Earth Report – Global Disaster Watch
Magnitude 5+ Earthquakes – Global
5.8 Earthquake hits south of Fiji.
5.3 Earthquake hits south of Fiji.
5.2 Earthquake hits off the east coast of Kamchatka.
5.1 Earthquake hits Coquimbo, Chile.
5.0 Earthquake hits Timor.
5.0 Earthquake hits Halmahera, Indonesia.
Tropical Storms – Roundup of Tropical Storms:
In the Eastern Pacific: Hurricane Dora is located about 255 mi…405 km WSW of Cabo Corrientes Mexico and about 285 mi…460 km S of the southern tip of Baja California with maximum sustained winds…80 mph…130 km/h. Present movement…WNW or 295 degrees at 12 mph…19 km/h.
NewsBytes:
India – The flood situation in Assam worsened on Monday as four new districts were hit by floods taking the total number of flood-hit districts to eight. Over 11,700 people displaced by the floods in 126 villages, Lakhimpur worst-hit district. Heavy rain also flooded Mumbai, delayed trains caused commuter chaos.
Melting Greenland ice now source of 25% of sea level rise
Ocean levels rose 50 percent faster in 2014 than in 1993, with meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet now supplying 25 percent of total sea level increase compared with just 5 percent 20 years earlier, researchers reported Monday.
The findings add to growing concern among scientists that the global watermark is climbing more rapidly than forecast only a few years ago, with potentially devastating consequences.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world live in low-lying deltas that are vulnerable, especially when rising seas are combined with land sinking due to depleted water tables, or a lack of ground-forming silt held back by dams.
Major coastal cities are also threatened, while some small island states are already laying plans for the day their drowning nations will no longer be livable.
Greenland alone contains enough frozen water to lift oceans by about 7 meters (23 feet), though experts disagree on the global warming threshold for irreversible melting, and how long that would take once set in motion.
Overall, the pace of global average sea level rise went up from about 2.2 mm a year in 1993, to 3.3 mm a year two decades later.
Wildfires – Idaho, USA
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management says a lightning storm ignited multiple fires in Southwest Idaho.
The largest fire to spark during the storm Monday night was estimated at nearly 5 square miles and located northwest of Grandview.
The second largest blaze burned about 2.3 square miles Monday night about two miles east of the Mountain Home Air Force Base.
At least a half dozen smaller fires also started around the area.