power plant on Feb. 13.
• At least 90 people perished when a magnitude 6.5 quake struck Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island on Jan. 15.



Tropical Cyclones

The Atlantic hurricane season was the third-most active on record, with 21 named storms.
• At least 14 people were killed from Louisiana to the Northeast as Hurricane Ida inflicted some of the most costly damage of any natural disaster in U.S. history from late August through early September.
• Developing Cyclone Seroja killed at least 160 people as it triggered catastrophic flooding in East Timor and adjacent provinces of Indonesia.
• Cyclone Gulab-Shaheen killed at least 36 people as it raked southeastern India to Oman in late September.
• Cyclone Tauktae left more than 100 dead in mid-May as the worst cyclone to strike western India in 30 years.
• Unprecedented Cyclone Eloise killed at least 15 people across five African countries in late January.



Volcanoes

• Months of swift lava flows and piles of deep ash from La Palma’s Cumbre Vieja volcano destroyed nearly 2,750 homes and forced thousands to evacuate in the Canary Islands.
• Fast-flowing lava and tremors from Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least 32 people around Goma in late May.
• Massive amounts of ash from La Soufrière volcano brought chaos to St. Vincent during April. Ash covering most of the island knocked out power and water supplies, creating a humanitarian crisis.



Massive Melt

A midsummer heat wave across parts of the North 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.



Hottest Month

July was the world’s hottest month globally on record, which NOAA said was part of a “disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe.”
Death Valley, California, had the planet’s hottest temperature on record — 130 degrees Fahrenheit on July 9.



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.
Analysis of nearly 50,000 marine species between 1955 and 2015 found that many were moving away from the equator, “on a global scale.”



Human Dominance

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 386,000 square miles, with farmland and grazing pastures increasing by about the same amount.



Current Collapse

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which includes the Gulf Stream, was weaker in 2021 than at any other time in the past 1,000 years, causing alarm among scientists.
The complex of warm and cold currents began to destabilize in the 20th century and could cause even further weather chaos should it collapse.



Records Smoke

Huge clouds of smoke from wildfires that again blackened parts of Siberia this year blew northward 1,800 miles, reaching the North Pole for the first time in recorded history.
Forestry officials say more than 35 million acres burned over the summer, making it the second-worst fire season this century.
Some of the uncontrolled blazes raged on top of permafrost in Russia’s largest and typically coldest region.



Earth's Vital Signs

An international coalition of more than 14,000 scientists 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.


• Extreme Temperatures: -110°F Vostok, Antarctica; 130°F Death Valley, California

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