Seismicity in the Himalaya dominantly results from the continental collision of the India and Eurasia plates, which are converging at a relative rate of 40-50 mm/yr. Northward underthrusting of India beneath Eurasia generates numerous earthquakes and consequently makes this area one of the most seismically hazardous regions on Earth. The surface expression of the plate boundary is marked by the foothills of the north-south trending Sulaiman Range in the west, the Indo-Burmese Arc in the east and the east-west trending Himalaya Front in the north of India.
Tsunami Information Bulletin in Aru Islands Region Indonesia, Indian Ocean
000
WEIO23 PHEB 120037
TIBIOX
TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 0037Z 12 OCT 2012
THIS BULLETIN IS FOR ALL AREAS OF THE INDIAN OCEAN.
... TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN ...
THIS MESSAGE IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY.
THIS BULLETIN IS ISSUED AS ADVICE TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. ONLY
NATIONAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO MAKE
DECISIONS REGARDING THE OFFICIAL STATE OF ALERT IN THEIR AREA AND
ANY ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN IN RESPONSE.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
ORIGIN TIME - 0032Z 12 OCT 2012
COORDINATES - 5.1 SOUTH 134.1 EAST
LOCATION - ARU ISLANDS REGION INDONESIA
MAGNITUDE - 6.7
EVALUATION
A DESTRUCTIVE WIDESPREAD TSUNAMI THREAT DOES NOT EXIST BASED ON
HISTORICAL EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI DATA.
HOWEVER - THERE IS A VERY SMALL POSSIBILITY OF A LOCAL TSUNAMI
THAT COULD AFFECT COASTS LOCATED USUALLY NO MORE THAN A HUNDRED
KILOMETERS FROM THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER. AUTHORITIES IN THE
REGION NEAR THE EPICENTER SHOULD BE MADE AWARE OF THIS
POSSIBILITY.
THIS WILL BE THE ONLY BULLETIN ISSUED BY THE PACIFIC TSUNAMI
WARNING CENTER FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
BECOMES AVAILABLE.
THE JAPAN METEOROLOGICAL AGENCY MAY ISSUE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
FOR THIS EVENT. IN THE CASE OF CONFLICTING INFORMATION...THE
MORE CONSERVATIVE INFORMATION SHOULD BE USED FOR SAFETY.
The CVGHM (or VSI) raised the Alert Level for Paluweh to ORANGE on 13 October based on ‘seismic and visual monitoring without specifying the activity; eruptive activity is most definitely on-going.
The Darwin VAAC has detected no ash plumes from Paluweh in the past 7 days.
Radar data from ERS-1, -2 and Envisat show a central uplift of about 10 mm per year near the Uturuncu volcano (dark red). The surrounding region shows a slower subsidence at a rate of about 2 mm per year (blue). Data were acquired 1992–2010. Scientists refer to the deformation pattern as the ‘sombrero uplift’. Credit: Y. Fialko, SIO/UCSD
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Geophysicists at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have identified a unique phenomenon in Altiplano-Puna plateau, located in the central Andes near the borders of Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
Magma underneath the Earth’s crust is forcing the ground up in one spot, and at the same time sinking the ground around it. The result is something the researchers have described as the “sombrero uplift,” after the popular Mexican hat.
According to their report on the phenomenon, published in the journal Science, the two UC San Diego scientists recorded uplift in the crust that measured about 0.4 inches per year for 20 years across an area 62 miles wide; the surrounding area sunk at a lower rate—about eight-hundredths of an inch.
“It’s a subtle motion, pushing up little by little every day, but it’s this persistence that makes this uplift unusual. Most other magmatic systems that we know about show episodes of inflation and deflation,” said Yuri Fialko, a professor of geophysics at UCSD and Planetary Physics at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
Fialko and co-author Jill Pearse said the phenomenon was the result of a diapir, or a blob of magma, that rises to Earth’s crust like heated wax inside a lava lamp.
Using satellite data from European Remote Sensing (ERS) and Envisat missions, the geophysicists were able to study the uplift in great detail. In 2006, the team asked for the satellites to gather more data from their orbits over Altiplano-Puna.
“It was really important to have good data from different lines of sight, as this allowed us to estimate contributions from vertical and horizontal motion of Earth’s surface, and place crucial constraints on depth and mechanism of the inflation source,” Fialko said.
“Back in 2006, it looked like the satellites stopped acquiring data from the ascending orbits over the area of interest. Fortunately, ESA was very responsive to our requests, and generated an excellent dataset that made our study possible.”
“Satellite data and computer models allowed us to make the important link between what’s observed at the surface and what’s happening with the magma body at depth,” he added.
Fialko said the study’s findings could fuel future research around magmatic events, including the formation of large calderas. Although this diapir in the Altiplano-Puna plateau appears unlikely to cause such a phenomenon—the creation of large calderas, “supervolcanoes,” are highly destructive events that spew thousands of cubic kilometers of magma into the atmosphere. An event of this type would dwarf the Icelandic volcano eruption in 2011 that ejected large amounts of ash into the atmosphere and disrupted global air travel, Fialko said.
Diapirs have been known to exist before, but this new study is the first to recognize an active diapir currently rising through the crust. Fialko said a less prominent uplift phenomenon is taking place near Socorro, New Mexico.
The Altiplano-Puna plateau is a highly active area for magma and is part of a South American volcanic arc that extends along the northwest side of the continent. Experts have described the area as the largest known active magma body in Earth’s continental crust.
Source: Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
According to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Manizales, an earthquake measuring 2.6 on the Richter scale occurred yesterday at 11:54 am. The communique also points out that the incident “is associated with rock fracturing within the volcanic edifice.” The volcano-tectonic earthquake occurred to the southeast of the main dome at a depth of 12.33 kilometers ( approx. 8 miles). Although the movement was felt in the district Tapias, rural zone of Ibagué, Eduardo Rodríguez, director of the Departmental Committee for Risk Management, confirmed that no emergencies have been reported thus far. The Cerro Machin volcano alert remains yellow. There have been three earthquakes reported in the vicinity of the volcano within a week. On Sunday two separate seismic occurrences were recorded at 9:32 and 9:35 pm with a magnitude of 4.6 and 3.9 on the Richter scale, respectively, located southeast of the main dome at a depth of 12 kilometers ( approx. 7 miles). The two municipalities which experienced the tremors are Cajamarca and Ibague.
The Klyuchevskoy volcano, the highest active volcano in Eurasia, has started erupting in Kamchatka, in the Russian Far East.
The luminescence over the volcano summit is evidence that glowing lava is flowing in the crater.
The volcano may start blowing out ash any moment now.
The Level of Concern Colour Code has been raised to Yellow, which is a potential danger warning for aircraft. The giant volcano last erupted from September 2009 to December 2010, and it began to again wake up in June this year. Klyuchevskoy volcano is 4,750 metres above sea.
A Japanese scientist has warned Mount Fuji is due for a “big-scale explosive eruption” that could affect millions of people and cause billions of dollars worth of damage.
It said the added pressure could have been caused by last year’s earthquake, which was followed a few days later by another large tremor directly underneath Fuji.
Professor Toshitsugu Fujii, the head of Japan’s volcanic eruption prediction panel, says an eruption could cause chaos and carnage all the way to Tokyo.
“Mount Fuji has been resting for 300 years now, and this is abnormal,” he told Saturday AM.
“It usually erupts in some form every 30 years.
“So the next eruption could be a big-scale explosive eruption.”
Ever since last year’s massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Japan’s north-east, the country’s meteorological agency has been keeping a closer eye on Mount Fuji.
Of even greater concern to the agency was a magnitude-6.2 quake right under the volcano a few days after the big one.
“It’s known that when a large earthquake happens, it can trigger a nearby volcano to erupt,” Professor Fujii said.
“That’s what happened 300 years ago, when Fuji erupted just 40 days after a big quake.”
If there is a large eruption, the government fears it could cause more than $30 billion in damage to public health and agriculture.
Ash accumulations in some areas could be as high as 60 centimetres.
Even Tokyo, 100 kilometres to the north-east, could be coated in volcanic ash.
“Volcanic rocks will fall near the mountain,” Professor Fujii said.
“Tokyo will be covered in a few centimetres of ash. Yokohama will be under 10 centimetres.
“Trains will stop, planes won’t fly and crops will fail.
“Millions will be affected.”
For the hundreds of thousands who live in the shadow of Fuji, an eruption is a constant worry.
Haruo Tomitsuka, a professional photographer who lives by a lake on the east side of the mountain, has been taking photos of Fuji for nearly three decades.
“I’m worried about an eruption, but mostly I worry it will change the beautiful shape of the mountain,” he said.
But for now Fuji remains a sleeping giant, and everyone living in the shadow of the national symbol is hoping the volcano’s slumber will long continue.
12.10.2012
Volcano Activity
Indonesia
East Nusa Tenggara, [Mount Rokatenda Volcano, Pulue Island]
Hundreds of local residents have been forced to evacuate as hot ashes spewed by Mount Rokatenda in Pulue Island, Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara on Thursday. “Volcanic ashes have reached four villages: Nitunglea, Rokirole, Kesokoja and Lidi. Our team has distributed masks and medicine for the residents,” Sikka disaster management agency head Silvanus Tibo said on Friday. Rokatenda’s volcanic activities have increased since Oct. 1, records show that there have been more than 50 volcanic earthquakes and 15 local tectonic earthquakes coupled with flames. The volcano’s last eruption was on March 23, 1985, with volcanic ashes reaching two kilometers above the mountain’s peak. Rokatenda also erupted during the period of Aug. 4 to Sept.25 1928. Nearly 6,000 people are currently living in four villages surrounding Mount Rokatenda.
The highest active volcano in Eurasia, Klyuchevskaya Sopka has started to erupt, officials with the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said. On the night of October 15, there was light seen over the summit of the volcano indicating a blowout of lava in its crater, Vesti.ru reports. Experts believe the release of ash to the height of 6 feet above sea level may start any moment. Lava flows on the slopes of the volcano are also expected. Yellow aviation color code has been assigned to the volcano to warn about the potential danger that the volcanic ash and gases may pose to aircraft engines. Nothing has been said about the possible threat to human settlements. The nearest settlement is 30 kilometers far from Klyuchevskaya Sopka. The last eruption of Klyuchevskaya Sopka took place from September 2009 to December 2010. In June this year, the giant began to wake up again.
SNOW has fallen across New South Wales and the ACT as a cold snap hits the region.
The unseasonal weather saw residents in areas including the Blue Mountains and southern tablelands waking up to snow on Friday.
There is also snow around Canberra, following the coldest October day there in more than 40 years. There was a maximum temperature of 8C in the Canberra area on Thursday, 11 degrees below the October average and the coldest since 1967.
Overnight snow fell in the hills between Canberra and Bungendore and in areas around Goulburn and Crookwell to the north.
The Bureau of Meteorology said many areas could see snow, frost and hail as the result of a low pressure system moving across NSW.
“We’ve had quite a few reports of snow. We’re expecting snow down to 700m over many parts of the state,” said meteorologist Julie Evans.
Sussex Inlet on the south coast experienced a thunderstorm about 4am on Friday, with “extensive small hail” falling, Ms Evans said.
“We do get this late season snow but it doesn’t happen very often,” she added.
“The last time was in 2008 when we saw snow in the Snowy Mountains and central tablelands in November.”
In some areas, the temperatures will struggle to reach double figures on Friday, with central western Orange seeing a high of 9C. On Saturday, temperatures will dip below zero with Walcha, in the state’s north, due to get a low of -4C.
The low pressure was expected to affect Sydney in the form of heavy rain on Friday, along with a “sharp increase in wind”, Ms Evans said.
Coastal areas will bear the brunt and surfing conditions were described by the meteorologist as dangerous.
On Saturday there is likely to be extensive frost up and down the tablelands but temperatures are set to improve across the state as the weekend progresses.
Ausgrid has warned residents in Sydney, the Central Coast and Hunter Valley to beware of powerlines that may have fallen as a result of the bad weather.
Ulladulla on the NSW south coast was hit by strong winds and rainfall.
The town saw 225mm of rain fall in less than 24 hours and there were gusts of 47 knots on Friday morning, approaching 90km an hour.
South of the town, heavy storms led to even higher falls, with 288mm at Burrill Lake in the same period.
In Sydney, large swells caused the cancellation of ferries between Manly and Circular Quay.
The Great Western Highway has been closed in both directions at Wentworth Falls due to heavy snow and black ice.
At least 19 people were killed and an estimated 1,500 fishermen are missing after tropical storms smashed into Bangladesh’s southern coastal islands and districts early Thursday, police said.
Police said at least 1,500 mud, tin and straw-built houses were also levelled in the storms that swept Bhola, Hatiya and Sandwip Islands and half a dozen coastal districts after Wednesday midnight.
At the worst-hit island of Hatiya, at least seven people were killed after they were buried under their houses or hit by fallen trees, said local police chief Moktar Hossain. More than 1,000 houses were flattened.
“More than 100 fishing trawlers, each carrying at least 10 fishermen, have been missing since the storm,” he told AFP, calling it one of the most powerful in decades.
Many fishermen are expected to have taken shelter in other remote islands in the Bay of Bengal or in the neighbouring Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest.
In the past, many fishermen thought to be missing from storms returned home to coastal villages a week or two later.
Four people were killed in Bhola, three each in Sandwip and Companyganj and two at Char Jabbar, police said.
The police chief of Bhola district, Bashir Ahmed, told AFP more than 500 fishermen were missing from the country’s largest island and at least 500 mud and straw-built houses were levelled by the sudden storm.
Bangladesh’s weather office forecast heavy rain in the coastal region and advised fishermen to take care near the shore, but there was no major storm warning.
“We only got the warning signal number three. But the storm was so powerful, the weather office should have hoisted the signal number seven or eight,” said Ahmed, referring to the intensity of the storm on a scale of ten.
“It caught the fishermen and coastal people by surprise. Till now we haven’t had any reports from the missing fishermen,” he said, adding the authorities had sent relief to thousands of affected people.
The provincial government of South Cotabato has ordered the evacuation of around 600 residents from three upland communities in Lake Sebu town following a series of landslides in the area since last week. Lawyer Hilario de Pedro III, acting Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) chief, said Friday they decided to evacuate residents from sitios Bentung, Lemuti and Tokobokong in Barangay Lamlahak, Lake Sebu to avert a possible tragedy due to the threats of landslides in the area. He said the three communities are considered as high-risk or in a danger zone due to the “multiple landslides” that occurred in the area since September 28. A PDRRMO report cited that the landslides initially displaced 109 families in the area.
It said the incident was caused by almost a week of continuous rains that eventually triggered several ridges of the area’s barren mountain slopes to give in. “(The rains) generated earth cracks which caused the soil descent,” de Pedro said. John Lorca, PDRRMO’s disaster operations chief, said 25 families were also affected in another landslide that occurred in the area earlier this week. He said two houses were destroyed in the incident, which was caused anew by the heavy rains in the area. Lorca said that three to four hectares of the area’s mountains were deemed highly vulnerable to landslides due to the presence of ground cracks. De Pedro, who is also the acting provincial administrator, said 155 families or a total of 620 individuals have been evacuated from the affected communities. He said the provincial government initially delivered food and other relief items to the evacuees, who are currently taking temporary shelter at the village center in Lamlahak. The official said they initially requested the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) to conduct an assessment of the affected areas and determine whether it’s still safe for the residents to return there.
Significant damage from a possible tornado has been reported in Monroe County in northeast Mississippi. Law enforcement reported the roof of a home was removed with numerous trees downed about three miles south southeast of the town of Wren at around 7:04 p.m. Sunday. The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for northern Monroe County from 6:52 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., indicating that a rotating severe storm was located near Wren and or seven miles northwest of Aberdeen, moving east at 25 mph. Luckily, there have not been any reports of injuries. The severe storm was associated with a cold front that was moving across the state. Mississippi is approaching what is considered the state’s second severe weather season in the late fall. The month of November is historically the second most active month for tornadoes behind April. The state observes Severe Weather Awareness Day on Oct. 24. Statewide tornado drills will also be conducted.
Forecasters say strong winds spun up a small tornado in Mayfield. Only one injury was reported after the storm on Sunday, but property damage included the scoreboard toppled at War Memorial Stadium. Graves County Sheriff Dewayne Redmon said Lions Club Park was heavily damaged. National Weather Service meteorologist Rick Shanklin said an EF-1 tornado struck near the Mills Manor nursing home with winds of 105 mph. No residents of the home were hurt, but cars were moved about in the parking lot and car windows blew out. Graves County Emergency Management Director Jamey Locke said at least two businesses and about a dozen homes were damaged. A homeowner was injured when the storm blew the roof of another building into his house.
A small tornado damaged a farm in Lexington, about 70 miles east of Austin in Lee County. Cecil and Darene Rexroat’s home in lexington was hit hard Saturday night. “It was like a bomb went off,” said home owner Darene Rexroat. The damage is easy to see. The tin on the roof crumpled like paper. Limbs of a centuries old tree broken off and thrown around the yard. Glass shattered and scattered inside. “About 6:45, apparently, there was a tornado that came through here. We weren’t at home,” said Darene Rexroat. Dispatchers at the Lee County Sheiff’s Office said the tornado was small, and quickly disappated after touching the ground. The Rexroat home took most of the damage. “It was scary. It was scary not knowing what, what was damaged or how damaged or anything like that because we couldn’t get in because the electrical line was laying on the ground so we didn’t go anywhere near it,” said Darene. Rexroat says professionals will come look at the house monday. In the mean time, she and her husband will be hard at work. A task that will be made a little easier with the company of friends and neighbors. Helping the Rexroat’s find serenity and peace among the destruction.
An unkown disease showing symptoms of fever is now fast spreading in Tamu town, neighbouring Moreh on the Indo-Myanmar border. The disease is suspected to be dengue. An official of the National Vector Borne Disease Control Society, however, maintained that they have received reports about outbreak of an unknown disease showing symptoms of fever but no definite information about the particular disease has been received so far.
Biohazard name:
Unknown fever illness (Susp. Dengue)
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
The most bizarre theory was from a man convinced Daleks had surrounded the city
By Lloyd Burr
News of the ‘Wellington hum’ has reverberated across the country with the local council inundated with calls on theories about the phenomenon.
The Wellington City Council says calls have flooded in since the noise was first reported in parts of the city three days ago.
The cause of the noise is still unknown but council spokesperson Clayton Anderson says there are several theories floating around.
“We’ve had around 20 phone calls and got around a dozen emails from around New Zealand from people speculating what it is,” he says.
One theory is that the Wellington sewerage pump station is reverberating through the pipes into people’s house.
Another caller said the work being carried out on the Mt Victoria Tunnel ventilation shaft could be producing a low-pitched hum.
The most bizarre theory was from a man convinced Daleks – fictional mutant aliens from the TV series Doctor Who – had surrounded the city.
But Daleks or not, it appears the noise is spreading with the council receiving its first call from a resident in Berhampore last night.
It takes the total to around 20 noise complaints from Mt Victoria, Mt Cook, Newtown, Berhampore and Karori.
“We’ve put the word out to our business units about what could potentially be making that noise and they’ve all come back saying it’s not us,” says Mr Anderson.
He says the council will continue to go out and monitor noise complaints.
Authorities in Bhaktapur’s Bode have culled more than 1500 chickens following a suspected outbreak of bird flu, health officials said. The outbreak of avian influenza initially killed 500 chickens out of 2000 at the poultry farm of a local Om Khadka. A meeting of health officials is underway at Bhaktapur to confirm whether the reported case is of bird flu.
Biohazard name:
H5N1 – Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
Today
Environment Pollution
USA
Gulf of Mexico, [Location of Deepwater Horizon disaster]
The Federal On-Scene Coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in New Orleans issued a Notice of Federal Interest to BP and Transocean Tuesday. Coast Guard Capt. Duke Walker issued the NOFI following sample results from an oil sheen located in the vicinity of where the Deepwater Horizon drill rig exploded and sank more than two years ago. The sheen was first reported to the National Response Center Sept. 16 by BP based on satellite images from the 9th and 14th overpasses in the Mississippi Canyon, block 252, approximately 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. The sheen is not feasible to recover and does not pose a risk to the shoreline. The Coast Guard, in concert with BP and NOAA, has conducted regular assessments of the sheen by aircraft and boat since its discovery. The observed sheen size has varied over time depending upon the conditions present. Samples of the sheen were taken by Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Morgan City Sept. 26 and sent to the Coast Guard Marine Safety Lab in New London, Conn. The Marine Safety Laboratory results indicate the sheen correlates to oil that originated from BP’s Macondo Well. The exact source of the sheen is uncertain at this time but could be residual oil associated with wreckage and/or debris left on the seabed from the Deepwater Horizon incident in 2010. The NOFI effectively informs BP and Transocean that the Coast Guard matched the sheen samples to the Deepwater Horizon spill or sunken drilling debris and that either party or both may be held accountable for any cost associated with further assessments or operations related to this sheen. The Gulf Coast Incident Management Team remains committed to the continued cleanup of the Gulf Coast and all shorelines affected as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. The FOSC is determined to continue response activities to remove all oil where it is technologically feasible, environmentally beneficial and safe for workers to perform recovery operations.
About 18,000 DTE Energy customers are without power after high winds blasted through southeast Michigan overnight. The outages include 7,000 customers without power in Wayne County, with the rest scattered throughout Macomb, Oakland and Washtenaw counties, DTE spokesman Scott Simons said this morning. “They should be back by sometime today,” Simons said. “It was high winds: gusts up to 45 miles per hour.” DTE provides electric power to 2.1 million customers throughout southeast Michigan. The power outage closed Detroit Public Schools’ Thirkell Elementary, 7724 14th Street, for the day today. National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Richter said today that the highest winds blew through between 8 p.m. and midnight Sunday. High gusts at 44 m.p.h. were clocked at Detroit Metro Airport at 9:52 p.m. Sunday and City Airport 10:42 p.m. “It was a really strong cold front that moved through, so we had a good burst of wind,” Richter said this morning from the agency’s White Lake Township office. “We’re going to have gusts about 25 m.p.h through most of the day today — considerably cooler today. It’s not going to get much warmer than what it is now.” Today’s high temperature is expected to reach 53 degrees, with a 30% chance of light showers across the region, he said. Temperatures will start to climb again on Tuesday, with a high of 60 degrees and a high of 70 degrees expected on Wednesday. Another front arrives with chances of rain Wednesday night and into Thursday, Richter said. Temperatures will drop again to highs around 60 on Thursday, then down to highs in the mid-50s for the weekend. “It’s going to be a little bit of a roller coaster ride,” Richter said.
At a meeting with New England commercial fishermen last December, physical oceanographers Glen Gawarkiewicz and Al Plueddemann from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) were alerted by three fishermen about unusually high surface water temperatures and strong currents on the outer continental shelf south of New England.
“I promised them I would look into why that was happening,” Gawarkiewicz says.
The result of his investigation was a discovery that the Gulf Stream diverged well to the north of its normal path beginning in late October 2011, causing the warmer-than-usual ocean temperatures along the New England continental shelf.
The researchers’ findings, “Direct interaction between the Gulf Stream and the shelfbreak south of New England,” were published in the August 2012 issue of the journal Scientific Reports.
To begin to unravel the mystery, Gawarkiewicz and his colleagues assembled data from a variety of sources and recreated a record of the Gulf Stream path during the fall of 2011.
First, they tapped into data collected by a program called eMOLT, a non-profit collaboration of fishing industry, research, academic and government entities, run by James Manning of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. For more than a decade the program has recorded near-bottom ocean temperatures by distributing temperature probes to lobstermen.
Manning and scientists from WHOI, including Robert Todd and Magdalena Andres, analyzed a time series of temperatures from two eMOLT sites, OC01 and TA51, which were located over the outer continental shelf near the shelfbreak, and identified two events when temperatures suddenly increased by 6.2 and 6.7 degrees C, respectively, to highs of more than 18 degrees C.
“These are very dramatic events for the outer continental shelf, at least 2 degrees C warmer than we’ve seen since 2001,” says Gawarkiewicz. “Near-bottom temperatures of 18 degrees C on the outer shelf are extremely high for late autumn.” The maximum recorded temperature in December 2011 was the warmest bottom temperature recorded in 6 years of records at the OC01 site.
In typical years, the warm Gulf Stream waters only indirectly influence ocean currents and temperatures near the continental shelfbreak south of New England when eddies, called warm core rings, pinch off from the Gulf Stream and drift toward the outer continental shelf. Such rings normally drift past a site after a few weeks, and therefore cause only limited warming of the water on the outer shelf.
Gawarkiewicz and his colleagues collected additional data on water temperature and salinity from December 4, 2011 through January 4, 2012, from instruments on temporary test moorings placed 12 km south of the shelfbreak by the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The researchers compared those salinity measurements to historical data, and discovered that high salinity levels – consistent with the salinity of waters carried by the Gulf Stream – coincided with the warming periods.
The extent and duration of the two 2011 warming events combined with the high salinity observed by the researchers suggested the cause was not a transient warm core ring, but the Gulf Stream itself that carried warm, salty water to the outer shelf.
To solidify that finding, Gawarkiewicz received serendipitous help from students in the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) program at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, NC, who had deployed a surface drifter during the period coinciding with the two warming events. Drifters use satellites to transmit their positions roughly every six hours, key information for the WHOI scientists, who analyzed the drifter tracks and speeds.
“Drifters around the edges of warm core rings drift toward the continental shelf at about 1 knot,” Gawarkiewicz says. “But we saw the drifter cut across the slope towards the shelf at about 2.5 knots. It only took it eight days to travel from Cape Fear, North Carolina, to a point 40 miles south of Georges Bank, a total distance of 580 miles.”
The periods of high speeds for the drifters coincided with the records for high temperatures on the outer shelf, which told the scientists that the core of the Gulf Stream had diverted to 39.9 degrees N at 68 degrees W – 125 miles north of its mean position, further north than had ever been recorded by satellite altimeters at this particular longitude.
The temporary shift in Gulf Stream path observed last fall potentially has significant longer-term implications. Studies have shown that temperature increases of 2 degrees C have caused major shifts in silver hake populations, for example, and in spring 2012, migratory bluefish and striped bass were observed off the coast of Cape Cod much earlier than in previous years.
But, the scientists say, more research is needed to determine just how the Gulf Stream’s behavior in 2011 affected the continental shelf ecosystem and marine organisms.
It is unclear what might have caused this shift in the Gulf Stream path. It occurred shortly after Hurricanes Irene and Katia drenched the east coast with rain, and this might have impacted the Gulf Stream separation from the continental shelf near Cape Hatteras.
Another possibility is that a cold core ring, an eddy south of the Gulf Stream core, might have deflected the Gulf Stream. Further research will be necessary to determine exactly how and why this occurred, which will be helpful in the long term in predicting Gulf Stream motions.
In the meantime, Gawarkiewicz and his colleagues will be keeping an eye on what the Gulf Stream does this fall, with the hope of someday being able to predict such a shift. “We’re checking in from time to time to monitor it. We’ll be talking to the fishermen, and academics, and keeping an eye on things,” he says.
Fishermen David Spencer, Fred Mattera, and Norbert Stamps first alerted the researchers to the anomaly. Profile data were made available by the OOI, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and managed by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. Tim Shaw and David Calhoun at Cape Fear Community College provided drifter data. WHOI scientists on this project were supported by the NSF, the Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region, the Penzance Endowed Fund in Support of Assistant Scientists, and the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at WHOI.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
Islamabad: A tremor of moderate earthquake was felt in Islamabad, Peshawar and other parts of Pakistan, however no causalities were reported.
According to the Pakistan Metrological Department (PMD), the intensity of the earthquake was magnitude 5.5 on Richter scale. The earthquake was felt in Islamabad, Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Swat, Malakand, Dir, North Punjab and other parts of Pakistan.
The focal point of the quake was near the Afghan-Tajik border. The tremors created panic among the residents.
Described as “a stronger than usual explosion” by volcanic activity specialists, the Sakurajima eruption was captured by four live cameras set up by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The volcano, located in Japan’s southern Kagoshima region, erupted at 20:42 local time (11:42GMT) on Tuesday and sent a plume of ash 15,000ft in the air, according to Japanese authorities.
CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Firefighters are taking advantage of cooler, more humid weather to dig in around a wildfire burning on Casper Mountain.
Crews were focusing Wednesday on building containment lines around the northwest corner of the Sheep Herder Hill Fire, the portion closest to most of the 750 homes threatened by the blaze. The fire has destroyed seven homes on the mountain overlooking Casper since breaking out Sunday.
It hasn’t spread much in the last 24 hours and is listed at nearly 25 square miles and 10 percent contained.
Investigators will also be in the fire zone looking into how the fire started. Fire spokeswoman Susan Ford said that’s a standard procedure when there aren’t any obvious signs of how a fire started, such as a lightning strike.
A flyover of southeast Louisiana revealed storm damage from Hurricane Isaac and marsh dieback, some of which was occurring before Hurricane Isaac. The flyover was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey National Wetlands Research Center (NWRC), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The flight examined areas from Wax Lake Delta, La., to Ship Island, Miss., and preliminary assessments suggest that Hurricane Isaac damaged coastal wetlands in a manner that is substantial, but not unprecedented. Damage to coastal wetland areas was evident throughout much of southeast Louisiana. The intensity of hurricane effects was most abundant in areas of upper Breton Sound, an area just to the south of the community of Braithwaite, which experienced devastating flooding. Breton Sound had been experiencing some slight recovery from the extensive damage inflicted by Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav; however, scientists observed many of the initial effects of Hurricane Isaac to be reactivations of previous damages in these newly recovering areas. Photos from the flyover are available online.
“The before and after images from coastal flyovers reveal the disappearance of some of the Gulf’s most biologically and economically significant landscape disappearing before our very eyes, on human time scales,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “There are many compounding factors that lead to enhanced coastal vulnerability, with hurricanes sweeping in to deliver the coup de grace.”
Other areas in which physical damage to coastal wetlands was observed include the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain near Slidell, areas surrounding the Rigolets to include the mouth of the Pearl River, and the Chandeleur Islands. The majority of structural changes in these areas appear to be reactivations or intensifications of effects of previous storms. Previous storms such as hurricanes Audrey, Hilda, Betsy, Andrew, Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike are known to have damaged coastal wetlands and contributed to wetland loss, and Isaac appears to have been yet another blow to Louisiana’s fragile but vital coastal wetlands.
“Louisiana’s coastal land loss is the greatest environmental, economic and cultural tragedy on the North American Continent, and marsh dieback exacerbates this ongoing disaster,” said USGS NWRC Director Phil Turnipseed. “The NWRC is dedicated to continuing to investigate the causes of land loss in order to provide decision makers with information that can help reduce land loss in the future.”
The most prevalent effects of Hurricane Isaac observed were expansive wrack fields. Wrack is accumulated organic debris and trash that are transported and deposited by a hurricane’s surge. Wrack deposits from Hurricane Isaac were observed throughout southeast Louisiana, burying existing marsh areas and obstructing infrastructure, such as canals and railroads. Generally wrack deposits eventually decompose and the areas are re-vegetated, but in the short-term wrack can kill the existing wetland vegetation.
Very few downed trees were observed in forested wetlands from Hurricane Isaac, especially compared to that of Hurricane Katrina, which is likely indicative of the lesser intensity of this storm. Even in areas where no physical removal of wetlands or vegetation was evident, the vegetation which did survive was observed to have sustained substantial damage.
Large areas of marsh dieback, termed “brown marsh” or “sudden marsh dieback,” were observed in the Terrebonne and Barataria basins in Louisiana. Previous reports of sudden marsh dieback in the spring and summer of 2012, before Hurricane Isaac, indicate that the dieback in this area has been increasing over time and may be the result of a combination of other stressors. Evidence of vegetation stress, such as widespread discoloration, was also observed in areas that were directly impacted further to the east by hurricane storm surge. The browning and destruction in the marshes east of the Mississippi River in coastal Louisiana appear to be recent, indicating a more direct link to salinity and flooding stress associated with the Hurricane Isaac’s storm surge. The USGS will further investigate the recent history of sudden marsh dieback events in coastal Louisiana. Subsequent aerial surveys will be conducted to quantify the extent of brown marsh and to potentially separate the phenomenon of sudden dieback and the storm surge impacts.
Sudden marsh dieback events have occurred over the last decade in coastal marshes from the Northern Gulf of Mexico to Maine. One of the most severe events occurred in 2000, where almost 25,000 acres (about 400 square miles) of salt marsh were impacted throughout Louisiana’s Mississippi River Delta Plain. The cause of sudden marsh dieback is still under debate, but may be cyclical depending on interactive climate conditions, sea level changes, and other environmental factors.
Marsh dieback can lead to land loss since the roots of the plants help hold the marsh together and, in some cases, increase the elevation of the marsh. As the plants die, the elevation of the marsh sinks when the roots deteriorate, turning marsh to shallow open water.
Louisiana currently experiences more wetland loss then all other states in the U.S. combined. Coastal Louisiana has lost a wetland area the size of Delaware, equaling 1,883 square miles, over the past 78 years, according to a 2011 USGS National Wetlands Research Center study.
Visit NWRC’s hurricane research for more information. To view images collected during post-Hurricane Isaac reconnaissance flights, click on the Hurricane Isaac link. To learn more about brown marsh, visit the Coastal Marsh Dieback (Brown Marsh) website.
12.09.2012
Flash Flood
USA
State of Utah, [Santa Clara area of Washington County]
Stacie Rogers was happy to hear that an employee got the seven preschoolers out of her performing art school and safely home – a flood was coming. Rogers, owner of Talent Sprouts, got word from the city early Tuesday afternoon that her business and others needed to evacuate. Heavy rain in southern Utah Tuesday afternoon caused flooding in the Santa Clara area of Washington County, which was declared a disaster area after an earthen dike broke. Extremely heavy rain fell into a small canyon above Santa Clara, which drained into what used to be a dry wash but has since been developed with homes and businesses, said Pete Wilensky, lead forecaster for the NWS in Salt Lake City. Between Monday evening and Tuesday at 2:44 p.m., 3.41 inches of rain fell in nearby Ivins, according to the NWS website. A retention pond swollen by the torrential rain broke through a canal dike near Sunset Boulevard and North Canyon View Drive, unleashing a flood of muddy red water. Shortly after noon, the city had evacuated 60 homes and 15 businesses threatened by water pouring toward the Santa Clara River. Water flooded at least several homes and businesses near the intersection of Santa Clara Drive and Canyon View Drive, said Chad Hays, director of parks and trails for Santa Clara. The waters flooded at least 10 to 15 homes, though officials were still trying to assess the extent of the damage Tuesday evening. The Red Cross of Utah provided snacks, water and dry ground for evacuees in the first floor of the Santa Clara City Building. Most of the water from the retention pond had stopped flowing by late Tuesday afternoon, and the city allowed people to return to their homes and businesses, some to see the damage for themselves. That included Randy Snow, owner of the Domino’s Pizza at 2311 Santa Clara Drive.
An intense thunderstorm is flooding streets and washes and prompting 911 calls for swift-water rescues in the Las Vegas area. Clark County spokesman Dan Kulin says rescuers are trying to confirm a report of a person in the water in a wash near Viking Road. That’s northeast of Maryland Parkway and Flamingo Road. But Las Vegas officials say firefighters haven’t confirmed any reports of people being swept away by water. The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood warning until 4 p.m. Tuesday in the central Las Vegas area. Almost an inch of rain was reported at McCarran International Airport just before 2 p.m. Officials say some motorists are reporting high water in intersections around the Las Vegas area.
Torrential rains continued lashing northern and eastern Balochistan, rendering hundreds of families homeless, inundating vast area of agriculture land and cutting off Balochistan from rest of the country. Two dead bodies have also recovered from the rainwater in Dera Murad Jamali and Bolan district while eight people, among them three women were also missing. Provincial government, Pak Army and Frontier Corps have started rescue operation in the rain battered areas of the province. The prevailing spate of intermittent rains which started five days back has badly affected Naseerabad, Jaffarabad, Kohlu, Barkhan, Rakhni, Sibi, Qila Saifullah, Zhob, Harnai, Loralai and Musa Khail districts of Balochistan rendering hundreds of families homeless and suspending train and road network with Punjab, Sindh and Khaibar Pakhtunkhwa. The torrential rains continued lashing parts of Balochistan for fifth consecutive day inundating hundreds of houses, destroying standing crops on millions of acre, injuring hundreds of people.Road network linking Balochistan to rest of the country has suspended as rain has pounded portion of roads in Qila Saifullah, Loralai, Harnai, Naseerabad, Jaffarabad, Zhob, Dera Ghazi Khan, Bolan and Sibi districts. Police official told that flash floods swept away three women namely Rahima, Saeeda and Saeeda in QIla Saifullah. Torrential rains has submerged the portion of railway track at Jacobabad-Sibi Junction, suspending train services in Balochistan. Balochistan is cut- off from rest of the country as road network is already disrupted due to the heavy rains in northern and eastern Balochistan. According to reports pouring in from different areas of the province, rain-battered people are fleeing to safer places. However, the provincial government has declared emergency and dispatched rescue teams to the rain-battered areas. On account of reports of possible breach in the Pat Feeder Canal, the leaves of the Irrigation department staff has been cancelled. PPP Balochistan president while addressing a press conference at his residence said that recent rains have played havoc in Naseerabad district. “Rains have so far claimed 12 lives while 4 lakh people are trapped in Naseerabad he said adding rains left hundreds of families homeless, destroyed 7 lakh acre rice crops. He maintained that rainwater has gushed into the houses in the district and people awaiting response from government and international humanitarian organizations. Meanwhile, under the supervision of Secretary Information Technology Captain retired Mohammad Akbar Durrani, Balochistan government has established relief cell for the masses of the rain battered areas. Relief goods comprising tents, ration, medicine and other stuff has been dispatched to the affected population.
A significant quantity of radioactive cesium, likely from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, has turned up in subsea mud about 200 kilometers away, near the mouth of the Shinanogawa River on Japan’s northwestern coast.
Scientists said samples taken in 2011 at Nagaoka, Niigata Prefecture, contained concentrations of up to 460 becquerels per kilogram of dry mud, a level comparable to that detected at a river mouth in Tokyo Bay last year.
Some isotopes of cesium are heavily radioactive. They are produced in uranium fission and deposits are often closely associated with nuclear accidents and atomic weapons tests.
A team sampled coastal seabed mud last August around the mouth of the river’s Okozu diversion canal, which discharges into the Sea of Japan. The team was led by Hideo Yamazaki, a professor of environmental analysis at Kinki University.
The sample sites lay beneath 15, 20 and 30 meters of water. Scientists took mud from those depths, and analyzed cesium concentrations at intervals of 1 centimeter.
The highest concentration was 2-3 cm below the mud surface at a water depth of 30 m. That reading of 460 becquerels per kg compares to samples of over 400 becquerels around the mouth of the Arakawa river in Tokyo Bay in August 2011.
Both readings are dozens of times higher than contamination detected after past atmospheric nuclear tests.
At a depth of 20 m the maximum concentration was 318 becquerels per kg, while at 15 m it was 255 becquerels.
The research results will be published at the fall meeting of the Oceanographic Society of Japan, which opens in Shizuoka on Sept. 13.
***
To read The Asahi Shimbun stories on the survey on seabed mud in Tokyo Bay, visit:
Eight people have been injured in an explosion at a Nuon power plant in Velsen Noord, west of Amsterdam. Three people have been rushed to hospital and one may be seriously injured, news agencies reported. One eyewitness said: ‘There was a big explosion followed by several little ones. There were flames but not a real fire.’ Others told the Telegraaf the incident may have been caused by workers making changes in the high-voltage sub-station. Once the area has been declared safe, fire officers will enter the building and try to establish more.
Climate change, algal blooms and ‘dead zones’ in the Great Lakes Enlarge The green scum shown in this image is the worst algae bloom Lake Erie has experienced in decades. Such blooms were common in the lake’s shallow western basin in the 1950s and 60s. Phosphorus from farms, sewage, and industry fertilized the waters so that huge algae blooms developed year after year. The blooms subsided a bit starting in the 1970s, when regulations and improvements in agriculture and sewage treatment limited the amount of phosphorus that reached the lake. But in 2011, a giant bloom spread across the western basin once again. Credit: Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using data provided courtesy of the United States Geological Survey (Phys.org)—Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of intense spring rain storms in the Great Lakes region throughout this century and will likely add to the number of harmful algal blooms and “dead zones” in Lake Erie, unless additional conservation actions are taken, according to a University of Michigan aquatic ecologist.
Climate models suggest that the number of intense spring rain storms in the region could double by the end of the century, contributing to an overall 30 to 40 percent increase in spring precipitation, said Donald Scavia, director of the U-M’s Graham Sustainability Institute. That increase, combined with the greater availability of phosphorous due to current agricultural practices in the Midwest, means that increased amounts of the nutrient will be scoured from farmlands and run into rivers that feed Lake Erie, fueling algae blooms and low-oxygen zones known as dead zones. “Climate change is likely to make reducing phosphorous loads even more difficult in the future than it is now, which will likely lead to even more toxic algae blooms and larger dead zones unless more conservation is undertaken,” said Scavia, who will present his latest findings on the topic Wednesday morning during Great Lakes Week events in Cleveland. “Current agricultural practices and climate are conspiring to increase the phosphorous loads that make their way into Lake Erie,” said Scavia, a professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment. The agricultural practices that contribute to increased availability of phosphorous from fertilizer include no-till farming, a method of planting crops without plowing. The technique reduces soil erosion but also leaves “high concentrations of phosphorous in the upper surface soil, and these intense storms appear to be flushing it out,” Scavia said. The widespread adoption of no-till farming and other agricultural techniques since the mid-1990s have had some positive effects but appear to have also increased the availability of the type of phosphorous, known as soluble reactive phosphorous, that promotes algae blooms, Scavia said. Since the mid-1990s, intense spring rain storms have also become more common in the Great Lakes region, especially in southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio, the regions that provide runoff into Lake Erie, Scavia said. Current agricultural best management practices – such as planting buffer strips around cropland, protecting wetlands and using less fertilizer – applied at the current scales are likely “not going to be sufficient to reduce the phosphorous loads to the levels we need to prevent the blooms and to get rid of the dead zones,” Scavia said. In the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, control strategies focused on reducing phosphorous from specific sources, such as waste-treatment plants. Reductions from those so-called point sources led to major gains in Great Lakes health, including a drop in the frequency and extent of harmful algae blooms and dead zones. Some of those gains have been reversed since the mid-1990s. The increased availability of soluble reactive phosphorous and a surge in extreme rainfall events in the region have contributed to a resurgence of both harmful algal blooms and dead zones in Lake Erie, Scavia said. Algae blooms can foul harbors, clog boat motors, reduce fish populations, and can sometimes be toxic to humans. Dead zones are low-oxygen regions where most aquatic organisms cannot survive. Provided by University of Michigan search and more info website
Glaciers in the eastern and central regions of the Himalayas appear to be retreating at accelerating rates, similar to those in other areas of the world, while glaciers in the western Himalayas are more stable and could be growing, says a new report from the National Research Council.Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-himalayan-glaciers-retreating-regions.html#jCp
The report examines how changes to glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, which covers eight countries across Asia, could affect the area’s river systems, water supplies, and the South Asian population. The mountains in the region form the headwaters of several major river systems—including the Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers—which serve as sources of drinking water and irrigation supplies for roughly 1.5 billion people. The entire Himalayan climate is changing, but how climate change will impact specific places remains unclear, said the committee that wrote the report. The eastern Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau are warming, and the trend is more pronounced at higher elevations. Models suggest that desert dust and black carbon, a component of soot, could contribute to the rapid atmospheric warming, accelerated snowpack melting, and glacier retreat. While glacier melt contributes water to the region’s rivers and streams, retreating glaciers over the next several decades are unlikely to cause significant change in water availability at lower elevations, which depend primarily on monsoon precipitation and snowmelt, the committee said. Variations in water supplies in those areas are more likely to come from extensive extraction of groundwater resources, population growth, and shifts in water-use patterns. However, if the current rate of retreat continues, high elevation areas could have altered seasonal and temporal water flow in some river basins. The effects of glacier retreat would become evident during the dry season, particularly in the west where glacial melt is more important to the river systems. Nevertheless, shifts in the location, intensity, and variability of both rain and snow will likely have a greater impact on regional water supplies than glacier retreat will.
Melting of glacial ice could play an important role in maintaining water security during times of drought or similar climate extremes, the committee noted. During the 2003 European drought, glacial melt contributions to the Danube River in August were about three times greater than the 100-year average. Water stored as glacial ice could serve as the Himalayan region’s hydrologic “insurance,” adding to streams and rivers when it is most needed. Although retreating glaciers would provide more meltwater in the short term, the loss of glacier “insurance” could become problematic over the long term. Water resources management and provision of clean water and sanitation are already a challenge in the region, and the changes in climate and water availability warrant small-scale adaptations with effective, flexible management that can adjust to the conditions, the committee concluded. Current efforts that focus on natural hazard and disaster reduction in the region could offer useful lessons when considering and addressing the potential for impacts resulting from glacial retreat and changes in snowmelt processes in the region. Many basins in the region are “water-stressed” due to both social changes and environmental factors, and this stress is projected to intensify with large forecasted population growth, the committee concluded. Climate change could exacerbate this stress in the future. Although the history of international river disputes suggests that cooperation is a more likely outcome than violent conflict in this region, social conditions could change. Therefore, modifications in water supplies could play an increasing role in political tensions, especially if existing water management institutions do not evolve to take better account of the region’s social, economic, and ecological complexities, the committee said. More information: Pre-publication copies of Himalayan Glaciers: Climate Change, Water Resources, and Water Security are available from http://www.nap.edu . Provided by National Academy of Sciences search and more info website
Around the world, amateur astronomers have been scanning the cloudtops of Jupiter for signs of debris from an explosion witnessed by Dan Peterson and George Hall on Sept. 10th. So far the cloud layer is blank. “Several observers have now obtained excellent images on the second and third rotations after the fireball, and there is nothing new nor distinctive at the impact site,” reports John H. Rogers, director of the Jupiter Section of the British Astronomical Association:
The fireball was probably caused by a small asteroid or comet hitting Jupiter. Apparently, the giant planet swallowed the impactor whole.
When fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter in 1994, each major flash observed by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft produced a “bruise,” a murky mixture of incinerated comet dust and chemically altered Jovian gas twisting and swirling among the clouds. In July 2009, amateur astromer Anthony Wesley discovered a similar mark thought to be debris from a rogue asteroid crashing into the planet.
So where is the debris this time? Perhaps the impactor was small, packing just enough punch to make a flash, but without leaving much debris. Indeed, studies suggest that Jupiter is frequently struck by relatively small 10-meter-class asteroids. In such cases, minimal debris is to be expected.
POLAR LIGHTS:
In the Arctic, springtime ended months ago. Nevertheless, butterflies have been sighted. This one appeared last night over Grøtfjord, Norway:
Helge Mortensen took the picture on Sept. 12th. “The auroras were not a strong as some I’ve seen, but it was still nice to be outside and watch such a beautiful apparition,” he says.
This Northern Lepidoptera appeared when a “kink” in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) drifted past Earth, briefly opening a crack in our planet’s magnetosphere. Solar wind poured in to fuel the display. At the peak of the storm, the Arctic Circle was glowing from Scandinavia to Iceland to Canada.
Earth’s polar magnetic field is settling down again, but more Arctic auroras are in the offing, especially on Sept 14-15 when a solar wind stream is expected to reach our planet
The galaxy cluster Abell 1689 is famous for the way it bends light in a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. A new study of the cluster is revealing secrets about how dark energy shapes the universe. Full story.
CREDIT: NASA, ESA, E. Jullo (JPL/LAM), P. Natarajan (Yale) and J-P. Kneib (LAM)
Dark energy, the mysterious substance thought to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, almost certainly exists despite some astronomers’ doubts, a new study says.
After a two-year study, an international team of researchers concludes that the probability of dark energy being real stands at 99.996 percent. But the scientists still don’t know what the stuff is.
“Dark energy is one of the great scientific mysteries of our time, so it isn’t surprising that so many researchers question its existence,” co-author Bob Nichol, of the University of Portsmouth in Engalnd, said in a statement. “But with our new work we’re more confident than ever that this exotic component of the universe is real — even if we still have no idea what it consists of.”
Water quality officials are posting blue-green algae warnings along the Klamath River and its reservoirs, encouraging people to stay out of the water. ”It’s a human health issue,” said Craig Tucker, a Klamath campaign coordinator for the Karuk tribe. “The hotter and drier it is, the worse the algae blooms.” Users are warned to avoid contact with the blue-green algae, which contains the microcystis toxin. Microcystin is a known tumor promoter and liver toxin, according to a press release from the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources. Craig said that the blooms affect reservoirs along the Klamath every year, but do not always contaminate the river downstream. This year, however, posted warning areas include Copco Reservoir, Iron Gate Reservoir and the river itself downstream to Turwar on the Yurok Reservation. The algal blooms usually occur between June and October because shallow, nutrient-rich water trapped behind the Klamath dams heats up. This provides an optimal environment for algae to bloom. ”We think the only way to deal with it is dam removal,” Tucker said. Blooms normally occur while downstream tribes are holding annual World Renewal ceremonies. According to the release, the ceremonies require spiritual leaders to bathe in the river, which puts them at risk of exposure. Tucker said, the Karuk medicine men who do the rituals are at an elevated risk.
Biohazard name:
Blue-Green Algae bloom (cyanobacteria)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
At least seven people were killed, eight injured and five remain missing after a five-story building collapsed today in the district of Shubra in the Egyptian capital Cairo. Several such incidents in Egypt have been caused by building violations and bad maintenance.
12.09.2012
Power Outage
Canada
Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, [Avalon Peninsula]
Approximately 9,000 Newfoundland Power customers on the Avalon Peninsula are still without power as of midday Wednesday, one day after tropical storm Leslie hit the island. According to Newfoundland Power spokeswoman Michele Coughlan, 6,000 of those customers are in the St. John’s area, with five main feeders in need of repairs. The remaining 3,000 customers are spread throughout the Avalon Peninsula. Over 60 poles needed replacing as of this morning, according to Coughlan. Trees tangled with power lines and lines downed by fallen trees were continuing to pose problems for the electric utility, she said. Siding detached from various buildings had also caused problems for power lines. Coughlan said the company intends to have all main feeders repaired by Wednesday’s supper hour, adding that isolated outages for some customers may run into Thursday.
Today the drilling starts for a seismic monitoring network on the Marmara Sea near Istanbul. Specially designed seismic sensors in eight boreholes on the outskirts of Istanbul and around the eastern Marmara Sea will monitor the seismic activity of the region with high precision.
In each of the respective 300 meter deep holes several borehole seismometers will be permanently installed at various depths. These detect even barely perceptible earthquakes with very small magnitudes at a high resolution and can thus provide information about the earthquake rupture processes associated with these.
To determine and monitor the seismic hazard of the region and the processes occurring in the fault zone beneath the Marmara Sea off Istanbul with the latest earthquake monitoring technology, the GONAF plate boundary observatory (Geophysical Observatory at the North Anatolian Fault) was set up under the auspices of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.
“Istanbul with its more than 13 million inhabitants is located in a region that is extremely vulnerable to earthquakes. A high probability of a strong earthquake of magnitude up to 7.4 is assumed for the region,”explains Professor Georg Dresen from the GFZ, one of the organizers of the project GONAF. “The data of small earthquakes in the region that are measured in the borehole can provide important information about the processes before a major earthquake.”
The data is continuously transmitted in real time to Potsdam and Ankara and evaluated there. A particular difficulty is that the earthquake zone to be monitored lies under the seabed of the Marmara Sea, about 20 kilometers off Istanbul. Only monitoring below ground in bore holes ensures the required precision of the measurementsdue to the much lower noise level.
“This means we have to get as close as possible to the quake source region,” explains GFZ researcher Professor Marco Bohnhoff, director of the project. “With our new, specially developed borehole seismometers the ratio of signal to background noise can be improved by at least a factor of 10, and therefore achieve a much higher resolution.”
The project involves close cooperation with the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD). The drilling is implemented as part of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program ICDP. Engineers and scientists at the GFZ supervise the construction and installation activities.
Upon successful completion and handover of the fully equipped pilot bore hole on the peninsula Tuzla just off Istanbul a first test phase will commence before the remaining seven wells will be drilled. “An earthquake prediction is not the goal of the project,” clarifies Marco Bohnhoff.
“Earthquake prediction is still not possible. But the data gathered in our project of the seismic activity before, during and after the expected strong quake will mean a great advance in the study of earthquakes.”
The flight path of the first HS3 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. to NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., on Sept. 5-6 included investigations of a tropical disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico and Hurricane Leslie in the Atlantic. Image credit: NASA. For a larger version of this image please go here.
NASA has begun its latest hurricane science field campaign by flying an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft over Hurricane Leslie in the Atlantic Ocean during a day-long flight that began in California and ended in Virginia. With the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission, NASA for the first time will be flying Global Hawks from the U.S. East Coast.
The Global Hawk took off from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Thursday and landed at the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., Monday at 8:37 a.m. PDT (11:37 a.m. EDT) after spending 10 hours collecting data on Hurricane Leslie. The month-long HS3 mission will help researchers and forecasters uncover information about how hurricanes and tropical storms form and intensify.
NASA will fly two Global Hawks from Wallops during the HS3 mission. The planes, which can stay in the air for as long as 28 hours and fly over hurricanes at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet (18,288 meters), will be operated by pilots in ground control stations at Wallops and Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
The mission targets the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change. The aircraft help scientists decipher the relative roles of the large-scale environment and internal storm processes that shape these systems.
Studying hurricanes is a challenge for a field campaign like HS3 because of the small sample of storms available for study and the great variety of scenarios under which they form and evolve. HS3 flights will continue into early October of this year and be repeated from Wallops during the 2013 and 2014 hurricane seasons.
The first Global Hawk arrived Sept. 7 at Wallops carrying a payload of three instruments that will sample the environment around hurricanes. A second Global Hawk, scheduled to arrive in two weeks, will look inside hurricanes and developing storms with a different set of instruments. The pair will measure winds, temperature, water vapor, precipitation and aerosols from the surface to the lower stratosphere.
“The primary objective of the environmental Global Hawk is to describe the interaction of tropical disturbances and cyclones with the hot, dry and dusty air that moves westward off the Saharan desert and appears to affect the ability of storms to form and intensify,” said Scott Braun, HS3 mission principal investigator and research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
This Global Hawk will carry a laser system called the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL), the Scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (S-HIS), and the Advanced Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS).
The CPL will measure cloud structure and aerosols such as dust, sea salt and smoke particles. The S-HIS can remotely sense the temperature and water vapor vertical profile along with the sea surface temperature and cloud properties. The AVAPS dropsonde system will eject small sensors tied to parachutes that drift down through the storm, measuring winds, temperature and humidity.
“Instruments on the ‘over-storm’ Global Hawk will examine the role of deep thunderstorm systems in hurricane intensity change, particularly to detect changes in low-level wind fields in the vicinity of these thunderstorms,” said Braun.
These instruments will measure eyewall and rainband winds and precipitation using a Doppler radar and other microwave sensors called the High-altitude Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler (HIWRAP); the High-Altitude MMIC Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR), developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; and the Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD).
HIWRAP measures cloud structure and winds, providing a three-dimensional view of these conditions. HAMSR uses microwave wavelengths to measure temperature, water vapor and precipitation from the top of the storm to the surface. HIRAD measures surface wind speeds and rain rates.
“HAMSR was the first complete scientific instrument to come out of NASA’s Instrument Incubator Program,” said Bjorn Lambrigtsen, HAMSR principal investigator at JPL. “An advanced version of instruments currently flying on satellites such as NASA’s Suomi NPP, HAMSR provides a much more detailed view of the atmospheric conditions in a hurricane than is possible from satellites. HAMSR is one of a number of airborne instruments developed by JPL that are being used to carry out research in a variety of areas.”
The HS3 mission is supported by several NASA centers, including Wallops; Goddard; Dryden; Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.; Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.; and JPL. HS3 also has collaborations with partners from government agencies and academia.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
An earthquake early Monday centered in Beverly Hills was upgraded from to 3.2 to 3.3. and was felt around Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The temblor occurred at 3:26 a.m.
According to the USGS, the epicenter was one mile from West Hollywood, two miles from Century City and eight miles from Los Angeles Civic Center.
The USGS “Do You Feel It” site said the quake was most strongly felt on the Westside but also in the South Bay, downtown L.A. area and the San Fernando Valley.
In the past 10 days, there has been one earthquake magnitude 3.0 and greater centered nearby.
JAKARTA—A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the Indonesian resort island of Bali early on Tuesday, but there was no tsunami warning and no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The quake’s epicentre was at a shallow depth of eight kilometers (five miles), the US Geological Survey said, putting it 278 kilometers south of Denpasar, on Bali. The quake hit at 2:23 am (1823 GMT Monday).
Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where continental plates collide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity.
Anak Krakatau in the Sunda Strait, 130 kilometers west of Jakarta, was created by the same tectonic forces that led to the 1883 Krakatoa eruption that killed tens of thousands of people. (Reuters Photo)
Bandarlampung. Volcanic ash from the increasingly active Anak Krakatau has reached a number of areas in Lampung, prompting officials on Monday to issue a warning for local residents and tourists.
“The ash was carried by wind from the southeast to the south, reaching Bandarlampung,” Nurhuda, who heads the observation and information section of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) in Lampung, said according to state news agency Antara.
Nurhuda said the ash fell over several subdistricts in Bandarlampung, about 130 kilometers away from Anak Krakatau.
“It is rather unusual for the dust to be this thick,” said Juniardi, a resident of Bandarlampung who complained that the falling dust was also hampering visibility.
Officials warned that the ask posed health hazards and asked local residents to wear masks when going outdoors or driving motorcycles.
“We also advise fishermen and tourists not to come within a radius of 3 kilometers of Anak Krakatau. The thick plumes of smoke sent off by Krakatau contain toxic material that is hazardous for your health,” said Andi Suhardi, head of the Anak Krakatau observation post in Hargo Pancuran village.
A report from the volcanology office in Bandung shows that the activities of Anak Krakatau has been on the rise over the past few days, reaching almost 90 eruptions per day.
Nurhuda said the report showed the volcano spewed red hot lava up to 300 meters above its peak. “More than 100 volcanic quakes and tremors have been recorded,” he added.
Anak Krakatau, or child or Krakatau, about 130 kilometers west of Jakarta, was created by the same tectonic forces that led to the 1883 Krakatoa eruption that killed tens of thousands of people.
A new phase of activity has started at Krakatau volcano. A large explosion occurred early today and produced an ash plume that reached 14,000 ft (4.2 km) according to Darwin VAAC who first observed it at 01:32 GMT. Ash fall has reached Lampung and over several subdistricts in Bandarlampung, at about 130 kilometers distance. Authorities have issued a warning for local residents and tourists not to approach the volcano. “It is rather unusual for the dust to be this thick,” said Juniardi, a resident of Bandarlampung who complained that the falling dust was also hampering visibility, the Jakarta Globe writes. According to the news article, the activity of Anak Krakatau has been on the rise over the past few days, reaching almost 90 eruptions per day. Nurhuda said the report showed the volcano spewed red hot lava up to 300 meters above its peak. “More than 100 volcanic quakes and tremors have been recorded,” he added.
Unusually fierce storms swept through Malta on Monday, killing one man and dropping more rain on the Mediterranean island in two hours than its normal monthly average for September. The first storm triggered floods that swept away a man who had abandoned his car. Police said the man managed to make it to higher ground. Another man working in a field was fatally struck by lightning, however, as a second storm battered Malta in the afternoon. The storms caused substantial damage across the small Mediterranean archipelago, which includes the main island and sister islands of Gozo and Comino, with cars overturned, trees uprooted, houses flooded and walls collapsed. Malta’s meteorological office said 42.4 millimeters (1.67 inches) of rain fell, eclipsing the 40-millimeter average for the month of September.
A fire in the Angeles National Forest north of Glendora has spread to 700 acres since it began about 2:15 p.m. along East Fork Road, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. The blaze was moving north toward the Sheep Mountain Wilderness Area, said John Wagner, an assistant public affairs officer with the forest service. An evacuation was underway at a mobile home park in the vicinity of the fire, Wagner said. He did not know how many residents had been evacuated. There were no reports of casualties or property damage. Wagner said seven air tankers from various agencies were battling the blaze. Fifteen engine companies from the Los Angeles County Fire Department were also fighting the fire, a spokesman said.
NEW ORLEANS — Tens of thousands of customers remained in the dark Monday in Louisiana and Mississippi, nearly a week after Isaac inundated the Gulf Coast with a deluge that still has some low-lying areas under water.
Most of those were in Louisiana, where utilities reported more than 100,000 people without power. Thousands also were without power in Mississippi and Arkansas.
President Barack Obama visited Monday, a day ahead of the Democratic National Convention, and walked around storm damage in St. John the Baptist Parish, where subdivisions were soaked in water from Isaac.
“I know it’s a mess,” Obama said as he approached a resident in the Ridgewood neighborhood. “But we’re here to help.”
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney visited the state Friday.
In St. John the Baptist Parish, residents spent Labor Day dragging waterlogged carpet and furniture to the curb and using bleach and water to clean hopefully to prevent mold.
LaPlace resident Barbara Melton swept mud and debris from her home, which was at one point under 2 feet of water. The garbage, debris and standing water – combined with heat reaching the 90s – created a terrible stench.
“It’s hot, it stinks, but I’m trying to get all this mud and stuff out of my house,” she said.
Melton was grateful for the president’s visit.
“I think it’s awesome to have a president that cares and wants to come out and see what he can do,” Melton, 60, said.
A few houses away, Ed Powell said Isaac was enough to make him question whether to stay.
“I know Louisiana’s a gambling state, but we don’t want to gamble in this method because when you lose this way, you lose a lot.”
Powell said even if Obama comes up with a plan or solution to the flooding problem in his area, time is not on the residents’ side.
“Even if they narrow down what the problem is and begin to resolve the problem, it usually takes years. And between now and whenever, a lot of things can happen,” Powell said.
More than 2,800 people were at shelters in Louisiana, down from around 4,000. State officials were uncertain how many people would eventually need longer-term temporary housing. Kevin Davis, head of the state’s emergency office, said housing would likely include hotels at first, then rental homes as close as possible to their damaged property.
Progress was evident in many places, though lingering flooding remained a problem in low-lying areas.
Crews in the town of Lafitte intentionally breached a levee Sunday night in an effort to help flooding there subside, Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts told The Times-Picayune.
Much of Plaquemines Parish, a vulnerable finger of land that juts into the Gulf of Mexico, remained under as much as 5 feet of water, Parish President Billy Nungesser said. The Category 1 hurricane walloped the parish, and for many, the damage was worse than that from Katrina in 2005.
Mumbai received a whopping 15 cm average rainfall in 12 hours since 8 a.m. Monday, even as one person was killed and normal life disrupted, officials said. Five people were killed in rain-related incidents in other parts of Maharashtra. Five persons were killed and another four injured when the wall of a temple crashed at Kaundinyapur village in Amravati district. The incident occurred Sunday evening and the bodies of the victims were removed from the debris early Monday. The incessant rains resulted in overflowing of Thane district’s Lake Tansa, a major source of drinking water for the 17 million people of the city, civic official said. Some parts of the city received between four to eight centimetres of rains since Monday morning, raising hopes that the water deficit would be wiped out this year. Several low-lying areas in the city and suburbs were waterlogged, slowing down vehicular movement and causing massive traffic snarls on both the national highways and other major roads. In the evening, five people were injured in a house-collapse in Chunabhatti area of central Mumbai as torrential rains continued. Water logging was reported from parts of Borivli, Kandivli, Jogeshwari, Andheri, Santacruz, Bhandup, Sion, Byculla and some areas in Dadar, Worli, Goregaon and Kurla experienced flooding.
Suburban train services were disrupted on the Western Railway, Central Railway and Harbour Line with average 20-30 minutes delays, hitting office workers and students. The evening peak hour witnessed chaos with a signal failure at Santacruz-CST on the Harbour Line route and trains virtually crawling to their destinations. People commuting from south Mumbai to their homes in the suburbs were stuck en route and reached their destinations only after long delays of one-two hours. Elsewhere in the state, most districts of the coastal Konkan, eastern districts of Vidarbha, northern parts of the state, Marathwada and western Maharasthra were lashed with heavy rains since morning, spelling cheers for the water-starved farming community. Torrential downpour in Thane’s major towns like Kalyan, Dombivli, Vasai, Virar, Palghar and Dahanu led to flooding on the roads with vehicular movements virtually crippled for hours. As a precautionary measure, some schools in the district were closed early to enable students reach their homes safely. Farmers in the parched districts of Marathwada smiled broadly as the region was lashed with rains after a gap of over three weeks and earnestly resumed their farming activities. The weather bureau has forecast similar heavy to very heavy rains over Mumbai and other parts of the state for the next two days.
The Ohio Department of Health announced on Friday that the country’s first known swine flu death took place in their state. A 61-year-old Madison county women was infected with the H3N2v virus and died. She had had direct contact with swine at the Ross County fair and had “multiple other underlying medical conditions” according to the statement.
There are currently 102 cases of the H3N2v virus in Ohio. The age range of patients is between 6 months and 61 years. Most of the patients had only a mild illness, and there have been few hospitalizations in this outbreak.
David Daniels, director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture, said, “swine flu is not uncommon, especially when temperatures have been high, as they have been this summer.” Dr. Tony Forshey, state veterinarian at the Ohio Department of Agriculture said “there are veterinarians in the barn at every fair. Heat-stressed swine are more likely to become ill and contagious.”
This type of flu is only transmissible through contact with live pigs. You cannot get the flu through properly handled and cooked pork. This virus is different from seasonal influenza, but it is transmitted in the same way: through coughing and sneezing by people who are infected. Most of the patients this year have been children.
To protect yourself, wash your hands with soap and water, especially after you’ve been around animals at the fair. Avoid touching eyes, nose, and mouth. Do not drink or eat near animals, and do not bring food into the barns when you visit a fair. And limit time around animals. Young children, pregnant women, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems should avoid exposure to pigs and swine barns.
If you develop a flu-like illness, with symptoms including fever, tiredness, lack of appetite, coughing, runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, see your healthcare provider. And make sure to tell her that you have been in contact with swine or other people who are sick. For questions or help, call the Ohio Department of Agirculture’s Division of Animal Health at 614-728-6220.
The next strong flare could be just around the corner. Sunspot AR1564 is growing rapidly and has developed a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class flares. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture of the active region during the early hours of Sept. 4th:
NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of M-flares during the next 24 hours. Any eruptions will likely be Earth-directed as the active region is turning toward our planet.
Solar wind
speed: 422.7 km/sec
density: 15.2 protons/cm3 explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 0735 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C2 0507 UT Sep04
24-hr: C2 0507 UT Sep04 explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 0700 UT
Daily Sun: 04 Sep 12
Sunspot 1564 is suddenly growing. It has a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI
Spotless Days Current Stretch: 0 days
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 821 days
Typical Solar Min: 486 days
Update 04 Sep 2012
A geomagnetic storm that began on Sept. 3rd when a coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth’s magnetic field is fitfully subsiding. The impact at 1200 UT (5 am PDT) induced significant ground currents in the soil of northern Scandinavia and sparked bright auroras around the Arctic Circle. Ole C. Salomonsen photographed the display over Naimakka, Finland, on Sept. 4th:
“There I was standing all alone deep in the Finish forest, just in awe of this display of light above my head,” says Salomonsen. “This is just one of many images of spectacular auroras I shot on this wonderful night.”
Forty-six students of Government Polytechnic College for Women at Sidhapudur in the heart of Coimbatore city became ill on Monday following suspected food poisoning. They were admitted at two hospitals in the vicinity after they complained of severe vomiting and stomach pain. The students developed discomfort after having dinner at the college hostel cafeteria on Sunday. While 11 of them were admitted at Ramakrishna hospital on Sunday night itself, 35 students were rushed to the Coimbatore Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) at around 8 am on Monday. Seven of them are being kept in the Intensive Care unit at CMCH and Ramakrishna hospital. The doctors attending to the students said that most of them were admitted with complaints of vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain. They were put on drips and medication. P Sivaprakasam, resident medical officer of CMCH said initial examinations had revealed that the students were suffering from food poisoning. He also said that they had consumed contaminated water. “They are recovering well and will be discharged in a couple of days,” he added.
A Kalpana, a third year student recovering at CMCH said that on Sunday night they were served tomato rice for dinner. For the past week the drinking water supply was not proper. Some students may have consumed contaminated water or it may have been used for cooking,” said another student on conditions of anonymity. “Just a few months ago the students had oragnised a public protest demanding good quality food. The case of food poisoning highlights the grim situation prevailing at the hostel,” she added. The doctors say that students fell ill because of consuming contaminated water. What has happened is unfortunate. We will look into the issue and ensure this does not happen again. Corrective measures will be put in place,” said B Padmini, principal of the college. There are 300 students residing at the hostel. Most hostel students are sports players, she said. “Students may have consumed pipe water instead of the boiled water made available to them. This is despite several reminders to drink only boiled water,” the principal added. Regarding the allegation of inadequate drinking water supply in the past one week, Padmini said that on certain days there was a disruption in supply.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Food Poisoning
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
03.09.2012
Biological Hazard
Kyrgyzstan
Chuy Oblast, [About 20 kilometers of the Kant Air Base]
Russia’s military officials say that efforts to prevent an anthrax epidemic have been increased at a Russian air base in Kyrgyzstan because of an outbreak of anthrax nearby. Officials from Russia’s Central Military District say one of the outbreaks is within 20 kilometers of the Kant Air Base in Kyrgyzstan’s northern region of Chui. He says all military buildings on the base — including apartments for officers and their families — have been disinfected and safety checks on food supplies have been increased. The move was undertaken after Kyrgyz health officials announced last week that several cases of anthrax had been confirmed in Chui and in the southern regions of Jalal-abad and Batken.
Biohazard name:
Anthrax
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
A wildlife rescue organization says 13 whales have died following a mass stranding off the Scottish coast. British Divers and Marine Life Rescue said Sunday that the mammals were among a group of 26 pilot whales stranded at Pittenweem, in eastern Scotland. Coast guards, volunteer medics, fire crews and police are all also involved in efforts to rescue the 13 still living. But rescue coordinator Gareth Norman said that it was likely more of the whales would die. A further 24 pilot whales from the same pod are currently in shallow water three miles along the coast at Cellardyke.
Scientists and conservationists are once again puzzled over the behaviour of whales – with two different pods of pilot whales beaching themselves this weekend on either side of the Atlantic.
A pod of 26 pilot whales stranded themselves off the coast of Fife in Scotland.
Crowds of on-lookers gathered to watch the massive rescue and relief operation.
13 of the 26 whales did not make it.
And in a strange coincidence… another pod of whales beached themselves along the coast of south-central Florida in the U.S.
This time, 22 pilot whales stranded themselves near Fort Pierce.
VERO BEACH, Fla., Sept. 2 (UPI) — Wildlife experts suspect an ailing alpha whale caused a pod of short-fin pilot whales to beach themselves in Florida this weekend.
Seventeen of the 22 mammals died in the surf at Avalon Beach State Park in St. Lucie County and five juveniles were taken to a rescue facility at nearby Florida Atlantic University, but were not expected to survive.
Blair Mase, who specializes in the study of whale stranding for the U.S. government, told TCPalm.com the tragedy was probably linked to the pod leader.
“This species has a tight social structure,” said Mase, a regional coordinator for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. “Typically, they stay together as a group. So if one animal is sick, they all come ashore.”
Hundreds of people on the area either watched the stranding unfold. Many tried to help out by throwing wet towels on the whales to protect them from the sun, TCPalm.com said.
Mase it would not have done much good to push the whales off the sand. “If you push them into the water, they’ll just keep coming back and stranding themselves again,” she said.
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The August 31, 2012 M 7.6 earthquake off the east coast of the Philippines occurred as a result of reverse faulting within the oceanic lithosphere of the Philippines Sea plate. The preliminary location of the earthquake indicates this is an intraplate event, 50 or more kilometers to the east of the subduction zone plate boundary between the Philippine Sea and Sunda plates. At the latitude of the earthquake, the Philippine Sea plate moves west-northwest at a velocity of approximately 100 mm/yr.
While this region of the Philippines experiences moderate-to-large earthquakes fairly frequently – there have been approximately 40 events of M6 and above over the past 40 years, within 250 km of the August 31 2012 earthquake – large events outboard of the subduction zone are unusual. While several moderate-sized events have occurred in this intraplate region, most have been the result of normal faulting within the shallower oceanic lithosphere, rather than deeper reverse faulting like August 31 2012 event. The largest nearby event regardless of mechanism was the October 1975 M 7.6 earthquake, approximately 200 km to the north of the August 31 2012 event.
For information on aftershocks within the region of this earthquake, see this map.
Seismotectonics of the Philippine Sea and Vicinity
The Philippine Sea plate is bordered by the larger Pacific and Eurasia plates and the smaller Sunda plate. The Philippine Sea plate is unusual in that its borders are nearly all zones of plate convergence. The Pacific plate is subducted into the mantle, south of Japan, beneath the Izu-Bonin and Mariana island arcs, which extend more than 3,000 km along the eastern margin of the Philippine Sea plate. This subduction zone is characterized by rapid plate convergence and high-level seismicity extending to depths of over 600 km. In spite of this extensive zone of plate convergence, the plate interface has been associated with few great (M>8.0) ‘megathrust’ earthquakes. This low seismic energy release is thought to result from weak coupling along the plate interface (Scholz and Campos, 1995). These convergent plate margins are also associated with unusual zones of back-arc extension (along with resulting seismic activity) that decouple the volcanic island arcs from the remainder of the Philippine Sea Plate (Karig et al., 1978; Klaus et al., 1992).
South of the Mariana arc, the Pacific plate is subducted beneath the Yap Islands along the Yap trench. The long zone of Pacific plate subduction at the eastern margin of the Philippine Sea Plate is responsible for the generation of the deep Izu-Bonin, Mariana, and Yap trenches as well as parallel chains of islands and volcanoes, typical of circum-pacific island arcs. Similarly, the northwestern margin of the Philippine Sea plate is subducting beneath the Eurasia plate along a convergent zone, extending from southern Honshu to the northeastern coast of Taiwan, manifested by the Ryukyu Islands and the Nansei-Shoto (Ryukyu) trench. The Ryukyu Subduction Zone is associated with a similar zone of back-arc extension, the Okinawa Trough. At Taiwan, the plate boundary is characterized by a zone of arc-continent collision, whereby the northern end of the Luzon island arc is colliding with the buoyant crust of the Eurasia continental margin offshore China.
Along its western margin, the Philippine Sea plate is associated with a zone of oblique convergence with the Sunda Plate. This highly active convergent plate boundary extends along both sides the Philippine Islands, from Luzon in the north to the Celebes Islands in the south. The tectonic setting of the Philippines is unusual in several respects: it is characterized by opposite-facing subduction systems on its east and west sides; the archipelago is cut by a major transform fault, the Philippine Fault; and the arc complex itself is marked by active volcanism, faulting, and high seismic activity. Subduction of the Philippine Sea Plate occurs at the eastern margin of the archipelago along the Philippine Trench and its northern extension, the East Luzon Trough. The East Luzon Trough is thought to be an unusual example of a subduction zone in the process of formation, as the Philippine Trench system gradually extends northward (Hamburger et al., 1983). On the west side of Luzon, the Sunda Plate subducts eastward along a series of trenches, including the Manila Trench in the north, the smaller less well-developed Negros Trench in the central Philippines, and the Sulu and Cotabato trenches in the south (Cardwell et al., 1980). At its northern and southern terminations, subduction at the Manila Trench is interrupted by arc-continent collision, between the northern Philippine arc and the Eurasian continental margin at Taiwan and between the Sulu-Borneo Block and Luzon at the island of Mindoro. The Philippine fault, which extends over 1,200 km within the Philippine arc, is seismically active. The fault has been associated with major historical earthquakes, including the destructive M7.6 Luzon earthquake of 1990 (Yoshida and Abe, 1992). A number of other active intra-arc fault systems are associated with high seismic activity, including the Cotabato Fault and the Verde Passage–Sibuyan Sea Fault (Galgana et al., 2007).
Relative plate motion vectors near the Philippines (about 80 mm/yr) is oblique to the plate boundary along the two plate margins of central Luzon, where it is partitioned into orthogonal plate convergence along the trenches and nearly pure translational motion along the Philippine Fault (Barrier et al., 1991). Profiles B and C reveal evidence of opposing inclined seismic zones at intermediate depths (roughly 70-300 km) and complex tectonics at the surface along the Philippine Fault.
Several relevant tectonic elements, plate boundaries and active volcanoes, provide a context for the seismicity presented on the main map. The plate boundaries are most accurate along the axis of the trenches and more diffuse or speculative in the South China Sea and Lesser Sunda Islands. The active volcanic arcs (Siebert and Simkin, 2002) follow the Izu, Volcano, Mariana, and Ryukyu island chains and the main Philippine islands parallel to the Manila, Negros, Cotabato, and Philippine trenches.
Seismic activity along the boundaries of the Philippine Sea Plate (Allen et al., 2009) has produced 7 great (M>8.0) earthquakes and 250 large (M>7) events. Among the most destructive events were the 1923 Kanto, the 1948 Fukui and the 1995 Kobe (Japan) earthquakes (99,000, 5,100, and 6,400 casualties, respectively), the 1935 and the 1999 Chi-Chi (Taiwan) earthquakes (3,300 and 2,500 casualties, respectively), and the 1976 M7.6 Moro Gulf and 1990 M7.6 Luzon (Philippines) earthquakes (7,100 and 2,400 casualties, respectively). There have also been a number of tsunami-generating events in the region, including the Moro Gulf earthquake, whose tsunami resulted in more than 5000 deaths.
The August 31, 2012 M 7.6 earthquake off the east coast of the Philippines occurred as a result of reverse faulting within the oceanic lithosphere of the Philippines Sea plate. The preliminary location of the earthquake indicates this is an intraplate event, 50 or more kilometers to the east of the subduction zone plate boundary between the Philippine Sea and Sunda plates. At the latitude of the earthquake, the Philippine Sea plate moves west-northwest at a velocity of approximately 100 mm/yr with respect to the Sunda plate.
While this region of the Philippines experiences moderate-to-large earthquakes fairly frequently – there have been approximately 40 events of M6 and above over the past 40 years, within 250 km of the August 31 2012 earthquake – large events outboard of the subduction zone are unusual. While several moderate-sized events have occurred in this intraplate region, most have been the result of normal faulting within the shallower oceanic lithosphere, rather than deeper reverse faulting like August 31 2012 event. The largest nearby event regardless of mechanism was the October 1975 M 7.6 earthquake, approximately 200 km to the north of the August 31 2012 event.
For information on aftershocks within the region of this earthquake, see this map.
Seismotectonics of the Philippine Sea and Vicinity
The Philippine Sea plate is bordered by the larger Pacific and Eurasia plates and the smaller Sunda plate. The Philippine Sea plate is unusual in that its borders are nearly all zones of plate convergence. The Pacific plate is subducted into the mantle, south of Japan, beneath the Izu-Bonin and Mariana island arcs, which extend more than 3,000 km along the eastern margin of the Philippine Sea plate. This subduction zone is characterized by rapid plate convergence and high-level seismicity extending to depths of over 600 km. In spite of this extensive zone of plate convergence, the plate interface has been associated with few great (M>8.0) ‘megathrust’ earthquakes. This low seismic energy release is thought to result from weak coupling along the plate interface (Scholz and Campos, 1995). These convergent plate margins are also associated with unusual zones of back-arc extension (along with resulting seismic activity) that decouple the volcanic island arcs from the remainder of the Philippine Sea Plate (Karig et al., 1978; Klaus et al., 1992).
South of the Mariana arc, the Pacific plate is subducted beneath the Yap Islands along the Yap trench. The long zone of Pacific plate subduction at the eastern margin of the Philippine Sea Plate is responsible for the generation of the deep Izu-Bonin, Mariana, and Yap trenches as well as parallel chains of islands and volcanoes, typical of circum-pacific island arcs. Similarly, the northwestern margin of the Philippine Sea plate is subducting beneath the Eurasia plate along a convergent zone, extending from southern Honshu to the northeastern coast of Taiwan, manifested by the Ryukyu Islands and the Nansei-Shoto (Ryukyu) trench. The Ryukyu Subduction Zone is associated with a similar zone of back-arc extension, the Okinawa Trough. At Taiwan, the plate boundary is characterized by a zone of arc-continent collision, whereby the northern end of the Luzon island arc is colliding with the buoyant crust of the Eurasia continental margin offshore China.
Along its western margin, the Philippine Sea plate is associated with a zone of oblique convergence with the Sunda Plate. This highly active convergent plate boundary extends along both sides the Philippine Islands, from Luzon in the north to the Celebes Islands in the south. The tectonic setting of the Philippines is unusual in several respects: it is characterized by opposite-facing subduction systems on its east and west sides; the archipelago is cut by a major transform fault, the Philippine Fault; and the arc complex itself is marked by active volcanism, faulting, and high seismic activity. Subduction of the Philippine Sea Plate occurs at the eastern margin of the archipelago along the Philippine Trench and its northern extension, the East Luzon Trough. The East Luzon Trough is thought to be an unusual example of a subduction zone in the process of formation, as the Philippine Trench system gradually extends northward (Hamburger et al., 1983). On the west side of Luzon, the Sunda Plate subducts eastward along a series of trenches, including the Manila Trench in the north, the smaller less well-developed Negros Trench in the central Philippines, and the Sulu and Cotabato trenches in the south (Cardwell et al., 1980). At its northern and southern terminations, subduction at the Manila Trench is interrupted by arc-continent collision, between the northern Philippine arc and the Eurasian continental margin at Taiwan and between the Sulu-Borneo Block and Luzon at the island of Mindoro. The Philippine fault, which extends over 1,200 km within the Philippine arc, is seismically active. The fault has been associated with major historical earthquakes, including the destructive M7.6 Luzon earthquake of 1990 (Yoshida and Abe, 1992). A number of other active intra-arc fault systems are associated with high seismic activity, including the Cotabato Fault and the Verde Passage–Sibuyan Sea Fault (Galgana et al., 2007).
Relative plate motion vectors near the Philippines (about 80 mm/yr) is oblique to the plate boundary along the two plate margins of central Luzon, where it is partitioned into orthogonal plate convergence along the trenches and nearly pure translational motion along the Philippine Fault (Barrier et al., 1991). Profiles B and C reveal evidence of opposing inclined seismic zones at intermediate depths (roughly 70-300 km) and complex tectonics at the surface along the Philippine Fault.
Several relevant tectonic elements, plate boundaries and active volcanoes, provide a context for the seismicity presented on the main map. The plate boundaries are most accurate along the axis of the trenches and more diffuse or speculative in the South China Sea and Lesser Sunda Islands. The active volcanic arcs (Siebert and Simkin, 2002) follow the Izu, Volcano, Mariana, and Ryukyu island chains and the main Philippine islands parallel to the Manila, Negros, Cotabato, and Philippine trenches.
Seismic activity along the boundaries of the Philippine Sea Plate (Allen et al., 2009) has produced 7 great (M>8.0) earthquakes and 250 large (M>7) events. Among the most destructive events were the 1923 Kanto, the 1948 Fukui and the 1995 Kobe (Japan) earthquakes (99,000, 5,100, and 6,400 casualties, respectively), the 1935 and the 1999 Chi-Chi (Taiwan) earthquakes (3,300 and 2,500 casualties, respectively), and the 1976 M7.6 Moro Gulf and 1990 M7.6 Luzon (Philippines) earthquakes (7,100 and 2,400 casualties, respectively). There have also been a number of tsunami-generating events in the region, including the Moro Gulf earthquake, whose tsunami resulted in more than 5000 deaths.
A 7.6 earthquake struck off the Philippine coast on Friday, triggering landslides that killed at least one person and a small tsunami that hit the eastern part of the archipelago, authorities said. The quake struck at a depth of 34 kilometres (21 miles) in the Pacific Ocean about 140 kilometres from the Philippines, leading to tsunami warnings across its east coast and as far away as Indonesia, Japan and Papua New Guinea. A series of small waves ranging from 16-centimetres (six-inch) to 50 centimetres hit the eastern Philippines about two hours after the quake, according to local authorities, but there were no reports of major damage. The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center shortly afterwards lifted its tsunami warnings for the Philippines and Indonesia. It had earlier cancelled similar warnings for Japan, Taiwan and several Pacific islands. The warnings led to a burst of terror for residents along the east coast of the Philippines, many of whom were without electricity because power lines had been cut during the earthquake that hit at 8:47 pm (1247 GMT). Leticia Amos, 35, a government employee, said hundreds of families on Samar island rushed to a hillside area, carrying their belongings as soon as the alert was raised.”It is very dark, there is no electricity and everyove is panicking,” she said. “Our place is on a hilly portion along the highway, and hundreds of people from low lying bayside areas rushed here.” The quake shook large areas of the east, and one person was confirmed killed when a landslide engulfed her home in Cagayan de Oro City. “There’s a 60-year-old woman who died and a five-year-old girl who was injured. There was a small landslide,” civil defence chief Benito Ramos said on DZMM radio. “The quake occurred amid strong rain, so the earth shook loose and there was a landslide.” Paula Daza, the governor of northern Samar province, one of the areas closest to where the quake struck, said there were reports of damage to infrastructure. “Some cracks appeared on concrete roads, and at the base of at least one bridge,” he said. Sol Matugas, the governor of another eastern region, Surigao del Norte, said on DZMM radio that the quake had severely shaken homes. “We were rather frightened. For the first time, we saw objects falling out of our cabinets,” he said. The USGS had initially reported the quake as having a magnitude of 7.9, but revised it to 7.6.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) reported in its website that the quake’s epicenter was located at 112 kilometers east of Guiuan, Eastern Samar.
The quake’s origin is tectonic and it has a depth of 10 kilometers.
It was also located at 175 kilometers northeast of Surigao, 187 kilometers east southeast of Tacloban, Leyte and 749 kilometers southeast of Manila, the US Geological Survey said in its latest bulletin.
The USGS issued a tsunami warning in the Philippines, as well as in Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan and Guam.
Phivolcs Director Renato Solidum advised residents in Surigao del Norte, Eastern Samar, Southern Leyte and Bicol to be on alert for possible aftershocks.
He also advised those living in coastal villages in these areas to evacuate due to the tsunami warning.
Southern Leyte Governor Damian Mercado said in a radio interview that he told all town mayors in the province to evacuate all families living in coastal areas. Evacuation is also ongoing in Eastern Samar and Surigao.
No damage has been reported as of this posting Friday. (Sunnex)
000
WEPA40 PHEB 311454
TSUPAC
TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 004
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 1454Z 31 AUG 2012
THIS BULLETIN APPLIES TO AREAS WITHIN AND BORDERING THE PACIFIC
OCEAN AND ADJACENT SEAS...EXCEPT ALASKA...BRITISH COLUMBIA...
WASHINGTON...OREGON AND CALIFORNIA.
ADDITIONAL SEA LEVEL READINGS INCLUDED. WARNING IS CANCELLED.
... TSUNAMI WARNING CANCELLATION ...
THE TSUNAMI WARNING AND/OR WATCH ISSUED BY THE PACIFIC TSUNAMI
WARNING CENTER IS NOW CANCELLED FOR
INDONESIA / PHILIPPINES / BELAU
THIS BULLETIN IS ISSUED AS ADVICE TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. ONLY
NATIONAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO MAKE
DECISIONS REGARDING THE OFFICIAL STATE OF ALERT IN THEIR AREA AND
ANY ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN IN RESPONSE.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
ORIGIN TIME - 1248Z 31 AUG 2012
COORDINATES - 10.9 NORTH 127.1 EAST
DEPTH - 33 KM
LOCATION - PHILIPPINE ISLANDS REGION
MAGNITUDE - 7.6
MEASUREMENTS OR REPORTS OF TSUNAMI WAVE ACTIVITY
GAUGE LOCATION LAT LON TIME AMPL PER
------------------- ----- ------ ----- --------------- -----
MALAKAL KOROR PW 7.3N 134.5E 1447Z 0.01M / 0.0FT 10MIN
DART 52404 20.9N 132.3E 1418Z 0.01M / 0.0FT 10MIN
DAVAO PH 7.1N 125.6E 1350Z 0.03M / 0.1FT 32MIN
DART 52405 12.9N 132.3E 1333Z 0.03M / 0.1FT 10MIN
LEGASPI PH 13.1N 123.8E 1343Z 0.03M / 0.1FT 14MIN
LAT - LATITUDE (N-NORTH, S-SOUTH)
LON - LONGITUDE (E-EAST, W-WEST)
TIME - TIME OF THE MEASUREMENT (Z IS UTC IS GREENWICH TIME)
AMPL - TSUNAMI AMPLITUDE MEASURED RELATIVE TO NORMAL SEA LEVEL.
IT IS ...NOT... CREST-TO-TROUGH WAVE HEIGHT.
VALUES ARE GIVEN IN BOTH METERS(M) AND FEET(FT).
PER - PERIOD OF TIME IN MINUTES(MIN) FROM ONE WAVE TO THE NEXT.
NOTE - DART MEASUREMENTS ARE FROM THE DEEP OCEAN AND THEY
ARE GENERALLY MUCH SMALLER THAN WOULD BE COASTAL
MEASUREMENTS AT SIMILAR LOCATIONS.
EVALUATION
SEA LEVEL READINGS INDICATE A TSUNAMI WAS GENERATED. IT MAY HAVE
BEEN DESTRUCTIVE ALONG COASTS NEAR THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER. FOR
THOSE AREAS - WHEN NO MAJOR WAVES ARE OBSERVED FOR TWO HOURS
AFTER THE ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL OR DAMAGING WAVES HAVE NOT
OCCURRED FOR AT LEAST TWO HOURS THEN LOCAL AUTHORITIES CAN ASSUME
THE THREAT IS PASSED. DANGER TO BOATS AND COASTAL STRUCTURES CAN
CONTINUE FOR SEVERAL HOURS DUE TO RAPID CURRENTS. AS LOCAL
CONDITIONS CAN CAUSE A WIDE VARIATION IN TSUNAMI WAVE ACTION THE
ALL CLEAR DETERMINATION MUST BE MADE BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES.
NO TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS FOR OTHER COASTAL AREAS IN THE PACIFIC
ALTHOUGH SOME OTHER AREAS MAY EXPERIENCE SMALL SEA LEVEL CHANGES.
THE TSUNAMI WARNING IS NOW CANCELLED FOR ALL AREAS COVERED BY
THIS CENTER.
THIS WILL BE THE FINAL BULLETIN ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE.
THE JAPAN METEOROLOGICAL AGENCY MAY ALSO ISSUE TSUNAMI MESSAGES
FOR THIS EVENT TO COUNTRIES IN THE NORTHWEST PACIFIC AND SOUTH
CHINA SEA REGION. IN CASE OF CONFLICTING INFORMATION... THE
MORE CONSERVATIVE INFORMATION SHOULD BE USED FOR SAFETY.
THE WEST COAST/ALASKA TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER WILL ISSUE PRODUCTS
FOR ALASKA...BRITISH COLUMBIA...WASHINGTON...OREGON...CALIFORNIA.
Some unrest is going on at Reclus volcano in southern Chile, located between Aguilera and Monte Burney in Patagonia, the Eruptions Blog writes:
“Over the summer, earthquakes began to be felt in towns in the region of the volcano and a potential for new activity from the Reclus has prompted geologists to visit the volcano later this spring (southern hemisphere). Interestingly, one article mentions that an overflight of the volcano in 2008 spotted cracks on the glaciers that cover the volcano along with traces of ash. However, the direct connection between the seismicity in Patagonia and Reclus is still tenuous, so further observations of the remote volcano will need to be done.”
Reclus has had at least 4 historical eruptions around, 1908, 1879, and in 1869. Although these were small, the volcano has produced larger explosive eruptions in the past and should be closely monitored.
Elevated Volcanic Activity and Information Releases
Friday, Aug 31, 2012 at 20:30:59 PDT.
The following U.S. volcanoes are known to be above normal background (elevated unrest or eruptions) or have shown activity that warranted an Information Release (for example, an earthquake swarm).
Times are local to the volcano and in military format.
Volcano Alert Levels & Aviation Color Codes defined at http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/activity/alertsystem.
Little Sitkin Alert Level=ADVISORY. Aviation Color Code=YELLOW. As of Aug 31, 2012, 15:35 AKDT Anomalous seismicity that began on August 29 gradually decreases since 06:00 AKDT (14:00 UTC) August 31, 2012.
(Change to current status occurred on Aug 30, 2012 04:23 AKDT from Alert Level UNASSIGNED and Aviation Color Code UNASSIGNED ) For more information see http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/activity/archiveupdate.php?noticeid=7691
Iliamna Alert Level=ADVISORY. Aviation Color Code=YELLOW. As of Aug 31, 2012, 15:35 AKDT Clouds obscured satellite and webcam view of Iliamna during the past 24 hours. Seismicity remains slightly above background.
(Change to current status occurred on Mar 9, 2012 13:07 AKDT from Alert Level NORMAL and Aviation Color Code GREEN ) For more information see http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/activity/archiveupdate.php?noticeid=7690
Cleveland Alert Level=WATCH. Aviation Color Code=ORANGE. As of Aug 31, 2012, 15:35 AKDT Satellite imagery indicates that as of August 27, 2012, the summit crater of Cleveland is a tephra-covered funnel surrounding a central vent containing no dome.
(Change to current status occurred on Jun 19, 2012 15:06 AKDT from Alert Level ADVISORY and Aviation Color Code YELLOW ) For more information see http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/activity/archiveupdate.php?noticeid=7689
Pagan Alert Level=ADVISORY. Aviation Color Code=YELLOW. As of Aug 31, 2012, 10:09 ChST Low-level unrest. YELLOW/ADVISORY. Persistent steam/gas plume.
(Change to current status occurred on Oct 6, 2011 14:21 ChST from Alert Level UNASSIGNED and Aviation Color Code UNASSIGNED ) For more information see http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/activity/archiveupdate.php?noticeid=7686
Kilauea Alert Level=WATCH. Aviation Color Code=ORANGE. As of Aug 31, 2012, 08:16 HST DI deflation and lava lake dropping slowed; new pit craters in Pu`u `O`o Crater and barely active lava flows to the SE; no ocean entry; gas emissions elevated.
(Change to current status occurred on Mar 9, 2011 19:45 HST from Alert Level WARNING and Aviation Color Code RED ) For more information see http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/activity/archiveupdate.php?noticeid=7688
People stand on large hexagonal columns of volcanic rock, southeast of Hong Kong in this handout photo released August 30, 2012.
Some 140 million years after it erupted and then toppled into the sea, an ancient supervolcano in Hong Kong is making headlines.
The government announced Thursday that it had located the supervolcano—the first discovery of its kind in southeastern China—while surveying in the area in southeastern Hong Kong. The volcano is now extinct and poses no threat to Hong Kong.
What makes the volcano super? When it last exploded 140 million years ago, it would have darkened the sky with 312 cubic miles of ash, enough to blanket all of Hong Kong, said Denise Tang of the government’s civil engineering & development department, which discovered the volcano. About 50 other such supervolcanos are known to exist around the world, she said.
The original base of Hong Kong’s supervolcano would have measured about 11 miles in diameter, and the vista of vaulting, hexagonal rock columns and small islands it left behind remain gorgeous reminders of its dramatic geologic past. They can be toured by boat, but Ms. Tang was quick to warn any would-be tourists to use caution before making any expeditions.
“Although it’s very beautiful,” she said, “there’s no facilities, no pier facilities, so we actually do not recommend people try to land on the island.”
Remnants of an ancient super volcano have been discovered near Hong Kong.
According to experts, the last eruption of the volcano occurred in the Mesozoic Era at the turn of the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods about 140 million years ago.
The diameter of the gigantic crater spans 18 kilometers.
Scientists have confirmed the earlier hypothesis that the volcano settled down many years ago and assured Hong Kong residents that it won’t erupt again.
Seismologists say a cluster of earthquakes has been detected at a remote volcano in Alaska’s western Aleutian Islands. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says the quakes began Wednesday evening at Little Sitkin Volcano and are continuing as of Thursday morning. No eruption has been detected. Scientist in charge John Power says there is no direct link to the swarm of earthquakes at Little Sitkin and a cluster of quakes that shook California’s Imperial County earlier this week. Powers says Little Sitkin is located on an uninhabited island and is far from any populated areas. He says the seismic activity is unusual for Little Sitkin, whose last eruption possibly in the early 1900s is questionable. Powers says the concern about an eruption would be the possible threat posed to aircraft.
A huge wildfire is approaching the wealthy resort of Marbella on Spain’s Costa del Sol, where the authorities have evacuated thousands of people. Flames reached the Elviria area on the edge of Marbella early on Friday. About 1,000 people have been evacuated from the edge of Marbella, about 3,300 from Ojen and others from a camp site at Alpujata, Spanish media report. They include at least 300 British expats sent to evacuation centres, the UK embassy said. Marbella is famous for its up-market hotels and villas – it is a favourite haunt of wealthy foreigners. Overnight the fire spread rapidly through a 12km (eight-mile) coastal strip, not far from holiday resorts. Two people have suffered serious burns and some homes have been engulfed by the fire. The Costa del Sol is one of Spain’s most popular holiday destinations and home to a large British expatriate community. The British embassy says it is working closely with the Spanish authorities and consular staff have been deployed to assist those affected.
Lake Tangipahoa, a 450 to 500-acre lake at Percy Quinn State Park just north of the Mississippi state line, was swollen from Isaac’s rain, undermining a dam that, if it failed, would release the body of water into the Tangipahoa River that meanders down the parish’s length to Lake Pontchartrain. “That’s going to inundate an already flooded river,” said National Guard Col. Rodney Painting, the incoming commander of the Guard’s 225th Engineer Brigade who started his day helping oversee the evacuation of flooded areas in LaPlace and would end it in his native Tangipahoa helping oversee what appears to be the largest such effort in the state since Isaac made landfall Tuesday. Authorities in Mississippi tried to ease the pressure by releasing some of the water, an effort said to be working. Louisiana officials are taking no chances.State and parish officials called a mandatory evacuation for communities from Kentwood to Robert. If the dam breaks, the National Guard will go into the affected communities with high-water vehicles and small boats, “that we can get through the flooded woods or streets if we have to,” said Painter, who during the Isaac state of emergency has helped coordinate evacuation sites at Zephyr Field in Metairie and in Slidell before moving to Laplace and Amite. In the “controlled release” using spillways, the water from the lake flooded out into a sparsely inhabited area of Mississippi on Thursday afternoon, relieving pressure on a dam scoured by Hurricane Isaac that threatened to push water levels in the Tangipahoa River up to 17 feet in Louisiana. Officials believe the controlled release of waters through emergency spillways will allow the water level to stabilize and lessen pressure on the dam until crews can breach the edge of Tangipahoa Lake near McComb and drain another 8 feet of water.While the release is expected to protect communities on the north shore, officials in Mississippi said about 20 homes on their side of the state line will be flooded out and emergency crews conducted a door-to-door effort to warn residents to leave their homes. Meanwhile, a more massive effort was occurring miles downriver, as National Guard units and other state assets attempted to get 40,000 to 60,000 people out of their homes. Though the water level in the lake was dropping and Mississippi officials downplayed the seriousness of the dam’s condition, Gov. Bobby Jindal continued to urge residents to leave potential flood zones in Tangipahoa Parish Thursday night. “The worse thing that could happen is that people get a false sense of confidence and then if there be a breach overnight it would be a lot harder for people to evacuate,” Jindal said. From the Florida Parishes Arena, troops drove school buses to collection points, where they’re driving evacuees to evacuation shelters set up at schools. School buses have been brought in from as far as Avoylles Parish and Terrebonne Parish, each driven by soldiers. “I’ve already got buses on the road full of people,” said Lt. Col. Vincent Tallo.
About 200 coaches and school buses are being rushed to Tangipahoa, said First Sgt. Rufus Jones of 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment, a Guard combat unit whose soldiers, all armed with M4 rifles, waited in the arena for missions that would likely would include security details. By Thursday night, Tallo said he expected 300 National Guard troops in the parish, assisting the evacuation. The National Guard received the mission at 10 a.m., Thursday, said Maj. Scott Slaven, who commands the 205th Engineer Battalion in Bogalusa. Troops and equipment are staged on both sides of the Tangipahoa River, Slaven said. At Pontchatoula High School, Darryl Holliday of Kajun Kettle Foods Inc., which has a state contract to feed evacuees, was told to brace for 2,000 people. At 6:30 p.m., none of the evacuees had reached the school on Louisiana 22. Holliday said he was told that 40 people were en route. Painter said the plan calls for keeping evacuees in Tangipahoa Parish. At the Florida Parishes Arena, employees of the state Department of Children and Family Services prepared to account for the evacuees with forms, in part designed to identify families.
The damage to dam prompted Parish President Gordon Burgess to order mandatory evacuations along the Tangipahoa River, which were carried out with the assistance of the state and National Guard units. The first reports of problems with the dam came into emergency operations officials at 8 a.m., when crews noticed two “sloughs” where dirt was sliding down the sides of the earthen structure, said Greg Flynn, spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. Those sloughs are the first sign of a problem with the integrity of a dam, Flynn said. The damage was caused by rain from Hurricane Isaac, which raised the water level of the recreational fishing lake by several feet, said Richard Coghlan, Emergency Coordinator for Pike County. “The dam appears very stable at this time,” Coghlan said. Mississippi officials stressed that reports Thursday that the waters had breached or overtopped the dam were incorrect. Opening the spillways will bring the water level back to normal but could cause flooding in a wide, sparsely populated stretch of Mississippi. Coghlan said residents had been warned and were planning on leaving for at least a night.
Those homes would also have been flooded in the event that the dam failed, he said. Once the water level drops back to normal, a process that could take days, crews will dig a trench out of the lake with the intention of causing a more serious drop in the water levels, Coghlan said. That will allow maintenance crews to go in and repair the dam, he said. Louisiana state officials estimated that between 40,000 and 60,000 homes would take on some water should the river flood. Many of those were outside the mandatory evacuation zone, which extended one mile on either side of the Tangipahoa River from Kentwood to Robert. It was unclear on Thursday exactly how many people lived in that area or how many were evacuated by the end of the day.
………………………………………
US Flooded: Video of Isaac aftermath, houses in water up to roofs
The area south of New Orleans has been plagued by flooding since Isaac sloshed ashore as a hurricane on Tuesday evening and pushed water over the 18-mile levee.
Aerial video footage shows dozens of homes surrounded by water up their rafters. The flood also unearthed caskets and uprooted trees at a local cemetery. The storm Isaac has been downgraded to a tropical depression, and the extent of the damage is becoming clearer. Crews set out in air boats in LaPlace and saw heavy mud and dirty water caking homes, street signs and trailers. They worked to save cows and other livestock from the debris. Evacuees from that town continue to be ferried by buses to various shelters. Many of them lost everything they owned except what they were able to carrying with them in the minutes before evacuating.
At least seven people are believed to have been killed after a landslide struck a gold-rush mountain community in the southern Philippines, the mayor of a nearby city said yesterday. Three days of heavy rains spawned the landslide on Thursday, which covered makeshift mining tunnels in a mountain area in Mindanao island, said Mati City Mayor Michelle Rabat. She said that a village chief in the isolated area told her by telephone that seven bodies had been recovered from the tunnels and the miners were digging to find more people believed buried. Other miners who descended from the mountains gave similar accounts, Rabat said. “Before the landslide, (a survivor) shouted to the people inside the tunnels to vacate the area. He saw three people running for their lives but it was too late. They were buried by the mudflow,” the mayor said. The gold-rich area has attracted thousands of small miners who tunnel into the side of the mountain despite the constant danger posed by landslides, quakes and collapsing tunnels, said Rabat. The area is so remote that it can only be reached through a lengthy motorcycle ride followed by an hour of hiking, making it difficult to determine the extent of the damage, she added. Military officials said soldiers had been dispatched to the affected area but they could not yet confirm any fatalities.
Ten people are dead and 14 others missing after a landslide hit a hydropower station in southwest China. Rescue work was under way at the site in Sichuan province’s Liangshan prefecture. Mud and stones began crashing down onto the station late Wednesday night and continued to fall into Thursday morning. The report did not say if anyone had survived the landslide and provincial officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Liangshan prefecture lies about 1,750 kilometers (1,100 miles) southwest of China’s capital Beijing.
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said Thursday that the amount of water injected into the crippled Nos. 1 to 3 reactors temporarily dropped below the level regarded as necessary to keep the fuel inside cool.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the drop in the volume of the water did not affect the temperature of the reactor pressure vessels, while adding that the company is investigating the cause of the incident.
The utility known as TEPCO noticed that the three reactors were not getting enough water injection at 3 p.m. Thursday. Workers took measures to increase the water volume and they confirmed at about 4:30 p.m. that it recovered to the necessary level.
At a gathering of politicians from prefectural and municipal governments in Japan, the veterinarian head of a non-profit organization called “Ecosystem Conservation Society of Japan” told the audience, quite off-handedly,
People in Fukushima, Tochigi, Saitama, Tokyo, Kanagawa where the radioactive plume went by, should not marry because the deformity rate of their offspring will skyrocket.
To the outraged delegation from Fukushima City, he says,
Tough. They misquoted me on purpose, I was just talking generalities.
Generalities. So these days in Japan, citing specific locales and predicting specific events like deformity of babies is talking generalities.
So far, only the delegation from Fukushima City is outraged. The reactions from the rest of Japan are two types:
Oh someone finally spoke the truth, and he is the head of some non-profit organization (that must mean his intentions are good), so we should take it seriously; or
Fukushima City Assemblymen including Mr. Kazuyoshi Sato held a press conference on August 29, and announced that they would demand the correction of the remark by Mr. Hobun Ikeya, head of a public interest incorporated foundation called “Ecosystem Conservation Society of Japan” during the lecture in July on the effect of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident as “inappropriate and discriminatory, and cannot be tolerated”.
According to Assemblyman Sato and others, Mr. Ikeha said in the lecture, “You’d better not marry anyone from Fukushima”, and “Cancer rate may rise in Fukushima, and deformed babies may be born”.
According to the explanation by the Society and the recording that our reporter listened to, Mr. Ikeya also mentioned several prefectures in Kanto region that have had certain levels of radiation contamination because of the nuclear accident. He pointed out to the map of the region, and said, “People who live in the areas where the radioactive plume went by should avoid marrying at all costs.” He further said “If they marry and have children, the rate of deformity in babies will skyrocket.”
Mr. Ikeya responded to Asahi Shinbun and explained, “I wanted to emphasize the heightened risk of DNA damage and deformed babies due to radiation exposure. I discussed generalities, and had no intention of discrimination.”
The lecture was sponsored by the Ecosystem Conservation Society of Japan and held in Tokyo on July 9. Assemblypersons from municipalities throughout Japan participated, and four assemblymen including Mr. Sato from the Fukushima City Assembly participated.
Regarding the remarks that have been condemned as inappropriate by Mr. Hobun Ikeya (age 70) of the Ecosystem Conservation Society of Japan in a lecture in Tokyo, Mr. Ikeya released part of the transcript of the lecture to the press on August 29.
According to the transcript, he said, “It’s not just Fukushima, you know, people in Tochigi, Saitama, Tokyo, Kanagawa, people who were there should not marry at all costs”, and “If they get married and have children, the rate of deformity in babies will skyrocket.”
協会によると、録音を書き起こした内容で、県内の各報道機関に送った。
According to the Society, the document is a transcript from the recording, and it has been sent to news organizations in Fukushima Prefecture.
To Fukushima Minpo, Mr. Ikeya admitted that he had made these remarks, and argued, “I don’t think it’s discriminatory against people in Fukushima.” As to his insistence in the past that he hadn’t said anything like that, he answered, “I meant I hadn’t said anything discriminatory.”
Mr. Ikeya is a practicing veterinarian. The “Policy” lecture has been given once a year or so since 2003, and it was the 12th this year. 80 to 100 politicians from municipalities and citizens who aspire to become politicians participate. Last year’s lecture was canceled due to the March 11 disaster, and this year’s lecture was the first since the disaster.
Accusation that Mr. Ikeya is discriminating against Fukushima is not really true, as Mr. Ikeya is saying the same for four other prefectures in Kanto.
Well at least Mr. Ikeya is a veterinarian, remotely qualified (I suppose) to comment on something medical. The only (human) medical experts who expressed outrage are so-called “government experts” (including Professor Noboru Takamura of Nagasaki University and Fukushima Prefecture Radiation Health Risk Management Advisor who spoke soothing words to Iitate-mura villagers right after the accident, and Professor Masahiro Fukushi of Tokyo Metropolitan University who measured radiation levels in meals with faulty germanium semiconductor detector for NHK program), which is taken by many net citizens on Twitter to mean Mr. Ikeya must be telling the truth.
Never mind that Mr. Ikeya’s expertise is with sick animals.
The Japanese government and government institutions and its experts have only themselves to blame for the deep distrust of anything that has to do with the government for an off-hand remark by a veterinarian to be taken seriously as the truth.
Two men in Missouri who became severely ill after sustaining tick bites were found to be infected with a new type of virus, according to a study from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Both men were admitted to hospitals after experiencing high fevers, fatigue, diarrhea and loss of appetite. They were originally thought to be suffering from a bacterial infection, but doubts arose when they didn’t improve after being treated with antibiotics.
Further tests revealed their blood contained a new virus, which the researchers dubbed the Heartland virus. It belongs to a group called phleboviruses, which are carried by flies, mosquitoes or ticks, and can cause disease in humans.
(Reuters) – Some 10,000 people who stayed in tent cabins at Yosemite National Park this summer may be at risk for the deadly rodent-borne hantavirus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.
The CDC urged lab testing of patients who exhibit symptoms consistent with the lung disease, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, after a stay at the California park between June and August and recommended that doctors notify state health departments when it is found.
Two men have died from hantavirus linked to the Yosemite outbreak and four others were sickened but survived, while the CDC said additional suspected cases were being investigated from “multiple health jurisdictions.”
Most of the victims were believed to have been infected while staying in one of 91 “Signature” tent-style cabins in Yosemite’s popular Curry Village camping area.
“An estimated 10,000 persons stayed in the ‘Signature Tent Cabins’ from June 10 through August 24, 2012,” the CDC said. “People who stayed in the tents between June 10 and August 24 may be at risk of developing HPS in the next six weeks.”
Yosemite officials earlier this week shut down all 91 of the insulated tent cabins after finding deer mice, which carry the disease and can burrow through holes the size of pencil erasers, nesting between the double walls.
Park authorities said on Friday that they had contacted approximately 3,000 parties of visitors who stayed in the tent cabins since mid-June, advising them to seek immediate medical attention if they have symptoms of hantavirus.
Nearly 4 million people visit Yosemite, one of the nation’s most popular national parks, each year, attracted to the its dramatic scenery and hiking trails. Roughly 70 percent of those visitors congregate in Yosemite Valley, where Curry Village is located.
YOSEMITE LOGS 1,500 CALLS
The virus starts out causing flu-like symptoms, including headache, fever, muscle ache, shortness of breath and cough, and can lead to severe breathing difficulties and death.
The incubation period for the virus is typically two to four weeks after exposure, the CDC said, with a range between a few days and six weeks. Just over a third of cases are fatal.
“Providers are reminded to consider the diagnosis of HPS in all persons presenting with clinically compatible illness and to ask about potential rodent exposure or if they had recently visited Yosemite National Park,” the CDC said.
Although there is no cure for hantavirus, which has never been known to be transmitted between humans, treatment after early detection through blood tests can save lives.
“Early medical attention and diagnosis of hantavirus are critical,” Yosemite superintendent Don Neubacher said in a statement. “We urge anyone who may have been exposed to the infection to see their doctor at the first sign of symptoms and to advise them of the potential of hantavirus.”
Yosemite spokeswoman Kari Cobb said rangers have answered some 1,500 phone calls from park visitors and others concerned about the disease. But she said the outbreak had not triggered a wave of cancellations
“Right now it’s normal numbers for Friday,” she said. “There have been cancellations, but it would be grossly overstated to say they’re cancelling en masse. There’s quite a bit of people out there still. It’s still summer and a holiday weekend. It’s still the summer crowds.”
A national park service officials has said that public health officials warned the park twice before about hantavirus after it struck visitors. But it was not until this week that the hiding place for the deer mice carrying the virus was found.
Hantavirus is carried in rodent feces, urine and saliva, which dries out and mixes with dust that can be inhaled by humans, especially in small, confined spaces with poor ventilation.
People can also be infected by eating contaminated food, touching contaminated surfaces or being bitten by infected rodents.
(Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Todd Eastham and Lisa Shumaker)
In the first confirmed case of bubonic plague in Colorado since 2006, an Archuleta County resident has tested positive for the disease. The last human case in Archuleta County, which borders on New Mexico, was in 1998. It is believed that the person contracted the plague during a family outing in the Cimarrona Campground northwest of Pagosa Springs, but the investigation is ongoing, according to a news release from the San Juan Basin Health Department. The gender and age of the victim were not released, the paper reported. In 2006, Colorado had four cases of plague, all in La Plata County, Joe Fowler, a disease-control nurse with the San Juan Basin Health Department said. Most human cases of plague tend to occur in rural areas in two regions — northern Arizona and New Mexico and southern Colorado or in California, southern Oregon and western Nevada. One human case has been reported in New Mexico so far this year – in a 78-year-old Torrance County man who contracted the disease in May, in what state health officials called the nation’s first human plague case of the yea
Biohazard name:
Plague
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
A case of adult chicken pox has emerged at SF State. A school-wide email was sent out by Alastair K. Smith, MD to SF State students Aug. 31, saying that there is a student with a case of the chickenpox. Though the student infected does not live on campus, they were on campus August 27 and 29, visiting the Creative Arts building, Humanities building, Science building, Business building, Burk Hall and Bookstore during their infected stage. Varicella, commonly known as chickenpox, is a virus which symptoms include fever, tiredness, headaches and a rash that turns into itchy, fluid-filled blisters that scab after several days. Chickenpox is a condition that is spread by airborne particles, sweat and skin-to-skin contact. Scott Hongsweet, junior at SF State, had chickenpox when he was 4 years old, but is not concerned about the recent developments. “I’ve had chickenpox and it was like having bug bites all over your body,” said Hongsweet. “Though it was super itchy, I wouldn’t be weary of going to school if there was a person with chickenpox there, because the chances of me getting it are very slim.”The incubation period for chickenpox is 14 to 16 days and is infectious until five or six days after the onset of the rash, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection. Varicella carries the most complications for people over 15 years of age and under one year of age. Overall, it is estimated that adults account for 5 percent for reported cases of varicella but may carry the most risk, according to the CDC. SF State isn’t the only university in the bay area that has experienced a health scare among the student body. The University of California at Berkeley had a mumps scare during October where seven students were infected. Pregnant and immune-compromised people are at a high risk for infection, and persons who are not immune are suggested to get a dose of the varicella vaccine within three to five days of exposure. Smith addressed in the email to the school: “We are monitoring the situation carefully, and given that most persons have immunity through childhood exposure or vaccination, we do not expect a major outbreak on campus.” Beth Cross, junior at SF State, isn’t the least bit worried about chickenpox at her school. “I am not worried about the disease on campus…I am sure there are way worse diseases on campus,” said Cross.
Biohazard name:
Chickenpox
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2012) — A cost analysis of the technologies needed to transport materials into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting Earth and therefore reduce the effects of global climate change has shown that they are both feasible and affordable.
Published August 31, 2012, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, the study has shown that the basic technology currently exists and could be assembled and implemented in a number of different forms for less than USD $5 billion a year.
Put into context, the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions is currently estimated to be between 0.2 and 2.5 per cent of GDP in the year 2030, which is equivalent to roughly USD $200 to $2000 billion.
Solar radiation management (SRM) looks to induce the effects similar to those observed after volcanic eruptions; however, the authors state that it is not a preferred strategy and that such a claim could only be made after the thorough investigation of the implications, risks and costs associated with these issues.
The authors caution that reducing incident sunlight does nothing at all to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, nor the resulting increase in the acid content of the oceans. They note that other research has shown that the effects of solar radiation management are not uniform, and would cause different temperature and precipitation changes in different countries.
Co-author of the study, Professor Jay Apt, said: “As economists are beginning to explore the role of several types of geoengineering, it is important that a cost analysis of SRM is carried out. The basic feasibility of SRM with current technology is still being disputed and some political scientists and policy makers are concerned about unilateral action.”
In the study, the researchers, from Aurora Flight Sciences, Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University, performed an engineering cost analysis on six systems capable of delivering 1-5 million metric tonnes of material to altitudes of 18-30 km: existing aircraft, a new airplane designed to perform at altitudes up to 30 km, a new hybrid airship, rockets, guns and suspended pipes carrying gas or slurry to inject the particles into the atmosphere.
Based on existing research into solar radiation management, the researchers performed their cost analyses for systems that could deliver around one million tonnes of aerosols each year at an altitude between 18 and 25 km and between a latitude range of 30°N and 30°S.
The study concluded that using aircraft is easily within the current capabilities of aerospace engineering, manufacturing and operations. The development of new, specialized aircraft appeared to be the cheapest option, with costs of around $1 to $2 billion a year; existing aircraft would be more expensive as they are not optimized for high altitudes and would need considerable and expensive modifications to do so.
Guns and rockets appeared to be capable of delivering materials at high altitudes but the costs associated with these are much higher than those of airplanes and airships due to their lack of reusability.
Although completely theoretical at this point in time, a large gas pipe, rising to 20 km in the sky and suspended by helium-filled floating platforms, would offer the lowest recurring cost-per-kilogram of particles delivered but the costs of research into the materials required, the development of the pipe and the testing to ensure safety, would be high; the whole system carries a large uncertainty.
Professor Apt continued: “We hope our study will help other scientists looking at more novel methods for dispersing particles and help them to explore methods with increased efficiency and reduced environmental risk.”
The researchers make it clear that they have not sought to address the science of aerosols in the stratosphere, nor issues of risk, effectiveness or governance that will add to the costs of solar radiation management geoengineering.
Inspired by the nearly-full moon, space station astronauts used an 800 mm lens to study the craters and mare in this picture taken on Oct. 5, 2001.
CREDIT: NASA
The night skies this week have been very bright thanks to the moon, and they’ll get brighter still on Friday as a blue moon rises above the horizon.
The moon won’t literally be blue-colored, of course; the name refers to the second full moon to occur in a single month.
Blue moons happen because our calendar months don’t line up exactly with the moon’s orbit. It takes the moon 29.5 days to wax and wane from full to new to full again. With the exception of February, months are longer than that, meaning that every so often the timing works out so there are two full moons in one month.
The first full moon of August 2012 graced night skies on Aug. 1; for most of the world, the second just squeezes in at the end of the month, with the moon becoming full at exactly 9:58 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (6:58 a.m. Pacific Standard Time).
Though a blue moon looks the same as any other full moon, the moon can actually appear to be colored under particular atmospheric conditions: Forest fires and volcanic eruptions can pump smoke and ash into the atmosphere, which can make the moon appear a bluish hue to those standing on the Earth’s surface.
Two white dwarfs similar to those in the system SDSS J065133.338+284423.37 spiral together in this illustration from NASA. Credit: D. Berry/NASA GSFC
Locked in a spiraling orbital embrace, the super-dense remains of two dead stars are giving astronomers the evidence needed to confirm one of Einstein’s predictions about the Universe.
A binary system located about 3,000 light-years away, SDSS J065133.338+284423.37 (J0651 for short) contains two white dwarfs orbiting each other rapidly — once every 12.75 minutes. The system was discovered in April 2011, and since then astronomers have had their eyes — and four separate telescopes in locations around the world — on it to see if gravitational effects first predicted by Einstein could be seen.
According to Einstein, space-time is a structure in itself, in which all cosmic objects — planets, stars, galaxies — reside. Every object with mass puts a “dent” in this structure in all dimensions; the more massive an object, the “deeper” the dent. Light energy travels in a straight line, but when it encounters these dents it can dip in and veer off-course, an effect we see from Earth as gravitational lensing.
Einstein also predicted that exceptionally massive, rapidly rotating objects — such as a white dwarf binary pair — would create outwardly-expanding ripples in space-time that would ultimately “steal” kinetic energy from the objects themselves. These gravitational waves would be very subtle, yet in theory, observable.
What researchers led by a team at The University of Texas at Austin have found is optical evidence of gravitational waves slowing down the stars in J0651. Originally observed in 2011 eclipsing each other (as seen from Earth) once every six minutes, the stars now eclipse six seconds sooner. This equates to a predicted orbital period reduction of about 0.25 milliseconds each year.*
“These compact stars are orbiting each other so closely that we have been able to observe the usually negligible influence of gravitational waves using a relatively simple camera on a 75-year-old telescope in just 13 months,” said study lead author J.J. Hermes, a graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin.
Based on these measurements, by April 2013 the stars will be eclipsing each other 20 seconds sooner than first observed. Eventually they will merge together entirely.
Although this isn’t “direct” observation of gravitational waves, it is evidence inferred by their predicted effects… akin to watching a floating lantern in a dark pond at night moving up and down and deducing that there are waves present.
“It’s exciting to confirm predictions Einstein made nearly a century ago by watching two stars bobbing in the wake caused by their sheer mass,” said Hermes.
As of early last year NASA and ESA had a proposed mission called LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) that would have put a series of 3 detectors into space 5 million km apart, connected by lasers. This arrangement of precision-positioned spacecraft could have detected any passing gravitational waves in the local space-time neighborhood, making direct observation possible. Sadly this mission was canceled due to FY2012 budget cuts for NASA, but ESA is moving ahead with developments for its own gravitational wave mission, called eLISA/NGO — the first “pathfinder” portion of which is slated to launch in 2014.
The study was submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters on August 24. Read more on the McDonald Observatory news release here.
Inset image: simulation of binary black holes causing gravitational waves – C. Reisswig, L. Rezzolla (AEI); Scientific visualization – M. Koppitz (AEI & Zuse Institute Berlin)
*The difference in the eclipse time is noted as six seconds even though the orbital period decay of the two stars is only .25 milliseconds/year because of a pile-up effect of all the eclipses observed since April 2011. The measurements made by the research team takes into consideration the phase change in the J0651 system, which experiences a piling effect — similar to an out-of-sync watch — that increases relative to time^2 and is therefore a larger and easier number to detect and work with. Once that was measured, the actual orbital period decay could be figured out.
GREENCASTLE, Ind. (AP) — Residents of a central Indiana county have reported nearly 100 dead deer in what wildlife officials believe might be a disease outbreak.
An Indiana Department of Natural Resources biologist says most of those dead deer have been found in southern Putnam County.
Biologist Dean Zimmerman tells the Banner Graphic ( ) that 17 counties around the state have had suspected cases of epizootic hemorrhagic disease among deer, although Putnam County seems to have a large outbreak.
The illness is a viral disease transmitted by small flies that typically occurs during late summer and early fall. It doesn’t affect humans.
Zimmerman says the flies that carry the disease reproduce more successfully in dry weather and that it will take a killing frost to end the outbreak.
The Kyrgyz Health Ministry said Friday five people had tested positive for anthrax. The five were among nine people who had been hospitalized in the central Asian country for anthrax-like symptoms in the past month, a health ministry spokesman said. Quarantine authorities had adopted counter-epidemic measures in the infectious disease-hit areas, where people as well as livestock had been given a vaccination against the bacteria, the spokesman said.
Biohazard name:
Anthrax
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
31.08.2012
Biological Hazard
Portugal
Municipality of Almada, [Costa da Caparica beaces]
Three beaches in Costa da Caparica just south of Lisbon were closed to bathers over the weekend due to an abundance of Portuguese Man-of-War jellyfish like looking creatures in the sea after a child was stung, the Maritime Police (MP) said. Red flags were raised to warn beach-goers not to enter the water and any people who do not obey the prohibition may be fined by the authorities. According to Wikipedia, despite its outward appearance the Man of War is not a jellyfish, but a siphonophore, which differs from jellyfish in that it is not actually a single creature, but a colonial organism made up of many minute individuals called zooids. Its long tentacles are poisonous enough nevertheless and well kept away from. This follows the release of a video on sites such as Youtube and Sapo showing a large shark off the coast near Lisbon. According to the Coast Guard, there is no reason to be alarmed, as it was just a Basking Shark that eats plankton and krill. Basking sharks, as their name suggests, like to bask in the sun on the surface of the water and are quite inoffensive to humans. Élio Vicente from Zoomarine in the Algarve said Basking Sharks and Whale Sharks are common round the coast of Portugal, but offer no risk to swimmers. “The hot weather heats the deep water creating more algae drawing in more ‘vegetarian sharks’” he said. These creatures have been here for thousands of years without harming anyone, he added, they just get a bad reputation from the term ‘shark’.
Biohazard name:
Portuguese Man-of-War jellyfish invasion
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Out of the 36 patients, who underwent prophylactic treatment after identification of the anthrax hot bed in Zaporizhia region, currently two of them are remaining under supervision of physicians. “Today we can say that everything is fine with the people: out of 36 people, who received preventive treatment, only two are under the supervision of doctors now. They are a man and a woman from Voznesenka village, who had contacted the infected animal and were hospitalized immediately after the accident. Currently, they have no manifestations of disease, but to make sure that the health condition of these people is good, we should get the results of laboratory tests and withstand a certain period,” chief medical officer of Zaporizhia region Anatoly Sevalnev said. According to the deputy head of the Main Department for Veterinary Medicine in Zaporizhia region Serhit Dehtiarenko, the quarantine measures will continue until September 5.
Biohazard name:
Anthrax
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Streaks of red tide – a toxic algal bloom that threatens both marine life – were clearly visible in Noyac Bay during a flyover on Thursday. Aerial photographer Jeff Cully captured images of red tide lining the shore at Long Beach. Red tide has appeared in Long Island waters every summer since 2004, Chris Gobler, Ph.D., told Patch earlier this month, when the algal bloom made its first showing of the year. Gobler, a Stony Brook Southampton School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences professor, said red tide typically appears in late August, but this summer it was detected in late July. The early arrival could be attributed to high temperatures this summer, he said. “This red tide is caused by the dinoflagellate, cochlodinium,” Gobler explained. “Cochlodinium is not a human health threat but is highly toxic to marine life. Fish exposed to dense cochlodinium blooms cannot survive more than one to six hours, depending on their size. We have had fish die at the Southampton marine lab when our intake system brought in red tide water.” After patches of red tide have passed through, pound net fisherman have found that catches have died off, he added. The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, thanks to $3 million in grants, announced Monday a plan to restore the health of another local bay, Shinnecock, by seeding eelgrass and shellfish beds in strategic areas where they are most likely to thrive. Shellfish filter algae from water, but their populations in Long Island waters have declined in recent decades, a trend marine sciences hope to turn around. If the effort proves successful, it could be implemented in other distressed bodies of water, both locally and around the world. Research demonstrates that algal blooms are made worse by an increased flow of nitrogen into the bays, from sources such as cesspools and fertilizers, Gobler said.
Biohazard name:
Red Tide
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
Nearly 1,000 earthquakes recorded in Arizona over 3 years Enlarge Nearly 60 USArray stations were installed in Arizona from 2006 to 2009 as part of the EarthScope project. Station 118A, seen in this photo, recorded ground motion north of Wilcox in southeastern Arizona from April 6, 2007 to Jan. 21, 2009. Credit: Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (funded by NSF EarthScope) Arizona State University researchers use EarthScope data to build the first comprehensive earthquake catalog for Arizona. Ads by Google Emergency Mgmt. Degree – Earn an emergency management degree online at AMU. Enroll now. – http://www.AMU.APUS.edu/EmergencyMgmt Earthquakes are among the most destructive and common of geologic phenomena. Several million earthquakes are estimated to occur worldwide each year (the vast majority are too small to feel, but their motions can be measured by arrays of seismometers). Historically, most of Arizona has experienced low levels of recorded seismicity, with infrequent moderate and large earthquakes in the state. Comprehensive analyses of seismicity within Arizona have not been previously possible due to a lack of seismic stations in most regions, contributing to the perception that widespread earthquakes in Arizona are rare. Debunking that myth, a new study published by Arizona State University researchers found nearly 1,000 earthquakes rattling the state over a three-year period. Jeffrey Lockridge, a graduate student in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and the project’s lead researcher, used new seismic data collected as part of the EarthScope project to develop methods to detect and locate small-magnitude earthquakes across the entire state of Arizona. EarthScope’s USArray Transportable Array was deployed within Arizona from April 2006 to March 2009 and provided the first opportunity to examine seismicity on a statewide scale. Its increased sensitivity allowed Lockridge to find almost 1,000 earthquakes during the three-year period, including many in regions of Arizona that were previously thought to be seismically inactive. “It is significant that we found events in areas where none had been detected before, but not necessarily surprising given the fact that many parts of the state had never been sampled by seismometers prior to the deployment of the EarthScope USArray,” says Lockridge. “I expected to find some earthquakes outside of north-central Arizona, where the most and largest events had previously been recorded, just not quite so many in other areas of the state.” Ads by Google ITT Tech – Official Site – Convenient Schedules, Over 130 Locations. Browse New Programs. – http://www.ITT-Tech.edu One-thousand earthquakes over three years may sound alarmingly high, but the large number of earthquakes detected in the study is a direct result of the improved volume and quality of seismic data provided by EarthScope. Ninety-one percent of the earthquakes Lockridge detected in Arizona were “microquakes” with a magnitude of 2.0 or smaller, which are not usually felt by humans. Detecting small-magnitude earthquakes is not only important because some regions experiencing small earthquakes may produce larger earthquakes, but also because geologists use small magnitude earthquakes to map otherwise hidden faults beneath the surface. Historically, the largest earthquakes and the majority of seismicity recorded within Arizona have been located in an area of north–central Arizona. More recently, a pair of magnitude 4.9 and 5.3 earthquakes occurred in the Cataract Creek area outside of Flagstaff. Earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or larger also have occurred in other areas of the state, including a magnitude 4.2 earthquake in December 2003 in eastern Arizona and a magnitude 4.9 earthquake near Chino Valley in 1976. “The wealth of data provided by the EarthScope project is an unprecedented opportunity to detect and locate small-magnitude earthquakes in regions where seismic monitoring (i.e. seismic stations) has historically been sparse,” explains Lockridge. “Our study is the first to use EarthScope data to build a regional catalog that detects all earthquakes magnitude 1.2 or larger.” His results appear in a paper titled, “Seismicity within Arizona during the Deployment of the EarthScope USArray Transportable Array,” published in the August 2012 issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. Ramon Arrowsmith and Matt Fouch, professors in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, are Lockridge’s dissertation advisors and coauthors on the paper. Fouch is also a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, DC. “The most surprising result was the degree to which the EarthScope data were able to improve upon existing catalogs generated by regional and national networks. From April 2007 through November 2008, other networks detected only 80 earthquakes within the state, yet over that same time we found 884 earthquakes, or 11 times as many, which is really quite staggering,” says Lockridge. “It’s one of countless examples of how powerful the EarthScope project is and how much it is improving our ability to study Earth.” Lockridge is also lead author on a study that focuses on a cluster of earthquakes located east of Phoenix, near Theodore Roosevelt Lake. The results from this study will be published in Seismological Research Letters later this year. In his current studies as doctoral student, Lockridge is using the same methods used for Arizona to develop a comprehensive earthquake catalog for the Great Basin region in Nevada and western Utah. Provided by Arizona State University search and more info website
Possibly volcanic SO2 plumes over Costa Rica on 11 Aug (NOAA)
Activity has decreased at White Island. Ash emissions have been lower than in the previous days. Gas measurements showed that all volcanic gases were at levels lower than the previous measurement on August 1.
Tongariro volcano has stayed calm with and GNS scientists think that the most likely scenario is that the 6 Aug eruption was a single event and will not be followed by new eruptions in the near to medium future.
A “new” volcano just entered the watch list:
Out in the Pacific, a pilot observed an ash cloud rising from Tofua volcano to 3,000 ft (ca. 1 km) in the Tonga Islands at 04:42 GMT, VAAC Wellington reports.
El Hierro volcano: A total of 5 earthquakes (between M1.3-2.4) at 10-19 km depth has occurred today so far. This is the highest number in many days.
Activity remains weak at Popocatépetl in Mexico. About 1 weak eruption per hour has been observed during the past day by CENAPRED. SO2 emissions remain high (which is typical for Popo during phases of activity).
An elevated SO2 plume was visible above Costa Rica’s Central valley on NOAA’s SO2 monitoring images. It could have been caused by stronger degassing activity of the volcanoes Poas or Turrialba, both of which have been showing increased activity in 2011-12, but seem to have calmed down in the past months. Another SO2 signal is visible about 100 km east of Rincon de la Vieja and could have originated there. The Costa Rican volcano observatory doesn’t mention any unusual activity.
Santiaguito / Santa Maria (Guatemala): An explosion at 05:49 local tie ejected an 800 m high ash plume and caused ash fall at Finca la Florida and around San Marcos Palajunoj. Only few and weak rock avalanches were reported since yesterday.
For Fuego volcano, INSIVUMEH reports 8 weak explosions during the past day, generating ash columns of 200-500 m height.
The lava flow in direction of Taniluya canyon has further advances and is now 300 m long and generates constant rock avalanches. Avalanches, too, have been observed towards the “Ash” (Ceniza) canyon.
In Colombia, sporadic gas and ash emissions continue to occur at Galeras and tremor signals are sometimes visible on the seismograms. Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia): Steam and ash emissions continue at Nevado del Ruiz at fluctuating intensity. This morning a fresh ash deposit was found at the volcano observatory.
The seimic recordings show tremor and a seismic swarm with 30 quakes since 22:27 local time last night, located NE of the Arenas crater between 3-5 km, in the same area as the previous swarm on 12 August.
Reventador volcano in Ecuador ejects a 1.5 km high steam plume, but IG mentions no explosions or ash. Tungurahua volcano continues to emit a steam plume with small amounts of ash, and has occasional small to moderate explosions accompanied by gunshot sounds heard around the volcano.
Jumping to the far north, there is little new activity to be reported from volcanoes in Kamchatka, the Kuriles, Aleutians and in Alaska. It is rather surprising that this normally very area has stayed quite calm over the past week.
Midway on its 800-kilometer (500-mile) voyage from Auckland to Raoul Island, New Zealand, the HMNZS Canterbury received an intriguing report: a maritime patrol aircraft had spotted a vast area of open ocean covered with floating pumice. Soon after, the ship was sailing through a mass of buoyant volcanic rocks. Up to two feet thick, the pumice raft was about half a nautical mile (1 kilometer) wide, and “extended sideways as far as the eye could see,” wrote Rebecca Priestley, a science writer aboard the ship. Although the lightweight, gas-filled pumice posed no threat to the Canterbury, enough got stuck in the water filters to provide samples for analysis.
Though the pumice was spread over a vast area of the South Pacific, the origin was a mystery to the crew of the ship. An undersea volcano several hundred kilometers to the north of the pumice—Monowai—had erupted on August 3, but an airline pilot reported seeing pumice as early as August 1. Two data sources provided clues to pinpoint the volcano: earthquake records and satellite imagery. After reports of the pumice rafts surfaced, scientists from Tahiti and New Zealand’s GNS Science connected the eruption with a cluster of earthquakes in the Kermadec Islands on July 17 and 18.
Working independently of GNS, volcanologist Erik Klemetti and NASA visualizer Robert Simmon examined a month’s worth of satellite imagery from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). They discovered the first signs of the eruption—ash-stained water, gray pumice, and a volcanic plume—in imagery from 9:50 a.m. and 2:10 p.m. (local time) on July 19, 2012. (Although the Kermadec Islands are east of the International Date Line, they follow New Zealand time.)
Hidden by clouds in the morning image (above, top), the site of the eruption is clearly visible in the afternoon image (lower). Klemetti matched the satellite imagery with ocean floor bathymetry to identify Havre Seamount as the likely source. The eruption was strong enough to breach the ocean surface from a depth of 1,100 meters (3,600 feet).
Alain Bernard of the Laboratoire de Volcanologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles analyzed nighttime imagery from MODIS and found heat from the eruption at 10:50 p.m. on July 18, 2012, the earliest evidence of the Havre Seamount eruption reaching the ocean surface.
By July 21, the eruption appeared to have waned, leaving behind the dense rafts of pumice. Winds and currents spread the pumice into a series of twisted filaments, spread over an area about 450 by 250 kilometers (280 by 160 miles) as of August 13.
A severe storm swept through Calgary and area this afternoon, bringing hail, torrential downpours and wind gusts reaching more than 100 kilometres per hour that left broken windows and fallen trees in its wake. The worst of the storm has passed Calgary, says CBC meteorologist Danielle Savoni. “At this point it’s starting to change over into just the rain and some embedded thunderstorms, but those embedded thunderstorms are nowhere near as severe as what we’ve seen.” Some window washers got caught on a platform on the 22nd floor on an office building on 5th Avenue S.W. Tara Sukut was in her office a floor below. “You could hear the window washers outside yelling, get us off here, get us out of here,” says Sukut. “And a couple minutes later we just heard glass smashing. And you could see it was banging on the window down on our floor. They broke the windows to get inside the building.” The Calgary Fire Department’s high-angle rescue unit was called in to help the three window washers. Sukut’s interview with the CBC’s Elizabeth Snaddon can be heard in the player below.
NEW: National Guard activated in Washington, will provide air support
An Idaho firefighter is killed battling a blaze; two others are hurt in Oregon and California
In all, 62 fires are burning
Are wildfires blazing near you? Send in your photos and videos to CNN iReport, but please stay safe.
(CNN) — Whipped by high winds, wildfires in central Washington state have scorched 28,000 acres and destroyed at least 60 buildings, officials said Tuesday.
Gov. Chris Gregoire declared Kittitas and Yakima counties to be in states of emergency, according to a written statement from her office. The Washington National Guard will provide air support to the Department of Natural Resources, which is in charge of statewide firefighting efforts.
The fire raging near Cle Elum is one of several Western fires burning this week.
Colorado paid the price earlier this summer. Now, new wildfires are burning through sagebrush, grass and beetle-killed lodgepole pines in California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington and Idaho.
In all, 62 fires, including 16 new large fires, were burning as of Tuesday, the U.S. Forest Service reported. They have destroyed dozens of homes and are threatening many more.
Tearful wildfire victim: ‘Nothing left’
Wildfires destroy homes in Oklahoma
Washington’s Taylor Bridge Fire began as a brush fire Monday afternoon. By Tuesday afternoon more than 20,000 acres, or 31 square miles, were burned.
Authorities have already evacuated between 900 people near the Taylor Bridge Fire, the governor’s office said. There was no report of any injuries.
“The fire behavior I would classify as extreme,” Rex Reed, the incident commander, earlier Tuesday. “Extreme fire conditions. We expect a very busy day. Very rapid rates of spread. There are multiple heads on this fire.”
He said authorities were working to activate National Guard troops to assist in the operation in Kittitas County.
In Idaho, a blaze has killed a 20-year-old firefighter. Two other firefighters have been injured in Oregon and California.
Anne Veseth died Sunday while fighting the Steep Canyon Fire near Orofino, said Phil Sammon of the Forest Service. He said the death was accidental but could not confirm how it happened.
On Tuesday, the fire danger spiked with searing temperatures and single-digit humidity across Western states. In some places, winds were gusting up to 40 miles per hour.
More than 750 firefighters and support personnel were working in Oregon and Nevada to corral the 418,235-acre Holloway Fire, the largest of the Western wildfires ignited by a lightning strike on August 5.
“We saw huge fire whorls all night,” said Fred Kaninski, fire behavior analyst for the Holloway Fire. “It was burning like daytime.”
On Monday, firefighters battled flames that measured 2 to 8 feet high. On occasion, they reported seeing 15-foot flames.
The northeast flank of the fire burned into Oregon Canyon, where a firefighter suffered burns to the leg and forearm and minor smoke inhalation, the Bureau of Land Management said.
The injured firefighter was rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Winnemucca, Nevada, and was released Sunday night. She is being sent to a burn center in Salt Lake City for further evaluation, the bureau said.
In California, a pair of fires north of San Francisco in Lake County burned 7,000 acres and were 30% contained Tuesday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Two buildings were destroyed and one was damaged, CNN affiliate KGO reported. An additional 480 homes are threatened, and a firefighter was injured while battling the flames, said Julie Hutchinson of the state’s forestry and fire department. She did not have information on the status of the injured firefighter.
Meteorologists predict the dry heat will last into next week — not good news for firefighters. Any thunderstorms that pop up could present more bad news than good, since lightning strikes could spark more flames.
However, rain doused the killer Waldo Canyon Fire that blazed out of control through parts of Colorado for many weeks this summer. On Tuesday, Colorado was not on the national map for large fires.
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Wildfires raged across Colorado earlier this summer. Now California, Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon are feeling the heat. On August 14, 2012, numerous fires blazed across the four western states, burning through everything from sagebrush to grass to beetle-killed lodgepole pine forests.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of the fires on Aug 11, 2012. Red outlines indicate hot spots where MODIS detected unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fires.
Three large fires burned through coniferous forests in northern California: the Reading fire in Lassen Volcanic National Park, the Chips fire in Plumas National Forest, and the Fort Complex fire in Klamath National Forest. The largest of the three (Chips) had consumed 57 square miles (148 square kilometers) and was 12 percent contained by August 14. The Reading fire had consumed 37 square miles and was 15 percent contained, whereas the Fort Complex Fire had burned 3 square miles and was 10 percent contained. All three were ignited by lightning. In Oregon, lightning also sparked the Barry Point fire, which had burned 68 square miles.
In northern Nevada, the Holloway, Hansen, and Willow fires burned through grass, brush, and sagebrush. The Holloway fire was the largest and had burned 676 square miles by August 14. The Willow and Hanson fires had burned 67 square miles and 20 square miles respectively. All three were ignited by lightning on August 5.
In Idaho, the Halstead fire burned through stands of beetle-killed lodgepole pines in Salmon-Challis National Forest. It had consumed 81 square miles. To the south, the Trinity Ridge fire had burned about 58 square miles. Lightning ignited the Halstead fire on July 27, whereas human activity started the Trinity Ridge fire.
According to statistics compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center, a total of 9,400 square miles had burned in the United States through August 14. That was above the ten-year average for that date, which was 7,750 square miles.
A fast-moving wildfire stoked by triple-digit temperatures burned 3,000 acres Tuesday in the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains, creeping perilously close to tinder-dry areas of the San Bernardino National Forest, officials said. At least four structures, including one home, were destroyed by the blaze, which spread rapidly through dry brush and grasslands in a sparsely populated area south of Hemet and east of Temecula. The fire, just 5% contained as of Tuesday evening, was spreading rapidly through the rocky hills and desert scrub, and was within a mile of forest lands west of Anza, where drought has heightened fire danger all summer. “Of course we’re concerned,” said John Miller, spokesman for the San Bernardino National Forest. “This year our big concern is the fact that rainfall and that includes snow for our forest was somewhere between 50% to 70% of normal.” Mandatory evacuations were ordered in the sparsely populated area near Aguanga, and more than 30 homes have been evacuated, according to Jody Hagemann of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries and were taken to a hospital, according to radio dispatch reports. One man who lived in a trailer was seriously burned and taken by helicopter to a local hospital. Authorities said the man, whose home was in a remote area, apparently had not received a notice to evacuate.South of the Riverside County fire, fast-moving blazes, some started by lightning strikes from heat-born thunderstorms, have burned more than 2,300 acres in northeast San Diego County, leading to evacuations in the rural communities of Ranchita and the San Felipe area off California 78. The four San Diego County fires are being fought by more than 500 firefighters, along with air tankers and water-dropping helicopters. No structures have yet been reported damaged. “We have very dry vegetation, brush and grass and things like that. Now we have multiple days of very high temperatures,” said Chief Julie Hutchinson, spokeswoman for the state fire agency. “It’s like lighting your fireplace with a blowtorch.” The fire in Riverside County was reported just before 1 p.m. in the community of Aguanga. More than 210 firefighters were working to extinguish the blaze, and six water-carrying helicopters and six water-tender aircraft as well as a DC-10 were assisting, state fire officials said. Crews from the Sierra Nevada mountains areas are being dispatched to assist firefighters. “That’s one thing that’s unique about California. We have a state fire agency, and we’re able to move resources up and down the state,” said Hutchinson, adding that crews from the U.S. Forest Service, local departments and the California National Guard are playing a role in the statewide firefighting efforts. Although flames are more than 14 miles away from Idyllwild, residents and fire officials in the artsy mountain community have been nervously watching television news reports.
Crews are monitoring a fire in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest that has charred an estimated 1,200 acres. The so-called Queen Fire was reported Monday night and forest officials say its cause is under investigation. The blaze is burning about 2 miles northeast of Superior in rocky, inaccessible terrain and crews are attacking the flames by air. Officials say the fire is burning grass and brush. There was immediate timetable Tuesday for containment of the blaze. Meanwhile, the forest is temporarily closing several areas because of the Mistake Peak fire 11 miles east of Basin. That fire began Aug. 8 and is 10% contained after burning about 3,400 acres by Tuesday. Tonto officials chose to temporarily close areas of the forest to protect the public and crews fighting the fire.
A second tropical storm in as many weeks battered the northern Philippines after making landfall Wednesday, killing at least two people, as forecasters warned that the still-reeling capital could see more flooding. Meanwhile, President Benigno Aquino III scrambled to avert another crisis when hundreds of state weather agency employees protested over their pay and warned that forecasting services could deteriorate. Tropical Storm Kai-Tak slammed ashore in northeastern Isabela province with maximum winds of 100 kilometers (60 miles) per hour and higher gusts. It is expected to traverse northern farming provinces and exit along Luzon Island’s western seaboard possibly as a powerful typhoon heading toward southern China in the direction of Hong Kong. The head of the disaster-relief agency, Benito Ramos, reported two deaths, including a man who drowned while swimming in Ilocos Norte province. He said some roads were flooded knee-deep, and government forecasters warned of intense rains that may drench the sprawling capital, Manila, which is still reeling from last week’s monsoon deluge. On Tuesday, an alarmed Aquino rushed to assure the protesting weather agency employees that steps were being taken to resume payment of the cash benefits that had been suspended in March. “I just reminded that since the weather is bad and we have a weather disturbance, we should not add to the worries of those who were hit by the floods,” Aquino told reporters after a hasty meeting with the restive employees.Forecasters and other employees of the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration wore black arm bands and hoisted streamers urging the government to resume hazard pay and other allowances. While the workers did not plan any work stoppage, protest leader Ramon Agustin said some hard-up employees had failed to report for work due to lack of money. “The only reason why we remain strong in performing our tasks is our pure love for the country, but this will eventually weaken,” Agustin said in a news conference at the weather agency, which buzzed with activity as forecasters tracked the second storm. The archipelago located in the tropical far western Pacific serves like a welcome mat for about 20 tropical storms and typhoons that develop in the open ocean and blow toward Asia every year. Heavy rain from those storms and the annual monsoon often cause flooding and landslides and leave a trail of death and destruction. Relentless rains for nearly two weeks culminated in last week’s two-day deluge that submerged Manila and outlying farming provinces, killing nearly 100 people and displacing more than 400,000. Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said payment of the hazard pay and other cash benefits had been suspended to correct past irregularities, but added the workers would get back the benefits soon. Agustin said the employees have lost an average of 10,000 pesos ($238) monthly since the benefits were suspended by officials in March.
The tornado then went back into the bay as a waterspout before briefly turning into a tornado for a second time as it came onshore at Barker’s Island, where it finally dissipated around 11:20 a.m. CDT.
The tornado was rated an EF-0 on the enhanced fujita scale, with winds from 65 to 85 mph. No damage was reported.
Nonetheless, the tornado is the first confirmed on record to touchdown in Duluth.
Thursday’s waterspout in Duluth, Minnesota is the city’s first tornado on record. (August 9, 2012)
Photo credit:
(NWS)
According to Carol Christenson, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the NWS, there hasn’t been a tornado in our city limits in recorded history, Northland NewsCenter reports.
“There was one outside of city limits back in 1986,” Christenson said.
The NWS says it appears the waterspout turned tornado developed near an inflection point along the leading edge of a strong surge of northeast winds and or small scale frontal boundary, which were enhanced by the very warm Lake Superior water temperatures.
A state of emergency has been declared by the James Smith Cree Nation following continued high rainfall and flooding. Local officials are calling for increased assistance from the federal and provincial governments. The drinking water of nine homes has been contaminated due to the high water levels and some roads have flooded over, says a news release issued Tuesday by James Smith. The continued rainfall is adding to the problems caused by last year’s flooding, said the release. “The high rains are destroying what’s left of our roads and water systems, and this is creating dangerous health conditions for our people, especially very young children and our elders,” said James Smith Chief Wally Burns. “We’ve been trying to get assistance since the 2011 flood, but have so far received minimal support.” Last month officials with the provincial disaster assistance program met with band leadership. The program provided $110,000 to repair damage from previous years of flooding, but the band estimates $3.2 million is needed. James Smith is located about 180 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.
View GalleryMysterious Louisiana Sinkhole Raises Concerns of Explosions and Radiation (ABC News)
A nearly 400-foot deep sinkhole in Louisiana has swallowed all of the trees in its area and enacted a mandatory evacuation order for about 150 residences for fear of potential radiation and explosions.
The 400-square-foot gaping hole is in Assumption Parish, La., about 50 miles south of Baton Rouge.
The sinkhole sits in the middle of a heavily wooded space where it has consumed all of the soaring cypress trees that had been there. Flyover photos show some of the treetops still visible through the mud.
Authorities enacted a mandatory evacuation for between 100 and150 homes in the area, but most people have chosen to stay, according to the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. If any of the dangers seem to become more imminent, the order will be escalated to a forced evacuation.
While officials are not certain what caused the massive sinkhole, they believe it may be have ben caused by a nearby salt cavern owned by the Texas Brine Company.
After being used for nearly 30 years, the cavern was plugged in 2011 and officials believe the integrity of the cavern may have somehow been compromised, leading to the sinkhole.
On Thursday, Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources required that Texas Brine drill a well to investigate the salt cavern as soon as possible, obtain samples from the cavern and provide daily reports on their findings. It could take up to 10 days to set up the drilling process, even with an expedited process.
“We have to arrange for the driller. We have to pick a location. We have to be very careful to not be in a point that’s too close to the sinkhole because of the weight of the rig,” Texas Brine Company spokesman Sonny Cranch told ABCNews.com today. “We don’t want to aggravate the situation.”
The sinkhole is on the outside edge of the salt dome where this particular brine well is located.
“There are some indications that it very well may have been connected, but there’s just indications,” Cranch said. “There’s nothing concrete that has connected the sinkhole to the cavern.”
There was bubbling in the water and the sinkhole is near areas where there has been exploration for oil and gas in the past, which would make the presence of low levels of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) possible.
The state’s Department of Environmental Quality said water samples from the sinkhole showed oil and diesel on its surface, but initial readings did not detect radiation.
In the days after the sinkhole opened up on Aug. 3, nearby Highway 70 was closed down because officials discovered that the sinkhole caused a 36-inch natural gas pipeline to bend and feared the possibility of an explosion, according to ABC News’ Baton Rouge affiliate WBRZ.
“That’s why the mandatory evacuation is going to stay on, because there is a risk for explosion,” John Boudreaux of from Assumption Parish Emergency Preparedness said at a meeting with residents on Tuesday, WBRZ reported.
“We are determined to do everything we can to find the answer,” president of Texas Brine Mark Cartwright told the residents.
Some community members were visibly frustrated with the situation and lack of answers.
“You can give us a straight answer because that’s all we want,” one woman said at the meeting. “We want to know when we can come home and be safe. Because you all go home after a days work. You’re safe, but we’re not.”
Gov. Bobby Jindal issued a declaration of emergency allowing the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security to assist in the efforts if necessary.
“This is extremely serious and it’s been going on for too long to still be at this point,” Kim Torres, spokeswoman for the Office of Emergency Preparedness, told ABCNews.com today. “The people are very aware of how serious this is.”
Prairie Island nuclear plant shut down Unit 1 after operators declared its two backup diesel generators inoperable Tuesday. Staff determined during routine testing that both generators had exhaust leaks, Xcel Energy media relations spokeswoman Mary Sandok confirmed. That deemed them inoperable, and the plant filed an incident report of the safe shutdown with the Nuclear Regulatory Plant. Prairie Island has other backup protection, including diesel generators and turbine-driven and portable pumps, the company said in the statement issued at 2:30 p.m. There was no radiation leak or danger to the public. Prairie Island Tribal Council President Johnny Johnson called the loss of both generators “not acceptable.” “A failure of the back-up diesel generators can affect all other safety features that rely on the electricity that they generate,” he said. The plant has had more than 30 reported incidents of failing equipment, security breaches, human performance problems and operating errors in recent years, he said. The emergency diesel generators did not fail, Sandok said. Plant workers test equipment regularly, and during this week’s test they determined both generators had defects. “When it comes to important equipment, the nuclear industry has no tolerance for any imperfections, so operators shut the unit down to repair the generators,” she said. As of 7 p.m. Tuesday, one diesel was operable and the other one was repaired and awaiting testing. “Despite these assurances, today’s unplanned shutdown – and the unusual white steam clouds released throughout the day during the reactor shutdown – are ominous reminders of the fact that the 40-year-old Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant operating a half-mile from our homes relies on aging technology,” Johnson said. An unrelated outage also occurred Tuesday at the Monticello plant to repair a gasket on a pipe flange. The plant had been operating at 10 percent power since the weekend as workers investigated leakage to a collection point inside the plant’s containment structure.
MessageToEagle.com – Gamma-ray photons seen emanating from the center of the Milky Way galaxy could be evidence of dark matter.
Dark-matter particles are annihilating each other in space, according to UC Irvine astrophysicists, who found more gamma-ray photons coming from the Milky Way galactic center than they had expected, based on previous scientific models.
Kevork Abazajian, assistant professor, and Manoj Kaplinghat, associate professor, of the Department of Physics & Astronomy analyzed data collected between August 2008 and June 2012 from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbiting Earth.
The gamma-rays Fermi detectsare billions of times more energetic, from 20 million to more than 300 billion electron volts.These gamma-ray photons are so energetic, they cannot be guided by the mirrors and lenses found in ordinary telescopes.
Instead Fermi uses a sensor that is more like a Geiger counter than a telescope.
If we could wear Fermi’s gamma ray “glasses,” we’d witness powerful bullets of energy – individual gamma rays – from cosmic phenomena such as supermassive black holes and hypernova explosions.
According to Abazajian, “this is the first time this new source has been observed with such high statistical significance, and the most striking part is how the shape, spectrum and rate of the observed gamma rays are very consistent with the leading theories for dark matter.”
In this illustration, one photon (purple) carries a million times the energy of another (yellow). Some theorists predict travel delays for higher-energy photons, which interact more strongly with the proposed frothy nature of space-time. Yet Fermi data on two photons from a gamma-ray burst fail to show this effect, eliminating some approaches to a new theory of gravity. The animation link below shows the delay scientists had expected to observe. Credit: NASA/Sonoma State University/Aurore Simonnet
“Future observations of regions with less astrophysical emission, such as dwarf galaxies, will be able to conclusively determine if this is actually from the dark matter.”
Nonluminous and not directly detectable, dark matter is thought to account for 85 percent of the universe’s mass. Its existence can only be inferred from its gravitational effects on other, visible matter. The UCI researchers’ findings could support its presumed presence at the center of galaxies.
The prevailing hypothesis is that dark matter is composed of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. When two WIMPs meet, they annihilate each other to produce more familiar particles – including gamma rays.
Although the data interpretation seems to be consistent with dark-matter theory, the gamma rays could be coming from a source other than WIMP destruction, Kaplinghat noted.
“The signal we see is also consistent with photons emitted by pulsars,” he said, “or from high-energy particles interacting with gas in the galactic center.”
UC Irvine astrophysicists submitted their research to the American Physical Society journal Physical Review D.
Casey Council will not install warning signs after a man reported being stung by a box jellyfish at Tooradin. Devon Meadows’ Tony Jenner said he was swimming when stung by a jellyfish with “six-foot long” tentacles. “It felt like I got bitten by two or three bees,” Mr Jenner said. “I came home and put vinegar on it and I didn’t feel too bad then but through the night I could feel my throat getting tight and it was hard to breathe.” In April, Cr Geoff Ablett called for an investigation into the “life-threatening situation” and whether warning signs should be posted to notify swimmers of the risks. However, in her report to councillors last week, community safety manager Caroline Bell said the incident was isolated and signs were not required. Joanna Browne, of Museums Victoria, said there was a species of box jellyfish in Victoria, but it was smaller and less harmful than those in the tropics.
Biohazard name:
Jellyfish Invasion (Box)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Nine people have died from a West Nile virus outbreak that infected 175 people in Dallas County, Texas, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency. The emergency was declared on Friday by Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s director of homeland security and emergency management. “This declaration will expand our avenues DisasterNew assistance in our ongoing battle with West Nile virus,” Jenkins said. “While we are busy doing everything we can to keep residents well informed and as protected as possible, we need your help.” Jenkins also said that planes would be spraying insecticide over areas most effected by the virus, which is spread by mosquitoes. He assured citizens that the insecticide is safe and that the planes will be precise in their spraying. Tarrant County has also received 146 reported cases of West Nile in the last few weeks. The county has not declared a state of emergency, though. Houston officials are warning residents of an increased threat of the virus. “Houston can definitely expect an increase in West Nile disease,” said Kristy Murray, an infectious disease specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine, DisasterNews reports. “From mid-August through September is the big season here.”
Biohazard name:
West Nile virus outbreak
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and
redOrbit
Anak Krakatau in the Sunda Strait, 130 kilometers west of Jakarta, was created by the same tectonic forces that led to the 1883 Krakatoa eruption that killed tens of thousands of people. (Reuters Photo)
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Tearful wildfire victim: ‘Nothing left’
Wildfires destroy homes in Oklahoma
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MessageToEagle.com – Gamma-ray photons seen emanating from the center of the Milky Way galaxy could be evidence of dark matter.
