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2010 – 2011: Earth’s most extreme weather since 1816?
Every year extraordinary weather events rock the Earth. Records that have stood centuries are broken. Great floods, droughts, and storms affect millions of people, and truly exceptional weather events unprecedented in human history may occur. But the wild roller-coaster ride of incredible weather events during 2010, in my mind, makes that year the planet’s most extraordinary year for extreme weather since reliable global upper-air data began in the late 1940s. Never in my 30 years as a meteorologist have I witnessed a year like 2010–the astonishing number of weather disasters and unprecedented wild swings in Earth’s atmospheric circulation were like nothing I’ve seen. The pace of incredible extreme weather events in the U.S. over the past few months have kept me so busy that I’ve been unable to write-up a retrospective look at the weather events of 2010. But I’ve finally managed to finish, so fasten Read more…
MASSIVE sink hole is swallowing up the beach at Inskip, Australia
A MASSIVE sink hole is swallowing up the beach at Inskip, north of Tin Can Bay.
Campers have told The Courier-Mail the hole, which appeared about 11am, could be up to 100 feet deep.
Camper Shane Hillhouse said four-wheel-drives had been travelling along the popular stretch of sand, near Inskip Peninsula, shortly before the hole appeared.
“This has the potential to take the tip of Inskip Point with it – this is huge and on a scale I’ve never seen before,’’ he said.
“People are bringing chairs and sitting back to watch it in awe.
“This is absolutely amazing – it’s almost at the Read more…
A Microscopic Chytrid Fungus Is Causing Massive Declines In Frog Populations Worldwide
A microscopic chytrid fungus is causing massive declines in frog populations all over the world and even the extinction of certain species. Together with colleagues from Europe and the USA, researchers from the University of Zurich present methods as to how the chytrid fungus can be combated in the journal Frontiers in Zoology: namely with bacteria and fungicides. However, the possibility of vaccinating the frogs is also being considered.
Photo: Benedikt Schmidt
New pathogens are not just a growing problem for humans and livestock, but also wild animals. Along with the destruction of their habitats and the overexploitation of their populations, a disease caused by a chytrid fungus called chytridiomycosis is one of the three Read more…
Australia evaluates sea level threats
Amazing waterspout ‘tornado’ caught on camera off Australia
Earthquake deaths increasing worldwide – UN report
Charlotte Bellis took this photo in the Christchurch CBD shortly after the quake struck. – Source: ONE News
Fatalities from earthquakes are increasing worldwide but the chance of dying in a weather-related disaster is diminishing the United Nations said today.
The UN report also claimed economic losses from catastrophes are rising in all regions often due to a lack of investment
Damage to infrastructure – schools, health centres, roads, bridges – is soaring in many low- and middle-income countries despite improvements in many early warning systems, it said in the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction.
Rich countries are also increasingly exposed, with damage on the rise following floods in Australia and earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand already this year, it said.
“Progress is mixed,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in the report.
“The recent events in Japan point to new and catastrophic risks that need to be anticipated,” he warned, referring to the earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan last March that triggered the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.
Disasters have already caused more than $300 billion in losses so far this year, roughly the same as in all of 2010, a UN Read more…
Mice plague hits biblical proportions across New South Wales farms
Mice are at plague proportions in the NSW Riverina area. Source: The Daily Telegraph Source: Supplied
DROUGHTS, locusts and floods – now a mouse plague threatens to cripple winter crops.
With an estimated 8000 mice per hectare, farmers are fighting a losing war against the pint-sized enemy, which eats seedlings as quickly as they can be planted and chews through new crops.
Describing the vermin as “intelligent and crafty”, NSW Riverina farmer John Pattison said their natural predators had disappeared after recent weather events, allowing them to multiply at a fast rate.
Not seen in such numbers for 15 years, they hide underground and grab the seed as it germinates.
Primary Industries Minister Katrina Hodgkinson said she would move swiftly to increase the production of poison to meet demand.
The worst affected areas are Hillston, Wentworth, Warren, Parkes and Griffith, with mouse activity and damage also reported in other areas across the Central West, Darling, Lachlan, Hume and Riverina.
Riverina firefighters have blamed mice for chewing through wire and starting a fire which almost killed a dairy farmer. Six people have also tested positive for a rare disease carried by mice.
Cleric: Jihad coming to ‘heart of America
The death of Osama bin Laden will bring a “new era of jihad,” predicted British extremist cleric Anjem Choudary.
Warning there are motivated jihadists “in the heart of America,” Choudary said al-Qaida will likely carry out revenge operations with “meticulous accuracy” and “devastating affect” comparable to that of the 9/11 attacks.
Choudary is the founder and former chief of two Islamic groups disbanded by the British authorities under anti-terror legislation.
Speaking today in an interview with “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” of New York’s WABC Radio, Choudary said that while bin Laden was a “lion of Islam … there are many lions waiting to take his place.”
“I do believe that the death of Sheikh Osama will bring in a new era of jihad,” Choudary told Klein.
“Post-Osama bin Laden, I believe the mujahedeen around the world will have something to prove, that the jihad is not about an individual.”
Choudary said instability for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan “will be a complete nightmare Read more…
Texas Wildfires Threaten Wheat Crop, Drive Food Prices Higher
As firefighters from around the country and the National Guard continue to battle the many blazes scattered across the state, with no immediate end to the crisis in sight, the future looks bleak for Texas farmers. Many farmers’ fields were already damaged by drought, and now some crops have been further harmed by smoke or entirely destroyed by flame.
Some agricultural experts are now predicting that Texas will lose two thirds of this year’s wheat crop to drought and Read more…
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