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El Nino 2002 Update

El Nino means "the little boy" or "Christ child" in Spanish. South American fishermen used the name years ago to designate periodic cycles of unusually warm water in the Pacific ocean which appear around Christmas time. El Nino conditions occur once water temperatures have warmed enough (.5 degrees Celsius or more above normal) to alter normal cloudiness and rainfall in the Pacific basin. The cycle is every four or five years and can last up to eighteen months. The last El Nino was 1997-1998.

Pacific Ocean temperatures near the South American coast in February 2002 had warmed 2 degrees Celsius (4 Fahrenheit) indicating that El Nino conditions are developing. Map courtesy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Pacific Ocean temperatures near the South American coast in February 2002 had warmed 2 degrees Celsius (4 Fahrenheit) indicating that El Nino conditions are developing. Map courtesy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

March 9, 2002 Washington, D. C. - Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced on March 7 that ocean surface temperatures near the South American coast had already warmed 2 degrees Celsius (4 Fahrenheit) by February 2002.

 

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Dinosaur Feathers – Even On Tyrannosaurus rex?

Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur painting © by artist Tony Trammell in Dinosaur Illustrations.
Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur painting © by artist Tony Trammell in Dinosaur Illustrations.

March 9, 2002 New York City, New York - This week I talked to a scientist who is confident that many dinosaurs had feathers, including the fierce Tyrannosaurus rex "monster" meat-eater, - or at least when it was young. Dr. Mark Norell, Chairman of the Paleontology Division at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, published photographs and information about a new fossil discovery from the Liaoning Province in northeast China in the March 7th journal, Nature.

 

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Mysterious Slowing of Pioneer Spacecraft 7 Billion Miles from Earth

An artist's rendering of the Pioneer spacecraft in deep space courtesy NASA.
An artist's rendering of the Pioneer spacecraft in deep space courtesy NASA.


February 24, 2002  Los Alamos, New Mexico - Thirty years ago on March 2, 1972, NASA launched the Pioneer 10 spacecraft from Cape Kennedy aboard an Atlas Centaur rocket. According to officials, it was the "fastest spacecraft ever to leave Earth." Its mission was to travel through the asteroid belt, be the first manmade machine to pass Jupiter and be the first spacecraft to use planetary gravity to change course and to reach escape velocity from the solar system. Pioneer 10 is powered by electricity derived from the warmth of decaying plutonium 238 and was intended to last only 21 months. Thirty years later, it is still going and sending signals.

 

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Sunken City Off India Coast – 7500 B. C.?

The underwater archaeological site that could be more than 9,000 years old is about 30 miles west of Surat in the Gulf of Khambhat (Cambay) in northwestern India.
The underwater archaeological site that could be more than 9,000 years old is about 30 miles west of Surat in the Gulf of Khambhat (Cambay) in northwestern India.

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February 16, 2002  Surat, India - A month ago in mid-January, marine scientists in India announced they had sonar images of square and rectangular shapes about 130 feet down off the northwestern coast of India in the Gulf of Khambhat (Cambay). Not only are their sonar shapes with 90-degree angles, the Indian Minister of Science and Technology ordered that the site be dredged. What was found has surprised archaeologists around the world and was the subject of a private meeting two weeks ago attended by the Indian Minister in charge of investigating the underwater site about thirty miles off the coast from Surat.

 

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January 2002 Warmest On Record For Whole World

January 2002 had the warmest global temperatures in modern records. Satellite photograph courtesy NASA.
January 2002 had the warmest global temperatures in modern records. Satellite photograph courtesy NASA.


February 13, 2002  Boulder, Colorado - Over the past three weeks, there have been several sobering headlines about the impact of global warming:

 

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United States Nuclear Power Plant Security – Is It Effective Against Terrorists?

"Government officials said intelligence suggested that al-Qaeda
members had been considering attacking U. S. nuclear power plants
with car or truck bombs, boats or aircraft."

- Seth Borenstein, The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 31, 2002

103 nuclear power plants in the states colored purple above supply about twenty percent of the electricity used in the United States. Some states have only one reactor. Others such as Pennsylvania have nine reactors, including Three Mile Island which is near the Harrisburg International Airport. Graphic © 2001 by the Nuclear Energy Institute.
103 nuclear power plants in the states colored purple above supply about twenty percent of the electricity used in the United States. Some states have only one reactor. Others such as Pennsylvania have nine reactors, including Three Mile Island which is near the Harrisburg International Airport. Graphic © 2001 by the Nuclear Energy Institute.

February 4, 2002  Middletown, Pennsylvania - President George Bush said in his January 29, 2002 State of the Union speech that "diagrams of American nuclear power plants" were found among terrorist manuals and other artifacts left by terrorists in Afghanistan. Earlier on January 16, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had issued an alert that a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant could be imminent.

 

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Latest Satellite Data Shows Surprisingly Thicker Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica

Ross Ice Shelf in lower left quadrant of Antarctica map has been the source of Connecticut-sized icebergs dropping into the sea in recent years.
Ross Ice Shelf in lower left quadrant of Antarctica map has been the source of Connecticut-sized icebergs dropping into the sea in recent years.

January 30, 2002 Pasadena, California - The huge Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica is bigger than Texas and two-thirds of a mile thick. It has been the source of Rhode Island-sized icebergs in recent years in what was thought to be a continual slow melting in slippery mud at the bottom where the heavy ice layer pushes against the continental land mass. Since the last Ice Age ended ten thousand years ago, icy "rivers" have moved along that mud base and dumped Connecticut-sized icebergs into the sea in recent years.

 

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Update on 70,000-Year-Old Human Artifacts from Blombos Cave, South Africa

View of Indian Ocean and west of Blombos Cave entrance where yellow arrow points. Photograph courtesy National Science Foundation.
View of Indian Ocean and west of Blombos Cave entrance where yellow arrow points. Photograph courtesy National Science Foundation.
Blombos Cave is 200 miles east of Cape Town, South Africa on a hillside overlooking the Indian Ocean.
Blombos Cave is 200 miles east of Cape Town, South Africa on a hillside overlooking the Indian Ocean.

January 24, 2002 Blombos Cave, South Africa - On December 8, 2001, I first reported about the new archaeological evidence that "modern humans" lived in Blombos Cave, South Africa 70,000 years ago. (See: Earthfiles 12/8/01) This month the journal Science published a report by the lead anthropologist and discoverer, Christopher Henshilwood, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town.

 

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