Earth Watch Report – Sunday August 26th, 2012
August 26, 2012 by desertrose
Extreme Temperatures/ Weather
Bosnia on red alert during hottest summer on record
by Staff Writers
Sarajevo (AFP)
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Bosnian authorities put the entire country on red alert Thursday against a heatwave that has seen the Balkan nation bake in its hottest summer on record, the national weather institute said.
Meteorologist Dzenan Zulum said the months of June, July and August had been the hottest since measurements were first recorded 120 years ago.
In some places, the mercury has soared to 41 degrees Celsius (105.8 Fahrenheit) and temperatures in the capital Sarajevo have in recent days been about seven degrees Celsius warmer than normal.
“We predict a similar temperature for the next two or three days followed by a slight cooling from Sunday,” Zulum said.
Farmers say between 50-80 percent of their crops have been damaged in the heatwave, and water distribution to several towns has been disrupted.
Bosnia is also battling dozens of forest fires in the south and east of the country, with many hundreds of hectares (acres) of land burned.
Related Links
Weather News at TerraDaily.com
| 25.08.2012 | Forest / Wild Fire | Greece | Region of Attica, [Near to Afidnes] |  |
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Forest / Wild Fire in Greece on Saturday, 25 August, 2012 at 13:08 (01:08 PM) UTC.
| Description | |
| Firefighters on Saturday managed to partially control a large forest fire that broke out on the northeastern outskirts of Athens, officials said. “I believe we are going well,” Pavlos Papageorgiou, a senior fire department officer, told state television NET. “The only front is in a ravine near the town of Afidnes, we are moving forces from other areas where the fire is under control,” he said. The fire broke out before dawn near Afidnes, clouding the skies over the capital’s northern suburbs with smoke and ash. It had earlier threatened an army camp and an industrial park in the vicinity. NET said a number of homes and vehicles had been burnt in the community of Drosopigi and that local residents had heard explosions before the fire broke out, suggesting that arson was involved. Traffic police briefly diverted traffic on the national highway leading north of Athens as a precaution. The same area had also been ravaged by fires in 2009. Greece suffers from a large number of summer fires usually aided by high temperatures and strong winds and are often attributed to arson. The Athens national observatory this week said the months of June and July were among the hottest on record. The worst disaster this season occurred on the Aegean island of Chios where scores of mastic orchards were destroyed by a fire burning for a week. |
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Storms / Flooding
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| Name of storm system | Location | Formed | Last update | Last category | Course | Wind Speed | Gust | Wave | Source | Details |
| Tembin (15W) | Pacific Ocean | 19.08.2012 | 26.08.2012 | Typhoon III | 155 ° | 157 km/h | 194 km/h | 4.27 m | JTWC | |
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| Bolaven (16W) | Pacific Ocean | 20.08.2012 | 26.08.2012 | SuperTyphoon | 315 ° | 213 km/h | 259 km/h | 5.79 m | JTWC | |
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| Isaac (AL09) | Atlantic Ocean | 21.08.2012 | 26.08.2012 | Tropical Depression | 305 ° | 93 km/h | 111 km/h | 5.79 m | NOAA NHC | |
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Heavy rain, floods kill 26 in Pakistan: officials
by Staff Writers
Muzaffarabad, Pakistan (AFP)
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Flash floods and landslides triggered by heavy rain have killed at least 26 people and destroyed hundreds of houses in northern Pakistan, officials said on Thursday.
Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, the prime minister of Pakistan-administered Kashmir said at least 17 people have been killed and nine others injured in six districts since Monday.
“Some 685 houses and 125 shops have been damaged and roads washed away,” Majeed said, adding that a request has been made to the federal government for financial help.
Irshad Bhatti, a spokesman for the country’s National Disaster Management Authority, said the extent of the damage was still being assessed.
The majority of the deaths in Kashmir came when buildings collapsed due to the rains, and a further nine people died in flooding in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, officials said.
Adnan Khan, an official from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said he feared the death toll there could rise.
“Dozens of families have suffered and their houses were destroyed, several people are still missing” Khan told AFP.
Weather officials are predicting heavy rain in the next three days and rescue teams are closely monitoring the situation, Bhatti said.
Floods in Pakistan in the summer of 2011 affected 5.8 million people, with floodwaters killing livestock, destroying crops, homes and infrastructure as the nation struggled to recover from record inundations the previous year.
Related Links
Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters
When the Earth Quakes
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Tropical Storm Isaac hugs Cuba coast, expected to be Cat 2 hurricane in Gulf
Florida’s governor declares a state of emergency as residents and tourists flee Key West. Storm preparations are under way all along the Gulf Coast. NBC’s Thanh Truong reports.
Updated at 6 p.m. ET: Tropical Storm Isaac was hugging the northern coastline of eastern Cuba on Saturday after claiming at least four lives in Haiti. Isaac should become a Category 1 hurricane on Sunday just as it nears the Florida Keys, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, and then grow into an even stronger Category 2 storm with 100 mph winds.
Isaac “could be significantly stronger than currently forecast” once it enters the Gulf of Mexico, the center said in an advisory.
It will first sweep past southwest Florida and the Florida Keys, where “hurricane conditions are expected … Sunday,” it said in a separate update.
Isaac is a massive storm, with tropical storm-force winds extending 230 miles from the center. Key West International Airport was halting all flights at 7 p.m. Saturday until the storm had passed.
Tropical Storm Isaac is picking up steam as it barrels through the Caribbean. The Weather Channel’s Mike Seidel reports on the storm’s effects.
In Haiti, a woman and a child in the town of Souvenance were killed in the storm, a local official reported. A woman in the southern coastal city of Jacmel was crushed to death when a tree fell on her house, government officials said.
In the capital Port-au-Prince – where some 350,000 people are still living in tents or shelters after the 2010 Haiti earthquake – a girl, 10, was killed when a wall fell on her.
Power outages and flooding were reported as Isaac moved across the hilly and severely deforested Caribbean country.
“There’s a lot of rain, a lot of wind,” said Magdala Jean-Baptiste, who huddled with her frightened children in their home in the southern coastal city of Jacmel. “We haven’t had any power since the storm started yesterday. We passed the night with no sleep.”
Tropical Storm Isaac lashes the island of Hispaniola, killing at least three people in Haiti, where thousands still live in tents after an earthquake over two years ago. NBC’s Mark Potter reports.
In neighboring Dominican Republic, Isaac felled power and phone lines and left at least a dozen towns cut off by flood waters. The most severe damage was reported along the south coast, including the capital Santo Domingo, where more than half the city was without power.
Cuba prepared by closing beaches and evacuating tourists in vulnerable areas, NBC’s Mary Murray and The Weather Channel’s Mike Seidel reported from Havana. Flights across Cuba were also suspended.
In Baracoa, a city on Cuba’s eastern side, high seas began topping the seawall Friday night, Radio Baracoa reported.
Now with 60-mph winds, Isaac should exit Cuba on Sunday and then move south of the Florida Keys and into the Gulf.
Dieu Nalio Chery / AP
Residents wade through a flooded street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Saturday.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Saturday declared a state of emergency to make sure local and state agencies would be ready. Republicans effectively canceled the first day of their national convention in Tampa, on Florida’s central Gulf Coast, deciding to gavel it open on Monday, then immediately recess to some time on Tuesday.
Gulf of Mexico operators began shutting down offshore oil and gas rigs on Friday ahead of the storm.
Follow Isaac’s path with our storm tracker
Live updates and analysis from weather.com
Tampa’s weather forecast includes rain and high winds Sunday night and into Monday, The Weather Channel reported. The winds could gust up to 60 mph.
The Weather Channel’s Bryan Norcross tracks Tropical Storm Isaac’s movement and predictions about where it is headed.
Monday and Tuesday include a risk of tornadoes across south Florida.
Officials were handing out sandbags to residents in the Tampa area, which often floods when heavy rainstorms hit. Sandbags also were being handed out in Homestead, 20 years after Hurricane Andrew devastated the community there. Otherwise, however, convention preparations were moving ahead as usual.
Isaac’s exact path is still unclear, but the hurricane center said models suggest it will make landfall somewhere between the Florida Panhandle and New Orleans on Tuesday night.
The storm’s anticipated path did shift closer to the Keys than previously forecast and emergency managers urged tourists to leave the islands if they could do so safely. A single road links the chain of islands to the Florida Peninsula.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Walter Michot / AP
Tropical Storm Isaac rakes the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba as it makes its way toward Florida, where Tampa will be hosting the Republican National Convention.
Have Swedish Forests Recovered from the Storm Gudrun?
ScienceDaily
In January 2005, the storm Gudrun hit Sweden. It has been estimated to have caused an overall economic damage of 2.4 billion euros in Swedish forestry alone. But has there been more damage to the forest than was clearly visible? A recently published study by Seidl and Blennow shows that Gudrun caused not only immediate damage corresponding to 110% of the average annual harvest in Sweden from only 16% of the country’s forest area but also pervasive effects in terms of growth reduction.
In recent decades, the frequency and severity of natural disturbances by e.g., strong winds and insect outbreaks has increased considerably in many forest ecosystems around the world. Future climate change is expected to further intensify disturbance regimes, which makes addressing disturbances in ecosystem management a top priority. As a prerequisite a broader understanding of disturbance impacts and ecosystem responses is needed. With regard to the effects of strong winds — the most detrimental disturbance agent in central and northern Europe — monitoring and management has focused on structural damage, i.e., tree mortality from uprooting and stem breakage. Effects on the functioning of trees surviving the storm (e.g., their productivity and allocation) have been rarely accounted for to date.
Seidl and Blennow show that growth reduction following the storm was significant and pervasive in a 6.79 million hectare forest landscape. Wind-related growth reduction in Norway spruce forests surviving the storm exceeded 10% in the worst hit regions. At the landscape scale, wind-related growth reduction amounted to 3.0 million m3 in the three years following Gudrun. It thus exceeds the annual long-term average storm damage from uprooting and stem breakage in Sweden and is in the same order of magnitude as the volume damaged by spruce bark beetles after Gudrun.
Seidl and Blennow conclude that the impact of strong winds on forest ecosystems is not limited to the immediately visible area of structural damage, and call for a broader consideration of disturbance effects on ecosystem structure and functioning in the context of forest management and climate change mitigation.
| Today | Tropical Storm | Japan | Island of Okinawa, [Okinawa-wide] |  |
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Tropical Storm in Japan on Sunday, 26 August, 2012 at 04:38 (04:38 AM) UTC.
| Description | |
| An unusually powerful typhoon packing 250-kilometre per hour gusts is approaching the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. Okinawa weather officials projected that Typhoon Bolaven would be the strongest typhoon to hit the island in several years. The Japan Meteorological Agency said the typhoon was centered about 200 kilometres southeast of Okinawa and was expected to pass directly over the island by this evening, dumping as much as 500 millimetres of rain over a 24-hour period. Public broadcaster NHK warned that the storm’s strong winds could produce heavy damage and told residents to stay indoors and away from windows. |
| Today | Flash Flood | China | Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, [Helan Mountain] |  |
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Flash Flood in China on Sunday, 26 August, 2012 at 03:47 (03:47 AM) UTC.
| Description | |
| Six tourists died and more than 30 were evacuated after a flash flood that soaked a mountain ravine in Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region Saturday, local authorities said. The flash flood, triggered by torrential rains in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, hit the Leek Ravine in the Helan Mountain that borders Inner Mongolia’s Alxa League and Shizuishan city of Ningxia at 12 pm, Ningxia’s regional drought relief and flood control headquarters said in a statement. Nine tourists were washed away while playing near a waterfall in the ravine. Six of them were found dead by rescuers and the other three were hospitalized with injuries, it said. At least 30 other tourists were evacuated to the city proper for safety considerations, said Xu Dongtao, an officer with Ningxia’s fire prevention headquarters who led the rescue operation. More than 100 officers and fire fighters joined the search and rescue. The city government of Shizuishan warned citizens Saturday of more mountain torrents and landslides in the Helan Mountain this flood season |
| 25.08.2012 | Flash Flood | USA | State of North Carolina, Roanoke Rapids | |
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Flash Flood in USA on Saturday, 25 August, 2012 at 14:34 (02:34 PM) UTC.
| Description | |
| At least 15 roads in the Roanoke Rapids area became impassable Saturday morning after flash floods swept through the city following at least one hour of heavy rainfall, according to a Halifax County official. Authorities are asking all residents to stay in their homes and, if they have to drive, to never attempt to pass through any high water. A flash flood warning remains in effect for Halifax County until noon. One shelter is open in the city, at the T.J. Davis Recreation Center, 600 E. 6th St., authorities said. No injuries have been reported, said Roanoke Rapids Police Chief Jeff Hinton. He estimated that some streets are covered with up to 4 feet of water. Flooded roads were also reported in Northampton County. Rain, along with warn temperatures and partly cloudy skies, are on tap throughout central North Carolina for the weekend. The rainfall started Friday night in many areas, including Wake County. Temperatures will climb to the upper 70s on Saturday and the mid-80s on Sunday. Monday’s high temperature could reach the low 90s. Tropical Storm Isaac could end up having an impact on North Carolina later this week. As of 8 p.m. Friday, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph and was expected to make landfall on Haiti late Friday and could lose some of its intensity over the weekend, as it moves over mountainous terrain. “It may get ripped apart so much that by the time it makes its way into the Gulf of Mexico, it may have a difficult time to reorganize,” WRAL meteorologist Mike Maze said. The storm, however, is expected to strengthen again in the Gulf to a Category 1 hurricane, and if it does, that could mean rain for the Triangle. |
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