Earthquakes

USGS

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Volcanic Activity

Niwa observes underwater volcano changes

New Zealand scientists investigating an active undersea volcano that erupted three months ago have discovered significant changes to the seafloor.

Niwa research ship Tangaroa has mapped the Kermadec volcano that erupted 800km northeast of Tauranga on July 19, producing a pumice raft the size of Canterbury.

The eruption was strong enough to breach the ocean surface from a depth of 1100 metres. It was captured by a Nasa satellite, and a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion patrol spotted the pumice on their way back home from Samoa.

Niwa’s volcanologist Dr Richard Wysoczanski, who is leading the 23-day expedition, said there had been volcanic activity every year for the past decade, but this was the largest by far.

“It is a substantial eruption. Had it occurred on land in New Zealand, it would have been a bit of a disaster.”

The volcanic caldera, which is like Lake Taupo, known to produce large and violent eruptions, spewed up to 10,000 more material than the Mt Tongariro eruption on August 6, he said.

It was mapped in 2002, showing a 1km-high undersea mountain with a 5km wide, 800-metre deep central crater.

This week, scientists found a new volcanic cone which has formed on the edge of the volcano, towering 240 metres above the crater rim.

They also found one side of the caldera wall is bulging in towards the volcano’s centre, indicating where an eruption may occur in the future or it may lead to an undersea avalanche.

Several cubic kilometres of new material has also been added to the volcano, with large volumes of freshly erupted pumice accumulating on the caldera floor, raising it by up to 10 metres.

“We couldn’t find any biology on the floor and the immediate vicinity has been completely wiped out,” Wysoczanski said.

Fresh volcanic rocks, up to beach ball size, will be brought back to Niwa for analysis.

Tangaroa embarked on the expedition to study the volcanic chain that stretches for 1000km north from Bay of Plenty. It is due back in Wellington on November 1.

Earthquake swarms and a region-wide rotten egg smell recently reminded Southern California residents they live next to an active volcano field, tiny though it may be.

At the time, scientists said the phenomena did not reflect changes in the magma chamber below the Salton Sea. But now, researchers may need to revise estimates of the potential hazard posed by the Salton Buttes — five volcanoes at the lake’s southern tip.

The buttes last erupted between 940 and 0 B.C., not 30,000 years ago, as previously thought, a new study detailed online Oct. 15 in the journal Geology reports. The new age — which makes these some of California’s youngest volcanoes — pushes the volcanic quintuplets into active status. The California Volcano Observatory, launched in February by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), already lists the area as a high threat for future blasts.

“The USGS is starting to monitor all potentially active volcanoes in California, which includes the Salton Buttes,” said study author Axel Schmitt, a geochronologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “With our results, I think this will further enhance the need to look into the system,” Schmitt told OurAmazingPlanet.

Schmitt and his colleagues dated zircon crystals in the hardened lava of the buttes with a relatively new technique, a “helium clock” that starts ticking once the minerals begin cooling at the surface.

Resolving the Obsidian Butte riddle

The revised age solves a long-standing archeological conundrum, said Steve Shackley, emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Artifacts created from one of the five buttes, Obsidian Butte, first appear in Native American villages around 510 B.C. to 640 B.C. The Kumeyaay people, whose territory ranged from the coast to the Coso Mountains, crafted projectiles from Obsidian Butte glass, he said. “The men produced some of the best in the world,” Shackley told OurAmazingPlanet.

However, for decades, researchers thought Obsidian Butte erupted thousands of years earlier. To explain why no one collected the valuable obsidian, archeologists hypothesized that Obsidian Butte was submerged under ancient Lake Cahuilla, the precursor to today’s Salton Sea. But geologists had long proved that Lake Cahuilla was ephemeral, flooding and emptying over and over again, so the explanation was always problematic.

“If this dating method is correct, then the Obsidian Butte material wasn’t even available, and that makes more sense archaeologically,” Shackley said.

Rifting brings rising magma

In fact, that Obsidian Butte rises above the Salton Sea is what first attracted Schmitt’s attention. A 30,000-year-old butte should have been buried by a combination of sediment and subsidence by now, he said. “It had to be very young,” Schmitt said.

The buttes exist because California is tearing apart, forming new oceanic crust as magma wells up from below. The sinking Salton Trough is the landward extension of the Gulf of California, and marks the boundary between the Pacific and North America tectonic plates.

The lava source for the volcanoes is a magma chamberbeneath the Salton Sea, which also heats water for a nearby geothermal plant. Decay of uranium isotopes in zircon crystals show magma built up underneath the volcanoes for thousands of years before the latest eruption, the study shows. [50 Amazing Volcano Facts]

If another eruption occurs at the Salton Buttes, it will likely mimic past breakouts, Schmitt said. The volcanoes are made of sticky, slow-moving rhyolite lava. At Obsidian Butte, the lava cooled so quickly it turned into glass. However, pumice and ash found nearby means past breakouts started with a bang.

Schmitt said he hopes to study the area in more detail to better understand the most recent eruption. “The amounts of magma involved are relatively small and the impacts of an explosive eruption, meaning an ash cloud, would most likely be very local,” he said. “We don’t know very well how far any ash would have been dispersed, and that’s something I would like to follow up on in the research.”

Researching future hazards

The National Science Foundation’s EarthScope project funds an extensive seismic imaging project in the Salton Sea that may soon reveal more information about what’s happening deep underground.

“We’ll be looking with great interest to see what we can tell from the Salton Seismic Imaging Project,” said Joann Stock, a Caltech professor and an expert on the region’s volcanic hazards who was not involved in the new study.

“I think [Schmitt’s study] is a great contribution,” she said. “It’s an area where we should be concerned. We know that there’s a lot of hot stuff down there,” she told OurAmazingPlanet.

In August, an earthquake swarm shook the nearby town of Brawley. The USGS attributed the temblors to faults in the Brawley Seismic Zone. In September, a sulfurous stench emanated from the Salton Sea and wafted across the Inland Empire. The odor was tentatively linked to a fish die-off, but could also have been caused by volcanic gases, Stock said.

Reach Becky Oskin at boskin@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We’re also on Facebook and Google+.

• 7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye
• Sights and Sounds: Cali’s Gurgling Mud Volcanoes
• Countdown: History’s Most Destructive Volcanoes

Submarine eruption from Havre volcano built a new volcanic cone

New Zealand scientists investigating an active Kermadec undersea volcano Havre discovered significant changes to the seafloor during last eruption on July 19, 2012. The eruption was captured by a Nasa satellite, and a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion patrol spotted the huge pumice area on their way back home from Samoa (read our earlier report)

Scientists, aboard Niwa research ship – Tangaroa (deepwater research vessel), used multibeam sonar to map the seamount and found evidence of a new volcanic cone, 240 m tall and reaching withing 1,100 m below sea level, built on the side of the large submarine caldera of Havre. Aside from new volcanic cone they also found one side of the caldera wall is bulging in towards the volcano’s centre, indicating where an eruption may occur in the future or it may lead to an undersea avalanche.

Niwa’s volcanologist Dr Richard Wysoczanski, who is leading the 23-day expedition, said there had been volcanic activity every year for the past decade, but this was the largest by far.

“It is a substantial eruption. Had it occurred on land in New Zealand, it would have been a bit of a disaster.”

The volcanic caldera, which is like Lake Taupo, known to produce large and violent eruptions, spewed up to 10,000 more material than the Mt Tongariro eruption on August 6, he said.

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Extreme Temperatures/ Weather

27.10.2012

Forest / Wild Fire

USA

State of Kentucky, [Clay County]

Forest / Wild Fire in USA on Saturday, 27 October, 2012 at 04:38 (04:38 AM) UTC.

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Storms / Flooding

Active tropical storm system(s)
Name of storm system	Location	Formed	Last update	Last category	Course	Wind Speed	Gust	Wave	Source	Details
Sandy (AL18)	Carib Sea	22.10.2012	27.10.2012	Hurricane I	30 °	120 km/h	148 km/h	3.66 m	NOAA NHC

Tropical Storm data

Son-Thin (24W)

Pacific Ocean

24.10.2012

27.10.2012

Typhoon IV

300 °

204 km/h

250 km/h

3.35 m

JTWC

Tropical Storm data

…………………………………..

New York faces most intense storm in history

City would actually benefit from a direct hit, forecast say

By Eric Holthaus

Reuters

Jean Marie Brennan walks along the jetty at Lighthouse Point Park as Hurricane Sandy passes offshore in Ponce Inlet, Fla. on Friday.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — As we’ve all heard by now, there is a big storm brewing on the East Coast. Looking at the latest weather models, that may be a bit of an understatement.

The National Weather Service has labelled the hybrid gyre that may result from the merging of Hurricane Sandy and a Midwest snowstorm a “Frankenstorm.” When it hits, the storm could have truly scary implications befitting the Halloween holiday it will coincide with.

You can read my latest forecast post on this rare menace over on the Wall Street Journal’s Metropolis blog.

In fact, computer models are now showing a storm so intense that it would break 100-plus year weather records for the most intense pressure readings ever recorded throughout nearly all of the Mid-Atlantic region northward into New York City and Long Island.

Every hurricane that has ever hit that area — from last year’s Hurricane Irene, to the “Perfect Storm” of 1991, even the Long Island Express of 1938 — would all rank below this storm should current models of the atmosphere pan out. That’s a stunning conclusion, but one worth pondering, even though the storm’s peak impacts won’t be felt until Tuesday and there’s still time for models to shift.

There’s reason to believe the models may be overdoing it. First off, what’s happening right now doesn’t have a clear precedence in the weather records. Our best available number-crunching simulations of the atmosphere simply weren’t designed for this scenario.

Normally, when hurricanes approach the East Coast from Sandy’s angle, they are pulled safely out to sea by a semi-permanent low-pressure center near Iceland. This time around, that low pressure isn’t there. In fact, it’s been replaced by a high pressure so intense it only occurs approximately 0.2% of the time on average.

The coincidence of that strong of a high pressure “block” being in place just when a hurricane is passing by — in and of itself a very rare occurrence — is just mind bogglingly rare. It’s the kind of stuff that’s important enough to rewrite meteorological textbooks. The result: Instead of heading out to sea Sandy’s full force will be turned back against the grain and directed squarely at the East Coast.

To top it off, an intense early-season snowstorm moving eastward out of the Great Lakes will provide an additional boost of energy to Sandy as it approaches the shore, broadening its windfield, strengthening its rainfall and waves, and increasing its destructive potential. This is truly a Frankenstein scenario — a hybrid of weather badness that is now coming alive.

The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center — the same folks at the National Weather Service that gave Sandy its “Frankenstorm” name — have had to manually adjust their official forecasts to tone down the exceptional scenarios that the weather models are currently showing.

It’s not that they don’t think the worst-case scenario is possible. It’s just that it’s never happened before. As a meteorologist, you have to be very, very careful if you are going to predict a historic scenario.

The storm is still a few days away, so there will be plenty of time to see how new model runs change with the addition of data from future Hurricane Hunter flights before the National Weather Service goes in full bore with an unprecedented forecast. For the time being, those from D.C. to Boston should remain especially vigilant and begin to take preparations to make sure they and their families are safe.

Storm may hit New York the hardest

Because the storm is expected to be so huge, the only reason its exact landfall location matters relates to the direction of the winds. Everyone from D.C. to New England will feel some type of effects, but because hurricanes rotate counter-clockwise, those north of the center will have massive amounts of seawater directly deposited on their shores.

For those south of the center, the storm’s circulation will actually be pushing flooding seas away from shore, lessening potential impacts.

Right now, the most reliable model tracks have clustered in a relatively tight range from Delaware to New York City. Counterintuitively, should the center of the storm make a direct strike on New York City, the city may actually be spared some of the more serious coastal impacts from the storm.

Should the storm continue on its current path (the National Hurricane Center’s most likely landfall is now in southern New Jersey), all bets are off for the five boroughs.

The latter scenario — the one that now appears most likely — would have many feet of ocean water funneled into New York Harbor over a period of up to 36 hours. Unlike Irene, which quickly transited New York City last year as a weakening tropical storm, Sandy may actually be in the process of strengthening when it makes landfall.

The result could prove incredibly damaging for coastal residents and critical infrastructure. Keep in mind that Irene was only inches away from flooding subway tunnels in Lower Manhattan. Storm-surge forecasts for this scenario haven’t been officially released yet, but six to 10 feet in the city is not out of the question in a worst-case scenario.

That result would put about 700,000 people’s homes underwater, according to a Climate Central interactive analysis. Add to that waves of 10 to 20 feet on ocean-facing shores, and an additional foot or so of tidal influence from the full moon, and we could be dealing with quite a mess on our hands.

With National Geographic reporting that sea level rise is already accelerating at three to four times the global rate in the Northeast due to climate change, impacts are expected to be worse than if the same exact storm would have hit several years ago.

Should Sandy veer further north of its current track and make landfall right over the city, storm surge could be dramatically lessened, though the city could receive about double the amount of rainfall — up to a foot or more.

For these reasons, if I were a resident of New York right now, I’d be rooting for a direct hit. If given a choice, I’d take 12 inches of rain over six feet of coastal flooding any day.

Meteorologist Eric Holthaus digs deeper into how weather and climate can affect markets for MarketWatch. He can be reached at wxriskforecaster@gmail.com.

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declares State of Emergency as Hurricane Sandy barrels through Caribbean, killing 43

Sandy could be ‘worst case’ superstorm, more powerful than Hurricane Irene; officials will decide Saturday whether to evacuate wide swaths of New York City as ‘Frankenstorm’ approaches

By Kenneth Lovett AND Tina Moore / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Franklin Reyes/AP

Hurricane Sandy leveled homes in Cuba and Jamaica this week and it has been blamed for more than 20 deaths. The storm is marching north towards the U.S., and could slam New York with lashing rain, powerful winds and even snow.

In the face of a potentially devastating storm, Gov. Cuomo declared a state of emergency Friday and city officials considered evacuating as many as 375,000 New Yorkers.

The MTA was also considering a total shut down of buses and subways if the worst predictions about Hurricane Sandy come true.

The deadly tempest, which killed at least 41 people in the Caribbean, according to The Associated Press, is expected to make landfall late Monday night near Delaware.

NEW YORKERS: CLICK HERE TO SEE WHETHER YOU LIVE IN A HURRICANE EVACUATION ZONE

Mayor Bloomberg said he’d make a decision about evacuations in low-lying areas in all five boroughs as soon as Saturday.

“We are taking all the steps that we need to take,” Bloomberg said during a hastily called afternoon press conference on Friday.

Franklin Reyes/AP

Hurricane Sandy blasted across eastern Cuba on Thursday as a potent Category 2 storm and headed for the Bahamas en route to the East Coast, forecasters predict.

Gilbert Bellamy/Reuters

Residents watch firefighters fight a blaze in a private home in Kingston October 26, 2012. The fire, which destroyed the home, was started by a faulty generator used to provide electricity in the blackout caused by the passing of Hurricane Sandy, firefighters said.

“But the storm is moving at a rate that we’re still not going to have a good sense of when and where it’s going to hit land.”

MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota said officials would begin the second shutdown of all buses and subways in its history if winds reach 39 mph.

“Our first priority is always safety, and the MTA is taking no chances with the safety of our customers, our employees and our equipment,” Lhota said in a statement. “We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. Whatever happens, we’ll be ready.”

Parts of the subway that are below sea level are particularly susceptible to flooding.

The MTA halted the subways for the first time in its history during Hurricane Irene last year.

Desmond Boylan/Reuters

People walk on a street littered with debris after Hurricane Sandy hit Santiago de Cuba October 26, 2012.

Carl Juste/The Miami Herald via AP

Locals walk across the flooded streets of La Plaine, Haiti after Hurricane Sandy caused flooding and claimed more than 20 lives across the Caribbean.

Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm before reaching the city but dire predictions in the days before it arrived triggered mandatory evacuations of lower Manhattan and other coastal neighborhoods.

With some forecasts predicting that Sandy could deliver an even more powerful punch, the city is again considering those extreme measures.

“The thing that we worry about the most is that people decide not to listen to the order to evacuate and then later on find themselves in harm’s way and then our police and fire departments have to put their lives on the line,” Bloomberg said.

City officials ordered construction crews to halt work as of Saturday evening and warned residents to prepare “go-bags” equipped with water and First Aid kits.

Officials were also deciding whether to cancel school on Monday.

Bryan Smith for New York Daily News

Mayor Michael Bloomberg discusses the city’s preparations ahead of Hurricane Sandy’s possible arrival early next week at City Hall on Friday.

Another major concern is “prolonged power outages,” Bloomberg said, and the city is working closely with ConEd.

“There are probably 20 different forecasts tracts for this storm and any one of them could be right,” Bloomberg said.

City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said the city was asking six hospitals and 41 chronic care facilities, including nursing homes, in the low-lying areas to move patients who could be easily relocated.

nhc.noaa.gov

Hurricane Sandy path as shown by NOAA map.

The city could decide to evacuate the facilities using city buses as it did during Irene.

Cuomo declared a state of emergency for all 62 counties and said at a Long Island event that the state was taking “every precaution possible.”

A state of emergency gives the state more flexibility to help cities and counties. Cuomo also put the National Guard on alert, which makes Guard personnel and equipment available to help.

Julia Xanthos/New York Daily News

Workers from the MTA install plywood over subway grating to prevent flooding expected from Hurricane Sandy near the Staten Island Ferry in lower Manhattan on Friday.

He also said he will call up repair crews and reach out to other states that may have crews available.

The state is also asking for a pre-disaster declaration that would get New York federal aid and assistance, he said.

Carl Juste/The Miami Herald via AP

Residents of Leogane, Haiti find higher ground as the water level continues to rise Friday, Oct. 26, 2012.

Steve Nesius/Reuters

Jean Marie Brennan walks along the jetty at Lighthouse Point Park as Hurricane Sandy passes offshore in Ponce Inlet, Florida on Friday.

“There’s no need to panic,” he said. “We have a lot of time and we’re prepared for any eventuality, but we’d rather err on the side of caution.”

Cuomo canceled plans to campaign in Florida for President Obama so he could stay in New York. He also scrapped a homeland security conference scheduled for Monday in Albany so the 1,000 first responders who planned to attend could prepare for the storm in their home counties.

A host of other events were canceled as the storm loomed, including an exam for specialized high schools admissions scheduled for Sunday.With News Wire Services
With News Wire Services
tmoore@nydailynews.com

Pre-Halloween ‘Frankenstorm’ takes aim at East Coast

FoxNews.com

With a name like “Frankenstorm,” this could get ugly.

Hurricane Sandy, moving north from the Caribbean, was expected to make landfall Monday night near the Delaware coast, then hit two winter weather systems as it moves inland, creating a hybrid monster storm that could bring nearly a foot of rain, high winds and up to 2 feet of snow.

Experts said the storm would be wider and stronger than last year’s Irene, which caused more than $15 billion in damage, and could rival the worst East Coast storm on record.

Officials did not mince words, telling people to be prepared for several days without electricity. Jersey Shore beach towns began issuing voluntary evacuations and protecting boardwalks

Atlantic Beach casinos made contingency plans to close, and officials advised residents of flood-prone areas to stay with family or be ready to leave. Airlines said to expect cancellations and waived change fees for passengers who want to reschedule.

“Be forewarned,” said Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. “Assume that you will be in the midst of flooding conditions, the likes of which you may not have seen at any of the major storms that have occurred over the last 30 years.”

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency Friday morning to help mobilize emergency response. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that wherever the storm comes ashore, there will be 10 inches of rain and extreme storm surges. Up to 2 feet of snow should fall on West Virginia, with lighter snow in parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The storm threatened to hit two weeks before Election Day, while several states were heavily involved in campaigning, canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Vice President Joe Biden both canceled weekend campaign events in coastal Virginia Beach, Va., though their events in other parts of the states were going on as planned.

In Rhode Island, politicians asked supporters to take down yard signs for fear they might turn into projectiles in the storm.

With a rare mix of three big merging weather systems over a densely populated region, experts predict at least $1 billion in damage.

STORM TIPS

Residents in the storm’s expected path should have a three days’ supply of water on hand, or one gallon per person per day, enough for drinking, cooking and some bathing, Virginia’s Department of Emergency Management recommends, and to combat extended power outages, residents should purchase battery-powered radios and extra batteries.

And if they meet Tuesday morning around New York or New Jersey, as forecasters predict, they could create a big, wet mess that settles over the nation’s most heavily populated corridor and reaches as far west as Ohio.

Airlines are giving travelers a way out if they want to scrap their plans due to Hurricane Sandy.

All the major airlines are offering waivers to customers who wish to reschedule their flights without incurring the typical fee of up to $150. The offers cover passengers flying in or out of just about any airport from Latin America to New Hampshire. Most waivers for travel in the Northeast are only valid Monday through Wednesday.

The airlines have only canceled a handful of flights so far, nearly all of them in and out of Florida and the Caribbean.

They say there will be hundreds of miles of steady, strong and damaging winds and rain for the entire Eastern region for several days. That could produce a bigger wallop than last year’s damaging Irene, which caused the cancellation of nearly 14,000 flights in a four-day period.

Those hoping to fly in or out of affected areas are asked to check their flight status before heading to the airport. Airlines also promise to update their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds with the latest information. To cancel, passengers should call the airline directly. Some airlines also allow changes to be made on their websites.

Passengers can expect cancellations to increase as the storm moves north over the weekend.

“Airlines and other operators generally stop flying to airports in the potential storm path long before winds reach dangerous levels,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

Utilities are lining up out-of-state work crews and canceling employees’ days off to deal with expected power outages. From county disaster chiefs to the federal government, emergency officials are warning the public to be prepared. And President Barack Obama was briefed aboard Air Force One.

“It’s looking like a very serious storm that could be historic,” said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the forecasting service Weather Underground. “Mother Nature is not saying, `Trick or treat.’ It’s just going to give tricks.”

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecaster Jim Cisco, who coined the nickname Frankenstorm, said: “We don’t have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting.”

Government forecasters said there is a 90 percent chance — up from 60 percent two days earlier — that the East will get pounded.

Coastal areas from Florida to Maine will feel some effects, but the storm is expected to vent the worst of its fury on New Jersey and the New York City area, which could see around 5 inches of rain and gale-force winds close to 40 mph. Eastern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania and western Virginia could get snow.

And the storm will take its time leaving. The weather may not start clearing in the mid-Atlantic until the day after Halloween and Nov. 2 in the upper Northeast, Cisco said.

“It’s almost a weeklong, five-day, six-day event,” he said from a NOAA forecast center in College Park, Md. “It’s going to be a widespread, serious storm.”

It is likely to hit during a full moon, when tides are near their highest, increasing the risk of coastal flooding. And because many trees still have their leaves, they are more likely to topple in the event of wind and snow, meaning there could be widespread power outages lasting to Election Day.

Eastern states that saw outages that lasted for days after last year’s freak Halloween snowstorm and Hurricane Irene in late August 2011 are already pressuring power companies to be more ready this time.

Asked if he expected utilities to be more prepared, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick responded: “They’d better be.”

Jersey Central Power & Light, which was criticized for its response to Irene, notified employees to be ready for extended shifts. In Pennsylvania, PPL Corp. spokesman Michael Wood said, “We’re in a much better place this year.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday said the city was striking a tone of calm preparedness.

“What we are doing is we are taking the kind of precautions you should expect us to do, and I don’t think anyone should panic,” Bloomberg said. The city has opened an emergency situation room and activated its coastal storm plan.

Some have compared the tempest to the so-called Perfect Storm that struck off the coast of New England in 1991, but that one hit a less populated area. Nor is this one like last year’s Halloween storm, which was merely an early snowfall.

“The Perfect Storm only did $200 million of damage and I’m thinking a billion” this time, Masters said. “Yeah, it will be worse.”

As it spun away from the Bahamas late Friday, Sandy was blamed for more than 43 deaths across the Caribbean. The 18th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season hit the Bahamas after cutting across Cuba, where it tore roofs off homes and damaged fragile coffee and tomato crops. It is expected to move north, just off the Eastern Seaboard.

Norje Pupo, a 66-year-old retiree in Holguin, was helping his son clean up early Thursday after an enormous tree toppled in his garden.

“The hurricane really hit us hard,” he said. “As you can see, we were very affected. The houses are not poorly made here, but some may have been damaged.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

27.10.2012

Tropical Storm

Cuba

MultiProvinces, [Provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Holguin]

Tropical Storm in Cuba on Friday, 26 October, 2012 at 02:49 (02:49 AM) UTC.

Back

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Radiation

Fish Off Japan’s Coast Said to Contain Elevated Levels of Cesium

By HIROKO TABUCHI

The findings published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science highlight the challenges facing Japan as it seeks to protect its food supply and rebuild the local fisheries industry.

More than 18 months after the nuclear disaster, Japan bans the sale of 36 species of fish caught off Fukushima, rendering the bulk of its fishing boats idle and denying the region one of its mainstay industries.

Some local fishermen are trying to return to work. Since July, a handful of them have resumed small-scale commercial fishing for species, like octopus, that have cleared government radiation tests. Radiation readings in waters off Fukushima and beyond have returned to near-normal levels.

But about 40 percent of fish caught off Fukushima and tested by the government still have too much cesium to be safe to eat under regulatory limits set by the Japanese government last year, said the article’s author, Ken O. Buesseler, a leading marine chemistry expert at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who analyzed test results from the 12 months following the March 2011 disaster.

Because cesium tends not to stay very long in the tissues of saltwater fish — and because high radiation levels have been detected most often in bottom-feeding fish — it is likely that fish are being newly contaminated by cesium on the seabed, Mr. Buesseler wrote in the Science article.

“The fact that many fish are just as contaminated today with cesium 134 and cesium 137 as they were more than one year ago implies that cesium is still being released into the food chain,” Mr. Buesseler wrote. This kind of cesium has a half-life of 30 years, meaning that it falls off by half in radioactive intensity every 30 years. Given that, he said, “sediments would remain contaminated for decades to come.”

Officials at Japan’s Fisheries Agency, which conducted the tests, said Mr. Buesseler’s analysis made sense.

“In the early days of the disaster, as the fallout hit the ocean, we saw high levels of radiation from fish near the surface,” said Koichi Tahara, assistant director of the agency’s resources and research division. “But now it would be reasonable to assume that radioactive substances are settling on the seafloor.”

But that was less of a concern than Mr. Buesseler’s research might suggest, Mr. Tahara said, because the cesium was expected to eventually settle down into the seabed.

Mr. Tahara also stressed that the government would continue its vigorous testing and that fishing bans would remain in place until radiation readings returned to safe levels.

Naohiro Yoshida, an environmental chemistry expert at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said that while he agreed with much of Mr. Buesseler’s analysis, it was too early to reach a conclusion on how extensive radioactive contamination of Japan’s oceans would be, and how long it would have an impact on marine life in the area.

Further research was needed on ocean currents, sediments and how different species of fish are affected by radioactive contamination, he said.

As much as four-fifths of the radioactive substances released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are thought to have entered the sea, either blown offshore or released directly into the ocean from water used to cool the site’s reactors in the wake of the accident.

Sea currents quickly dispersed that radioactivity, and seawater readings off the Fukushima shore returned to near-normal levels. But fish caught in the area continue to show elevated readings for radioactive cesium, which is associated with an increased risk of cancer in humans.

Just two months ago, two greenling caught close to the Fukushima shore were found to contain more than 25,000 becquerels a kilogram of cesium, the highest cesium levels found in fish since the disaster and 250 times the government’s safety limit.

The operator of the Fukushima plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that the site no longer released contaminated water into the ocean, and that radiation levels in waters around the plant had stabilized.

But Yoshikazu Nagai, a spokesman for the company, said he could not rule out undetected leaks into the ocean from its reactors, the basements of which remain flooded with cooling water.

To reduce the chance of water from seeping out of the plant, Tokyo Electric is building a 2,400-foot-long wall between the site’s reactors and the ocean. But Mr. Nagai said the steel-and-concrete wall, which will reach 100 feet underground, would take until mid-2014 to build.

Fukushima owner says plant may be leaking radiation into sea

Volunteers to remove radioactive substances from a fishing boat in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, in this photo taken by Kyodo October 24, 2011. (Reuters / Kyodo)

TEPCO, operator of the Fukushima nuclear facility, failed to confirm that radiation leaks at the plant had fully stopped. This came after a US report that irradiated fish are still being caught off the coast of Japan following the 2011 meltdown.

­The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) told journalists Friday they could not confirm that radiation had stopped leaking from the nuclear power plant struck by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Still, they said that radiation levels in the seawater and seabed soil around the plant were declining.

A recent article in the academic journal Science revealed that 40 percent of bottom-dwelling marine species in the area show cesium-134 and 137 levels that are still higher than normal.

“The numbers aren’t going down. Oceans usually cause the concentrations to decrease if the spigot is turned off,” Ken Buesseler, study author and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution told the Associated Press. “There has to be somewhere they’re picking up the cesium.”

“Option one is the seafloor is the source of the continued contamination. The other source could be the reactors themselves,” Buesseler added.

Radioactive cesium is a human-made radioactive isotope produced through nuclear fission of the element cesium. It has a half-life of 30 years, making it extremely toxic.

TEPCO confirmed that the radioactive water used to cool the plant’s reactors leaked into the ocean several times, most recently in April.

The plant is struggling to find space to store the tens of thousands of tons of highly contaminated water used to cool the broken reactors and prevent it from a meltdown.

The company managed to collect the water used to cool the spent fuel rods and circulate it back into reactor cores, so the reactors are now being cooled with recycled water. However, groundwater is still seeping through cracks in basement where the reactor and turbine are stored, posing further dangers.

With the groundwater seeping in, the volume of decontaminated water collected and stored at the Fukushima Daiichi plant could triple within three years, TEPCO told the AP.

The accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant was triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. An enormous tsunami crashed onto the land, resulting in the flash-flooding of four of the plant’s six reactors, shattering the cooling system. This led to a series of oxygen blasts, and a partial meltdown of the reactor core.

The incident was the biggest nuclear disaster in 25 years since the tragedy at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Multiple cases of contamination of air and seawater by radioactive material have been reported. Over 140,000 people were forced to leave an evacuation area 40 kilometers in diameter around the plant. Most of those people are still living in shelters. Full management of the disaster, including dismantling the reactors, is expected to take around 40 years.

Fukushima ‘running out of space’ to store dirty water

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Epidemic Hazards / Diseases

27.10.2012

Epidemic Hazard

Uganda

Western Uganda, [Kabale District]

Epidemic Hazard in Uganda on Friday, 19 October, 2012 at 10:56 (10:56 AM) UTC.

Back

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Climate Change

Opposite Behaviors? Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks, Antarctic Grows

by Maria-Jose Vinas for NASA’s Earth Science News
Greenbelt MD (SPX)

September 2012 witnessed two opposite records concerning sea ice. Two weeks after the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low for the satellite era (left), Antarctic sea ice reached a record winter maximum extent (right). But sea ice in the Arctic has melted at a much faster rate than it has expanded in the Southern Ocean, as can be seen in this image by comparing the 2012 sea ice levels with the yellow outline, which in the Arctic image represents average sea ice minimum extent from 1979 through 2010 and in the Antarctic image shows the median sea ice extent in September from 1979 to 2000. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio and NASA Earth Observatory/ Jesse Allen. View Arctic larger. View Antarctic larger.

The steady and dramatic decline in the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean over the last three decades has become a focus of media and public attention. At the opposite end of the Earth, however, something more complex is happening.

A new NASA study shows that from 1978 to 2010 the total extent of sea ice surrounding Antarctica in the Southern Ocean grew by roughly 6,600 square miles every year, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. And previous research by the same authors indicates that this rate of increase has recently accelerated, up from an average rate of almost 4,300 square miles per year from 1978 to 2006.

“There’s been an overall increase in the sea ice cover in the Antarctic, which is the opposite of what is happening in the Arctic,” said lead author Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “However, this growth rate is not nearly as large as the decrease in the Arctic.”

The Earth’s poles have very different geographies. The Arctic Ocean is surrounded by North America, Greenland and Eurasia. These large landmasses trap most of the sea ice, which builds up and retreats with each yearly freeze-and-melt cycle. But a large fraction of the older, thicker Arctic sea ice has disappeared over the last three decades. The shrinking summer ice cover has exposed dark ocean water that absorbs sunlight and warms up, leading to more ice loss.

On the opposite side of the planet, Antarctica is a continent circled by open waters that let sea ice expand during the winter but also offer less shelter during the melt season. Most of the Southern Ocean’s frozen cover grows and retreats every year, leading to little perennial sea ice in Antarctica.

Using passive-microwave data from NASA’s Nimbus 7 satellite and several Department of Defense meteorological satellites, Parkinson and colleague Don Cavalieri showed that sea ice changes were not uniform around Antarctica.

Most of the growth from 1978 to 2010 occurred in the Ross Sea, which gained a little under 5,300 square miles of sea ice per year, with more modest increases in the Weddell Sea and Indian Ocean. At the same time, the region of the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas lost an average of about 3,200 square miles of ice every year.

Parkinson and Cavalieri said that the mixed pattern of ice growth and ice loss around the Southern Ocean could be due to changes in atmospheric circulation. Recent research points at the depleted ozone layer over Antarctica as a possible culprit.

Ozone absorbs solar energy, so a lower concentration of this molecule can lead to a cooling of the stratosphere (the layer between six and 30 miles above the Earth’s surface) over Antarctica. At the same time, the temperate latitudes have been warming, and the differential in temperatures has strengthened the circumpolar winds flowing over the Ross Ice Shelf.

“Winds off the Ross Ice Shelf are getting stronger and stronger, and that causes the sea ice to be pushed off the coast, which generates areas of open water, polynyas,” said Josefino Comiso, a senior scientist at NASA Goddard.

“The larger the coastal polynya, the more ice it produces, because in polynyas the water is in direct contact with the very cold winter atmosphere and rapidly freezes.” As the wind keeps blowing, the ice expands further to the north.

This year’s winter Antarctic sea ice maximum extent, reached two weeks after the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low, was a record high for the satellite era of 7.49 million square miles, about 193,000 square miles more than its average maximum extent for the last three decades.

The Antarctic minimum extents, which are reached in the midst of the Antarctic summer, in February, have also slightly increased to 1.33 million square miles in 2012, or around 251,000 square miles more than the average minimum extent since 1979.

The numbers for the southernmost ocean, however, pale in comparison with the rates at which the Arctic has been losing sea ice – the extent of the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean in September 2012 was 1.32 million square miles below the average September extent from 1979 to 2000. The lost ice area is equivalent to roughly two Alaskas.

Parkinson said that the fact that some areas of the Southern Ocean are cooling and producing more sea ice does not disprove a warming climate.

“Climate does not change uniformly: The Earth is very large and the expectation definitely would be that there would be different changes in different regions of the world,” Parkinson said. “That’s true even if overall the system is warming.” Another recent NASA study showed that Antarctic sea ice slightly thinned from 2003 to 2008, but increases in the extent of the ice balanced the loss in thickness and led to an overall volume gain.

The new research, which used laser altimetry data from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), was the first to estimate sea ice thickness for the entire Southern Ocean from space.

Records of Antarctic sea ice thickness are much patchier than those of the Arctic, due to the logistical challenges of taking regular measurements in the fierce and frigid waters around Antarctica. The field data collection is mostly limited to research icebreakers that generally only travel there during spring and summer – so the sole means to get large-scale thickness measurements is from space.

“We have a good handle of the extent of the Antarctic sea ice, but the thickness has been the missing piece to monitor the sea ice mass balance,” said Thorsten Markus, one of the authors of the study and Project Scientist for ICESat-2, a satellite mission designed to replace the now defunct ICESat. ICESat-2 is scheduled to launch in 2016. “The extent can be greater, but if the sea ice gets thinner, the volume could stay the same.”

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Solar Activity

2MIN News October 26. 2012

Published on Oct 26, 2012 by Suspicious0bservers

Collapsing Atmosphere/Magnetic Shield: http://youtu.be/woVitezc-zU
STARWATER: http://youtu.be/LiC-92YgZvQ

TODAY’S LINKS
Methane Followup: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/24/14670511-climate-changing-methane-…
Saturn Storm: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121025105209.htm
Saturn Storm Visualizations: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-after-effects-saturn-super-storm-video.html
Hawaii Volcano Update: http://news.discovery.com/earth/kilauea-lava-lake-threatens-to-spill-121024.html
Soyuz/ISS Update: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-soyuz-astronauts-docks-space-station.html
China’s Largest Fresh Lake: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2012-10/26/c_131931543.htm
China NavSat: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2012-10/26/c_131931037.htm
Italy Quake: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9634929/One-dead-as-5….

REPEAT LINKS
Spaceweather: http://spaceweather.com/ [Look on the left at the X-ray Flux and Solar Wind Speed/Density]

HAARP: http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/data.html [Click online data, and have a little fun]

CERES JPL: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=ceres;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb

SDO: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/ [Place to find Solar Images and Videos – as seen from earth]

Helioviewer: http://www.helioviewer.org/

SOHO: http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/soho_movie_theater [SOHO; Lasco and EIT – as seen from earth]

Stereo: http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/images [Stereo; Cor, EUVI, HI – as seen from the side]

SunAEON: http://www.sunaeon.com/#/solarsystem/ [Just click it… trust me]

SOLARIMG: http://solarimg.org/artis/ [All purpose data viewing site]

iSWA: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/iswa/iSWA.html [Free Application; for advanced sun watchers]

NASA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/IswaSystemWebApp/iSWACygnetStreamer?timestamp=…
NOAA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/

US Wind Map: http://hint.fm/wind/

NOAA Bouys: http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/

RADIATION Network: http://radiationnetwork.com/

NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory: http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/Default.php

RSOE: http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php [That cool alert map I use]

GOES Xray: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sxi/goes15/index.html

JAPAN Radiation Map: http://jciv.iidj.net/map/

LISS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/monitoring/operations/heliplots_gsn.php

Gamma Ray Bursts: http://grb.sonoma.edu/ [Really? You can’t figure out what this one is for?]

BARTOL Cosmic Rays: http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu//spaceweather/welcome.html [Top left box, look for BIG blue circles]

TORCON: http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-torcon-index [Tornado Forecast for the day]

GOES Weather: http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/ [Clouds over America]

RAIN RECORDS: http://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/ListIntensePrecipReports.aspx

EL DORADO WORLD WEATHER MAP: http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/satellite/ssec/world/world-composite-ir-…

PRESSURE MAP: http://www.woweather.com/cgi-bin/expertcharts?LANG=us&MENU=0000000000&…

HURRICANE TRACKER: http://www.weather.com/weather/hurricanecentral/tracker

INTELLICAST: http://www.intellicast.com/ [Weather site used by many youtubers]

NASA News: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/

PHYSORG: http://phys.org/ [GREAT News Site!]

QUAKES LIST FULL: http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/seismologist.php

2MIN News October 27. 2012

Published on Oct 27, 2012 by Suspicious0bservers

All Images seen and Information heard here can be found at the Links Below, with gratitude. [Click SHOW MORE]

Collapsing Atmosphere/Magnetic Shield: http://youtu.be/woVitezc-zU
STARWATER: http://youtu.be/LiC-92YgZvQ

TODAY’S LINKS
Fukushima Worry: http://www.weather.com/news/japan-nuclear-water-worries-20121025

REPEAT LINKS
Spaceweather: http://spaceweather.com/ [Look on the left at the X-ray Flux and Solar Wind Speed/Density]

HAARP: http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/data.html [Click online data, and have a little fun]

CERES JPL: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=ceres;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb

SDO: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/ [Place to find Solar Images and Videos – as seen from earth]

Helioviewer: http://www.helioviewer.org/

SOHO: http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/soho_movie_theater [SOHO; Lasco and EIT – as seen from earth]

Stereo: http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/images [Stereo; Cor, EUVI, HI – as seen from the side]

SunAEON: http://www.sunaeon.com/#/solarsystem/ [Just click it… trust me]

SOLARIMG: http://solarimg.org/artis/ [All purpose data viewing site]

iSWA: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/iswa/iSWA.html [Free Application; for advanced sun watchers]

NASA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/IswaSystemWebApp/iSWACygnetStreamer?timestamp=…
NOAA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/

US Wind Map: http://hint.fm/wind/

NOAA Bouys: http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/

RADIATION Network: http://radiationnetwork.com/

NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory: http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/Default.php

RSOE: http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php [That cool alert map I use]

GOES Xray: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sxi/goes15/index.html

JAPAN Radiation Map: http://jciv.iidj.net/map/

LISS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/monitoring/operations/heliplots_gsn.php

Gamma Ray Bursts: http://grb.sonoma.edu/ [Really? You can’t figure out what this one is for?]

BARTOL Cosmic Rays: http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu//spaceweather/welcome.html [Top left box, look for BIG blue circles]

TORCON: http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-torcon-index [Tornado Forecast for the day]

GOES Weather: http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/ [Clouds over America]

RAIN RECORDS: http://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/ListIntensePrecipReports.aspx

EL DORADO WORLD WEATHER MAP: http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/satellite/ssec/world/world-composite-ir-…

PRESSURE MAP: http://www.woweather.com/cgi-bin/expertcharts?LANG=us&MENU=0000000000&…

HURRICANE TRACKER: http://www.weather.com/weather/hurricanecentral/tracker

INTELLICAST: http://www.intellicast.com/ [Weather site used by many youtubers]

NASA News: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/

PHYSORG: http://phys.org/ [GREAT News Site!]

QUAKES LIST FULL: http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/seismologist.php

CANYON OF FIRE:

A filament of magnetism snaking around the sun’s southeastern limb erupted on Oct 26th. The blast created a “canyon of fire” in the sun’s lower atmosphere. Click on the circle to animate the event:

The glowing walls of the canyon are formed in a process closely related to that of arcade loops, which appear after many solar flares. Stretching more than 250,000 km from end to end, the “canyon” traces the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the stellar surface.

As erupting magnetic filaments often do, this one launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. The Solar and Heliospheric Observary recorded the expanding cloud: movie. The CME does not appear to be heading for Earth or any other planet.

Solar activity at low levels with possible Earth-directed CME…

Solar activity was at low levels for the past 24 hours and X-Ray flux plot shown merely C-class threshold. However, a prominence eruption was observed north of Region 1600.

A bright CME was observed in STEREO Ahead COR 2 imagery at 18:24 UTC on October 27. Latest STEREO Ahead COR2 images indicate that this CME may be Earth directed. SIDC reports that a halo or partial-halo CME was detected.

STEREO Behind COR2 image from 21:40 UTC on OCtober 27 and earlier STEREO Ahead COR2 image from 18:54 UTC on October 27

SOHO’s LASCO C2 latest image is recorded at 11:12 UTC on October 26.

SpaceWeather.com reports that filament of magnetism snaking around the sun’s southeastern limb erupted on October 26. The blast created a “canyon of fire” in the sun’s lower atmosphere. This solar filament launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space but luckily, it was not Earth-directed. Stretching more than 250,000 km from end to end, the “canyon” traces the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the stellar surface.

GOES X-Ray flux show mostly quit conditions, only 3 C-class flares were observed during the past 24 hours.

All four visible Sunspot regions (1596, 1598, 1599, 1600) are currently stable. Three low-level C-class flares were observed from behind the west limb, likely from old Region 1594. Region 1598 remained the most magnetically complex region on the visible disk and produced a B9 flare at 12:35 UTC on October 27. Region 1596 has shown signs of penumbral decay, mainly in its trailer spots. There are no large coronal holes on the Earthside of the Sun.

There will be a slight chance for an isolated M-Class flare throughout the weekend. NOAA/SWPC forecasters estimated 15 % chances of M-class event. Sunspot 1598 is the one to watch.

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Space

NASA: Rare, enormous gas storm detected on Saturn

(CNN) — NASA says the Cassini spacecraft recorded the aftermath of a massive storm on Saturn that let out an “unprecedented belch of energy.”

Not only was the size of the storm unusual, but what the storm was made of left scientists puzzled.

The source of the cosmic burp, which rapidly changed the atmosphere’s temperature, was ethylene gas, an odorless, colorless gas that has rarely been observed on Saturn, NASA said.

“This temperature spike is so extreme it’s almost unbelievable,” said Brigette Hesman, the study’s lead author who works at Goddard. “To get a temperature change of the same scale on Earth, you’d be going from the depths of winter in Fairbanks, Alaska, to the height of summer in the Mojave Desert,” Hesman said in a statement released by NASA.

NASA’s NuStar gets first look at black hole at the center of the Milky Way

Scientists still haven’t figured out from where the ethylene gas came.

By comparison, a storm of similar size on Earth would cover North America from top to bottom and wrap the planet many times, researchers said.

The Cassini spacecraft first detected the disruption on December 5, 2010, and has been following it since, but researchers said the ethylene gas disruption that followed the storm was unexpected.

A storm this size happens once every 30 years, or once every Saturn year, NASA scientists said.

Launched in 1997, the Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

A full report will be published in November’s issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

A COMET IN TROUBLE?

Amateur astronomers have been keeping a close eye on Comet 168P/Hergenrother since October 1st when it suddenly brightened 500-fold, from 15th to 8th magnitude. At the time, the comet was making its closest approach to the sun (1.4 AU). Some observers speculated that solar heating caused the fragile comet to break apart. On Oct. 26th, a group of astronomers found evidence to support this idea. “Using the Faulkes North (F65) telescope,” writes Ernesto Guido et al., “we detected a fragmentation in Comet 168P.”

“Our images, taken on Oct. 26th, reveal the presence of a secondary nucleus, or fragment, about two arcseconds away from the main central condensation of comet 168P.” This is probably a chunk of rocky ice emerging from the haze of gas and dust that surrounds the main nucleus, still hidden inside. Comets are notoriously fragile, so its no surprise that Comet 168P/Hergenrother is breaking apart in this way.

The only question is, what happens next? Will the comet spit in two, with two heads and two tails, one tracking the fragment and the other tracking the parent? Or is this the prelude to a more complete disintegration? Amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor developments while the comet remains bright enough to see through backyard telescopes. Here are the comet’s coordinates. For best results, we recommend the Comet Hunter Telescope.

Earth approaching objects (objects that are known in the next 30 days)
Object Name	Apporach Date	Left	AU Distance	LD Distance	Estimated Diameter*	Relative Velocity
214869 (2007 PA8)	05th November 2012	8 day(s)	0.0433	16.8	1.5 km – 3.3 km	10.79 km/s	38844 km/h
(2011 UG21)	06th November 2012	9 day(s)	0.1784	69.4	340 m – 760 m	19.73 km/s	71028 km/h
(2010 WT)	07th November 2012	10 day(s)	0.1251	48.7	53 m – 120 m	6.53 km/s	23508 km/h
333358 (2001 WN1)	09th November 2012	12 day(s)	0.1285	50.0	370 m – 830 m	8.73 km/s	31428 km/h
330233 (2006 KV86)	11th November 2012	14 day(s)	0.1876	73.0	450 m – 1.0 km	23.35 km/s	84060 km/h
(2008 LH2)	12th November 2012	15 day(s)	0.1487	57.9	35 m – 78 m	5.10 km/s	18360 km/h
(2001 YM2)	12th November 2012	15 day(s)	0.0860	33.5	440 m – 980 m	9.26 km/s	33336 km/h
(2012 KF25)	15th November 2012	18 day(s)	0.1528	59.5	23 m – 51 m	9.75 km/s	35100 km/h
(1999 SF10)	19th November 2012	22 day(s)	0.0346	13.5	41 m – 92 m	4.08 km/s	14688 km/h
(2009 WB105)	24th November 2012	27 day(s)	0.0400	15.6	59 m – 130 m	18.86 km/s	67896 km/h
(2007 VB188)	25th November 2012	28 day(s)	0.1446	56.3	14 m – 32 m	10.32 km/s	37152 km/h
1 AU = ~150 million kilometers,1 LD = Lunar Distance = ~384,000 kilometers Source: NASA-NEO

Galactic Dinners –
The Milky Way Slowly Consuming Ancient Star Cluster

MessageToEagle.com – Based on current models, galaxies grow by consuming other star systems and the so-called galactic cannibalism process is widespread in the universe.

Around the Milky Way galaxy and in the vicinity of our immediate cosmic neighborhood, known as the “Local Group” of galaxies, traces of spiral galaxies swallowing dwarf galaxies have been known to astronomers since 1997.

Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, researchers have recently discovered a band of stars, or stellar stream.
It is the first of its kind found in the southern Galactic sky, a region that has been hard to examine due to a relative lack of deep-sky imaging there. Deeper imaging enables astronomers to detect fainter stars.

Credits: NASA
This stellar stream, named the Triangulum stream, could be the remnant of an ancient star cluster slowly being ingested by the Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy.

“The Milky Way is constantly gobbling up small galaxies and star clusters,” said Ana Bonaca, a Yale graduate student and lead author of a study forthcoming in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Click on image to enlarge

M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is a perennial favorite of amateur and professional astronomers alike, due to its orientation and relative proximity to us. It is the second nearest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way (after M31, the Andromeda Galaxy) and a prominent member of the “local group” of galaxies. From our Milky Way perspective, M33’s stellar disk appears at moderate inclination, allowing us to see its internal structure clearly, whereas M31 is oriented nearly edge-on. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer imaged M33 as it appears in ultraviolet wavelengths. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The discovery will help astronomers reconstruct how the Milky Way’s mass is distributed, further revealing its dynamic structure.

“The more powerful gravity of our Milky Way pulls these objects apart and their stars then become part of the Milky Way itself.”

Galaxies are believed to form hierarchically through the merger of smaller galaxies and still smaller star clusters.
Stellar streams form as they are ripped apart by the gravitational force of galaxies.
This process may be the primary way galaxies such as the Milky Way grow in mass, the researchers say.

A map of stars in the outer region of the Milky Way as traced by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Streams of stars are seen throughout both the Northern (top) and Southern Galactic hemispheres, corresponding to small galaxies and star clusters which are in the process of being ingested by the Milky Way. The newest discovery is designated as the Triangulum Stream. Credits: yale.edu
Triangulum was found by searching a region recently surveyed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), an international collaboration that is mapping the sky through wide-field photometry.

Bonaca, Geha and co-author Nitya Kallivayalil, a Yale postdoctoral fellow, relied specifically on the survey’s Data Release 8, which included information about vast new areas of the southern galactic sky.

The study is available now on the arXiv preprint server.

MessageToEagle.com via cordis.europa.eu

See also:
ESA’s New Satellite Cheops Will Study Super-Earths

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Mysterious Booms / Rumblings

A loud, unexplained noise set off dozens of calls to the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office Friday morning after residents reported hearing an explosion so loud it shook their homes. YNN’s Meg Rossman reveals the source behind that explosion and why there’s no mystery behind that mystery boom.

NIAGARA COUNTY, N.Y. — It was the mystery boom heard ’round the world – or at least Niagara County that caused the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office to field dozens of calls similar to this exchange from concerned residents:

Dispatch: “Niagara County 911 what’s your emergency?”Caller: “…I heard an explosion and my windows all shook.

Dispatch: “You don’t see any fire or anything?

Caller: “No. No, I don’t.”

No fire and no damage but after several reports just after midnight Friday, Niagara County Undersheriff Michael J. Filicetti said deputies went to investigate.”We actually had several units respond down to the, mostly it was the Newfane area, Town of Somerset, Barker area,” he explained. “They checked around and couldn’t find anything.”

But they were offered plenty of suggestions, everything ranging from a sonic boom to a meteor.

“As of early this morning, we still hadn’t figured out what caused it,” Filicetti said.

According to officials at Columbia University, it’s not out of the question for tremors like Friday’s to be caused by landslides, sonic booms or even a meteor. In this case, however, the source turned out to be a 2.5 magnitude earthquake centered in the Town of Barker.

Dispatch: “Niagara County 9-1-1 what’s the address of your emergency?

Caller: “It’s not actually an emergency. I heard that explosion…”

So how do you explain that mystery boom?”They likely experienced a jolt and that jolt would likely set one’s house in motion and I suspect that’s the noise they heard,” Andrew Whittaker explained.

Whittaker, a structural engineering professor from the University at Buffalo, said it’s a common occurrence with minor earthquakes so close to the surface. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the area sits on a fault line and experiences several very minor quakes every few years, though none of any apocalyptic proportions.

“We have no evidence whatsoever that a large magnitude event is around the corner,” Whittaker said.

Mystery solved.

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Biological Hazards / Wildlife

DNR: More than 11,000 deer dead of EHD

Virus will not impact this hunting season

• By Steve Kelso

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) – The number of Michigan deer dead of a virus continues to rise.

More than 11,000 deer that have been reported dead of epizootic hemorrhagic disease, or EHD, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

The disease causes extensive internal hemorrhages, according to the DNR. White-tailed deer usually develop symptoms seven days after exposure. Between eight and 36 hours after the start of symptoms like rapid pulse and breathing, fever and weakness, the deer lie down and die.

EHD is spread by a gnat called the midge — a species that multiplied well in this summer’s drought. It has been know to exist in Michigan for years, but this year’s outbreak is the worst in history.

“It is way worse than any other outbreak. We have had a few that got over 1,000 or maybe over a thousand a few years back, but this is by far the worst we have seen it,” said DNR Wildlife Biologist John Niewoonder.

The hardest-hit areas are in southwest Michigan, a DNR map shows. Ionia County has also seen a big outbreak. There have been 2,244 reported cases there. Kent County has had 1,637 reported cases.

The DNR says that the number of deer dead of EHD is actually much higher than the 11,000 or so reported, but admits that there is no telling exactly how many deer have died.

The DNR had hoped that by October, the numbers would be on the decrease because a hard freeze should kill off the midges.

Hunters should still feel free to hunt, the DNR says, and the agency will not put any limitations on deer hunting this year. But after this season concludes, the DNR will consider numbers gathered from deer check stations as they decide how many permits to issue next year.

“Typically these re-evaluations don’t result in big changes because the population just doesn’t change that much from one year to the next. This year may be different because of the disease. Hunters may notice bigger changes for next year than they normally would,” said Niewoonder.

It is important to put the number of dead deer in perspective. While there are more than 11,000 deer dead from EHD, hunters harvested more than 440,000 last year and an average of more than 50,000 die every year in car crashes.

The DNR says it does not anticipate that Michigan’s deer herd is in danger.

Humans cannot contract EHD. It occasionally infects domesticated animals — usually hoof stock, the DNR says — but they rarely get sick.

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Online:

DNR field offices contact information

Details on this year’s EHD outbreak and FAQ

Watch video here

27.10.2012

Biological Hazard

USA

State of California, South Lake Tahoe

Biological Hazard in USA on Saturday, 27 October, 2012 at 17:27 (05:27 PM) UTC.

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Articles of Interest

Rocket Explosion:
New Space Debris Cloud Threatens Future Space Missions

MessageToEagle.com – ‘Briz-M’, a Russian rocket recently exploded into some 500 fragments. Most of the debris is now, floating in low Earth orbit.

The good news is that the ISS can avoid a possible collision.

The bad news is that this new space junk cloud has become a threat to future space missions.

The rocket was previously floating inert in space after it failed on a mission to deliver two satellites to its intended orbits in a botched August launch. The rocket engine stalled seven seconds after ignition, leaving some 10 to 15 tons of rocket fuel unused in its tanks. On October 16, Briz-M detonated and shattering into hundreds of fragments.

A proton-M rocket carrying Briz-M.
The debris from the explosion was first noticed by Australian astronomer Robert McNaught. Russia is carefully monitoring the fragments, but there is a risk the number may increase further as the space junk pieces collide with each other and break apart, an industry source told Interfax on Thursday.

The space junk poses no immediate danger, but could threaten future space missions. “We just expanded the list of potential threats with new entries,” the source explained.

“The resulting debris field and impact to space objects on orbit are being assessed at this time, however JFCC-Space is currently tracking over 500 pieces of debris,” Matoush said in an email Tuesday. ”

We expect that number to fluctuate as work to characterize the debris field continues.”

The explosion of Briz-M has cteared a space debris cloud that can threaten future space missions. Image credit: ESA

“Although some of the pieces have begun to re-enter, most of the debris will remain in orbit for an extended period of time,” US State Department spokesperson Jamie Mannina said in a statement.

The International Space Station orbits Earth at an altitude of about 400 kilometers. The station is not currently on a collision course with any of the fragments, and can be repositioned in the future if any danger arises.

Experts are worried how the debris cloud will affect future space missions.

© MessageToEagle.com

See also:
New Supercomputer Can Prevent Asteroid Impact By Using An Atomic Bomb

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