Volcanic ash cloud 'spreading towards London': forecast

Telegraph.co.uk, by Alastair Jamieson, 8:39AM BST 15 Apr 2010

The Met Office ash cloud forecast for 7pm BST on Thursday 15 April, issued at 6.35am. The area inside the red line is affected by volcanic ash. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Eyjafjallajokull Eruption Video: Iceland Volcano

The Met Office ash cloud forecast for 6pm local time on Thursday 15 April, issued at 6.35am. The area inside the red line is affected by volcanic ash.

A set of charts issued by the Met Office shows how the cloud is set to drift southwards across Britain, mostly at three and three-quarter miles (6km) above ground.

The maps show the estimated location of the ash cloud at 6pm and midnight tonight.

The red areas show the risk of ash at lower levels between ground and 20,000ft - marked in "flight levels" as FL200 - while green areas show the risk of ash between 20,000ft and 35,000ft - marked as FL200/FL350.

Blue areas show the cloud between 35,000ft and 55,000ft - marked as FL350/FL550.

The spread of all three layers over southern England suggests even more disruption to flights is expected later today, as controllers extend air space closures, currently affecting every UK air traffic 'sector' north of London.

A spokesman for the Met Office said it was not immediately clear how long the flight disruption could be expected to last.

He added that the cloud was thinly dispersed at high altitudes and that there was little risk of Britain being dusted with ash, although it is possible many will enjoy a bright red sunset.

Hundreds of flights have already been cancelled at airports in Scotland and northern England, and air traffic controllers in Brussels in charge of strategic management of flights across Europe have issued warnings to pilots that many flights into Britain can expect to be diverted to other countries or cancelled.

Flights in Norway and other parts of northern Europe have also been disrupted.

Volcanic ash is extremely dangerous in airspace, as it causes engines to malfunction, restricts vision and even cause severe damage to the metal 'skin' of the aircraft.

Because of the threat to aviation, a global early warning system, known as theInternational Airways Volcano Watch, has been established. Iceland is considered as particularly vulnerable to volcanic disruption.

Authorities on Tuesday evacuated 800 residents from around the Eyjafjallajokull glacier as water gushed down the mountainside and rivers rose by up to 10 feet (3 meters).

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted for the first time in 200 years on March 20, in a dramatic display that sent fountains of lava spewing into the air.

The first eruption did not trigger any major flooding, as was initially feared, because the active vents were in a mainly ice-free part of the volcano.

But Tuesday's eruption came from a different vent beneath a 650-ft (200m) thick block of ice, unleashing a torrent of glacial meltwater.

Smoke billows from a volcano in Eyjafjallajokull April 14, 2010. (Credit: Reuters/Ingolfur Juliusson)

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Lightning streaks across the sky as lava flows from a volcano in Eyjafjallajokul, Iceland, on Friday. The resulting ash has blanketed Northern Europe, shutting down flights to and from the region and leaving thousands of travelers stranded. The volcano could continue to erupt for months. (Reuters Photo)

Virus Helps Researchers Split Water into Hydrogen and Oxygen

POPSCI, By Clay Dillow, 04.12.2010 at 2:30 pm

Splitting Water It's chock full of hydrogen atoms; if we could only unlock it efficiently, we could have an abundant and inexpensive source of energy on our hands. Noodle Snacks

Viruses generally get a bad rap, but they can also be very helpful little machines. For instance, bacteriophages have been engineered to clear up infections that seemed otherwise untreatable, and genetic material from viruses has been used to ease biofuel production. Now a team at MIT is using a modified virus to assemble the biological nano-scaffolding necessary to split water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

Of course, other means to split water into hydrogen and oxygen exist, but none of them are as efficient or simple as the method plants use to oxidize water through photosynthesis, requiring energy from outside the system to carry the process to fruition. Meanwhile, efforts to extract the photosynthesizing components from plants for use in harnessing solar power have been largely unsuccessful.

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Science, Clay Dillow, electricity, energy, hydrogen, oxygen, photosynthesis, water splittingSo the MIT team decided to engineer a virus to imitate plants’ oxidizing machinery by artificial means. Using a zinc porphyrin pigment and iridium oxide catalyst, the team was already able to mimic nature’s own photosynthesizers, which are very efficient at flipping solar power into fuel for water-splitting reactions within plants. But for efficient water-splitting, those catalysts and pigments must be arranged in a very particular way.

Therein lies the team’s innovation: an engineered bacterial virus known as M13 that serves as a sort of self-assembling biological scaffold, spacing the porphyrins and iridium such that oxygen production increases fourfold. The pigments capture sunlight and transfer that energy down the length of the virus the way a wire transfers electricity from one end to the other. That energy in turn powers the iridium reaction that splits the oxygen from the water.

The process still lacks a critical step: once the splitting is complete, the oxygen has been siphoned from the water but the hydrogen is left split into its component electrons and protons. The team is currently exploring other biomimicking systems that might reassemble those building blocks into usable, storable hydrogen atoms. An actual commercial process that produces hydrogen from water as efficiently as plants do is likely years away, but the MIT team hopes to have a working, self-sustaining device that can perform the entire water-splitting process in the lab within two years.

104 degrees

The Jakarta Post, The Associated Press, Hyderabad, India, Wed, 04/14/2010 9:09 PM

104 degrees: A Shepherd walks with a herd of sheeps as he crosses a dried water bed in the outskirts of Hyderabad, India, Wednesday. Heat wave conditions swept several parts of the country with mercury hovering over 40 degree Celsius (104 degree Fahrenheit) in many areas, according to news reports. AP/Mahesh Kumar A.

Cyclone hits India, killing 31 villagers and destroying 50,000 homes

Daily Mail, By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE, 10:21 AM on 14th April 2010

At least 31 people have been killed after a cyclone demolished thousands of homes in India.

The storm destroyed 50,000 mud huts as it tore through villages, leaving more than 100 people injured.

Trees were uprooted and telephone and electricity lines snapped as the cyclone hit the North Dinajpur district of West Bengal state last night.

Devastation: North Dinajpur in West Bengal where the storm hit

Srikumar Mukherjee, the civil defense minister, said the worst-affected areas were Hematabad, Raiganj and Kiran Dighi, where police have recovered 31 bodies.

He is personally overseeing relief operations and has rushed to the Uttar Dinajpur district, where the devastation is huge.

The villages have been left without power, hampering rescue operations which were continuing today. Officials have said they expect the death toll to rise.

The storm was followed by heavy rains that furthered added to the woes of the villagers whose housetops had earlier been blown away.

Telecommunication links have also been severely hit.

In May last year more than 155 people were killed by Cyclone Aila which hit West Bengal and Bangladesh.

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Mongolia Gets ADB Support for Herder Families Battling Natural Disaster

Asian Development Bank, 12 April 2010

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - Isolated nomadic herder families in Mongolia who are struggling to survive amidst an unfolding natural disaster are to receive support from the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Asia Pacific Disaster Response Fund.

A grant of $2.5 million from the Fund to the Government of Mongolia will help deliver food, fuel, and health and social services to herders battling heavy snow and abnormally low temperatures that have affected the country since last December. The brutal winter conditions follow a severe summer drought and shortage of animal fodder, resulting in a local natural disaster known as a dzud.

"ADB is committed to helping herder families affected by the dzud through this very difficult time," said ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda.

The government has declared a state of disaster in 15 of the country’s 21 provinces, with over 420,000 people - or a quarter of the rural population - affected by the severe conditions. Nomadic herder families, including pregnant women, have exhausted their food and cooking fuel, and in many cases have lost most of their livestock - the main source of livelihood for up to a third of the country’s population. Forced to fend for themselves, families have also been unable to access medical care and other social support services.

Livestock deaths reached 5 million by the end of March, and along with the potential for increased herder poverty, unemployment, and mass urban migration as a result, the large number of carcasses pose an infectious diseases threat as temperatures rise and the snow thaws. Part of ADB’s assistance will also be used to remove dead animals in order to contain any risk of disease, and to avoid soil contamination.

The United Nations Resident Coordinator in Mongolia is overseeing disaster relief with assistance already extended from international nongovernmental organizations and development organizations. Bilateral emergency relief is being provided by countries such as People’s Republic of China, Russia and Turkey.

The Asia Pacific Disaster Response Fund, established in 2009, provides quick disbursing grants to developing member countries affected by natural calamities. It is designed to help countries meet their immediate expenses, and helps bridge the gap between ADB financing facilities that reduce disaster risks, and those that provide longer term post-disaster reconstruction assistance.

About ADB

Mongolia has been hit by unusually severe winter weather

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"The tilting of the earth changes everything" - Inuit Elders Speak on Climate Change

Marklar Blog, on January 4, 2010 at 2:00pm

View Video (Isuma, by Ian Mauro, 11/25/2009)

Arguably, the most bizarre, fascinating and perhaps groundbreaking of all observations we've heard from Inuit is that they believe our world has tilted on its axis and this contributes to climate change. When Zacharias and I first heard this, we thought it was very strange, yet elders in all the communities we've worked in - Pangnirtung, Iqaluit, Resolute Bay and Igloolik - all believe this phenomenon to be true. In today's blog, we post a video from Igloolik elder Japiti Palluq talking about the impacts of a tilted earth, and unpack the traditional knowledge and science on this issue.

It's been very interesting to see elders and hunters across Nunavut make the same observation about the world having shifted on its axis. In most cases, research participants were not prompted on the issue, yet they began talking about it. Just today, we heard from another interviewee that "the earth has tilted", and Zach looked and me and jokingly said "did you tell him?". As a trained scientist, I know that a key test for "truth" is the repeated replicability of a research finding, independent of who is doing the test. Hearing Inuit across Nunavut make the same observation, using their traditional ecological knowledge, seems to pass this credo for scientific truth. So what data are elders collecting and analyzing to draw this conclusion?

Elders across Nunavut have noticed that the sun and stars have changed their position in the sky. The sun is now rising higher and staying longer than it used to. Importantly, in the far north, you must remember that the sun goes below the horizon for a large part of the year, and therefore Inuit are very familiar with its celestial pattern. Indeed, Inuit we're talking with are telling us stories about how in the old days, during the dark months, they would travel the land by dog team using stars as their navigational tools. So, when Inuit talk about the sun and stars, they do so with an intimate knowledge of these systems.

We've heard that the earth has tilted in the direction of the sun. Elders explain that this is why the sun is higher in the sky and there is increased and more direct heat entering the Arctic ecosystem. As Japiti explains, this has subsequently altered migratory routes of animals, warmed the ocean water, and thinned the ice cover. While this almost sounds like a fringe theory to obfuscate that fossil fuel use increases greenhouse gases, it is actually something has just recently been acknowledged by scientists.

When we began this project, I scanned the academic literature to see if there was any scientific evidence to support Inuit claims that the "earth has tilted" and thus causing climate change, but nothing existed. Now that we're in Igloolik, editing the film, and hearing this observation repeatedly, I hit the literature again. And, to my surprise and delight, two research studies have recently been published that relate to the Inuit knowledge we are collecting with video.

Drysdale et al (2009) published a study in the prestigious journal Science this past August that argues the Late Pleistocene (approximately 141,000 years ago) glacial period came to an end because of changes to the obliquity, or tilt, of the earth. Like Inuit, the study states that this is a possible climate change hypothesis "because of the relatively large and persistent increases in summer energy reaching the high latitudes of both hemispheres during times of maximum Earth tilt". Although Drysdale et al (2009) are discussing past climate change, their findings seem to support present claims by Inuit that a tilting earth may warm climate. In another study, published this past September in Geophysical Research Letters, Landerer et al (2009) indicate that the warming of oceans, exacerbated by melting glaciers that flow into them, is causing "horizontal mass redistribution" of the world's seas. Essentially, the weight and position of the world's oceans have shifted, and this has literally caused the earth to shift its position on its axis! In both the Drysdale (2009) and Landerer (2009) studies, the authors argue that these phenomena have not been previously reported, and that their findings offer new insights into how scientists and society should think about climate change and its causes and associated impacts.

Indeed, Inuit observations seem tied to the technical science of long-term climate change, specifically the theory of the Milankovitch Cycles, which seem to predict natural planetary warming and cooling periods based on the position of the earth and its axis in relationship to the sun. See Wikipedia for more details:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

In many ways, Inuit elders speak with the knowledge of astrophysicists and environmental scientists all in one, and so I'm just trying to catch up. I find it fascinating that for many years, elders and hunters living on the land have been observing and talking about environmental change that is now only being published by scholars working at the cutting edge of science. Indeed, Inuit are climate change experts, and their knowledge complements and in some ways surpasses scientific understanding on this topic. We certainly hope that our work shows how these two "ways of knowing" can work together to better understand climate change, arguably the paramount issue of our time.

>>>>>>>MARKLAR: "Taken in conjunction with the the article I previously posted titled Earth's north magnetic pole racing towards Russia due to core flux, a picture emerges that indicates a possible pole shift in the making though it could stabilize tomorrow just as well."

References:

Drysdale (2009). Evidence of obliquity forcing of glacial termination II. Science, 325, 1527-1528.

Landerer et al. (2009). Long-term polar motion excited by ocean thermal expansion. Geophysical Research Letters, 36, 1-5.

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Inuit Observations Offer New Tool for Climate Change Research

Inuit communities that have long paid close attention to the climate have said Arctic weather patterns are shifting--and scientists say they are right

Scientific American, By Lauren Morello and Climatewire

TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER: Researchers credit a combination of scientific data and traditional environmental knowledge from Inuit communities for shedding new light on an overlooked aspect of climate change. (NATIONAL OCEAN & ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION)

Computer models, weather satellites and ice cores are valuable tools for scientists who study how Earth's climate is changing. But a new study suggests that researchers can add another weapon to their arsenal: the knowledge gathered by indigenous people who have spent generations living off the land in rhythm with weather and seasons.

Researchers at the University of Colorado credit a combination of scientific data and traditional environmental knowledge from two Canadian Inuit communities for shedding new light on an overlooked aspect of climate change.

In recent years, Inuit communities that have long paid close attention to the climate have said their traditional forecasting methods are becoming less accurate. They blame the change on shifting weather patterns.

Scientists have attempted to confirm those claims for at least 15 years without success -- until now.

"This is not the first scientific paper on Inuit knowledge," said lead author Elizabeth Weatherhead, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado. "But it is the first paper linking that Inuit knowledge to more scientific approaches."

The scientist said the detailed interviews with Inuit conducted by her co-author and University of Colorado colleague, Shari Gearheard, helped make the difference.

"Instead of just glossing over and taking a sort of sound bite -- 'The weather is faster' -- she really sat with people and found it was a problem and at what time scales," Weatherhead said.

Unexplained changes in weather persistence

The Inuit weather observers Gearheard interviewed told her that the strange weather behavior didn't occur every year or in every season, but it was becoming more severe when it did happen.

Meanwhile, Weatherhead combed through scientific data and discovered evidence supporting the Inuit observations.

"What we found is that the day-to-day persistence of weather was changing in this more unpredictable manner for at least one of the two locations" included in the study, she said, during a critical time of year -- Arctic spring, which occurs in June at the two Canadian sites.

In simple terms, what the researchers were looking at is how much weather changes from one day to the next, and how long a weather pattern -- like a heat wave or a cold snap -- lasts.

"We all grew up with the idea that if today is a warm day, tomorrow will be a warm day, too -- but we probably won't be stuck in a warm period for three weeks," Weatherhead said. "There's a natural time scale to weather events. That's what seems to be changing."

In most of the world -- including mid-latitudes, where much of the planet's population lives -- weather seems to be getting more persistent.

But at the Baker Lake site in the Canadian Arctic province of Nunavut, weather events seem to be getting less persistent -- shorter. Scientists didn't observe such a change at the second place they studied, the community of Clyde River, also located in Nunavut.

Though they don't fully understand what caused the different outcomes at the two sites, Weatherhead speculated it had something to do with Clyde River's proximity to Baffin Bay, and the influence of weather patterns that develop over the oceans.

Inland areas, like Baker Lake, are more sensitive to changes in land use and snow cover, she said.

Overlooked and underappreciated by mainstream scientists

The new study is not the first attempt by scientists to draw on indigenous environmental knowledge. Projects funded during the 2007-2008 International Polar Year, for example, documented different Arctic native populations' rich vocabulary for different types of sea ice and plumbed the communities' observation of changing caribou behavior.

But Mead Treadwell, chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, said the new work is another piece of evidence that justifies the attention to indigenous knowledge that has been overlooked and sometimes dismissed by mainstream science.

That's one reason his commission has urged measures ranging from preserving indigenous languages of the Arctic to encouraging scientists and native peoples to collaborate on scientific research.

"If you lose the language that people have been speaking for 10,000 years as it has evolved, you lose a huge amount of information that is built up in the language," he said. "If something is named 'a place where the caribou mate,' that tells you the caribou were once there if they are not there now. If you lose a particular plant that might translate as 'medicine weed,' you understand how it has been used."

Treadwell noted that, in two separate instances, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration changed its estimate of the Arctic's bowhead whale population based on native reports that showed more whales than the government initially counted.

For her part, Weatherhead said her next step will be examining how climate change affects the persistence of weather patterns around the world.

"This increase in persistence that we're seeing in very many places is just as important as the decrease in persistence that Arctic inhabitants are talking about," she said. "It has potential human health impacts, for example. People with asthma can often take one day of bad weather. Two is stressful. But at three, they might find themselves in the emergency room."

The study will be published this month in the journal Global Environmental Change.

Inuits has long studied nature. Photo from 1854. (Photo by paukrus /Flickr)

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Inuit communities in tune with nature note that the weather is changing, scientists concur.

Mother Nature Network, by Katherine Butler, Sat, Apr 10 2010 at 12:15 PM EST

Inuits has long studied nature. Photo from 1854. (Photo by paukrus /Flickr)

Native people have long lived in harmony with nature, following the patterns of the weather for centuries. Now, science is listening. Scientific American reports that climatologists at the University of Colorado used information from two Canadian Inuit communities and scientific data in a recent study on shifting weather patterns.

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Scientists tracking weather for over a decade recognized that native insight might eclipse the latest weather satellites and computer models. Elizabeth Weatherhead is an atmospheric scientist at the University of Coloradoand lead author for this study. As she told Scientific American, "This is not the first scientific paper on Inuit knowledge. But it is the first paper linking that Inuit knowledge to more scientific approaches."

And just what have they found? The scientists looked at how much weather changes from one day to the next, and how long a weather pattern lasts. The Inuits, located in and near the Arctic, explained to Weatherhead and co-author Shari Gearheard that there are unexplained changes in weather patterns. The natural time scale to a weather event is becoming more erratic. In other words, it could be cold one day, and warm the next – as opposed to usual three weeks of warm weather. Canadian Inuit tribes have noticed that their traditional forecasting measures are becoming less accurate. Inuits believe this is because the weather has become erratic.

Mead Treadwell is the chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, and he feels like this report justifies new interest in indigenous observations about our world. As he told Scientific American, "If you lose the language that people have been speaking for 10,000 years as it has evolved, you lose a huge amount of information that is built up in the language…If something is named 'a place where the caribou mate,' that tells you the caribou were once there if they are not there now." After all, a popular though disputed saying notes that Inuits have several worlds for snow. Why should science not pay attention?

This is not the first time scientists have turned to native people for information. According to Treadwell, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration twice changed its report of the Arctic's bowhead whale population based on indigenous people’s report that revealed more whales than counted by the government.

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Wall of water could engulf Shangri-La

A landslide has dammed Pakistan's Hunza River, creating a vast lake which now threatens 45,000 people downstream

The Independent, by Rina Saeed Khan, Sunday, 4 April 2010

Pakistani bearers carrying goods from China that were ferried across the new lake last week. Engineers fear the natural dam formed by a huge landslide may break (AP)

A seven-mile lake formed by a massive landslide in north-east Pakistan is threatening to burst its banks and sweep through a valley, wiping out villages and endangering 45,000 people who live downstream.

Engineers are racing to build a channel at the top of the natural dam, formed by a landslide in early January which killed 19 people and blocked the Hunza River. This would let the water drain from the lake gradually. But they do not have much time. The water, which only a week or so ago was rising at a rate of 45cm a day, is now going up by a daily 30cm. Its growth is sure to accelerate as glaciers and snow caps in the nearby mountains start to melt.

The swelling waters of this huge lake – about as long as Ullswater, the Lake District's second-largest body of water – are now just 30 metres from the top.

Professor David Petley, of the International Landslide Centre at Durham University, warns there is "substantive risk of an outburst" as the water level approaches the top of the dam, with "the potential for a large flood wave to travel downstream as far as Tarbela Dam", 50km northwest of Islamabad.

He says: "When the water reaches the top there are two scenarios. One, water goes into the channel that the army are cutting and there's no flood. It sounds like an attractive prospect but you have a huge body of water behind a landslide dam. Two, if the water goes, it would be caught by the Tarbela dam downstream – and the reservoir there is low because of the drought in Pakistan – but as many as 45,000 people are in danger of a flood wave. A wave could be 40 metres high, or even more, as it goes down the valley."

The dammed river, from which the lake has formed, runs through the fertile Hunza Valley, the former mountain kingdom renowned as the fabled Shangri-La, and feeds into the mighty Indus river on which the Tarbela dam lies. The expanding lake has already displaced more than 1,600 people in surrounding villages and the waters are encroaching on several more villages.

People now watch helplessly as the waters rise. Shah Makeen, a fruit seller from Shiskat, a village a few kilometres east of the landslide, closer to the Chinese border, said at the end of March, when I visited the area, that his home is slowly being engulfed by the massive lake.

At that point, the waters were lapping at the village of Gulmit, and had already flooded the orchards of tourist hotels located near the river. Makeen said: "I would say that in another two weeks most of Ayeenabad will be flooded. The water has even reached Gulmit now. People are very upset."

Focus Humanitarian Assistance, a charity affiliated with the Aga Khan Development Network, is setting up an early-warning system to alert villagers downstream in case the dam shows signs of collapse. They have built a monitoring camp above the lake to check for cracks and have installed CCTV and night lights to monitor seepage or any unusual activity in the dam.

Professor Petley says more needs to be done. In his report he writes: "While constructing the spillway is undoubtedly an appropriate first step, a great deal more work is urgently required in terms of management of the hazard... The downstream communities are facing a risk that is not tolerable – immediate action is required at a national level to protect the population between Attabad and Tarbela Dam."

But for people such as Afsar Jan from Shiskat, who is watching the waters submerge his home, the authorities have done too little too late. "They should have done more sooner," he says. "Our future is being destroyed in front of our very eyes."

The villagers, mostly Ismaili Muslims whose spiritual leader is the Aga Khan, are losing their homes, orchards and fields as the waters rise. And the lake has not only taken people's land away, it has also cut off the 25,000 population living in the Gojal region of Hunza from the rest of the country and severed a vital trading route with China.

Submerged beneath the icy water is a vital 10km stretch of the famous Karakoram Highway (KKH), the highest road in the world which snakes through the mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush, the Karakorams and the Himalayas, linking China and Pakistan. The route is not expected to reopen for months.

Professor Petley says: "The 25,000 or so people on the north side of the blockage are stranded. They have no access to the road but for the rickety old boats that are taking them across the lake to the dam. Without them, they'd be cut off from the outside world. There is a serious problem supplying them with food and medicine. People on the north side of the barrier are suffering badly. The boats are totally inadequate. There does need to be some more assistance."

The only way for people to get to the KKH from upstream of the landslide is a one-hour journey across the lake by boat and then over the 1.5km landslide on foot. The journey takes a whole day as there are not many boats and they operate only in daylight. The people complain there are insufficient boats, although the army plans to start operating large rafts which can transport more goods and even small jeeps. There are no food shortages but people are relying on aid.

Bibi Shawar, who is currently living in a makeshift camp in Ayeenabad, said: "In the beginning there were only around two boats. I know of a woman and her new-born baby who both died because there was no boat to take them to a hospital in time.

"In the Punjab [a southern state in Pakistan], a woman delivered a baby in a rickshaw and the media made such a fuss that she was compensated 500,000 rupees (£7,350). Here, even the boats they give us are leaky and unsafe."

More than 100,000 cubic metres of debris have already been moved by the bulldozers but a further 112,500 cubic metres still need to be lifted. At the site of the landslide, four large diggers, borrowed from the Chinese contractors who were working on widening the Karakoram Highway, are lifting clay, rocks and soil from the landslide to build the spillway channel. The work is being carried out by engineers from the Frontier Works Organisation, which built and maintains the Karakoram Highway.

Farooq Ahmad Khan, a retired major general who chairs Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, said: "The landslide occurred on 4 January this year and on 5 January I was at the site along with my team. We led the rescue operation in the area. To date, the Pakistani army has flown 635 helicopter sorties to the affected area, dropping off 153 tons of food items and 438 cartons of medicines."

In his view, the work to open the spillway is on track, given the scale of the landslide, and it should be completed by 15 April unless the boulders are so big they require blasting. "In the beginning it was very tricky work. We first had to make an access path for the bulldozers over all the slush, which took time," he said.

Professor Petley says: "I haven't seen plans to move people. The Focus organisation has drafted plans for as far down the river as Gilgit, which is where the Hunza becomes the Indus. But there's nothing planned beyond that. The government could have plans in place: I desperately hope that there are plans for the evacuation. If there aren't, that's worrying. Despite the World Bank endorsing my plan for the area, there's been no feedback from the Pakistan government. We're trying not to make them feel that we're backing them into a corner."

'World needs a barometer of life'

BBC News, by Mark Kinver, Science and environment reporter

Knowledge about species and extinction rates is "very poor"

Biodiversity's 'point of no return'

The world needs a "barometer of life" to prevent ecosystems and species being lost forever, scientists have warned.

Existing schemes, they said, did not include enough species from groups such as fungi and invertebrates to provide a detailed picture of what is at risk.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers said the barometer would increase the number of species being assessed from almost 48,000 to 160,000.

The data would help identify areas in need of urgent action, they added.

The article was penned by four leading figures in conservation, including Harvard University's Edward O Wilson and Simon Stuart, chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Species Survival Commission (SSC).

"Knowledge about species and extinction rates remain very poor, and species disappear before we know they existed," they wrote.

To date, about 1.9m species have been described and given scientific names, but the actual number may exceed 10m.

"As scientists are better able to assess the conservation status of the species that compose an ecosystem, the more they will understand the health of that ecosystem," they continued.

"It is time to accelerate taxanomy and scientific natural history, two of the most vital but neglected disciplines of biology."

Broader coverage

Currently, the most authoritative data on the status of at-risk species is the IUCN Red List, which has been assessing the conservation status of species around the globe for more than 40 years.

Dr Stuart, who oversees the compilation of the Red List, said it provided a good insight to the health of certain ecosystems, such as forests.

"But it is very weak in its coverage of freshwater, marine and arid land species," he told BBC News.

"There are a lot of additional species that we have to bring into the Red List."

At the moment, it evaluates almost 48,000 species, but it is acknowledged that there is a bias towards higher vertebrates, which include mammals, birds and reptiles.

"The barometer would broaden the reach of the Red List to make it representative of all life, that's what it's all about," Dr Stuart explained.

The authors hope that broadening the taxanomic base of the Red List and increasing the database to 160,000 species would deliver practical benefits.

"A representative barometer would provide a solid basis for informing decisions globally," the authors suggested.

"For example, on conservation planning, resource allocation, environmental impact assessments, monitoring biodiversity trends... and enabling countries to develop national-level biodiversity indicators."

'Not acceptable'

The authors, all of whom are leading figures in their field, decided to join forces in order to voice their concerns that the rate of progress was too slow.

"The amount that we are investing at the moment in the Red List to broaden its coverage means that it would take about 20 years to get there," Dr Stuart observed.

The status of animals such as tigers is well researched and documented

"At a time when everything on the planet is deteriorating, having to wait 20 years before we can measure everything properly is not acceptable."

However, the scientists acknowledge that a three-fold increase in the number of species regularly monitored by a global network of biologists would come at a price - an estimated US $60m (£39m).

But they argued: "The barometer would, from an economic perspective, be one of the best investments for the good of humanity."

Europe launches satellite to track climate change

The Jakarta Post, Associated Press, Darmstadt, Germany | Thu, 04/08/2010 9:42 PM

CryoSat 2 satellite

The European Space Agency says it successfully launched a new satellite designed to measure the effects of climate change on Earth's polar ice caps.

ESA said at its European Space Operations in Germany Thursday it received a signal from CryoSat 2 after it took off on a Russian rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, meaning lift-off was successful.

CryoSat 2 is designed to pinpoint the effects of climate change on Earth's polar ice sheets. Using radar technology, it is to measure tiny variations in the thickness of ice floating in the polar oceans and on land.

In 2005, ESA lost its first CryoSat when the launcher rocket failed, causing a five-year delay of the mission, which has been eagerly awaited by glacial scientists since the 1990s.

Related Article:

Esa's Cryosat mission switches on radar instrument

First oxygen-free animals found

BBC News, By Patrick Jackson

The creatures are covered in a thick, protective layer or lorica

Scientists have found the first animals that can survive and reproduce entirely without oxygen, deep on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.

The team, led by Roberto Danovaro from Marche Polytechnic University in Ancona, Italy, found three new species from the Loricifera group.

He told BBC World Service they were about a millimetre in size and looked like jellyfish in a protective shell.

"We plan to go back and see if there are new surprises for us," he added.

It is a real mystery how these creatures are able to live without oxygen because until now we thought only bacteria could do this

Professor Roberto Danovaro

One of the three new Loriciferans (so-called because of their protective layer, or lorica) has already been officially named Spinoloricus Cinzia, after the professor's wife.

The other two, currently designated Rugiloricus and Pliciloricus, have still to be formally described.

They were discovered in the course of three oceanographic expeditions conducted over a decade in order to search for living fauna in the sediment of the Mediterranean's L'Atalante basin.

The basin, 200km (124m) off the western coast of Crete, is about 3.5km (2.2m) deep and is almost entirely depleted of oxygen, or anoxic.

Eggs included

Bodies of multicellular animals have been found previously in sediment taken from an anoxic area - or "dead zone" - of the Black Sea, Professor Danovaro told BBC News. But these were believed at the time to be remains of organisms which had sunk there from adjacent oxygenated areas.

The new species are less than a millimetre in size

What the team found in the L'Atalante dead zone was three species of living animals, two of which contained eggs.

Although it was not possible to extract the animals alive in order to show that they could live without oxygen, the team was able to incubate the eggs in anoxic conditions aboard on the ship.

The eggs hatched successfully in a completely oxygen-free environment.

"It is a real mystery how these creatures are able to live without oxygen because until now we thought only bacteria could do this," said Professor Danovaro, who heads Italy's Association of Limnology (the study of inland waters).

"We did not think we could find any animal living there. We are talking about extreme conditions - full of salt, with no oxygen."

The discovery of the new Loriciferans represents, he said, a "tremendous adaptation for animals which evolved in oxygenated conditions".

Dead zones in the world's oceans, he added, were expanding all the time.

Commenting in the journal BMC Biology, Lisa Levin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said that before this discovery, "no one had found [animals] capable of living and reproducing entirely in the absence of oxygen".

"Loriciferans are rarely reported," she noted.

"Whether they were overlooked or are exceedingly rare and thus not sampled is unclear. Perhaps scientists have been looking for them in all the wrong places."

Considering the implications of creatures which can exist without oxygen, she said that greater study of animal-microbe interactions in the extreme environment of Earth's oceans could help answer questions about the possibility of life existing on other planets with different atmospheres.