Space junk threatens station astronauts

WASHINGTON (AP) — A discarded chunk of a Russian rocket is forcing six space station astronautsto seek shelter in escape capsules early Saturday.
ASA spokesman Rob Navias (NAVE-e-us) says the space junk will barely be close enough to be a threat. But if it hits the station it could be dangerous, so the astronauts — two Americans, three Russians and a Dutchman — will wake early and climb into two Soyuz vehicles ready to rocket back to Earth just in case.

The debris is supposed to come closest at 2:38 a.m. EDT. It was not noticed until Friday, too late to move the International Space Station out of the way.

This is the third time in 12 years that astronauts have had to seek shelter from space junk.

Audit: Gas lines tied to fracking lack oversight

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Government auditors say federal officials know nothing about thousands of miles of pipelines that carry natural gas released through the drilling method known as fracking, and need to step up oversight to make sure they are running safely.

Amid the gas-drilling boom, private companies have put in hundreds of small gathering pipelines in recent years to collect new fuel supplies released through the high-pressure drilling technique.

Nationwide, about 240,000 miles of gathering pipelines ferry the gas and oil to processing facilities and larger pipelines in the major energy-producing states. Many of these pipelines course through densely populated areas, including neighborhoods in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Government Accountability Office said in its report issued Thursday that most of those miles are not regulated by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which means they are not regularly inspected for leaks or corrosion.

In some states, officials don't know where the lines are.

Emily Krafjack, who lives in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania, said many local residents have no idea that the pipelines near their homes are not overseen by federal regulators. Gathering lines that run in the rural northeastern corner of the state receive no federal oversight if there are fewer than 10 homes within 220 yards of the pipeline.

"Who would ever think that they could run something like this next to your home and it wouldn't have any regulations attached to it?," said Krafjack, a former community liaison for Wyoming County, Pa., on gas issues.

Nationwide, there are about 200,000 miles of gas gathering lines and up to 40,000 miles of hazardous liquid gathering lines in rural and urban areas alike, ranging in diameter from about 2 to 12 inches. But only about 24,000 of those miles are regulated, according to the report.

The industry is not required to report pipeline-related fatality, injury or property damage information about the unregulated lines. PHMSA only collects information about accidents on the small subset of gathering lines that the agency regulates, but that data was not immediately available Thursday.

The pipeline agency is considering collecting more data on the unregulated gas gathering lines, but the plans are still preliminary and have met with some resistance from the natural gas industry. Agency officials are reviewing more than 100 public comments received about their proposal for gas lines, and also plan to propose a rule that will cover hazardous liquid gathering pipelines by the fall, said Jeannie Layson, a spokeswoman for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

PHMSA delegates some enforcement of its rules to state-level pipeline safety authorities, who the Government Accountability Office surveyed to understand the array of risks associated with gathering lines.

Those state-level agencies told the auditors that construction quality, maintenance practices, unknown locations, and limited or no information on current pipeline integrity all posed safety risks for federally unregulated gathering pipelines.

The expansion of hydraulic fracturing, which involves shattering rock thousands of feet underground with a combination of water, sand and chemicals, promises staggering yields, and drilling also comes with promises of job creation and economic opportunities.

But in Fort Worth, where dozens of new gathering lines have been laid in recent years to capture supplies from hundreds of new wells, some residents say there aren't enough protections from leaks and ruptures due to corrosion.

"It's ridiculous," said Jerry Lobdill, a retired chemical engineer who lives in a Fort Worth neighborhood near several new gas wells and has several lines running near his home. "The gathering lines are unregulated, the city doesn't know where they are, and they're buried so you can't see them."

The recent surge in drilling also has led California lawmakers to write new laws to increase oversight of the industry.

Assemblyman Bill Wieckowski, D-Fremont, is sponsoring a bill now pending before a state Senate committee that would require gas and oil producers to disclose what chemicals they are using when they engage in hydraulic fracturing.

"If we're on this cusp of a boom then maybe we at the very least need to know where these lines are," Wieckowski said.

Brazil may shift jurisdiction of Chevron case

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A judge in Campos, Brazil, could shift the criminal charges filed against Chevron and drill-rig operatorTransocean to Rio de Janeiro, a decision that would remove a crusading prosecutor from the case.

Eduardo Santos de Oliveira, a federal prosecutor based in Campos, in Rio de Janeiro's interior, told Reuters on Friday a jurisdictional review is under way, which could delay any formal criminal indictment of the firms and their employees for weeks.

Oliveira filed criminal charges against Chevron, Transocean and 17 of their employees in Brazil this week for alleged crimes related to a November offshore oil spill in Brazil's Frade field, which Chevron operates.

He pledged to seek maximum prison sentences of 31 years against the firms' executives.

Federal judge Claudio Girão Barreto will consider whether the companies must post bonds in Campos or whether the case should be moved to Rio de Janeiro. The judicial review normally takes around ten calendar days.

The review does not alter the content of the criminal charges, but it could remove the case from Oliveira's turf and hand it to another team of prosecutors.

The question of jurisdiction stems from the location of the alleged crimes in a deep-sea oil field beyond Brazil's territorial waters but within its 200-nautical-mile "exclusive economic zone."

Oliveira said the judge had asked him to appear in court on Monday with more details about the case.

"I think moving the case to Rio de Janeiro would be a mistake," said Oliveira in a telephone interview. "Chevron and Transocean want you to believe this happened on some foreign ship or platform in international waters. But the crime happened under the seabed, in physical Brazilian territory."

Some Brazilian officials, including Senator Jorge Viana of the government's ruling party, have called Oliveira's charges over-aggressive. Viana told Reuters this week that the case could damage Brazil's oil industry.

A 20 billion reais ($11 billion) civil suit filed earlier by Oliveira in Campos against Chevron and Transocean, its drilling contractor at Frade, has already been shifted to Rio de Janeiro's capital. A judge ruled in January that Campos wasn't the proper jurisdiction for the civil case, Brazil's largest-ever environmental lawsuit.

Chevron's November leak of 2,400 to 3,000 barrels of oil at the Frade field was the result of a pressure kick during drilling. Oliveira has said Chevron's drilling was reckless and unsafe. The companies deny the charges.

(Editing by Brad Haynes, Gary Hill)

NASA releases new moon pics requested by students

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft in orbit around the moon has sent back five dozen new images of the lunar surfaceincluding a view of the far side with Earth in the distance.

Don't thank scientists for it. Fourth-graders from Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., directed the spacecraft to snap pictures as part of a project headed by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

The images were returned earlier this week.

Twin NASA probes entered lunar orbit over the New Year's weekend on a mission to study the gravity field. During non-critical parts of the mission, select students get to choose camera targets.

The Montana students got first dibs for winning a NASA-sponsored contest that renamed the craft Ebb and Flow.

Mexico's Pacific coast no stranger to earthquakes

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A powerful earthquake Tuesday that centered along the Pacific coast of southern Mexico occurred in a region with a history of unleashing damaging jolts, scientists say.

Since 1973, the seismically active coast has been rocked by 15 major quakes magnitude-7 or larger. The deadliest occurred in 1985 when a magnitude-8 struck, sending shock waves to Mexico City that killed thousands.

"It's a very active zone," said Stanford University geophysicistGreg Beroza, who has done field work in the area.

The latest quake was smaller — with a preliminary magnitude of 7.4 — and struck about 300 miles south of the 1985 quake at the boundary where the Cocos plate dives beneath Mexico. Dozens of homes buckled near the epicenter and shaking was felt in Mexico City, where high-rises swayed and panicked residents streamed into the streets.

Unlike in 1985, Tuesday's quake did not severely damage the capital, mainly because it wasn't as large and did not release as much energy. Since Mexico City was built on an ancient lakebed, long periods of shaking from the 1985 temblor amplified the destruction. That quake destroyed 400 buildings and damaged thousands more.

The latest jolt "wouldn't have been nearly as effective at generating those deep bass tones" that caused the damage seen in 1985, USGS seismologist Susan Hough said in an email.

As governments and residents tally the damage, scientists warned about aftershocks. At least half a dozen, the largest recorded at magnitude-5.1, have already rattled Mexico City and the borders of Oaxaca and Guerrero near the epicenter.

"Any time there's a big earthquake, prepare for more," said seismologist Kate Hutton of the California Institute of Technology. The shaking "will go on for weeks."

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Online:

U.S. Geological Survey: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/

NASA considering space station for Mars dry run

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The International Space Stationmay provide the setting for a 500-day pretend trip to Mars in another few years.

NASA said Tuesday that consideration is under way to use the space station as a dry run for a simulated trip to and from Mars.

It would be patterned after Russia's mock flight to Mars that lasted 520 days at a Moscow research center. Six men were involved in that study, which ended late last year. They were locked in a steel capsule.

NASA's space station program manager Mike Suffredini said before astronauts can fly beyond low-Earth orbit, they'll have to spend more than six months aloft at a time. That's the typical stint forspace station crews. Five hundred days is more than 16 months.

The human endurance record of 14 months was set by a Russian cosmonaut aboard the Mir space station in the mid-1990s. Only two others — both Russians — have spent as long as a full year in space.

No NASA astronaut has spent more than seven months in space on a single mission.

Suffredini doesn't expect any such Mars simulation aboard the space station to occur any sooner than two to three years. Physical as well as psychological questions will have to be addressed before anything of that sort is attempted, he said.

Steps are under way, however, for such an effort, and scientists and flight surgeons already are working on it. The goal would be to have all the data in hand so the space station can be used as a Mars test bed before its projected demise in 2020 or thereafter.

Suffredini said he expects the consensus ultimately will be to simulate "at least the first leg of a trip to a distant planet."

NASA's future for manned exploration is up in the air as the debate drags on as to where astronauts should head in the decades ahead: the moon, asteroids and/or Mars. The cost promises to be a major factor, along with the development of rocketships big enough to travel so far.

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Online:

Space station: http://www.nasa.gov/station

Solar power station in Spain works at night

A unique thermosolar power station in southern Spain can shrug off cloudy days: energy stored when the sun shines lets it produce electricity even during the night.

The Gemasolar station, up and running since last May, stands out in the plains of Andalusia.

From the road between Seville and Cordoba, one can see its central tower lit up like a beacon by 2,600 solar mirrors, each 120 square metres (28,500 square feet), that surround it in an immense 195-hectare (480-acre) circle.

"It is the first station in the world that works 24 hours a day, a solar power station that works day and night!" said Santago Arias, technical director of Torresol Energy, which runs the station.

The mechanism is "very easy to explain," he said: the panels reflect the suns rays on to the tower, transmitting energy at an intensity 1,000 times higher than that of the sun's rays reaching the earth.

Energy is stored in a vat filled with molten salts at a temperature of more than 500 degrees C (930 F). Those salts are used to produce steam to turn the turbines and produce electricity.

It is the station's capacity to store energy that makes Gemasolar so different because it allows the plant to transmit power during the night, relying on energy it has accumulated during the day.

"I use that energy as I see fit, and not as the sun dictates," Arias explained.

As a result, the plant produces 60 percent more energy than a station without storage capacity because it can work 6,400 hours a year compared to 1,200-2,000 hours for other solar power stations, he said.

"The amount of energy we produce a year is equal to the consumption of 30,000 Spanish households," Arias said, an annual saving of 30,000 tonnes of CO2.

Helped by generous state aid, renewable energies have enjoyed a boom in Spain, the world number two in solar energy and the biggest wind power producer in Europe, ahead of Germany.

For the Gemasolar solar product, foreign investors helped too: Torresol Energy is a joint venture between the Spanish engineering group Sener, which holds 60 percent, and Abu Dhabi-financedrenewable energy firm Masdar.

"This type of station is expensive, not because of the raw material we use, which is free solar energy, but because of the enormous investment these plants require," Arias said.

The investment cost exceeds 200 million euros ($260 million).

But "the day when the business has repaid that money to the banks (in 18 years, he estimates), this station will become a 1,000-euro note printing machine!," he said, recalling that oil prices have soared from $28 a barrel in 2003 to nearly $130.

For now, the economic crisis has nevertheless cast a shadow over this kind of project: Spain is battling to slash its deficit as it slides into recession and has suspended aid to new renewable energy projects.

Andalusia, hard hit by the economic crisis with the country's highest unemployment rate at 31.23 percent, holds regional elections on March 25.

"We have three projects ready but stalled" because of the aid suspension, Arias said, admitting that in a difficult global economy the group has not managed to sell the Gemasolar techology abroad despite huge interest outside Spain.

Delicate rescue saves stranded $1.7B US satellite

DENVER (AP) — Air Force ground controllers delicately rescued a $1.7 billion military communications satellite last year that had been stranded in the wrong orbit and at risk of blowing up — all possibly because a piece of cloth had been left in a critical fuel line during manufacture.

During the 14-month effort, the satellite had to battle gravity and dodge space junk while controllers improvised ways to coax it more than 21,000 miles higher to its planned orbit.

"This rescue effort was definitely a very sophisticated and highly technical masterpiece," said Col. Michael Lakos, chief of the Military Satellite Communications Division at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo.

The Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite is the first of six in a $14 billion system designed to give the military more communications capacity than its current Milstar system as well as resist signals jamming.

Losing AEHF-1 would have been a costly and embarrassing blow. It would have delayed the satellite system along with all the related technology that will use it, and it would have prolonged the military's dependence on the aging Milstar system, first launched in 1994. It also would have raised more questions in Congress about the military and aerospace industry's ability to manage multibillion-dollar projects.

The program was $250 million over budget and two years behind schedule when the first satellite, AEHF-1, lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in August 2010. As planned, an Atlas V rocket carried AEHF-1 to an elliptical "parking orbit" ranging from 140 miles to 31,000 miles from Earth.

Trouble came days later when ground controllers twice directed AEHF-1 to fire its main engine to begin moving into a circular orbit more than 22,000 miles above the Earth. Both times the satellite shut the engine down when it detected that it wasn't working — a safety feature.

AEHF-1 was useless in the parking orbit where it was stranded. Worse, there was a danger the fuel backed up in the lines might ignite and explode, the Air Force said.

The Air Force acknowledged a problem in the propulsion system shortly after the 2010 launch but didn't publicly discuss the danger the satellite was in until this year.

"My initial reaction was we had lost the mission," said Dave Madden, the civilian director of the Military Satellite Communications System Directorate at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif.

Madden quickly assembled teams of "really big brains" from the Air Force and the aerospace industry — including satellite builder Lockheed Martin — to determine what went wrong. His experts said another attempt to fire the engine might trigger an explosion.

"Their findings probably saved the satellite," Madden said.

They devised a rescue plan using the satellite's two other propulsion systems. Both are weaker than the main engine and were designed to make course corrections, not push the satellite across 21,000 miles of space.

Over the next 14 months, ground crews fired the two propulsion systems hundreds of times. Each time, they had to check with Air Force teams that monitor satellite orbits to make sure AEHF-1 wasn't headed for a collision with a piece of space junk. They had to move the satellite out of the way of debris three or four times.

One of the backup propulsion systems required electricity, so the satellite's solar panels had to be extended earlier than planned. That put them at risk of damage as the satellite passed through radiation belts around the Earth. They survived without damage.

The satellite reached orbit in October, more than a year late, and successfully completed testing on Feb. 29, Lockheed Martin said. No other problems have cropped up, and the Air Force said it has enough fuel to complete its expected 14-year life.

Madden's experts identified the likely culprit for the engine malfunction as a blocked fuel line. A Government Accountability Office report issued last year said the blockage might have been a piece of cloth left there during manufacturing. The Air Force said it could have been put there in the first place to keep out impurities when the line was disconnected for a repair.

Defense analyst Marco Caceres, who tracks rocket and satellite failures as part of his work for the Teal group, an aerospace and defense analysis firm, said he had never heard of such a mistake.

"If I had to find the top 10 strange ones, that one would make my list," said Caceres.

Lockheed Martin, which is expected to build all six AEHF satellites, said the probable cause was a foreign object that got into the system during manufacture. The Air Force reduced Lockheed Martin's potential fees by $15 million because of the mistake. Lockheed Martin's current contract for AEHF is valued at $7.8 billion.

The Air Force said the next two AEHF satellites have been inspected and additional checks have been added to the manufacturing process for the remaining versions. Lockheed Martin and the Air Force say the next satellite is scheduled for launch on April 27.

Skydiver aims to jump from 23 miles, go supersonic

"Fearless Felix" Baumgartner has jumped 2,500 times from planes and helicopters, as well as some of the highest landmarks and skyscrapers on the planet — the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro, the Millau Viaduct in southern France, the 101-story Taipei 101 in Taiwan.

He's also leapt face-first into a pitch-dark, 620-foot-deep cave in Croatia — his most dangerous feat yet, he says, but soon to be outdone.

This summer, Baumgartner hopes to hurtle toward Earth at supersonic speed from a record 23 miles up, breaking the sound barrier with only his body.

He made it more than halfway there during a critical dress rehearsal Thursday, ascending from the New Mexico desert in a helium balloon and jumping from more than 13 miles up. He is believed to be only the third person to leap from such a high altitude and free fall to a safe landing — and the first to do so in 50 years. The record is Air Force test pilot Joe Kittinger's jump from 102,800 feet — 19.5 miles — in 1960.

"I'm now a member of a pretty small club," Baumgartner said in remarks provided by representatives.
Baumgartner tested the same pressurized capsule and full-pressure suit that he will use in a few months for a record-setting free fall from 120,000 feet. The extra protection is needed because there's virtually no atmosphere at such heights.
That's nowhere near space, but high enough to grab NASA's attention.
Engineers working on astronaut escape systems for future spacecraft have their eyes on this Austrian skydiver, former military parachutist, extreme athlete and, yes, daredevil known as "Fearless Felix."
"I like to challenge myself," Baumgartner, 42, explained in a recent interview, "and this is the ultimate skydive. I think there's nothing bigger than that."
Thursday's test run provided the boost Baumgartner was hoping for.
"That was the momentum we needed for the whole team. Now we are ready for the 90,000 jump," Baumgartner said, referring to the next trial run.
"I could not really feel my hands in free fall as it was so cold. We have to work on this," he added.
Baumgartner's 100-foot helium balloon and pressurized capsule lifted off from Roswell, N.M., on Thursday morning. He jumped at 71,581 feet — 13.6 miles — and landed safely eight minutes and eight seconds later, according to spokeswoman Trish Medalen. He reached speeds of up to 364.4 mph and was in free fall for three minutes and 43 seconds, before pulling his parachute cords, Medalen said.
"The view is amazing, way better than I thought," Baumgartner said after the practice jump.
(Commercial jets generally cruise at just over 30,000 feet.)
After one more trial run, he'll attempt 120,000 feet, or 22.8 miles. The launch window opens in July and extends until the beginning of October; it's based on optimal weather at the Roswell site.
"Keep in mind that at 120,000 feet ... there is no atmosphere to sustain human life," said Dustin Gohmert, manager of NASA's crew survival engineering office at Johnson Space Center in Houston. "To the body, it's no different than being in deep space, save from possibly more radiation shielding from the little atmosphere you have. You need the full protection of the pressure suit."
The record-holder Kittinger was in free fall for four minutes, 36 seconds, and accelerated to 614 mph, equivalent to Mach 0.9, just shy of the sound barrier. For his grand finale, Baumgartner expects to be in free fall for five minutes, 35 seconds, and achieve Mach 1, or 690 mph. All told, the descent should take 15 to 20 minutes.
Dr. Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon who heads Baumgartner's medical team, puts the chance of survival as "very high." Injury is possible.
"Sure, I fear" for Baumgartner's life, said Clark, whose astronaut wife, Laurel, died aboard space shuttle Columbia in 2003. "I mean, this is high-risk stuff."
Baumgartner is a perfectionist with a test pilot's personality and drive, according to Clark, and definitely not a flamboyant risk taker. He's survived as a BASE jumper, Clark noted, referring to the sport of jumping off fixed structures and using parachutes to break the fall. "They don't live long if they're not good."
The project, called Red Bull Stratos, is sponsored by the energy drink maker. (Stratos refers to the stratosphere.) The project costs have not been disclosed.
Kittinger's Excelsior mission was Air Force; he was a test pilot when he made his record-setting jump from an open, unpressurized gondola, long before anyone had rocketed into space.
Now 83, Kittinger lives near Orlando, Fla., and has been working with Baumgartner for three years. He took part in Thursday's test, as did Clark.
Kittinger is amazed no one has broken his free-falling record, after so many decades.
"In the 52 years since I did it, there have been a lot of improvements in pressure suits, in communications and life-support systems. But the only thing that really has not changed is how hostile it is at that altitude," Kittinger said. "It's almost a complete vacuum."
That's why NASA is so interested, even though space officially begins considerably higher at an even 100 kilometers, 328,084 feet or 62 miles.
In the nine years since the Columbia tragedy, emergency escape has been a top priority for NASA. The seven astronauts were killed during re-entry at just over 200,000 feet, nearly double Baumgartner's targeted altitude.
Granted, NASA's retired space shuttles will never fly again. But with so many different types of spacecraft in development by so many different companies, NASA wants to keep astronauts as safe as possible and provide a means for escape in the decades ahead.
Baumgartner's experience is sure to provide important lessons, Gohmert said.
Indeed, Baumgartner considers himself a pioneer — and a cautious one. He's following Kittinger's example of jumping in incrementally higher stages.
Kittinger nearly died trying on his own first dress rehearsal.
While jumping from 76,400 feet in 1959, Kittinger's small, stabilizing parachute opened too soon and got tangled around his neck. He went into a downward spin and blacked out. He was saved only by the automatic deployment of his emergency chute.
"I had confidence in myself and my equipment and my team. That never varied," Kittinger said. "Felix has to have the same thing."

Baumgartner insists he won't take any chances. Plus he's spent the past five years surrounding himself with "the right people," most notably Kittinger, a retired Air Force colonel and former Vietnam POW. A lawsuit, claiming theft by Red Bull of the idea, held things up; it was settled out of court last year.

Baumgartner — a lean but muscular 5-foot-8 and 150 pounds — said he minimizes risk through preparation.

"We're not going from zero to hero," Baumgartner said last month.

Like NASA, he's put together a big what-if list: What if this goes wrong? What if that does?

What scares him most, Baumgartner said, sounding like so many astronauts, are the things he hasn't thought of yet.

Simply put, the unknown unknown.

New figures: More of US at risk to sea level rise

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 4 million people across the United States, from Los Angeles to much of the East Coast, live in homes more prone to flooding from rising seas fueled by global warming, according to a new method of looking at flood risk published in two scientific papers.

The cities that have the most people living within three feet (one meter) of high tide — the projected sea level rise by the year 2100 made by many scientists and computer models — are in Florida, Louisiana, and New York. New York City, often not thought of as a city prone to flooding, has 141,000 people at risk, which is second only to New Orleans' 284,000. The two big Southeast Florida counties, Miami-Dade and Broward, have 312,000 people at risk combined.

All told, 3.7 million people live in homes within three feet of high tide. More than 500 US cities have at least 10 percent of the population at increased risk, the studies said.

"Southeast Florida is definitely the highest density of population that's really on low coastal land that's really most at risk," said lead author Ben Strauss, a scientist at Climate Central. Climate Central is a New Jersey-based group of scientists and journalists who do research about climate change.

The studies look at people who live in homes within three feet of high tide, whereas old studies looked just at elevation above sea level, according to work published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research and an accompanying report by Climate Central. That's an important distinction because using high tide is more accurate for flooding impacts, said study co-author Jonathan Overpeck, a scientist at the University of Arizona's Institute of the Environment. And when the new way of looking at risk is factored in, the outlook looks worse, Overpeck said.

"It's shocking to see how large the impacts could be, particularly in southern Florida and Louisiana, but much of the coastal U.S. will share in the serious pain," Overpeck said.
And it's not just residents of coastal areas who will be hurt by this, said Sharlene Leurig, a senior manager for the insurance program at Ceres, a Boston-based investment network. Most coastal areas get flood insurance from the federal program and with more flooding, the program will have to spend more and that will come out of all taxpayers' wallets, she said.
Sea level has already risen about 8 inches since 1880 because warmer waters expand, Strauss said. In addition to the basic physics of ever-warming water expanding, scientist say hotter climate will cause some melting of glaciers in Greenland and western Antarctica that would then cause seas to rise even more.

Flooding from Hurricane Irene last year illustrated how vulnerable coastal places such as Manhattan are with a combination of storms and sea level rise, Strauss said.

Using data from the latest census, Climate Central also has developed an interactive system that allows people to check their risk by entering a ZIP code.
Sea level rise experts at the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration who weren't part of the studies said the results make sense and were done by experts in the field.
"All low elevation places in the many urban areas along the coast will become more vulnerable," said S. Jeffress Williams, scientist emeritus for the USGS, who wasn't part of the studies. He pointed to Boston, New York City, Norfolk, Va., New Orleans, Charleston, S.C., Miami and Washington and its Virginia suburbs. "More people and infrastructure will be at increasing risk of flooding."
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Online: Climate Central's report: http://sealevel.climatecentral.org/

Australia to become hotter, drier: climate report

Australia's climate is warming at an alarming rate and is set to become drier despite recent record floods, scientists said in a report that warns of increased drought and fiercer storms.

The country has seen annual average daily temperatures rise by 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1911, with each decade since the 1950s warmer than the last, the report by government science body CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology said.

The national climate snapshot found that temperatures will jump again -- by between 1.0 and 5.0 degrees Celsius by 2070 -- if global greenhouse emissions remain within the range of expectations.

"Global changes of this magnitude happen very rarely. They happen when asteroids strike, they happen when there's planetary volcanic activity," said Karl Braganza, the head of climate monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology.

"They're happening now because we're digging up fossil fuels and basically burning them all. And we're doing that very, very rapidly," he told ABC Radio.

Australia is known for its droughts, cyclones, bushfires and floods and the State of the Climate 2012 found that while a spike in the frequency of droughts was expected in the south, there was also likely to be an increase in the intensity of rainfall events -- such as the Queensland floods.

Eastern Australia faced huge floods in late 2010 and early 2011, which swamped an area as large as France and Germany combined, destroying farms and coal mines and claiming more than 30 lives.

The inundations were caused by La Nina events, which brought the highest two-year average rainfall total on record in 2010 and 2011 -- and Australia's coolest years since 2001.

But the report said they did not alter the overall picture of warming.
"The warming trends observed around Australia are consistent with global-scale warming that has been measured during recent decades," it said.
The report said average temperatures in Australia are projected to rise by 0.6-1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030 when compared with the climate of 1980 to 1999.

It added it was clear that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations -- which reached a new high in 2011 -- would result in "significant further global warming".

"Unless greenhouse gas emissions decrease, we expect to see the temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans continue to warm and sea levels continue to rise at current or even higher rates than reported here," it said.

Human-like fossils in China caves puzzle scientists

The most recent fossils ever found of a human-like species in southeast China have presented scientists with a mystery about what may be an unknown Stone Age culture, researchers said Wednesday.

Sometimes called the "red deer people," the remains are about 11,500 to 14,500 years old and appear to show a mix of modern and archaic peoples, said an Australian and Chinese team of researchers in the journal PLoS One.


The remains, including skulls and teeth, of at least three individuals were found in 1989 at Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, in Yunnan Province, but the fossils went unstudied until 2008.

A fourth partial skeleton was found in 1979 in a cave in the village of Longlin, in the neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, but it remained encased in rock until it was eventually extracted in 2009.

"These new fossils might be of a previously unknown species, one that survived until the very end of the Ice Age around 11,000 years ago," said lead author Darren Curnoe, a professor at the University of New South Wales.

"Alternatively, they might represent a very early and previously unknown migration of modern humans out of Africa, a population who may not have contributed genetically to living people."
Most relics and remains of ancient people -- like the Neanderthals who died out some 30,000 years ago -- have been found in Europe and Africa, but fossil finds in Asia have been more rare.
Before the red deer people, no fossils younger than 100,000 years old were found in mainland East Asia, but the latest discoveries suggest the land may not have been vacant of our human-like cousins after all, the researchers said.
"The discovery of the red-deer people opens the next chapter in the human evolutionary story -- the Asian chapter -- and it's a story that's just beginning to be told," said Curnoe.

Ethiopia's Magnetic Stripes Hold Clues to Ocean Formation

Several winters ago, a team of geophysicists from Missouri flew to the eastern edge of Africa, strapped on bulky backpacks and began walking. They were looking for a set of huge stripes in the Tendaho Graben, a place within the Afar Depression of Ethiopia, where Africa's continental crust is stretching thin and a new ocean will eventually form.

But the stripes they sought — and eventually found — aren't visible to the naked eye. They're magnetic stripes, similar to the ones lining the ocean floor at mid-ocean ridges. David Bridges, a geophysicist from the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and his colleagues sniffed them out using a bit of geological detective work, lots of walking and the hulking magnetometers strapped to their backpacks.

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The Tendaho Graben's magnetic stripes are important because they're the first ones scientists have documented on land, Bridges said. Even more importantly, because these stripes have formed before the area becomes a water-covered basin, they may change the way researchers interpret the planet's oceans.

"The really interesting thing is that some of the oceanic basins may perhaps be a little bit younger than we currently believe," Bridges told OurAmazingPlanet.

Stripes and flips

The underwater relatives of Tendaho's magnetic stripes were first documented in the 1950s by geophysicists who set sail to take thousands of seaboard magnetic readings. The researchers eventually began to see that their readings sketched out distinct sets of stripes running parallel to mid-ocean ridges, and that each stripe's magnetic alignment was the reverse of neighboring stripes.

The striped magnetic pattern develops because, as oceanic crust pulls apart, magma rises to the surface at mid-ocean ridges and spills out to create new bands of ocean floor. Ferromagnetic minerals in the hot magma align themselves with the Earth's magnetic field, which completely reverses its north-to-south polarity every now and then, and freeze in that alignment as the magma cools. Later, after the planet's magnetic field flips again, the next stripe of new ocean floor aligns its polarity in the opposite direction.

"For many ocean basins, the timing of their openings has been based on the appearance of these magnetic stripes," because scientists long believed that the stripes first appeared when seafloor spreading started, Bridges said.

Tendaho breaks the trend

But the stripes that Bridges' team found in Tendaho may prove that conventional wisdom wrong.

Tendaho's magnetic bands, which measure 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide, are embedded in continental crust, not oceanic crust. And unlike magnetic stripes on the ocean floor, Tendaho's formed through diking: as the African crust stretched thin, streams of magma intruded the continental crust and hardened. Like in the oceanic stripes, ferromagnetic minerals in the dikes aligned with the planet's magnetic field as the magma hardened. Their magnetic signals are very similar to those of ocean-floor stripes.

This all happened sometime between 1.8 million years ago, when the region's continental crust began to break apart, and 780,000 years ago, when the Earth's magnetic poles last flipped, Bridges said.

Scientists predict it could be as many as 2 million years before the crust in the Tendaho Graben ruptures and begins to form an ocean basin. Altogether, this means that Tendaho's magnetic stripes could predate the future ocean basin by nearly 4 million years.

And magnetic stripes may predate other ocean basins, too.

"Other groups have found evidence suggesting that perhaps the Atlantic basin opened up a little later than what's currently believed," Bridges said. "It's sort of an interesting time in this field."

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Asia climate disasters displace 42 million: ADB

Climate-related disasters have displaced more than 42 million people in Asia over the past two years, the Asian Development Bank said Tuesday in a report calling for swift action to avert future crises.

"Asia and the Pacific is the global area most prone to natural disasters, both in terms of the absolute number of disasters and of populations affected," said the report launched in Bangkok, which was itself affected by flooding last year.

About 31.8 million people in the region were displaced by climate-related disasters and extreme weather in 2010 -- a particularly bad year -- including more than 10 million in Pakistan owing to massive flooding.

A further 10.7 million were forced to flee their homes last year, it said, warning that such events will become more frequent with climate change.

"While many of those displaced returned to their homes as conditions improved, others were less fortunate, struggling to build new lives elsewhere after incurring substantial personal losses," ADB vice president Bindu Lohani said in a foreword to the report, released at an Asian climate forum.

The bank says Asia has six of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change, with Bangladesh and India in the top two places on a list that also includes Nepal, the Philippines, Afghanistan and Myanmar.
"The environment is becoming a significant driver of migration in Asia and the Pacific as the population grows in vulnerable areas, such as low-lying coastal zones and eroding river banks," Lohani said in a separate statement.
"Governments should not wait to act. By taking steps now, they can reduce vulnerability, strengthen resiliency, and use migration as an adaptation tool rather than let it become an act of desperation."

The report, titled Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific, said governments in disaster-prone Asia-Pacific countries must enact a range of measures to stave off future crises.

Among other things, it recommended greater investment in urban infrastructure and basic services to accommodate the anticipated increase in migrant flows to the region's megacities.
"By taking actions today, governments can reduce the likelihood of future humanitarian crises and maximise the possibilities that people can remain in their communities or -- should deteriorating environmental conditions make that impractical -- that they have the real option to relocate to a more secure place with livelihood options," it said.

The ADB says the Asia-Pacific region needs to spend about $40 billion a year through 2050 to "climate proof" against the impact of global warming.