SIO15/ERTH15: Natural Disasters

December 21, 2006 (for week ending Dec. 15)
• Earthquakes:
  • A magnitude 5.1 quake damaged college buildings and sent residents fleeing their homes when it rocked northern Thailand's Chiang Mai province. No injuries were reported from the initial shaking or any of the 23 recorded aftershocks.
  • Earth movements also were felt in Taiwan (5.0), Indonesia's Aceh province (5.4) and north Moluccas region (5.0), northern India (3.5), southeastern Iran (3.8), central Greece (4.5), southern Italy (4.5) and southeastern Pennsylvania (2.8).
• Tropical cyclone: Typhoon Utor left a trail of damage and at least 27 people dead after it roared across the central Philippines. Officials say nearly 4000 homes were destroyed and more than 12,000 others were damaged by the storm, mainly on the islands of Samar, Marinduque and Boracay. Mass evacuations were ordered in advance of the storm's arrival to avoid a repeat of the massive number of fatalities caused by super Typhoon Durian a week earlier. Utor later lost force as it drenched China's island province of Hainan.
• Australian blazes:
  More than 3000 firefighters in Australia battled to contain some of the worst wildfires the country has seen in 70 years. Fourteen major blazes were being fought across Victoria, and at least 14 homes were destroyed by other fires on the island state of Tasmania. Worsening drought conditions have created an extreme fire danger across many eastern parts of the country. Fire officials said they were preparing to bring in firefighters from the United States to help with the crisis.
• Solar storm:
  An explosive burst on the surface of the sun sent a stream of charged particles rushing toward Earth's atmosphere. The solar storm was expected to produce vivid displays of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, as far south as parts of Europe and the northern U.S.. Solar experts also warned the charged particles could threaten radio communications, satellites and power grids. Passengers flying in jet aircraft could also be put at higher risk for radiation exposure, forecasters said.
• Pakistan slides:
  Severe weather in northern Pakistan triggered landslides, mudflows and avalanches that blocked several roads across the region. Boulders cascading down the mountains of the North-West Frontier Province blocked a section of the Karakoram Highway, which connects Pakistan and China. Several areas of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir were isolated due to slides.
• Habitat conflicts:
  Four people were attacked and killed by wild elephants in northeast India's Assam state during the latest in a series of attacks by the animals. Wildlife officials said that about a dozen elephants stormed into a group of woodcutters, literally tearing two of the victims apart. The habitat of wild elephants has come under increased pressure in recent years as human development encroaches into native forests. Assam officials say pachyderms have killed 248 people in the past 4 years, while 268 elephants have died. Many of the elephant victims were the target of retaliation by humans. The aroma of rice beer being brewed by villagers has lured the animals into some of the communities that have come under attack.
• Ebola victims:
  An outbreak of the Ebola virus in the wild has killed between 3500 and 5000 gorillas in one area of the Republic of the Congo during the past 4 years, according to primate researchers. Writing in the journal Nature, Peter D. Walsh of the max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology said there had been a massive decline in the number of the animals due to the virus. He believes the deaths are helping to push the threatened species even closer to extinction. Walsh proposes inoculating some some of the surviving western gorillas with an Ebola vaccine that has proved to be effective in some animals.
• Extreme temperatures: -62 deg F in Oimyakon, Siberia; 107 deg F in Oodnadatta, S. Australia

November 16, 2006 (for week ending Nov. 10)
• Earthquakes:
  • A relatively mild tremor in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region damaged more than 5500 houses, including 1353 that received serious damage. There were no reports of significant injuries from the magnitude 4.2 quake.
  • Earth movements also were felt in the southern Philippines (4.9), Kyrgyzstan (5.0), eastern Turkey (3.1), the Dominican Republic (4.5), southern Mexico (5.3) and south-central Alaska (3.8).
• Japanese twister: A freak tornado raked an area of far northern Japan, killing at least nine people and destroying dozens of temporary houses built for workers digging a nearby tunnel. Television images of the country's worst tornado damage on record showed a scene of devastation, with a trail of collapsed buildings, badly damaged cars and utility poles strewn across streets.
• Whaling:
  
  • An official in Iceland said his country might reconsider its decision to resume commercial whaling if no market for the whale meat can be found. Whaling commissioner Stefan Asmundsson compared whaling to the car industry. "When you don't have buyers for your cars, you halt production," he told reporters. The decision to resume commercial whaling, announced in mid-October, has sparked condemnation from conservationists as well as several governments.
  • The international Whaling Commission announced that Japan has caught 35 whales off the coast of Hokkaido Island under a research program critics say is merely disguised commercial whaling. The catch was only a little more than half of the 60 minke whales authorized to be killed. The shortfall was mainly blamed on bad weather.
• Global warming shield:
  A University of Arizona optics expert has won a NASA grant to explore the possibility of placing a huge network of filters between Earth and the sun to counter the effects of manmade global warming. astronomer Roger Angel will use the grant to continue studying the practicality of deploying a space sunshade in the event it becomes clear that Earth is unmistakably headed for disastrous climate change within a decade or two. Writing in the Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences, Angel proposes the establishment of a huge constellation of 2-foot-diameter filters, which collectively would divert about 10% of the sun's heat. The "flyers" would be made of a transparent film pierced with small holes. Its transparency and steering mechanism, made up of tiny mirrors, would prevent it from being blown away by the pressure of solar radiation.
• Orangutan deaths:
  A leading wildlife conservationist in Borneo says that about 1000 orangutans are believed to have perished this year due to drought and illegal wildfires on the island. "Orangutans are starving. They are sick, and many of those we are treating were injured after being attacked by machetes", said Willie Smits of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. He added that many of the surviving primates of the species are suffering from respiratory distress caused by the pall of smoke. The haze has also resulted in a health crisis among the human populations of Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. Smits added that the fires have deprived the orangutans of food, forcing them to encroach into human settlements, where they have come under attack for damaging crops.
• Ocean ice alert:
  An iceberg warning was issued for the Southern ocean to the south of New Zealand as some of an estimated 100 chunks of Antarctic ice came closer to New Zealand that any others for the past 75 years. "We were surprised by the number of them and by how far north they were", said Royal New Zealand Air Force Capt. Andy Nielsen, who found the icebergs while flying on a routine fishing patrol. He added that the largest iceberg is 1.25mi long and towers 400ft above the ocean surface. National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research oceanographer Mike Williams said the icebergs were likely part of a larger chunk of ice that broke off the Ronne Ice Shelf six years ago.
• Millenium drought:
  An official from Australia's largest river management agency told a gathering of political leaders that the current drought is not only the worst in recorded history, but it's also likely to be the worst in 1000 years. Murray-Darling Basin Commission official David Dreverman told an emergency water summit that there has been a "quantum leap" in the severity of the drought since last year's previous record dryness. He warned Prime Minister John Howard and other leaders that reservoirs, which supply much of Australia's southeastern farmland, are predicted to dry up before next May.
• Extreme temperatures: -68 deg F at Vostok, Antarctica; 107 deg F in Curtin, W. Australia

November 10, 2006; NASA Earth Observatory/no UT Earthwatch this week
• Record Rain over the U.S. Northwest
Record rainfall fell over parts of the northwestern U.S. during the first week of November 2006. Stampede Pass in western Washington received 8.22in of rain on Monday. Nov 5, to set a new all-time, one-day total. Six rivers reached record crests in the region. By early Nov 8, one person had died, and two were missing as a result of the flooding, said news reports. The weather pattern responsible for all of the rain is known as the Pineapple Express. The Pineapple Express is really hust the subtropical jet stream, a stream of fast-moving air that carries moisture originating around the hawaiian Islands northeast towards the West Coast. This moisture can then be drawn into storm systems as they approach the West Coast. In this case, a slow-moving storm system tapped into this tropical moisture to generate heavy rainfall.
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• Esperanza Fire
In late October, a fierce forest fire flared up in the mountainous terrain west of Palm Springs, California. The Esperanza Fire started in the foothills at the southern outskirts of the town of Cabazon, apparently as an act of arson. Driven by Santa Ana winds out of Great Basin deserts to the east, the fire raced over more that 40,000 acres in a matter of days, destroying 34 homes and 20 outbuildings in the area. Several firefighters died while battling the blaze.
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• Fires on Madagascar
On November 6, NASA's MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) system captured the widespread fires burning across the island of Madagascar, which lies off the southeast coast of Africa. Fires are buring across many different ecosystems: in and around the rainforests that parallel the eastern coast; the humid grassland along the east coast; and the drier grasslands that cover most of the rest of the island. Nearly all of these fires are likely agricultural in origin, with people setting fires to clear farmland and pasture. Some fires in the rainforest may be "slash-and-burn" fires in which rainforest is cleared to make way for agricultural land.
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• Fires in Northwest India
Each year in Northern Hemisphere fall, the fertile agricultural plains at the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains in northwest India come alive with scores of seasonal agricultural fires. NASA's MODIS system (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) captured an image on Nov 5. The region, which included the state of Punjab, is India's primary fodd-grain-producing region. Major crops include wheat and rice. The fires are probably for clearing fields of the stubble from harvested crops. Although they are not necessarily immediately hazardous, such wide-spread fires can have a strong impact on weather, climate, human health, and natural resources. The smoke from these fires, perhaps mingled with urban pollution and dust, spreads southeast at the base of the mountains, but also southwest down the Indus River Valley and out over the Arabian Sea.
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• Fires on Borneo and Sumatra
In Sumatra and Indonesia, seasonal fires and the thick smoke they produce plagued the islands for nearly two months in late 2006. Thick smoke spread between the two islands. Many factors contribute to the fires, which usually start from agricultural burning, but often spread into adjacent tropical rainforest. When the forests have been degraded by logging, they become much more prone to fire. In addition, climate fluctuations, such as droughts that occur in concert with El Niño events, can make the fires worse. During droughts, the typically soggy forest floor of these lowland forests dries out. The thick layer of dead vegetation on the forest floor, peat, becomes flammable and produces enormous quantities of smoke when it burns.
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• Volcanic Activity on Soufriere Hills
The Soufriere Hills Volcano on the Caribbean island of Montserrat continued its intermittent activity in November 2006. Soufriere Hills is a stratovolcano composed of alternating layers of hardened lava, ash, and rock. It occupies the southern half of the island of Montserrat, and it began a period of serious eruptive activity in 1995.
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• Dust Storm in the Bodele Depression, Chad
Chad's lowest points is the Bodele Depression, and it is one of the world's most active sources of dust storms. NASA's Terra satellite recorded a storm on Nov 9. A MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) image shows a dust plume as pale beige brush strokes against a tan background. Lake Chad in the area once approached the size of lake Erie in North America but is now estimated at approx. 5% of its size in 1966. Irrigation and declines in rainfall have both diminished the lake.
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• Floods in East Africa
Severe drought early in 2006 followed by widespread flooding during August crippled Ethiopia (NB: The most tragic flooding occurred along the Omo River where floods trapped thousands of people in 14 villages. 364 people died and up to 10,000 people were displaced.) In late October and early November, the disaster continued to develop as heavy rain once again sent the Wabe Shebele River over its banks. The swollen river grew to twice its normal size, inundating towns that line its fertile banks, reported the World Food Program. More than 60 people died in the floods, and many more were impacted.
Like much of East Africa, southeastern Ethiopia goes through a regular cycle of floods and droughts. The cycle is in part driven by El Niño, a cyclical warming of ocean waters in the central and eastern pacific that can alter weather patterns around the world. In general, El Niño causes drought in some regions, such as Indonesia, Australia, and the Philippines, while bringing excess rain to others, including East Africa and the southwestern U.S..
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• Floods in Southern India
Wide swaths of the eastern Indian coast were underwater on Nov 5, when the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) captured an image. Standing water can be seen in amny places that was not present two weeks earlier. The floods followed in the wake of a cyclonic storm that pounded India's southeast coast during the first days of November. The storm dumped records rainfall in the region. At least 39 people died in the flooding, and approx. 50,000 were evacuated. .
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October 20, 2006 (for week ending Oct. 14)
• Earthquakes:
  • Three people in southwest Pakistan's Baluchistan province were injured when a magnitude 4.6 tremor struck the city of Chaman.
  • Earth movements were also felt in southeastern(4.8) and northeastern Iran(3.8), southern India (3.7), the Thailand-Myanmar border region (5.6), Taiwan (6.4), northeastern Japan (6.0), northern Chile (5.8) and southern Washington state (4.5).
• Tropical cyclones:
  • Typhoon Soulik formed to the north of the U.S. Northern Marianas Islands before skirting the Japanese island of Iwo Jima.
  • Tropical storms Norman and Olivia lost force off the southern tip of Baja California.
• Eruptions:
  
  • A volcano on Papua New Guinea's New Britain Island erupted with such force that it shattered windows 7 mi away. Disaster officials in the port of Rabaul said the eruption of Mount Tavurvur forced 2,000 people from their homes and brought a rain of ash over the city. A 1994 eruption of Tavurvur and nearby Mount Vulcan destroyed much of Rabaul.
    check out news at Smithsonian's global volcanism program
  • Scientists in New Zealand said an eruption of Mount Ruapehu on the North Island sent 18-ft-high waves rushing across the volcanao's crater lake. GNS Science determined that the eruption was contained within the lake, which warmed by 12 deg F during the activity.
  • Bulusan volcano shot a thick column of ash almost 2mi above the central Philippines, which blanketed nearby villages.
• Thai flood disaster:
  Floodwaters devastated parts of northern Thailand, leaving 39 people dead and more than two million others with submerged homes. Ang Thong, Sing Buri, Ayutthaya, Chiang Mai and Ubon Ratchathani provinces were among the areas hit hardest, but floodwaters were rushing down the Chao Phraya River toward Bangkok.
• New nuclear power:
  North Korea announced it had conducted a nuclear test inside a horizontal tunnel deep inside a mountain on the country's northeast coast. The relatively small blast registered a magnitude 4.2 on the global seismic network, indicating a force of 1 kiloton or less, according to some analysts. The test immediately evoked almost universal condemnation from countries around the world.
• Indonesian pall:
  Rampant burning of forest for land clearing in Indonesia created a pall of smoke that traveled across Southeast Asia, even reaching the Pacific island of Guam. Satellite images showed 506 fires burning on Sumatra Island alone, with others being detected across central Borneo. The pollution index in Singapore reached the highest level since a similar haze covered the region in 1997. The latest cloud of smoke is forcing many residents to remain indoors or wear a face mask. It is also being blamed for the collision of two ships on the Batanghari River in Indonesia's haze-shrouded province of Jambi.
• Muted El Niño:
  The current El Niño ocean warming in the tropical Pacific is not likely to bring the severe drought conditions that Asia's farmers suffered from during the last severe outbreak in 1997-08, according to an Indonesian government crop expert. Ati Wasiati told Reuters that while the country is likely to get below-normal rainfall during the next few months, the weak El Niño should not be that damaging to Southeast Asia's coffee, cocoa and grain farmers. Australia is currently parched by a severe drought not directly linked to the phenomenon, but a further warming of the Pacific could be devastating for the country's eastern crops.
• Desert swarms:
  A cloud of desert locusts that covered 3 square miles moved across the sub-Saharan nation of Mauritania. Government monitors said the crop-eating insects were sighted near Bennichab, about 155mi north of the capital Nouakchott. A locust invasion in 2004 ravaged a vast amount of crops across the northern third of Africa, leaving millions of people at risk of starvation.
• Extreme temperatures: -88 deg F at Amundsen-Scott South Pole, Antarctica; 114 deg F in Karima, Sudan

October 05, 2006 (for week ending Sep. 29)
• Earthquakes:
  • Two minor magnitude 3.7 earthquakes shook northeastern South Carolina within three days, breaking some windows in Marlboro County.
  • Earth movements also were felt in Maine (3.5), northwest California (3.8), northwestern Argentina (5.7), southern Iran (3.5), western Japan (5.2) and Indonesia's Sulawesi Island (5.7) and Maluku Islands (4.5).
• Tropical cyclones:
  • Flash flooding from the remnants of Tropical Storm 17W killed at least 3 people and inundated homes, farmlands and roads along the central Vietnamese coast. The tropical cyclone had attained storm force for only a brief period before striking the country.
  • Typhoon Xangsane, the worst such storm to strike the Philippines in 20 years, killed at least 14 people and caused a massive blackout across Luzon Island. Numerous trees and billboards were toppled by fierce winds at the height of Xangsane's onslaught in Manila, making many roads impassable. The storm was predicted to later strike central Vietman.
  • Cyclone Mukda made a loop across the waters of the Arabian Sea.
• Alaskan rumblings:
  A volcanic mountain near the mouth of Alaska's Cook Inlet appears to be coming back to life after lying dormant for thousands of years. The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) reports that vents in Fourpeaked Mountain are spewing smelly volcanic gases, and the agency believes that an eruption is possible during the next few weeks. Steve McNutt, acting coordinator for AVO, said infrasound waves from the rumbling mountain were detected by microphones as far away as Fairbanks. The observatory has installed a network of geophysical instruments at the previously unmonitored mountain.
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• Antarctic ozone hole:
  The hole in Earth's protective layer of stratospheric ozone over Antarctica was larger during the just-ended southern winter than last year, and U.N. weather experts say it neared the record size that occurred in 2000. "The ozone depletion started quite late, but when it started it came quite rapidly", said Geir Braathen, the World Meteorological Organization's top ozone expert.While use of ozone-depleting chemicals has waned since a worldwide ban went into force in 1989, Braathen said large amounts of chlorine and bromine remain in the atmosphere and will keep causing large holes in the zonoe level over Antarctica for decades. Ozone depletion causes incresed UV exposure and a greater risk of skin cancer.
• Amazon reforestation:
  The Brazilian state of Acre has launched a project to reforest land in the Amazon previously cleared for ranching. It is establishing a nursery for growing various trees, which will be issued to large landowners. Up to 4 million mahogany, Brazil nut, palms and other trees are to be cultivated, and new laws will require ranchers to use the trees to reforest up to 30% of their property. Acre's governor, Jorge Viana, says he wants to shift the state's economy away from ranching to concentrate on sustainable logging, Brazil nuts, berries, rubber and medicinal plants.
• Java mud mystery:
  A massive flow of noxious, steaming mud that began spewing from the depths of the Earth at an Indonesian gas well in May has so far forced 12,000 people from their homes. Some geologists said the flow could have been triggered by a crack about 6,000ft beneath East Java province's Banjar Panji exploratory well. But a group of international experts now believes the mudflow might be a natural phenomenon, which could continue to spew until underground pressure is finally released 10 to 100 years from now. Gushing out at more than 1.7 Mio cubic ft per day, the mud has submerged half a dozen villages and 20 factories. The disaster is thought to have been caused by gas-charged fluids breaching coral mounds on top of limestone rock, a "magmatic" reaction generating gas, a newborn mud volcano or hydrothermal fluids arriving from neighboring areas.
• Extreme temperatures: -96 deg F in Vostok, Antarctica; 111 deg F in Bilma, Niger

September 21, 2006 (for week ending Sep. 15)
• Earthquakes:
  • A magnitude 6.0 temblor centered beneath the Gulf of Mexico was felt over a wide area from Florida to Louisiana and Tennessee. Firefighters in Orlaando said the sahking burst pipes in one of the Florida city's apartment buildings.
  • Earth movements also were felt in Israel and the Palestinian territories (4.4), southern Iran (4.7), the India-Myanmar border region (4.0), Hong Kong (3.5), Tasmania (3.0), northern New Zealand (5.2) and central Chile (4.7).
• Tropical cyclones:
  • Hurricane Florence ripped off roof and downed power lines as it passed near Bermuda. Florence later skirted Newfoundland, where it also knocked down power lines.
  • Hurricane Gordon formed far from any land areas in the mid-Altantic.
  • Tropical storm Helene gained strength after developing to the south of the Cape Verde Islands.
  • Southern Baja California was on alert for approaching Tropical Strom Lane.
  • Typhoon Shanshan was bearing down on Japan's southernmost islands late in the week.
• Volcano alerts:
  
  • Volcanoes on three separate Indonesian islands displayed enough signs of unrest that officials put areas surrounding them on alert. Mount Talang in West sumatra, Mount Bromo in East Java and Mount Karang Etang in North Sulawesi are all exhibiting dangerous activity. Mount Talang was the latest to be put on alert as dark clouds billowed from its crater.
  • The more than 30,000 people who fled Mount Mayon in the central Philippine province of Albay during August have begun to return to their homes after a 10-day drop in the level of activity within the volcano.
• Arctic Retreat:
  The Arctic Ocean's permanent sea ice shrank abruptly by 14% between 2004 and 2005, according to a new report published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Such "perennial" ice has often been 10 feet thick or more, but it has been replaced by new seasonal ice that is only about 1to 7 feet thick, according to satellite observations. Researchers from NASA say that if the sea ice cover continues to decine, the surrounding ocean will warm, further accelerating summer ice melts and impeding fall freeze-ups. This could result in even further disappearance of permanent ice. A combination of climate change and strong winds blowing the ice out of the Arctic are believed to be responsible for the trend.
• New Zealand fireball:
  An explosion from a meteor[ite] or piece of space debris entering the atmosphere above New Zealand's South Island was so loud that people ran from their homes and workplaces to see what had rattled the buildings. Eyewitnesses said they saw a bright white trail in the sky with pieces breaking off. A commercial pilot flying over the region said he saw an object similar to a meteor[ite] - "but different" - flashing in front of his cockpit. The pilot said he did not believe it was a meteor[ite] because it was spinning, and reminded him of the debris from the United States Space Shuttle Columbia when it exploded. An object thought to be a fragment of the fireball was discovered on a farm south of Christchurch.
• El Niño returns:
  The U.S. weather agency NOAA announced that the returning El Niño ocean warming phenomenon in the Pacific is likely to strengthen during the next few months and has already affected the hurricane season. "the weak El Niño is helping to explain why the hurricane season is less than we expected ... because it tends to suppress hurricane activity in the Atlantic", said Gerry Bell, a hurricane forecaster for NOAA. During the last 30 days, drier-than-average conditions have been observed across all of Indonesia, malaysia and most of the Philippines, which are usually the first areas to experience El Niño-related impacts. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center believes the ocean warming will last well into 2007, bringing a warmer winter to western and central parts of the United States and Canada. Wetter-than-normal weather is expected from Texas to Florida.
• World's tallest:
  Scientists have discovered three trees in a remote area of California's Redwood National Park that are taller than the tree previously believed to be the world's tallest living thing. The tallest of the new discoveries was given the name Hyperion, and towers 378.1ft above the forest floor. That makes it 8ft taller than the tree previously thought to be the tallest. The enwly discovered redwoods were found by a team of researchers in a tract of forest added to the park during President Jimmy carter's administration. George Koch, a biology professor at Northern Arizona University, said he believes this protection kept them from being cut down for timber.
• Extreme temperatures: -107 deg F in Vostok, Antarctica; 120 deg F in Yenbo, Saudi Arabia

September 07, 2006 (for week ending Sep. 01)
• Earthquakes:
  • A strong magnitude 5.1 tremor and subsequent aftershock in southwest China's Yunnan province killed at least two people as it wrecked thousands of buildings in Yanjin and Daguan counties.
  • Earth movements also were felt in eastern Japan (4.8), Taiwan (6.1), Indonesia's Banda Sea region (6.4), central and northeastern Iran (3.0, 3.9), western Greece (4.8), Montenegro (4.2), northern Italy (3.8), southern Portugal (3.2) and the Hawaiian Islands (3.7).
• Tropical cyclones:
  • Hurricane Ernesto drenched a long path across the Carribean and southeastern United States, killing at least two people in Haiti. The storm attained hurricane strength for only a frief period, then lost further intensity as it moved over the rough terrain of eastern Cuba.
  • Category 4 Hurricane John skirted Mexico's Pacific coast, and was predicted to strike the resorts of southern Baja California late in the week.
  • Hurricane Kristy moved over open waters to the west of Mexico.
  • Super Typhoon Ioke was a category 5 storm during much of its second week of crossing the Pacific.
• Philippine Eruption:
  The Philippine's Mayon volcano ended a week of relative calm by expelling large amounts of ash and gases over parts of Albay province. Two separate explosions within a single day were accompanied by 16 volcanic earthquakes.
• Sumatran Smoke:
  Failed efforts by Indonesian officials to curb illegal burning of the Sumatran rain forest this year have allowed a pall of smoke to blanket the island and neighboring areas of Malaysia. Smoke became so thick that approximately 10,000 people sought medical help for respiratory problems during a single day in Riau province's capital of Pekanbaru.
• China's toxic rain:
  An official Chinese government report revealed that unbridled industrial development has caused a third of the country's land mass to now be regularly bathed in acid rain. More than half the 696 Chinese cities and counties monitored were shown to have experienced acid rain.
• Drought crisis:
  A dry monsoon season in northeast India's Assam state is threatening to create a food crisis for the rare one-horned rhinos of Kaziranga National Park. Park warden Utpal Bora told reporters that many of the animals in Kaziranga are liekly to face food shortages during the upcoming winter season. He fears the animals may be forced to stray outside of the park's boundaries and into human settlements in search of food.
• Vernal expansion:
  Climate change across Europe is now bringing the arrival of sring more than a week earlier than 30 years ago, and there has been a marked delay in the arrival of autumn as well, according to a new study. Scientists from 17 countries joined to record changes in natural annual events to see what impact global warming might be having on the continent's ecology. The study of 542 plants from 1971 to 2000 found that 78% are now flowering, leafing and fruiting earlier.
• Extreme temperatures: -109 deg F in Vostok, Antarctica; 120 deg F in Death Valley, California

August 31, 2006 (for week ending Aug. 25)
• Earthquakes:
  • Residents in southwestern parts of Russia's Sakhalin Island rushed into the streets when a mag. 6,1 quake struck, damaging water supply systems in two villages.
  • The strongest temblor to strike the Scotia Sea, between South America and Antarctica, since 1987 may have frightened a few penguins, according to seismologists.
  • Earth movements also were felt in metropolitan Tokyo (5.1), Taiwan (5.6), eastern Papua New Guinea (5.0), northern New Zealand (5.2, 3.5), central Iran (3.6), Jamaica (2.9), El Salvador (5.7), western Mexico (5.5) and just north of Los Angeles (2.9).
• Tropical cyclones:
  • The forth named storm in the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season formed to the south of the Cape Verde Islands. Tropical Storm Debby was predicted to strengthen to near hurricane force, but curve northward and not threaten any land areas.
  • Twelve members of an Air Force research vessel were forced to take shelter on Johnston Island just before powerful Hurricane Ioke hit the U.S. Pacific Wildlife Refuge and nuclear material dump.
  • Hurricanes hector and Ileana churned the eastern Pacific.
• Deadly Eruption:
  Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano erupted violently before dawn on Aug. 17, killing 6 people as it buried 5 nearby villages with 8,000 tons of hot ash. Accompanying lava flows set fire to several homes. Thousands of head of livestock were killed and crops were destroyed by the volcanic debris.
• Ocean Noise Pollution:
  A new study that compares recent underwater noise levels with data gathered by the U.S. Navy is the 1960s shows that the world's oceans have become louder in the last 40 years. Researchers from the San Diego-based Scripps Institution of Oceanography say there has been a tenfold increase in man-made sound below the ocean surface since the 1960s. Their study shows noise levels in the North Pacific during 2003 and 2004 were 10 to 12 decibels higher than in 1964 through 1966. Most of the added noise is attributed to increased ocean shipping. The Scripps report says if the increased noise level is affecting marine mammals, it may be appropriate to divert shipping away from areas where there are high concentrations of whales and dolphins.
• Spill Disasters:
  
  • Four towns in the central Philippines have been declared under a state of calamity due to the danger posed by oil-leaking from a sunken tanker in Guimaras Strait. The MT Solar 1 sank on Aug. 11 off Iloilo province in bad weather, carrying 530,000 gallons of oil. It's estimated that 80,000 gallons have already leaked into the sea, killing birds, fish and other wildlife. Hundreds of people have become ill, and one man has died, due to exposure to the pollution, according to health officials.
  • Clean-up crews along the Lebanese coast have recovered about 100 tons of oil that spilled into the Mediterranean after Israel bombed a power plant to the south of Beirut. But Greenpeace released video that shows large amounts of the congealed fuel have sunk, blanketing the sea floor.
• Ozone Recovery Delayed:
  The hole in Earth's protective ozone layer will take 15 years longer to recover than previously predicted, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The U.N. agency predicts it will take until 2065 instead of the earlier estimate of 2050 for stratospheric ozone to recover from decades of chemical leaks from refrigerators, air conditioners and other sources. WMO believes that the amount of ozone-depleting chloro-flouro-carbons in storage and still being produced is higher than was previously estimated. Most of those substances are currently banned or are being phased out under the 1989 Montreal Protocol.
• Vulture Siege:
  The largest city in Peru's Amazon rain forest has become besieged by hundreds of vultures, which forced the shutdown of the community's main link to the outside world. The scavenger birds prompted officials to close the Iquitos airport due to frequent collisions between the birds and aircraft. The airport authorities blamed the vulture siege on city officials, who have allowed the dump for the city of 400,000 to expand to near the runways.
• Extreme temperatures: -106 deg F in Vostok, Antarctica; 121 deg F in Death Valley, California

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