Parkfield, on the San Andreas fault, has been at or near the site of several large earthquakes in the past

Parkfield, on the San Andreas fault, has been at or near the site of several large earthquakes in the past. Map & Photos: USGS

Seismologists estimate that there will be one earthquake with an 8+ magnitude and 17 earthquakes with a magnitude of 7-7.9 over a year. It has been estimated that this planet should have a mega quake with a 9.0+ magnitude about once every ten to fifteen years. In the past six months (November, 2004 to April, 2005) there have been one 9+ magnitude mega-quake, two 8-8.9 major quakes and fifteen 7-7.9 great quakes. The most expensive clustering of four hurricanes hit the eastern coast of the United States in the summer, 2004. The Far East has been inundated with record number of typhoons. There are record number of volcanoes (1500) erupting around the world. The largest galactic or cosmic blast has hit our planetary geo-magnetic shield and strange number of meteors or aberrant bolts of lights have occurred around the world. Strange lights were shining in the dark arctic winter. The second largest quake in recorded history occurred on December 26, 2004 off the coast of Sumatra with the most devastating tsunami in recorded history. More deaths have occurred by catastrophes on this planet since 1556. What is going on?

Asia primed for next big quake – March 16, 2005

New Scientist - Indonesia and Germany signed an agreement this week to install a tsunami early warning system in the Indian Ocean. Though some of the pieces will be in place by October, it could turn out to be a race against time. The quake that caused last year's devastating tsunami has increased the stress on other faults nearby, according to a study published this week. This has left the region primed for one or two major earthquakes, and possibly another tsunami. The earthquake on 26 December, 2004, occurred when the dense India tectonic plate slipped under the Burma plate. This deformed the seabed leading to the tsunami that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

When an earthquake occurs in such a subduction zone, where one plate slips under another, it is often followed by another, in addition to the aftershocks. For example, on the Nankai subduction zone to the south-east of Japan, five of the last seven major quakes were followed within five years by major earthquakes along an adjoining segment of the fault, and three of those occurred within a year."Big earthquakes make other big earthquakes more likely," says John McCloskey of the University of Ulster, UK, who led a study that measured the changes in stress in the plate boundaries in the Indian Ocean and Sumatra (Nature, vol 434, p 291). This is because a big earthquake often increases stress in other sections of the same fault or those nearby.

McCloskey, working with Suleyman Nalbant and Sandy Steacy, found a dramatic increase in stress in the Sumatra fault, which cuts through the island of Sumatra and runs east of the subduction zone that ruptured last year. The Sumatra fault is a "strike-slip" fault in which two plates slide against each other horizontally. Before the India-Burma subduction fault gave way, it was pushing on the Sumatra fault, "clamping it shut" says geophysicist Rob McCaffrey of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, US. "When it's clamped it's hard to make it slide. Now there's an increased probability of it slipping." McCloskey's team found that in places the stress along the Sumatra fault had increased by 9 bars. In 1999, the magnitude 7.4 Izmit earthquake in Turkey increased stress in a nearby plate boundary by just 2 bars, and triggered an earthquake of magnitude 7.1 three months later. McCloskey warns that a magnitude 7.5 earthquake could occur along the Sumatra fault. While it would not cause a tsunami because the fault line is not beneath the ocean, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake under Sumatra would be devastating. "This one will be closer to buildings, maybe in Medan," says geologist Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado at Boulder, US.

The Sumatra fault is not the only threat. A second quake along the Sunda trench, a continuation of the India-Burma subduction zone, could lead to another tsunami. An earthquake in this area was considered overdue even before the quake farther north on the same fault which caused last year's tsunami. "This south-east part of the subduction zone has been accumulating stress since 1833 and 1861, and the recent earthquake will have added more," says Phil Cummins of Geoscience Australia.

An earthquake in the Sunda trench could potentially reach magnitude 8.5, McCloskey warns, and could trigger another tsunami. Because it would start further south than the one last year, it would probably not strike Thailand, but Sri Lanka and the west coast of Africa could be hit again, as would Sumatra. Seismologist Seth Stein of Northwestern University at Evanston, Illinois, agrees: "If the next bit south broke it could create a comparable tsunami."

McCloskey's calculations show the stress along the Sunda trench to be about 5 bars. However, there is some uncertainty because of how the Earth's lower crust is reacting to the sudden movement of the upper crust on 26 December. It is therefore possible that that the movement of the lower crust could ease the stress in the Sunda trench, making an earthquake less rather than more likely, McCloskey says. Peter Malin of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, US, agrees. "We have huge holes in our data and knowledge of fault zones," he says. And it's equally difficult to say when an earthquake would occur. "We are very bad at predicting the timing of when the pressure will be released," says Bilham. "It could be months, it could be years." But the threat of another tsunami, however speculative, has prompted McCloskey to call for a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. "It's the closest we've come to a political statement," he says. "We're asking for a political response to a scientific paper." The Indonesian-German venture could be the answer.

In a report published in the most recent issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters (vol. 133), the scientists say they have confirmed that the Indo-Australian Plate--long identified as a single plate on which both India and Australia lie--appears to have broken apart just south of the Equator beneath the Indian Ocean. The break has been underway for the past several million years, and now the two continents are moving independently of one another in slightly different directions. Scientists have known that for some 50 million years, the Indian subcontinent has been pushing northward into Eurasia, forcefully raising the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan Mountains. The new research suggests that starting about 8 million years ago, the accumulated mass became so great that the Indo-Australian Plate buckled and broke under the stress. "The result of this critical stage in the collision between India and Asia is the breakup of the Indo-Australia Plate into separate Indian and Australian plates," Jeffrey Weissel, a scientist at Lamont-Doherty, Columbia's earth sciences research institute in Palisades, N.Y., said in an interview.

A moderate earthquake that rattled parts of Arkansas and Tennessee Thursday should serve as a wake-up call to the central United States about the potential for much

stronger events, experts said. The temblor, preliminarily put at magnitude 4.1, shook eastern Arkansas and western Tennessee early in the morning. It was centered 47 miles north-northwest of Memphis. There were no reports of significant damage. "Although today’s earthquake was what we characterize as ‘light,’ this area is capable of producing an earthquake that can result in significant loss of life and property damage," said Charles "Chip" Groat, director of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Groat pointed out that the region was host to the strongest earthquake on record in the lower 48 United States.

Though similar in strength, an earthquake East of the rockies is felt across a wider area. SOURCE: USGS

The infamous series of three New Madrid quakes in 1811-1812 occurred a few weeks apart, from Dec. 16 to Feb. 7. They measured 8.1, 8.0 and 7.8 and represent three of the four strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the lower 48. "Strong earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone are certain to occur in the future," states a USGS fact sheet. "There is a 9-in-10 chance of a magnitude 6 to 7 temblor occurring in the New Madrid Seismic Zone within the next 50 years." The New Madrid fault's remarkable spree of shifts devastated the sparsely populated area at the time. Amazingly, the quakes were so strong they were felt in much of the country -- as far away as Boston. Damage was reported as far away as Charleston, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C.

Differences in geology east of the Rockies account for the widespread effects, geologists say.

The strongest of the New Madrid events was 10 times more intense than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, scientists say. Earthquakes of similar intensity occurred around the year 900 and again in the middle 1400s along the New Madrid fault, named for a small town in Missouri.

Good-sized temblors, the sort that can topple brick facades or bring down poorly designed bridges, rattled the New Madrid seismic zone in 1843 (6.3-magnitude) and 1895 (6.6-magnitude).

All this taken into account, plus the much larger population in the danger zone now, suggests a magnitude 7 quake on the New Madrid fault today "could be far worse than

those of the 1989 magnitude 7 Loma Prieta, California, earthquake," according to the USGS. That rattle of the bay, which struck the San Francisco area during the World Series, killed 63 people and caused $6 billion in damage.

In California and other parts of the West, many old buildings and roadways have been retrofitted to largely endure earthquakes in the magnitude 6 to 7 range. But buildings in the New Madrid fault region constructed before modern building codes were put in place typically are not retrofitted, according to a USGS statement.

"This earthquake is an opportunity to gather more knowledge about the region’s seismic risk and incorporate it into safer buildings," Groat said.

The regional Center for Community Earthquake Preparedness issued a statement Thursday saying the quake "underscores the need for Mid-South emergency management officials to have a seismic response plan ready." The CCEP is staffed by engineers and geologists from the University of Mississippi.

1. Prince William Sound, Alaska 1964, 9.2
2. Andreanof Islands, Alaska 1957, 9.1
3. Rat Islands, Alaska 1965, 8.7
4. East of Shumagin Islands, Alaska 1938, 8.2
5. New Madrid, Missouri 1811, 8.1
6. Yakutat Bay, Alaska 1899, 8.0
7. Andreanof Islands, Alaska 1986, 8.0
8. New Madrid, Missouri 1812, 8.0
9. Near Cape Yakataga, Alaska 1899, 7.9
10. Fort Tejon, California 1857, 7.9

The largest earthquake in the world since measurements have been made was a 9.5-magnitude event that shook Chile in 1960. The 1964 Alaskan quake had held the No. 2 spot globally until this week, when scientists provided an updated estimate of the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami-causing Sumatran earthquake. That subsea event has now been pegged at 9.3. Scientists note that all of the magnitude numbers are estimates, especially the historical temblors for which there exist little or no reliable instrumented measurements.

A continuous shaking from deep in the San Andreas Fault may foretell of future earthquakes, scientists announced today.

The tremors -- not really normal earthquakes, last for more than four minutes. They are "a kind of chatter" coming from depths of 12 to 24 miles below the surface, said Robert Nadeau, from the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory of the University of California.

Over a three-year period, Nadeau and his graduate student, David Dolenc, detected 114 of the events beneath the town of Cholame, CA. These faint rumblings originate up to five times deeper than the average earthquake on this section of the fault.

The geologists have observed a possible correlation between the tremors and the rate of small microquakes in the region.

"This is new information from an area deep down under the fault we have not been able to look at before," Nadeau said. "If these tremors are precursory to earthquakes, there is potential here for earthquake forecasting and prediction."

The town of Cholame is thought to have been the origin of the magnitude 8 Fort Tejon Earthquake of 1857. This was the last big quake to hit southern California, and some seismologists think the area is due for another, since the average time between big quakes is 140 years.

Although the study was no longer running at the time, a moderate, magnitude 6 earthquake erupted on Sept. 28, 2004, outside the city of Parkfield, which is 15 miles northwest of Cholame. Because this quake was near the tremor region, Nadeau believes it supports the tremor-quake relationship.

Parkfield describes itself as the "Earthquake Capital of the World" because for 20 years seismologists have been studying the fault-line that cuts through the city. Between the quakes in 1887 and 2004, the area has been hit by five other large events in 1881, 1901, 1922 and 1934.

Earthquake magnitudes are measured with seismographs and rated on the Richter scale:

· 2.5 or less: Usually not felt, but can be recorded by seismograph. 900,000 per year worldwide.

· 8.0 or greater: Great earthquake. Can totally destroy communities near the epicenter. One every 5 to 10 years.

Parkfield, on the San Andreas fault, has been at or near the site of several large earthquakes in the past.

Small tremors have typically been ignored by seismologists, who are more interested in short bursts of activity rather than a sustained rumbling.

But tremors have been observed under volcanoes, and recently led to predictions of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State. They have also been discovered in Japan and the Pacific Northwest at sites called subduction zones, where one of the Earth’s plates dips underneath another.

Nadeau and Dolenc’s tremors are the first detected underneath a transform fault, which is where two plates scrape against each other in a horizontal direction. It had been thought that tremors result from fluids flowing deep underground, but Nadeau said that his findings challenge this theory.

"Transform faults like the San Andreas have no obvious source of fluid, so it's not clear what's causing the tremors," he said. "Either tremors don't need fluid, or there is another, unknown source of fluid, perhaps from the Earth's mantle."

By understanding this mechanism better, the researchers hope to uncover whether tremors really can predict earthquakes.

Nadeau and Dolenc describe their work today in the online version of the journal Science.

Tokyo (Yahoo) - A powerful magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck off the coast of southern Japan on Sunday, killing one person and injuring at least 381 others, damaging buildings and jolting residents with a series of strong aftershocks. Authorities issued a tsunami warning that was later canceled. The temblor, which hit west of Kyushu Island at 10:53 a.m. local time, was centered at an unusually shallow depth of 5.5 miles below the ocean floor, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said. Aftershocks followed at least one a magnitude-4.2 quake. Officials reported water and gas main breaks and power blackouts. Local and bullet train railway service was halted, after an automatic safety mechanism was triggered by the tremors, public broadcaster NHK television reported. Telephone service in the southern prefecture was jammed. Minutes after the shaking began, the agency warned of the possibility of 20-inch tsunami waves triggered by the seismic activity. Such waves can grow to towering heights as they approach land, and authorities cautioned residents near the water to move to higher ground….

A magnitude-7 quake can cause tremendous damage in populated areas, either directly or by triggering tsunami, which are distinguished from normal coastal surf by their great length and speed. On Oct. 23, a magnitude-6.8 earthquake struck Niigata, about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo, killing 40 people and damaging more than 6,000 homes. The jolt was the deadliest to hit Japan since 1995, when a magnitude-7.3 quake killed 6,433 people in the western city of Kobe. On Dec. 26, a 9.0-magnitude quake triggered a massive tsunami that devastated Asian and African coastlines in nearly a dozen nations, killing at least 175,000 people.

Fairbanks, Alaska (KTUU) - There is mounting evidence that the earthquake that triggered a killer tsunami in the Indian Ocean on Christmas weekend also triggered a second earthquake in Alaska. That second quake was minor, but the fact that it happened at all was a revelation to scientists, who believe it provides a window into understanding volcanoes. The first earthquake took place in the Indian Ocean, some 6,000 miles from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. But UAF seismologists say that, an hour after that massive quake occurred, they could actually detect the entire state of Alaska undulating up and down, rising and falling an inch or more every 30 seconds for several minutes. The power that represents over such a distance is astounding, even to researchers. But the quake did something more, something that scientists have not seen at that incredible distance. It actually triggered a second earthquake beneath Mount Wrangell, a 14,000-foot volcano about 50 miles east of Glennallen. "Wrangell is a pretty large volcano, with a large hydrothermal system," explains Dr. John Sanchez of UAF. The mountain vents steam almost constantly and sits atop unstable volcanic faults.

"The ground is very hot at Mount Wrangell here," says Dr. Michael West, also a researcher at UAF. "Despite a snow-covered mountain, you have open steaming areas of ground." Restless Mount Wrangell, locked in fire and ice, would seem a world away from the tropical paradise of the Indian Ocean, but is now known to be seismically connected to it. Last December, when a huge earthquake generated a killer tsunami in the Indian Ocean, scientists watched as the quake sent a huge pulse of energy that actually engulfed the entire planet within a few hours. The event generated a power equivalent to 20,000 Hiroshimas. "On the evening of Christmas Day here, the day after Christmas in Sumatra, after the earthquake occurred, it took about an hour for the large-amplitude seismic waves to make it to Alaska," says Dr. West. UAF scientists watched as that pulse of energy, traveling at 6,000 mph raced toward Alaska and actually lifted the entire state an inch or more into the air.

"The ground in Alaska -- in Anchorage and everywhere else through the state -- moved a couple of inches up and down during this time period," West says. The heaving of the earth beneath Alaska triggered a series of magnitude 2 earthquakes beneath Mount Wrangell, 6,000 miles away from Indonesia. "Here in the summit of the volcano and this is the general area around which the little earthquakes happened, during the passage of the waves from the Sumatra earthquake," Dr. Sanchez says. The phenomenon of one earthquake triggering another earthquake at a distance of 6,000 miles -- a quarter of the circumference of the Earth -- has never been seen before. Now that it has happened, scientists are hoping it will provide insight into volcanic activity in Alaska and elsewhere. Gaining clues as to when volcanoes may become active again could be an important tool in saving lives.

Tokyo (OKYO - Two earthquakes, including one measuring a strong 5.4 on the Richter scale, jolted Japan, with no immediate reports of casualties or damage, officials said. The 5.4 quake's epicenter was off the Pacific coast of Aomori prefecture, about 550 kilometers (350 miles) north of Tokyo, at 9:37 PM (1237 GMT) Saturday. Its focus was a relatively deep 70 kilometers (44 miles) under the sea, the Meteorological Agency said. A second earthquake registering 4.4 on the Richter scale hit 16 minutes later in Ado island, some 300 kilometers (185 miles) northwest of Tokyo. There was no danger of tsunami waves from either tremor. Ado is part of Niigata prefecture, which in October was hit by Japan's worst earthquake in a decade killing 40 people. Japan endures 20 percent of the world's strong earthquakes. A government panel Friday said that a major tremor in Tokyo would kill 13,000 people, inflict 1.1 trillion dollars in damage and force millions into shelters.

Live Science - Monday’s earthquake, which caused extensive damage and at least 330 deaths on two islands off the coast of Indonesia, was originally put at magnitude 8.2 by geologists. It was later revised to magnitude 8.7 – equal to five times more energy on the logarithmic scale. Underestimating the strength of a large earthquake is common, according to Kerry Sieh of the California Institute of Technology.

The tsunami-causing earthquake that struck the same area on Dec. 26 last year was initially assessed as 8.2, then 9.0, and finally 9.3, as reported in February by LiveScience. This final estimate makes the tsunami-causing quake the second largest ever recorded. In the current issue of Nature, researchers report on follow-up analysis of this deadly event. The difficulty with measuring the energy of a big quake is that they last longer. The Dec. 26 quake was the longest ever measured, at 10 minutes. A magnitude 6 earthquake, in contrast, typically lasts only a few seconds.

This longer rumbling time means that some of the energy spreads out in longer wavelength seismic waves. Many seismic detectors do not measure these longer waves, so they end up underestimating the energy output.

Could Monday’s temblor end up being larger than a magnitude 8.7? "It’s possible," Sieh told LiveScience. "But it looks like this one is more well-behaved."

For one thing, the March 28, 2005 quake was shorter – about 2-½ minutes. It also appears to have originated from farther down in the crust – a fact that may explain why no major tsunami was generated.

"Most of the slip appears to have occurred deeper, so the seafloor wasn’t displaced as much," Sieh said.

It seems likely that this second temblor was in part brought on by the Dec. 26 event. Pressure relieved in one patch of the fault line can result in more pressure at another patch – leading to a kind of domino effect. In a commentary on the Nature results, Sieh drew attention to a cluster of giant earthquakes between 1950 and 1965. Seven of the 10 biggest earthquakes of last century occurred in this 16-year range, and five of these occurred in the northern Pacific.

It seems likely, said Sieh, we are seeing a similar clustering in the Indian Ocean now. The new concern is that the fault line has become vulnerable further southeast from where this week’s quake occurred.

Power of tsunami earthquake heavily underestimated – February 9, 2005

New Scientist - The earthquake that created the devastating Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 was three times more powerful than first thought, say researchers analysing long-period seismic waves.

The finding could upgrade the quake to the second strongest ever recorded and explain why the tsunami caused such great damage across the ocean in Sri Lanka and India.

Earthquakes are classified on the Richter scale by their largest-amplitude seismic wave. These seismic waves come in a variety of periods, or wavelengths - but only the most powerful quakes pack a lot of energy into long-period waves.

Seismologists initially used seismic waves with periods of about 300 seconds to set the magnitude of the Sumatran earthquake at 9.0 - making it the fifth most powerful event on record.

Now, seismologists Seth Stein and Emile Okal at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US, have scrutinised seismograms taken from 7 stations around the world in the week or so following the earthquake. They looked for the longest-period waves possible - those lasting about 3200 seconds (53 minutes).

"We found, to our surprise, that there was three times more energy out there than at the 300-second period," Stein told New Scientist. "It was colossal." The new work reclassifies the earthquake on the logarithmic Richter scale at magnitude 9.3 - second only to the 9.5-magnitude quake recorded in Chile in 1960.

The Asian earthquake occurred at the eastern edge of the Indian Ocean where, over millions of years, the Indian tectonic plate has been disappearing beneath the Burma plate. This "subduction" zone had been locked for perhaps 200 years before the built-up pressure was finally released in the slippage of 26 December.

The Burma plate rebounded upwards by about 10 metres at the quake's epicentre - setting the deadly tsunami waves in motion. And the process continued along the border between the two plates, causing the earth to rupture along the fault line - running from south to north. But seismologists are not sure exactly where the rip stopped.

Some think the rupture only made it through the southern third of the 1200-kilometre-long zone that was rocked by aftershocks. "But if the earthquake is three times more powerful then previously believed, that's telling you the fault area is three times bigger," says Stein. "We think the entire aftershock zone ruptured." The northern two-thirds of the zone may have taken longer to slip, which is why its energy was released in longer-period waves.

This could be actually be positive news for survivors living near the zone. Having released such a large amount of energy, Stein thinks it will take another few hundred years for the zone to build up the strain necessary for another huge earthquake.

But he warns that smaller earthquakes could still occur, perhaps spawning localised tsunamis. Furthermore, other locked sections of the fault - further to the south, near Java, for example - could still rupture catastrophically.

If the rupture did indeed occur along the whole length of the aftershock zone, it could explain why some distant regions were so devastated by the tsunami. While the lower third of the zone directed tsunami waves to the southwest, the upper portion has a different orientation and sent waves due west - straight towards hard-hit Sri Lanka and southern India. However, other factors, such as the topography of the sea floor, may also explain why the waves gathered so much force in those regions.

Other seismologists have also calculated that the Asian earthquake was significantly larger than initially thought. Teh-Ru Alex Song, at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, US, and colleagues used long-period waves from about 20 seismometers around the world to confirm that the earthquake was two to three times more powerful than magnitude 9.0 .

But he says it is not clear yet how fast or slow the slip proceeded along the fault. The group arrived at their preliminary result on Sunday and will continue to refine their analysis.

Song hopes seismologists will develop a technique to analyse and convey the magnitude of any earthquakes that could spawn tsunamis as they actually happen - information that could come from waves with periods of 200 to 500 seconds.

A final analysis of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami is likely to create a death toll in 2004 greater than any caused by ground shaking in more than four centuries.

While the total deaths from the Dec. 26, 2004 disaster remains uncertain, it stands at 275,950, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) statement released Thursday. A comparatively small number of other earthquake-related fatalities for the year brings the total to 276,856, the agency reported. However, other disaster officials put the known deaths at between 162,000 and 178,000, with a list of missing between 26,000 to 142,000. Those figures add up to a possible death toll range of between 188,000 and 320,000.

It remains to be seen whether the final tally will exceed 1976, when a magnitude 7.5 temblor killed roughly 255,000 people in and around Tangshan, China. On Jan. 23, 1556, a quake thought to have been magnitude-8 killed an estimated 830,000 people in Shansi, China. Historically, most earthquake deaths are caused directly by the shaking. But tsunamis and fires have contributed to combined catastrophes before. In 1755, an earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal triggered a tsunami and fires that combined to kill more than 60,000 people.

The Dec. 26, 2004 earthquake was put at magnitude 9.0 initially. One group of scientists said earlier this week it was actually 9.3. As of Thursday, however, the USGS was still using the 9.0 figure. Depending on what number geologists ultimately settle on, it will go down in history as the second or third strongest event ever measured.

The all-time largest, magnitude 9.5, hit Chile in 1960. In 2004, just three days before the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, another large earthquake -- magnitude 8.1 -- struck north of Macquarie Island, about a thousand miles southwest of New Zealand. There were no reported deaths.

Prior to that, the last great earthquake was a magnitude 8.3 in Hokkaido, Japan, in September of 2003. In 2003, 33,819 deaths were attributed to earthquakes; about 31,000 owing to a magnitude 6.6 temblor that struck Bam, Iran on Dec. 26 of that year. In 2002, 1,711 people were killed by earthquakes.

The largest U.S. earthquake in 2004 was a magnitude 6.8 in southeastern Alaska. A magnitude 6.0 temblor struck Parkfield, Calif., on Sept. 28, 2004. Long anticipated by geologists, it ruptured roughly the same segment of the San Andreas Fault that had cracked in 1966, 1934, 1922, 1901, 1881 and 1857. The deadliest U.S. earthquake in history struck San Francisco on April 18, 1906. The magnitude 7.8 quake killed about 3,000 people, but many of the deaths were attributed to fires that ravaged the city.

None of this is unusual in the grand scope of nature. Earth rattles constantly. About 50 measurable earthquakes occur every day. On average, each year there are 18 major earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.0 to 7.9, and one great earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or higher, according to the USGS. Geologists caution that the magnitudes of historical events are in some cases estimated based on little or no instrumented seismographic measurement.

The Iranian citadel of Bam after the 2003 earthquake

BBC News - Scientists in Iran are urging the government to move the capital out of Tehran. The city, which lies on at least 100 known fault lines could be hit by a major earthquake, they say. The UN rates Iran as the number one country in the world for earthquakes - whether measured in intensity, frequency or the number of casualties. In December 2003 a quake in Bam killed about 30,000 people and, in February 2005, more than 500 people died in the Zarand area in another quake. Experts say on average there's a small earthquake every day in Iran.

Capital move - Tehran is home to more than 12 million people, but few of the buildings have been made to withstand even an earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter scale. "Tehran must be rebuilt; if not it should be moved," says Dr Bahram Akasheh, a geophysicist at Tehran University. "Either we have to put up with millions of dead, millions of injured, or we need to move the capital somewhere else and take steps to decrease the population here and make Tehran more resistant to earthquakes," he warns. According to Dr Akasheh's calculations, there is a 90% chance of an earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter scale hitting Tehran and a 50% chance of an earthquake measuring 7.5 striking the capital. The only problem is he cannot say when.

'Fatalistic' - "We have to take the issue of earthquakes seriously," he says. He says Iranians are too fatalistic, believing whatever happens to be God's will. Instead, Dr Akasheh believes, they should use the skills God gave them to build homes resistant to quakes. Indeed hardly any of the buildings in Tehran are made to withstand a major quake despite the city's recent major construction boom. Increasingly, estate agents say customers are worried about whether buildings are safe but it is hard to know for certain without getting a full structural survey. "I couldn't find a place which I could think of living in without worrying," says electrical engineer Mohammed Serpooshan. He has just bought an old house with the intention of knocking it down and rebuilding it to be earthquake safe."The only way is to start from scratch - that is find a place and build on it myself, applying the necessary standards myself because there's no other choice."

'Move the government' - Mr Serpooshan says he is prepared to go to all this trouble because, ultimately, the lives of his family are at stake. While this is a possibility for some, it is impossible for the government to refit or rebuild all the public buildings in Tehran - it would simply be too expensive. The government has announced it will renovate 200,000 rural buildings every year but this is a drop in the ocean in a country with nearly 70 million people, where every major city except Isfahan lies in a seismic zone. More than half the buildings in Iran are thought to be non-reinforced masonry structures. "The best way... is to drag the government out of Tehran and put it not far away," says Mr Hosseini, a structural engineer at the International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology in Tehran. He says there is still space to build satellite towns in safer areas and if some government ministries move outside the capital, others will be drawn out. Mr Hosseini says he has suggested postgraduate engineering students research new techniques for strengthening old buildings to reinforce them against earthquakes. So far government efforts have focused on training exercises.

Raising awareness - Experts believe that being prepared can save up to a third of lives in an earthquake so it is well worth the effort. Millions of school children are trained to dive under desks if an earthquake strikes and then shown how to evacuate the injured. There are songs about quakes and even cartoons. But the problem for the government is how hard to push the message. The worry is that the warnings will alarm people and the government will then have to tell them that there is insufficient money to rebuild their homes and offices. After the 2003 earthquakes in Bam and the Zarand earthquake in February 2005 there were calls to learn lessons for the future. But many experts complain that the tendency has been to take the quake threat seriously only when the memory of the latest disaster is still fresh in peoples' minds. "The hope that I have is that this sort of attention does not wane in the near future," says Mr Hosseini. He adds that it might be a good idea to pray to God to have more minor earthquakes so as to keep the awareness high. "Not to kill people but just to warn them that the earthquake is saying 'Be careful, I am here' ."

Jakarta (Yahoo) - A strong undersea earthquake measuring up to 7.5 on the Richter scale struck Indonesia and northern Australia but there were no reports of casualties or damage, officials said. They said the quake, centred in the Banda Sea, was unlikely to cause a tsunami like the one which devastated westernmost Aceh province in December. "It is highly unlikely the quake could trigger a tsunami since its focus is located too deep under the sea. We have not received any reports of tsunami over the last two hours," said Suyanto of the meteorology and geophysics office in Jakarta. An official of the Japanese meteorological agency added: "No tsunami can be expected of an earthquake which occurs 100 kilometers (62 miles) or more below." The quake occurred at 5:42 pm (1042 GMT) with its epicenter in the Banda Sea about 320 kilometers southwest of the town of Tual on Kai Kecil island in the Malukus, formerly known as the "Spice Islands", officials said. The French Earth Sciences Observatory in Strasbourg recorded the earthquake at 7.1 points on the Richter scale. Authorities in Australia said the quake measured 7.5 while Japanese seismologists recorded it at 7.2 and Hong Kong's agency estimated the strength at 6.8. ….Another large earthquake, said to be measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale, was recorded off the coast of Vanuatu Wednesday, Australian scientific authorities said. (Read entire Article)

Nias Quake Toll Now More Than 2500 - April 4, 2005
7 a.m. News - Indonesian authorities now say that more than 2500 people were killed in last week's 8.7 earthquake on the island of Nias.

The 8.7 quake hit as Indonesians were still recovering from the Boxing Day tsunami.

More than 500-bodies have been recovered, while another 2017 are missing presumed dead.

The assessment was made after a village-by-village survey by the Indonesian armed forces.

Heavy lifting equipment is still being brought to the island to remove rubble and debris.

Cluster In Oz/SE Asian Region (Rense) This morning our radio news in Perth reported a strong 7.1 richter earthquake from the area north of Darwin (see Banda Sea event data below). Currently we have no reports of a significant Tsunamis event linked with this seismic event. This Banda Sea event is along the same Australian plate boundary fault as the deadly Boxing Day Aceh 9.3 richter quake-tsunamis event. It proves that the area of the Andaman-Nicobar-Sumatra Arc and the associated edges of the Australian plate are still highly unstable - over a very large region. This may be a developing stress scenario and as a consequence it remains a VERY dangerous region. It would appear that a cluster of MULTIPLE earthquakes initiated between 10.40 and 10.44 GMT/UTC time today (03-02-2005) over a very large area around and within Australia and SE Asia - BUT see below for discussion of veracity of this computer generated data. The European -Mediterranean Seismic Centre (EMSC) has recorded seismic signals from multiple receiver sites that have allowed them to generate computer designated quake info.

Rense - The Sumatra-Andaman Arc seismic event is STILL releasing huge amounts of energy in the form of clusters of 5-6 richter quakes - each one of which can level a city. This is a major CONTINUING event and we have not heard the last of this location. It continues to let rip with 5-6 richter quake clusters along a 1200km front. Natural or man made is not really critical in the scheme of things (nice to know though) BUT rather what is going on in the igneous intrusive department underneath and along this suture zone could be EXTREMELY CRITICAL - given the island arcs incredible explosive volcanic history eg Krakatoa and Taba to name but two.

These type of explosive events are not spoil your whole day or even week or year in character. Rather they could be of a type to spoil your whole decade or century or our very human existance on the planet. If the 9 richter event was manmade then it looks like things have run out of control as the events along the Andaman-Nicobar-Sumatra zone cannot be called "normal" aftershocks. Joe Vialls thinks it was a US H-Bomb in the trench. Personally I seriously doubt that and/or the scalar EM weapon scenario. My reasoning is based upon the extreme solar activity during most of December and the slightly preceeding Macquarie Island 8 richter quake - suggesting an unstable plate stress regime was unfolding at the time due to planetary magnetosphere coupling with solar energy output ???

I note the "day following" the 9 richter quake saw a reported hugely massive energy blast in a distant sector of space. US scalar energy researchers also noted a scalar Tx that gave a few hours warning of the 9 richter quake - something they have noted as preceeding many absolutely natural quake and volcanic events in the western USA. It is quite possible that these off planet and solar - planetary events link with the 9 richter in some sort of coupled scalar EM energy way. There remain huge unknowns concerning the energy couplings of planets, stars, and the vacuum. It is very possible that these systems couple to produce mass condensation at planetary centres, and the entire range of quakes, volcanic activity, plus all manner of planetary expansion tectonics ???

Although fascinating science speculation WHAT we really need to know exactly what is going on UNDER this newly activated tremblor zone. Krakatoa started with massive earthquakes in January 1883 which continued until March 1883 - then Krakatoa began to smoke - more quakes led to on-off volcanic activity which led in August 1883 to the culminating terrific explosions of 27th August 1883. Some 40-50,000 died as a result of this explosion and the tsunamis it produced. The real death toll was possibly much higher as communications then were fairly primitive. Bodies were washing ashore in pumice rafts on the South African coast 2 years later. Taba was a similar but significantly larger Sumatran arc volcanic explosive event 54,000 years ago which DNA researchers believed nearly extinguished human life on this planet. Krakatoa's explosion put 12 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere. Taba's explosion is estimated to have put 2,400 cubic kilometers into the atmosphere. We really do need some good geoscience research into this continuing scenario - PRONTO. The British marine geoscience surveys of the sea bed are a good start BUT we need to get an idea of the 3D tomography of intrusive activity under this zone. The adjoining Asian and Australian communities need future prediction advice ASAP.

Was Tsunami caused by human hands trying to develop alternative energy from Tectonic plate frictions and movements? – February 9, 2005

India Daily - Many in South Asia now believe that the Tsunami was created by some entity trying to develop alternate energy from Tectonic plate frictions and movements. According to Geologists, Scientists and Thermodynamic experts, enormous amount of energy is involved in Tectonic plate frictions and movements. If that energy can be tapped, the world will be full of free energy. It may make sense for some human hands to try and see if this enormous source of energy can be used to generate and use power – free energy!

The tsunami-battered Andaman and Nicobar Islands were on Sunday rocked by a series of eight earthquakes measuring 5 to 5.3 on the Richter scale, even as a slight tremor jolted Uttar Pradesh, India. The quakes, classified as "moderate" by the India Meteorological Department, started occurring just after midnight Saturday and continued till 8.49 a.m. on Sunday. The epicentres of the tremors were located off the east coast of Car Nicobar Island, off the north coast of Camorta and northwest of North Andaman Islands. According to some Geologists in India the epicenter of the aftershocks are steadily moving northwards along a line. Still the aftershocks have strange gaps between them and the after shocks are not getting reduced in Richter scale.

The strangest thing observed is another smaller but very similar quake in Uttar Pradesh (a state in India), which is in the Northern India adjacent to the Himalayas. When the epicenters of these quakes are joined with a straight line, it seems that the aftershock epicenter is moving along this line. The aftershocks are between 5.2 and 6.2 in Richter scale. After a series of aftershock there is approximately 78 hours of gap before the next series appears. All these can be just a coincidence and is nothing unusual say some Geologists. But the continuation of this phenomenon for over a month cannot be just coincidental. The sailors in Indian Ocean especially in the area of Andaman-Nicobar as well as Sumatra and in Bay of Bengal are weary of what is happening.

(Malaspina Univ) - Transform faults within continental areas - such as the San Andreas Fault in California and the Alpine Fault in New Zealand - are sites of relatively frequent earthquakes and visible offsets. From this it is clear that the crust is breaking in a brittle manner. What

is not so clear is how the underlying lithospheric part of the mantle is behaving. Recent work from New Zealand suggests that the lithospheric mantle beneath New Zealand is deforming continuously - and not breaking. New Zealand forms the boundary between the Pacific and Indo-Australian Plate, and interestingly the Pacific Plate is being subducted beneath the Indo-Australian Plate to the northeast of New Zealand, while the Indo-Australian Plate is being subducted beneath the Pacific Plate to the south of New Zealand (see map).

The subduction zone boundaries are joined by the 800 km long Alpine Fault, which extends along the length of the South Island and part way across the North Island. Over the past 45 m.y. there has been 460 km of offset on the Alpine Fault. (note offset of Cambro-Devonian metamorphic rocks)

Researchers from the US and New Zealand have carried out a detailed study of seismic data from earthquakes in the region. They have used the data to argue that the lithospheric mantle at depths of 100 to 120 km has deformed continuously across a width of 300 to 400 km - and has not slipped along one, or a small number of faults. (see figure above)The implication - in this type of situation - is that the lithospheric mantle flows, and that it is not as LITHOspheric as we might have thought. While it is still clear that the crustal plates include both crustal and lithospheric mantle material, and that for the most part they move together as a unit, if these authors are correct there may be a partial de-coupling of the crust and the lithospheric mantle at plate boundaries.

In a report published in the most recent issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters (vol. 133), the scientists say they have confirmed that the Indo-Australian Plate--long identified as a single plate on which both India and Australia lie--appears to have broken apart just south of the Equator beneath the Indian Ocean. The break has been underway for the past several million years, and now the two continents are moving independently of one another in slightly different directions. Scientists have known that for some 50 million years, the Indian subcontinent has been pushing northward into Eurasia, forcefully raising the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan Mountains. The new research suggests that starting about 8 million years ago, the accumulated mass became so great that the Indo-Australian Plate buckled and broke under the stress. "The result of this critical stage in the collision between India and Asia is the breakup of the Indo-Australia Plate into separate Indian and Australian plates," Jeffrey Weissel, a scientist at Lamont-Doherty, Columbia's earth sciences research institute in Palisades, N.Y., said in an interview.

WELLINGTON, March 14 (Xinhuanet) -- A strong earthquake centered off the coast of Taranaki, North Island, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale, shook many New Zealanders awake early Monday morning. Geological and Nuclear Science duty seismologist Peter McGinty told New Zealand Press Association that the 4:08 a.m. (1508 GMT) tremor was located 80 km south of Opunake, in south Taranaki, at adepth of 150 km. "This was to do with the plate boundary," he said. "At that depth it's just part of the normal process at the plate boundary."

The Geological and Nuclear Science Institute was not expecting any aftershocks and did not believe the tremor was a precursor to a massive earthquake. "We never know but it's unlikely," McGinty said. Its proximity in the South Taranaki Bight meant the quake was felt in many parts of both islands - from Wanganui and as far south as Christchurch…The latest quake followed a minor tremor of 2.9, located 120 kmnorth of Dunedin, South Island, on Sunday at 8:19 p.m. and was the biggest earthquake since November, when a tremor measuring 7.2 struck 240 km off the Southland coast at a depth of 33 km.

Voice of America - News reports from Iran say a powerful earthquake has hit the southeastern region of the country. The state-run IRNA news agency says the quake's intensity measured 5.9 on the Richter scale. It struck early Sunday in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, which borders Pakistan. The U.S. Earthquake Information Center says its instruments reported the quake had an intensity of 6.0. No casualties were reported during the first hours after the earthquake.

Several major fault lines in the Earth's crust run through Iran, and much of the country is seismically active. A strong earthquake that hit southeast Iran on February 22 killed more than 600 people and destroyed several villages. That jolt measured 6.4 on the Richter scale and was centered on the town of Zarand in Kerman province, about 700 kilometers southeast of Tehran. Another earthquake hit southeastern Turkey early Saturday, injuring at least seven people and triggering an avalanche in rural Bingol province.

NEWPORT, Ore. -- An earthquake "swarm" that began last weekend has resulted in thousands of small earthquakes off the Oregon coast in recent days but the size of the quakes did not pose any tsunami threat, officials said. Scientists from Oregon State University said they are joining National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers on Saturday for a cruise to investigate a site on the undersea Juan de Fuca Ridge northwest of Astoria called the Endeavor segment. "These earthquake swarms are associated with seafloor spreading," said Robert P. Dziak, an Oregon State oceanographer who works with NOAA at the university's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. "We suspect what happened was that magma pushed up into the crust and the lava may have broken the surface," Dziak said.

The quakes are generally small and not a tsunami threat, although a section of the sea floor off the Northwest coast called the Cascadia subduction zone is similar to the Indian Ocean area that produced a magnitude 9 quake and tsunami that devastated southeast Asia last December. The much smaller quakes off the Northwest coast generally ranged from magnitude 2 to magnitude 4 and typically occur in swarms during seafloor spreading events, scientists said.

During the first 36 hours of the swarm, nearly 1,500 small quakes were detected. The undersea quake activity was continuing at a "moderate pace," Dziak said.

LONDON (AFP) -- Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, has been photographed stripped of its millennia-old snow and glacier peak for the first time, in a move used by environmentalists to show the perils of global warming. The picture is the first time anyone has caught the Tanzanian mountain's dramatic change, according to the Climate Change group which led a project to document the

effects of global warming across the world.

The launch of the photo project NorthSouthEastWest coincides with a meeting of environment and energy ministers from 20 countries at a British-sponsored conference on climate change that opened on Tuesday in London. It also comes ahead of a further meeting of G8 ministers in Derbyshire, central England, later in the week. Mount Kilimanjaro's crowning snow and glaciers are melting and likely to disappear completely by 2020, triggering major disruptions to ecosystems on the dry African plains that spread out at its feet below, scientists have warned. The forests on Kilimanjaro's lower slopers absorb moisture from the cloud top hovering near the peak, and in turn nourish flora and fauna below. "Rising temperatures threaten not only the ice-cap, but also this essential natural process," Climate Change warned.

The mountain, one of Africa's most stunning landscapes, was memorialized in Ernest Hemingway's 1938 short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro". The story, and the 1952 film which followed, has brought tens of thousands of visitors to Tanzania for decades. The loss of snows on the 19,330-foot (5,892-meter) peak, which have been there for about 11,700 years, could have disastrous effects on the Tanzanian economy, US researchers warned in a 2001 Science article warning about the melting.

The NorthSouthEastWest project also includes images from Magnum agency photographers of 10 "climate hotspots" including the Marshall Islands and Greenland, as well as Kilimanjaro, showing "the most dramatic examples of the impact of global warming", Climate Change's Denise Meredith told AFP Tuesday. The printed collection of the photos is being given to the environment and energy ministers gathered in London and will be distributed at the G8 meeting. The photos are on exhibit through May 15 at London's Science Museum. The British Council will also tour the exhibition in 100 cities in 60 countries in 2004 and 2005, Climate Change said.

The Guardian - Africa's tallest mountain, with its white peak, is one of the most instantly recognisable sights in the world. But as this aerial photograph shows, Kilimanjaro's trademark snowy cap, at 5,895 metres (1,934ft), is now all but gone - 15 years beforescientists predicted it would melt through global warming, writes Paul Brown. In Swahili Kilima Njaro means shining mountain, but the glaciers and snow cap that kept the summit white, probably for 11,000 years - despite the location, in Tanzania, 200 miles south of the equator - have almost disappeared.

The volcanic crater at the summit of Kilimanjaro, its white cap reduced to scattered patches of snow and ice. Photograph: Magnum/Alex Majoli

Tomorrow the 34 ministers at the G8 energy and environment summit, meeting in London, will receive a book - published by The Climate Group, and entitled Northsoutheastwest: a 360 view of climate change - that includes this picture among others depicting global warming. The book's text describes the devastating speed of climate change documented by 10 of the world's top photographers from Magnum Photos.

ABC.net - Climate change is causing Himalayan glaciers to retreat rapidly, threatening water shortages for hundreds of millions of people who rely on glacier-dependent Himalayan mountains

rivers, conservationists say. Global conservation group WWF warns of water shortages for people in China, India and Nepal with the release of its new report today.

Himalayan glaciers feed seven of Asia's greatest rivers. But how will climate change affect water levels? (Image: NASA)

The report indicates glaciers in the region, which represent the greatest concentration of ice on the planet after the poles, are now receding at an average rate of 10 to 15 metres a year. "The rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers will first increase the volume of water in rivers, causing widespread flooding," says Jennifer Morgan, director of WWF's global climate change program."But in a few decades this situation will change and the water level in rivers will decline, meaning massive economic and environmental problems for people in western China, Nepal and northern India."

Himalayan glaciers feed into seven of Asia's greatest rivers: the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Yellow rivers. This ensures a year-round water supply to hundreds of millions of people in the Indian subcontinent and China. The WWF report is published in the run-up to two meetings in London on climate change organised by the UK as current head of the G8 group of industrialised nations.

The gatherings, a ministerial roundtable of the 20 largest energy using economies in the world, and then a G8 meeting of development and environment ministers focusing on climate change, take place this week. A study commissioned by WWF shows that dangerous levels of climate change could be reached in just over 20 years and that if nothing is done, the Earth will have warmed by 2°C above pre-industrial levels by some time between 2026 and 2060. As glacier water flows dwindle, the energy potential of hydroelectric power will decrease, causing problems for industry, as well as agriculture, as reduced irrigation means lower crop yields, WWF says. The environmental watchdog's report shows that three of Nepal's snow-fed rivers have shown declining discharge. Nepal has an annual average temperature rise of 0.06°C a year. In northwest China, the Qinghai Plateau's wetlands have seen declining lake water levels, lake shrinkage, the absence of water flow in rivers and streams and the degradation of swamp wetlands, the report says.India's Gangotri glacier, which supports one of India's largest river basins, is meanwhile receding at an average rate of 23 metres a year.

GENEVA - The shrinking of Himalayan glaciers could fuel an upswing in flooding in China, India and Nepal, before creating water shortages for hundreds of millions of people across the region, a leading environmental group warned Monday. In a report, the Switzerland-based World Wide Fund for Nature said the rate of retreat of the Asian mountain range's glaciers is accelerating because of global warming, and has now reached 33-49 feet a year. "The rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers will first increase the volume of water in rivers causing widespread flooding," said Jennifer Morgan, head of WWF's global climate change program. "But in a few decades this situation will change and the water level in rivers will decline, meaning massive economic and environmental problems for people in Western China, Nepal and Northern India."

Himalayan glaciers feed into seven of Asia's biggest rivers: the Ganges; Indus; Brahmaputra; Mekong; Thanlwin, formerly known as the Salween; Yangtze and Yellow. WWF noted that this ensures a year-round water supply to hundreds of millions of people in the Indian subcontinent and China. As glacier water flows dwindle, the energy potential of hydroelectric power will decrease, causing problems for industry, while reduced irrigation means lower crop production, it said. Nepal has an annual average temperature rise of .11 degrees Fahrenheit. The report said that flows have decreased in three of Nepal's snow-fed rivers. In China, the report said, the Qinhai Plateau's wetlands have seen declining lake water levels, lake shrinkage, and the degradation of swampland. In India, the Gangotri glacier, which supports one of India's largest river basins, is receding at an average rate of 76 feet per year.

Polar history shows melting ice-cap may be a natural cycle – March 9, 2005
THE melting of sea ice at the North Pole may be the result of a centuries-old natural cycle and not an indicator of man-made global warming, Scottish scientists have found. After researching the log-books of Arctic explorers spanning the past 300 years, scientists believe that the outer edge of sea ice may expand and contract over regular periods of 60 to 80 years. This change corresponds roughly with known cyclical changes in atmospheric temperature. The finding opens the possibility that the recent worrying changes in Arctic sea ice are simply the result of standard cyclical movements, and not a harbinger of major climate change. The amount of sea ice is currently near its lowest point in the cycle and should begin to increase within about five years.

As a result, Dr Chad Dick, a Scottish scientist working at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromso, believes the next five to ten years will be a critical period in our understanding of sea ice and the impact, if any, of long-term global warming. Concern has been expressed recently that animals such as polar bears could become extinct because sea ice is disappearing. The new research by Dr Dick and a colleague, Dr Dimitry Divine, gives rise to hopes the melting will stop soon. However, Dr Dick warned that if the ice carried on melting, it would mean that man-made global warming had disrupted the natural process - with potentially disastrous results.

He said: "Cycles of 60 to 80 years have been identified before in atmospheric temperature records in the Arctic. The old records that we recovered from ships’ logs and other sources may show that similar cycles are present in sea ice. "I’ve this gut feeling that within ten years from now we’ll know for certain whether we’re losing sea ice long term or whether it’s coming back. "If it doesn’t come back it shows we are in serious trouble. Sea ice has a whole lot of effects on climate and it is pretty important."

Sea ice protects the northern coastlines of Canada, Russia and the United States from erosion caused by storms. If it melted, waves crashing on to the shoreline could release vast stores of carbon dioxide stored in permafrost, which would increase global warming still further. Dr Dick said the research did not suggest that global warming was not a reality. "You couldn’t say, ‘The sea ice is coming back so therefore there’s no global warming’. It’s never going to be that simple," he said. "But the question now is the extent of global warming, how fast it will happen and whether there are any surprises on the way. "We know there is warming and that it’s caused by humans, but it will be a great relief to many people if the ice comes back as opposed to going away."

He added that some people might be pleased to see less ice in the Arctic as it would finally open up the North-west Passage trade route - sought by many of the explorers whose log-books were used in the study - between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. "If the sea ice continues to disappear it could cut something like 5,000km off the sea route from Europe to Japan and China. There are people who think that’s a good thing," Dr Dick said. "Humans are great at adapting to change. We might lose polar bears and some species of seal, but most people don’t worry about that, it doesn’t affect them. And if it means their stereo can be shipped from China more quickly, they are happy with that."

Among the hundreds of mariners whose records were examined by Dr Dick were the noted Scottish arctic explorer Sir John Ross and his nephew Sir James Clark Ross.

Sir James discovered the magnetic North Pole in 1831 after earlier accompanying his uncle to the Arctic in 1818. He then began to explore the Antarctic, giving his name to the Ross Sea, Ross Island and the Ross Ice Shelf. The polar explorer Clive Waghorn, who lives in Limekilns, Fife, said the idea of regular periodic changes in sea ice was "entirely credible". "You read stories of the old whalers and sailors in the Arctic in some seasons coming back with no catches at all because they weren’t able to get as far north as they could in other seasons," he said. "Whalers were always rather secretive about where they had been because they didn’t want people knowing where they had been if they had a successful trip, but I would say as the record [of log-books] goes, it’s pretty objective."

He said he shuddered to think what would happen if the Arctic lost its sea ice. "I think ecologically it would be a bit of a disaster. It would also open the Arctic up for mineral and oil exploration, which would be another disaster," Mr Waghorn said. In January, the international Climate Change Task Force warned that global warming could reach a "point of no return" in ten to 20 years by which time atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations would be so great that any attempt to reduce them would be futile. Robin Harper, a Scottish Green Party MSP, said that while he hoped Arctic sea ice would return, it could actually be a false sign of hope that global warming was not as serious as previously thought. "All it would prove is that global warming doesn’t affect that particular cycle," he said. "There would be no reason for us to be complacent if it comes back."

THERE are fears that the disappearance of polar ice could have a catastrophic effect on the world’s climate. The presence of large areas of ice helps to moderate the world’s temperature by reflecting the sun’s rays and keeping the planet cool. As the ice sheets reduce, this exposes more areas of water, which absorb more heat from the sun, warming the planet and reducing areas of ice still further. Perhaps the biggest fear is that cold melt-water could "switch off" the Gulf Stream and even the Earth’s system of hot and cold currents, known as the Ocean Conveyor. The Gulf Stream has a major effect on Britain’s climate, allowing palm trees to grow on the west coast of Scotland. Without it, Scotland’s climate would be more like Canada’s.

The Ocean Conveyor has stopped flowing in the past - 8,200 years ago and 12,700 years ago - in an event associated with the start of an ice age. Melting sea ice will not have an impact on sea levels as it already displaces its own weight of water. Large land-based ice sheets on Greenland and in the Antarctic are the main sources of concern. Huge quantities of carbon - a major greenhouse gas - are stored frozen on the ocean floor and in permafrost in Siberia and Canada particularly. Melting ice would release this into the atmosphere, further increasing global warming. This is one reason why scientists fear the world could reach a "tipping point" in about ten to 20 years time when we will not be able to reverse global warming. Sea ice has a calming effect on the water, as waves cannot travel very far. This protects northern Arctic circle coastlines from erosion which would release carbon stored in permafrost. In a warmer world, more water from the sea will evaporate. Greater evaporation actually helps increase the amount of sea ice as fresh water running off the land freezes more easily than salt water in the sea. But, as always in climate studies, the situation is complex, because while some of the water vapour will form clouds which reflect sunlight, it also helps to retain warmth, particularly at night.

Live Science - The eruption of a super volcano "sooner or later" will chill the planet and threaten human civilization, British scientists warned Tuesday.

And now the bad news: There's not much anyone can do about it. Several volcanoes around the world are capable of gigantic eruptions unlike anything witnessed in recorded history, based on geologic evidence of past events, the scientists said. Such eruptions would dwarf those of Mount St. Helens, Krakatoa, Pinatubo and anything else going back dozens of millennia."Super-eruptions are up to hundreds of times larger than these," said Stephen Self of the United Kingdom’s (U.K.) Open University. "An area the size of North America can be devastated, and pronounced deterioration of global climate would be expected for a few years following the eruption," Self said.

"They could result in the devastation of world agriculture, severe disruption of food supplies, and mass starvation. These effects could be sufficiently severe to threaten the fabric of civilization." Self and his colleagues at the Geological Society of London presented their report to the U.K. Government's Natural Hazard Working Group. "Although very rare these events are inevitable, and at some point in the future humans will be faced with dealing with and surviving a super eruption," Stephen Sparks of the University of Bristol told LiveScience in advance of Tuesday's announcement.

The warning is not new. Geologists in the United States detailed a similar scenario in 2001, when they found evidence suggesting volcanic activity in Yellowstone National Park will eventually lead to a colossal eruption. Half the United States will be covered in ash up to 3 feet (1 meter) deep, according to a study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Explosions of this magnitude "happen about every 600,000 years at Yellowstone," says Chuck Wicks of the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied the possibilities in separate work. "And it's been about 620,000 years since the last super explosive eruption there." Past volcanic catastrophes at Yellowstone and elsewhere remain evident as giant collapsed basins called calderas. A super eruption is a scaled up version of a typical volcanic outburst, Sparks explained. Each is caused by a rising and growing chamber of hot molten rock known as magma. "In super eruptions the magma chamber is huge," Sparks said. The eruption is rapid, occurring in a matter of days. "When the magma erupts the overlying rocks collapse into the chamber, which has reduced its pressure due to the eruption. The collapse forms the huge crater." The eruption pumps dust and chemicals into the atmosphere for years, screening the Sun and cooling the planet. Earth is plunged into a perpetual winter, some models predict, causing plant and animal species disappear forever.

Yellowstone may be winding down geologically, experts say. But they believe it harbors at least one final punch. Globally, there are still plenty of possibilities for super volcano eruptions, even as Earth quiets down over the long haul of its 4.5-billion-year existence. "The Earth is of course losing energy, but at a very slow rate, and the effects are only really noticeable over billions rather than millions of years," Sparks said.

The odds of a globally destructive volcano explosion in any given century are extremely low, and no scientist can say when the next one will occur. But the chances are five to 10 times greater than a globally destructive asteroid impact, according to the new British report.

In the Jemez Mountains, near Santa Fe, New Mexico, sits the Valles Caldera -- the circular feature at left in this false-color satellite image (vegetation is red). It's about 15 miles (24 kilometers) wide, made by two super-eruptions 1.6 and 1.1 million years ago.

The rocky mound below, the result of the older eruption, is 820 feet (250 meters) thick. The next super eruption, whenever it occurs, might not be the first one humans have dealt with. About 74,000 years ago, in what is now Sumatra, a volcano called Toba blew with a force estimated at 10,000 times that of Mount St. Helens. Ash darkened the sky all around the planet. Temperatures plummeted by up to 21 degrees at higher latitudes, according to research by Michael Rampino, a biologist and geologist at New York University.

Rampino has estimated three-quarters of the plant species in the Northern Hemisphere perished.

Stanley Ambrose, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois, suggested in 1998 that Rampino's work might explain a curious bottleneck in human evolution: The blueprints of life for all humans -- DNA -- are remarkably similar given that our species branched off from the rest of the primate family tree a few million years ago.

Ambrose has said early humans were perhaps pushed to the edge of extinction after the Toba eruption -- around the same time folks got serious about art and tool making. Perhaps only a few thousand survived. Humans today would all be descended from these few, and in terms of the genetic code, not a whole lot would change in 74,000 years.

Based on the latest evidence, eruptions the size of the giant Yellowstone and Toba events occur at least every 100,000 years, Sparks said, "and it could be as high as every 50,000 years. There are smaller but nevertheless huge eruptions which would have continental to global consequences every 5,000 years or so."Unlike other threats to mankind -- asteroids, nuclear attacks and global warming to name a few -- there's little to be done about a super volcano. "While it may in future be possible to deflect asteroids or somehow avoid their impact, even science fiction cannot produce a credible mechanism for averting a super eruption," the new report states. "No strategies can be envisaged for reducing the power of major volcanic eruptions." The Geological Society of London has issued similar warnings going back to 2000. The scientists this week called for more funding to investigate further the history of super eruptions and their likely effects on the planet and on modern society.

"Sooner or later a super eruption will happen on Earth and this issue also demands serious attention," the report concludes.

India Daily - Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI) scale runs from zero to eight. The higher the VEI number, the bigger — and less frequent — the eruptions. Similar to Richter Scale, VEI of 8.0 is 10 times for violent that 7.0 VEI. There are four major hotspots of massive magma chambers close to the earth’s crust - Hawaiian Islands, Indonesia, Iceland and Yellowstone.

According to conventional geologists these hot spots are dormant and possibilities of eruption within a few years is remote. But according to some forward-looking physicists and geologists, some thing is being overlooked. In 2012, the sun and earth will both simultaneously reverse the polarity. Some say this last happened 74,000 years back. Before that it happened 640,000 years back. One before that happened 1.3 million years ago and one before that was 2.1 million years back. The years when these Terrestrial and Solar polar reversal happened can only be guessed from complex mathematical computation. There is no guarantee they really happened in that interval. But if the hypothesis is true then there is something else in a pattern we can see.

2.1 million years back, there was a massive mega volcanic eruption in Yellowstone of 8.0 VEI. If that happens today, our civilization will come to an end. 1.3 million years ago, Yellowstone erupted again with 7.0 VEI. Approximately, 640,000 years back Yellowstone last massive volcanic eruption took place with VEI between 6.0 and 7.0. About 64,000 years back, a massive volcano erupted in Indonesia. In all these massive eruptions, the earth got cooled for a while. What is the possibility of a mega volcano now in the next ten years? The answer lies in seismic activities of the earth. Underwater volcanoes, earthquakes have progressively increased many folds in the last few years. That can be a precursor to some very serious coming. Think about this the three most severe earthquakes in last 150 years happened in the last four months.

The traditional geologists say: super volcanoes are likely to give decades — even centuries — of warning signs before they erupt. The scientists think those signs would include lots of earthquakes, massive bulging of the land, an increase in small eruptions, "swarms" of earthquakes in specific areas, changes in the chemical composition of lavas from smaller eruptions, changes in gasses escaping the ground and, possibly, large-scale cracking of the land. But there is no guarantee of that. No one was there 64,000 years back or 640,000 years back. It is true that seismic studies have found that the magma column under Yellowstone extends like a pipe 400 miles deep into the earth in an angle. The pipe is become active. Indonesian underwater ridges near Sumatra have become extremely active with multiple mega-quakes in the last four months. Sumatra Island is on the other side of the earth from the Yellowstone. Are Sumatra mega-quakes trying to tell us something about Yellowstone – the biggest hotspot on the earth?

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Volcanic rumblings at Mount Spurr are creating hazardous conditions for extreme skiers, snowboarders and pilots landing in the area, the Alaska Volcano Observatory said Friday. Possible dangers include unstable snow and ice, higher concentrations of potentially lethal gases and acidic water that could be strong enough to burn skin, observatory officials said. Heightened seismic activity has been recorded there for months.

New measurements taken during flights over the volcano this week show the presence of sulfur dioxide, indicating activity stemming from molten lava, not simply heating of ground water, said Tom Murray, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey who works at the observatory's Anchorage office. Carbon dioxide also has been detected. During the flyovers, researchers also spotted water at a summit lake bubbling up -- either from increasing heat or gases floating to the top, Murray said. "We just want people to know this is not a normal mountain,'' Murray said. "They need to be thinking beyond the normal rules. Climbing is already inherently risky as it is.'' The observatory's current level of concern is yellow, signifying activity as "restless.''

Only a handful people actually tackle Mount Spurr, but observatory officials wanted to get the word out about possible dangers on the mountain about 80 miles west of Anchorage. "We don't know how much of a hazard is out there,'' Murray said. "We just want to make sure people are aware of the possibilities so they're not caught unaware.''

One of the concerns is that the higher heat has created melt holes, including a giant hole found last year. Observatory scientists worry there may also be holes hidden by thin crusts of snow or ice. Scientists also warned that higher concentrations of volcanic gases can be deadly. Carbon dioxide is particularly worrisome because it is heavier than air and can collect in low-lying areas. It also can accumulate in the snow pack. Volcanic gases may also dissolve to dangerous levels. The summit lake is likely acidic enough to burn. "We just thought conditions have reached a point where being there could become hazardous,'' Murray said. "We've seen enough of a change to lead us to put a warning out.''

Many underwater volcanoes erupting simultaneously all over the world – tectonic disturbance steadily rising – are we headed for a major catastrophe? – March 14, 2005

India Daily - When in America Mount St. Helen recently erupted, many thought it was just an isolated normal case of volcanic eruption. But now it is becoming clear that hundreds of underwater volcanoes are erupting all around the world especially around the Pacific Ring of Fire.

The tectonic plate movements especially under the oceans have gone up by many times. Andaman Nicobar Island now is experiencing under water volcanoes in Indian ocean and Bay of Bengal. In America North West is experiencing unprecedented level of small earthquakes and under water volcanoes. Seattle and Oregon are experiencing heavy levels of tectonic disturbance.

Underwater volcanoes are being reported in Australia, Greece, New Zealand and many other countries. Russia’s Kumpchetka peninsula is experiencing double volcanoes of large sizes.

According some geologists, there are not enough monitoring mechanisms for knowing the number of under water volcanoes.

Most Navies are experiencing changing under water topologies all over the world. The recent American submarine accident caused by under water ridges never mapped before and many other reports from other navies just confirm the fact that there are massive tectonic movements under the oceans that we are not observing.

Magma movements under the ocean has increased many folds – says Geologists. These developments show the projected under water volcanoes and magma movements have steadily increased in the last five years and now it is just going through the roof.

These data do not take into consideration the small less that 4.0 Richter scale earth quakes under the water.

Based on a recent study, it is evident that the tectonic movements have gone up by several folds in the last nine months.

Many researchers are now concerned about these developments. They are saying the probability of a mega or multiple mega volcanoes is very high now. According to some there is 74,000 year cycle of mega volcanoes and that is due in 2012.

Eurekalert - Acquired from orbit 800 kilometres away, this Envisat image shows two volcanoes erupting simultaneously on Russia's snowy Kamchatka Peninsula this week. Located in the Russian Far East, the Kamchatka Peninsula is a landscape covered with volcanoes, part of the Pacific 'Ring of Fire'. Two stratovolcanoes, Kliuchevskoi and Shiveluch are currently erupting simultaneously. The more southerly 4835-metre-high Kliuchevskoi volcano began its latest eruption on 17 January 2005. By 7 March its consequent lava flow had reached the Erman

glacier and started to melt it, causing a threat of potential mudslides. The hot volcanic material in contact with the surrounding ice and snow caused secondary explosions, hurling material as far as eight kilometres into the air.

This 7 March 2005 Envisat MERIS image shows the unusual phenomenon of the simultaneous eruption of two stratovolcanoes, Kliuchevskoi and Shiveluch (or Sheveluch) on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. Credits: ESA Click for full size image

Above it is Kamchatka's most northerly active volcano Shiveluch – also known as Sheveluch. It is 3283 metres high and started its latest eruption on 27 February 2005. The erupting material covers an area over 700 kilometres across with a layer of ash about 150 kilometres wide and eight centimetres thick, extending westward to the Okhotsk Sea. A ten-km-wide lava flow destroyed the Shiveluch seismological station, located about eight km from the volcano.

Russia's Novosti RIA news agency reports that the village of Klyuchi located between the two volcanoes is suffering periodic ash falls but is otherwise safe. Aviation is at greater threat, with volcanic ash particles capable of disabling aircraft engines: Kamchatka is on a major airline route, and aircraft have had to divert around eruptions in the past. The image was acquired by Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) in Reduced Resolution Mode, with a spatial resolution of 300 metres and a width of 1284 km. It was processed for ESA by Brockmann Consult.

Scientists search for seafloor eruption – March 9, 2005

The most intense swarms of earthquakes detected in the last 10 to 12 years on the far edge of the Juan de Fuca plate could indicate the eruption of magma from the seafloor or an underwater volcano. Between 50 and 70 earthquakes an hour, most of them small, were occurring at the end of February at a spot some 200 miles off the Canadian coast.

University of Hawaii's Jim Cowen, chief scientist, and National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration's Ed Baker, co-chief scientist, are at sea now leading an expedition at the Endeavour Segment, the site of the quakes. The Endeavour Segment is located in deep water and the quakes are not of a magnitude that would cause noticeable effects on land in Canada or the United States. Click for Reports from the expedition. As of March 8, the site said the number of quakes had calmed in recent days.

The scientists are on board the Thomas G. Thompson, the 274-foot research vessel operated by the University of Washington, and will return to Seattle March 11. The project is a rapid-response cruise funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, with cooperation from the Canadian government. There have been six rapid-response cruises to investigate seismic activity on the Juan de Fuca plate since 1991, the most recent having been in 2001 led by Marv Lilley, University of Washington oceanographer. Nowhere have scientists been in position to document lava flows while they are erupting, other than in Hawaii where Kilauea lavas flow into the sea, Lilley says. They've been tantalizingly close a few times out on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, once detecting fresh lava that was still hot enough to have diffuse water flowing out of it and another time arriving to find small glass shards still suspended in the water.

Even if there is no chance to witness lava flows, scientists are eager to arrive at the site as quickly as possible to measure changes that rapidly unfold following an eruption. Fluids discharged into the ocean during such events can form a billowing plume half a mile thick and stretching 6 miles in diameter, substantially changing water temperature and chemistry. Microorganisms flourish, increasing in such abundance that scientists say water near eruption sites can appear blizzard-like as it becomes laden with individual organisms and those that have formed into trailing mats and strings in the water. "What's expelled gives scientists a view into what's deep in the seafloor, in places scientists can't reach," chief scientist Cowen says. The swarms of quakes started Feb. 27 and lasted long enough that co-chief scientist Ed Baker told the Seattle Times before the expedition left port that, "We're pretty sure lava is moving." The seafloor quakes are monitored by SOSUS, the SOund SUrveillance System, that can "hear" sound waves generated by seismic events, submarines or whales. The swarms are centered about 200 miles west of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, at 48 degrees N and 129 degrees W. The seafloor is about a mile and a half below the surface there. As of March 4, fewer than 10 quakes an hour were being detected.

The site is on the Endeavour Segment, on the northern part of the Juan de Fuca Ridge. The ridge is where the Juan de Fuca plate is pulling away from a neighboring plate. Molten lava typically oozes up into the open spaces creating new seafloor at a pace of usually only inches a year. There can be more rapid spreading, however, during volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Fields of hydrothermal vents form where seawater circulates beneath the seafloor gaining heat and chemicals until the fluids vent back into the ocean, sometimes like geysers. As the fluids mix with cold seawater the chemicals separate and solidify, sometimes piling up into impressive mounds, spires and chimneys. Researchers will sample sea water, take images using a camera sled, collect rock fragments and deploy three to four floats made especially to be able to float along with the plume of vent fluids for several months.

There is the possibility scientists will find something other than an eruption underway. A swarm of earthquakes off the coast in 2001 caused an area of the seafloor to draw in surrounding seawater for more than a year. It was a surprising twist for scientists who visited the site expecting to find hot water, and possibly magma, being expelled, says Lilley, leader of that expedition and co-author of a paper last July in Nature about the event. The void created by the earthquakes was under negative pressure, drawing water down into hundreds of feet of sediments, something scientists had never observed before. Scientists, graduate students and undergraduates on the current expedition are from the University of Hawaii, University of Washington, University of Miami, Oregon State University, NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well as students from Canada, Hong Kong and Switzerland.

India Daily - Geologists in India and the rest of the world are receiving signals of a very disturbed mantel and core of the earth. According to some computer models, the outer core and the mantel is getting extremely heated. This can cause extreme tension on the earth’s crust and the tectonic plates. The net result can be increased earthquakes and volcanoes.

The reports coming from every continent says that the volcanoes, geysers and mud volcanoes all are ready to explode. According to the scientists the mantel viscosity is going down due to increased temperature. The outer core is showing sign molecular agitation. The inner core is also showing strange signs. According to some contemporary geosciences theories, the Earth's iron core formed with a large share of radioactive uranium, which combined with sulfur to make an ultra-dense compound.

The uranium settled to the center of the core, where it eventually formed a mass big enough to sustain a supercritical nuclear reactor. Not just that, but it functions as a breeder reactor, creating more nuclear fuel than it burns. This provides the energy needed to generate the geomagnetic field. That is in essence is the theory geomagnetism and gravity. If that reactor for some reason is disturbed, it can cause major problems and eventually explode. But scientists believe the chances of that are very remote though not impossible. There are evidences in our solar system that an extra planet did explode and caused major problems for the Earth and Mars millions of years back. We can get very little clue on what is happening in the inner core. The mantel is what we can get a feel for. And nothing is possible to investigate without proper data.

Rense - Scientists analysing the aftermath of the Boxing Day earthquake under the Indian Ocean warned today that another devastating quake is now far more likely to strike the region. The seismic slip off the coast of Sumatra that triggered the tsunami has piled dangerous levels of stress on to two vulnerable parts of the fault zone, significantly raising the chances of a magnitude 7.5 earthquake. The scientists cannot accurately predict how soon such an earthquake may occur, but they point out that previous examples of so-called "coupled" earthquakes have struck within a year of each other. John McCloskey of the University of Ulster in Coleraine, who led the research, said: "Many of us are brought up to understand hazard as whenever you've had your bit of bad luck it doesn't happen again. Lightning never strikes twice. But one great indicator that you're going to have an earthquake is that you've just had one." He added: "These are very significant and extensive increases in stress. We cannot say for certain it will result in an earthquake but it's the biggest stress increase over a large area that we've measured since we started doing this research."

A powerful undersea earthquake rocked parts of the region yesterday but there were no reports of damage or casualties. The quake, which registered 6 on the Richter scale, struck about 19 miles beneath the seabed off Aceh province in Indonesia but did not cause a tsunami. The new study shows one of the regions at increased risk of a more powerful event is a 31-mile stretch of the undersea Sunda trench, next to the 745-mile long zone that ruptured on Boxing Day. Earthquakes in the Sunda trench triggered fatal tsunamis in 1833 and 1861. Not all big undersea earthquakes cause tsunamis but the scientists say their results emphasise the urgent need for a warning system in the Indian Ocean. Countries in the region and UN experts agreed plans for a system last week at a meeting in Paris, but it will not be completed until the end of next year. Until the network of tidal gauges and seabed sensors is in place, Japan and the US will issue alerts on seismic activity in the Indian Ocean. The second area of concern identified in the new research is a 185-mile region of fault running directly beneath the island of Sumatra, close to the city of Banda Aceh, which was devastated in December and where rebuilding work is under way. The scientists estimate that stress in the Sunda trench region has increased by up to 5 bars; in the Sumatra fault it has been forced up by as much as 9 bars.

Precedent - Prof McCloskey said there was a worrying recent precedent to consider: in 1998 the seismologist Suleyman Nalbant, one of the authors of the new study, used the same technique to show that local seismic activity had increased stress by 2 bars on a 31-mile stretch of the Anatolian fault in Turkey, which has a very similar structure to the Sumatra fault. Less than 18 months later, the Turkish fault gave way near the city of Izmit and triggered a magnitude 7.4 earthquake that killed 20,000 people. He also warned that earthquakes in subduction zones - where one continental plate passes underneath another, as happens at the Indian Ocean boundary - frequently struck in pairs. In the Nankai trough to the south-east of Japan, five of the seven large earthquakes over the last 1,500 years have been followed by a similar event within five years. Three occurred within 12 months. Prof McCloskey said: "It's by studying and reanalysing what happened in the past that we are able to have some confidence in the relationship between the stresses we're measuring and the occurrence of other earthquakes. "But it should be stressed that the mapping is not one to one.

It does not mean there will be another earthquake within a year or two, but certainly the risk has increased significantly as a result of what happened in December." His team used computer simulations of the Boxing Day earthquake prepared by an American team at Caltech in Pasadena to recreate movement of the surrounding area. Because some regions of the affected fault slipped further than others, the resulting redistribution of stress through the ground was patchy and uneven - meaning seismologists could not be sure at first whether the risk of a second quake was raised or lowered. To find out, Prof McCloskey's group used mathematical models of elastic materials, which essentially view the Earth as a giant rubber ball. For several points along the faults in the two danger zones they worked out whether the movement of the surrounding rocks freed the two surfaces to slide past each other or clamped them together, making an earthquake more or less likely. The results appear in the journal Nature. Peter Styles, the president of the Geological Society, said: "It has become apparent over the last 10 years that when a major earthquake occurs it changes the stress in adjacent areas.

Sometimes this can serve to lock the fault, but sometimes it can make another failure more likely. Every effort should be made to ensure that appropriate monitoring technologies and communication protocols are put in place to monitor the Indian Ocean." Nick Ambraseys, a seismologist at Imperial College London, said: "There is nothing in [the new study] that enables, with any degree of certainty, the prediction of the immediacy of the next earthquake - except that an earthquake such as those of 1833 and 1861 is likely to occur sometime in the future. False alarms and inaccurate timing could create more problems than already exist." In separate research, marine scientists in the US have highlighted the risk of a tsunami in the Caribbean, where there is no warning system. The team from the University of North Carolina and the University of Texas say more than 35 million people could be affected if a powerful earthquake struck along the boundary between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates. At least 10 significant tsunamis have been recorded in the region since 1492, six of which are known to have caused loss of life. The recovery so far -

India - A World Bank report says tsunami losses in Tamil Nadu state were $815m (£423m) and about $100m in each of Kerala, Pondicherry and Andrah Pradesh. Relief work is expected to continue for several months but reconstruction is beginning in some areas. India has given up hope of rebuilding on six islands in the badly-hit Andaman and Nicobar archipelago where 5,764 are still missing, 40,000 are in camps, and the infrastructure is in chaos. It could take up to eight years for hospitals, power stations, and resorts to be rebuilt, says the government.

Thailand - Thailand's death toll was 5,303, including 2,159 unidentified people. Another 3,396 people are still missing and another 8,457 injured. Assistance is shifting from relief to reconstruction, as displaced people start to move back from emergency camps to their communities. Fishermen have started returning to work in boats donated by western aid organisations.

Indonesia - In Aceh province, 125,996 bodies have been buried, and 94,105 people are still missing. The number displaced is estimated at 400,156. Indonesia aims to take over relief efforts in Aceh by the end of this month, and has said it wants foreign troops from more than 12 countries to leave Aceh within the next fortnight. More than $4.5bn (£2.4bn) is needed to rebuild roads, power plants, houses, office buildings, farm lands and other facilities destroyed.

Sri Lanka - Latest official figures say 31,000 died, 5,000 are missing, 15,000 were injured, and 443,000 displaced. Some 75,000 houses were destroyed, as were 150,000 vehicles. Roads, railway, power, and water supplies were badly damaged. More than half of the damaged hotel and phone capacity has been repaired and the rail track is back to normal. Sri Lanka will need $1.5bn (£780m), and has asked for a longer period of relief from debt payments to rebuild its economy. Total losses are estimated by the World Bank and the government to equal 4.4% of GDP, with $500m needed in external financing in the short-term for 2005.

Somalia - A relatively small total of 298 were killed and a similar number injured. But containers of hazardous waste, radioactive waste, chemical waste and other substances, previously dumped on the coastline, are spawning illnesses after the containers were damaged by the tsunami. Reports suggest 18,000 households were affected, while an estimated 20,000 people are still living in caves and under trees.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Large cracks off the coast of Puerto Rico show there is a strong chance of quakes, landslides and tsunamis in the Caribbean region, geologists said on Wednesday. Sonar readings of the Puerto Rican trench, where the North American and Caribbean plates meet, show long, deep cracks, said Nancy Grindlay and Meghan Hearne of the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Paul Mann of the University of Texas at Austin. That fits in with historical reports of tsunamis in the area, some of which have the potential to be very large, the three scientists reported in the journal Eos. "I marked out faults and what appear to be landslide deposits," Grindlay said in a telephone interview. "We also identified these large cracks on the sea floor that appear to have potential for future landslides. They are about 35 to 40 kilometers (20 to 25 miles) long and they are right off the north coast of Puerto Rico." They range in depth from 1,000 meters (3,200 feet) to 3,000 meters (10,000 feet), she said, and some are similar to the fault that caused the Dec. 26 quake off the coast of Indonesia that generated the tsunami that left 300,000 people dead or missing in the Indian Ocean area.

As with all quakes, it was impossible to predict when one would occur and what sort of tsunami it might generate, if it caused one at all, Grindlay said. Movement of the sea floor or a landslide could cause such a wave. It could affect Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands, she said. "There is the potential for the tsunami to travel across the ocean but by the time it reaches the (U.S.) Atlantic coast it will probably be a small wave," she said. At least 10 significant tsunamis have been documented in the northern Caribbean since 1492. All 10 were triggered by movement along this plate boundary, which runs 2,000 miles from the north coast of the island of Hispaniola, home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, to the Lesser Antilles, the researchers said. One destroyed Port Royal, Jamaica in 1692, and another killed at least 10 Jamaicans in 1780. In 1946, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake in the Dominican Republic caused a wave that killed 1,800 people. More could die if another tsunami hits because 35.5 million people now live along vulnerable coasts, the three geologists said.

Other experts have noted there are several active Caribbean volcanoes that could set off an inundating wave. In January, U.S. officials said they would spend $37.5 million over two years for new deep-sea warning systems aimed at giving near-total coverage for the U.S. coastline. There is no such system in the Caribbean.

Caribbean in danger of being struck by huge tsunami, scientists say - March 17, 2005

WASHINGTON (Real Cities) - Based on the historical record, there's a serious risk of a devastating tsunami in the Caribbean Sea off the coasts of Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, a team of scientists reported Wednesday. An earthquake in that region could generate waves up to 40 feet high and threaten the lives of up to 35.5 million people living in coastal areas, they said. Smaller waves could reach Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and as far north as New Jersey. Ten destructive tsunamis have been generated in the past 500 years by undersea earth movements along the boundary between the Caribbean and the North American tectonic plates - two of the great, moving slabs of rock that cover the ocean floor. That's an average of one significant tsunami every 50 years. The most recent occurred in 1946 - 59 years ago - when a magnitude 8.1 earthquake in the Dominican Republican triggered a giant wave that killed 1,800 people. The dates imply that another tsunami is already overdue, but experts say they can't predict when it might happen. The scientists - Nancy Grindlay and Meghan Hearne of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and Paul Mann of the University of Texas, Austin - will publish their report in the March 22 issue of Eos, the newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.

"The rapid increase in population in the northern Caribbean to its present level of 35.5 million people means that future tsunamis will be much more destructive than the historical ones," they predicted. In all, 88 tsunamis - most of them moderate - have been reported in the earthquake-prone, volcano-ringed Caribbean area since 1489, according to George Pararas-Carayannis, former director of the International Tsunami Information Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. "Several of these were generated by volcanic eruptions and by collateral volcanic flank failure, debris avalanches and landslides," he wrote last year in the Science of Tsunami Hazards, a professional journal.

At least six Caribbean tsunamis are known to have killed people: in 1692, 1781, 1842, 1867, 1918 and 1946. The total death toll is unknown but at least 2,000 persons perished. According to the Eos report, "the northern Caribbean is capable of generating tsunamis of at least up to 12 meters (40 feet) high." The effects of past tsunamis have extended up to1320 miles, it said. "More sobering than the historical record of tsunamis is the presence of large scale underwater landslide features that may have produced immense, prehistoric (before 1400 AD) tsunamis along the northern margin of Puerto Rico that were much larger than any of those known from 500 years of historical records," the report said.

Underwater landslides cause tsunamis by displacing large volumes of water, forcing it to surge upward in a powerful wave. "This is serious," Martitia Tuttle, a tsunami expert in Georgetown, Maine, who is not part of the Eos team, said in a telephone interview. "Because it has happened in the historic period, certainly it's likely to happen in the future, but at this point we can't predict when," she said. Tuttle noted that there's evidence of a major earthquake along the Caribbean plate boundary about 800 years ago. "Strain has been accumulating on that fault since then," she said. "Enough strain has accumulated to generate a quite large - 7 to 8 magnitude - earthquake, but when we can't say." In addition to past earthquakes, marine geologists have reported many small underwater landslides and cracks, 20 miles or more long, existing in the sea floor off the coast of Puerto Rico, near where the 1918 tsunami originated. "Cracking indicates that these areas are close to failure," the Eos report said.

Massive cleanup begins, Territory counts cost – March 14, 2005
Cyclone Ingrid / Bureau of Meteorology

Queensland Courier Mail - THE Tiwi Islands resembled a war zone tonight after Cyclone Ingrid unfurled her full wrath on the tiny community. Tiwi Islanders began to emerge from emergency shelters this afternoon after enduring a terrifying 24 hours as the eye of the destructive cyclone passed directly overhead. At least two houses were ripped apart, and flying trees damaged several other homes, as gales pummelled the two islands, north of Darwin, last night. Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin will visit the hardest-hit coastal communities tomorrow. "I want to see first hand the level of damage and what we can do to aid the recovery effort," Ms Martin said.

The Cyclone Warning Centre predicted yesterday the gales were 235km/h at the core of the storm, but it was unable to supply an accurate reading of the gusts today.

Late today, the category three cyclone was heading out to sea but West Australian coastal communities were placed on cyclone alert. NT Police said they expected to airlift emergency relief to the Tiwi Islands once the 120km/h gales and torrential rain abated, with at least one community experiencing food shortages. Roofing was blown from Milikapiti's school, Nguiu's only store was smashed by a tree, and the small communities of Ranku, Pirlangimpi and Milikapiti were without functioning sewerage services, police said. "A lot of big sections of trees went past us," one Milikapiti resident told ABC radio. "It (the cyclone) had no trouble in picking them up. "It was just amazing the size of some of the stuff that went past us." Another resident, Irene Hall-Ah Kit, said the sounds of metal and logs hitting the side walls of the community shelter were terrifying. "It was really scary for the kids," she told the radio station. "They were frightened to listen to the noise, a lot of them had never heard it before."

Residents were relieved that everyone had emerged safe. At 4pm (CST), Ingrid was 175km west north-west of Darwin, moving south-west into the Timor Sea at 8km/h.

WA coastal communities between the NT border and Mitchell Plateau were placed on alert.

The warning was cancelled for Darwin, which caught only the edge of the destructive system and escaped without damage. Perth meteorologist Andrew Burton said the cyclone was likely to gain strength over the warm waters, and could climb back to a category five before hitting the WA coastline, possibly on Wednesday. "At the moment we would be focusing on the coast between Kalumburu and Kununurra as probably the areas that can expect to see the greatest impacts," he said.

As the cyclone moved on, Territorians were beginning to count the cost of Ingrid's devastation, with police reporting damage across the top end. In Nhulunbuy, the first NT town blasted by the cyclone, Arafura Pearls suffered more than $1 million damage to its pearling fleet, with seven vessels lost or missing. On Croker Island, the community's 400 residents were still without power or running water and equipped with only enough food for two days. Emergency relief was being sent to the community, which was hit by powerful gales early on Sunday morning that destroyed the school, the island's only store and damaged half the community's 60 houses. "I would doubt if there's a single tree left in town that's standing," local David Price said.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Dozens of residents in the Pacific Northwest reported seeing a bright streak of light as it flashed across the sky, startling witnesses from southern Oregon to the Seattle area, according to officials. Scientists said the flaming object was probably a meteor, and that it likely disintegrated before any fragments fell into the Pacific Ocean. "It was like a big ball of fire," said Summer Jensen, who was in her living room Saturday night when she saw the flash of light outside her Portland home. Michael O'Connor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration's regional office in Renton, Wash., said he fielded numerous calls from people reporting they had seen a bright streak across the sky shortly before 8 p.m. He said police, pilots and some air traffic controllers described it as "a green ball of fire with a long tail.""It appears to have come down over the ocean," said Dick Pugh of the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory in Portland. He said the object flew over the Pacific Coast, streaking along from south to north. Jim Todd, planetarium director at the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, said that if a meteor had entered the atmosphere during the day, it may not even have been noticed."It creates a bright contrast against the night sky," Todd said. Last year, a meteor that appeared like a fireball was sighted over western Washington state. In March 2003, residents in four Midwestern states also reported seeing a disintegrating meteorite flash across the sky.

Washington residents who looked up at the sky Saturday night saw a great ball of fire ignite the sky. When they went back inside their homes, some of them found only darkness -- and no power. Seattle utilities officials said it was just a coincidence. "The power outages that affected the Queen Anne and Magnolia areas had nothing to do with any other phenomena," Sharon Bennett, spokeswoman for Seattle City Light, said yesterday. Also unrelated to the fireball was the small earthquake that struck the Olympia area Saturday night, experts said. Scientists said observers saw a fireball -- a large meteor -- streak through the sky across the western half of the Pacific Northwest shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday. The Federal Aviation Administration's regional office in Renton and local television stations reported calls from people from southern Oregon to Seattle.

The object zoomed over the Pacific Ocean, traveling from south to north, and likely disintegrated before any fragments fell into the Pacific. Adding to the post-meteor buzz was another coincidence that lit up phone lines across the Northwest: A coal plant in Montana tripped off a power line at about the same time, causing lights in Seattle to flicker. As for the larger outage, Bennett said a cable from a Broad Street substation failed, causing electricity to go out on street lights, the Ballard Bridge and in Queen Anne, Magnolia, Westlake and 15th Avenue West. The outage lasted from about 8:10 to 9:30 p.m. and affected 3,000 customers. Meanwhile, a 3.3-magnitude quake occurred about 15 miles north of Olympia before 8 p.m. Saturday, seismologists said. Some Olympia residents suspected a connection to the fireball.

Denver Post - Solar flares and frigid temperatures are believed to be working with human chemicals to eat away at the protective ozone layer above the North Pole, surprising scientists who have been looking for evidence that the planet's ozone layer is healing. The ozone layer protects Earth from dangerous ultraviolet radiation, which can cause skin cancer. Last winter, Arctic ozone declined more precipitously than ever in the upper atmosphere, probably because of violent storms on the sun's surface, one team reports today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. And in recent days, a lower layer of ozone has undergone an extraordinary thinning because of a level of bitter cold (about minus-110 degrees Fahrenheit) rarely seen in the Arctic and manmade chemicals, researchers said. One Colorado scientist has raced north to document the event, expected to sputter out within days. The two unusual findings have experts worried that they don't fully understand the dynamics of ozone depletion. "I don't think we can be confident about whether or not we're seeing an ozone recovery or if we're attributing recovery to the correct causes," said Cora Randall, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado.

Randall and her colleagues studied a dramatic and unexpected drop in upper-level ozone levels last winter. A few months before the decline, massive solar storms had blasted high-energy particles toward Earth. Randall suspects the energetic particles helped create chemicals called nitrogen oxides, which are known ozone-gobblers. Solar storms are natural, she said, but some scientists suspect humans also played a role in creating conditions that contributed to the historic ozone- depletion event. Human-emitted chemicals are largely responsible for the massive ozone hole that has formed at lower levels in the Arctic atmosphere in recent days, experts said. There, unusually low temperatures are triggering reactions in which manmade chemicals quickly devour ozone, they said. "Something like this only happens once every 20 years," said Russ Schnell, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder. His agency deployed Andrew Clarke to a lab in Greenland, located under the area of sky where the ozone layer is diminishing. There, Clarke is lofting testing equipment into the sky with giant balloons. It will be weeks or months before the results are understood, he said.

PureEnergySystems - Seeing the powerful earthquakes such as the December 26th, 2004 event that triggered the tsunami disaster, people are looking for possible causes for the apparent instability of earth's crust. "End-times" alarmists and backyard researchers believe that the predicted imminent reversal of the earth's magnetic field may be a significant clue to these eschatological-scale events. Scientists have been observing changes in the direction of earth's magnetic field which took place recently as well as in the distant past. NASA’s website features a map showing the gradual northward migration of the north magnetic pole in the past century and a half. Since more than double the time interval has elapsed since the last reversal, compared to the time lapse between the previous two pole reversals, some believe we may be overdue for the next north-south flip.

The weakening of earth’s magnetism is one of the factors believed to be predictive of a pole reversal. That magnetic field reversals have occurred in the past is confirmed in the geological record. What is unclear is how precisely the transition occurs, and what happens to life forms extant at the time of this pole flip. Does the magnetic field drop to zero gauss? Dire predictions follow upon the heels of this theory. Electronic devices would all be at risk: there may be damage to, or complete loss of, all near-earth-orbiting satellites and possibly the space station itself. Effects on life forms could range from migrating birds losing their sense of direction to immune system decline and even widespread die-off from radiation-induced cancers. Losing its protective magnetic envelope, the

The disorderly-flip theory is supported by evidence from geology that in past reversals the decline was not total. Lava flows that solidified at Steen's Mountain during a lengthy reversal process show that the magnetic poles wandered across the equator three times. Though strength of the field was reduced to about 20% of maximum, there is no record that it fell to zero gauss during that transitional period.(Lenghty but Insightful)

Space.com - A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday. No known eruption beyond our solar system has ever appeared as bright upon arrival.

Artist impression of the eruption striking Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere. Credit: NASA

But you could not have seen it, unless you can top the X-ray vision of Superman: In gamma rays, the event equaled the brightness of the full Moon's reflected visible light. The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected Dec. 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). The commotion was caused by a special variety of neutron star known as a magnetar. These fast-spinning, compact stellar corpses -- no larger than a big city -- create intense magnetic fields that trigger explosions. The blast was 100 times more powerful than any other similar eruption witnessed, said David Palmer of Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of several researchers around the world who monitored the event with various telescopes.

"Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

There are no magnetars close enough to worry about, however, Gaensler and two other astronomers told SPACE.com. But the strength of the tempest has them marveling over the dying star's capabilities while also wondering if major species die-offs in the past might have been triggered by stellar explosions.

Artist impression of the eruption streaming out in all directions through the galaxy. Credit: NASA

The Sun is a middle-aged star about 8 light-minutes from us. Its tantrums, though cosmically pitiful compared to the magnetar explosion, routinely squish Earth's protective magnetic field and alter our atmosphere, lighting up the night sky with colorful lights called aurora.Solar storms also alter the shape of Earth's ionosphere, a region of the atmosphere 50 miles (80 kilometers) up where gas is so thin that electrons can be stripped from atoms and molecules -- they are ionized -- and roam free for short periods. Fluctuations in solar radiation cause the ionosphere to expand and contract."The gamma rays hit the ionosphere and created more ionization, briefly expanding the ionosphere," said Neil Gehrels, lead scientist for NASA's gamma-ray watching Swift observatory.

Gehrels said in an email interview that the effect was similar to a solar-induced disruption but that the effect was "much smaller than a big solar flare."

Still, scientists were surprised that a magnetar so far away could alter the ionosphere."That it can reach out and tap us on the shoulder like this, reminds us that we really are linked to the cosmos," said Phil Wilkinson of IPS Australia, that country's space weather service."This is a once-in-a-lifetime event," said Rob Fender of Southampton University in the UK. "We have observed an object only 20 kilometers across [12 miles], on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years."

Some researchers have speculated that one or more known mass extinctions hundreds of millions of years ago might have been the result of a similar blast altering Earth's atmosphere. There is no firm data to support the idea, however. But astronomers say the Sun might have been closer to other stars in the past.A similar blast within 10 light-years of Earth "would destroy the ozone layer," according to a CfA statement, "causing abrupt climate change and mass extinctions due to increased radiation."The all-clear has been sounded, however."None of the known sample [of magnetars] are closer than about 4,000-5,000 light years from us," Gaensler said. "This is a very safe distance."

Researchers don't know exactly why the burst was so incredible. The star, named SGR 1806-20, spins once on its axis every 7.5 seconds, and it is surrounded by a magnetic field more powerful than any other object in the universe."We may be seeing a massive release of magnetic energy during a 'starquake' on the surface of the object," said Maura McLaughlin of the University of Manchester in the UK.Another possibility is that the magnetic field more or less snapped in a process scientists call magnetic reconnection.Gamma rays are the highest form of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes X-rays, visible light and radio waves too.

The eruption was also recorded by the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array of radio telescopes, along with other European satellites and telescopes in Australia.

A neutron star is the remnant of a star that was once several times more massive than the Sun. When their nuclear fuel is depleted, they explode as a supernova. The remaining dense core is slightly more massive than the Sun but has a diameter typically no more than 12 miles (20 kilometers).

Millions of neutron stars fill the Milky Way galaxy. A dozen or so are ultra-magnetic neutron stars -- magnetars. The magnetic field around one is about 1,000 trillion gauss, strong enough to strip information from a credit card at a distance halfway to the Moon, scientists say.

Of the known magnetars, four are called soft gamma repeaters, or SGRs, because they flare up randomly and release gamma rays. The flare on SGR 1806-20 unleashed about 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power.

"The next biggest flare ever seen from any soft gamma repeater was peanuts compared to this incredible Dec. 27 event," said Gaensler of the CfA.

BANGKOK (AFP) - As Thailand wrestles with one of its worst droughts in years, millions of people from China to Indonesia are also desperate for the rains to return. In at least seven countries in and around Southeast Asia, wells and reservoirs have dried up, crops have withered, governments have declared disaster zones, and in some cases communities are going hungry. Authorities in Thailand, one of the rice bowls of Southeast Asia and a country heavily dependent on agriculture, were scrambling to contend with bone-dry conditions in 63 of Thailand's 76 provinces. Drought now affects 9.2 million people in the country.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej has expressed worry over the looming crisis to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and urged the government to urgently focus on cloud seeding.

Thaksin himself acknowledged the drought "will affect economic growth" and that his government could do little to salvage devastated crops. At least 809,000 hectares (two million acres) of farmland lie ruined at a cost of 7.4 billion baht (193.2 million dollars), according to interior ministry figures. "Farmers' revenues would be affected, particularly the farmer who focuses on exports," Thaksin said Tuesday.

Large dams are only at 40 percent capacity or below, according to the agriculture ministry, while four reservoirs in northeastern Thailand have reported critical capacity levels. "We have a potable water shortage, so we have to do whatever we can to help during this situation," said Pinyo Thongsing, an official at Chulabhorn dam in Chaiyaphun province, where reservoir levels have plunged to four percent of capacity. "If there is no rain during this period, we'll be in crisis." Thai authorities are planning to ask their neighbours, especially Laos and Myanmar, about diverting water from the Mekong river to slake thirsty farm land.

Yet Vietnam's Mekong delta is itself in dire straights. Some experts, blaming the El Nino weather phenomenon, say the Mekong Delta could face its worst drought in a century. Vietnam has been hit both in the delta and the central region. A ministry of agriculture official in Hanoi confirmed the central highlands' five provinces were affected, including 162,500 hectares of cultivated lands containing 134,500 hectares of coffee. Nationwide, the drought has cost more than 60 million dollars, the official said. In central provinces, 1.3 million people have faced shortages of clean water since December, ministry official Tran Ai Quoc said. "Local authorities have to find new sources of water and use it sparingly, set up a proper schedule for its use on crops in affected areas, and improve the state of wells and canals," the official said.

Parts of southern China are experiencing their worst drought in decades. The sustained drought in southern Guangdong province, said to be the worst in 55 years, threatens the rice harvest and other crops. Cloud seeding planes have been dispatched to operate between March and May. On China's southern Hainan Island, drought has meant 900,000 people face difficulty getting drinkable water. It has also posed a threat to more than 210,000 hectares of crops -- more than half of the province's total arable land -- and to 194,000 head of livestock, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Cambodia, too, was suffering its worst drought in recent years, hitting 14 out of 24 provinces and municipalities. Nhim Vanda, chairman of the National Disaster Management Committee, said some areas were experiencing food shortages and not less than a million people were affected. Of those, 700,000 were seriously hit in the predominantly agricultural kingdom of 13 million people. "We have urged them to plant dry-season rice, with about 300,000 hectares already planted," he said.

In Malaysia, more than 6,000 rice farmers are affected, officials said. Rain is not expected until late March, and a meteorological department official told AFP cloud-seeding would begin in the northern states of Perlis and Kedah on Wednesday.

In Laos, officials were coy about disclosing the drought's extent. There have been few if any rains since December, but the impact on crops is likely minimal as most are harvested later in the year during the rainy season. While much of Indonesia is currently under the rainy season, drought has also clipped the province of East Nusa Tenggara, affecting 10 of the province's 16 districts and municipalities, the Kompas newspaper said.

Pasadena, CA - NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has completed the commissioning phase of the mission and has moved into the cruise phase. Deep Impact mission planners have separated the spacecraft's flight operations into five mission phases. Cruise phase will continue until about 60 days before the encounter with comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. Soon after launch on Jan. 12, 2005, Deep Impact entered the commissioning phase. During that

phase, the mission team verified the basic state of health of all subsystems and tested the operation of science instruments. The spacecraft's autonomous navigation system was activated and tested using the Moon and Jupiter as targets.

The spacecraft's high gain antenna, which will relay images and data of the cometary collision, was activated and is operating properly. A trajectory correction maneuver was performed, refining the spacecraft's flight path to comet Tempel 1. The maneuver was so successful that a second one planned for March 31 has been cancelled.

An artist's concept of Deep Impact and comet Tempel 1. Image credit: NASA/JPL

Another event during commissioning phase was the bake-out heating of the spacecraft's High Resolution Instrument to remove normal residual moisture from its barrel. The moisture was a result of absorption into the structure of the instrument during the vehicle's last hours on the launch pad and its transit through the atmosphere to space.

At completion of the bake-out procedure, test images were taken through the High Resolution Instrument. These images indicate the telescope has not reached perfect focus. A special team has been formed to investigate the performance and to evaluate activities to bring the telescope the rest of the way to focus. Future calibration tests will provide additional information about the instrument’s performance.

The Deep Impact spacecraft has four data collectors to observe the effects of the cometary collision: a camera and infrared spectrometer comprise the High Resolution Instrument; a Medium Resolution Instrument; and a duplicate camera on the Impactor Targeting Sensor. They will record the vehicle's final moments before it is run over by comet Tempel 1 at approximately 37,000 kilometers per hour (23,000 miles per hour). The Medium Resolution Instrument and Impactor Targeting Sensor are performing as expected.

Dr. Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, College Park, Md., added, "We are very early in the process of examining the data from all the instruments. It appears our infrared spectrometer is performing spectacularly, and even if the spatial resolution of the High Resolution Instrument remains at present levels, we still expect to obtain the best, most detailed pictures of a comet ever taken." "This in no way will affect our ability to impact the comet on July 4," said Rick Grammier, Deep Impact project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Everyone on the science and engineering teams is getting very excited and looking forward to the encounter."

Deep Impact is comprised of two parts, a flyby spacecraft and a smaller impactor. The impactor will be released into the comet's path for the planned high-speed collision. The crater produced by the impactor is expected to range from the width of a house up to the size of a football stadium and be from two to 14 stories deep. Ice and dust debris will be ejected from the crater revealing the material beneath. Along with the imagers aboard Deep Impact, NASA's Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes, along with the largest telescopes on Earth, will observe the effects of the material flying from the comet's newly formed crater.

An intimate glimpse beneath the surface of a comet, where material and debris from the formation of the solar system remain relatively unchanged, will answer basic questions about the how the solar system formed. The effects of the collision will offer a better look at the nature and composition of these celestial travelers. Principal Investigator A'Hearn leads the mission from the University of Maryland, College Park. JPL manages the Deep Impact project for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. Deep Impact is a mission in NASA's Discovery Program of moderately priced solar system exploration missions. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, Boulder, Colo. Click for more information about Deep Impact on the Internet

Bizarre species sightings leave Floridians perplexed – April 2, 2005
ST. AUGUSTINE -- Something strange is stirring in and around Florida's coastal waters. In the last few months, fish and bird species have been popping up in places they're not normally found. These transients aren't arriving in huge numbers, just an oddity here and there -- an Arctic bird off St. Augustine Beach, spiny dogfish normally farther north found in Ponce de Leon Inlet. ``Something's going on in the North Atlantic,'' said Chuck Hunter, an Atlanta-based refuge biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But there isn't one explanation to account for the unusual sightings, bird and fish experts say. Some attribute them to the hurricanes while others point the finger at a cold-water phenomenon that started in 2003.

For the last few weeks at the Flagler Beach Pier, small hake fish have been jumping onto people's hooks. Identified as southern hake, the coldwater fish are common in Floridian estuaries, although not usually close to the shoreline, said Ed Matheson of the state's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg. Bill Allgire, who works at Ocean Pier Bait & Tackle, says the fish, about 3 inches long, have been coming in mostly after dark. Some days, he'll see one small school of them; other days, they can be seen throughout the full length of the pier, he said. ``Nobody really wants them,'' he said. ``They're just there.''

Rich Paperno, research administrator with the Fish and Wildlife Institute, says it's still too early to tell how the hurricanes impacted wildlife. ``We've seen a lot of unusual things after the hurricanes, where the fresh water that was running off brought a lot of species that were running into the lagoons,'' Paperno said from the Indian River field laboratory. Some have caught spiny dogfish -- a type of shark that's usually found north of Cape Cod in the winter -- swimming in Ponce Inlet and the Jacksonville area, said Eric Sander, who does recreational fishing surveys for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Of Sander's 16 years of shark fishing, he said he has never caught a single spiny dogfish. Sander connects their arrival with cold-water temperatures reaching the low 50s. The chilly waters can be prompted by upwellings, a situation when persistent winds out of the south and southeast blow warm surface water out to sea. But whatever caused these out-of-towners to visit, it's left some fishermen scratching their heads. As for the one Arctic bird found in St. Augustine and the others reported in South Carolina, researchers are dumbfounded.

In December, a puffin was found off St. Augustine Beach and stayed alive for only 24 hours at a local wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center. It was the second puffin ever to be reported in Florida, said Andy Kratter, collections manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History. ``He was very thin, emaciated really,'' said Karen Lynch, president of Noah's Ark Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in St. Augustine. Kratter, who examined the remains of the puffin, said neither the hurricanes nor the cold water had anything to do with the puffin's unusual pilgrimage. ``Probably it just kept going, instead of stopping where it should have,'' Kratter said. ``It went too far south. It could have been a storm. Its orientation was screwed up for some reason.'' And while experts agree rare bird sightings are not uncommon in Florida, Kratter said, ``it's still pretty much a mystery why birds get off tracking,'' although food or weather can be common factors.

Sometimes, butterfly fish, who live in Florida, find their way to New Jersey estuaries, Matheson said. ``These are babies that get caught in the Gulf Stream and go up there,'' Matheson said.He speculated that the southern hake spotted at the Flagler Beach Pier were probably the scattered young also. When a coldwater upwelling occurs, the water brings in cooler water fish, Matheson said. And if last summer's hurricanes have anything to do with the bizarre sightings, researchers say it'll take time to figure that out.``Many of the effects are going to be long-term effects,'' Paperno said. ``We won't (understand) this for several years down the road.''

The Guardian - Warmer water is washing unprecedented numbers of "southern" fish and other marine life into the previously inhospitable North Sea, according to a survey by university biologists. More than 600 sightings of dolphins and whales - some in schools of more than 200 - have been recorded in a year-long audit of waters between Britain, Scandinavia and Germany. Large shoals of sea bass, usually found off Cornwall, have added to the new ecology, astonishing fishermen, who described the number of squid in particular as "unreal". A volunteer fleet of fishing craft and pleasure yachts working for Newcastle University also charted an invasion of red mullet, pilchard and velvet crabs, all indicators of warmer seas.

Notable sightings include a white-beaked dolphin and calf, and Risso's dolphins, which are thought to have followed migrating squid from the English Channel. The increase in prey has meanwhile tempted colder water species such as the killer whale to increase in numbers, harrying growing populations of seal. "The sea is changing," said a trawler skipper, Stephen Moss, whose ship, Green Pastures, of Blyth, Northumberland, has increasingly been trailed by dolphins in the last year. "We've been catching commercial quantities of red mullet and occasionally pilchard, and this year we were hauling in mackerel right up to Christmas. We're definitely seeing changes in the water temperature. The number of squid now is just unreal."

The survey was organised by the university's Dove Marine Laboratory at Cullercoats, just north of the mouth of the Tyne, where tallies are being compared with records from previous years. Joanna Stockhill, the coordinator of the project, said: "Other recent surveys have suggested an increase in warmer water species in the North Sea, and everything we have got is pointing in that direction. "Risso's dolphins, which are primarily a warm water species with few previous records from the North Sea, account for 12% of our 614 whale and dolphin sightings. The number of common dolphin also support the warming theory. They've usually been found off the south-west coast of Britain and only rarely in the North Sea, until recent years."

Sightings have been monitored and backed up in most cases by details of behaviour, to avoid identification mistakes. Volunteers were also encouraged to get photographic proof, such as Linda Lane Thornton's picture of the pair of white-beaked dolphins. "We've been sailing from Blyth for three years and we're definitely seeing an increase in whales and dolphins," said Mrs Lane Thornton, the secretary of the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club. She and her husband, Andy, have been trailed regularly in their yacht by dolphins this year. "Their reports are among quite a few which describe these species following vessels, rubbing on the hull and trying to score the occasional fish escaping from trawlers' nets," said Dr Stockhill. One of the biggest of the 614 sightings was a shoal of 250 white-beaks 26 miles off Cullercoats. The survey, backed by the Sea Watch Foundation, which monitors whale and dolphin numbers off Britain's coasts, follows previous recent records of exotica such as a semi-tropical rainbow wrasse caught off Southend pier, and landings of sea cucumbers and anchovies in the North Sea. The team is drawing up a "sustainable future" plan for stock management in the North Sea.

Osama, terror of Lake Victoria, is caught at last – March 13, 2005
Osama the killer crocodile is loaded onto a truck

Osama the crocodile, the terror of Lake Victoria and reputedly the world's most prolific man-eater, is staring blankly at the concrete wall of his new home, his expression suggestive of deep depression. Only two weeks ago he was feasting on the remains of a 12-year-old boy, the 83rd victim from Luganga village he had dragged to his lair on the papyrus banks of Africa's largest lake.

Last Monday, however, a beast once thought to be charmed, if not immortal, was finally captured by 50 local men and wildlife officials after a stakeout in southern Uganda lasting seven days and seven nights.

Osama is now the property of Uganda Crocs Ltd, purveyors of fine crocodile-skin handbags destined for the followers of fashion in Italy and South Korea.

His man-eating days, the new owners hope, are over. Certainly, Osama has lost his lusty appetite, forlornly nibbling on a single chicken since arriving and fixing his captors with a baleful stare. Despite a fondness for human flesh, Osama, who measures 16ft from snout to tail, and weighs one ton, is to be used for breeding stock. Alex Mutamba, the proprietor of Uganda Crocs, with nearly 5,000 animals in his care, was delighted when the country's wildlife authority rang him up requesting a home for Osama. "All Nile crocodiles like Osama will eat a human being if they perceive their territory is being encroached on," he said. "But our crocodiles are well secured, so I'm not too worried." Uganda is famous for its man-eating reptiles. In the 1970s, Idi Amin, the former dictator, threw 4,000 disabled people into the crocodile-infested headwaters of the Nile. Osama, who is thought to be about 60 years old, may well have been a beneficiary.

Though wildlife campaigners will consider it shameful that Osama will spend his remaining days giving birth to handbags, Luganga locals believe he has got off lightly. Since 1991, he has attacked both young and old in a reign of terror, eating his way through a tenth of the village population. In the early years, the people of Luganga nicknamed the crocodile John Major in recognition of his size and his namesake's global prominence at that time. But as the killer croc became more brazen in the late 1990s, and following the al-Qa'eda attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, he was re-christened Osama. Not only did he carry children away from the shore as they filled buckets with water, he would often swim beneath fishing boats and capsize them. More recently, Osama began to jump into the wooden vessels themselves, highly unusual behaviour for a crocodile, before carrying off victims. Paul Kyewalyanga was rowing in the back of his boat while his brother Peter fished from the prow when Osama invited himself aboard. "He just emerged from the water vertically and flopped into the boat," he said. "The back of the boat where I was sitting was submerged." As Paul called frantically for help, the crocodile latched on to Peter's leg and began to pull. "Peter was clutching the side screaming," he said. "They fought for about five minutes until I heard a tearing sound. Peter shouted, 'He's broken my leg.' Then he let go and was dragged into the lake. A few days later we found his head and his arm." Terror gripped the village. Children were forbidden from the shore. But the livelihood of the community depended on fishing. Some moved away but most continued to brave the waters. "All we could do was pray," said one villager, John Mangene, 64. "We did a lot of that. I would wake up in the middle of the night and get down on my knees."

In the end, their revenge came after the week-long vigil, mounted by local men who squatted patiently on the shores of Lake Victoria as they lay in wait. Officials from the Uganda Wildlife Authority had draped a pair of cow's lungs over the branches of a tree near Osama's favourite hiding place, known by horrified locals as "The Butchery", as bait. It was Mr Mangene, a father of nine and grandfather of 31, who first spotted the giant beast. His breath caught in his throat as a pair of beady eyes, barely visible above the surface of the lake, glided towards the bait. He muttered a silent prayer and opened his eyes to find that the trap had worked.

Flailing furiously, the crocodile hung by its jaws from the tree. A copper snare had been concealed within the cow's organs and the more Osama tried to break free, the more his teeth became entangled. In triumph, Mr Mangene rushed back to the village to tell his fellow vigilantes who were sipping tea after what they thought was another fruitless night.

One of the villagers, Aida Nabirye could scarcely believe the news that the beast had been caught. In two separate attacks, the crocodile had carried off both her sons. The younger, James, was taken first, in 1997. On holiday from his boarding school, on the morning of his ninth birthday, his mother sent him down to the shore to fetch water. "I heard a scream," she said. "Then I heard other boys screaming. I remember running down to the water praying: 'Please God let it be somebody else's child; please don't let it be mine.'"When I reached the bottom of the hill, I could see the crocodile staring back at us. James was in his mouth. He had stopped moving by then."

Just 18 months later, her older son, Sospeter, 15, was seized while out fishing. As he cast out his net, the crocodile suddenly emerged from the water, grabbed Sospeter's outstretched hand and catapaulted him into the lake. In disbelief, Mrs Nabirye hastened last week to the shore only to discover that John Mangene had spoken the truth and the crocodile was in captivity. "I was so angry," she said. "All I could see was the killer of my boys. I picked up stones and threw them at it. I just wanted to kill it there and then."

She watched as 50 men grabbed the ropes attached to the snare and slowly began to haul in the furious crocodile, a treacherous and lengthy task. Among those pulling the hardest was Yazid Kotongole. On nine different occasions, the crocodile had killed fellow fishermen on the same boat as him, most recently his brother, but somehow he had always emerged unscathed. Villagers turned their back on him, suspecting him of entering into a Faustian pact with the beast, who was popularly believed to have been possessed by Satan. Only 15 people have felt Osama's teeth and lived to tell the tale. Richard Masinde, 24, had stepped off his boat on to a rocky outcrop four years ago when the crocodile grabbed his arm. With his other arm, he grabbed hold of a tree and clung on for half an hour as other villagers beat the animal with wooden clubs. Somehow, Mr Masinde found a strength he never thought he had. He managed to grasp the tree even when his other arm was ripped off. "I suppose I should be grateful I am still alive," he said. "But in many ways he killed me anyway. I have not been able to work for four years. I am a beggar shunned by my friends."

When, on Monday, the villagers had the scourge of their community trussed and gagged, many were astonished when wildlife officials forbade them from finishing him off. "Even he has rights," the villagers were told. "He cannot be killed with impunity."

Dolly scientist wins human cloning research licence – February 9, 2005
The Guardian - Motor neurone disease tests may create 'invaluable shortcut' The scientist who created Dolly the sheep said yesterday that he hoped a licence he had been granted to clone human embryos for research into motor neurone disease would pave the way for researchers to take an "invaluable shortcut" in tackling a range of diseases. Ian Wilmut was yesterday granted only the second licence in the UK to clone human embryos for medical research since cloning was legalised in 2001. Alongside colleagues from King's College, London, Professor Wilmut plans to use the techniques he pioneered when he cloned the world's first mammal in 1996 to investigate the cause of motor neurone disease (MND).

The researchers will use therapeutic cloning, or cell nuclear replacement, to generate stem cells that carry the genetic defect which causes MND. These stem cells can then be turned into motor neurones, allowing researchers to investigate what causes the cells to degenerate and produce the disease. Prof Wilmut said the technique, which does not involve reproductive cloning, will be particularly valuable for motor neurone disease since, despite two decades of research, little progress had been made in finding treatments. Christopher Shaw, from King's College, added: "We have only come up with one gene, which affects around 3% of all cases. We hope that cloning technology will allow us to bypass the gene-hunting step and make much more rapid progress." About 1,200 people die from MND each year in the UK, 100,000 worldwide, and most live for less than five years after diagnosis. Brian Dickie, director of research at the Motor Neurone Disease Association, said the decision by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to grant Prof Wilmut a licence means "we are a step closer to medical research that has the potential to revolutionise the future treatment of motor neurone disease". Prof Wilmut said: "I think the techniques we are investigating could prove hugely beneficial to a group of diseases where people have not been able to identify the gene responsible. It will, hopefully, allow researchers to take an invaluable shortcut." Angela McNab, chief executive of the HFEA, said: "Following careful review of the medical, scientific, legal and ethical aspects of this application, we felt it was appropriate to grant the Roslin Institute a one-year licence for this research into the disease."

Funding has still to be secured for the research, which will take far longer than the one year allowed by the HFEA. But when it begins, researchers will grow skin or blood cells in the lab from people who have the inherited form of MND. They will then remove the nucleus, where the genetic information is stored, from an unfertilised egg and replace it with the nucleus from a cell grown from an MND patient. Embryonic stem cells can then be removed and directed to become motor neurones. The remaining cells are destroyed. The technique is controversial and anti-cloning groups yesterday condemned the HFEA's decision. A spokesman for Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: "Human cloning remains dangerous, undesirable and unnecessary. Alternative therapies and research with adult and umbilical cord blood stem cells are already providing safe and ethical solutions." However, Prof Wilmut said his research was only possible using therapeutic cloning. "It cannot be done using other embryos, because we cannot be sure who would develop the disease," he said.

BibleSearcher scans the world for information that has relevance on the time of the end and can allow the believers in the Almighty One of Israel to “watch and be ready”. Our readiness has nothing to do trying to halt the progression of evil or good on our planet earth but to be prepared for the coming of the Messiah of Israel. Our preparation is a pathway of spiritual readiness. Our defense is with the Lord of hosts. The time of the end suggests that the Eternal One of Israel’s intent is to close out the chapter of this earth’s history so that the perpetrators of evil, those that seek power, greed and control, will be eliminated from this planet earth. The wars of the heavens are being played out on this planet earth of which humans on this earth will live through it to testify of the might, power, justice and the love of the God of Israel. In a world of corruption and disinformation, we cannot always tell who is telling the truth or who is spreading lies, promoting evil or mis-information. We cannot guarantee our sources but will always seek to portray trends that can be validated in the testimony of the prophets of the Old and the New Testament.

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml