Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet (April 5, 2013)

Deep Warming
A new study shows that the world's oceans are warming significantly under the influence of greenhouse gas-induced climate change, especially the deeps.  Scientists from the U.S. and European weather agencies reassembled data from 1958 to 2009, using all available sources to create a model of ocean temperature changes.  They found that dimmed sunlight due to massive volcanic eruptions in the early 1980s and 1990s briefly reversed an otherwise profound trend of ocean warming.  About 90 percent of the energy added to the global environmentby human activities was found to have gone into the ocean.  Deep waters absorbed a surprising amount of heat, which may be related to a long-term cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.  Once it changes, researchers believe the ocean surface temperatures will begin to warm more.
Bat Die-Off
One of Pennsylvania's largest bat habitats has suffered an almost complete die-off this past winter.  The deaths are the result of a lethal fungal infection that has decimated bat caves and mines across a broad swath of the eastern United States during the past few years.  Greg Turner, a biologist from Pennsylvania's Game Commission, found that all but 23 of the approximately 10,000 bats that have hibernated for generations in the Durham mine, died over the winter.  It's the lastest colony to succumb to white nose syndrome, an epidemic that has spread across the region since 2006.  The syndrome is caused by a white fungus, which builds up around the snout of stricken bats.  Once infected, a bat will repeatedly wake from hibernation, leading the flying mammal to use up its stores of body fat before the end of the season.
Sea Lion Starvation
Unprecedented numbers of starving sea lion pups are swimming to shore in California, straining local animal care centers and puzzling marine biologists who have yet to determine what is ailing the sea mammals.  According to marine biologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), more fledgling sea lions have beached themselves along the central and southern California coast in 2013 so far than in the previous five years combined.  The agency says 948 sea lion pups, many of them less than a year old, have come ashorethis year between San Diego in the south and Santa Barbara in the north.  That compares to only 88 strandings in all of 2012.
Locust Alert
Madagascar's worst locust plague in 60 years has infested more than half of the island's crops and has prompted a U.N. warning of potential food shortages.  The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that half of the island's population could be at risk of hunger as the insects continue to devour crops.  "The last (locust plague) was in the 1950s and it had a duration of 17 years.  So if nothing is done, it can last for five to 10 years, depending on the conditions," FAO locust control expert Annie Monard told the BBC.
Earthquakes
Manila and other parts of Luzon were jolted by a strong quake that struck just offshore from the northern Philippines island.  Residents rushed outside during the shaking.
*  Earth movements were also felt in south-central Burma, Trinidad, central West Virginia and southeastern Missouri.
Argentine Cloudburst
One of the most severe storms on record inundated the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, leaving half the city submerged and many residents stranded on rooftops.  Nearly 6 inches of rain fell over parts of the city in two hours during an overnight cloudburst.  It was the heaviest April rainfall to douse the capital in a century.  Dozens of people were killed in the floods across Buenos Aires Province.  Major streets and avenues turned into streams and rivers that carried away thousands of cars.
Fairy Circles
Puzzling patterns of grass rings that blanket parts of southwest Africa have left casual observers and even experts scratching their heads for centuries.  Fairy circles can reach 50 feet in diameter and are most common in Namibia.  The indigenous Himba people have, since prehistoric times, attributed the rings to a higher power.  But botanist Norbert Juergens of the University of Hamburg says the lowly termite is the true force that creates them.  Writing in the journal Science, Juergens says that the sand termite Psammotermes allocerus is the only creature that is always there when the circles are forming.  He and colleagues found that the insects, which seem to "swim" through the sandy terrain around fairy circles, damage plant roots and feed on them, slowly forming fairy circles in the process.  The termites benefit from the moisture that gets trapped inside the circle.  This leaves other plants in the mainly arid region cut off from the moisture, causing the grass rings to appear as the most prominent signs of life.