----- <begin forwarded article> -----
Study: Glaciers Melting Faster
Thu Jul 18, 4:35 PM ET
By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - An estimated 24 cubic miles of ice are disappearing annually
from Alaskan glaciers, turning some imposing ice mountains into minor hills and
adding to the steady rise in global sea level, a study shows.
Researchers at the University of Alaska surveyed 67 major glaciers using an
airborne laser system and found that the rate of melting in the last five years
is rapidly growing. "From the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s, the glaciers
lost about 52 cubic kilometers (13 cubic miles) a year," said Anthony A.
Arendt, first author of the study appearing in the journal Science. "In
the last
five years, that rate has almost doubled." Over almost a half century, he
said, the glaciers have
lost some 500 cubic miles of ice. The new measurements show that the glaciers
of Alaska are contributing about half of the water worldwide flowing into the
oceans from shrinking mountain
glaciers, said Arendt. Studies have suggested that the global sea level has
risen about 7.8 inches over the last 100 years, and some experts say the rate
is increasing. Arendt said that would be consistent with what he and his
co-authors have found in their study of the Alaskan glaciers.
"The next question is what has been causing this glacier thinning. Is it
because there is less snowfall in the winter or are the summers warmer?"
said Arendt. "Glacier changes are linked to the climate, so this indicates
that something has changed about the Alaskan climate."
Alaska's glaciers grow if they receive more snow in the winter than is melted
in the summer. Since the glaciers are shrinking, then one end of ice equation
has changed and Arendt said that more study is needed to find out the causes.
Experts have attributed sea level rise to two primary effects: run off from the
melting of ancient ice fields, such as the Alaskan glaciers, and an ocean
expansion due to warming. Some have attributed the warming of the ocean to a
general global trend caused by human action.
Mysterious Shift in Earth's Gravity Suggests Equator
is Bulging
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
Something strange has been going on under our feet for the past four years.
Earth's gravity field suddenly shifted gears and began getting flatter,
reversing a course of centuries during which the planet and its gravity field
grew rounder each year. The scientists who noticed the change and report it in
the Aug. 2 issue of the journal Science suspect Earth itself may be flattening
out, with the oceans rising near the equator, but they aren't sure. What they
do know is that Earth has never been round. It has always bulged at the equator
and is about 0.3 percent fatter there, partly a result of the planet's
rotation.
Getting rounder
Yet ever since the last Ice Age, the planet has been getting rounder as ground
beneath the polar regions, relieved of the weight from ice that was miles thick
in places, has been rebounding. In some parts of Scandinavia and Canada, the
ground rises a quarter-inch (1 centimeter) per year.
Since the late 1970s, satellite measurements have shown that this post-glacial
rebound, as it is called, generates a corresponding rounding of Earth's gravity
field. Suddenly the trend has reversed. "Sometime around 1998, something
began to make the Earth's gravity field flatter," says Christopher Cox of
Raytheon Information Technology and Scientific Services. "The result is it
looks as if post-glacial rebound has reversed itself. But, we do not have any
reason to think that post-glacial rebound has in any way stopped or
changed."
In effect, Cox said in an interview, while post-glacial rebound continues to
make the Earth rounder, some movement of mass on the surface of the Earth must
be making the gravity field flatter. It's not a change anyone could notice;
it's only revealed by sensitive satellite measurements. The shift, however, is
significant. "The effect is twice as large as post-glacial rebound in
terms of effect on the gravity field, and it's in the opposite direction,"
Cox said. "Whatever it is, it's big."
Like a rubber ball
Cox, who also works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, described
post-glacial rebound as similar to pushing a rubber ball in at the top and
bottom with your fingers. "The sides come out, and the top and bottom go
in. Take your fingers off that rubber ball, and the sides are going to go in
and the top is going to come out again."
What does this have to do with Earth?
"You have material moving inside," Cox explained. The rubber is
compressed, but air is also pushed around. Some of the post-glacial rebound is
caused by the ground simply decompressing. But scientists have long known that
to account for what they've measured, Earth's physical shape must change. Material
--ground, water or air -- must be moved around. Though the planet's shape and
its gravity field are not directly correlated, they are related.
Cox and his colleague, Benjamin Chao of Goddard, were at first baffled by the
sudden reversal and flattening of the gravity field. They considered that ice
melting at the poles and raising the overall sea level could be the culprit.
Calculations showed, however, that "you would have to drop a 10x10x5
kilometer cube of it into the ocean every year for the past five years."
Separate measurements of sea surface height from NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon mission
don't support this
scenario. Material in Earth's crust can't be responsible -- it couldn't move so
quickly from the poles to the equator. Molten rock oozing around in Earth's
core might be to blame, but data do not support such a scenario. Changes in the
atmosphere might be involved, but no data supports that being the primary
cause, either. So what is it? Instead, Cox said, long-term circulation patterns
in
the ocean seem to be the most likely cause. Shifts in huge ocean currents --
similar to El Nino
but on larger scales and moving in a north-south direction -- might transport
enough water toward the equator to account for the flattened gravity field. One
such cycle is called the Pacific Decadal
Oscillation. "We have a strong suspicion that it's in the ocean," Cox
said. "Whatever the cause, the results of Cox and Chao emphasize the
importance of gravity variations as a barometer of integrated mass changes in
the Earth system," write scientists Anny Cazenave and R. Steven Nerem in
an analysis of the research for Science. "Monitoring these variations with
improved spatial and temporal resolution would provide an important tool for
studying Earth system changes." Since Cox and Chao submitted their paper
to the journal, they've continued to look into the mystery and are more
confident that the ocean is behind it all. "But we need more data,"
Cox said.
--- <end forwarded article> ---
Note to "Prophesied 'Earth Changes' List" members
-
Herein you'll find three current news stories (or excerpts thereof), followed
by an URL to the original article...
News Article Titles
---- ------- ------
"Scientists Say 30-Second Alert Possible for Quakes"
12 Aug. '02
"Experts warn of disasters from climate changes"
30 July '02
"Louisiana Sinking: One State's Environmental
Nightmare Could Become Common Problem" (first in an
occasional AP series) 10 Aug. '02
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
This first one is short, so is included in total, followed by URL to original.
--- <begin forwarded article> ---
SCIENTISTS SAY 30-SECOND ALERT POSSIBLE FOR QUAKES
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Scientists working with a new network of seismic
monitoring stations in Taiwan say it is now possible to give as much as 30
seconds warning before some major earthquakes time to shut off gas lines, stop
public transit and take other precautions to limit damage. "This could be
a 911 (emergency) call for earthquakes," researcher Leon Teng of the
Southern California Earthquake Center at the University of Southern California
said on Monday. "When you have this kind of information coming in, you
really can prepare."
Teng's research, published in the current issue of the Bulletin of the
Seismological Society of America, is based on the analysis of data derived from
Taiwan's seismic station network, now one of the most comprehensive earthquake
monitoring systems in the world.
By allowing computers to isolate "subnetworks" of closely placed
monitoring stations, they were able to identify the early stages of specific
earthquakes, calculating estimates of epicenter and magnitude rapidly enough to
alert communities further away that a shake-up is coming. During the test
period, the "subnetwork" system correctly detected and reported 54
earthquakes
measuring between 3.5 and 6.3, and that further tests have shown it close to
100 percent accurate.
The quake information is then relayed to emergency response agencies in areas
likely to be affected as the quake's shockwaves move through the earth's
surface. While in some cases the earthquake occurs too close for warning,
communities that are further away can get 20 to 30 seconds to prepare, Teng
said. "(The information) is coming in ahead of the destructive waves. That
will give you some warning,"
he said.
EXPENSIVE WARNINGS
Earthquake alert systems have been tested in several West Coast communities, as
well as in Mexico and areas of Japan, according to Prof. Thomas Heaton, an
earthquake expert at the California Institute of Technology. While these
systems have proven to be effective in
sensing some of the "compression waves" or "p-waves" that
signal the onset of an earthquake, they are often too small or localized to
provide much in the way of a useful warning. "In the most likely
circumstances you would get less than ten seconds," Heaton said. "The
demand for such
systems is not really there until we have a capability to deliver and use the
information quickly."
Teng said the Taiwan prototype for earthquake alerts could be replicated in
other seismically active areas, allowing the automated shutdown of key utility,
transit and computer systems and giving officials time to prepare emergency
medical and rescue teams. But he said that in most cases -- including
California -- earthquake agencies have not set up enough seismic monitoring
stations to form the "subnetworks" crucial to determining when and
where an earthquake will hit.
Taiwan, which experiences numerous earthquakes, has spent a total of $60
million on its seismic monitoring system. To equip California with a comparable
network could cost as much as $200 million, he said. "Taiwan is about 20
percent the size of California, but it has as many instruments as California.
There is high density, quick transmission and good software."
--- <end forwarded article> ---
--------------------------------------------------------
Again short, so not excerpted. "Climate change" caused
disasters have been predicted for some years now, from
a number of sources... but, I guess *now* its
"official" since the so-called experts have chimed in.
--- <begin forwarded article> ---
EXPERTS WARN OF DISASTERS FROM CLIMATE CHANGES
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP)- Climate changes caused by global warming will inundate
small island states and seriously threaten agriculture, forests, marine
ecosystems and public health, a U.N. expert warned Tuesday.
"The earth's atmosphere is now warming at the fastest rate in recorded
history, a trend that is projected to cause extensive damage to forests, marine
ecosystems and agriculture," said Ravi Sawhney of the Bangkok-based United
Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, or ESCAP.
Speaking at the opening of a four-day conference here on climate change, Sawhney
warned that small island states, deltas and low lying coastlines will be
submerged while agriculture and public health could be adversely affected in
many countries. Sawhney said global warming can be controlled by more usage of
renewable energy, cleaner production and
consumption of power and increased reforestation.
The 12th Asia-Pacific Seminar on Climate Change, which brought together
scientists and experts from the Asia-Pacific region, was organized by Japan's
Ministry of the Environment, ESCAP and the Tokyo-based Institute for Global
Environment Strategies.
The delegates will be brought up to date on the status of the Kyoto Protocol on
global warming, the landmark 1997 international agreement that seeks to set
mandatory reductions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by industrial nations.
The conference will also help contribute to the global conference on the
environment to be held from Aug. 26 - Sept. 4 in Johannesburg, South Africa. In
a welcoming speech, a senior Thai government official said "climate change
is the most serious environmental threat facing the world today" and would
have a profound impact on the Asian-Pacific region. But because of the lack the
research and knowledge on how to plan for climate change, countries in the
region need to increase education and transfers of technology, said Apichai
Chvajarernpun, the deputy secretary general of the Office of Environmental
Policy and Planning.
--- <end forwarded article> ---
--------------------------------------------------------
The third, and final, news story today is excerpted below. You'll find the URL
to the complete, original article (the first in what is called an
"occasional series", by the Associated Press) afterward. This article touches upon some of the "disasters"
only hinted at in the last one. So, fearless earthprophecy-l member, read on...
--- <begin excerpted article> ---
LOUISIANA SINKING: ONE U.S. STATE'S ENVIRONMENTAL
NIGHTMARE COULD BECOME COMMON PROBLEM
ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. (AP) - At the end of the road to Isle de Jean
Charles, a patchwork of dusty green salt grass and sparkling blue water extends
untouched to the horizon.
Stilt-legged egrets wing the sky or stand frozen in the grass. Occasionally a
fat mullet heaves itself out of the water and falls back with a gentle plop...A
few decades ago Isle de Jean Charles was a patch of high ground in a sea of
grassy marsh teeming with catfish and crawdads. Today the small community is a
true island, regularly flooded during storms and sometimes even at high tide.
In a few years it will be submerged completely...... A widely publicized
government report recently predicted that sea-level rise caused by global
warming could swallow sizable chunks of the coastal United States in the coming
century. In Louisiana, that future is already here. Up to 35 square miles of
Louisiana's wetlands sink into the Gulf of Mexico each year. To date, an area
the size of Rhode Island has been lost. In some places the coastline has
retreated 30 miles. If scientists' global warming projections prove correct,
virtually every (U.S.) state along the
Atlantic and Gulf coasts will have problems similar to Louisiana's by the
middle of the century. In a worst-case scenario, sea level would be 44 inches
higher 50 years from now. If it is, 23,000 square miles of land along the Gulf
and Atlantic coasts will disappear. Low-lying cities such as Miami, Houston,
Wilmington, N.C., and Charleston, S.C., will face many of the same problems New
Orleans grapples with today. Beyond the United States, low-lying coastal
countries such as the Netherlands, Bangladesh and the Bahamas stand to lose
large swaths of territory... ."We're not going to be the only ones in the
boat," says Al Naomi, a project manager in the New Orleans
District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "We're just in the boat
first."
--- <end excerpted article> ---
FULL NEWS STORY; in which the dire effects of a major
hurricane (25,000 to 100,000 people killed; stagnant,
possibly toxic, un-drainable water taking
weeks-to-months to evaporate) hitting southern LA.,
and New Orleans specifically, are discussed & a
long-term solution for the coastal wetlands proposed
in--
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