The panel said the world needs to get ready for more dangerous and “unprecedented extreme weather” caused by global warming. These experts fear that without preparedness, crazy weather extremes may overwhelm some locations, making some places unlivable.

The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a special report on global warming and extreme weather Friday after meeting in Kampala, Uganda. This is the first time the group of scientists has focused on the dangers of extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods, droughts and storms. Those are more dangerous than gradual increases in the world’s average temperature.

For example, the report predicts that heat waves that are now once-in-a-generation events will become hotter and happen once every five years by mid-century and every other year by the end of the century. And in some places, such as most of Latin America, Africa and a good chunk of Asia, they will likely become yearly bakings.

And the very heavy rainstorms that usually happen once every 20 years will happen far more frequently, the report said. In most areas of the U.S. and Canada, they are likely to occur three times as often by the turn of the century, if fossil fuel use continues at current levels. In Southeast Asia, where flooding has been dramatic, it is likely to happen about four times as often as now, the report predicts.

One scientist points to this year’s drought and string of 100 degree days (38 Celsius) in Texas and Oklahoma, which set an all-time record for hottest month for any U.S. state this summer.

“I think of it as a wake-up call,” said one of the study’s authors, David Easterling, head of global climate applications for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “The likelihood of that occurring in the future is going to be much greater.”

The report said world leaders have to prepare better for weather extremes.

Read Full Article Here

On November 9, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will conduct the first-ever nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST), a test that will last for approximately three minutes.

The EAS is a system designed to transmit emergency alerts and warnings to the public at the national, state, and local levels.

EAS participants broadcast alerts and warnings regarding severe weather, child abductions and other types of emergencies. EAS alerts are transmitted over radio and television broadcast stations, cable television and other media services.

Although local and state components of the EAS are tested on a weekly and monthly basis, there has never been a nationwide test or a national activation of the system.

Unlike the monthly tests, the national test will occur almost simultaneously on almost all TV and radio stations.

The purpose of the test is to assess the reliability and effectiveness of the system as a way to alert the public during nationwide emergencies.

Although the EAS test will be initiated by FEMA, the FCC is telling local governments they can use the test as an opportunity to work with local broadcasters and cable providers to educate appropriate government officials and staff about the EAS, such as how it works and when it should be activated.

Finally, the FCC is asking local government officials to help inform residents in advance of the test, so that they will know what to expect.

Details: Additional information can be found at the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau website at www.fcc.gov/pshs.

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — Winds gusting at more than 70 mph churned up a dust storm that roiled through the Texas South Plains during the Monday afternoon commute.

Dust kicked up by westerly breezes ahead of a strong cold front restricted visibility in Lubbock to about 5 miles all afternoon, said National Weather Service Lubbock meteorologist Matt Ziebell.

That was nothing compared to the 8,000-foot-high rolling dust cloud that moved through the city just before 6 p.m., dropping visibility to between zero and less than a quarter of a mile, Ziebell said.

North winds gusting as high as 74 mph had begun forming the dust cloud about 100 miles north of Lubbock around 4:30 p.m., he said.

“It went from light to dark, just like that,” said Lubbock convenience store clerk Alma Williams. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It really scared me.”

She said customers who went outside to watch the dirt cloud said they hadn’t seen anything like it, either,

Lubbock city spokesman Jeff McKito said he was driving home from work when the dust hit. “It was pretty spectacular. Everything just turned black,” he said.

A thick cloud of dust covers everything in sight during a dust storm on Monday. (Credit: Lockerz, Twitter.com/SFEwingIV)

He said cars pulled over and stopped, “but you don’t want to get out of the car in this situation,” he said.

FAA controllers at Lubbock International Airport had to evacuate the tower and direct air traffic from a backup center on the tower’s ground floor, McKito said. Trees toppled, roofs lost shingles and a small cargo plane at the airport was overturned, he said.

No injuries were reported from the dust cloud reminiscent of those shown in Dust Bowl photos from the late 1930s.

The dust cloud was yet another byproduct of the persistent drought in West Texas, Ziebell said.

The U.S. Drought Monitor map released Oct. 11 showed much of Texas, including the South Plains, were still experiencing “exceptional drought” — the most severe category.

In an Oct. 6 statement, the National Weather Service in Lubbock reported that there was a “high likelihood” that 2011 could be the driest on record across the South Plains.

[Via Weather.com]

Daniel Borris for The New York Times.

FLOODS, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and other extreme natural phenomena have left a trail of destruction during the first half of 2011. But this could be just the start to a remarkable year of bad weather. Next up: drought. In the South, 14 states are now baking in blast-furnace conditions — from Arizona, which is battling the largest wildfire in its history, to Florida, where fires have burned some 200,000 acres so far. Worse, drought, unlike earthquakes, hurricanes and other rapid-moving weather, could become a permanent condition in some regions.

Climatologists call drought a “creeping disaster” because its effects are not felt at once. Others compare drought to a python, which slowly and inexorably squeezes its prey to death.

The great aridification of 2011 began last fall; now temperatures in many states have spiked to more than 100 degrees for days at a stretch. A high pressure system has stalled over the middle of the country, blocking cool air from the north. Texas and New Mexico are drier than in any year on record.

The deadly heat led to 138 deaths last year, more than hurricanes, tornadoes or floods, and it turns brush to tinder that is vulnerable to lightning strikes and human carelessness. Already this year, some 40,000 wildfires have torched over 5.8 million acres nationwide — and the deep heat of August is likely to make conditions worse before they get better.

Climatologists disagree about what caused this remarkable dry-out. But there is little disagreement about the severity of the drought — or its long-term implications. When I asked Richard Seager, who analyzed historical records and climate model projections for the Southwest for the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, if a perpetual drought was possible there, he replied: “You can’t really call it a drought because that implies a temporary change. The models show a progressive aridification. You don’t say, ‘The Sahara is in drought.’ It’s a desert. If the models are right, then the Southwest will face a permanent drying out.”

Growing population has increased the burden on our water supply. There are more people on earth than ever, and in many places we are using water at unsustainable rates. Cultural shifts contribute to subtle, far-reaching effects on water supplies. In 2008, for the first time, more people lived in cities than in rural communities worldwide, and water is becoming urbanized. Yet some of the world’s biggest cities — Melbourne, Australia; Barcelona, Spain; and Mexico City — have already suffered drought emergencies. Further drying could lead to new kinds of disasters. Consider Perth, Australia: its population has surpassed 1.7 million while precipitation has decreased. City planners worry that unless drastic action is taken, Perth could become the world’s first “ghost city” — a modern metropolis abandoned for lack of water.

Read The Rest

[Via NYTimes.com]

• 241 tornadoes in three days make up deadliest U.S. storm since February 2008
• 22 deaths reported in North Carolina, six in Virginia, seven in Alabama, two in Oklahoma, seven in Arkansas and one in Mississippi
• Hundreds of homes flattened and 200,000 without power in North Carolina
• Forecasts say more violent storms are on the way

The 241 tornadoes that took the lives of 45 Americans and scythed a path of destruction through 14 states is the most violent storm on record.

Officials say it is the largest number of tornadoes to touch down from a single storm system since records began.

And, in a forecast that could spell further grief for residents in the Southern states, experts at AccuWeather predict that more violent storms are on the way.

The high winds and rain – and the possibility of more twisters – will undoubtedly hamper clean-up and rescue operations, and heap more misery on those who have already lost everything.

Rescue crews recovered the body of an eight-year-old as the U.S. struggled to come to terms with the devastation wreaked by three days of violent storms across the southern states which killed at least 45 people.

Read Full Article with Pictures and Videos Here: DailyMail

Water contaminated with radioactive material from the Fukushima atomic plant has been flowing into the Pacific Ocean Photo: NHK/AFP/GETTY

With workers pumping toxic water from the Fukushima atomic plant into the Pacific Ocean for a second day, Japan imposed a legal limit for radioactive iodine in fish, adding it would look at widening tests to cover a larger area.

Raised levels of radioactive iodine had been discovered in a fish caught off Ibaraki prefecture, south of the crippled plant.

An Indian government statement said all food imports from Japan “stand suspended with immediate effect” for three months, or until “credible information is available that the radiation hazard has subsided to acceptable limits”.

The move by India, which imports small amounts of fruits, vegetables and processed food, is the first nationwide ban, while several countries including China, Singapore and the United States have blocked food from some Japanese prefectures.

Read Entire Article

AFP/NASA/Ho – A NASA image of an erupting solar flare. A powerful solar eruption that has already disturbed radio communications …

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A powerful solar eruption that has already disturbed radio communications in China could disrupt electrical power grids and satellites used on Earth in the next days, NASA said.

[Related: What are solar flares?]

The massive sunspot, which astronomers say is the size of Jupiter, is the strongest solar flare in four years, NASA said Wednesday.

The Class X flash — the largest such category — erupted at 0156 GMT Tuesday, according to the US space agency.

“X-class flares are the most powerful of all solar events that can trigger radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms,” disturbing telecommunications and electric grids, NASA said.

[Related: Solar flare to create light show on Earth?]

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory saw a large coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with the flash that is blasting toward Earth at about 560 miles per second (900 kilometers per second), it said.

[Related: Planet Tyche: New member of solar system?]

The charged plasma particles were expected to reach the planet’s orbit at 0300 GMT Thursday.

The flare spread from Active Region 1158 in the sun’s southern hemisphere, which had so far lagged behind the northern hemisphere in flash activity. It followed several smaller flares in recent days.

“The calm before the storm,” read a statement on the US National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Service.

“Three CMEs are enroute, all a part of the Radio Blackout events on February 13, 14, and 15 (UTC). The last of the three seems to be the fastest and may catch both of the forerunners about mid to late … February 17.”

Geomagnetic storms usually last 24 to 48 hours, “but some may last for many days,” read a separate NWS statement.

“Ground to air, ship to shore, shortwave broadcast and amateur radio are vulnerable to disruption during geomagnetic storms. Navigation systems like GPS can also be adversely affected.”

The China Meteorological Administration reported that the solar flare had jammed shortwave radio communications in southern China.

It said the flare caused “sudden ionospheric disturbances” in the atmosphere above China, and warned there was a high probability that large solar flares would appear over the next three days, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

In previous major disturbance of the Earth’s electric grid from a solar incident, in 1973, a magnetic storm caused by a solar eruption plunged six million people into darkness in Canada’s eastern-central Quebec province.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) said meanwhile that the solar storm would result in spectacular Northern Lights displays starting Thursday.

One coronal mass ejection (CME) arrived on February 14, “sparking Valentine’s Day displays of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) further south than usual.”

“Two CMEs are expected to arrive in the next 24-48 hours and further… displays are possible some time over the next two nights if skies are clear,” it said.

The office published geomagnetic records dating back to the Victorian era which it hopes will help in planning for future storms.

“Life increasingly depends on technologies that didn’t exist when the magnetic recordings began,” said Alan Thomson, BGS head of geomagnetism.

“Studying the records will tell us what we have to plan and prepare for to make sure systems can resist solar storms,” he said.

SOURCE: Yahoo News

Courtesy: AP / NOAA

With storm watches and blizzard warnings up over most of the continental U.S., the Federal Emergency Management Agency is sending its disaster response specialists in advance to Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The agency is also positioning supplies in advance, including water, meals, blankets, cots and generators.

Sending people and supplies into the field in advance of a storm — regardless of whether it’s expected to make a severe impact — is one of the major operational changes made by FEMA in the wake of its botched response to Hurricane Katrina. Such deployments are made without formal disaster requests by governors, but state officials must agree to allow federal personnel to join them at state emergency operation centers.

Read Full Article

A new report about a so-called superstorm that could devastate California in the future is getting a lot of attention in the meteorological blogosphere.

The premise of the report, which was released last week, says a superstorm could develop that could last more than a month and dump up to 10 feet of rain on the state!

A group of 117 scientists, engineers, lifeline operators, emergency planners and insurance experts worked for two years on the report. They used computer models analyzing the impacts of two storms that soaked California in 1969 and 1986.

The Weather Channel’s Severe Weather Expert Dr. Greg Forbes (Find him on Facebook) weighed in on the report.

“I certainly agree with the sense that California could get a storm worse than what we’ve seen in our limited period of record, but the 125-mph wind speed would likely not affect a very large area and the rainfall amounts seem too extreme,” says Dr. Forbes.

Courtesy: AP/National Weather Service

Scientists say the so-called superstorm would be fed by an “atmospheric river,” which is essentially a huge hose-like flow of moisture from the Pacific Ocean into California.

Dr. Forbes points out that this report portrays a worst-case scenario. He says this realistically could happen once or twice a millenia. The Weather Channel did an episode of “It could Happen Tomorrow,” that focused on a storm that could overwhelm the levees in the Sacramento Valley and again turn the area into an inland sea, as a storm did in 1861-1862.

Possible Effects of So-Called California Superstorm

• Overwhelm state’s flood protection system
• Cause massive flooding
• Touch off hundreds of landslides
• Result in serious damage in state’s major population centers

“We create these scenarios to understand what are the implication of the types of very rare events that science tell us has to happen in our future,” Lucy Jones, chief scientist of the USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project, said following a symposium with the researchers at the University of California, Davis.

Jones said geological records show superstorms happened numerous times in the past, with the same frequency as a big earthquake striking the San Andreas Fault.

This project, called the “ARkStorm” project, resulted in the first statewide map detailing areas susceptible to landslides. Scientists also created a modeling system for analyzing severe storm impacts to coastal areas, and a scaling system to categorize the intensity of atmospheric rivers — the force behind most winter storms over California.

Scientists say historical records show California has had several storms in which 16 inches of rain fell in three days — the same amount left in the wake of hurricanes over Gulf Coast states.

“Our storms really are as bad as hurricanes in the amount of rain that they can bring,” USGS Director Marcia McNutt said. “Without that type of labeling, we haven’t recognized that our storms are that bad and we risk underestimating emergency response (to storms).”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: weather.com

Experts say the sun should have risen over the Arctic nation’s most westerly town, Ilulissat, yesterday, ending a month-and-a-half of winter darkness.

But for the first time in history light began creeping over the horizon at around 1pm on Tuesday – 48 hours ahead of the usual date of 13 January.

The mysterious sunrise has confused scientists, although it is believed the most likely explanation is that it is down to the lower height of melting icecaps allowing the sun’s light to penetrate through earlier.

Climate change? The sun rose in Ilulissat, Greenland, two days early on Tuesday, ending a month-and-a-half of winter darkness. One theory is that melting ice caps have lowered the horizon allowing the sun to shine through earlier

Thomas Posch, of the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Vienna, said that a local change of the horizon was ‘by far the most obvious explanation’.

He said as the ice sinks, so to does the horizon, creating the illusion that the sun has risen early.

MORE:

• Global Warming?  This January Could be the Coldest for US Since 1985
• Why Earth May Be Entering a New Ice Age

This theory, based on the gradual decline of Greenland’s ice sheet, is backed by recent climate studies.

A report by the World Meteorology Organisation shows that temperatures in Greenland have risen around 3C above average over the last year.

It also reported that December was much warmer than usual with rainfall instead of snow recorded for the first time in Kuujjuaq since records began.

Low horizon: The fishing town of Ilulissat is Greenland\'s most westerly habitation. Temperatures in Greenland have risen 3C above average over the last year

It has even been suggested that the sun’s early appearance could have an astronomical explanation.

But Wolfgang Lenhardt, director of the department of geophysics at the Central Institute for Meteorology in Vienna, scotched this theory.

He said: ‘The constellation of the stars has not changed. If that had happened, there would have been an outcry around the world.

‘The data of the Earth’s axis and Earth’s rotation are monitored continuously and meticulously and we would know if that had happened.’

Source

This summer Russia banned exports of wheat to ensure their nation’s supply, which sparked complaints of protectionism. The U.S. agriculture community is already talking about rationing corn over ethanol mandates versus supply concerns. We’ve seen nothing yet in terms of food protectionism.

Read Full Article

Crops flooded near the town of Theodore in Queensland - fears for wheat shortages pushed the price in the US to the highest since last August. Photo: Reuters

US wheat futures rose heavily yesterday as concerns grew that Australian wheat growers will be unable to deliver their harvests as a result of the devastation. Australia is the world’s fourth largest exporter of wheat after the USA, Canada and Russia.

At the Chicago Board of Trade, the price of wheat for March delivery rose over 3pc, at one point hitting $8.25 (£5.30) a bushel, the highest since last August. Warnings over impending cold weather in the US were also cited as reasons for the rise.

Gordon Polson, a director at the Federation of Bakers, which represents the UK baking industry, said that although the ‘spot’ price of wheat is not what large bread producers pay for their supply, the increase could eventually lead to higher prices on the shelf.

“There is no doubt that if there is a longer trend of higher wheat prices, this will be reflected in [bakers'] costs. If there are a couple of poor harvests in the world that will obviously impact prices,” he said.

The Queensland area of Australia has been hit by calamitous flooding. Andrew Fraser, Queensland’s State Treasurer, described the floods as a “disaster of biblical proportions”. Water is covering land the size of France and Germany. It is expected to reach over 30 feet deep in some areas in coming days.

Read Full Article

So exactly what events have happened recently that are causing people to take a close look at the New Madrid fault zone? Well, just consider the following examples of things that have been popping up in the news lately….

*According to the U.S. Geological Survey, more than 500 measurable earthquakes have been recorded in central Arkansas just since September.

*A magnitude-3.8 earthquake that shook north-central Indiana on December 30th is being called “unprecedented“. It was strong enough to actually cause cracks along the ground and it was felt in portions of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and Kentucky.

*More than 3,000 red-wing blackbirds fell out of the sky dead in the Arkansas town of Beebe on New Year’s Eve.

*Large numbers of dead birds were also found in Kentucky right around Christmas.

*Approximately 500 dead blackbirds and starlings were also recently discovered in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana.

*Approximately 100,000 fish washed up dead on the shores of the Arkansas River just last week.

So could all of these things have some other very simple explanation?

Possibly.

But the fact that they all happened in or around the New Madrid fault zone is starting to raise some eyebrows.

About 200 years ago, in 1811 and 1812, there were four earthquakes that were so powerful in the area of the New Madrid fault zone that they are still talked about today. All four of the quakes were estimated to have been magnitude-7.0 or greater. It is said that those earthquakes opened deep fissures in the ground, caused the Mississippi River to run backwards and that they were felt as far away as Boston.

The last major earthquake to hit the region was a 5.4-magnitude quake that struck the town of Dale, Illinois in 1968. Things have been strangely quiet in the region since then until recently.

If a true “killer earthquake” struck along the New Madrid fault zone today, cities such as St. Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee could potentially be completely destroyed.

Unfortunately, this is not an exaggeration.

Read Full Article

Many people may be surprised to learn that the Sun, rather than burn with faultless consistency, goes through moments of calm and tempest.

But two centuries of observing sunspots — dark, relatively cool marks on the solar face linked to mighty magnetic forces — have revealed that our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of behaviour.

The latest cycle began in 1996 and for reasons which are unclear has taken longer than expected to end.

Now, though, there are more and more signs that the Sun is shaking off its torpor and building towards “Solar Max,” or the cycle’s climax, say experts.

Read Full Story

The first inkling that something had changed with the sun was the recognition of an abnormal sunspot cycle. Then, astronomers noted that all the planets were heating up-even little Pluto on the outskirts of our solar system.

While climatologists on Earth massaged the data to make it seem like man-made global warming was real, major climate changes were occurring on Mars.

Read Full Article

Authorities worked Monday to reach more than 70 motorists in snow-covered northwest Indiana who were trapped in their cars in biting temperatures.

LaPorte County sheriff’s Deputy Andy Hynek said officials don’t know exactly how many people were stranded, but some had been stuck for as long as 12 hours.

The heavy lake effect snow in northern Indiana was part of a slow-moving storm that has been crawling across the Midwest since Friday night. It dumped nearly 2 feet of snow in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin before moving into Michigan and Indiana. Monday, it stretched further east, with snow in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

Read Full Article

Weather experts are pretty good at tracking a storm and determining where it will go. But predicting whether it will whip itself into a tempest, or peter out into a gentle rain, is another matter.

The study, which is known by the acronym GRIP, which stands for Generation and Rapid Intensification Processes experiment, is the first major U.S.-based study of hurricanes since 2001.

“The potential scientific impact of this mission is enormous,” said Ramesh Kakar, the GRIP project manager at NASA. “We can hardly contain our excitement.”

The study will use three planes to observe Atlantic storms and hurricanes. The planes will provide much better data than satellites can because they can observe and measure much more precisely, with better resolution, though satellite data will be used also, Kakar explained.

Two of the planes are conventional, manned, research planes, a DC-8 and a WB-57. But the third is an unmanned drone recently acquired from the Air Force. Called the Global Hawk, the plane has been used for observation in Afghanistan and Iraq. And, it is the Global Hawk that is critical to the mission. The $35-million plane is able to fly for 30 hours. Since it will be flying out of Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, that means it will be able to get to the Caribbean or western Atlantic and fly around and over storms for possibly a continuous 18-20 hours, NASA said.

That is longer than any observation has been able to accumulate before, and it will allow observations at a number of critical times. The plane, which flies at 60,000 feet, is “a game changer,” Kakar said.

Previously, planes have been able to fly over hurricanes for only about 2 hours.

The DC-8 will be based out of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and the WB-57 will be based out of the NASA Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field in Houston. Where the Global Hawk will mostly measure conditions inside the storms, the other two planes will measure conditions around the storms.

Each of the planes will carry about 15 scientific instruments. Those instruments range from dropsondes, which are small cylinders dropped through the storms that measure temperature and precipitation, to microwave detectors that can measure ocean surface wind speed and rain rate. The scientists are going to measure everything from wind speed, in three dimensions at once, to the size of drops of precipitation.

The research should address two pressing questions about hurricane formation and intensification, said Edward Zipser, a professor of meteorology at the University of Utah, who is collaborating with the mission.

One question is whether Saharan winds affect hurricane formation. In 2006, scientists predicted an active hurricane year. But that did not happen. Instead, there were just four tropical storms and five hurricanes recorded in the Atlantic during the 2006 season. That compared with 12 tropical storms and 15 hurricanes in 2005. It was noted that, earlier, in June and July, a number of large dust storms had occurred in the Sahara desert, and the dust traveled over the Atlantic, blocking the sun and cooling the ocean. Warm water is necessary for hurricane formation.

The second question is whether thunderstorm activity near the eye wall of a hurricane indicates it will intensify or calm. Most hurricanes do not have lightning and thunder because lightning and thunder require strong vertical winds, which hurricanes typically do not have. However, in 2005, Hurricane Emily was observed to have very active thunderstorms, located along the eye wall. Hurricane Emily, which devastated the Yucatan, was a very strong hurricane. So, since that time, scientists have wondered whether lightning is associated with hurricane intensity.

James Elsner, a professor at Florida State University, in Tallahassee, said there is a huge need for the information the mission might generate. He said that, despite the fact that hurricanes are a regular occurance, there is very little known about them, and he cited as an example the fact that no one really has any idea how or why hurricanes form.

Elsner said that when storms form way out to sea they can be tracked and people can be warned with ample time. However, some hurricanes form from storms close to the coast, when people have little time to prepare and protect their property. In those cases, it would be hugely beneficial to predict.

“We do get storms that occur very close to the coast line and with those storms it is really important to be able to predict which ones will become hurricanes and which ones will not,” he said.

NASA expects to spend about $4 million on the study this year, said Stephen Cole, an agency spokesperson.

[Via InsuranceJournal.com]

The deaths are blamed on the opening of release valves on the Mississippi River in an attempt to use fresh water to flush oil out to sea. Giant diversion structures at Caernarvon and Davis Pond have been running since April 25 on the orders of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and local officials with the consent of the Army Corps of Engineers.

For the past 82 days, about 30,000 cubic feet of water per second has flowed into coastal Louisiana, enough to fill the Louisiana Superdome, home to the New Orleans Saints football team, nearly once an hour.

“What I saw does not look good,” Patrick Banks, oyster manager for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, said in an e-mail. He said he found no evidence of oil on the reefs east of the Mississippi River, but he said they “looked to be fallow reef.”

Banks dove onto reefs at Black Bay, Bay Crab and Telegraph Island, where the state is building public oyster grounds for farmers to collect baby oysters and transfer them to their private leases. Once there, they are raised to market size.

Public reefs account for up to half of Louisiana’s oyster harvest, an industry that employs about 6,000 people and is valued at $330 million.

On Thursday, Banks said oyster deaths also were found west of the Mississippi, though the surveys there are not yet complete.

Reports also are coming in about damage to private oyster grounds.

John Tesvich, chairman of the Louisiana Oyster Task Force, a state committee overseeing the industry, said the reports of oyster deaths on private leases are worrisome.

Oysters use saltwater to make their shells and need it to keep their vital membranes working properly. They can tolerate small doses of fresh water for perhaps a couple of weeks, but they will die if they suck in too much.

“The public reefs on the east side of the Mississippi — American Bay, Black bay, Breton Sound — that is where most of our seed comes from, and they might be closed for a long time,” Tesvich said.

Garret Graves, Jindal’s chief coastal aide, said the state is looking at “all adverse effects” of the oil spill on the Louisiana environment.

“BP as the responsible party is expected to pay for all of the natural resource damages associated with this spill,” Graves said. He is the chairman of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

Earl Melancon, an oyster expert at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, said he has already written off this year for oyster production.

“If you lose an oyster reef, it takes three years minimum to get it back into production,” he said. “And it could take five years.”

Oyster reefs lie a few feet under the water and span the Louisiana coast. Often, farmers help build oyster grounds by dropping concrete and other hard surfaces into the water so oyster larvae can attach to them.

Most likely, the oysters that will do the best will be those close to the Gulf of Mexico, where there’s more salt water.

But those shellfish could be vulnerable to the oil, which has been washing into coastal waters since the end of April.

The Louisiana oyster spawns by releasing larvae that swim through the water and find places to sit on and grow. The oyster goes through various stages — from growing a leg to losing it, changing sexes and growing a shell by extracting calcium carbonate from the water — to the point where it is big enough to sell on the market, between two and four years old.

From now until next spring, Melancon said the big question will be whether there will be a new brood of oyster larvae planting itself on Louisiana’s reefs.

The industry already was reeling from several bad years marred by hurricanes, heavy rains and over-harvesting — a situation made worse by the oil spill and the freshwater diversions, Tesvich said.

Plus, a more limited supply could drive up oyster prices. But Banks said the industry has rebounded before.

“The good news is that we have been this low before,” Banks said. “Mother Nature is amazing and oysters can come back.”

Cain Burdeau of The Associated Press wrote this report.

[Via Nola.com]

251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. [1] Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world. [2]

55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM).

The LPTM lasted 100,000 years. [3]

Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be happening again-and no known technology can stop it.

The bottom line: BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.

The oil giant drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane mega-bubble.

Ryskin’s methane extinction theory

Northwestern University‘s Gregory Ryskin, a bio-chemical engineer, has a theory: The oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas. He has documented the scientific evidence that such an event was directly responsible for the mass extinctions that occurred 55 million years ago. [4]

Many geologists concur: “The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region “boils over,” ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g., CO2, H2S) into the atmosphere, and flooding large areas of land. Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The air-methane mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%; as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions and conflagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide…” [5]

The warning signs of an impending planetary catastrophe—of such great magnitude that the human mind has difficulty grasping it-would be the appearance of large fissures or rifts splitting open the ocean floor, a rise in the elevation of the seabed, and the massive venting of methane and other gases into the surrounding water.

Such occurrences can lead to the rupture of the methane bubble containment—it can then permit the methane to breach the subterranean depths and undergo an explosive decompression as it catapults into the Gulf waters.  [6]

All three warning signs are documented to be occurring in the Gulf.

Ground zero: The Gulf Coast

The people and property located on the greater expanse of the Gulf Coast are sitting at Ground Zero. They will be the first exposed to poisonous, cancer causing chemical gases. They will be the ones that initially experience the full fury of a methane bubble exploding from the ruptured seabed.

The media has been kept away from the emergency salvage measures being taken to forestall the biggest catastrophe in human history. The federal government has warned them away from the epicenter of operations with the threat of a $40,000 fine for each infraction and the possibility of felony arrests.

Why is the press being kept away? Word is that the disaster is escalating.

Cracks and bulges

Methane is now streaming through the porous, rocky seabed at an accelerated rate and gushing from the borehole of the first relief well. The EPA is on record that Rig #1 is releasing methane, benzene, hydrogen sulfide and other toxic gases. Workers there now wear advanced protection including state-of-the-art, military-issued gas masks.

Reports, filtering through from oceanologists and salvage workers in the region, state that the upper level strata of the ocean floor is succumbing to greater and greater pressure. That pressure is causing a huge expanse of the seabed-estimated by some as spreading over thousands of square miles surrounding the BP wellhead-to bulge. Some claim the seabed in the region has risen an astounding 30 feet.

The fractured BP wellhead, site of the former Deepwater Horizon, has become the epicenter of frenetic attempts to quell the monstrous flow of methane.

The subterranean methane is pressurized at 100,000 pounds psi. According to Matt Simmons, an oil industry expert, the methane pressure at the wellhead has now skyrocketed to a terrifying 40,000 pounds psi.

Another well-respected expert, Dr. John Kessler of Texas A&M University has calculated that the ruptured well is spewing 60 percent oil and 40 percent methane. The normal methane amount that escapes from a compromised well is about 5 percent.

More evidence? A huge gash on the ocean floor—like a ragged wound hundreds of feet long—has been reported by the NOAA research ship, Thomas Jefferson. Before the curtain of the government enforced news blackout again descended abruptly, scientists aboard the ship voiced their concerns that the widening rift may go down miles into the earth.

That gash too is hemorrhaging oil and methane. It’s 10 miles away from the BP epicenter. Other, new fissures, have been spotted as far as 30 miles distant.

Measurements of the multiple oil plumes now appearing miles from the wellhead indicate that as much as a total  of 124,000 barrels of oil are erupting into the Gulf waters daily-that’s about 5,208,000 gallons of oil per day.

Most disturbing of all: Methane levels in the water are now calculated as being almost one million times higher than normal. [7]

Mass death on the water

If the methane bubble—a bubble that could be as big as 20 miles wide—erupts with titanic force from the seabed into the Gulf, every ship, drilling rig and structure within the region of the bubble will immediately sink. All the workers, engineers, Coast Guard personnel and marine biologists participating in the salvage operation will die instantly.

Next, the ocean bottom will collapse, instantaneously displacing up to a trillion cubic feet of water or more and creating a towering supersonic tsunami annihilating everything along the coast and well inland. Like a thermonuclear blast, a high pressure atmospheric wave could precede the tidal wave flattening everything in its path before the water arrives.

When the roaring tsunami does arrive it will scrub away all that is left.

A chemical cocktail of poisons

Some environmentalist experts are calling what’s pouring into the land, sea and air from the seabed breach ’a chemical cocktail of poisons.’

Areas of dead zones devoid of oxygen are driving species of fish into foreign waters, killing plankton and other tiny sea life that are the foundation for the entire food chain, and polluting the air with cancer-causing chemicals and poisonous rainfalls.

A report from one observer in South Carolina documents oily residue left behind after a recent thunderstorm. And before the news blackout fully descended the EPA released data that benzene levels in New Orleans had rocketed to 3,000 parts per billion.

Benzene is extremely toxic and even short term exposure can cause agonizing death from cancerous lesions years later.

The people of Louisiana have been exposed for more than two months—and the benzene levels may be much higher now. The EPA measurement was taken in early May. [8]

Doomsday

While some say it can’t happen because the bulk of the methane is frozen into crystalline form, others point out that the underground methane sea is gradually melting from the nearby surging oil that’s estimated to be as hot as 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Most experts in the know, however, agree that if the world-changing event does occur it will happen suddenly and within the next 6 months.

So, if events go against  Mankind and the bubble bursts in the coming months, Gregory Ryskin may become one of the most famous people in the world. Of course, he won’t have long to enjoy his new found fame because very shortly after the methane eruption civilization will collapse.

Perhaps if humanity is very, very lucky, some may find a way to avoid the mass extinction that follows and carry on the human race.

Perhaps.
…………

Sources

[1] The Permian extinction event, when 96% of all marine species became extinct 251 million years ago.

[2] “The Day The Earth Nearly Died,” BBC Horizon, 2002

[3] Report about the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM), which occurred around 55 million years ago and lasted about 100,000 years. Large undersea methane caused explosions and mass extinctions.

[4] Ryskin Theory
Huge combustible clouds produced by methane gas trapped under the seas and explosively released could have killed off the majority of marine life, land animals, and plants at the end of the Permian era—long before the dinosaurs arrived.

[5] James P. Kennett, Kevin G. Cannariato, Ingrid L. Hendy, Richard J. Behl (2000), “Carbon Isotopic Evidence for Methane Hydrate Instability During Quaternary Interstadials,” Science 288.

[6] “An awesome mix of fire and water may lie behind mass extinctions”

[7] “Methane in Gulf ‘astonishingly high’-US scientist”

[8] Report: “Air Quality – Oil Spill” TV 4WWL video

Links

“BP engineer called doomed rig a ‘nightmare well’”

History Channel Mega Disasters – Methane Explosion

“BP Official Admits to Damage Beneath the Sea Floor”

[Via Helium.com]

Yesterday, President Barack Obama issued an emergency disaster declaration for Texas that enables FEMA to identify, mobilize and provide equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. FEMA continues to closely monitor Hurricane Alex and remains in close contact with state and local officials in Texas, as well as all hurricane-prone states to ensure they have the resources they need should a storm strike.

“As Hurricane Alex moves closer to south Texas, every resident living in the area should be taking the steps they need to prepare,” said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. “It’s critical that people remember to listen to their local and state officials. FEMA’s first priority, as we continue to line up resources on the ground, is to support our state and local partners in their efforts to keep families and communities safe.”

In anticipation of a possible landfall in Mexico that will impact counties in south Texas, in the desire to work proactively and aggressively to prepare for the storm, FEMA has coordinated the following:

• Federal Coordinating Officer Brad Harris has been designated to coordinate the federal response in the region. He, along with members of one of FEMA’s Incident Management Assistance Teams (IMAT), along with additional FEMA personnel, are on the ground working with state officials as they prepare for the impact of the hurricane. FEMA has also assigned a liaison officer for the Texas Department of Emergency Management.
• FEMA has staged commodities at a facility outside San Antonio in readiness to provide support for the response. This includes more than 1.1 million meals, more than 400,000 liters of water, more than 41,000 tarps and more than 100 generators, as well as other commodities such as cots, blankets and personal kits.
• U.S. Northern Command has activated a U.S. Army North Defense Coordinating Office (DCO) and Defense Coordinating Element (DCE) in support of operations, to provide assessment and coordination as required. DCOs and DCEs work very closely with federal, state, tribal and local officials to determine what unique Department of Defense capabilities can assist in mitigating the effects of a natural disaster.
• The American Red Cross has deployed 17 Emergency Response Vehicles (feeding trucks) to south Texas, and has also sent additional volunteers to the area, along with 2000 cots, blankets and hygiene kits to support sheltering efforts in the area. The Red Cross is prepared to support 20 post landfall shelters in South Texas and kitchen equipment is also being brought into the area.

FEMA coordinates the federal government’s role in preparing for, preventing, mitigating the effects of, responding to, and recovering from all domestic disasters, whether natural or man-made, including acts of terror. For more information on FEMA’s activities, visit www.FEMA.gov.

FEMA is not the whole team – FEMA is part of the emergency management team. That team includes federal partners, state, tribal and local officials, the private sector, non-profits and faith-based groups, and most importantly – the general public.

Individual and community preparedness is the responsibility of everyone. Individuals, families and businesses should prepare emergency supply kits and develop family emergency plans. Our team can only be as prepared as the public, which is why it is important that people living in hurricane-prone areas take steps to prepare and protect their family. Emergency preparedness information for individuals and businesses is available online at www.Ready.gov.

[Via FEMA.Gov]