the realization that it's time to get up.**
LARGEST QUAKES -
This morning -
5.2 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS
Yesterday -
5/4/11 -
5.4 SOUTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA
5.0 WESTERN XIZANG-INDIA BORDER REGION
5.4 FIJI REGION
5.2 VANUATU
5.3 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.0 NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.1 WESTERN INDIAN-ANTARCTIC RIDGE
TROPICAL STORMS -
Tropical Cyclone Formation Alert - AREA OF CONVECTION APPROXIMATELY 180 NM EAST OF MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES. THE POTENTIAL FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SIGNIFICANT TROPICAL CYCLONE WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS IS GOOD.
'Arabian Sea's temperature rise led to cyclones' - The Arabian Sea's average temperature has gone up by two to five degrees Celsius over the last four decades, which is not good news for the climate. It has also resulted in many cyclones originating from the Arabian Sea during the same time.
The sea's temperature, which used to be 22 to 27 degrees Celsius till 1980s, is now 27 to 32 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, a high of 3.4% cyclones in the world have hit India during the same time, making it the country to be hit by the most cyclones in Asia. While the Bay of Bengal has always been the one to generate most cyclones that affect India, there have been quite a few in the last few years that have been affecting western parts of the country too.
"The sea's average temperature has increased by two degrees in the last 40 years due to global warming," says the deputy director-general of the India Meteorological Department. "The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is turned into oxygen by plants on land. But when the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide, it doesn't turn into oxygen. This, along with direct solar radiation over the sea, has led to an increase in the sea's temperature. The most recent example of a super cyclone was Cyclone Phet, which churned the Arabian Sea and hit coastal Gujarat, Rajasthan and Karachi last June." According to data from the tropical rainfall measuring mission satellite, the cyclone caused more than 600 mm (23.6 inches) of rain over the open waters of the Arabian Sea.
Apart from Phet, four others, including Cyclone Gonu in 2007, have been the strongest in the Arabian Sea and have caused landfalls at the time at which the storm passes over shore. "When there is an air mass over the warm sea area, having a vertical extent of 15 km and horizontal of a few hundred km, a cyclone is formed. In the middle is the eye of the cyclone, which has the calm, heavy, hot air, while the circumference has a circular wall of winds of high velocity which circulate in the opposite direction. Earlier, as temperatures used to be high in the southern part of the sea, there were few cyclones. Now that temperatures near land have increased, that's where cyclones generate and hit the western coast of India, and countries like Pakistan and Iran."
SEVERE RAIN STORMS, FLOODING, LANDSLIDES -
U.S. to blow third hole in levee as floods worsen - Government engineers will blow up a third section of a Mississippi River levee today to manage flooding, as a wall of water roared down the nation's largest river system, threatening towns and cities all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blew up a two-mile section of the Birds Point levee Monday night, inundating about 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland in a desperate attempt to ease flooding in towns in Illinois and Kentucky.
Water levels did recede but a second, smaller section was detonated Tuesday afternoon to allow water back into the river. A third and last blast was scheduled for Wednesday but was delayed until 1 p.m. on Thursday by "logistical difficulties." The Corps, which is responsible for the system of locks and dams along the Mississippi River, will then turn its attention to the growing threat further south. "THE ENTIRE SYSTEM IS EXPERIENCING FLOODING and we will continue our fight downstream." President Barack Obama on Wednesday declared parts of Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee as disaster areas due to flooding, freeing up federal aid to help those affected.
Arkansas closed a 15-mile stretch of westbound lanes of one of the busiest road arteries in the nation, Interstate 40, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER DUE TO FLOODING. More than 31,000 vehicles travel daily through the section of road closed, and 65 to 70 percent of those are trucks. Highway officials were diverting traffic onto rural roads but even some of these were flooded. Further downstream in Mississippi, some residents of the historic Civil War town of Vicksburg were moving to higher ground on Wednesday to avoid the rising flood waters.
The levee system in Mississippi is holding for now but it HAS NEVER BEEN TESTED LIKE THIS BEFORE. "Compared to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 this flood is going to be a lot nastier."
Large amounts of rain and melt from the winter snow has caused a chain reaction of flooding from Canada and the Dakotas through Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee. It is expected to soon hit Mississippi and Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
SPACE WEATHER -
SPACE-TIME VORTEX AROUND EARTH: NASA has announced the results of an epic physics experiment that confirms the reality of a space-time vortex around Earth. The shape of the 4-dimensional twister precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity. One day, this will be written up in textbooks as one of the classic experiments in the history of physics."
Time and space, according to Einstein's theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called "space-time." The mass of Earth dimples this fabric, much like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a trampoline. Gravity, says Einstein, is simply the motion of objects following the curvaceous lines of the dimple. If Earth were stationary, that would be the end of the story. But Earth is not stationary. Our planet spins, and the spin should twist the dimple, slightly, pulling it around into a 4-dimensional swirl. This is what GP-B went to space in 2004 to check.
The results of Gravity Probe B give physicists renewed confidence that the strange predictions of Einstein's theory are indeed correct, and that these predictions may be applied elsewhere. The type of spacetime vortex that exists around Earth is duplicated and magnified elsewhere in the cosmos - -around massive neutron stars, black holes, and active galactic nuclei. NASA funding for Gravity Probe B began in the fall of 1963. That means researchers have been planning, promoting, building, operating, and analyzing data from the experiment for more than 47 years — truly, an epic effort. (diagrams)
