Australia races to control major blaze before weather worsens
Kersbrook, Australia (AFP) Jan 05, 2015 -
Firefighters raced Monday to contain a major blaze before the forecast return of strong winds and a heatwave, following the loss of 26 homes in the worst bushfire conditions in South Australia for three decades.
The state fire service said properties were still at risk after nearly 13,000 hectares (32,124 acres) of scrub and farmland were razed in the Mount Lofty Ranges, east of Adelaide, ov ...
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What is the MJO, and why do we care?
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 05, 2015 -
The articles posted on this blog have described ENSO, its regional and global impacts, and the challenge of forecasting it, among several other topics. Here we introduce another important player on the tropical stage: the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO.
While the MJO is a lesser-known phenomenon, it can have dramatic impacts in the mid-latitudes. Several times a year the MJO is a strong ...
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NASA satellite captures images of isolated forest in Malawi
Blantyre, Malawi (UPI) Jan 2, 2015 -
Mulanje Massif is rather impressive from ground level; but it may be most stunning from 440 miles above Earth's surface. That's the vantage point through which NASA's Landsat 8, one of the agency's Earth Observation satellites, viewed the Malawian mountain top most recently.
The isolated outcropping of rock - a geologic feature known as an inselberg or monadnock - rises abruptly from ...
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Karachi's mangroves, defence against storms and tsunamis, threatened
Karachi (AFP) Jan 04, 2015 -
Thick mangroves have long protected Karachi, southern Pakistan's sprawling metropolis, from battering by the Arabian Sea, but pollution, badly managed irrigation and years of illegal logging have left this natural barrier in a parlous state.
Experts fear that loss of the natural barrier formed by the mangroves could put the city of nearly 20 million people at greater risk from violent storms ...
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China's Three Gorges dam 'breaks world hydropower record'
Beijing (AFP) Jan 02, 2015 -
China's Three Gorges dam has broken the world record for annual hydroelectric power production, more than a decade after it became the world's largest power plant, its operator said.
The Yangtze river power station generated 98.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2014, the Three Gorges Dam Corporation said in a statement, topping the 2013 production from the Brazilian-Paraguayan Itaip ...
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