Sun exhibiting the more unusual, erratic behavior in recorded history?
November 11, 2013 – SPACE – Something is up with the sun. Scientists say that solar activity is stranger than in a century or more, with the sun producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected and its magnetic poles oddly out of sync. The sun generates immense magnetic fields as it spins. Sunspots—often broader in diameter than Earth—mark areas of intense magnetic force that brew disruptive solar storms. These storms may abruptly lash their charged particles across millions of miles of space toward Earth, where they can short-circuit satellites, smother cellular signals or damage electrical systems. Based on historical records, astronomers say the sun this fall ought to be nearing the explosive climax of its approximate 11-year cycle of activity—the so-called solar maximum. But this peak is “a total punk,” said Jonathan Cirtain, who works at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as project scientist for the Japanese satellite Hinode, which maps solar magnetic fields. “I would say it is the weakest in 200 years,” said David Hathaway, head of the solar physics group at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Researchers are puzzled. They can’t tell if the lull is temporary or the onset of a decades-long decline, which might ease global warming a bit by altering the sun’s brightness or the wavelengths of its light.
“There is no scientist alive who has seen a solar cycle as weak as this one,” said Andrés Munoz-Jaramillo, who studies the solar-magnetic cycle at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. To complicate the riddle, the sun also is undergoing one of its oddest magnetic reversals on record. Normally, the sun’s magnetic north and south poles change polarity every 11 years or so. During a magnetic-field reversal, the sun’s polar magnetic fields weaken, drop to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. As far as scientists know, the magnetic shift is notable only because it signals the peak of 
the solar maximum, said Douglas Biesecker at NASA’s Space Environment Center. But in this cycle, the sun’s magnetic poles are out of sync, solar scientists said. The sun’s north magnetic pole reversed polarity more than a year ago, so it has the same polarity as the South Pole. “The delay between the two reversals is unusually long,” said solar physicist Karel Schrijver at the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif. Scientists said they are puzzled, but not concerned, by the unusual delay. They expect the sun’s South Pole to change polarity next month, based on current satellite measurements of its shifting magnetic fields. At the same time, scientists can’t explain the scarcity of sunspots. While still turbulent, the sun seems feeble compared with its peak power in previous decades. “It is not just that there are fewer sunspots, but they are less active sunspots,” Dr. Schrijver said. However, the sun isn’t idle: After months of quiescence, it unleashed vast streams of charged particles into space five times in as many days last month, and flared again last week. Even so, these outbursts exhibited a fraction of the force of previous solar maximums. -WSJ
Book quote: “The sun’s erratic behavior in solar cycle 24 has been anomalous at best. The sun is not conforming to any previous past models. Predicting what could happen next in the near future has turned into a bit of a guessing game.” -The Extinction Protocol, page 87, 2009
Weakened Haiyan continues north to China and Vietnam, killing 13
November 11, 2013 – VIETNAM - Typhoon Haiyan continued on its destructive path into Vietnam and China Monday, although it had weakened slightly and was later downgraded to a tropical storm. At least 13 people were killed and 81 injured in Vietnam according to the Voice of Vietnam, the country’s national radio broadcaster. Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua said at least nine people had died and seven were missing in Hainan and Guangxi provinces. Gusts of up to 74 mph also left thousands without power, uprooted trees and ripped billboards from their stands after the storm slammed into Vietnam at around 3 a.m. local time (3 p.m. ET) the station reported. The storm may be the most violent to ever make landfall. Power is out and both water and food are in short supply. NBC’s Angus Walker reports. The storm made landfall near the city of Cam Pha in Vietnam, a small city about 100 miles east of Hanoi according to Kevin Noth, a lead meteorologist at The Weather Channel, who called Haiyan the most powerful tropical cyclone of the year.
“When it hit Vietnam it was still a typhoon,” he said. “But then it weakened sufficiently to be downgraded to a tropical storm. It is certainly the most powerful tropical cyclone of the year. After researching this, we believe that when it hit the Philippines this may have been the strongest ever recorded storm to make landfall,” Noth added. “There have been more powerful storms over the sea, but this could be the strongest ever to hit land.” The storm had earlier felled trees on the Chinese island of Hainan, The Weather Channel reported. The storm then turned north and northeast across far northeastern Vietnam and into the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of southern China, where it made landfall at 9 a.m. local time (7.30 p.m. ET Sunday), Xinhua reported. Two bodies thought to be crew members of a cargo ship registered in Guangxi were found by rescuers in the island province of Hainan, after the storm broke the vessel’s mooring and cast it out to sea. Five sailors were still missing. -NBC (excerpt)
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Scientists baffled over the deaths of hundreds of sea turtles in Central America
November 11, 2013 – CENTRAL AMERICA – Hundreds of sea turtles are washing up dead on the beaches of Central America and scientists don’t know why. One hypothesis is that the killer is a potent neurotoxin that can be produced by algae during red tides, which are large accumulations of algae that turn sea water red or brown. The puzzling thing, though, is that red tides have come and gone before without taking such a deadly toll on turtles. Making things worse, some o f the turtles dying are from endangered species. In El Salvador, for instance, from late September to the middle of October, 114 sea turtles were discovered dead on Pacific coast beaches, according to the environment ministry. They were black turtles (Chelonia agassizii), Olive Ridley turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) and ones that are a cross between the two. Scientists throughout Central America are alarmed, and the only laboratory that specializes in these creatures is taking tissue and organ samples to figure out what is going on. The death toll in other countries is just as ugly — 115 so far this year in Guatemala, 280 in Costa Rica and an undisclosed number in Nicaragua. Another 200 died in late 2012 in Panama. And in Nicaragua there is yet another problem: turtles showed up weeks late, at the end of September, to crawl up onto the beach and lay their eggs.
“Some say it could be due to climate change, sea currents or the techniques used by fishermen,” said biologist Ivan Ramirez of the Foundation for the Sustainable Development of Nicaragua (Fundenic). The head of wildlife and ecosystems at the Salvadoran environment ministry, Nestor Herrera, said the strongest hypothesis over the death of the turtles is that they were killed by saxitoxin — which affects the nervous system and can be produced by a red tide. In one area of El Salvador’s coast, dogs that started eating dead turtles stopped breathing and died almost instantly. In 2006, saxitoxin killed about 500 sea turtles in El Salvador, and four years later, another 100 died of the same cause. However, there is a red tide almost every year, while such widespread turtle deaths have never happened before, said Angel Ibarra, coordinator of Ecological Unity of El Salvador, who added more study is needed to shed light on the phenomenon. Others worry that the recent spate of turtle deaths can be traced more directly to human activity. In Guatemala, the National Council of Protected Areas said some turtles are caught up by industrial-size fishing boats that drag nets along the sea bed and capture everything in their path, a process called trawling.
And drift net fishing, in which very long nets float behind a ship and near the surface of the water, could also be a threat to turtles. Jose Leonidas Gomez, who works with a sea turtle conservation project in El Salvador, said turtles discovered dead on one beach were found not to have eaten, so it is presumed they got caught in nets. Biologist Fabio Buitrago of Nicaragua’s Fundenic said turtles are also being killed by fishermen who use explosives, among other techniques. “The fishermen themselves say so,” he said. Antonio Benavides, a veteran turtle conservationist in El Salvador, said protecting the creatures is all the more difficult because the mortality rate for juveniles is already high. Only one out of a thousand babies that hatch and make it out into the sea ever returns to the beach as an adult to lay eggs. Fertility is yet another issue: in September scientists in Honduras said turtles on one beach laid 40 percent fewer eggs. –Space Daily
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Diplomatic stalemate: Iran backs out of nuclear talks with the West
November 11, 2013 – MIDDLE EAST - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said Iran backed out of a deal on its nuclear program during talks with world powers in Geneva on Saturday. Amid reports that France’s reservations scuppered an agreement, Mr. Kerry told reporters in Abu Dhabi: “The French signed off on it; we signed off on it.” Iran had been unable to accept the deal “at that particular moment,” he added. Mr. Kerry said he hoped in the next few months they could “find an agreement that meets everyone’s standards.” Representatives from Iran and the so-called P5+1 – the US, UK, France, Russia and China plus Germany – will meet again on 20 November. Iran stresses that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, but world powers suspect it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. In a separate development on Monday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, said the agency had agreed a “roadmap for co-operation’ with Iran to help resolve remaining issues. Six specific access or information issues will be addressed over the next three months, offering a clear test of Iran’s willingness to provide greater clarity about its activities, says the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus. Progress between Iran and the IAEA is seen by experts as a vital parallel track to the talks between Iran and the major powers, he says. Mr. Amano said the deal was “an important step.”
It opens the way for inspectors to visit a heavy-water plant being built in Arak and the Gachin uranium mine in Bandar Abbas, and for measures requested by the UN watchdog to be implemented. Tehran says the reactor in Arak is intended for the production of radioisotopes for medical purposes, but its spent fuel will contain plutonium suitable for use in nuclear weapons. Some reports said the latest talks failed because France had wanted to place tight restrictions on the facility in Arak. However, US diplomats said the Iranian government’s insistence on formal recognition of its ‘right’ to enrich uranium had been the major obstacle. The Jerusalem Post quoted a senior US official as saying the P5+1 had approved a working document, but that it had been “too tough” for the Iranians. Speaking at a news conference with UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Monday, Mr. Kerry said: “The P5+1 was unified on Saturday when we presented our proposal to the Iranians. The French signed off on it, we signed off on it, and everybody agreed it was a fair proposal. Iran couldn’t take it at that particular moment; they weren’t able to accept.” –BBC
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Philippine typhoon kills at least 10,000: survivors ‘walking around like zombies’
November 10, 2013 – TACLOBAN, Philippines - One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away entire coastal villages and devastating the region’s main city. Super typhoon Haiyan destroyed about 70 to 80 percent of the area in its path as it tore through Leyte province on Friday, said police chief superintendent Elmer Soria. As rescue workers struggled to reach ravaged villages along the coast, where the death toll is as yet unknown, survivors foraged for food as supplies dwindled or searched for lost loved ones. “People are walking like zombies looking for food,” said Jenny Chu, a medical student in Leyte. “It’s like a movie.” Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by surging sea water strewn with debris that many said resembled a tsunami, leveling houses and drowning hundreds of people in one of the worst natural disasters to hit the typhoon-prone Southeast Asian nation.
The national government and disaster agency have not confirmed the latest estimate of deaths, a sharp increase from initial estimates on Saturday of at least 1,000 killed by a storm whose sustained winds reached 195 miles per hour (313 km per hour) with gusts of up to 235 mph (378 kph). “We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said, based on their estimate, 10,000 died.” Soria said. “The devastation is so big.” More than 330,900 people were displaced and 4.3 million “affected” by the typhoon in 36 provinces, the UN’s humanitarian agency said, as relief agencies called for food, water and tarpaulins for the homeless. Witnesses and officials described chaotic scenes in Leyte’s capital, Tacloban, a coastal city of 220,000 about 580 km (360 miles) southeast of Manila, with hundreds of bodies piled on the sides of roads and pinned under wrecked houses. The city lies in a cove where the seawater narrows, making it susceptible to storm surges. The city and nearby villages as far as one kilometer (just over half a mile) from shore were flooded, leaving floating bodies and roads choked with debris from fallen trees, tangled power lines and flattened homes. TV footage showed children clinging to rooftops for their lives.
‘It was like the end of the world.’ – Many internet users urged prayers and called for aid for survivors in the largely Roman Catholic nation on social media sites such as Twitter. “From a helicopter, you can see the extent of devastation. From the shore and moving a kilometer inland, there are no structures standing. It was like a tsunami,” said interior secretary Manuel Roxas, who had been in Tacloban since before the typhoon struck the city. “I don’t know how to describe what I saw. It’s horrific.” The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said aerial surveys showed “significant damage to coastal areas with heavy ships thrown to the shore, many houses destroyed and vast tracts of agricultural land decimated.” The destruction extended well beyond Tacloban. Officials had yet to make contact with Guiuan, a town of 40,000 that was first hit by the typhoon. Baco, a city of 35,000 people in Oriental Mindoro province, was 80 percent under water, the UN said. Six people were killed and dozens wounded during heavy winds and storms in central Vietnam as Haiyan approached the coast, state media reported, even though it had weakened substantially since hitting the Philippines. Vietnam authorities have moved 883,000 people in 11 central provinces to safe zones, according to the government’s website. Despite weakening, the storm is likely to cause heavy rains, flooding, strong winds and mudslides, as it makes its way north in the South China Sea.
Looters rampaged through several stores in Tacloban, witnesses said, taking whatever they could find as rescuers’ efforts to deliver food and water were hampered by severed roads and communications. Mobs attacked trucks loaded with food, tents and water on Tanauan bridge in Leyte, said Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon. “These are mobsters operating out of there.” Tecson John Lim, the Tacloban city administrator, said city officials had so far only collected 300-400 bodies, but believed the death toll in the city alone could be 10,000. International aid agencies said relief efforts in the Philippines were stretched thin after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in central Bohol province last month and displacement caused by a conflict with Muslim rebels in southern Zamboanga province. The World Food Program said it was airlifting 40 tons of high-energy biscuits, enough to feed 120,000 people for a day, as well as emergency supplies and telecommunications equipment. Tacloban city airport was all but destroyed as seawaters swept through the city, shattering the glass of the airport tower, leveling the terminal and overturning nearby vehicles. A Reuters reporter saw five bodies inside a chapel near the airport, placed on pews. Airport manager Efren Nagrama, 47, said water levels rose up to four metres (13 feet). “It was like a tsunami. We escaped through the windows and I held on to a pole for about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport,” he said. “Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard all throughout until the water subsided.” –Times of India
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Panic and fear, as double measles outbreaks hit Britain and Queensland
November 9, 2013 – LONDON - Health chiefs have warned Britain is on the brink of a second major epidemic just four months after the previous outbreak, which claimed one life and more than 1,200 victims. The virus is highly contagious. Experts say one child with measles sitting in a classroom for just an hour will pass it on to at least 70 per cent of other pupils who are not vaccinated. Cases have once again soared in Swansea, the area which was hit earlier this year. Health chiefs in Wales warned last month that a renewed flare-up was likely to spread rapidly unless children have the vital secondary measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) booster jab. At that point, the total stood at 13 cases but this has already risen to 36. “Parents and young people should not underestimate how serious measles can be and how quickly it can spread,” said Dr. Jorg Hoffmann, Public Health Wales consultant in communicable disease control. “To prevent this outbreak spreading even further, it’s crucial that unvaccinated children and young people receive two doses of MMR urgently and that those with symptoms do not attend school.” The epidemic which swept the greater Swansea area earlier this year triggered a huge vaccination program.
While many children got their first dose of the MMR injection, a significant number failed to get a booster jab within a month. Although more than 70,000 catch-up MMR jabs were given across Wales during the epidemic, 30,000 children and young people aged from 10 to 18 remain unprotected. Health officials emphasized that the only protection against the infection is two doses of the MMR jab. All cases in the new outbreak, affecting four schools, date from the start of October. Several of the new cases have been spread as a result of pupils attending school already with the symptoms of measles. Where sufficient numbers of children remain unprotected in a school where there has been measles, school vaccination sessions will be arranged. Dr. Hoffmann added: “Parents who have decided not to vaccinate their children are not only risking their children’s health but are putting other children at risk. “We are very frustrated to see more cases so soon after the large outbreak earlier this year and we are very keen for this to be stopped before we return to a position where children are admitted to hospital or die.” –Express UK
Measles outbreak hits Queensland: Thirty-five people have now contracted measles in Queensland in one of the worst outbreaks of the disease in Queensland’s recent history. This year 30 of the 35 measles cases have emerged since August, with eight cases now confirmed at Woodford Correctional Centre. Last year only four Queenslanders contracted measles. Questions are being asked if the measles outbreak is linked to overcrowding in Queensland prisons. The Department of Justice and Attorney General on Wednesday evening confirmed there were now 6432 prisoners in Queensland jails on November 6. It is the first time in Queensland history prisoner numbers have been more than 6000. The extra 832 prisoners include hundreds “doubling up” in cells at several prisons in the Ipswich area. Queensland’s chief medical officer Dr. Jeanette Young confirmed “gene tracing” had matched the Woodford prison measles outbreak to the measles outbreak in Ipswich. “Gene sequencing has now linked the Woodford outbreak to the Ipswich outbreak which so far has affected 23 people including those at Woodford,” Dr. Young said on Thursday night.
“So far this year, 35 people in Queensland have contracted measles, with 30 of these falling ill since August including the 23 in the Ipswich-Woodford outbreak.” There has not been a connection to an Ipswich prison, although prisoner transfers are being checked, Dr. Young told reporters last week. Dr. Young confirmed the three extra cases of measles – bringing the total to eight confirmed cases – inside Woodford Correctional Centre. Dr. Young confirmed prisons were now a hotspot of concern for health authorities, after vaccinating 1200 prisoners and staff. “Measles is a highly contagious disease and can spread more easily in any situation where many people are in close contact,” she said. “This includes places like schools, shopping centers, airports or prisons.” Health authorities have already warned people between the ages of 20 and 40 are more vulnerable to measles because they believed they were immunized. Public health physician Dr. Heidi Carroll said many adults in their late 20s and early 30s mistakenly believe they have been vaccinated for measles. “This may be because measles vaccine wasn’t universally available to all children in Australia until the late 1980s and early 1990s,” she said. –Brisbane Times
Record number of dolphins dying off East Coast in ‘measles’ outbreak
November 9, 2013 – OCEAN – The deadliest known outbreak of a measles-like virus in bottlenose dolphins has killed a record number of the marine mammals along the U.S. Atlantic coast in recent months, officials said Friday. A total of 753 bottlenose dolphins have washed up from New York to Florida from July 1 until Nov. 3, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The figure represents a 10-fold increase in the number of dolphins that would typically turn up dead along East Coast beaches, said Teri Rowles, program coordinator of the NOAA Fisheries Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program. “Historic averages for this same time frame, same geographic area, is only 74, so you get an idea of the scope,” she told reporters. The cause of death is morbillivirus, a form of marine mammal measles that is similar to canine distemper and can cause pneumonia, suppressed immune function and brain infections that are usually fatal. The virus spreads among dolphins in close contact to one another. The death toll is also higher than the 740-plus strandings in the last major Atlantic morbillivirus outbreak in 1987-1988. And they have come in a much shorter time period, leading officials to anticipate this event could get much worse. “It is expected that the confirmed mortalities will be higher,” said Rowles. “If this plays out similar to the ’87-88 die-offs, we are less than halfway through that time frame.”
Rowles said efforts are underway to try to determine if the virus might have been introduced into wild bottlenose dolphins from another species, like humpback whales or pygmy sperm whales. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions about that,” she told reporters. Among bottlenose dolphins, immunity to the virus has been decreasing, particularly in the younger animals as time has gone by since the last outbreak 25 years ago. “So we know we had a susceptible population, but just being susceptible alone is not how the outbreaks go,” she said. “We are trying to understand where this virus came from and how it got into the population in which it is now circulating.” In the meantime, the process of dealing with all the dead carcasses has been “overwhelming,” particularly for local recovery teams, Rowles said. The Virginia Aquarium alone has had to pick up and do necropsies on 333 animals in the space of just a few months, said Ann Pabst, co-director of the University of North Carolina Marine Mammal Stranding Program. Five percent of the dolphins have been found alive on the beaches, but died soon after, NOAA said. The virus has appeared to infect dolphins of all ages, from young to old. But since the number of dolphins washing up on shore may not represent all of the creatures that are dying, it is difficult to estimate what proportion of the population is sick. And without a way to vaccinate the wild population, there is little that officials can do but collect the carcasses and continue to study them. While NOAA hasn’t determined a cause for the deaths, other scientists have speculated that mass die-offs like this one are becoming increasingly common as climate change causes water to warm, and human-produced pollution weakens dolphins’ immune systems. –Al Jazeera
Posted in Acquatic Ecosystem crash, Black Swan Event, Disease outbreak, Earth Changes, Earth Watch, Environmental Threat, Food chain unraveling, High-risk potential hazard zone, Marine animal strandings, Mass animal deaths, New virus reported, Pestilence Watch, Prophecies referenced, Time - Event Acceleration 14 Comments
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