Week ending Friday, October 4, 2019
Carbon Ratio
An international team of scientists says it found that human activity on Earth produces enough carbon dioxide emissions to create up to 100 times more greenhouse effect in the atmosphere than all of the gases spewed by all of the world’s volcanoes. The decade-long study by the Deep Carbon Observatory also says volcanoes and other geologic activities alone don’t release enough carbon dioxide to shift the planet’s climate as some controversial theories have claimed in recent years. The study warns that when carbon dioxide levels have soared as much throughout the planet’s history as during the past century of increasing industrial activity, global mass extinctions followed.
Earthquakes
Much of New Zealand’s lower North Island was jolted by a magnitude 5.4 temblor.
• Earth movements were also felt in the southern Philippines, southern Taiwan, southwestern Turkey, central Chile and western Texas.
Ozone Oddity
The hole in stratospheric ozone that develops over Antarctica as the frozen continent emerges from winter is now acting in ways never before observed. Scientists at Europe’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service say the hole is not only about half as large as normally seen in September, but it has been off-center and far from the South Pole. They point to a sudden and significant warming of the stratosphere over Antarctica during the month. This appears to have destabilized the process in which ozone has been destroyed since the now-banned chlorofluorocarbons began causing the ozone hole during the 1960s and 1970s.
Tropical Cyclones
The Azores were lashed by pounding surf and storm-force winds as Category‑2 Hurricane Lorenzo passed just to the west of the Portuguese archipelago.
• A long strip of Mexico’s Pacific resorts felt the effects of Tropical Storm Narda, which killed at least two people in Oaxaca.
• Tropical Storm Mitag killed at least nine people when it pounded South Korea. The storm had earlier skirted Taiwan and the Chinese coast, near Shanghai, as a Category‑2 typhoon.
Greenhouse Fires
The huge wildfires that have raged across parts of Indonesia since August have spewed 365 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than Spain’s entire greenhouse emissions for all of last year, according to Singapore’s environment minister. We now are clear that these forest fires have a major impact on climate, Masagos Zulkifli wrote in a Facebook post.The loss of carbon sinks in the burning of peat is irreversible. Singapore and Malaysia say they are going after the companies responsible for the pall of smoke that blows into their countries from the slash-and-burn techniques used to clear land in Indonesia for agriculture.
Plastic vs. Worms
A new study finds that one of the world’s most common earthworms cannot thrive in ground polluted with high levels of microplastics.
Lead researcher Bas Boots of Britain’s Anglia Ruskin University says the finding adds to the growing body of evidence of how increasing plastic pollution is affecting the natural world. These effects include the obstruction and irritation of the digestive tract, limiting the absorption of nutrients and reducing growth, Boots said.
Eruptive Repeat
A column of lava shooting hundreds of feet above Papua New Guinea’s restive Ulawun volcano sent nearby residents fleeing their homes again on the remote Bismarck Archipelago. Many of the 7,000 to 13,000 people who were displaced by a stronger eruption in June had only recently returned before Ulawun fired up again without warning. The volcano is listed as one of the world’s most dangerous.
Dist. by: Andrews McMeel Syndication
©MMXIX Earth Environment Service
