Plant life is growing on Antarctica like never before in modern times, fueled by global warming which is melting ice and transforming the landscape from white to green, researchers said Thursday.
Scientists studying moss in an area spanning 400 miles (640 kilometers) have found a sharp increase in growth over the past 50 years, said the report in the journal Current Biology.
Plant life exists on only about 0.3 percent of Antarctica.
“Temperature increases over roughly the past half century on the Antarctic Peninsula have had a dramatic effect on moss banks growing in the region,” said co-author Matt Amesbury, of the University of Exeter.
“If this continues, and with increasing amounts of ice-free land from continued glacier retreat, the Antarctic Peninsula will be a much greener place in the future.”
Five moss cores—or column-like samples drilled from the Earth—showed evidence of what scientists called “changepoints,” or points in time after which biological activity clearly increased.
Areas sampled included three Antarctic islands—Elephant Island, Ardley Island, and Green Island—where the deepest and oldest moss banks grow, said the report.
“This gives us a much clearer idea of the scale over which these changes are occurring,” said Amesbury.
“Previously, we had only identified such a response in a single location at the far south of the Antarctic Peninsula, but now we know that moss banks are responding to recent climate change across the whole of the Peninsula.”
The polar regions are warming more rapidly than the rest of the Earth, as greenhouse gasses from fossil fuel burning build up in the atmosphere and trap heat.
The Arctic is warming the fastest, but Antarctica is not far behind, with annual temperatures gaining almost one degree Fahrenheit (half degree Celsius) each decade since the 1950s.
“The sensitivity of moss growth to past temperature rises suggests that ecosystems will alter rapidly under future warming, leading to major changes in the biology and landscape of this iconic region,” said researcher Dan Charman, a professor at Exeter.
“In short, we could see Antarctic greening to parallel well-established observations in the Arctic.”
Researchers on the project also came from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey.
The Vancouver Park Board voted to ban bringing in all new cetaceans, even if they are injured or rescued.
Some people believe keeping large mammals in captivity is cruel and dangerous for the animals' health.
But the Vancouver Aquarium says the ban effectively ends whale rehabilitation and research in Canada.
The aquarium, which sits on land controlled by the parks department, currently has three cetaceans, all of which were rescued and considered incapable of living in the wild.
These animals will remain and are not affected by the ban.
Protesters on both sides of the debate turned up for the vote on Monday night.
Public sentiment has been turning away from keeping whales in captivity for some time, says Vancouver Humane Society spokesperson Peter Fricker.
"There's substantial scientific evidence that cetaceans do suffer in captivity, and that outweighs the benefit of putting them on display for our entertainment," he told the BBC.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals also supports the ban.
Michael Wiebe, chair of the Vancouver Park Board, said that after two belugas died within days of one another at the aquarium last fall, the board decided they needed to look into whether it was right to keep bringing in more.
"I believe it is time to move on," he said.
An internal investigation later found the whales were killed by an unknown toxin, possibly introduced through their food.
But the Vancouver Aquarium says the ban will ultimately hurt the animals more than help. Its Marine Mammal Rescue Program is the only programme in Canada able to provide long-term care for rescued cetaceans that can't be released back into the wild, said CEO John Nightingale.
"It turns its back on some of the marine animals in need when they are in need," he told the BBC.
Although only six cetaceans have been treated at the rescue centre over the past 50 years. Mr Nightingale said its long-term care facility has helped attract top experts, who in turn have helped further research.
New Zealand’s iconic yellow-eyed penguins – displayed on billboards greeting people arriving at the country’s main airports – could become extinct from the mainland in 25 years, scientists have warned.
Once-busy breeding grounds are now “overgrown and silent” with just a few pairs trying to carry on as birds are caught in fishing nets, are killed by unidentified toxins in the sea and suffer because of the general degradation of the marine environment by humans.
Global warming is also thought to be playing a part in the animal’s demise, according for about a third of the population decline.
The penguins’ decline comes despite its use as a means to attract tourists to the country.
New Zealand’s other famous bird, the kiwi, is also in trouble with the northern brown kiwi and the Okarito brown kiwi both classed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
In a new study, researchers developed a model to predict what will happen to the yellow-eyed penguins on the Otago Peninsula over the next few decades.
Published in the journal PeerJ, the results produced by one model found the birds would become locally extinct by 2060 as rising ocean temperatures impact their ability to breed successfully.
However, when mass ‘adult die-off’ events – such as the deaths of more than 60 in 2013 – were factored in, this brought the extinction date much further forward.
Dr Ursula Ellenberg, of La Trobe University, who has researched yellow-eyed penguins for the past 14 years, said: “It is sobering to see the previously busy penguin-breeding areas now overgrown and silent, with only the odd lonely pair hanging on.”
The lead author of the research paper, Dr Thomas Mattern, pointed out the bird’s status in New Zealand. In addition to being used to promote the country as a tourist destination, they also appear on the country’s $5 note.
“Yet despite being celebrated in this way, the species has been slowly slipping towards local extinction,” he said.
“The problem is that we lack data to examine the extent of human impacts, ranging from fisheries interactions, introduced predators to human disturbance, all of which contribute to the penguins' demise.
“However, considering that climate change explains only around a third of the variation in penguin numbers, clearly those other factors play a significant role.
“Unlike climate change, these factors could be managed on a regional scale.”
The researchers urged the Government to take steps to save the animal.
In the paper, they wrote: “Now we all know that yellow-eyed penguins are quietly slipping away we need to make a choice.
“Without immediate, bold and effective conservation measures we will lose these penguins from our coasts within our lifetime.”
Dutch officials on Monday opened what is being billed as one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms, with 150 turbines spinning in action far out in the North Sea.
Over the next 15 years, the Gemini windpark, which lies some 85 kilometres (53 miles) off the northern coast of The Netherlands, will meet the energy needs of about 1.5 million people.
At full winds the windpark has a generating capacity of some 600 megawatts, and will help supply some 785,000 Dutch households with renewable energy, the company said.
“We are now officially in the operational stage,” the company’s managing director Matthias Haag told AFP, celebrating the completion of a project first conceived in 2010.
The 2.8-billion-euro ($3 billion) project is a collaboration between the Canadian independent renewable energy company Northland Power, wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Wind Power, Dutch maritime contractor Van Oord and waste processing company HVC.
It has been “quite a complex” undertaking, Haag said, “particularly as this windpark lies relatively far offshore... so it took quite a lot of logistics”.
Gemini will contribute about 13 percent of the country’s total renewable energy supply, and about 25 percent of its wind power, he added.
It will also help reduce emissions of carbon-dioxide emissions, among the so-called greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, by 1.25 million tons, the company says.
The Netherlands remains dependant on fossil fuels which still make up about 95 percent of its energy supply, according to a 2016 report from the ministry of economics affairs.
But the Dutch government has committed to ensuring that some 14 percent of its energy comes from renewable sources such as wind and solar power by 2020, and 16 percent by 2023, with the aim of being a carbon neutral by 2050.
Gemini “is seen as a stepping stone” in The Netherlands, and has “shown that a very large project can be built on time, and in a very safe environment,” Haag added.
It's named after a Nordic god and drills deep into the heart of a volcano: "Thor" is a rig that symbolises Iceland's leading-edge efforts to produce powerful clean energy.
If successful, the experimental project could produce up to 10 times more energy than an existing conventional gas or oil well, by generating electricity from the heat stored inside the earth: in this case, volcanic areas.
Launched in August last year, the drilling was completed on January 25, reaching a record-breaking depth of 4,659 metres (nearly 3 miles).
At this depth, engineers hope to access hot liquids under extreme pressure and at temperatures of 427 degrees C (800 F), creating steam that turns a turbine to generate clean electricity.
Iceland's decision to harness the heat inside the earth in a process known as geothermal energy dates back to the 1970s and the oil crisis.
But the new geothermal well is expected to generate far more energy, as the extreme heat and pressure at that depth makes the water take the form of a "supercritical" fluid, which is neither gas nor liquid.
"We expect to get five to 10 times more power from the well than a conventional well today," said Albert Albertsson, an engineer at the Icelandic energy company HS Orka, involved in the drilling project.
To supply electricity and hot water to a city like Reykjavik with 212,000 inhabitants, "we would need 30-35 conventional high temperature wells" compared to only three or five supercritical wells, says Albertsson. The cost would be much less.
Scientists and the team working on the "Thor" drill project have two years to determine its success and the economic feasibility of the experiment, which is called the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP).
Situated not far from the Blue Lagoon, whose steaming blue waters attracted more than one million tourists last year, the IDDP overlooks craters formed by the last volcanic eruption 700 years ago that covered this part of the Reykjanes peninsula with a sea of lava.
The peninsula's moon-like landscape also attracted NASA training missions in 1965 and 1967, aiming to prepare astronauts for unknown landscapes they might encounter on the moon.
A Nordic island nation, rich in geysers with fountainlike jets of water and steam, hot springs and breathtaking volcanoes, Iceland is currently the only country in the world with 100 percent renewable electricity. Geothermal accounts for 25 percent, while the rest comes from hydroelectric dams.
But is Iceland a model for clean energy?
The answer is complex, according to Martin Norman, a Norwegian sustainable finance specialist at Greenpeace.
Although geothermal energy is still preferable to gas, coal and oil, it's not "completely renewable and without problems," he said.
"As soon as you start drilling you have issues to it, such as sulphur pollution and CO2 emission and they need to find solutions to deal with it," he added.
Albertsson agreed but said geothermal emissions were only "a fraction" compared to those produced by oil and natural gas. He added that recycling methods are progressing rapidly.
Iceland prides itself on being at the forefront of renewable energy, yet "it is far from meeting the international objectives in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions," Norman said.
The Institute of Economic Studies at the University of Iceland said in a February report that the country will not be able to abide by the COP21 climate change agreement signed in Paris in 2015.
Greenhouse gas emissions are rising in all sectors of the economy, except in fisheries and agriculture, it said.
And they are predicted to rise by between 53 and 99 percent by 2030 from 1999 levels, a far cry from the island nation's COP21 summit pledge to slash carbon pollution by 40 percent compared to the same benchmark.
Iceland's heavy and energy-intensive -- aluminium, silicon -- industries and booming tourism are some of the causes.
The land of ice and fire, with a population of 338,000, expects to welcome more than two million foreign visitors this year.
With the frequent landing of charter planes, coaches weaving through the interior of the country, quads and powerful 4x4 driving over the black lava landscape and hotels sprouting up in the capital, the growing volume of holidaymakers is taking a toll on Iceland's environment.
Norman, of Greenpeace, fears the capital will turn into "a Costa del Reykjavik" due to the lure of the profits to be made and result in Icelanders giving up the country's unique nature.
In an interview with AFP, Icelandic Environment Minister Bjort Olafsdottir said she hopes her nation will find the political will to reach its COP21 goals.
"If we do nothing, if we don't take strong actions, we won't reach the Paris agreement goals. But that's not the plan," she said.
The current government has doubled taxes on CO2 emissions and financial incentives for polluting industries have been removed, she argued.
"It is the first step, probably it is not enough. We have to do it with the help of the industry," she said.
Iceland's long-term goal is to reduce the country's dependence on hydrocarbons by having all cars run on electric power.
A major dust storm engulfed northern China and Beijing on Thursday, prompting authorities to cancel dozens of flights and urge children and the elderly to stay indoors.
Buildings were shrouded by the greyish haze in the capital while residents who ventured out covered their mouths and noses with masks and bandanas.
At least 48 flights were cancelled, including six international routes in Asia and Russia, according to the Beijing Capital Airport's website.
The storms regularly occur in spring, when winds from China's northwest blow loose, dry soil and sand into the city from the Gobi desert, coating urban areas with a layer of yellow grime.
Visibility in Beijing was as low as one kilometre (0.6 miles) in the morning, according to state media.
Levels of large particulate matter, known as PM 10, hovered around 900 in the late morning, according to air quality monitoring website aqicn.org, or nearly 20 times the World Health Organisation's recommended daily maximum exposure.
The high levels pose a threat to human health, and the city urged children and the elderly to stay indoors.
The storm will cover large portions of the country's northwest through tomorrow, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
Beijing has attempted to combat the phenomenon with greenbelts around the city, but increased desertification in the country's northwest have frustrated the efforts.
Winter temperatures in Norway’s Lapland could rise dramatically this century, with potentially devastating consequences for the region’s reindeer and the indigenous Sami people who make their living herding them.
A vast frozen tundra, the mountainous Finnmark plateau in Norway’s far north, is experiencing a hot spell-relatively speaking-wreaking havoc on the centuries-old Sami way of life.
“We already feel the effects of global warming here,” says Per Gaup, a colourful reindeer herder in his 60s out on the job. “I can see that we’re losing more reindeer because of climate change.”
Here, the continental climate with cold and dry winters is gradually becoming more like that of coastal areas, with milder temperatures and more rain.
The change affects grazing conditions for the 146,000 or so semi-domesticated reindeer in the region who feed on lichen and moss under the snow.
“When there’s more snow and it turns hard, the animals die because there’s less to eat, especially the young ones who are at the bottom of the hierarchy,” says Gaup, astride his snowmobile with an orange lasso slung across his chest.
One of the Sami dialects counts no fewer than 318 words to describe different types of snow. “Seanas”, for example, means a kind of grainy snow ideal for reindeer, making it easy for them to dig out the lichen and moss with their hooves.
But it has to be very cold to have that kind of snow. While temperatures in Kautokeino, Norway’s main reindeer-herding hub, used to regularly drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit) for several weeks at a time, nowadays this happens only rarely and briefly.
And today’s conditions are just a taste of what is to come. The mercury is expected to rise by seven to eight degrees Celsius in winter in Finnmark by the end of this century, according to Rasmus Benestad, a researcher at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.
A recurring problem for the reindeer now is alternating periods of thaw and freezing, which create thick layers of ice that the starving reindeer are unable to penetrate with their hooves.
When reindeer can’t access the lichen and moss on their herder’s grazing grounds, the flocks seek out other pastures. This can cause conflicts between herders over grazing grounds, which are not officially demarcated, and may require the herders to resort to the onerous and heavy task of putting out fodder.
The changing climate also complicates the twice-yearly transhumance, when the herders move the reindeer from their summer grazing grounds along the coast to their winter pastures in the Finnmark mountains, and vice versa.
Because of longer autumns, the ice, now often thinner and unpredictable, can give way under the weight of the reindeer as they cross waterways, sometimes taking the animals, and even their herders, into the deep.
“It’s getting worse and worse,” says another herder, alarm in his voice. “Last year, I lost at least 12 reindeer that fell through the ice. They died. I wasn’t able to get them out,” he says.
In November 2009, almost 300 animals from a single flock drowned in a river in neighbouring Sweden.
“The reindeer have always lived with the changing climate and they’ve learned to adapt to nature,” notes Anders Oskal, the director of the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry.
“Our main concern is that the Arctic is becoming increasingly accessible as it gets warmer, leading to an explosion of human activity,” he says.
Prospecting and development of mining and wind energy, along with the construction of roads and holiday cabins all compete with the Samis’ ancestral practices, encroaching on their pastures.
“The reindeer may be a semi-domesticated animal but it will always try to stay away from anything it associates with man, especially the females and the young,” says Oskal.
Mathis Andreas, a 47-year-old herder, is worried about the potential impact of a Canadian mining company’s alleged interest in land near his pastures.
“We can’t welcome with open arms people who come and destroy our livelihood, our way of life, our traditional lands,” he says.
“No one besides us has ever lived here. A company would just turn up one day and grab what has belonged to us from generation to generation, for hundreds, if not thousands, of years?”
Almost two thirds of Britons are living in areas with illegal levels of air pollution, new analysis has revealed.
Nearly 40 million citizens live in towns and cities where the levels of harmful nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are above legal limits set by the EU.
The study commissioned by the Labour Party raises fresh concerns over the public health impact of air pollution, after a string of findings linked poor air quality to disease and early death.
Sue Hayman, the Shadow Environment Secretary, called the levels of air pollution a “national crisis”.
“Labour will not allow the Tories to use the snap general election or Brexit to kick this issue into the long grass, or water down standards that would put millions of UK adults and children at risk,” she told The Guardian.
Her party said it would introduce a number of “clean air zones” across the UK and fight to close loopholes in car emissions tests if elected.
The new data reveals 59 per cent of people in the UK are living amid illegal pollution levels. Towns and cities including Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Burnley, Leeds and Sheffield all breach NO2 limits, as do many areas of London.
In the capital alone, NO2 pollution, which is caused mostly by diesel vehicles, is responsible for 5,900 early deaths each year.
Under the EU’s legally-binding Air Quality Directive, levels of NO2 should not exceed 40 micrograms per cubic metre of air.
The news came as government ministers made a last-minute bid to delay a High Court deadline for submitting revised proposals for tackling air pollution.
The Government had been ordered to produce tougher measures by 4.00pm on Monday after their initial plan was dismissed by judges on the grounds it was so weak that it was unlawful.
At 7.00pm on Friday, ministers requested a lengthy delay that would allow them to hold off putting forward new plans until after the 8 June general election.
A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We are firmly committed to improving the UK’s air quality and cutting harmful emissions. We are seeking an extension to comply with pre-election propriety rules.”
But Greenpeace UK said there was “no excuse” for further delaying the publication of the plan.
“Ministers have had months to come up with a robust plan to tackle illegal air pollution”, a spokesperson said.
Antarctic meltwater lakes are far more common than once thought and could destabilise glaciers, potentially lifting sea levels by metres as global warming sets in, scientists said Wednesday.
Most vulnerable are the massive, floating ice shelves that ring the Antarctic continent and help prevent inland glaciers from sliding toward the sea, they reported in the journal Nature.
Antarctica holds enough frozen water to push up global oceans by tens of metres.
Meltwater pooling on the surface of ice shelves can suddenly drain below the surface, fracturing the ice with heat and pressure, studies have shown.
"This is widespread now, and has been going on for decades," said lead author Jonathan Kingslake, a glaciologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
"Most polar scientists have considered water moving across the surface of Antarctica to be extremely rare -- but we found a lot of it over very large areas," he said in a statement.
To piece together a "big picture", Kingslake and his team combed through thousands of photos taken from military aircraft starting in 1947, along with satellite images dating back to 1973.
They catalogued nearly 700 distinct networks of interconnected ponds, channels and streams criss-crossing the continent.
A few reached to within 600 kilometres (375 miles) of the South Pole at altitudes topping 1,300 metres (4,300 feet), where liquid water was assumed to be rare or nonexistent.
Rising temperatures are eroding ice shelves -- which can be hundreds of metres thick and extend hundreds of kilometres over ocean water -- on two fronts, scientists say.
From above, warmer air and shifting winds remove snow cover, exposing the bedrock ice underneath. Because ice has a darker, blueish tint, it absorbs more of the Sun's radiation rather than reflecting it back into space.
But the main damage to ice shelves comes from ocean water eroding their underbellies.
Normally, that erosion is compensated by the accumulation of fresh snow and ice from above.
But oceans in recent decades have absorbed much of the excess heat generated by global warming, which has lifted average global air temperatures by one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid-19th century.
Temperatures in Earth's polar regions have risen twice as fast during the same period. On the Antarctic Peninsula -- which juts north toward South America -- they have shot up by 3.5 C (6.3 F) in just the last 50 years.
Indeed, in a dress rehearsal of what might happen elsewhere, large chunks of the peninsula's Larsen Ice Shelf fell dramatically into the ocean within days in 1995 and 2002 -- due in large part to the impact of pooling waters, scientists now believe.
Another huge piece of the same ice shelf, half the size of Jamaica, is hanging by a thread and could break off at any moment, scientists monitoring the future iceberg have said.
"This study tells us that there is already a lot more melting going on than we thought," said Robin Bell, a polar scientists at the same institute and lead author of a second study, also published in Nature, on Antarctic meltwater.
Bell and colleagues looked at the movement of water on the surface of Nansen Ice Shelf, also part of the Antarctica peninsula, and found that its drainage system may in fact help relieve pressure.
The elaborate, river-like system on the 50-kilometre (30-mile) long shelf was first observed more than a century ago, but recent aerial images and remote sensing show that it has remained remarkably stable, the study found.
During the southern hemisphere summer, the meltwater is efficiently drained through sinkholes and a "roaring 400-foot-wide waterfall into the ocean," Bell said.
Taken together, the two studies outline diverging scenarios of how the icy continent might respond to global warming and an increase in meltwater, the authors said.
Dramatic improvements are needed in ensuring access to clean water and sanitation worldwide, the World Health Organization said Thursday, warning that nearly two billion people currently use faecal-contaminated water.
Hundreds of thousands of people die each year because they are forced to drink contaminated water, the WHO said, urging large investments to help provide universal access to safe drinking water.
“Today, almost two billion people use a source of drinking-water contaminated with faeces, putting them at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio,” Maria Neira, who head’s WHO’s public health department, said in a statement.
“Contaminated drinking-water is estimated to cause more than 500,000 diarrhoeal deaths each year and is a major factor in several neglected tropical diseases, including intestinal worms, schistosomiasis and trachoma,” she added.
In 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) -- a series of aspirational targets for eradicating poverty and boosting human wellbeing, including vowing to ensure universal access to safe and affordable water and sanitation by 2030.
But according to a fresh report Thursday, published by WHO on behalf of UN-Water, countries will fall far short of this goal if they do not radically increase their investments.
The report welcomed the fact that countries had on average raised their annual budgets for water, sanitation and hygiene by 4.9 percent over the past three years.
But 80 percent of countries acknowledge that their financing is still not enough to meet their nationally-set targets for increasing access to safe water and sanitation, it found.
“In many developing countries, current national coverage targets are based on achieving access to basic infrastructure, which may not always provide continuously safe and reliable services,” WHO warned in a statement.
The World Bank has meanwhile estimated that investments in infrastructure will need to triple to $114 billion per year—not including operating and maintenance costs—in order to meet the SDG targets.
“This is a challenge we have the ability to solve,” said Guy Ryder, Chair of UN-Water and head of the International Labour Organization.
“Increased investments in water and sanitation can yield substantial benefits for human health and development, generate employment and make sure that we leave no one behind,” he added.
Whale cams have revealed the secret feeding habits of the giant mammals in frozen Antarctica, details on their social lives, and even how they must blow hard to clear sea ice to breathe.
Scientists attached tiny cameras and electronic tags to humpbacks to better understand what they do underwater as they study how shrinking sea ice caused by warming sea temperatures linked to climate change may impact them.
"Once we have an idea about where the whales feed, how often, where they go and rest, we can use this to inform policy and management to protect these whales and their ecosystem," leading whale scientist Ari Friedlaender said Tuesday.
The Australian Antarctic Division-led team said the information helped determine how the abundance of their main food, krill, affected the feeding success of whales.
It also added to their understanding of how any change in krill population due to climate change, commercial fishing, or ocean acidification, may impact whales in the future.
"We have some wonderful data on different feeding strategies from rolling lunges near the surface, to bubble net feeding, to deep foraging dives lunging through dense patches of krill," said Friedlaender.
"We have been able to show that whales spend a great deal of time during the days socialising and resting and then feeding largely throughout the evening and night time."
The cameras were attached by suction cups to each whale for between 24 and 48 hours before they fell off and were retrieved and reused.
WWF-Australia, which help fund the cameras, said the work was about enabling habitats to become more resilient and thrive in the future.
"Growing human impacts such as climate change and increasing krill fishing overlapping in their critical feeding areas need to be managed carefully," said Chris Johnson, WWF-Australia ocean science manager.
The Antarctic remains one of the world's last wild frontiers, containing some of the most pristine marine ecosystems left on the planet.
It is seen as a critical laboratory for scientists monitoring the effects of climate change.
The researchers also deployed longer-term electronic tags on the smaller Antarctic minke whales, with scientist Elanor Bell saying there was little information on their feeding behaviour.
"Minkes are faster and more elusive than humpback whales and often forage in areas with lots of sea ice," she said.
"This makes it challenging to find and approach them to deploy tracking equipment.
"So it was really exciting to be able to attach some tags on this voyage. These will transmit the location and dive depth data to satellites every time they surface for up to two months."
The research, backed by the International Whaling Commission, ultimately aims to estimate the abundance and distribution of whales and their role in the Antarctic ecosystem.
It starts with torrential rain in the mountains. Then a wall of mud and boulders comes barreling down the slopes, sweeping away houses, cars and people.
Like a video stuck on repeat, the story has played out over and over again in recent weeks in South America, where hundreds of people have been killed in landslides.
First they hit Peru, where the indigenous Quechua language has a word for these flash flood-landslides: “huaycos.”
More than 100 people have been killed since the start of the year in flooding and landslides in Peru, and more than 100,000 have lost homes or otherwise been affected.
In Colombia, the devastation is even worse.
The southern town of Mocoa was hit by an enormous landslide Friday that killed 262 people, including 43 children.
Why do these natural disasters occur? And why is South America being hit so hard right now?
“Nature has always been like this. Our ancestors understood it better than we do today,” said Peruvian architect Augusto Ortiz de Zevallos.
“Just look at the archaeological sites that remain, sheltered from the onslaught of water,” he told AFP.
Modernization has led to forests being replaced by farms, eliminating the natural barriers that restrain the water from torrential rains.
“During the (floods) of 2010 and 2011... 71 percent of the flooding happened in pasture land that had lost its trees,” the head of the weather warning system for the Colombian meteorological institute, Christian Euscategui, told newspaper El Tiempo.
Colombia’s weather authorities, who keep a close eye on deforestation, say it slowed by 12 percent in 2015. But that still meant forest losses of more than 124,000 hectares (475 square miles).
Global warming, which is melting the region’s glaciers, is also driving the problem.
“Climate change is generating dynamics and we see the tremendous results in terms of intensity, frequency and magnitude of these natural effects, as we have just seen in Mocoa,” said Martin Santiago, UN chief for Colombia.
Experts say chaotic urbanization is also to blame.
Mocoa’s population was swollen by poor migrants and especially people uprooted by Colombia’s half-century civil war.
These displaced residents and their often precarious houses were hit especially hard by the disaster.
“The centralization of society means people try to move closer to cities, no matter where it is, without considering whether a river used to flow there or if it’s a ravine where rain accumulates,” said architect Ortiz de Zevallos.
In the case of Mocoa, the town “was the victim of a lack of urban planning,” said Colombian ecologist Rodrigo Botero.
“That’s the case in nearly every region of Colombia.”
Even Mocoa’s own mayor, Jose Antonio Castro, said it “is not a place where a town should be,” because of all the rivers surrounding it.
Three of them flooded Friday, triggering the landslide.
In the Peruvian capital Lima-also hit hard recently by flooding and landslides-Mayor Luis Castaneda said nature “got the better of engineering.”
But that misses the whole point, said Ortiz de Zevallos.
“Engineering is about understanding nature,” like the ancient Incas did, said the architect.
The bishop of Mocoa, Luis Maldonado, had his own take when asked if God had abandoned the town’s people.
“God always forgives, man sometimes does, but nature doesn’t forgive,” he said.
A massive clean-up was in full swing Monday as floodwaters receded across parts of Australia devastated by a cyclone, with residents and business owners returning to thick mud, piles of debris and ruined property.
At least two people were killed and three remain missing after torrential rain and powerful winds pummelled large swathes of Queensland and New South Wales states over the past week, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people and causing huge damage.
While the worst of the weather is over, with Cyclone Debbie moving out to sea on Saturday, the daunting task facing those affected is just beginning.
New South Wales State Emergency Services Deputy Commissioner Mark Morrow said it would be a long haul for towns such as Lismore and Murwillumbah that were inundated by floods.
“The mud, combination of chemicals, raw sewage, paint which gets into everything. Two to three metres above floor level. Nothing escaped this. It was a very, very big flood,” he said.
Many of those who fled the area have begun heading back, with Morrow warning “it won’t be pleasant.”
“It will be a lot of work for those people as they return today,” he said.
Military and emergency personnel continued to work to restore essential services such as water and electricity in affected towns, where hundreds of homes have been deemed uninhabitable.
The Insurance Council of Australia has estimated the damage bill could reach Aus$1 billion (US$770 million), as people braved mud-caked streets to begin clearing out homes and shops, with mountains of ruined possessions piled on pavements.
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian, speaking in flood-ravaged Tweed Heads, said the government would do all it could to help those who have lost everything.
“It is not just about the few days when the floods hit and the water recedes. This is when the work starts. We know that,” she said.
The cyclone dumped more than a metre of rain on parts of Queensland and the huge volume of water is still slowly spilling down river systems, with Rockhampton next in the firing line.
It was feared the town would be hit later this week by its worst flooding in more than 60 years, but authorities Monday said the estimated peak had now been revised down, although major flood warnings still exist.
“We do want to stress to the people of Rockhampton that you still need to make your flood preparations,” said Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
“We are not out of the woods yet, there is still a long way to go,” she added, stressing that 300 schools in the state had been damaged and needed repairs.
One of the worst hit areas was Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday islands, key drawcards for foreign tourists.
Many resorts face months of repairs and rebuilding, but despite this tour boats mostly survived and some are already back in business.
“I’ve got butterflies being back on the water,” tour operator Asher Telford told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as he set sail with 18 undeterred holiday-makers on a two-night cruise.
Queensland Tourism Minister Kate Jones said the lucrative industry would bounce back.
“Although many communities have been affected by the cyclone and floods, Queensland is still open for business,” she said.
Towns were cut off and without power in northern Australia Wednesday after being pummelled by a powerful cyclone that washed battered yachts ashore and ripped roofs off houses in scenes compared to “a war zone”.
The category four storm slammed into the coast of Queensland state between Bowen and Airlie Beach on Tuesday afternoon, packing destructive winds and devastating some of the region’s tourist hotspots.
It has since been downgraded to a tropical low but the Bureau of Meteorology still warned of damaging wind gusts with “intense” rain.
“This rainfall is likely to lead to major river flooding over a broad area this week,” it said.
Roads to the towns of Bowen, Airlie Beach and Proserpine were inaccessible due to fallen trees, with up to 50,000 homes without power and communications down in many areas.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she was worried that people might be injured but had been unable to contact emergency services.
“We just don’t know how many people are injured, the status of their homes, and what we are hearing is that we are seeing some structural damage in places such as Proserpine,” she said.
On a brighter note, a baby girl was born at an ambulance station on the Whitsunday islands as the storm raged outside.
“You know, out of all of this, to see a little miracle, I think brings a smile to a lot of faces,” said Palaszczuk.
So far there have been no reports of deaths from cyclone Debbie. A man was badly injured when a wall collapsed on him Tuesday.
Great Barrier Reef islands popular with foreign tourists were among the worst hit.
Daydream Island Resort said it bore the brunt of the storm and sustained significant damage, including to its jetty and accommodation wings.
“Conditions were extreme with heavy rainfall and strong wind gusts causing damage to the resort and surrounds,” the resort said in statement, adding that all guests had been accounted for.
As day broke, scenes of devastation began to emerge.
Pictures posted on social media showed a light plane flipped upside down, battered yachts washed ashore, power poles down and trees fallen on houses.
Whitsunday Regional Council mayor Andrew Willcox described the scene in cyclone-ravaged Bowen as “like a war zone”.
“This beautiful seaside town is now half-wrecked, but we will rebuild,” he told Channel Nine television.
In the mining town of Collinsville, roofs were reported ripped off houses from a storm residents called “savage” and emotionally draining, with winds raging for hours.
“I’m shattered emotionally and physically. I’ve gone through the worst 24 hours I’ve experienced in my 53 years,” a local identified only as Julie told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Wind gusts of up to 270 kph (167 miles) were reported near Debbie’s broad core.
Emergency crews began to venture out at first light to better assess the damage, with the federal government having soldiers, helicopters and planes on standby to help clean up.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he had “put in place the biggest pre-deployment of the Australian Defence Force in advance of a natural disaster”.
Having lived through cyclones before, many people were prepared and sandbagged and boarded up homes after warnings to prepare for the worst weather to pummel the state since Cyclone Yasi in 2011, which ripped houses from their foundations and devastated crops.
Tens of thousands evacuated to higher ground, cyclones shelters or moved out of the region before it hit.
Yasi, which struck less populated areas, caused damage estimated at Aus$1.4 billion. Debbie has officially been declared a catastrophe by the Insurance Council of Australia, allowing claims from the disaster to be prioritised.
An "unprecedented" 21 different types of dinosaur tracks have been found on a stretch of Australia's remote coastline, scientists said Monday, dubbing it the nation's Jurassic Park.
Palaeontologists from the University of Queensland and James Cook University said it was the most diverse such discovery in the world, unearthed in rocks up to 140 millions years old in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Steve Salisbury, lead author of a paper on the findings published in the Memoir of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, said the tracks were "globally unparalleled".
"It is extremely significant, forming the primary record of non-avian dinosaurs in the western half of the continent and providing the only glimpse of Australia's dinosaur fauna during the first half of the Early Cretaceous Period," he said.
"It's such a magical place -- Australia's own Jurassic Park, in a spectacular wilderness setting."
He added: "Among the tracks is the only confirmed evidence for stegosaurs in Australia. There are also some of the largest dinosaur tracks ever recorded."
It was almost lost, with the Western Australian government in 2008 selecting the area as the preferred site for a massive liquid natural gas processing precinct.
Alarmed, the region's traditional Aboriginal custodians, the Goolarabooloo people, contacted Salisbury and his team to officially research what they knew was there.
They spent more than 400 hours investigating and documenting dinosaur tracks in the Walmadany area.
"We needed the world to see what was at stake," Goolarabooloo official Phillip Roe said, explaining the dinosaur tracks formed part of a songline that extends along the coast and then inland, tracing the journey of a Dreamtime creator being called Marala, the Emu man.
Aboriginal Australians have developed and are bound by highly complex belief systems -- known as the Dreamtime -- that interconnect the land, spirituality, law, social life and care of the environment.
A songline is one of the paths across the land which mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings", stories that have been handed down through the generations.
"Marala was the Lawgiver. He gave country the rules we need to follow. How to behave, to keep things in balance," Roe said.
The area was eventually awarded National Heritage status in 2011 and the gas project subsequently collapsed.
"There are thousands of tracks around Walmadany. Of these, 150 can confidently be assigned to 21 specific track types, representing four main groups of dinosaurs," Salisbury said.
"There were five different types of predatory dinosaur tracks, at least six types of tracks from long-necked herbivorous sauropods, four types of tracks from two-legged herbivorous ornithopods, and six types of tracks from armoured dinosaurs."
Most of Australia's dinosaur fossils have previously come from the eastern side of the vast country.
Singers like Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga and Ryan Adams performed at the 70th birthday celebrations of Grammy winning singer Elton John, who says a person is only as old as one feels within.
The iconic singer’s lengthy career was honoured throughout the evening by host Rob Lowe, with top singers, including Roseanne Cash, on Saturday night, reports people.com.
The guest list included celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris, Ryan Phillippe, Jon Hamm, Heidi Klum and Katy Perry.
The gala, which also paid tribute to John’s 50-year writing partnership with Bernie Taupin, benefited both the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the Hammer Museum at University od California - Los Angeles.
“Some people don’t like birthdays, they don’t like celebrating, they don’t want to know about them, and I’ve always enjoyed my birthday,” John said.
“Seventy sounds so archaic, doesn’t it? When I was growing up, 70 sounded like the end of the world. But things have changed—you’re only as old as you feel inside,” he added.
Ahead of the gala, John shared photographs from his family’s private birthday celebrations at their home, where he was joined by his young sons Elijah and Zachary.
In one Instagram image, the three can be seen gathered around a chocolate cake. The singer also shared several photographs of the birthday cards he had received for his birthday.
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck New Zealand last year was one of the most complex earthquakes ever recorded. Scientists discovered up to 12 faults ruptured at great distances apart – a finding that may mean current hazard models need to be completely rethought. It could also mean the risk of large earthquakes elsewhere are more likely.
The earthquake hit just after midnight local time on 14 November. There were several aftershocks measuring 5.6 and 5.8. Straight away, scientists thought a number of faults were involved and since it struck have been working to understand how and why it happened.
In a study published in the journal Science, a team of researchers led by Ian J Hamling from GNS Science in New Zealand announced just how complex the earthquake was. The team used a combination of field observations of displacements, GPS data and coastal uplift to work out what happened.
Findings showed the rupture propagated north for 170km along mapped and unmapped faults. It then continued offshore. They showed there were surface ruptures on at least 12 major faults up to 15km apart, with extensive uplift along much of the coastline.
These results were of huge surprise. It had been thought that the final rupture length was largely due to stress levels and geometric complexities, and models suggest that fault stepovers that are more than four to five km apart can halt the propagation. But more recently, scientists have found complex ruptures with multiple faults, challenging current assumptions about earthquakes.
"This complex earthquake defies many conventional assumptions about the degree to which earthquake ruptures are controlled by fault segmentation, and should motivate rethinking of these issues in seismic hazard models," they wrote.
In a related news article in Science magazine, Betsy Mason notes that the current findings could mean the chances of major earthquakes elsewhere in the world are higher. Ned Field, a seismologist with the USGS, called the findings a "wake-up call" – his team recently upgraded the chance of a large earthquake in California to account for the findings.
This means the chance of a magnitude 8 earthquake or above over the next 30 years has risen from 4.7% to 7% - but that the chance of smaller earthquakes has dropped by about 30%. "It's a significant step toward being a more realistic representation of the interconnectedness of the faults," Field told the magazine.
Experts from Worldwide Fund for Nature-India, who mapped the abundance of and threats to Gangetic dolphins in the Hooghly, say one of the most “striking features” of the study was that the endangered mammals were sighted in highly polluted pockets of the river.
The study was conducted by observing and counting dolphins from the riverbank at specific locations along the 534-km stretch of the Hooghly in West Bengal.
The current global population of the species is between 1,200 and 1,800 individuals.
“We sighted around 75 to 80 dolphins, between Farakka and Ganga Sagar, during the period. We know that in locations where pollution levels and man-made disturbances are high, dolphins are usually not found. However, there are some highly-polluted points such as Kolaghat and Gadiara where we sighted the mammals.
“If we take measures now, if we can reduce the level of pollution and generate awareness, then we can protect them,” Saswati Sen, State Director, WWF-India, West Bengal, told IANS on Wednesday.
Sen spotted around seven to eight dolphins with calves in Kolaghat, a town located on the banks of the Rupnarayan river in the East Midnapore district.
The organisation has initiated a dialogue with municipal corporations and panchayats to help generate awareness in these locations.
The survey was conducted from 2012-2014 to explore the behaviour, abundance, habitat-use and potential threats of the dolphin in the lower, middle and upper stretches of the river Ganga and its tributaries in southern Bengal.
The findings were published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa in August 2016. The paper was co-authored by marine biologist Mahua Roy Chowdhury and Sangita Mitra (presently associated with National Biodiversity Authority).
Observations were made during the day-light hours at 12 stations and their adjacent river stretches (from a boat) and along river banks during the study period.
Global positioning system (GPS) was used during navigation for recording the locations of sightings around every station and adjacent water channels.
As for threats, the study notes: “It was noticed during this study that potential threats in the dolphin habitat have an adverse impact either directly on their prey species or confine the habitat into isolated pockets.”
Some of the key concerns raised by the study are: Entanglement of the mammals in fishing gear such as nylon gill nets, availability of fish, the presence of dams and barrages in the river that prevent their migration and lead to the segregation of populations.
“Farakka Barrage on the Ganga is one major impediment in the movement of dolphins since its commissioning in 1975. Currently, there are five connecting bridges over the river Rupnarayan at Kolaghat and a series of sluice gates over river Damodar near Garchumukh obstructing the movement of the dolphins,” the study highlights.
Now the researchers plan to go for observations in stretches between two points along the river. “We plan to do it after the monsoon when the water recedes,” Sen added.
The Ganges River dolphin inhabits the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Karnaphuli-Sangu river systems of Nepal, India, and Bangladesh.
Disney’s hit movie “Beauty and the Beast”, under fire from Malaysian conservatives for a “gay moment”, will be released in the Muslim-majority country without any cuts, the entertainment giant said Tuesday.
The film “will be released in Malaysia on the 30th March, rated PG13 with no cuts”, a spokeswoman for Disney in Southeast Asia told AFP by email.
A movie chain, Golden Screen Cinemas, also tweeted that the movie would be shown uncut on that date in Malaysia.
A “PG 13” rating means parental guidance is advisable for children aged below 13.
Malaysian film censors could not immediately be reached for comment.
The film, featuring “Harry Potter” star Emma Watson, has raised hackles worldwide among religious groups angered by its depiction of Le Fou, the sycophantic sidekick to antagonist Gaston, as a gay man—making him Disney’s first-ever openly gay character.
Malaysian authorities had demanded cuts but Disney refused to budge, choosing to instead to appeal the decision last week.
“The way he dances is... gay and the dialogue and the lyrics of the song are too. In the same scene he also lifts up his shirt and shows a love bite on his tummy,” Abdul Halim Abdul Hamid, head of Malaysia’s Film Censorship Board, told AFP last week.
But some members of parliament on Monday questioned the need to censor the film, arguing that the debacle was giving Malaysia bad publicity.
Homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia and sodomy can result in imprisonment, corporal punishment and fines.
Religious groups and Islamic scholars had previously called for the film to be banned over concerns that it would promote “negative values” in the country.
The film has also come under fire from religious figures in neighbouring Singapore, while Russia slapped an adults-only rating on it last week following pressure from an ultra-conservative lawmaker.
Singapore has allowed the movie to be shown uncut but with a parental guidance rating for “mild portrayals of violence”.
Despite the controversy, the movie shattered box office records in its opening weekend, taking a monster $175.7 million in North America and $357 million in total, according to industry data.
The warming climate could make us shorter over time, suggests new research that found that mammals in the past had responded to extreme global warming events by shrinking in size.
While this mammalian dwarfism has previously been linked to the largest of the warming events, the new research has found that this evolutionary process can happen in smaller such events as well.
The findings could help shape an understanding of underlying effects of current human-caused climate change.
"We know that during the largest of these hyperthermals, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, temperatures rose an estimated nine to 14 degrees Fahrenheit and some mammals shrank by 30 percent over time, so we wanted to see if this pattern repeated during other warming events," said lead author of the study Abigail D'Ambrosia, a doctoral student at University of New Hampshire.
"The hope is that it would help us learn more about the possible effects of today's global warming," D'Ambrosia said.
In the study, published in the journal Science Advances, researchers collected teeth and jaw fragments in the fossil-rich Bighorn Basin region of Wyoming in the US.
Their focus was on several early mammals including Arenahippus, an early horse the size of a small dog, and Diacodexis, a rabbit-sized predecessor to hoofed mammals.
Using the size of the molar teeth as a proxy for body size, the researchers found a statistically significant decrease in the body size of these mammals during a second, smaller, hyperthermal, called the ETM2.
Arenahippus decreased by about 14 per cent in size, and the Diacodexis by about 15 per cent.
"We found evidence of mammalian dwarfism during this second hyperthermal. However, it was less extreme than during the PETM," D'Ambrosia said.
The researchers believe that the body change could have been an evolutionary response to create a more efficient way to reduce body heat.
A smaller body size would allow the animals to cool down faster. Nutrient availability and quality in plants may have also played a role.
Previous research shows that both the warming events considered in this study coincided with increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that could have limited nutrient quality in plants, which may have contributed to the smaller mammal body size.
The carbon dioxide released during both hyperthermals has a similar footprint to today's fossil fuels, the study said.
