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
This report covers active volcanoes recorded from May 2 – May 8, 2012 based on Smithsonian/USGS criteria. New unrest has been noticed around 5 volcanoes, ongoing activity was reported for 8 volcanoes.BATU TARAKomba Island (Indonesia) 7.792°S, 123.579°E; summit
Kīlauea’s lava flows have surged in activity on the coastal plain accompanying inflation at the summit, though following by about 24 hours. This activity is farther from the ocean than before, relatively close to the base of the pali but moving quickly across cooling
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
Natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis are expected to have substantial ecological effects, but if researchers don’t have enough data about the environment before the disaster strikes, as is usually the case, it is difficult to quantify these
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
Over the winter of 2011–2012, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean was slightly below the 1979–2000 average, but conditions in the Bering Sea were different. There, sea ice extents were well above normal, reaching a record high in March 2012. Two factors
A rare heat burst occurred on Thursday in Bussey, about 50 miles southeast of Des Moines, Iowa, when suddenly temperatures spiked more than 10 degrees. Data from the Mesonet/KCCI Schoolnet 8 weather station shows the sudden temperature change shot up from
A teenage boy died, around 40 people were injured and up to 250 houses were damaged on Sunday, May 6, 2012 after an apparent tornado hit Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures, north of Tokyo, local police and firefighters said.An aerial shot from a Kyodo helicopter shows
