Prophecy, Drought, Earthquakes, Famine, Pestilence, War, and Strange Weather.

[Shammu]

Scientist Reading the Leaves to Predict Violent Weather

Sara Goudarzi
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com Mon Mar 13, 10:00 AM ET

When meteorologist Edward Lorenz set up his computer to model the weather in 1960, he had no idea what a complex problem he was taking on. After a while, he realized that any small change in the starting conditions of his program had a huge impact on the outcome of his experiment and in predicting the weather.

This phenomenon known as chaos, and popularly called the butterfly effect, made Lorenz and others realize that predicting weather with pinpoint accuracy will never be possible.

But scientists are getting closer.

And just like the butterfly whose single flapping of a wing on one side of the world might help precipitate a tornado on the other side, a single leaf can have large consequences for the weather.

"How well we are able to represent one leaf in a weather forecast model can be a key to predicting thunderstorms," said Dev Niyogi, an assistant professor of agronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University. "The amount of moisture plants are emitting during photosynthesis may be considered the local trigger that trips fronts into violent weather."

Researchers in plant biology have long used models of photosynthesis to look at environmental changes. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants convert solar energy into carbon dioxide. But weather simulators have never directly incorporated photosynthesis models for forecasting weather.

"We coupled a photosynthesis-based vegetation model to a weather forecast model and tested the improvement one could obtain by this for simulating severe weather situations," Niyogi told LiveScience.

This, combined with improved mapping of soil moisture, allows for better predictions of specific, local events.

"Our results showed that, while the current weather forecast and vegetation models do a fair job in simulating the weather, the results in terms of timing, location and intensity of local-scale thunderstorms can be improved by adopting more detailed photosynthesis transpiration models," Niyogi explained.

These improvements can improve forecasting of factors such as temperature and humidity anywhere from 5 to 50 percent.

"It certainly makes us think, what other factors may be important that we should be considering and how that may improve matters further," Niyogi said.

[Shammu]

Earthquake hits northeast Algeria, at least four dead
Mar 20 7:52 PM US/Eastern
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An earthquake hit the town of Laalam east of Algiers, killing at least four people and injuring 36, local authorities in Bejaia district said.

About 30 houses collapsed, Algerian news agency APS quoted the authorities as saying, adding that large quantities of rescue materiel had been sent to the affected region.

Algerian national radio said the quake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale shook the Kherrata region at 1944 GMT.

Its epicentre was situated near the town of Kherrata, between Bejaia and Setif (respectively 260 and 300 kilometres -- 165 and 190 miles -- east of the capital).

The tremor was strongly felt in the east of Bejaia region over around 100 kilometres (65 miles), causing panic among the population.

Algeria, the north of which is in a seismic zone at the junction between the Eurasian and African plates, is regularly affected by earthquakes.

In May 2003 Algiers and its region were struck by a violent quake that killed 2,300 people and injured more than 10,000.

[Shammu]

New storm fear for battered coast
Troops begin ferrying aid into stricken town

Monday, March 20, 2006; Posted: 9:39 p.m. EST (02:39 GMT)

INNISFAIL, Australia (AP) -- Australian weather forecasters warned on Tuesday that more wild weather was on its way, with a Category 2 cyclone brewing in the Coral Sea even as the country was taking stock of the damage caused by what officials said was the most powerful cyclone to hit the country in three decades.

Cyclone Wati was churning slowly toward northeast Australia and was expected to be off the coast later in the week, several hundred kilometers south of the region hammered by Cyclone Larry, a Category 5 storm with winds up to 290 km/h (180 mph), Tropical Cyclone Warning Center senior forecaster Jeff Callahan said.

Wati is expected to turn south in about a day or so, and then move parallel to the coast. If it stays out to sea, as expected, the likely impact could be high waves and maybe gale force winds at sea.

The Weather Bureau said that at 10 am Tuesday (11 p.m. Monday GMT), Wati was located over the eastern Coral Sea about 475 nautical miles east north-east of Mackay and moving west at about 14 knots.

The bureau said it was expected to maintain this movement until Wednesday morning, when it would slow down.

Larry, which lashed Australia's eastern coast, left a path littered with debris and devastation.

Hardest hit was Innisfail, a town of 8,500 people 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the tourist city of Cairns.

"It looks like an atomic bomb hit the place," Innisfail mayor Neil Clarke told Australian television. "It is severe damage. This is more than a local disaster, this is a national disaster."

Australian troops began moving aid to Innisfail Tuesday as residents picked through waterlogged streets littered with rubble and mangled roofs.

A spokesman for Attorney General Philip Ruddock said troops were moving tarpaulins to cover houses that lost their roofs.

"One of the most immediate needs is to get shelter over roofless homes, and there are many," the spokesman said.

Reporters who flew into Innisfail on Tuesday saw scenes of devastation on the ground -- previously pristine rain forest shredded by the winds, hectares of sugar and banana plantations flattened, the trees and cane on the ground next to their stumps, pointing in the direction that the cyclone tore past.

"It looks like it's just been napalmed," helicopter pilot Ian Harris said. "That's normally pristine rainforest."

Stephen Young, deputy executive director of Queensland's Counter Disaster and Emergency Services, said relief was flowing to Innisfail from all over Australia.

About 120 troops were helping deliver aid, while clean up and specialist urban search and rescue crews were heading to the town.

Among supplies flowing into the town were nearly 40,000 liters (10,500 gallons) of water, 6,000 in-flight meals provided by national flag carrier Qantas, as well as gas and gasoline.

"We've hit this as hard as we possibly could with every possible ounce of effort from the Queensland government and the commonwealth government," Young said.

Officials estimated that Larry caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage but there were no fatalities and only 30 people suffered minor injuries.

Ben Creagh, a spokesman for Queensland state Department of Emergency Services, said the human toll was low because people were warned about the cyclone's approach during the weekend and either boarded up their homes and fled or hunkered down or went to evacuation centers in town while the storm raged outside.

"Good planning, a bit of luck -- we've dodged a bullet," Creagh said.

Many of the people who left are expected to return Tuesday, many without knowing if their homes are standing.

Queensland State Premier Peter Beattie said 55 percent of homes in Innisfail had been damaged, though rescue and assessment teams were yet to get full access to the swamped region as the tail end of the storm deluged it with rain. (Watch the power of the winds -- 1:02)

"We haven't had a cyclone like this for decades, if we've ever had one like it before," he said.

Farmers were expected to be among the hardest hit -- the region is a major growing region for bananas and sugar cane and vast tracts of the crops were flattened.

"It looks like someone's gone in there with a slasher and slashed the top off everything," said Bill Horsford, an Innisfail cane farmer and member of the Cane Protection and Productivity Board.

"Cane farmers were looking for good prices this year ... the first bright light for some time, and this has just turned that right around," he said. "You're probably looking at ... 40 to 50 percent losses in the cane industry."

Larry is the third cyclone to hit Australia's east coast this year and the eighth in waters near Australia during this season, which ends April 30.

It appeared to be the biggest storm ever to hit the country's Pacific coast, which generally sees fewer cyclones than the northern and western coasts.

The worst Australian storm on record was Cyclone Tracy, which killed 65 people in the northern city of Darwin in 1974.

New storm fear for battered coast

[Shammu]

March 21, 2006

Bird flu mutation 'adds to threat of human pandemic'
By Mark Henderson
THE virus that causes bird flu has split into two distinct genetic subgroups, widening the gene pool from which a form that could trigger a human pandemic might evolve.

An analysis of more than 300 samples of the H5N1 virus taken from humans and birds has revealed that its family tree has started to branch out in a way that could make it more threatening to people.

Before 2005 every known human case of avian flu had been caused by a particular subtype of the H5N1 virus, which affected Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

The H5N1 virus that started to infect people in Indonesia last year, however, has now been found to have subtle genetic differences, which scientists likened to those between human cousins. While this mutation has not in itself made the H5N1 virus any more readily transmissible from person to person — the key step if it is to start a pandemic — the changes are worrying because they show that the virus is increasing in genetic diversity.

This is important because a wider gene pool creates more opportunities for H5N1 to acquire the characteristics it needs to infect humans with ease, though it remains uncertain whether or not this will happen. It will also make it more difficult for scientists to monitor the way that the virus is changing, so as to track potentially dangerous mutations.

“As the virus continues its geographic expansion, it is also undergoing genetic diversity expansion,” said Rebecca Garten, of the US Centres for Disease Control and Surveillance (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, who led the study.

“Back in 2003 we only had one genetically distinct population of H5N1 with the potential to cause a human pandemic. Now we have two.”

John Wood, a virologist at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in Hertfordshire, agreed that the changes added to the pandemic risk from the virus, although there are no indications that the necessary mutations have happened yet. He said: “The more mutations that are seen, the more the virus is able to mutate, the greater the chances of the virus changing.”

Influenza viruses are separated into strains, which are labelled according to the particular versions of two proteins that they carry — haemagluttinin (H) and neuraminidase (N).

These strains are then subdivided into genetic groups called genotypes, and some genotypes can be separated further into smaller units called clades. A vaccine that protects against one type of bird flu may not be effective against another.

Bird flu mutation 'adds to threat of human pandemic'

[Soldier4Christ]

Volcano spews ash, residents told to stay away

More earthquakes and ash explosions were likely from Bulusan volcano in central Philippines, volcanologists said on Wednesday as they warned nearby residents to stay away from the mountain. Bulusan spewed ash clouds nearly 1.5 km into the sky on Tuesday night, its first major volcanic activity since similar explosions from November 1994 to January 1995.



“There is indeed abnormality and most likely this is a steam-driven explosion,” Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvocs), said in a television interview.

“We can probably expect more explosions as a manifestation of this and more volcanic earthquakes,” he said, adding that Philvocs was ready to raise its alert level if necessary. “If ever we see signs that there is magma moving up the summit of the volcano, then we can raise the alert to a higher level.”

The institute issued an alert level of 1 in Bulusan on Sunday after detecting successive quakes. The highest alert level is 5, indicating lava flows or ash columns reaching 6 km.

Mild volcanic quakes were also felt and steam was seen coming from the crater of the 1,559-metre volcano in Sorsogon province early on Wednesday, Jaime Sincioco of the volcanology institute said.

[Soldier4Christ]

Hokkaido volcano gets active again

A volcano in eastern Hokkaido erupted early Tuesday, a local meteorological observatory said after confirming minor volcanic activity there.

The Sapporo observatory said minor volcanic activity has been detected since around 6:28 a.m. on 1,499-meter Mount Meakandake.

Observatory officials added that they were able to confirm white smoke billowing out about 400 meters above the peak and blowing in a southeasterly direction at around noon.

Tuesday's eruption probably took place along the mountain's southwest slope, some 500 meters from the peak, officials said, adding that a new crater might have formed.

The volcano has seen small-scale eruptions many times in the postwar period. The last time it erupted was in November 1998, when a small amount of volcanic ash fell in an area up to 15 km east of the mountain.

Officials said the volcanic activity had subsided by 10:30 a.m., and there was no major change in seismic activity.

While they said there was little likelihood of a major eruption, they urged caution in the vicinity of the peak, saying small-scale eruptions could continue.

On March 11, the observatory detected volcanic seismic activity 576 times, a record since it began to observe the volcano in 1972.

Such activity, however, declined to 122 on March 12 and to 48 on March 13, leading the observatory to say no emergency measures were necessary.

[Soldier4Christ]

Earthquake hits central Serbia region already suffering from landslides

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ A central Serbia region already suffering from landslides was hit Wednesday by a moderate earthquake which caused additional damage to an area where dozens of homes have been destroyed amid heavy rains and melting snow, media and officials said.

The 4.5-magnitude quake hit the region of Mionica, 75 kilometers (45 miles) southwest of Belgrade, at 12:26 p.m. local time (1126GMT), Serbia's seismological institute said. There were no reports of injuries.

Also felt in the capital and as far south as neighboring Montenegro, the quake caused cracks in several old buildings and triggered a brief panic at its epicenter. The same region was hit by stronger, 5.4- and 5.7-magnitude quakes in 1998 and 1999 respectively.

The temblor followed landslides in more than a hundred locations in central and southern Serbia, which left almost 1,000 people homeless.

Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica visited the hard-hit town of Trstenik, 120 kilometers (70 miles) south of Belgrade where local officials had declared a state of emergency.

«The situation is getting worse by the hour,» said Dragan Andrejic, chief municipal official in Trstenik. «The ground is splitting, walls are cracking, roofs falling.»

Kostunica pledged government assistance to the affected areas and told the locals that «all those who lost their homes will get new ones.»

A state of emergency was also declared in the Kraljevo district, where an entire village moved by a dozen meters (yards) as the slope on which it is located shifted downhill due to recent heavy rains.

Twenty-nine houses were destroyed and about 100 badly damaged by the landslides in the southwestern municipality of Cacak. Eighteen roads were damaged near the southern city of Krusevac, threatening to cut off several villages.

[Soldier4Christ]

No Belief in Greener Pastures: Worst Drought in 20 Years Hits East Africa
U.N. Appeals for More Funds and Food to Avert Widespread Starvation


The scrubby grasslands of northeast Kenya have all but turned to dust.

The nomads, who move from place to place to find water and food for their precious cattle, have given up looking for green pastures. The land is dead. It has killed whole herds of cows, and even camels seem to be dying.

The nomads understand it is only a matter of time before the people start dying too.

The Horn of Africa is facing its worst drought in two decades, and nearly 6 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Kenya are at risk of dying. The situation is so dire that Africans have come to rely more and more on various sources of foreign aid, which unfortunately, all lack for funds.

Thirsty for Help

It is midday on a vast sun-scorched plain in northeast Kenya. The temperature soars above 100 degrees, and there is no shade. Nearly 300 men, women and a few very thirsty children wait patiently. Barely a word is spoken; they are exhausted.

Most people have spent the night here in the open, and more people arrive, having walked since before dawn to get here. Everyone has come for one thing -- water.

For the first time in living memory, the nomads -- proud, resilient, independent -- have turned to the outside world for help. All they seem to have left are bunches of empty containers.

Nuria, a 41-year-old mother with five children, speaks slowly as she explains how, for the first time in her life, she has been unable to find water on her own.

"If we do not get help from the outside we will surely die," she said.

The lifeline appears as a dust cloud on the horizon -- a rickety truck carrying a leaky water tank. It maneuvers into position above a pit lined with yellow plastic sheeting. Within minutes there is a pool of fresh cool water, an oasis in a land that has been turned to desert.

Twice a week, the aid agency Oxfam sends the truck here and to about 30 other places to bring relief to a people hanging on by a thread. At first they move slowly, deliberately, to fill their containers. Then, as the water level begins to drop, the pace quickens and the level of anxiety begins to rise. There is shouting, even one or two scuffles break out.

Dying for More Water and Food

It is easy to understand why, some of these people have been without water for days. They won't get more water until the next truck arrives, which is three days away. The weekly ration per person works out to about two gallons, well below the universally accepted nine gallons per person. But that is all Oxfam can afford right now; it simply doesn't have the funds to bring in more.

"When you see how people are struggling over this water, you just feel desperate to help," said Magdalen Nandula, Oxfam's coordinator in the Wajir district.

"It wouldn't take much," she said. "Just $600 would have paid for another truck to deliver water on this day."

In the end, more than a dozen people walked away with empty containers.

Food is also a growing concern.

With so many cattle dead, the nomadic people are running out of sources for nourishment. Malnutrition and starvation loom. The United Nations World Food Program has distributed food for weeks but faces serious funding shortfalls in all countries.

"I don't think the world has appreciated until the last 60 days how serious this is; this is about as bad as it gets," said James Morris, executive director of the U.N. program. He added that in Kenya alone they are short $170 million, and he's desperate for people to take notice.

[Soldier4Christ]

Teacher absences close 54 Detroit schools


Fifty-four Detroit schools were forced to close Wednesday by teachers who called in sick en masse.

As of Wednesday morning, Detroit Public School officials said at least 1,500 teachers called in sick.

Many teachers apparently called in sick to protest their losing five days' pay this year at a time when principals and assistant principals may get pay increases.

Parents were being told to pick up their kids at the schools which were closed. The schools were expected to reopen Thursday.

Under an agreement between the teachers’ union and the school district, the teachers are supposed to get reimbursed next school year for loaning the financially strapped district the five days’ worth of pay.

Principals and assistant principals lost 10 percent of their pay this school year, but were recently told they would get some of that pay back through pay adjustments this spring.

[Soldier4Christ]

Devastating floods seen from global warming


Toronto — If current temperature trends continue to the end of the century, Earth's climate will be warm enough to cause a massive melting of Greenland's ice sheet and a partial collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet, resulting in a global sea level rise of six metres from the torrent of melt water, according to two new research papers.

The jump in ocean levels would be enough to inundate many low-lying coastal areas around the world, place dozens of major cities under water and become irreversible at some point later this century ”unless something is done to dramatically reduce human emissions of greenhouse-gas pollution,” warns Jonathan Overpeck, a professor at the University of Arizona and one of the authors of the studies.

He said that if serious efforts to limit global warming aren't taken soon, ”we're committed to four to six metres of sea level rise in the future.”

The research is some of the most alarming to date on the possible impact of global warming.

It was based on computer models that recreated the climate during the last really warm period in Earth's history before the present era. An interglacial heat wave that began about 130,000 years ago caused northern regions of the world to be bathed in an warm spell that endured nearly 12,000 years.

At that time, temperatures in Arctic regions were about three to five degrees warmer than they are now – the same levels they are projected to attain later this century because of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activity.

If what happened in the past is any kind of prologue to what might happen in the future, scientists believe there will be serious consequences.

”Although the focus of our work is polar, the implications are global,” said Bette Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and another one of the authors. ”These ice sheets melted before, and sea levels rose. The warmth needed isn't that much above present conditions.”

The new research could have major significance in the debate about the effects of global warming, because it suggests that current projections on the rise in sea levels because of the increase in Earth's surface temperatures may be far too conservative.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the main body of scientists assessing the threat from global warming, has been estimating that sea levels will rise anywhere from only about 10 centimetres to just under a metre by the year 2100. The new research concluded ”that the melting could be faster and hence more challenging for society.”

That earlier warming spell caused about half of Greenland's ice cap to melt, the boreal forest to march northward to the Arctic Ocean in most areas of the north, and the disappearance of ice sheets from almost all the areas of the Canadian high Arctic islands, according to the two papers, which are being published simultaneously in the current issue of the journal Science.

Greenland even started to live up to the literal meaning of its name, at least in southern part of the island, which at the time was covered in tundra similar to what is now found in much of Northern Canada.

The melting in the Arctic caused only about half of the rise in sea levels calculated to have occurred at the time, and the researchers concluded that some unknown process linked to this warming in the Northern Hemisphere then prompted a massive chuck of Antarctic's ice sheet to float into the ocean, accounting for the rest of the sea level change.

It is the first time studies have linked melting in the Arctic and Antarctic during the last interglacial period, and it presents a worrisome possible new feedback loop if the world's climate changes because of global warming, as many scientists project. If melting of ice in the Arctic is able to trigger the disintegration of Antarctic ice, even more sea level rise than is now expected could occur.

Investigations of the last interglacial period are a fascinating research topic for climate scientists trying to figure out what might happen as global warming takes place.

That last warm spell was unlike the current one, which is attributable to human causes, such as burning fossil fuels and clearing forests.

About 130,000 years ago, there as a slight change in Earth's orbit and tilt, causing more intense sunlight to fall on Arctic regions. This sunlight caused temperatures to remain above freezing for longer each year, setting in motion the vast melting that raised ocean levels for about 12,000 years.

[Shammu]

Melting Ice Threatens Sea-Level Rise

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 36 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Earth is already shaking beneath melting ice as rising temperatures threaten to shrink polar glaciers and raise sea levels around the world.

By the end of this century, Arctic readings could rise to levels not seen in 130,000 years — when the oceans were several feet higher than now, according to new research appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Even now, giant glaciers lubricated by melting water have begun causing earthquakes in Greenland as they lurch toward the ocean, other scientists report in the same journal.

In principal findings:

• At the current warming rate, Earth's temperature by 2100 will probably be at least 4 degrees warmer than now, with the Arctic at least as warm as it was 130,000 years ago, reports a research group led by Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Arizona.

• Computer models indicate that warming could raise the average temperature in parts of Greenland above freezing for multiple months and could have a substantial impact on melting of the polar ice sheets, says a second paper by researchers led by Bette Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Melting could raise sea level one to three feet over the next 100 to 150 years, she said.

• And a team led by Goeran Ekstroem of Harvard University reported an increase in "glacial earthquakes," which occur when giant rivers of ice — some as big as Manhattan — move suddenly as meltwater eases their path. That sudden movement causes the ground to tremble.

Otto-Bliesner and Overpeck wrote separate papers and also worked together, studying ancient climate and whether modern computer climate models correctly reflect those earlier times. That allowed them to use the models to look at possible future conditions. The researchers studied ancient coral reefs, ice cores and other natural climate records.

"Although the focus of our work is polar, the implications are global," Otto-Bliesner said. "These ice sheets have melted before and sea levels rose. The warmth needed isn't that much above present conditions."

According to the studies, increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the next century could raise Arctic temperatures as much as 5 to 8 degrees.

The warming could raise global sea levels by up to three feet this century through a combination of thermal expansion of the water and melting of polar ice, Overpeck and Otto-Bliesner said.

Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, who was not part of the research teams, said, "One point stands out above all others and that is that a modest global warming may put Earth in the danger zone for a major sea level rise due to deglaciation of one or both ice sheets."

Ekstroem and colleagues reported that glacial earthquakes in Greenland occur most often in July and August and have more than doubled since 2002.

"People often think of glaciers as inert and slow-moving, but in fact they can also move rather quickly," Ekstroem said. "Some of Greenland's glaciers, as large as Manhattan and as tall as the Empire State Building, can move 10 meters in less than a minute, a jolt that is sufficient to generate moderate seismic waves."

Melting water from the surface gradually seeps down, accumulating at the base of a glacier where it can serve as a lubricant allowing the ice to suddenly move downhill, the researchers said.

"Our results suggest that these major outlet glaciers can respond to changes in climate conditions much more quickly than we had thought," said team member Meredith Nettles of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Melting Ice Threatens Sea-Level Rise

[Shammu]

Melting Ice Threatens Sea-Level Rise

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 24, 9:30 AM ET

WASHINGTON - The Earth is already shaking beneath melting ice as rising temperatures threaten to shrink polar glaciers and raise sea levels around the world.

By the end of this century, Arctic readings could rise to levels not seen in 130,000 years — when the oceans were several feet higher than now, according to new research appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Even now, giant glaciers lubricated by melting water have begun causing earthquakes in Greenland as they lurch toward the ocean, other scientists report in the same journal.

In principal findings:

• At the current warming rate, Earth's temperature by 2100 will probably be at least 4 degrees warmer than now, with the Arctic at least as warm as it was 130,000 years ago, reports a research group led by Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Arizona.

• Computer models indicate that warming could raise the average temperature in parts of Greenland above freezing for multiple months and could have a substantial impact on melting of the polar ice sheets, says a second paper by researchers led by Bette Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Melting could raise sea level one to three feet over the next 100 to 150 years, she said.

• And a team led by Goeran Ekstroem of Harvard University reported an increase in "glacial earthquakes," which occur when giant rivers of ice — some as big as Manhattan — move suddenly as meltwater eases their path. That sudden movement causes the ground to tremble.

Otto-Bliesner and Overpeck wrote separate papers and also worked together, studying ancient climate and whether modern computer climate models correctly reflect those earlier times. That allowed them to use the models to look at possible future conditions. The researchers studied ancient coral reefs, ice cores and other natural climate records.

"Although the focus of our work is polar, the implications are global," Otto-Bliesner said. "These ice sheets have melted before and sea levels rose. The warmth needed isn't that much above present conditions."

According to the studies, increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the next century could raise Arctic temperatures as much as 5 to 8 degrees.

The warming could raise global sea levels by up to three feet this century through a combination of thermal expansion of the water and melting of polar ice, Overpeck and Otto-Bliesner said.

Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, who was not part of the research teams, said, "One point stands out above all others and that is that a modest global warming may put Earth in the danger zone for a major sea level rise due to deglaciation of one or both ice sheets."

Ekstroem and colleagues reported that glacial earthquakes in Greenland occur most often in July and August and have more than doubled since 2002.

"People often think of glaciers as inert and slow-moving, but in fact they can also move rather quickly," Ekstroem said. "Some of Greenland's glaciers, as large as Manhattan and as tall as the Empire State Building, can move 10 meters in less than a minute, a jolt that is sufficient to generate moderate seismic waves."

Melting water from the surface gradually seeps down, accumulating at the base of a glacier where it can serve as a lubricant allowing the ice to suddenly move downhill, the researchers said.

"Our results suggest that these major outlet glaciers can respond to changes in climate conditions much more quickly than we had thought," said team member Meredith Nettles of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Melting Ice Threatens Sea-Level Rise

[Soldier4Christ]

Brother I can see you're doubling up your own posts now??

[Shammu]

Brother I can see you're doubling up your own posts now??

I did? Oh well,,,,,,,,,, it happens.

[Soldier4Christ]

More cases of TB resist many drugs
The worst among them accounts for a growing share of incidences. Overall, U.S. rates fall.


WASHINGTON - The number of cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the United States increased in 2004 for the first time in a decade. The proportion of these serious cases that were "extensively" resistant - an even worse category - is also rising, according to a government report released yesterday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 128 U.S. cases of multidrug-resistant TB in 2004, up from 113 the year before. In addition, the proportion of these hard-to-treat cases that are extensively resistant - a strain virtually untreatable - rose from 3.9 percent in the 1993-96 period to 4.5 percent during 2001-04.

"It is a modest increase, but it is a movement in the wrong direction," said Kenneth Castro, an assistant surgeon general and director of the tuberculosis program at the centers, which released the data.

These findings appear to be driven by the growth of multidrug-resistant TB in countries that are home to the United States' recent immigrants, and not among its native-born population. Overall, tuberculosis continues to decline in this country. The per-capita rate of the lung infection last year was the lowest since the government began collecting data in 1953. There were slightly more than 14,000 cases reported to health authorities, compared with about 24,000 a decade earlier.

The incidence of TB has fallen steadily since 1993, when a seven-year rise in cases finally got the attention of public-health authorities who had considered it almost eliminated.

That resurgence was marked by outbreaks of multidrug-resistant infections, particularly among prisoners. Castro said he and other officials hoped the slight uptick in those cases was not the harbinger of a new growth phase in the ancient infection.

The report, timed for World TB Day today, also described the growth of "extensively drug-resistant" TB, defined as microbes resistant to not only the two first-line drugs, but to three or more of the six classes of second-line drugs.

Laboratory studies from Latvia showed that 19 percent of drug-resistant cases fit the worse definition, as did 15 percent of the drug-resistant cases in South Korea.

"Drug-resistant TB is growing, and that should worry us," said Marcos Espinal, a World Health Organization official who heads the Global Partnership to Stop TB.