Earthweek: Environmental news from around the globe

October 04, 2009 8:00 AM

UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

Tropical cyclones

A tropical storm that later became Typhoon Ketsana killed at least 288 people and damaged the homes of 3 million as it triggered the worst flooding the northern Philippines has experienced in 40 years.

After devastating parts of Manila, Ketsana went on to hit other Southeast Asian countries, killing 99 in Vietnam, 14 in Cambodia and 16 in Laos.

• Typhoon Parma cut a path across the Philippines’ northern edge on Saturday, killing four people but sparing the capital, Manila, from a second flood disaster as the storm churned toward Taiwan.

Tens of thousands of Filipinos had evacuated their homes as the storm bore down on the main island of Luzon just eight days after an earlier tempest left Manila awash in floods that killed almost 300 people.

• Another typhoon, Melor, was churning in the Philippine Sea, 1,600 miles to the east, threatening the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands.


Penguin rebound

A species of penguin virtually wiped out on Macquarie Island more than 100 years ago has rebounded, to the delight of Australian wildlife experts.

The island, located between New Zealand and Antarctica, was teeming with king penguins when it was discovered in 1810.

But the birds were slaughtered for blubber oil over the next century to the point that only a small colony survived. The Australian Antarctic Survey says that hundreds of the birds now live in the area around Lusitania Bay.

It appears the population has grown to the point that the penguins have begun to look for new parts of the island to recolonize.


Pushing Earth’s limits

A team of the world’s most eminent environmental scientists published a warning that human activity has already pushed three of Earth’s nine biophysical boundaries to beyond the planet’s ability to self-regulate.

Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers attempt to set “acceptable” upper limits on man’s influence on such environmental conditions as climate, biodiversity, stratospheric ozone and chemical cycles like that of nitrogen.

They suggest that for some of those conditions, like the use of nitrogen in fertilizers and loading of atmospheric carbon dioxide, humankind may have already stepped outside the safety zone.

It’s feared we may have to backpedal quickly to avoid catastrophe. Human activities, most notably the growing reliance on fossil fuels and industrialized agriculture, have become so pervasive that they may trigger irreversible and abrupt environmental change by damaging the regulatory capacity of the planet, the group warned.


African famine looms

The severe drought that has parched much of East Africa this year continues to worsen while taking the lives of people, wildlife and livestock.

The charity Oxfam International has appealed for $15 million in emergency donations so it can provide 750,000 people with food assistance.

Paul Smith Lomas, Oxfam’s East Africa director, said that while the drought stretches from the Horn of Africa to Uganda, about 3.8 million Kenyans, a tenth of the population, now need emergency aid.

Climate change has caused the frequency of drought to increase from about once per decade to once every two or three years.


Indian drought

Indian weather officials said that a weak summer monsoon has created the country’s worst drought since 1972.

Scant precipitation has caused extensive damage to rice, sugar cane and groundnut crops, according to the Meteorological Department.

It added that depleted reservoirs behind hydropower stations threaten both electricity and irrigation shortages this winter.


Acorn hazard

Many New Englanders are being forced to dodge a bumper crop of acorns raining down across the region this autumn.

The nuts were unusually scarce last year, but millions of the hard-shelled bombs are now bopping joggers on the head, whacking gardeners’ backsides and cracking vehicle windshields.

“It hurt,” University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor Wesley Autio told the The Boston Globe. “You stand outside and you can hear acorns hitting everything — cars, metal roofs, and it makes a tremendous sound.”

But the region’s largest acorn crop in memory is also allowing squirrels and other nut hoarders to fatten up for what some believe will be a brutal winter.

A cool summer along with record snowfalls and rain earlier this year have helped the acorns bloom larger and in greater numbers this fall.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Source: gazette.com