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U.K. Towns West of London Face Severe Thames River Flood

Waterlogged towns on the River Thames west of London face severe flooding as U.K. authorities struggle to deal with the wettest weather since 1766. The Environment Agency has in place 16 severe flood warnings, including 14 along England ’s most famous waterway. Towns in London’s commuter belt including Chertsey, Egham and Datchet are affected. Two warnings remain in Somerset, southwest England, where some roads have been cut off since December. After two months of record-breaking rainfall, there’s little respite for southern England, with the Met Office predicting rain every day through Feb. 14. A succession of storms and tidal surges have buffeted Britain since early December, flooding more than 8,000 homes and damaging coastal infrastructure, including the main railway connecting Plymouth and other southwestern cities with the rest of England. “Extreme weather will continue to threaten communities this week, with further severe flooding expected Monday […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Eleven dead in Japan after worst snowfall in decades hits capital

Eleven people died, more than a thousand were injured and tens of thousands lost power when the worst snowstorm in decades hit Tokyo and areas around the Japanese capital before heading north to blanket the tsunami-hit Pacific coast. Flights were still backed up at Tokyo’s Haneda international airport on Monday and the lobby was packed with anxious travelers, with some flights overbooked. As much as 27 cm (10.6 inches) of snow fell on Tokyo by late Saturday, the most in 45 years, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said. Back streets in outlying neighborhoods remained choked with snow and frozen slush on Monday morning, forcing commuters in heavy boots to pick their way carefully to work. Financial markets opened normally on Monday despite the heavy snowfall. Traffic accidents and falls claimed 11 lives across the nation, including one 78-year-old man in Ichikawa, just east of Tokyo. More than 1,000 […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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U.S. Winter Storm Seen Spreading Snow, Sleet Across South

Rain, sleet and snow are expected to spread across the southern U.S., including Atlanta’s northern suburbs, less than two weeks after a winter storm stranded thousands of motorists and children in cars, buses and schools in the region. Atlanta’s northern suburbs may get 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.6 centimeters) of snow through the next three days as the storm moves from Texas to the southern Appalachian Mountains, according to the U.S. Weather Prediction Center . The city itself will probably be spared this time, said Steve Wistar, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc . in State College, Pennsylvania . “In this storm it looks like Atlanta is in the southern edge,” Wistar said. “Because the south is less prepared to deal with some of these things it will be a real concern, but most of Georgia south of Atlanta will just get rain.” […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Tight Propane Supply Reaches Crisis

Federal and state officials are pushing emergency measures to get propane to people who need the gas to heat their homes in the Midwest and other regions of the country beset by persistent frigid temperatures. The measures, which include extending working hours for truckers and ordering a pipeline company to prioritize shipments to areas with tight supplies, are meant to alleviate a propane crunch that has sent prices for the fuel to record highs in some parts of the country. "The propane shortage has been a crisis for thousands of families and farmers in Minnesota and across the region," Sen. Al Franken, who represents the North Star State, said in a statement. He has been asking various federal agencies to help route more propane to places in need. Governors in affected states are trying to increase propane deliveries and make funds available for residents to pay higher heating bills. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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California drought hits farmers hardest

That’s about 650,000 boxes of cantaloupe, regular and organic, he won’t be harvesting come July — about $3 million worth of produce, he estimated. It’s a few hundred workers, most of them migrants, he won’t be hiring. It’s money that won’t be spent in grocery and hardware stores in small towns across the region that produces half of the country’s homegrown fruits and vegetables. It’s a lot of schools with empty seats as farm workers looking for jobs move on with their families. “Everybody will be hurt,” Del Bosque said. “When farmers idle land, the people who have small businesses in small communities . . . they’ll all suffer. It’s a huge ripple effect through the whole valley.” California is entering its third year of drought, a recurring nightmare for those old enough to remember the prolonged dry period of 1987 to 1991 and the disaster of 1976 and 1977, the previous […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Global-Warming Slowdown Due to Pacific Winds, Study Shows

Stronger Pacific Ocean winds may help explain the slowdown in the rate of global warming since the turn of the century, scientists said. More powerful winds in the past 20 years may be forcing warmer seas deeper and bringing cooler water to the surface, 10 researchers from the U.S. and Australia said yesterday in the journal Nature . That has cooled the average global temperature by as much as 0.2 degree Celsius (0.36 Fahrenheit) since 2001. Scientists have been trying to find out why the rate of global warming has eased in the past 20 years while greenhouse-gas emissions have surged to a record. Yesterday’s paper elaborates on a theory that deep seas are absorbing more warmth by explaining how that heat could be getting there. “The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.1–0.2 degree Celsius, which […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Late-arriving snowfall quenches thirst of Beijing, disrupts traffic

It has been a long time in coming, but the first snow of the winter began falling in Beijing early on Friday, the second-latest arrival in the capital for over 60 years. The snowfall, only averaging 1.1 mm from 1 a.m. to 8 a.m., ended 107 precipitation-free days in the city, which had suffered from a dry spell since light rain fell on Oct. 22 last year, said the municipal meteorological observatory. Snowflakes were first seen in the southwestern suburb of Fangshan, and by 9 a.m., snow was lying in most areas in the city. The snowfall is set to continue into Friday night. At 6:15 a.m., the observatory issued a warning […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Accustomed to Floods, but ‘Nothing Like This,’ in Southern England

Muchelney Under Water Tommaso Protti for The New York Times MUCHELNEY, England — The village of Muchelney has become an island. Cars stand idle; locals canoe across the flooded plain or take a police boat down the road-turned-river connecting them to what they now call the “mainland.” About halfway, a silver sedan bobs in the water, its roof barely protruding. It has been there for five weeks. Even by Britain’s rain-soaked standards it has been a wet winter. For several parts of the country, it was the wettest January on record, and it is still raining. Large swaths of southern England remain on flood alert. Muchelney and the adjacent hamlet of Thorney, about 120 miles southwest of London, are among the hardest hit areas — though it took the government awhile to realize this. Roderic Baillie-Grohman, 57, was standing in knee-deep water in his living room here one recent […]

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New study suggests reported PAH emissions in oil sands region greatly underestimated

« New study suggests reported PAH emissions in oil sands region greatly underestimated Results from a new modeling assessment of contamination in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) suggest that officially reported emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in that region have been greatly underestimated. The study, which was carried out by University of Toronto Scarborough Environmental Chemistry professor Frank Wania and his PhD candidate Abha Parajulee, is published as an open access paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science . We sought to use a dynamic multimedia environmental fate model to reconcile the emissions and residue levels reported for three representative PAHs in the AOSR. Data describing emissions to air compiled from two […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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California governor slams GOP water proposal

California Gov. Jerry Brown, whose state is facing its worst drought in decades, harshly criticized on Monday an effort by congressional Republicans to roll back environmental rules limiting how much water agencies can pump out of the fragile San Joaquin-Sacramento River delta in dry years. The emergency legislation would allow state and federal water managers to send water to farms and communities in California’s parched breadbasket during the summer, when the impact of the drought begins to hit hardest. The legislation is scheduled for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday. It would roll back pumping restrictions imposed over the past two decades that required officials to keep a certain amount of water flowing through the delta to protect fish. In wet years, restrictions decreased – but for the past three dry years, little pumping has been allowed, and barring an onslaught of rain, none is […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple