Global Disaster Watch - Natural Disasters

Friday, November 6, 2009 -

A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY -
A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.
Chinese proverb

QUAKES -
World map of the quakes in the past 7 days.
Quake list.

Quakes this morning -
5.0 CARLSBERG RIDGE

Largest quakes yesterday -
11/5/09 -
5.5 PAPUA, INDONESIA
5.5 TAIWAN
5.1 RYUKYU ISLANDS, JAPAN
5.4 MACQUARIE ISLAND REGION
5.7 TAIWAN
5.1 NEAR THE COAST OF YEMEN
5.5 NEAR THE COAST OF YEMEN

Midwest quakes are aftershocks from 1800s - Study suggests that people shouldn’t worry about huge temblors in region. The small earthquakes that sporadically rattle the central United States may actually be aftershocks from a few extremely large quakes that occurred in the region almost 200 years ago, according to the new study. The heart of the seismic activity was near the town of New Madrid, Missouri, close to the Kentucky and Tennessee borders. The town has shaken with numerous earthquakes since, from tiny ones that don't cause much of a stir, to moderate sized ones, such as a 5.2 quake in 2008. "There's no motion across the fault now, so nothing's going on, but yet there are still small earthquakes there." The present-day temblors are getting smaller with time, which is a characteristic of aftershocks. The findings suggest that people may not need to worry so much about the next big quake happening in the New Madrid region anytime soon. "That fault system seems to be shutting down, and if so, we may be looking at maybe thousands of years before we have [large] earthquakes on that particular fault again."

TAIWAN - A magnitude-6 earthquake hit Nantou County at 5:32 p.m. Thursday, causing buildings to sway all over Taiwan. The quake was the biggest to hit Central Taiwan since the 7.3-magnitude quake on September 21, 2009 which killed more than 2,400 people nationwide, but no deaths were reported Thursday. The main quake’s epicenter was located at a relatively short distance of 19.3 kilometer under the surface 10.3 kilometer southeast from the township of Mingchien, where the tremor’s intensity reached seven. The same area was hit by several aftershocks during the rest of the day, the first registering 4.7 about six minutes later. The biggest, measuring 5.7, struck Mingchien at 7:34 p.m. The quakes caused light injuries by falling objects inside buildings and forced the high-speed rail line to suspend traffic in Central and Southern Taiwan. Cracks appeared in houses in Mingchien, with ceilings and walls damaged at a local government building. There were also reports of hundreds of households in the Nantou area losing electricity and phone service.

TROPICAL STORMS -
Map.
Projected storm paths .
Tropical depression IDA was 127 nmi S of Puerto Lempira, Honduras.

Hurricane Ida ripped into Nicaragua's Atlantic coast Thursday, destroying homes, damaging schools and downing bridges before losing steam and and later becoming a tropical depression. Ida, clocking 75-m.p.h. winds, struck land around sunrise in Tasbapauni, about 60 miles northeast of Bluefields. About 80% of homes were destroyed in nearby Karawala, a fishing village of about 100 shacks.

VIETNAM - The number of people killed by floods in central Vietnam has risen to 107 and the new estimate of damage caused by Mirinae was at least $US120 million.

STRANGE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR -
Bald bears perplex experts - Bears in a zoo in eastern Germany have lost their fur, but international experts cannot work out why. Three spectacled bears in Leipzig Zoo are in various states of baldness, with the worst being hairless all over. The zoo curator said he had discovered that zoos throughout Europe and further afield had encountered the same problem, but no-one knew why. One expert suggested it could be caused by climate and the diet of the bears, whose native habitat is South America. The bears come from the Andean mountains of Ecuador, Peru and northern Bolivia. "I could hardly believe it is a bear although I have been dealing with bears all my life." The bears are suffering from itchiness as well, so animal keepers apply ointments to soothe their skin. "This problem with the spectacled bears is not just in Leipzig. There are other zoos in Europe and overseas having the same problem. And so we've had an international working group of zoo vets looking at this for some time already." Symptoms first appeared in the animals about two years ago. The mountain bears have a seasonal pattern influenced by climate, behaviour and food. "We in zoos are not very good at imitating natural seasonality." (photo)

HEALTH THREATS -
Latest bird flu news from the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy.
HealthMap - Global disease alert map.
SWINE FLU BREAKING NEWS

Wall St firms get swine flu vaccines first - News that US swine flu vaccines, meant to be prioritised for the nation's most vulnerable, are being distributed to Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs has sparked uproar. The New York Department of Health said Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have applied for supplies of the H1N1 vaccine and are eligible because they are large employers with in-house clinics. With H1N1 vaccines often scarce and populist anger already raging at Wall Street for last year's financial meltdown, the news triggered furor overnight. The secretary-treasurer for the largest US health care union, the SEIU, said it was "obscene" that powerful and wealthy private organisations got vaccines when "at-risk Americans are either waiting in line for hours or getting turned away." "It is shocking to think that private firms would be prioritised ahead of hospitals when the vaccine supply cannot meet the demand." "What they (critics) have to realise is that all providers who order H1N1 vaccine - whether it be a hospital or an employee health service - they have to agree that they'll only administer the vaccine to people in at-risk groups." So far, Citigroup has requested 2200 vaccines and received 1200, health department figures show. Goldman Sachs requested 5400 vaccines and has received 200. Morgan Stanley, which requested 1500, has not yet received any. Giant media corporation Time Warner requested 2000 and has so far received 100.

German drug regulators have approved Novartis's cell-culture pandemic H1N1 vaccine, becoming the first country to clear a cell-based version. The vaccine, made in Marburg, Germany, contains 3.75 micrograms of antigen and an MF95 adjuvant. It is approved for those 6 months old and older. Studies found a single dose provoked a good immune response with no unexpected safety or tolerability concerns. Novartis is building a second cell-culture plant in the United States.

Thursday, November 5, 2009 -

A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY -
When you want to test the depths of a stream, don't use both feet.
Chinese proverb

QUAKES -
World map of the quakes in the past 7 days.
Quake list.

Quakes this morning -
5.5 PAPUA, INDONESIA
5.5 TAIWAN
5.1 RYUKYU ISLANDS, JAPAN
5.4 MACQUARIE ISLAND REGION
5.7 TAIWAN
5.1 NEAR THE COAST OF YEMEN
5.5 NEAR THE COAST OF YEMEN

Largest quakes yesterday -
11/4/09 -
5.6 NORTHERN QINGHAI, CHINA
6.0 AZORES ISLANDS REGION
5.2 SAMOA ISLANDS REGION
5.2 OFF COAST OF OREGON
5.5 MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES

Many recent earthquakes may have been the aftershocks of large quakes that occurred hundreds of years ago. Researchers describe a new pattern in the frequency of aftershocks that could explain some major quakes. They found that, away from plate boundaries, echoes of past earthquakes can continue for several hundred years. In the middle of a continent, the earth takes longer to recover. "It's something we had never spotted before...Most big earthquakes happen at [plate] boundaries - like the San Andreas fault. There is a lot of movement there and aftershocks go on for about ten years after a big quake." When the aftershocks have dissipated, scientists monitor regular movement of the earth to gauge the likelihood of a future quake. But small earthquakes also occur where there is none of this regular movement. "So if the ground has not been storing up energy for future earthquakes, these must be aftershocks." This could explain the disastrous earthquake in 2008 in China's Sichuan province. The event shocked many scientists as this was an area where there had been hardly any earthquakes in the past few centuries. But these "aftershock quakes" get smaller over time. "It even looks like we see small earthquakes today in the area along Canada's Saint Lawrence valley where a large earthquake occurred in 1663." They recommend that, instead of just focusing on the regions where small, regular earthquakes happen, scientists should use methods like GPS satellites and computer modelling to look for places where the earth is "storing up energy for a large future earthquake".

VOLCANOES -
KENYA - Surface deformation of 4 active volcanoes underscore possibility for human hazard, potential of geothermal resources. "The Kenyan Rift volcanoes are part of a larger Great Rift Valley complex that extends all the way from Mozambique to Djibouti; their presence in East Africa attests to the presence of magma reservoirs within the Earth's crust. Our study detected signs of activity in only four of the 11 volcanoes in the area -- Suswa, Menengai, Longonot and Paka -- all within the borders of Kenya." Small surface displacements, which are not visible to the naked eye, were captured using InSAR, a sophisticated satellite-based radar technique. From 1997 – 2000 they discovered that the volcanoes at Suswa and Menengai subsided 2 – 5 cm, and between 2004 and 2006 the Longonot volcano experienced uplift of ~9 cm. However, the most dramatic uplift unfolded at Paka, which had uplift of ~21 cm during a nine month period in 2006-2007. This pulse of activity was preceded by transient uplift and subsidence at a second source, associated with the magma flow through the complex underground plumbing system. Overall, the events were short in duration and episodic rather than continuous, which means discrete pulses of magma were arriving at the crust, similar to a stop valve that is being turned on and off intermittently. "The fact that these areas are so close to a major metropolitan area pose a challenge in terms of a large volcanic or seismic event." Suswa, Menengai and Longonot are all located in densely populated areas within 100 km of Nairoibi.

TROPICAL STORMS -
Map.
Projected storm paths .
Hurricane IDA was 127 nmi S of Puerto Lempira, Honduras.

Hurricane Ida made landfall in eastern Nicaragua today and may enter the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical storm within five days after passing over Honduras. Ida was centered about 75 miles (125 kilometers) north of the port city of Bluefields, Nicaragua, as of about 9 a.m. local time. It was moving northwest at 6 miles per hour. The storm had maximum sustained winds of about 75 mph, making it Category 1, the least-intense hurricane on the five- step Saffir-Simpson scale. Ida may return to tropical-storm strength, with winds below 74 mph, as it moves inland over Nicaragua before weakening into a depression. More than 2,200 people have been evacuated from islands off the Caribbean coast and from shanties near Bluefields amid heavy rain last night and this morning. Eastern Nicaragua and eastern Honduras are forecast to get as much as 25 inches (64 centimeters) of rain, which may produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides. A storm surge may raise water levels in eastern Nicaragua as much as 3 feet above ground level, with battering waves. The storm is forecast to pass over Honduras as a depression and then re-intensify into a tropical storm as it moves back into the Caribbean this weekend. It should pass just east of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on the morning of Nov. 9 and then north into the Gulf of Mexico, home to about a quarter of U.S. oil production, according to a five-day track prediction.

EXTREME HEAT / WILDFIRES / DROUGHT / CLIMATE CHANGE-
ARCTIC - Temperatures were as much as 10 degrees above average during portions of October. Intense low pressure worked to generate strong southerly winds over the Arctic Ocean and Siberia, keeping ice from forming. A study suggests that less summer sea ice cover can lead to a feedback loop: warmer water (less ice) provides more energy for storms; the winds from these storms delay ice formation during the fall, and so the cycle deepens. This pattern retards ice growth but at the same time increases precipitation (snowfall) which accumulates over land areas. This makes for greater cold air reservoirs later in the winter. One might conclude this would lead to more cold air outbreaks in the U.S. and Canada, but the data is far too sketchy and recent to draw that conclusion. For now, the arctic sea ice pack hovers just above the 2006/2007 record lows for various parts of November (2006 was the record low sea ice year for the last two weeks of the month; 2007 for the first two weeks). Ice growth is expected to accelerate now that all of the Arctic Ocean is in continuous darkness for the next two months. Whether the UNUSUAL weather pattern will continue to interfere is unknown.

AFRICA - Temperatures at Kilimanjaro never get above freezing. The ice there has shrunk (although data only goes up to 2007), but the reason is in dispute. When Kilimanjaro first became the poster child of the Global Warming movement a few years ago, we were told that the ice would be gone at 2015. The latest report has pushed it back to 2020... perhaps because the ice is not melting nearly as fast as was expected. The measured ice has leveled off quite a bit in the past decade. 90% of the ice has been lost since first measurements, but what else other than global warming could explain the ice melt? The glacier atop Kilimanjaro is believed to have formed around 11,000 years ago during a wet period in eastern Africa. When the first European climbers reached the summit in 1889, the local climate was already dry,and the ice was already retreating. This is due to sublimation. That is when snow an ice skip melting and goes directly to water vapor gas. Since there has not been enough snow to replenish the supply, then net result is ice loss. Again, not from melting, since the temperature is still below freezing near the peak. The ice topography shows little evidence that melting is anything but a minor force. Based on ice core samples, conditions are returning to where they were 11,000 years ago. Jagged spires and cliffs made of ice up to 120 feet tall are not softened around the edges. "The real explanations are much more complex. Global warming plays a part, but a variety of factors are really involved." Forest reduction in the areas surrounding Kilimanjaro, and not global warming, might be the strongest human influence on glacial recession. "Clearing for agriculture and forest fires - often caused by honey collectors trying to smoke bees out of their hives - have greatly reduced the surrounding forests." The loss of foliage causes less moisture to be pumped into the atmosphere, leading to reduced cloud cover and precipitation and increased solar radiation and glacial evaporation.
"So why did the AP just release a story about the disappearing ice caps? Perhaps it was conveniently timed with Al Gore's appearance on Good Morning America. Perhaps it times out with Senator Barbara Boxer's attempt to fast track the newly named Tax and Cap Bill called, "Clean Energy and American Power Act". Regardless, we are all about to be inundated with global warming and climate calamity stories leading up to the Climate Conference in Copenhagen on December 7th."
Researchers have found that since 1971, temperatures at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro have been rising faster than global warming alone would account for. Deforestation may have led to changes in temperatures and precipitation patterns that have at least contributed to, if not driven, changes at the summit.

SPACE WEATHER-
NOAA forecasters say there is a chance that a coronal mass ejection (CME) will hit Earth's magnetic field today, and the impact could spark a high-latitude geomagnetic storm. The billon-ton cloud was blown into space by departing sunspot 1029 on Oct. 31st. Normally, CMEs take only two or three days to reach Earth, but during the deep solar minimum of 2008-2009, the CLOUDS HAVE SLOWED TO A VERITABLE CRAWL. Crossing the sun-Earth divide now requires about five days, so an Oct. 31st CME should arrive on Nov. 5th. Because the blast was not squarely Earth-directed, the sluggish CME will deliver at most a glancing blow.

HEALTH THREATS -
Latest bird flu news from the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy.
HealthMap - Global disease alert map.
SWINE FLU BREAKING NEWS

CDC says vaccine shortage likely to outlast current H1N1 wave.

The Ukrainian health ministry said today that 86 people have died of respiratory illnesses, five of them from the pandemic virus. A global team is in the country to help assess the outbreak, which has hit western regions hardest.

Pain relievers may blunt vaccine response - Taking pain relievers such as ibuprofen or aspirin to reduce the pain of flu injections appears to blunt immune response. Researchers found the association across a range of vaccine and pain relievers. They say that cyclooxygenase 2 inhibitors block optimal production of B lymphocytes, which make antibodies. Czech researchers recently found that acetaminophen weakened infants' response to vaccines.

Iowa cat tests positive for pandemic flu - A 13-year-old Iowa house cat was recently diagnosed as having novel H1N1 after two of its three owners were sick. The cat and its owners have recovered. It is the first pandemic virus isolation in a cat, and it doesn't appear the cat spread the virus.

CURRENT WORLDWIDE NATURAL DISASTERS