Climate research: Where is the world's permafrost thawing
Bremerhaven, Germany (SPX) Sep 15, 2015 -
This Saturday at a conference in Quebec, Canada an international research team will present the first online data portal on global permafrost. In the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost researchers first collect all the existing permafrost temperature and active thickness layer data from Arctic, Antarctic and mountain permafrost regions and then make it freely available for download.
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Russia draws in hordes of Chinese with 'red tourism'
Saint Petersburg (AFP) Sept 13, 2015 -
Drawn by its Communist past and a visa-free regime, Chinese tourists are flocking to Russia in droves as it develops new routes touting "red tourism".
Nearly 410,000 Chinese came to Russia last year putting them on top of the list of foreign tourists, according to the federal tourism agency.
Their number has swelled 10 percent since 2013, when Germans topped the list of overseas visitor ...
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Global warming to pick up in 2015, 2016: experts
London (AFP) Sept 13, 2015 -
Man-made global warming is set to produce exceptionally high average temperatures this year and next, boosted by natural weather phenomena such as El Nino, Britain's top climate and weather body said in a report Monday.
"It looks very likely that globally 2014, 2015 and 2016 will all be amongst the very warmest years ever recorded," Rowan Sutton of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science ...
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Predicting tornadoes months or even seasons in advance
Toronto, Canada (SPX) Sep 15, 2015 -
What if tornado activity could be forecasted months, even seasons in advance? Thanks to a new model developed at the University of Toronto Scarborough, that ability could soon become a reality.
"The aim is to predict ahead to the following year or subsequent years about whether we'll get above or below average tornado activity in a given area," says Vincent Cheng, a postdoctoral fellow in ...
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Babies and children among 34 dead in Aegean migrant boat sinking
Athens, Greece (AFP) Sept 13, 2015 -
At least 34 people, including 15 babies and children, drowned when their overcrowded boat capsized in high winds off a Greek island on Sunday, the latest migrant tragedy at sea.
The new deaths came as Athens angrily defended its handling of the mounting refugee crisis in Europe and appealed for more help.
Four babies and 11 young children - six boys and five girls - were among those o ...
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Japan warns tourists on Mount Aso after eruption
Tokyo (AFP) Sept 14, 2015 -
Japan on Monday warned tourists to keep away from popular Mount Aso after it began belching smoke and ash into the air, the latest eruption in one of the world's most volcanically active countries.
Authorities issued their third-highest alert and cancelled more than a dozen flights after the huge volcano on the southwestern main island of Kyushu shot a column of ash several thousand metres ( ...
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New Ebola death in SLeone dims optimism for epidemic's end
Freetown (AFP) Sept 14, 2015 -
A 16-year-old girl in Sierra Leone has died from Ebola, dealing a blow to optimism that the west African country has finally turned the page on the devastating epidemic.
The teenager died Sunday in the city of Makeni, in a northern province that had not recorded a single case of the deadly virus in nearly six months, officials said.
Her death came some two weeks after a 67-year-old food ...
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