The Dying Earth - 08/09/2015

Mideast temperatures to exceed half the boiling point next week

el-Arabiya,

8 August, 2015

If you think the worst of the heatwave has passed, think twice. People in the Middle East will swelter through an incredible heat wave this coming Thursday.

Some meteorological national centers in the region are warning their citizens to be ready for temperature’s that have rarely been recorded before.

The center of Meteorology and Seismology in Iraq, predicts that temperatures will exceed half the boiling point of water - 50 degrees - as early as next Thursday.

Other Arab centers issued statements predicting that temperatures will exceed 45 degrees in various countries in the region such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE during the days of Friday, Saturday and Sunday of next week.

Iraq and Lebanon, were forced to declare a four-day holiday last Thursday to help residents cope with extreme conditions as a heat dome set in over the region.

The Iranian port city of Bandar-e Mahshahr recorded temperatures as high as 74 degrees. That remarkable reading came from a heat index that is calculated according to a formula that combines the air temperature - 46 degrees at its peak - with the top humidity or dew-point temperature reached of 32 degrees.

This year is shaping up to be one of the world's hottest. In May, a heat wave in southern India killed 750 people over five weeks and in June, a heat wave in the southern Sindh province of Pakistan claimed over 1,200 lives with a high of 45 C.

'Godzilla El Niño' Now Being Called 'Strongest In Recorded History'

A new piece in the Washington Post, and the new thermographic image above, are here to scare the wits out of you today about this coming fall and winter, when it sounds like every day in California will be a #Rainpocalypse. You know how that climate guy was calling the coming El Niño, now taking shape in the Pacific, a "Godzilla El Niño" a couple weeks ago? Well now more experts are weighing in saying it's most definitely going to get the official categorization of a "strong" event by the end of this month, and 2015 is likely to then become the warmest year on record for the planet as a whole.

Forecasters warn El Nino is getting stronger and could cause more climate ‘mayhem’

August 2015 – CLIMATE – Exceptionally warm water moving from the western Pacific Ocean towards South America has caused El Niño to get even stronger in recent weeks. In fact, scientists claim conditions in the Pacific are now as intense as they were in the summer of 1997, when a massive El Niño was brewing. While this could be good news for drought-stricken areas such as California, researchers warn it may also lead to torrential and hazardous downpours elsewhere.

El Nino events tend to warm the Earth’s atmosphere by suppressing the upwelling of cold water from the ocean that can absorb excess heat. But as well as bringing relief, El Niño can have devastating consequences for agriculture. It can trigger heavy rains and floods in South America and scorching weather in Asia and as far away as east Africa. ‘We have not seen a signal like this in the tropical Pacific since 1997,’ said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA. ‘It’s no sure bet that we will have a strong El Niño, but the signal is getting stronger. What happens in August through October should make or break this event.’ The pulses of warmer water moving across the ocean are Kelvin waves.

Sea level is naturally higher in the western Pacific; in fact, it is roughly 40 to 50cm (15-20 inches) higher near Indonesia than off of Ecuador. Much of this difference is due to tropical trade winds, which predominantly blow from east to west across the Pacific Ocean, piling up the water near Asia and Oceania. When those trade winds ease and bursts of wind come out of the west, warm water from the western Pacific sloshes east in vast and deep waves and evens out sea level a bit. –Daily Mail

One with the wind: Car gets blown away by typhoon in Taiwan

Incredible dashcam footage has emerged of a car literally being blown away by a powerful gust of wind as Typhoon Soudelor magnified by torrential rains raged across Taiwan.

Typhoon Soudelor hits China after sweeping across Taiwan

A powerful typhoon has brought chaos to parts of south-eastern China, with thousands evacuated and millions of homes left without power.

Typhoon Soudelor struck Fujian province late on Saturday night, bringing rains and gale force winds, state media said.

The typhoon earlier swept across Taiwan, leaving at least five people dead.

Although it has weakened, the typhoon is expected to continue moving across the region in the coming hours.

Fujian raised its typhoon alert to the highest level in anticipation of the storm, with at least 163,000 people evacuated to higher ground. There are reports of more evacuations in neighbouring Zhejiang.

What a scorcher! Typhoon Soudelor triggers Hong Kong's hottest day in 130 years as pollution levels soar

Many elderly people struggle to cope as city records hottest temperatures in 130 years as three people were sent to hospital with suspected heatstroke and more than 1,500 call for emergency help

Typhoon Soudelor scorched a place in history books yesterday, bringing Hong Kong its hottest day since records began 130 years ago, with residents baking in temperatures of up to 37.8 degrees Celsius.

The previous hottest days were on August 19, 1900 and August 18, 1990, according to the Hong Kong Observatory, its weather authority.

A spokesman for the Hospital Authority said that as of 5pm on Saturday, three people aged 62, 56 and 53 were admitted to hospital due to suspected heat stroke.

Typhoon Soudelor impacts: at least 17 killed; Grade-IV emergency issued for hard-hit areas in China

August 2015 – TAIWAN – Typhoon Soudelor battered Taiwan and China on Saturday, killing at least 17, leaving nine missing and causing millions of dollars in damage. Five people were killed while the storm besieged Taiwan, including a mother and daughter swept out to sea, two men killed by falling debris in separate incidents and another man pulled from a mudslide. At least twelve died when the storm caused mudslides and flooding in China. Officials issued a grade-IV emergency, the lowest emergency level, for areas hard-hit by Soudelor in China, Xinhua News Agency reported. Two teams were dispatched to Zhejiang and Fujian provinces to aid those affected by the storm.

Agricultural damage in Taiwan is estimated to cost around $18.9 million, says the Taipei Times. Damage in China has been calculated at $617 million, according to Xinhua News Agency. Taiwan’s Ministry of Education reported academic institutional damage reached $4 million nationwide, Taiwan News reported. At least 812 schools were damaged. At one point during the storm, over 4 million Taipower customers were rendered powerless, a record number of outages previously held by Typhoon Herb, which left 2.79 million powerless in 1996, according to the utility.

The BBC reported an eastern Taitung County resident told Formosa TV, “I’ve never seen such a powerful typhoon in my 60 years.” Local authorities reported at least 12 people were killed when mudslides and flooding swept through Zhejiang Province, China, Saturday night, collapsing several homes, Xinhuan News Agency reported. Another five people are missing. A man was killed in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, after he was struck by a falling tree Saturday afternoon, Taiwan News reported. Another man died when he was struck by a falling billboard in Su’ao Township late Friday night, the report dded.

An 8-year-old girl and her mother died when they were swept out to sea by strong waves as the storm neared land, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported. The girl’s twin sister remains missing along the beach in the northeastern county of Yilan, the report added. Before the storm made landfall in China, more than 1.4 million homes in Fujian province were left without power as strong winds blasted the region, the Associated Press reported. The city of Fuzhou, China, was slammed by heavy rains, leaving over 10,000 trees strewn about the city and stranding vehicles in floodwaters, Xinhua News Agency reported. Authorities ordered the evacuation of more than 163,000 people in southeast China and called 32,000 ships back to port ahead of the storm, the AP dded.

Thousands of police and soldiers were on standby to aid those affected by Soudelor. On Saturday afternoon, marine police rescued 55 university students and teachers trapped on a small island where they had been attending a summer camp, after strong gales stopped ferry services, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported. At least 185 people were injured during the storm in Taiwan. Aside from injuries, residents and others woke to streets in Taipei littered with trees, power lines and other debris. –Weather

2nd firefighter killed battling California wildfires

A U.S. Forest Service firefighter was killed Saturday night battling a wildfire in Northern California, becoming the second firefighter to die in just over a week.

Spain wildfire forces more evacuations..

A wildfire that officials suspect was started deliberately, forced the evacuation of a third town in western Spain on Saturday, officials said.

Firefighters evacuated about 1 000 people from the town of Hoyos in the early hours of Saturday, a day after another 1 400 people were ordered to leave their homes and campsites in two other nearby towns.

Puerto Ricans face punishing drought amid economic slump

Puerto Ricans are learning to live without water on an island that already was suffering an economic crisis.

A severe drought is forcing businesses to temporarily close, public schools to cancel breakfast service and people to find creative ways to stay clean amid sweltering temperatures.

Rationing rules that had meant water coming through the pipes only one day out of three will increase the cutoff to one day out of four starting next week, government officials say.

Floods in Guatemala'

at least four people were killed, two disappeared and 8.231 were affected by the overflow of a river because of the rains in the municipality of el estor, in the department Caribbean Izabal, reported today Sunday official sources.

The spokesperson of the state-Run National Coordinator for the reduction of disasters (conred), David De Leon, told the media that 1.109 people were evacuated and 309 relocated to two shelters.

The heavy rains that azotaron the area last Wednesday also caused damage between " Mild, moderate and severe " to 286 houses, of which 195 are found " in condition of risk ". .

The overflow of the river semuch flooded four communities and the case of urban el estor, where collapsed the bridge tunico.

The conred has moved to the area humanitarian assistance to those affected by the floods, for the moment "fourteen tons" of different resources, he said.

This year the season of rain of Guatemala, that usually go from may to October, has caused by the time of six dead and damage to some 100.000 people.

In 2014 were 28 the deceased and 614.229 those suffering because of the rains, which struck also to 8.274 homes.

Will these Alaska villagers be America's first climate change refugees?

Scientists estimate that due to climate change, the village of Kivalina, in northwestern Alaska, will be underwater by the year 2025.

In 2008, the Inupiat village sued 24 of the world's biggest fossil fuel companies for damages. In 2013, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case and the village has declared it will not file a new claim in state court.

Brazil's water crisis is so bad that the army is staging simulations of a mass uprising at the local water utility

Here’s a scenario that seems plausible enough: The Brazilian megacity of São Paulo, currently dealing with Brazil’s largest water crisis in 40 years, continues to experience severe drought over the next several months.

The crisis deepens, and soon, some residents lose access to water altogether. The next step: a riot or crowd-driven attack on Sabesp, the local water utility.

It’s the kind of desperate measure that seems more like a distant post-apocalyptic situation for other drought-ridden places like California, but as one São Paulo water activist recently discovered, the Brazilian army is actually preparing for this possibility.

Massive Toxic Algae Bloom Spreading Across Pacific Coast

An unprecedented bloom of toxic algae that spreads thousands of miles across the Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada is raising concerns for health and massive economic loss through the closing of fisheries.

The massive algae bloom emerged in May and spans from the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California to Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

Boats high and dry as Central Europe fights drought

RIVER traffic on the Danube has been disrupted with boats left high and dry, and crops destroyed as Central Europe battles one of its worst draughts in decades.

Dozens of ships have their passage blocked on the Danube, with shipping companies having to lighten their boat loads or transfer cargo to lorries and trains as they contend with a scorching and prolonged heat-wave caused by hot air moving northwards from Africa.

In the Czech Republic temperatures have come close to 40C, and meteorologists expect July and August to the be the hottest months on record.

Tornado in Malta

Crazy pic of the fire in the Catalinas!

Toxic sludge in contaminated river reaches New Mexico, communities have 90-day water supply

Toxic waste, including arsenic and lead, which seeped into a river in southwest Colorado, has now crossed the state border into New Mexico. More than 550 gallons per minute are entering the water flow system according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which caused the spill.

The agency says it should have the results of samples undergoing lab testing soon, so they can find out just how contaminated the river has become. Aside from lead and arsenic, federal officials say the spill also contains, cadmium, aluminum, copper and calcium.

THE METHANE MONSTER -

by Sam Carana

Via Facebook

At no time in the past did humans exist under conditions that we are facing now, no matter how far back you go in history. 

Global mean methane levels as high as 1840 parts per billion were recorded on August 4, 2015. This is the highest mean level since records began and this new record is likely to be superseded by even higher levels soon.

The carbon dioxide that is released now will only reach its peak impact a decade from now. Methane's high immediate impact makes it more important than carbon dioxide emissions in driving the rate of global warming over the coming decade.

The Pacific Ocean is very warm at the moment. Warm water flows from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean. Sea surface temperatures in the Bering Strait were as high as 20.5°C (or 69.1°F) on August 4, 2015. That is 8.7°C (or 15.6°F) warmer than the water used to be. Sea surface temperatures as high as 11.8°C (53.2°F) were recorded in between Greenland and Svalbard on August 7, 2015, an anomaly of 8.5°C (15.3°F).

The danger is that further warming will cause collapse of the sea ice, which in turn will lead to even more rapid warming of the Arctic Ocean, while the presence of more open water will also increase the opportunity for powerful storms to develop that can mix high sea surface temperatures all the way down to the seafloor, resulting in destabilization of sediments and triggering releases of methane that can be contained in such sediments in huge amounts.

Methane releases from the seafloor of the Arctic ocean threaten to cause rapid local warming that in turn will trigger further methane releases, in a vicious cycle of runway warming that could destroy habitat for humans within decades.

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as discussed at the Climateplan at theArctic-news blog. 


A scientific paper 

"It looks like damage to the oceans may as well be considered permanent. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere would help, but it will take thousands of years for the oceans to recover. The current reality is that more C02 is still being added to the atmosphere rather than being reduced in the atmosphere. Sheer folly. When carbon was reduced in the atmosphere and stored during Earth's early formation, it made life on Earth possible. Releasing carbon back into the atmosphere is the biggest mistake humans have ever made. Permanent damage to the oceans and life on Earth has already been done and it continues. Sheer madness."

---Harold Hensell

Long-term response of oceans to CO2 removal from the atmosphere

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere has been proposed as a measure for mitigating global warming and ocean acidification. To assess the extent to which CDR might eliminate the long-term consequences of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the marine environment, we simulate the effect of two massive CDR interventions with CO2 extraction rates of 5 GtC yr−1 and 25 GtC yr−1, respectively, while CO2 emissions follow the extended RCP8.5 pathway. We falsify two hypotheses: the first being that CDR can restore pre-industrial conditions in the ocean by reducing the atmospheric CO2 concentration back to its pre-industrial level, and the second being that high CO2 emissions rates (RCP8.5) followed by CDR have long-term oceanic consequences that are similar to those of low emissions rates (RCP2.6). Focusing on pH, temperature and dissolved oxygen, we find that even after several centuries of CDR deployment, past CO2 emissions would leave a substantial legacy in the marine environment.

Gulf Of Mexico Dead Zone Has Grown In Size This Summer, NOAA Says

A dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, an area with low oxygen that is harmful to marine life, has grown in size this summer, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Tuesday. Heavy rainfall in June across the Mississippi River watershed and a loss of nutrients in the water were cited as possible causes.

This year, the dead zone is over 5,000 square miles large and is equivalent to the combined size of Connecticut and Rhode Island, according to NOAA. Also known as hypoxia, the dead zone is formed mostly from the overuse of fertilizers on farming land. Nutrients such as nitrogen allow algae to flourish and consume the oxygen that's needed to support life in the water, leading to depleted populations of fish, shrimps, crabs and other marine life. Annual measurements of the dead zone began in 1985

NORMALIZING EXTINCTION..

A few years back I had the good fortune of visiting the rainforest in a remote part of Panama. I stayed in a small cabin at an ecolodge with the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea just steps away. There were no televisions, no internet access, and no phones or electricity, except in the main house. In back of the lodge was a trail that meandered through a dense forest brimming with tree frogs, sloths, iguanas, leaf cutter ants, and countless species of birds hopping from branch to branch. Just a couple feet into the water and I counted dozens of bright orange sea stars. And at night the sea shore came alive with biolumeniscent dinoflagellates, who would respond to my flashlight signals in short bursts of blue-green neon. The abundance of life in that tiny corner of the world crowded out most signals of modern civilization....