Wind chill warnings across Canada

BBC News, 24 January 2011

Wind chill warning are in place across much or east and central Canada as Canadians brave some of the lowest winter temperatures in decades.

There was "sea smoke" off Halifax Nova Scotia, a
phenomena caused by cold air passing over warmer
water

Quebec City temperatures fell to -25C. Wind chill made it feel more like -40C.

Other parts of east and central Canada are experiencing similar lows and the severe temperatures were set to remain until Tuesday morning.

Despite being a country used to extreme weather, many residents are finding the latest cold snap hard to bear.

Last year's relatively warm winter had raised expectations according to David Phillips, Senior Climatologist with Environment Canada, who told the BBC: "I think we were seduced into thinking this was what winters were going to be."

Upside down

Some of mildest weather is currently being seen in the northern Arctic regions.

The city of Whitehorse in Yukon was enjoying a relatively balmy -1C on Monday.

"We often think that winter begins in the north," said Mr Phillips.

"But we have had some very high temperatures. It's almost as if the weather was upside down."

Further south, in Ottawa, the temperature reached -28.6C, the lowest recorded since 1970. Montreal fell to -22C.

"It's freezing," said Louis Thibaut, who runs a winter clothing store in the city.

He noted that locals, caught off guard, had been buying-up heavy duty outdoor wear.

"People spend from $600 to $800 on jackets on goose down jackets which are good to -40 degrees," he said.

Americans are being warned that the cold front is heading their way next.

Residents in the north-eastern states of Maine and Vermont have been warned to expect similar temperatures to those seen in Canada.

Many schools have already been closed, in preparation for expected blizzard conditions.

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(Live Kryon Channelings was given 7 times within the United Nations building.)

Quantum states last longer in birds' eyes

NewScientist, 20 January 2011 by Rachel Courtland, Magazine issue 2796.

"BIRD brain" is usually an insult, but that may have to change. A light-activated compass at the back of some birds' eyes may preserve electrons in delicate quantum states for longer than the best artificial systems.

There's a compass in my eyes (Image: Kim Taylor/NsaturePL)

Migrating birds navigate by sensing Earth's magnetic field, but the exact mechanisms at work are unclear. Pigeons are thought to rely on bits of magnetite in their beaks. Others, like the European robin (pictured), may rely on light-triggered chemical changes that depend on the bird's orientation relative to Earth's magnetic field.

A process called the radical pair (RP) mechanism is believed to be behind the latter method. In this mechanism, light excites two electrons on one molecule and shunts one of them onto a second molecule. Although the two electrons are separated, their spins are linked through quantum entanglement.

The electrons eventually relax, destroying this quantum state. Before this happens, however, Earth's magnetic field can alter the relative alignment of the electrons' spins, which in turn alters the chemical properties of the molecules involved. A bird could then use the concentrations of chemicals at different points on its eye to deduce its orientation.

Intrigued by the idea that, if the RP mechanism is correct, a delicate quantum state can survive a busy place like the back of an eye, Erik Gauger of the University of Oxford and colleagues set out to find out how long the electrons remain entangled.

They turned to results from recent experiments on European robins, in which the captured birds were exposed to flip-flopping magnetic fields of different strengths during their migration season. The tests revealed that a magnetic field of 15 nanoTesla, less than one-thousandth the strength of Earth's magnetic field, was enough to interfere with a bird's sense of direction (Biophysical Journal, DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2008.11.072).

These oscillating magnetic fields will only disrupt the birds' magnetic compass while the electrons remain entangled. As a weaker magnetic field takes longer to alter an electron's spin, the team calculated that for such tiny fields to have such a strong impact on the birds' compasses the electrons must remain entangled for at least 100 microseconds. Their work will appear in Physical Review Letters.

The longest-lived electrons in an artificial quantum system - a cage of carbon atoms with a nitrogen atom at its centre - survived for just 80 microseconds at comparable temperatures, the team points out. "Nature has, for whatever reason, been able to protect quantum coherence better than we can do with molecules that have been specially designed," says team member Simon Benjamin of the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore.

Thorsten Ritz of the University of California, Irvine, who helped perform the robin experiments, cautions that the RP mechanism has yet to be confirmed. But he is excited by the prospect of long-lived quantum states. "Maybe we can learn from nature how to mimic this," he says.

Related Article:

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Violent Seismic Activity Tearing Africa in Two

Der Spiegel, By Axel Bojanowski, Jan 20, 2011

Northeastern Africa is no longer like it once was. The earth there is in upheaval.
(University of Bristol / Lorraine Field)

Photo Gallery

The fissures began appearing years ago. But in recent months, seismic activity has accelerated in northeastern Africa as the continent breaks apart in slow motion. Researchers say that lava in the region is consistent with magma normally seen on the sea floor -- and that water will ultimately cover the desert.

Cynthia Ebinger, a geologist from the University of Rochester in New York, could hardly believe what the caller from the deserts of Ethiopia was saying. It was an employee at a mineralogy company -- and he reported that the famous Erta Ale volcano in northeastern Ethiopia was erupting. Ebinger, who has studied the volcano for years, was taken aback. The volcano's crater had always been filled with a bubbling soup of silver-black lava, but it had been decades since its last eruption.

The call came last November. And Ebinger immediately flew to Ethiopia with some fellow researchers. "The volcano was bubbling over; flaming-red lava was shooting up into the sky," Ebinger told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Afar Triangle (Spiegel Online)

The earth is in upheaval in northeastern Africa, and the region is changing quickly. The desert floor is quaking and splitting open, volcanoes are boiling over, and seawaters are encroaching upon the land. Africa, researchers are certain, is splitting apart at a rate rarely seen in geology.

The first fracture appeared millions of years ago, resulting in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The second fracture, stretching south from Ethiopia to Mozambique, is known as the Great Rift Valley, and it is lined with several volcanoes. Millions of years from now, it too will be filled with seawater.

Could Go Quickly

But in the Danakil Depression, in the northern part of the valley, the ocean could arrive much sooner. There, low, 25 meter (82 foot) hills are the only thing holding back the waters of the Red Sea. The land behind them has already dropped dozens of meters from previous levels and white salt deposits on the desert floor testify to past encroachments of the sea. But lava soon choked off its access.

For now, no one can really say when the sea will finally flood the desert. But when it does, it could go quickly. "The hills could sink in a matter of days," Tim Wright, a fellow at the University of Leeds' School of Earth and Environment, said at a recent conference hosted by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

In the last five years, the geologic transformation of northeastern Africa has "accelerated dramatically," says Wright. Indeed, the process is going much faster than many had anticipated. In recent years, geologists had measured just a few millimeters of movement each year. "But now the earth is opening up by the meter," says Loraine Field, a scholar at the University of Bristol who also attended the conference.

Earth tremors cause deep fissures to form in the desert floor and the ground in East Africa is shattering like broken glass. Researchers in the Gulf of Tadjoura, which juts into Djibouti from the Gulf of Aden, have recently registered a barrage of seismic shocks. "The quakes are happening on the mid-ocean ridge," Ebinger reports.

Shifting Tectonic Plates

Lava gushes out of fissures in these underwater mountain ranges to constantly create new earth crust -- when it hardens, it becomes part of the sea floor. As the magma surges upward, it spreads the ocean floor on both sides, shifting tectonic plates and causing tremors.

In recent months, the quaking in the Gulf of Tadjoura has been getting closer and closer to the coastline. As Ebinger explains, the splitting of the ocean floor will gradually extend to dry land. This is already the case along some fault lines in the Ethiopian desert, creating a geological spectacle that can otherwise only be witnessed deep below the surface of the ocean.

Even the pattern of earthquakes supports the conclusion that the desert landscape is transforming into a deep seafloor, according to a recent article in the Journal of Geophysical Research published by Zhaohui Yang and Wang-Ping Chen, two geologists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The researchers have recorded several strong earthquakes at a shallow depth in northeastern Africa similar to ones that are otherwise only seen on mid-ocean ridges far out at sea.

In recent months, researchers have also recorded an up-tick in volcanic activity. Indeed, geologists have discovered volcanic eruptions near the earth's surface at 22 places in the Afar Triangle in northeastern Africa. Magma has caused fissures up to eight meters (26 feet) wide to open up in the ground, reports Derek Keir from the University of Leeds. While most of the magma remains beneath the surface, in places like Erta Ale it has made its way above ground.

An Ocean Without Water

Scientists have also noted that the kind of magma bubbling up in the region is the type otherwise only seen spewing forth from mid-ocean ridges deep below the water's surface. One of its signature characteristics is a low proportion of silicic acid. The magma coming out of Erta Ale has the same chemical composition as the kind that emerges from deep-sea volcanoes. The entire region increasingly resembles an ocean floor -- one without water.

The new burst in activity began in 2005, when a 60-kilometer-long fissure suddenly formed in the Afar Depression. Since then, roughly 3.5 cubic kilometers of magma have gushed forth, according to Tim Wright -- enough to cover the entire area of London to an average person's height.

From a geological perspective, the speed with which the magma is pushing forth is astonishing. It has been channeling its way through the rock below the earth's surface at speeds of up to 30 meters per minute, reports Eric Jacques from the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris. Satellite measurements attest to the consequences: In one 200-kilometer stretch welling up with magma, the ground looks like asphalt on a hot summer day. Magma is also pooling up under the Dabbahu Volcano in northern Ethiopia, Lorraine Field reported in San Francisco.

Continuing to Expand

The satellite data has also shown that a much larger area has been scarred by fissures than previously assumed, says Keir. Subterranean currents of magma are also causing ground temperatures to spike in eastern Egypt, a team of geologists from Egypt's National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics recently reported in Seismological Research Letters. At the AGU conference, Columbia University's James Gaherty reported that magma eruptions have ripped a 17-kilometer gash into the desert floor in the northern part of Malawi and that the lateral pressure they have exerted has even lifted the surrounding earth up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) in places.

The most violent upsurge of magma in recent years, though, happened in an unexpected place. In May 2009, a subterranean volcano erupted in Saudi Arabia. A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 5.7 accompanied by tens of thousands of milder tremors forced 30,000 to seek shelter. Magma spewed out of the ground in an area about the size of Berlin and Hamburg combined, Sigurjon Jonsson from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology reported at the AGU meeting. The fact that the eruption took place almost 200 kilometers (124 miles) away from the fault line in North Africa "surprised all of us," says Cynthia Ebinger. And the world's largest geological construction site continues to expand. Loraine Field confirms that more and more magna is pushing its way to the earth's surface, adding that: "The magma chamber is reloading."

Oxford University's David Ferguson predicts a considerable increase in volcanic eruptions and earthquakes in the region over the next decade. They will, he says, "become of increasingly large magnitude."

Related Article:

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Dutch scientist advocates bugs as a green superfood

BBC News, 18 January 2011

Dutch scientist Arnold van Huis has advocated bugs as a healthy, green, alternative food, saying it is time to break old eating habits.

The Callis farm in Ermelo supplies
Prof van Huis and Chef van Gurp
with insects

Insect dishes could be the answer to the global food crisis, shrinking land and water resources and climate-changing carbon emissions, he argued.

"Children don't have a problem with eating insects," he told Reuters.

Prof van Huis gives lectures, tastings and cookery classes with a master chef who prepares Dutch-farmed bugs.

The problem for adults is psychological, he said, and "only tasting and experience can make them change their minds".

Insects are a long-established food in some parts of the world such as Mexico and Thailand.

Worm sprinkles

The professor at Wageningen University said insects had more protein than cattle per bite, cost less to raise, consumed less water and did not have much of a carbon footprint.

To encourage bug consumption, the professor has been working with a local cookery school to produce a cookbook and suitable recipes.

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Chef Henk van Gurp, who created recipes for mealworm quiche and chocolate pralines with buffalo worms, sees no reason to disguise the ingredients.

He sprinkles mealworms on top of his quiche filling and on the chocolate buffalo worms as protein.

"I try to make my food in a way that people can see what they eat," he told Reuters.

"Once international leading chefs begin preparing this food, others will follow."

'Good for the elderly'

Insects are already bred as food for birds, lizards and monkeys at the Callis family's farm near the university, and now the owners are eyeing the human market.

"It is good food, of high nutritional value and very healthy for elderly people," said Margot Callis, adding that she cannot eat insects herself because she is "allergic to them".

One person who attended a food-tasting at the university, 24-year-old IT consultant Duyugu Tatar, was less than enthusiastic about the quiche.

"The taste was not that awful but the idea of eating them horrified me," he said about Mr van Gurp's sprinkles.

"It was crispy. The taste was not like normal food. Not like meat, vegetable, or fruit. Maybe something like cornflakes.

"It took a lot of courage to eat it. I usually smash them [insects] when I see them. I am not used to eating them. I don't know if I would eat it again."

200 dead cows found in Wisconsin field

Kare11.com, By The Associated Press , 1/15/2011 12:50:48 PM

TOWN OF STOCKTON, Wis. -- An investigation is under way after 200 dead cows were found in a field in the Town of Stockton.

The Portage County sheriff's office says the owner of the cattle has been working with a local veterinarian and it's believed the animals died from the IBR/BVD virus. The virus can cause respiratory and reproductive problems.

WSAW reports samples from the dead cows have been sent to Madison for testing.

Authorities say there is no threat to humans or other animals.

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Mysterious sinkhole threatens farmer's house

People’s Daily China, 14:57, January 14, 2011

A mysterious sinkhole suddenly appeared at the vegetable garden of Zhang Shiyin, a villager, in his own yard on Jan. 13, Shuangshan Village, Leshan City of Sichuan Province. The diameter of the sinkhole has increased to about 20 meters and it is severely threatening Zhang's house, but it has not resulted in any casualties until now. (Photo by Chinanews/Liu Zhongjun)

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Magnetic Polar Caps Shifting - Finally Mainstream Waking Up

The Tampa Tribune, January 5, 2011

TAMPA - Scientists say the magnetic north pole is moving toward Russia and the fallout has reached -- of all places -- Tampa International Airport.

Magnetic north pole is moving toward
Russia

The airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account for the shift in location of the Earth's magnetic north.

The closure of the west parallel runway will result in more activity on the east parallel runway and more noise for residential areas of south Tampa.

The busiest runway will be re-designated 19R/1L on aviation charts. It's been 18R/36L, indicating its alignment along the 180-degree approach from the north and the 360-degree approach from the south.

Later this month, the airport's east parallel runway and the seldom used east-west runway will be closed to change signage to their new designations.

The Federal Aviation Administration required the runway designation change to account for what a National Geographic News report described as a gradual shift of the Earth's magnetic pole at nearly 40 miles a year toward Russia because of magnetic changes in the core of the planet.

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Magnificent Aurora in Finland

Spaceweather, Jan. 8, 2011

Timo Newton-Syms of Ruka, Finland, took the picture on Jan. 7th when a
\ solar wind stream hit Earth's magnetic field. "The auroras where widespread
 and visible despite passing clouds and light pollution from the nearby ski slopes,"
 he says. The same stream of solar wind continues to buffet Earth's magnetic field,
and is the source of the expected geomagnetic activity this weekend.

Aurora Picture Galleries


Amazing natural phenomenon parhelion appears in NE China

A parhelion (sundog) combined with a halo is seen in Changchun,
capital of northeast China's Jilin Province, Jan. 8, 2011. The
weather phenomenon is created by ice crystals in the atmosphere
during a cold weather period. (Xinhua/Wang Haofei)

In Stockholm, Sweden, the sun was only up for a little while Wednesday (Jan, 12, 2011), but it made good use of its time. Sunbeams lanced through ice crystals in the air, producing a busy halo of surpassing beauty. "This was the most spectacular sun halo I have seen in recent years from Stockholm," says photographer Peter Rosén. "It was visible for the whole (short) day." In addition to the sundogs, upper tangent arc, and 22° halo captured in the snapshot above, Rosén also witnessed "a 46° outer halo and a circumzenithal arc as ice crystals blew in gusts across the sun. What a show!" More Images ......

Katla - earthquakes during the last 48 hours

Myrdalsjokull (Katla Volcano) - earthquakes during the last 48 hours

Scientists Create 52 Artificial Rain Storms in Abu Dhabi Desert

Time, by: Josh Sanburn, Jan 3, 2010

Fifty-two storms in Abu Dhabi this summer were artifically created.
(Via Getty Images)

Hail, lightning and gales came through the state's eastern region this summer thanks to scientist-puppetmasters.

As part of a secret program to control the weather in the Middle East, scientists working for the United Arab Emirates government artificially created rain where rain is generally nowhere to be found. The $11 million project, which began in July, put steel lampshade-looking ionizers in the desert to produce charged particles. The negatively charged ions rose with the hot air, attracting dust. Moisture then condensed around the dust and eventually produced a rain cloud. A bunch of rain clouds.

(See TIME's pictures of the year 2010)

On the 52 days it rained in the region throughout July and August, forecasters did not predict rain once.

While fascinating, this is not the first time scientists have attempted to mess with Mother Nature. China has been tinkering with cloud seeding for years, not always successfully.

But the idea that countries in the Middle East could actually create rain in this water-poor region could go a long way to solving the area's problems with drought and is considered to be cheaper than desalination. But how controllable the weather can be is still in doubt, and the consequences of meddling with nature at this level are yet to be seen.

(See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2010)

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Natural disasters 'killed 295,000 in 2010'

Google / (AFP)

FRANKFURT — The Haiti earthquake and floods in Pakistan and China helped make 2010 an exceptional year for natural disasters, killing 295,000 and costing $130 billion, the world's top reinsurer said Monday.

A man makes his way through the morgue in Port-au-Prince,
Haiti, in January 2010

"The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change," said Munich Re in a report.

The last time so many people died in natural disasters was in 1983, when 300,000 people died, mainly due to famine in Ethiopia, spokesman Gerd Henghuber told AFP.

A total of 950 natural disasters were recorded last year, making 2010 the second worst year since 1980. The average number of events over the past 10 years was 785.

And in terms of economic cost, insured losses amounted to approximately $37 billion, putting 2010 among the six most loss-intensive years for the insurance industry since 1980.

"2010 showed the major risks we have to cope with. There were a number of severe earthquakes. The hurricane season was also eventful," said Torsten Jeworrek, the firm's chief executive.

The earthquake in Haiti in January was by far the worst disaster in terms of human cost, killing 222,570 people, Munich Re said. Some 56,000 died in a combination of heatwaves and forest fires in Russia, it said.

The other most destructive events were an earthquake in China in April that killed 2,700, floods in Pakistan between July and September that cost 1,760 lives and August floods in China in which 1,470 perished.

Although the Haiti earthquake resulted in human devastation on a "staggering scale", it cost the industry very little as very few people in the poverty-stricken country can afford insurance.

However, an earthquake in Chile that hit over a month later was the world's most expensive natural disaster last year, with overall losses of 30 billion dollars and insured losses of eight billion dollars.

The second most expensive disaster for the insurance industry was a series of earthquakes that rattled New Zealand, which cost an estimated 3.3 billion dollars but caused no deaths.

The global distribution of natural catastrophes in 2010 was however "comparable to that of previous years," Munich Re said.

The American continent suffered the most disasters -- 365 in total -- with 310 in Asia. A total of 120 natural disasters were recorded in Europe, 90 in Africa and 65 in Australia and Oceania.

In 2009, considered a "benign" year due to the absence of major catastrophes and a less severe than usual hurricane season in the North Atlantic, there were 900 "destructive natural hazard events", costing some 60 billion dollars.

Around 11,000 people lost their lives in natural disasters in 2009, well below the average of 77,000.

Last month, another major reinsurer, Swiss Re, reported that man-made and natural disasters generated worldwide economic losses of 222 billion dollars in 2010, more than three times the figure for the previous year.

More than 1,000 dead birds fall from sky in Ark.

MSNBC,

BEEBE, Ark. — The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday more than 1,000 dead blackbirds fell from the sky in Beebe.

A dead bird lies on Skylark Street in Beebe, Ark. on Saturday, Jan. 1,
2011. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday more
than 1,000 dead black birds fell from the sky in Beebe. The agency
said its enforcement officers began receiving reports about the dead
birds about 11:30 p.m. Friday. (AP Photo/The Daily Citizen, Warren
Watkins)

The agency said its enforcement officers began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m.

Friday. The birds fell over a one-mile area of the city, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area, officials said.

Robby King, a wildlife officer for the agency, collected about 65 dead birds, which will be sent for testing to the state Livestock and Poultry Commission lab and the National Wildlife Health Center lab in Madison, Wis.

Commission ornithologist Karen Rowe said that similar events have occurred elsewhere and that test results "usually were inconclusive."

The birds showed physical trauma, said Rowe, who surmised that "the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail."

The agency also said another possibility is that New Year's Eve revelers shooting off fireworks in the area could have startled the birds from their roost and caused them to die from stress.

It's doubtful the birds were poisoned, Rowe said, "since it only involved a flock of blackbirds and only involved them falling out of the sky." She said a necropsy is the only way to determine if the birds were poisoned.

The city of Beebe hired U.S. Environmental Services to clean up and dispose of the dead birds.

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