Earthquakes

RSOE EDIS

04.05.2012 23:50:34	4.4	Middle-East	Iran		Darreh Kavoli				EMSC
04.05.2012 23:50:55	2.8	Europe	France		Sainte-Anne				EMSC
04.05.2012 23:51:16	3.1	Europe	Greece		Kamaria				EMSC
04.05.2012 22:30:37	2.3	North America	United States	Hawaii	‘Ainapö				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 22:55:35	4.4	Asia	India	State of Assam	Nahorkatiya				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 23:51:37	4.4	Asia	India		Nahorkatiya				EMSC
04.05.2012 22:50:31	2.5	Asia	Turkey		Alakoy				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:45:33	2.8	Europe	Greece		Ayios Miron				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:45:55	2.1	Europe	Poland		Gorzyce				EMSC
04.05.2012 22:00:39	4.2	Middle America	Guatemala	Departamento de Suchitepequez	San Francisco				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 22:50:52	4.2	Middle-America	Guatemala		San Francisco				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:46:17	2.5	Asia	Turkey		Akcaoren				EMSC
04.05.2012 20:55:53	2.2	North America	United States	Nevada	Schurz				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 22:51:14	2.0	Asia	Turkey		Yagmurlar				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:46:39	2.5	Asia	Turkey		Yagmurlar				EMSC
04.05.2012 20:15:44	2.4	North America	United States	California	Lakehead				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 20:16:06	2.8	Middle America	Mexico	Estado de Baja California	El Centinela				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 20:45:33	2.3	Europe	Italy		Anacapri				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:47:00	4.8	Pacific Ocean – East	Tonga		Haatua				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:20:43	4.9	Pacific Ocean	Tonga		Haatua				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 21:47:19	2.4	Asia	Turkey		Rahimler				EMSC
04.05.2012 19:55:56	3.0	North America	United States	Alaska	Ugashik				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 21:49:09	3.0	North America	United States	Alaska	Ugashik				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 20:45:54	2.4	Europe	Greece		Agia Marina				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:47:39	2.3	Asia	Turkey		Inlice				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:47:59	2.4	Asia	Turkey		Adatepe Koyu				EMSC
04.05.2012 20:20:37	3.8	Caribbean	U.S. Virgin Islands		Hams Bay				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 19:45:31	2.8	Europe	Greece		Dhariza				EMSC
04.05.2012 19:45:50	2.5	Asia	Turkey		Kahya				EMSC
04.05.2012 18:43:14	5.0	Indonesian archipelago	Indonesia		Simatorkis				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 18:40:35	5.1	Indonesian Archipelago	Indonesia		Simatorkis				EMSC
04.05.2012 18:40:55	3.7	Middle-East	Iran		Nastanj				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:48:22	2.3	Asia	Turkey		Yagmurlar				EMSC
04.05.2012 18:41:16	2.2	Asia	Turkey		Yagmurlar				EMSC
04.05.2012 18:41:37	2.3	Asia	Turkey		Yagmurlar				EMSC
04.05.2012 18:41:57	2.7	Asia	Turkey		Taslik				EMSC
04.05.2012 18:42:20	2.6	Asia	Turkey		Baskonak				EMSC
04.05.2012 17:40:33	3.0	Asia	Turkey		Rahimler				EMSC
04.05.2012 17:40:54	3.0	Asia	Turkey		Rahimler				EMSC
04.05.2012 17:41:14	2.2	Asia	Turkey		Degirmendere				EMSC
04.05.2012 17:41:34	2.0	Asia	Turkey		Saphane				EMSC
04.05.2012 17:41:54	2.5	Asia	Turkey		Degirmendere				EMSC
04.05.2012 17:42:16	2.5	Asia	Turkey		Ismetpasa				EMSC
04.05.2012 16:35:34	2.4	Asia	Turkey		Kamis				EMSC
04.05.2012 15:50:46	2.2	North America	United States	California	Lonoak				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 18:42:40	2.1	Europe	Greece		Galaniana				EMSC
04.05.2012 15:35:29	3.2	Europe	Serbia		Gare				EMSC
04.05.2012 15:30:43	2.8	North America	United States	Alaska	McKinley Park				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 15:35:51	2.7	Asia	Turkey		Ismetpasa				EMSC
04.05.2012 15:36:17	2.9	Asia	Turkey		Rahimler				EMSC
04.05.2012 15:36:37	2.3	Asia	Turkey		Ismetpasa				EMSC
04.05.2012 15:36:59	2.5	Asia	Turkey		Ulaslar				EMSC
04.05.2012 14:00:31	2.7	North America	United States	California	Black Oaks				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 14:35:32	3.0	Asia	Turkey		Erbagi				EMSC
04.05.2012 15:37:19	4.7	North-America	Canada		Port Alice				EMSC
04.05.2012 17:01:00	4.7	North America	Canada	British Columbia	Port Hardy				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 13:35:28	3.1	Asia	Turkey		Sogut				EMSC
04.05.2012 13:35:48	2.9	Europe	Romania		Ungureni				EMSC
04.05.2012 13:36:11	3.1	Asia	Turkey		Saphane				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:10:36	2.0	North America	United States	California	Mountain Center				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 12:30:28	3.1	Europe	Macedonia		Vesala				EMSC
04.05.2012 13:36:32	2.2	Asia	Turkey		Karacaviran				EMSC
04.05.2012 12:20:47	2.0	North America	United States	Alaska	Shirleyville				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 12:45:56	2.9	Caribbean	Puerto Rico		Corcega				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 12:31:14	2.6	Europe	Greece		Anthoupolis				EMSC
04.05.2012 12:31:34	2.3	Asia	Turkey		Baskonak				EMSC
04.05.2012 12:31:56	2.0	Asia	Turkey		Rahimler				EMSC
04.05.2012 12:32:38	2.6	Europe	Greece		Sara Kato Lakka				EMSC
04.05.2012 11:30:34	2.7	Asia	Turkey		Baskonak				EMSC
04.05.2012 11:30:55	2.0	Asia	Turkey		Tuncbilek				EMSC
04.05.2012 11:31:16	2.5	Asia	Turkey		Ismetpasa				EMSC
04.05.2012 11:31:37	2.9	Asia	Turkey		Demirciler				EMSC
04.05.2012 11:32:21	3.5	Asia	Turkey		Hazine				EMSC
04.05.2012 10:30:56	4.9	Indonesian Archipelago	Indonesia		Trana				EMSC
04.05.2012 09:55:36	2.4	North America	United States	Hawaii	Mähukona				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 10:31:33	2.1	Asia	Turkey		Degirmendere				EMSC
04.05.2012 10:31:52	2.5	Asia	Turkey		Yenikoy				EMSC
04.05.2012 10:32:15	2.7	Asia	Turkey		Kesmetas				EMSC
04.05.2012 10:32:36	2.1	Europe	Italy		Ca d’Amici				EMSC
04.05.2012 19:20:46	2.4	North America	United States	Alaska	Happy Valley				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 10:45:36	4.0	Middle America	Mexico	Guerrero	Loma Romero				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 11:32:42	4.0	Middle-America	Mexico		Loma Romero				EMSC
04.05.2012 10:32:56	2.7	Asia	Turkey		Saphane				EMSC
04.05.2012 10:15:42	4.5	Indonesian archipelago	Papua New Guinea		Ora				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 10:33:16	4.5	Indonesian Archipelago	Papua New Guinea		Ora				EMSC
04.05.2012 21:40:34	2.4	Middle America	Mexico	Estado de Baja California	Canon de Guadalupe				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 19:46:52	2.2	North America	United States	Alaska	Iniskin				USGS-RSOE
04.05.2012 10:33:37	3.1	Europe	Cyprus		Katalynata ton Plakoton				EMSC

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Extreme Temperatures/ Weather

Gale Warning

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

POINT ST GEORGE TO POINT ARENA

POINT ARENA TO POINT CONCEPTION

EUREKA CA

LOS ANGELES/OXNARD CA

MEDFORD, OR

ANCHORAGE ALASKA

Red Flag Warning

FIRE WEATHER MESSAGE

EL PASO TX/SANTA TERESA NM

GRAND JUNCTION CO

DENVER CO

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Storms, Flooding

Severe Thunderstorm Warning

RAPID CITY SD

DES MOINES IA

PADUCAH KY

Severe Thunderstorm Watch

PADUCAH KY

NORMAN OK

ST LOUIS MO

High Wind Warning

SALT LAKE CITY UT

Flash Flood Warning

CHARLESTON WV

LOUISVILLE KY

OMAHA/VALLEY NEBRASKA

Flash Flood Watch

CHARLESTON WV

WILMINGTON OH

JACKSON KY

SAN JUAN PR

Flood Warning

QUAD CITIES IA IL

CLEVELAND OH

MILWAUKEE/SULLIVAN WI

SPRINGFIELD MO

KANSAS CITY/PLEASANT HILL MO

GAYLORD MI

SPOKANE, WA

BOISE ID

INDIANAPOLIS IN

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Radiation

Japan closes last reactor, ‘energy crisis looms’

Published on May 4, 2012 by RussiaToday

Japan is set to turn off its last working reactor this weekend, leaving one of the world’s largest industrial nations without a source of nuclear energy for the first time in almost 50 years. The government has bowed to public pressure following last year’s disaster at the Fukushima power plant after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. For more on the impact of the shut-down, RT talks to James Corbett, editor of The Corbett Report.

Japan shuts last of nuclear reactors

Published on May 5, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish

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Solar Activity

2MIN News May4: Supermoon, Quakes, Solar Activity

Published on May 4, 2012 by Suspicious0bservers

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=77828
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120503194213.htm
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/05/new-light-on-revolutions-that-w…
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-greenland-glaciers-insight-sea.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/lightning-planets.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/04/us-hsbcusa-probes-idUSBRE8420FX2012…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17855194
http://spaceweather.com/
http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/
http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/data.html
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/
http://umtof.umd.edu/pm/
http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/soho_movie_theater
http://www.ips.gov.au/HF_Systems/6/5
http://solarimg.org/artis/
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/cme-based/
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php
http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/SWMF_RealTime_browse.cgi
http://grb.sonoma.edu/
http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-torcon-index

Solar X-rays:Geomagnetic Field:

>

From n3kl.org

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Epidemics/Diseases

Washington state facing major whooping cough epidemic

1,132 confirmed cases reported year to date have already surpassed 2011 total

By Laura Myers

SEATTLE — Public health officials in Washington state have confirmed more than 1,100 cases of whooping cough so far this year in what is on track to become the worst epidemic of the disease to hit the state in seven decades.

No deaths have been reported from this year’s outbreak, but 20 infants have been hospitalized with the bacterial infection, which poses a special risk to young children, said Tim Church, a spokesman for the state Health Department.

Gov. Christine Gregoire made state emergency funds available on Thursday to help increase vaccinations against the disease and announced federal approval to redirect some funds to buy 27,000 more doses of vaccine for uninsured adults.

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, causes severe, uncontrollable coughing. Worldwide, it infects between 30 million and 50 million people a year and kills about 300,000 — mostly children in the developing world.

In the United States, most children are immunized against whooping cough with a vaccine that is given as a series of shots starting at the age of two months.

Outbreaks in the United States tend to run in cycles, but Church said the latest wave of cases in Washington state was running well above typical peak years in the past, when 500 to 600 cases might be reported for an entire year.

Read Full Article  Here

Idaho infant dies from whooping cough amid regional outbreak

(Reuters) – Whooping cough took the life of a 9-week-old girl from Idaho this week, the first death from an outbreak of the highly contagious respiratory disease that has hit Idaho, Washington state and Montana, health officials said on Friday.

Few details were available about the infant, who was treated for whooping cough at a hospital in Pocatello, Idaho, before being flown on Wednesday to a medical center in Salt Lake City, where she later died, hospital and state health officials said.

Washington state has seen 1,132 confirmed cases so far this year, up from 961 for all of 2011. Montana has also seen an alarming rise, with 99 cases so far this year, or about double the number recorded during the same period last year.

In Idaho, 31 cases have been reported since January. The state, where the per-capita occurrence has usually risen higher than the national average since 1987, recorded its last infant death from whooping cough in 2009.

The disease, also known as pertussis, causes severe coughing attacks and is especially dangerous for infants who are younger than a year old and have yet to complete the full cycle of vaccinations against the ailment.

Worldwide, it infects 30 million to 50 million people a year and kills about 300,000 – mostly children in the developing world.

The death in Idaho and the spike in whooping cough cases elsewhere have led health officials to renew a call for the vaccination of children, and boosters for adults who are in contact with babies and young children.

“When you have something as tragic as the death of an infant, it underscores the fact that there are really nasty, severe illnesses that vaccines can prevent,” said Emily Simnitt, spokeswoman with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

Idaho and Washington are among 20 states that grant so-called philosophical exemptions to vaccination.

In Ravalli County in western Montana, the number of school-age children who have gained exemptions on religious or medical grounds from vaccinations caused health officials there to request 115 students stay home for three weeks – a period slated to end May 13 – to avoid contracting whooping cough.

Historically, Idaho and other Western states have had lower immunization rates for children ages 19 to 35 months. But disease experts said there was no definitive link between those rates and outbreaks of preventable illnesses.

(Editing by Edith Honan and Peter Cooney)

Sen. Cantwell asking for CDC help in whooping cough epidemic

By KOMO Staff & news services

SEATTLE (AP) – The state Health Department and Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell are asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help battle the whooping cough epidemic in Washington.

Health Secretary Mary Selecky is asking the CDC to send a special team of investigators and epidemiologist.

Selecky briefed Cantwell about the situation Friday at a state lab in Shoreline.

Selecky declared on April 3 that pertussis was an epidemic in the state. More than 1,100 cases have been reported this year – 10 times the number at this time last year.

“It just got a hold of us and it’s staying here,” she said. “We’re at a tough point. Our folks are getting tired, and we need to look at this disease in a very different way so we’re asking the centers for Disease Control to send us some experts.”

Cantwell has asked the CDC to step in right away.

“We’re hoping that kind of expertise can come in, look at the data and information about what’s going on in Washington state and help us nip this more in the bud,” she said.

Gov. Chris Gregoire announced Thursday the state is putting $90,000 into a public awareness campaign and diverting some federal money to pay for 27,000 doses of vaccine.

Adults are urged to get the shot to prevent spreading the disease to infants.

The first wave of the CDC’s Epidemic Aid Team would be a three-person investigative unit.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Sen-Cantwell-asking-for-CDC-help-in-whooping-cough-epidemic-150243055.html?embed

Infectious disease researcher, 25, dies from rare bacteria in San Francisco

(Credit: iStockphoto)
(CBS/AP) SAN FRANCISCO – A researcher at an infectious diseases laboratory in San Francisco has died of a rare bacteria strain, California health officials said, raising fears the man’s friends and fellow researchers may too have been infected.

The 25-year-old man who worked at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, who has not been named, died over the weekend shortly after asking friends to take him to a hospital, the San Jose Mercury News reported Wednesday.

California Occupational Safety and Health Administration spokesman Peter Melton told the paper that the man had been handling a bacteria linked to bloodstream infections at the VA Hospital’s Northern California Institute for Research and Education.
Cal-OSHA was investigating the death and trying to determine if the lab followed safety protocol.
Harry Lampiris, chief of the VA Hospital’s infectious diseases division, said workers at the facility are expected to wear gloves, gowns and work behind a protective “safety cabinet,” or hood, while isolating the bacteria.

“His co-workers felt he was highly competent and that he was adequately supervised to do the level of work,” Lampiris said.
According to the Mercury News, a state laboratory confirmed the worker was infected with the rare Neisseria meningitidis bacterial strain he had been working with for months before his death.

The bacterial strain causes septicemia and meningitis, officials said. Septicemia is an inflammation of the bloodstream that causes bleeding into the skin and organs and is believed to be the cause of the man’s death. It can be spread by sneezing, coughing or kissing. Meningitis is a bacterial infection of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, that can result in brain damage and death without immediate treatment.

“He left the lab around 5 p.m.” Friday, said Lampiris said. “He had no symptoms at all.” The man reportedly told his girlfriend two hours later that he felt sick with a headache, fever and chills. By Saturday morning his symptoms worsened with a rash and he asked to be taken to the hospital, but fell unconscious in the car and had no pulse on arrival. He died later that morning.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Department of Public Health was trying to locate everyone who had close contact with the researcher during the time he was infected, said spokeswoman Eileen Shields.
Friends and people who worked with man, as well as about 60 health workers involved in his treatment, were being given antibiotics, Shields said.
The CDC is also helping state and local officials with their investigation.
Centers for Disease Control spokeswoman Alison Patti wrote in an email to the San Jose Mercury news, “We’re not certain how this death happened, but hopefully the investigation will turn up some answers to help prevent it from ever happening again.”

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Space

1 AU = ~150 million kilometers,1 LD = Lunar Distance = ~384,000 kilometers

Source: NASA-NEO

Our Growing, Shrinking Moon

We often think of the moon as a geologically dead fixture in our sky. That isn’t a bad thing; scientists have long looked at the moon as a perfectly preserved slice of our solar system’s history.

But new images returned from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest that our natural satellite isn’t dead at all. It’s actually pretty active, having both shrank and grown fairly recently in its history.

The first evidence of an active moon came in 2010 when LRO’s camera returned high-resolution pictures of landforms called lobate scarps. Previously found only in the equatorial regions in images from Apollo missions 15, 16 and 17, these lobe-shaped cliffs have now been found scattered across the lunar surface.

Less than 10 meters high and several kilometers long, lobate scarps form along thrust faults — inclined fractures where blocks of a body’s crust rise vertically. It’s likely they formed when the moon’s interior cooled and the rock contracted to force slices upward. These are common on the geologically active Earth, but finding them on the moon was a shock.

What’s more, lunar scarps are fairly young; many have sliced ancient impact craters. As the moon’s core has continued to cool in the relatively recent past, the crust has buckled under compression. It’s sort of like an apple. As the fruit dehydrates, the skin buckles and forms around the shrinking core.

Based on the sizes of the scarps, scientists estimate the distance between the center of the moon and its surface shrank about 300 feet in the process. It’s a very different moon than the dead one scientists have long imagined.

Now add features called graben to the picture. Graben are linear valleys typically much longer than they are wide, and finding these features on the moon was a total shock to mission scientists. They formed, like the lobate scarps, when the moon cooled. But instead of forming when the moon’s crust buckled, they formed when the crust was stretched, broken and dropped down between two bounding faults. In short, it’s growing.

Around the same time the moon was shrinking around its cooling core, forces in some places were acting to pull it apart. It’s like a game of tectonic tug-of-war being played on the supposedly inert lunar surface. Taken together, these discoveries paint a very different picture of our moon, and it all relates to the moon’s evolution, how it formed and how it lost its heat.

Most terrestrial planets in our solar system were so hot when they first formed that they completely melted. This put them in a general state of contraction — the inside stayed hot while the outer layer cooled.

The mix of scarps and graben found on the moon suggest that our satellite never completely melted in its earliest stages of formation. Instead, only the outer portion melted, covering the surface with an expansive layer of molten rock called a magma ocean. The balance of stresses acting on that early moon creates the right conditions for the somewhat contradictory surface features we see today.

These graben add to the evidence of recent geologic activity on the moon. Scientists think these features are only about 50 million years old, compared with the moon’s 4.5 billion-year life.

Our moon is shrinking in some places, growing in others, but worth further exploration everywhere.

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Articles of Interest

GILLETTE, Wyo. — An explosion at a coal mine northeast Wyoming was big enough to register on seismographs on the scale of a small earthquake.

Some people in Gillette reported feeling the ground shake from 16 miles away.

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded the blast at 11:11 a.m. Tuesday. The blast registered as large as a magnitude 4.5 earthquake but had the signature of a human-caused explosion.

The Gillette News-Record reports using explosives is a routine part of remove dirt and soil at the coal mines where the blast occurred southeast of Gillette.

The explosion happened in the area of Cloud Peak Energy’s Cordero Rojo mine.

Mine explosions that register with such force are rare. Sheriff’s officials said they had not heard of any emergency at the mines.

___

Information from: The Gillette (Wyo.) News Record, http://www.gillettenewsrecord.com

Lightning Signature Could Help Reveal the Solar System’s Origins

How Much Will Earth’s Seas Rise? Answers Lacking, Scientists Warn

Wynne Parry
LiveScience

© Andrew Kemp, Yale University
Sea levels aren’t expected to increase by the same amount everywhere.

With a significant portion of the world’s population living within close proximity to the oceans, often in large cities, rising sea levels bring the potential for devastating consequences.

But scientists are still unable to make predictions precise enough for people to plan how to handle the loss of land and threat to coastal communities expected over this century, two researchers point out in a commentary this week in the May 4 issue of the journal Science.

“We know sea level is going to rise, but how much, and how fast, and where, we really still don’t know,” co-author Josh Willis, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told LiveScience.

The complex seas

It turns out the ocean isn’t like water in a bathtub; it doesn’t rise uniformly as more water pours in. As global warming raises sea levels, some places are expected to see higher-than-average increases, and a few places may even see decreases.

Currently, projections suggest that over the course of this century, sea levels will rise between 8 inches and 6.6 feet (20 centimeters and 2 meters) around the planet. Scientists know this increase will be driven by the expansion of water as it warms (warmer water takes up more space) and the melting of ice, most importantly, ice stored in the massive ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica.

But the effects of warming water and melting ice on sea-level rise are expected to vary depending on location. What’s more, some of the dynamics involved aren’t well represented in models used to make projections for the future, write Willis and his co-author, John Church of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research in their essay.

The melting of the Antarctic and Greeland ice sheets presents the largest uncertainty for the future, but air, land and water also play roles in changes to sea level, they write. For instance, sea level (which is measured relative to land) in the vicinity of the ice melt actually decreases, because the ground underneath the melting ice rebounds as the heavy ice disappears.

Planet-scale effects also influence regional changes. Mass that starts out locked up as ice in the high latitudes spreads around the planet once it has melted and flowed into the ocean. This re-arrangement of mass can tweak the tilt of the Earth’s axis. In turn, a slight change in the tilt of axis also redistributes the oceans because the forces of the Earth’s rotation help shape the surface of the ocean, Willis said.

Likewise, thermal expansion doesn’t play out uniformly across the oceans. For example, during an El Niño event, which is associated with warmer waters in the equatorial Pacific, the arrival of warmer waters off the California coast lifts sea levels. During La Niña, when waters are cooler, sea levels tend to subside, Willis said.

Climate change is expected to change ocean currents and the winds that help drive ocean currents. These changes will affect the distribution of heat within the oceans, and, as a result, affect changes in sea level.

Future sea-level rise

Scientists use two types of models to make projections about the future of sea levels, but the two don’t agree, Willis and Church point out. Earth system models are simulations that include the atmosphere, ocean and ice, but while these models include decent representations of the ocean and the atmosphere, the behavior of ice sheets is not as well represented, he said.

These models make predictions on the lower end of the spectrum for 2100 sea levels. Meanwhile, the other class of models, called semi-empirical models, base projections on the relationship between warming and the rate of global sea-level rise. These semi-empirical models rely heavily on historical observation, and tend to give higher estimates of future sea-level rise.

The simplest projection, based on the observed rate of sea-level increase, is a continued 0.1 inches (3 millimeters) rise in sea level per year. But it’s clear that much greater rates are possible.

“We know from geologic records that ice sheets are capable of causing very rapid sea-level rise three to four times what we see today,” Willis said.

If scientists can’t accurately project sea-level increase for the coming decades, the least we can do is measure what is happening today, Willis and Church say. Scientists’ ability to do this, however, is threatened by delays in the launch of a new satellite, Jason-3, Willis said. The current satellite responsible for measuring ocean height, Jason-2, is reaching the end of its planned operation life.

04.05.2012

Terror Attack

Nigeria

Potiskum

Terror Attack in Nigeria on Friday, 04 May, 2012 at 12:42 (12:42 PM) UTC.

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