BULLETIN ITEM: After Nearly A Month Of 0 Sunspots, Activity At 11 On July 18
Frankly, it smells like we just passed through, finally, absolute Solar MIN, several months after it was initially called. One of my gauges is the universal sense of depression which has settled in over the human species. People everywhere are at a standstill, large masses barely hanging on. In U.S. political circuits, the let-down and disappointment with both major party candidates is palpable, all U.S. institutions are currently surrounded by severe lack of confidence by the great majority.
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Two more quakes hit off Oregon coast
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A 4.0 magnitude earthquake struck at a depth of 10 miles under the ocean west of Yachats just after 6 p.m. Friday, followed 10 minutes later by a 4.7 magnitude quake.
The U.S. Geological Survey said five other quakes hit the same area and depth in the past three days.
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Information from: The Oregonian
And now here's Stan Deyo's latest (now watch for OREGON intensity increasing, a major activity shift is taking place .. as PREDICTED )
Tsunami as earthquake measuring 6.6 rattles Japan
www.chinaview.cn  2008-07-19 12:33:55 | |
QUITO, July 18 (Xinhua) -- A 5.2-magnitude earthquake hit Ecuador's southwestern coastal province of Guayas early Friday, injuring dozens and causing minor property damage.
According to the National Geophysics Institute, the quake occurred at 00:41 a.m. local time (0541 GMT) and its epicenter was located 310 km southwest of the capital city Quito.
Many shanty towns along the Guayaquil River collapsed in the quake, local media reported. The government has pledged to provide aid and temporary shelters to those rendered homeless.
Northern Ecuador was also hit by a mild earthquake measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale later on Friday. There are no reports of casualties or property loss so far.
July 19, 2008
Holly Deyo
Very unusual activity is occurring just off the Oregon Coast. Also of interest...
Seismometers closest to an event always chart the quake at a higher intensity that seismic equipment located further away. Isn't it interesting that the USGS' seismometers and the EMSC both show the latest quake at Mag. 5.6, recorded at a mere 2 seconds difference. However, something strange happens with TWO "missing" Richter 5 quakes on the USGS report. Yet they show on the EMSC list. Since the two lists report data in different order, they have been color-coded for your convenience.
When you look at the legend for this USGS earthquake map, keep in mind the time frame of "last hour, last day, last week." This can be confusing because any shaker that occurred even 25 hours ago, falls into the "last week" category since their is no daily breakdown.
Also, some of the Oregon Coast quakes have occurred under the bigger squares and won't show up. For these "invisible" quakes, see the inset.
USGS
Mag. 4.7 July 19 01:00:22 44.332 -129.325 10.0 415 km (258 mi) W of Yachats, OR
Mag. 4.1 July 19 00:49:12 44.385 -129.824 10.0 455 km (283 mi) W of Yachats, OR
Mag. 5.6 July 17 22:51:56 44.381 -129.352 10.0 417 km (259 mi) W of Yachats, OR
Mag. 5.2 July 17 22:36:19 44.391 -129.288 10.0 412 km (256 mi) W of Yachats, OR
Mag. 3.7 July 17 15:03:36 44.684 -128.457 10.0 347 km (216 mi) W of Depoe Bay, OR
Mag. 4.4 July 17 13:32:19 44.451 -129.330 10.0 415 km (258 mi) W of Yachats, OR
Mag. 4.0 July 16 18:48:30 44.362 -129.787 10.0 452 km (281 mi) W of Yachats, OR
Mag. 4.2 July 15 04:29:04 44.435 -129.826 10.0 455 km (283 mi) W of Yachats, OR
Tornado Count in This Very Active Season
July 18, 2008
Holly Deyo
As stated by NOAA, the 1,735 tornado count is a preliminary figure. Even so, if you look at their stats for the past 3 years, actual vs. preliminary numbers at their widest only vary by 207. That would make the count nearer to 1,538 instead of lagging at April's 547 number.
More importantly, NOAA statistics show that the US is seeing an earlier start to tornado season as well as a decided uptick in events.
NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory states that the US sees about 1,000 tornadoes in any given year. The NWS' 10-year running average shot up considerably when 1,817 twisters hit in 2004.
This pushes the 10-year number to a distorted average. Even taking this into account, the graph speaks for itself. With months still to go before year end, this could be a very impressive twister year.
Hurricane Season Getting Longer
By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer
posted: 14 July 2008 12:15 am ET
Hurricane seasons have been getting longer over the past century and the big storms are coming earlier, LiveScience has learned. The trend has been particularly noticeable since 1995, some climate scientists say.
Further, the area of warm water able to support hurricanes is growing larger over time. The Atlantic Ocean is becoming more hurricane friendly, scientists say, and the shift is likely due to global warming.
"There has been an increase in the seasonal length over the last century," Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told LiveScience. "It's pretty striking."
A study Gulledge co-authored with other climate scientists found a five-day increase in season length per decade since 1915.
Hurricane season officially starts June 1, but the first named storm of the 2008 season, Tropical Storm Albert, formed on May 31. The first hurricane of the season, Hurricane Bertha, formed on July 1, reaching hurricane strength on July 7, relatively early in the season for a major storm.
In the last decade, more strong storms have been forming earlier in the season, said hurricane researcher Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
While this trend hasn't been formally linked to global warming because climate models can't reproduce individual storms, Holland thinks it's likely that the warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases is a major factor in the seasonal shift based on observations of changes in recent decades and the predictions models are making for the changing conditions in the Atlantic basin.
The length of the hurricane season is "one of the potentially big signals" that could change in response to global warming, Holland said.
Defining the season
The definition of the hurricane season depends on who you ask: For hurricane forecasters and coastal residents living in an area prone to hurricane landfalls, the standard dates are June 1 to Nov. 30. The National Hurricane Center uses these dates because historically most storms occur within that span of six months and because having a definitive time frame helps to heighten the public's awareness of the dangers of hurricanes.
But for researchers looking at how hurricane activity has changed over time, those dates don't really matter — meteorologists look at the dates of the first and last named storms in a given year, which allow them to evaluate the actual length of each hurricane season.
Since 1995, hurricane seasons have been increasing in length based on the latter definition, Holland said, with stronger storms that typically wouldn't be seen until mid-August showing up in July (Bertha, which became a Category 3 storm in the Atlantic last week, is one example).
Expanding warm pool
Like a hurricane's intensity, the length of the hurricane season is affected by the temperature of the ocean that fuels the storms. The warmer the water, the more energy a storm has to draw from.
Hurricanes and tropical storms have been forming earlier in the season recently because "we now get warmer sea surface temperatures earlier in the year," Holland explained. "The whole season has extended out."
Peter Webster of Georgia Tech put a finer point on it. "There is some work that says that the length of the North Atlantic hurricane season has become longer as SSTs [sea surface temperatures] warm up more quickly early in the season," he said.
Tropical storms and hurricanes need water of at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.5 degrees Celsius) to form. The area where water temperatures meet or exceed that mark is called the warm pool.
In recent years, the warm pool has expanded, creating a larger area over which hurricanes can develop and strengthen, Holland told LiveScience. It is now reaching all the way to the coast of Africa, allowing storms to form farther east, and so giving them more time to strengthen as they traverse the Atlantic.
Bertha, for example, formed farther east than any other July storm on record.
These storms that form so far over in the eastern Atlantic are called "Cape Verde-type" storms, after the chain of islands off the western coast of Africa. Cape Verde-type storms account for a major proportion of all major hurricanes (Category 3 and higher), Holland said.
These storms tend to take a straight westward path across the Atlantic, avoiding land and cooler waters, which can kill a storm. Hurricane Andrew, which devastated southern Florida in 1992, and 2007's Hurricane Dean, which wreaked havoc in the state of Yucatán in Mexico, were both Cape Verde-type storms, along with Bertha.
Holland thinks that the growth of the warm pool will be a factor in the length of future hurricane seasons by promoting these and other early-forming storms.
Outliers
Other early storms, outliers to the standard June 1 to Nov. 30 season, such as this season's Tropical Storm Arthur or last year's Subtropical Storm Andrea (which formed on May 9), aren't all that unusual. Such early birds were seen even before global warming became an issue — the earliest-forming storm in recorded weather history was observed on March 7, 1908.
"There's always been the odd one out," Holland said, adding that we'll likely see more of these in a warming world.
"We have to expect that they'll be more outliers," he said, though he doubts that the official dates of hurricane season will change, since most will still lie within that window.
But these aren't the early-forming storms that Holland is worried about, because they tend to be weaker. It's the major storms, like the Cape Verde-type, that are forming in July and later that are the ones to watch out for, he said.
These shift to more major storms is also cause for concern because the Atlantic historically had fairly timid hurricane seasons compared to other storm-producing basins such as the Indian Ocean. Because the Atlantic basin wasn't optimized for hurricane formation already, "it didn't take much of a change to see a difference," Holland said.
One other way the Atlantic basin is becoming more hurricane-friendly, besides warmer oceans, is more favorable atmospheric conditions. Warming ocean temperatures also change atmospheric circulation patterns. Holland said some changes are already happening over the Atlantic and climate models predict that these changes will also tend to promote the development of storms off the coast of Africa.
"All of the stars are lining up," he said.
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