Musk oxen clash horns in a battle for dominance on Alaska's Seward Peninsula. Researchers suspect that herds of reindeer, musk oxen and other Arctic animals may face starvation as a warming climate affects their ability to access food. Laurent Dick/AP
When wildlife biologists visited a remote spot in Canada called Banks Island in the spring of 2004, they discovered thousands upon thousands of dead musk oxen. It took years to determine the cause. They called it "rain-on-snow" — the worst case of it ever documented.
"Long story short, about 20,000 musk oxen starved to death because of this event," says geologist Jaakko Putkonen. It was a "humongous event" that took place in the fall of 2003.
Putkonen, who is a professor at the University of North Dakota, has since discovered a few anecdotal accounts of big rain-on-snow events that killed reindeer in the Arctic and in Scandinavia.
What happens is this: Unusually warm weather drops rain on top of snowpack. The rain either pools at the surface or trickles down to the soil below the snowpack, then freezes into a sheet of ice. Musk oxen, which are shaggy, cow-sized animals that weigh hundreds of pounds, can't break through the ice to browse on plants underneath the snow. Sooner or later, they starve.
Putkonen says it's hard to know where and how often this is happening. The Arctic is vast and remote, and one never knows where or when a rain-on-snow event will happen. Even if you put down instruments to record one, they freeze up or get snowed under. CONTINUE
Darkness falls in Asia during total eclipse, luring masses
(CNN) -- The longest solar eclipse of the century cast a wide shadow for several minutes over Asia and the Pacific Ocean Wednesday, luring throngs of people outside to watch the celestial spectacle.
Event is longest of 21st century, astronomers predict it would last over 6 minutes
People in parts of Pacific Ocean, China and India able to get full view
Chinese city of Shanghai touted as one of the best spots to watch the eclipse
Some unusual watching events include a cruise, plane trip and a music festival
Day turned into night. Temperatures turned cooler in cities and villages teeming with amateur stargazers.
The total eclipse could be seen starting in India on Wednesday morning and moving eastward across Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Vietnam, China and parts of the Pacific. Millions cast their eyes towards the heavens to catch a rare view of the sun's corona.
Tim O'Rourke, a 45-year-old freelance photographer from Detroit, Michigan, lives in Hong Kong but traveled up to Shanghai -- touted as one of the best spots to watch the eclipse. See China's experience in the dark »
"It was pitch black like midnight," said O'Rourke, standing in People's Square with what appeared to be a crowd of thousands.
"Definitely not disappointed we came. Of course it would have been much better with nice weather, blue skies. But still it was a great experience, it was a lot of fun." he said. Viewing the eclipse in pictures »
The European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory Will Search for the Answers to Star Formation, Water Creation and More
Atop the Ariane 5 rocket in Kourou, French Guiana, Herschel waits for its May launch. Named after the British astronomer William Herschel, who discover the infrared spectrum and Uranus, the observatory is the largest space telescope ever launched. Photo courtesy of the ESA
When in 1969 Joni Mitchell, in her song “Woodstock,” wrote “We are stardust…,” she expressed –- as any astronomer will tell you -– a scientific fact as well as a glaring rock metaphor. Almost all elements in the universe are literally debris blown off by dying stars — material that is later recycled in the formation of new stars, planets and eventually life.
While water plays a crucial role in these cosmic births, much about its own origin in the universe remains unknown. Today, however, hopes are high, as the largest telescope ever flown into space blasts off into the great unknown to unlock the great secrets of water in the universe. The Herschel Space Observatory, which launched in May, opened its eyes in June to peer deep into the cosmos — into galaxies, star-forming regions and dying stars. CONTINUE
This image, captured by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Hawaii, shows a large impact on Jupiter's south polar region on Monday. The impact zone is the bright spot at lower left.
PASADENA, Calif. - Astronomers say Jupiter has apparently been struck by an object, possibly a comet.
Images taken early Monday by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility, at the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, show a dark scar in Jupiter's atmosphere near the south pole of the gas giant.
The images also show bright upwelling particles in the atmosphere, detected in near-infrared wavelengths, as well as a warming of the upper troposphere with possible extra emission from ammonia gas detected at mid-infrared wavelengths.
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena captured the new images after receiving a tip from an Australian amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley, on the night before.
"We were extremely lucky to be seeing Jupiter at exactly the right time, the right hour, the right side of Jupiter to witness the event. We couldn't have planned it better," JPL scientist Glenn Orton said in a statement released by the lab.
Orton said the event "could be the impact of a comet, but we don't know for sure yet."
The images, taken by the space agency's infrared telescope in Hawaii, come on the 15th anniversary of another comet strike. In 1994, Jupiter was bombarded by pieces of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
Mysterious, glowing clouds previously seen almost exclusively in Earth’s polar regions have appeared in the skies over the United States and Europe over the past several days.
Photographers and other sky watchers in Omaha, Paris, Seattle, and other locations have run outside to capture images of what scientists call noctilucent (”night shining”) clouds. Formed by ice literally at the boundary where the earth’s atmosphere meets space 50 miles up, they shine because they are so high that they remain lit by the sun even after our star is below the horizon
The clouds might be beautiful, but they could portend global changes caused by global warming. Noctilucent clouds are a fundamentally new phenomenon in the temperate mid-latitude sky, and it’s not clear why they’ve migrated down from the poles. Or why, over the last 25 years, more of them are appearing in the polar regions, too, and shining more brightly.
“That’s a real concern and question,” said James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University and the principal investigator of an ongoing NASA satellite mission to study the clouds. “Why are they getting more numerous? Why are they getting brighter? Why are they appearing at lower latitudes?”
Nobody knows for sure, but most of the answers seem to point to human-caused global atmospheric change.
Noctilucent clouds were first observed in 1885 by an amateur astronomer. No observations of anything resembling noctilucent clouds before that time has ever been found. There is no lack of observations of other phenomena in the sky, so atmospheric scientists are fairly sure that the phenomenon is recent, although they are not sure why.
Over the last 125 years, scientists have learned how the clouds form. At temperatures around minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, dust blowing up from below or falling into the atmosphere from space provides a resting spot for water vapor to condense and freeze. Right now, during the northern hemisphere’s summer, the atmosphere is heating up and expanding. At the outside edge of the atmosphere, that actually means that it’s getting colder because it’s pushed farther out into space.
It’s not hard to see how a warming Earth could change those dynamics: as the globe heats up, the top of the atmosphere should get colder.
“The prevailing theory and most plausible explanation is that CO2 buildup, at 50 miles above the surface, would cause the temperature decrease,” Russell said. He cautioned, however, that temperature observations remain inconclusive.
The global changes that appear to be reshaping noctilucent cloud distribution could be much more complex, said Vincent Wickwar, an atmospheric scientist at Utah State University whose team was first to report a mid-latitude noctilucent cloud in 2002. Temperature does not explain their observations from around 42 degrees latitude.
“To get the noctilucent clouds you need temperatures that are about 20 degrees Kelvin colder than what we see on average up there,” Wickwar said. “We may have effects from CO2 or methane but it would only be a degree or a fraction of a degree.”
Instead, Wickwar’s explanation is that a vertical atmospheric wave discovered in their LIDAR data lowered the temperature in the region above their radar installation near Logan, Utah. But then you have to ask, he noted, “Where’d the wave come from?”
They don’t really have an answer yet. Other facilities around the world with similar LIDAR capacity haven’t reported similar waves. And the Rocky Mountains, near Wickwar’s lab, can cause atmospheric waves, which could be a special feature of his location.
Other theories abound to explain the observed changes in the clouds. Human-caused increases in atmospheric methane, which oxidizes into carbon dioxide and water vapor, could be providing more water for ice in the stratosphere. Increases in the amount of cosmic or terrestrial dust in the stratosphere could also increase the number of brightly shining clouds.
Two years into Russell’s NASA project, more questions exist than firm answers. They will have at least three and a half more years, though, to gather good data on upper atmospheric dynamics.
The recent observations of noctilucent clouds at all kinds of latitudes provide an extra impetus to understand what is going on up there. Changes are occurring faster than scientists can understand their causes.
“I suspect, as many of us feel, that it is global change, but I fear we don’t understand it,” Wickwar said. “It’s not as simple as a temperature change.”
Image: 1. The sky over Omaha on July 14th, snapped by Mike Hollingshead at Extreme Instability 2. Noctilucent clouds lit up the Paris sky behind the Bastille Day fireworks show at the Eiffel Tower. Captured by flickr user, breff 3. A rendering of the noctilucent clouds created from data obtained by Russel’s NASA project, AIM. Video: NASA.
Astute observers from around the northern latitudes of the world noticed a dazzling display of "noctilucent" clouds.
They are clouds at the very edge of space, hundreds of thousands of feet in the air. The air is very cold and very dry at that level of the atmosphere, but in the summer time, the rising air from the hotter surface can gradually push a little water moisture to those space-high altitudes (that's why they're seen only in the summer). Scientists are still not quite sure of all the details that cause the clouds to form, although the glow is from simple sunlight -- the clouds are so high they reflect sunlight even after the sun appears well below the horizon from the ground. CONTINUE
Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise pictured in cracked and drifting ice in front of the Petermann Glacier (out of view) on Greenland's north-west coast. Photo: Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace
Altogether, 5 billion tonnes of ice is set to crumble from the Petermann Glacier on Greenland's north-west coast, the researchers said.
"Ocean warming currents are circulating around the fjord here and eroding the underbelly of Petermann glacier at an incredible rate, which is 25 times that of the surface melt," Dr Alun Hubbard, a glaciologist at the University Of Wales, said.
"There's been a revelation in the last couple of years in the role that warming oceans play in triggering the enhanced acceleration, break-up and thinning of these outlet glaciers."
The breaking-up of the head of a glacier can allow the mass of ice behind to flow downhill and melt more quickly.
Melting glaciers are one measurable indication of the onset of climate change. While a handful of the world's glaciers have grown in recent years, most are melting at rates that have not been observed before due to warmer water and air temperatures.
The Greenpeace icebreaking ship Arctic Sunrise, led by Australian Eric Philips, is on a three-month voyage to document the impact of climate change on the Arctic for the Copenhagen climate summit in December.
A spokesman for the group said there appeared to be less sea ice than in recent years.
"The unprecedented melting of the sea ice is in stark contrast to the glacial pace of global climate negotiations," Greenpeace campaigner John Hepburn said.
UNITED NATIONS -- The global crisis for endangered species is more serious than the financial meltdown, with numbers of imperiled animals and plants rising at record rates, scientists are warning in a report released today.
In its latest four-year assessment of endangered species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has added several new entries to the Red List of Threatened Species. Judging from the list's expansion, the report warns, the world is unlikely to meet a goal of reversing a trend toward species depletion by 2010.
The report, "Wildlife in a Changing World," estimates that 22 percent of known mammals are either facing the threat of extinction or are already extinct. It also found great stress for amphibians, with more than 30 percent classified as threatened or extinct.
"We now know that nearly one quarter of the world's mammals, nearly one third of amphibians and more than 1 in 8 of all bird species are at risk of extinction," IUCN warns. "This allows us to come to the stark conclusion that wildlife ... is in trouble."
The 2008 review covers 44,837 species, up from 38,047 in 2004 and 16,507 in 2000. Thus far, IUCN has recorded 869 separate cases of plant and animal extinctions, including 804 wiped out and 65 others considered extinct in the wild. CONTINUE
This photo, released by the Alaska Volcano Observatory/U.S. Geological Survey, shows the top vent in the Redoubt summit crater near Kenai, Alaska, March 21, 2009. The volcano erupted three times starting Sunday night, sending an ash cloud an estimated 50,000 feet into the air. The ash cloud is expected to reach the Susitna Valley, including Talkeetna and Willow about 90 miles north of Anchorage. Authorities said about six eruptions were detected between Sunday night and Monday night. The activity sent volcanic ash plumes more than nine miles into the air. The area is bracing for an ashfall, according to The Associated Press.
Astronauts on board the International Space Station were treated to this view of Sarychev volcano erupting June 12, 2009. The volcano is in Russia's Kuril islands, northeast of Japan. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes in the chain of islands. The volcano last erupted in 1989. Commercial airline flights were diverted from the area to minimize the danger of engine failure from the intake of ash, according to NASA.
A queen and worker Argentine ant have many, many relatives
A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.
Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.
The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.
What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.
Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.
These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.
In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the "Californian large", extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.
The enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society
Entomologists reveal the ant colony's true size
While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.
But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.
Researchers in Japan and Spain led by Eiriki Sunamura of the University of Tokyo found that Argentine ants living in Europe, Japan and California shared a strikingly similar chemical profile of hydrocarbons on their cuticles.
Sea-level rise is now inevitable and will happen much quicker than most of us thought - and will last for centuries, according to experts.
Even if greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow the oceans will continue to swell as they warm and as glaciers or ice sheets slide into the sea.
The growing consensus among climate scientists is the "official" estimate of sea level rise by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - 20cm to 60cm by 2100 - is misleading.
It could well be in the region of one to two metres - with a small risk of an even greater rise.
In a report in New Scientist magazine, climate expert Dr Eric Rignot, of California University, said: "When we talk of sea level rising by one or two metres by 2100 remember that it is still going to be rising after 2100."
For many islands and low lying regions including much of the Netherlands, Florida and Bangladesh even small rises will spell catastrophe.
Large parts of London, New York, Sydney and Tokyo could be among cities submerged beneath the waves unless a massive engineering effort can protect them against the waves.
Dr Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: "There is a very close and statistically highly significant correlation between the rate of sea level rise and the temperature increase above the pre-industrial background level."
His calculations suggest sea level will rise between 0.5 and 1.4 metres - and the higher estimate is more likely because emissions have been rising faster than the IPCC's worst case scenario.
He said: "I sense than now a majority of sea level experts would agree with me that the IPCC projections are much too low."
Dr Paul Blanchon's team at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Cancun has been studying 121,000 year-old coral reefs in the Yucatan Peninsula formed during the last interglacial period when sea level peaked at about six metres higher than today.
His findings suggest at one point the sea rose three metres within between fifty and one hundred years. We just don't know if this could happen again in the 21st century.
But even the lowest and most conservative estimates are now higher than the IPCC's highest estimate.
Dr Robert Bindschadler, of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, said: "Most of my community is comfortable expecting at least a metre by the end of this century."
New research, which reconstructs the extent of ice in the sea between Greenland and Svalbard from the 13th century to the present indicates that there has never been so little sea ice as there is now. The research results from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, are published in the scientific journal, Climate Dynamics.There are of course neither satellite images nor instrumental records of the climate all the way back to the 13th century, but nature has its own 'archive' of the climate in both ice cores and the annual growth rings of trees and we humans have made records of a great many things over the years - such as observations in the log books of ships and in harbour records. Piece all of the information together and you get a picture of how much sea ice there has been throughout time.
"We have combined information about the climate found in ice cores from an ice cap on Svalbard and from the annual growth rings of trees in Finland and this gave us a curve of the past climate" explains Aslak Grinsted, geophysicist with the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
In order to determine how much sea ice there has been, the researchers needed to turn to data from the logbooks of ships, which whalers and fisherman kept of their expeditions to the boundary of the sea ice. The ship logbooks are very precise and go all the way back to the 16th century. They relate at which geographical position the ice was found. Another source of information about the ice are records from harbours in Iceland, where the severity of the winters have been recorded since the end of the 18th century. Story Here
Musk oxen clash horns in a battle for dominance on Alaska's Seward Peninsula. Researchers suspect that herds of reindeer, musk oxen and other Arctic animals may face starvation as a warming climate affects their ability to access food. Laurent Dick/AP
The enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society 
