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08/10/2024

Florida warned of 'potentially catastrophic' Hurricane Milton impact
US officials have warned of the threat to life posed by Hurricane Milton, which briefly became a category five storm before returning to category four as it heads towards Florida.
Milton is still packing ferocious winds of up to 155mph (250km/h) as it moves past the northern edge of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. Forecasters from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) say "potentially catastrophic" storm surges are possible along coastal areas.
The storm is expected to hit the heavily populated city of Tampa Bay with full force on Wednesday, less than two weeks after the state was hit by Hurricane Helene.
Floridians have been told to prepare for the state's largest evacuation effort in years

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07/10/2024

How satellites are mapping the future of turtle conservation
Marine turtles spend almost their entire lives at sea – but little is known about the paths they take. Now, satellites are helping scientists map their movements during the "lost years".
In early June 2024, Donna Shello, an adult female leatherback turtle, was hanging out on a sandy beach along the Caribbean coast of Panama. After laying about 80 eggs, and with a satellite transmitter attached to her back, she was ready to start competing in the Tour de Turtles, an intense oceanic "marathon" organised by the Sea Turtle Conservancy (STC), a US non-profit. This year, she is up against seven other leatherback females, and the winner will be the one who swims the longest distance.
"[Donna Shello] is at least 20 years old, but may be as old as 80 to 90," says Daniel Evans, a research biologist working at the STC. "There is currently no way to age a live sea turtle."
Although the "competition" only lasts three months, a full migration from nesting season to the next nesting season could take two years. From what they know so far, she has been laying between 70 and 90 eggs each time she nests, and could be nesting between four and seven times in a nesting season. "Based on three nesting seasons, she could have laid between 840 and 1,890 eggs since we first encountered her nesting in 2020," says Evans.

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04/10/2024

Helene is deadliest mainland US hurricane since Katrina
The death toll from Hurricane Helene has surpassed 200 as rescuers continue to search for survivors from the storm that tore across the US south-east.
More than half of the deaths were in North Carolina, where entire communities were uprooted and devastated by the deadliest mainland storm since Katrina in 2005, which killed more than 1,800 people.
Hundreds of people are still missing and 780,000 homes were without power nearly a week after Helene made landfall.
The rising death toll comes as President Joe Biden continues his two-day tour of the area visiting Florida and Georgia on Thursday.

Biden received an aerial tour of the damage in Tallahassee, Florida, on Thursday where the hurricane made landfall as a category four storm last week.
Speaking later in Ray City, Georgia, Biden told residents: “I see you, I hear you, I grieve with you, and I promise you we have your back.

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03/10/2024

'It kills everything' - Amazon’s indigenous people hit by record forest fires in Brazil
“If these fires continue, we indigenous people will die.”
Raimundinha Rodrigues Da Sousa runs the voluntary fire service for the Caititu indigenous community in the Brazilian Amazon.
Their land is supposed to be protected under the Brazilian constitution.
But it has been on fire for more than 15 days.
For her brigade, their fight feels personal.
“Today it is killing the plants, in a while it will be us, because we inhale so much,” she says.
“It is a very aggressive fire that kills everything that comes its way.”
Her father, Ademar, tells us the constant smoke has caused him respiratory problems.
“I can’t sleep due to a lack of air. It wakes me up, I feel like I’m drowning,” he says.
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02/10/2024

01/10/2024

Switzerland and Italy redraw border due to melting glaciers
Switzerland and Italy have redrawn part of their border in the Alps due to melting glaciers, caused by climate change.
Part of the area affected will be beneath the Matterhorn, one of Europe's tallest mountains, and close to a number of popular ski resorts.
Large sections of the Swiss-Italian border are determined by glacier ridgelines or areas of perpetual snow, but melting glaciers have caused these natural boundaries to shift, leading to both countries seeking to rectify the border.
Switzerland officially approved the agreement on the change on Friday, but Italy is yet to do the same. This follows a draft agreement by a joint Swiss-Italian commission back in May 2023.

Statistics published last September showed that Switzerland's glaciers lost 4% of their volume in 2023, the second biggest loss ever after 2022's record melt of 6%.
An annual report is issued each year by the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (Glamos), which attributed the record losses to consecutive very warm summers, and 2022 winter's very low snowfall. Researchers say that if these weather patterns continue, the thaw will only accelerate.
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30/09/2024

The logger who learned the value of living trees
Roberto Brito learned how to use a chainsaw at the age of 11. Now he uses his intimate knowledge of the Amazon rainforest to guide tourists around in his flip-flops.
It used to be that when Roberto Brito looked at a tree, he would see a number: the amount of money he could earn from chopping it down.
Brito and his family, who live along the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon, only saw the monetary value of logged trees. He learned how to use a chainsaw at the age of 11, and represented his family's fourth generation of men cutting down trees before they became legal adults.
At first Brito found it hard to see a beautiful tree, which he knew would produce good timber, without cutting it down. Resisting this impulse was excruciating, like quitting smoking, he says.
Now, when Brito looks at a tree, everything has changed. "We stopped thinking about price and started thinking about [a different kind of] value. For example, when I see a beautiful cumaru [Brazilian teak] tree, 300 to 400 years old, with a little over a metre in diameter, and 15-20m (49-66ft) long, I still touch it, but with a different mindset," he reflects.
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27/09/2024

"You get a sinking feeling in your gut, knowing lives will be changed."
That is how Heather Holbach, of the Hurricane Research Division in the US, describes the experience of flying directly into a category five hurricane before it reaches land.
"You're experiencing the strength and ferocity of Mother Nature and know it's heading towards people."
Reconnaissance missions like this are just one way that scientists and forecasters try to shed light on these monstrous storms, as they grow in size and move ever closer to causing destruction.
So let us take you on a similar journey - all the way from where a hurricane is born to where it dies.
We start thousands of miles away from the Americas - over the African continent.��

26/09/2024

South-eastern US braces for 'catastrophic' Hurricane Helene
Hurricane Helene continues to strengthen as it barrels toward the US Gulf Coast.
The category one storm is on track to intensify quickly into a dangerous category four hurricane by the time it makes landfall in Florida on Thursday evening local time, with official forecasts and warnings describing its likely impacts as "catastrophic", "life-threatening" and "unsurvivable".
The governors of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia have declared states of emergency ahead of the storm's landfall.
Mexico's Yucatán peninsula and the tourist resorts of Cancún and Cozumel were spared major damage when the hurricane skirted its north-eastern coast but failed to make landfall.

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25/09/2024

Знак якості 😂

25/09/2024

The new shark species emerging from the deep

In 2011, a researcher called Brett Human was volunteering at the Western Australian Museum in Perth, when he came across the ridged shark egg case. While it was similar to eggs laid by another species of shark, that animal had never been found in Australian waters. Human linked the egg case to other eggs which had been found off Australia, and narrowed down the species to possibly being a member of the catshark family. But he could not determine the exact species.
"He first described the case and did a very good effort of trying to narrow down… he did a lot better than what a lot of people would have, actually," says White. "Nothing happened on that until we started looking at a case with a colleague Helen O'Neill. Even then I was like, 'I think I'm barking up the wrong tree, looking at cases. No one's really done it, there's probably a reason why'."

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