Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet (Oct. 31, 2014)

A Chilling Discovery
Vanishing Arctic sea ice appears to have been responsible for the spells of bitterly cold wintertime conditions in the Northern Hemisphere during recent years.  Masato Mori of the University of Tokyo and colleagues found colder-than-normal winters are now twice as likely to occur across Eurasia under these conditions than before the record polar melting began.  This past September saw the sixth-lowest minimum Arctic sea ice extent ever observed.  A warming Arctic causes the polar jet stream to be weaker, allowing frigid weather systems to creep farther south.  It can also promote blocking weather patterns that cause the chill to linger for weeks.  While the study focused on a part of Eurasia that stretches from Eastern Europe to China, the past few winters have also brought frigid conditions not seen in decades to parts of Western Europe and North America.
Microbic Warming
A microbe recently discovered in the melting Arctic permafrost appears to be releasing vast amounts of the greenhouse gas methane, possibly speeding up climate change.  Methanoflorens stordalenmirensis "breathes out methane like we breathe out carbon dioxide," said lead author Carmody McCalley, a scientist at the Earth Systems Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.  Methane makes up only about 9 percent of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but it can store up to 21 times more heat than carbon dioxide.  Researchers say they hope the microbic discovery will help scientists improve their simulations of future climate by providing a more accurate picture of how thawing permafrost releases greenhouse gases.  The study was published in the journal Nature.
Eruption
Advancing lava from Hawaii's Kilauea volcano plowed through a residential area, burning structure and threatening to cut off the community from the rest of the Big Island.  The flow has been creeping for weeks toward the town of Pahoa at about 45 feet per hour.  Since the lava began to move again in September after a brief standstill, it has crossed a road, overrun a cemetery and triggered methane explosions.  Residents of Pahoa were removing their personal belongs from structures in the path of the lava, and were told by officials that they would be allowed to watch their homes burn as a way to help them cope with the loss.  Kilauea's current eruption began in 1983.  A seperate lava flow between 1983 and 1990 destroyed about 180 homes.
Tropical Cyclones
Cyclone Nilofar weakened rapidly late in the week as it approached the India-Pakistan border region.  The storm briefly attained Category-4 strength far from land over the Arabian Sea a few days earlier.  India's meteotological agency warned that heavy rainfall from remnants of the storm could damage crops in the state of Rajasthan.
*     Drought-plagued parts of Honduras and Nicaragua were drenched as Tropical Storm Hanna dissipated over the region.
Earthquakes
A moderate quake centered in far northwestern Greece knocked items off shelves, but caused no significant damage.
*      Earth movements were also felt in Samatra and nearby areas of southern Thailand, Peru's Amazon region and central England.
Solar Salvo
The largest group of sunspots seen in nearly a quarter-century sent a barrage of solar flares into space, three of which were among some of the most powerful that the sun can create.  Solar flares are gigantic explosions on the surface of the sun, which send streams of dangerous charged particles rushing into space.  If Earth happens to be in the path of the blasts, the resulting geomagnetic storms can knock out satellite electronics, disrupt high-frequency communications and even bring down power grids.  Such storms also produce vivid aurora displays.  The largest sunspot in history was observed in 1947 and grew to be three times larger than the one currently producing the swarm of flares.
Tortoise Comeback
The famed giant tortoise of the Galapagos Islands has been brought back from the verge of extinction after its population dropped to only 15 by the 1960s.  Captive breeding and conservation efforts have allowed that number to rebound to more than 1,000.  "The population is secure.  It's a rare example of how biologists and managers can collaborate to recover a species from the brink of extinction," said James P. Gibbs, a biologist at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.  He was lead author of a study that charted the growing success of the islands tortorises, published in the journal PLOS ONE.  But Gibbs cautions that the giant tortosie population is not likely to increase further on the island of Espanola until the landscape recovers from the damage inflicted by now-eradicated goats.