Week ending Friday, March 4, 2022
Mosquito Attraction
Researchers say they have found that the best way to avoid being targeted by mosquitoes is to shift your wardrobe to colours the biters are not attracted to. Biologists from the University of Washington found that after the insects catch a whiff of carbon dioxide from human breath, they target anyone wearing the longer- wavelength colours of red, orange, black and cyan for their next blood meals. Writing in the journal Nature Communications, Jeffrey Riffell says that while the insects are attracted to human breath, sweat and skin temperature, they don’t even bat an eye at those wearing green, purple, blue and white.
Earthquakes
At least 11 people perished in western Sumatra on Feb. 25 when a powerful temblor toppled buildings and sent a landslide tumbling onto a village.
• Earth movements were also felt across a wide area of South Asia’s Hindu Kush region and in metropolitan Los Angeles.
Manatee Feeding
Emergency measures to provide lettuce to starving manatees in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon appear to be curbing the record number of deaths that have occurred among the sea cows during the last year. Such unprecedented human intervention follows more than 1,100 of the manatees dying of starvation due to their usual seagrass diet being depleted because of water pollution caused by agricultural activities.
The manatees initially did not eat the lettuce thrown on the surface for them because they were used to looking down as they grazed on the seagrass. However, wildlife authorities said the mammals eventually changed their eating habits after they understood the lettuce was good food.
Nuclear War
The spike in radiation levels recorded around Ukraine’s crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant in late February was due to invading Russian military vehicles stirring up radioactive dust, Ukraine authorities said. The site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster was overrun and captured by Russian forces on Feb. 24, causing radiation dose rates to soar from only 3 microsieverts per hour at one sensor in the days before the invasion to 65.5 microsieverts in the hours afterward. Ukraine’s nuclear regulators say the buildings containing the wrecked reactor are intact and unaffected.
Rain ‘Bomb’
One metre of rainfall in parts of eastern Australia over a six-day period unleashed catastrophic flooding that forced tens of thousands from their homes. At least 13 people died in the aftermath of what was called a “rain bomb” in parts of New South Wales and Queensland. The New South Wales city of Lismore recorded its worst flooding in history. One of the more distressing images on Australian TV showed nearly half of the 300-cow herd of a Lismore farmer being swept away in surging flood waters, some eventually washing up on coastal beaches.
Atlas of Suffering
The just-released UN climate report gives the most dire predictions to date on the future impacts to the planet by global heating if carbon emissions are not immediately curbed. “The future looks dark if we do not take action,” said Rachel Bezner Kerr, a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “No region will be spared.” The report warns of simultaneous crop failures in the world’s breadbaskets and massive livestock deaths from the mounting heat waves by 2050. The panel said in a statement that the pace of increasing deadly heat, wildfires, floods and other weather disasters is unfolding far more quickly than what was predicted only five years ago.
Tropical Cyclones
Parts of northwestern Australia were soaked by Tropical Storm Anika.
• Tropical Storm Vernon formed over the central Indian Ocean while unnamed storms spun up briefly south of Java and north of New Zealand.
Dist. by: Andrews McMeel Syndication
©MMXXII Earth Environmen`t Service
