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
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
As part of the Pacific Volcanic Ring, the remote and beautiful Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia holds more than 300 volcanoes, and twenty-nine of them are currently active. Of all the volcanoes on Kamchatka, Shiveluch is the most active – indeed, it is one of
A new eruption on the remote Zavodovski Island in the South Sandwich island chain was detected by NASA’s Aqua satellite on April 27, 2012.The satellite picture shows a plume originating from the island’s active crater known as Mt Curry, or sometimes also referred
Over 50 thousand fish in a pond near an industrial area in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen died overnight on Monday, CRI Online reports.The dead fish are mostly concentrated in the northern corner of the pond, and half of the body of water is now covered with
