Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet (March 28, 2014)

Warming for the Ages
The head of the U.N.'s weather agency says that global warming has not stopped and will continue for at least centuries due to the burning of fossil fuels by humans.  Michel Jarraud made the pronouncement as he presented the World Meteorological Organization's annual review of the world's climate.  The report concludes that last year tied with 2007 as the sixth hottest since reliable records began over 150 years ago.  It also says that 13 of the 14 qwarmest years on record have occurred in this century.  "Greenhouse gases are at record levels, meaning that our atmosphere and oceans will continue to warm for centuries to come.  The laws of physics are non-negotiable."  Jarraud told a news conference.
Bird of Paradise
One of the most endangered waterfowl in the world has been found living in the wild on the Hawaiian island of Oahu for the first time in centuries.  A pair of Hawaiian geese, or nene, is believed to have flown on its own from another island to nest on Oahu's North Shore.  It has since successfully hatched three healthy goslings.  The nene, the official state bird, is believed to have descended from Canada geese that arrived nearly 1 million years ago.  It was brought to near extinction by the middle of the 20th century by the expansion of agriculture by early Polynesian settlers and then through unrestricted hunting by European colonists.  Only 30 birds were left by 1952.  But conservation efforts have lifted the population to about 2,000, mainly on the island of Kauai.  Some pairs have been airlifted for resettlement to the Big Island and Maui, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the pair found on Oahu was not part of that program.
Blooming Response
Climate change has stretched the wildflower blooming season in the Rocky Mountains by more than a month, with half the flowers beginning to bloom weeks earlier than before.  But researcher David Inouye of the University of Maryland says that the flowering plants response to climate change is complex, with different species responding in unexpected ways.  Inouye began counting flowers in the Rockies in 1974, long before climate change was even on the scientific radar.  He and his students have since amassed an enormous amount of data on wildflower blooming, and say the blooming times are now changing rapidly.  Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he says that the peak time of wildflowers bursting into blooms has moved up five days per decade during his study.
Tropical Cyclone
Cyclone Gillian lashed Australia's Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island with high winds that tore the roofs off homes and brought down trees as well as power lines.  Gillian was only at tropical storm force when it skirted the island, just south of Java, but later intensified into a Category-5 cyclone over a remote stretch of the eastern Indian Ocean.
Earthquakes
People in far northern Chile became alarmed by more than 300 offshore quakes that struck in a single week.  The swarm began with a 6.2 magnitude temblor that prompted more than 100,000costal residents to briefly evacuate low-lying areas.
*     Earth movements were also felt in the Nicobar Islands and central Oklahoma.
Ebola Outbreak
Countries across West Africa began scrambling to halt a new outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus that is suspected of killing at least 63 people.  The hemorrhagic disease emerged in mid-March in parts of Guinea, and is now feared to have spread to neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia.  Initial symptoms are severe fever, headaches, muscle pain and weakness.  Those can advance to life-threatening diarrhea, vomiting and hemorrhaging.  Humans can become infected from bats, gorillas and forest antelope, then spread it to others through contact with infected blood, bodily fluids and tissue.  Fatality rates can be as high as 90 percent.
Worm Woes
Worms struggle to cope with the use of pesticides, which a new study reveals impacts both the physiology and behavior of the important soil-aerating creatures.  A Danish-French research team studied earthworms that had been living for generations in soil sprayed with a fungicide.  "We see that the worms have developed methods to detoxify themselves, so that they can live in soil sprayed with fungicide.  They spend a lot of energy on detoxifying, and that comes with a cost," said researchers Nicolas Givaudan and Claudia Wiegand, whose report was published in the journal Soil Biology and Biochemistry.  And that cost is that they are less successful at reproducing and are much smaller than worms living in organic farming fields.  There are often two to three times more earthworms in unsprayed soil than in soil treated with pesticide, the report says.