A cold lava flood hit Ternate city in North Maluku Province early on Wednesday. Floods carrying volcanic debris swept through a town in eastern Indonesia killing four people, including a nine-year-old child, and leaving 10 others missing, a government official
An assessment of coastal change over the past century has found 70 percent of beaches on the islands of Kaua’i, O’ahu, and Maui are undergoing long-term erosion, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and University of Hawai’i (UH) report. Scientists from the
The European Space Agency (ESA) on Wednesday declared the official end of Envisat, the Earth-monitoring satellite that went silent last month after operating for twice its predicted lifespan. A team of engineers has spent the last month attempting to regain control of
An unusual funnel cloud was spotted on the plains of northern Italy recently. Videos posted online early this week clearly showed a funnel cloud dipping from heavy dark clouds.Close-up detail showed well the anti-clockwise twisting of the narrow funnel, which seemed
Earth is entering the line of fire as the huge sunspot 1476 rotates across the face of the sun into geoeffective position. Sunspot 1476 is crackling with M-class solar flares and its ‘beta-gamma-delta’ magnetic field harbors energy for X-class flares. NOAA/SWPC
For several months each year, Russia’s Lake Baikal is covered by a thick layer of ice. Formation begins in late-December, and by mid-January the entire lake is usually blanketed. Come spring, the lake begins its long, slow melt. Patches of open water usually appear
A drought is threatening Angola’s already modest food production, in a setback for efforts to revive once-vibrant farmlands abandoned during decades of war. The dry season that normally lasts only about three weeks in December has stretched to three months in parts of
A dust storm in western Africa, which began in late April, 2012, continued through early May, sending billowing clouds of tan dust over the Atlantic Ocean and the Cape Verde Islands. This very large plume of thick dust began blowing off the coast of Africa on April, 29
Hundreds of birds and dolphins have been washing up dead along the Peru coast, and this has government officials looking for causes. At least 1,200 birds, mostly pelicans, have been found dead in recent weeks along a stretch of Pacific coast in northern Peru, the
Open letterto the Members of the European Parliamentto John Dalli, Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protectionto Dacian Ciolos, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Developmentto Janez Potočnik, Commissioner for the Environmentto László Andor,
