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Drought State Of Emergency Declared In Brazil's Amazon
Rio De Janeiro (AFP) Oct 14, 2005 Brazil's northern state of Amazonas, mostly covered by the Amazon rainforest, has declared a state of emergency in all its cities except the capital due to the worst drought since 1963, an Amazonas official said Friday. "All the state's cities, except Manaos, where it's raining sporadically, have a problem," the secretary of the state government, Jose Melo, said. The emergency declaration affected 61 cities, he added. "But it is the 1,200 hamlets bordering dry lakes and small rivers where the situation is the most serious: a lack of drinkable water and provisions," the official told local media. The official state of emergency allows the state government to authorize spending without having to first put out public tenders, and obtain government assistance. The federal government already has released 2.2 million dollars to buy medicine and provisions. Amazonas state is the biggest in Brazil, and is covered 92 percent by the Amazon rainforest, home to the world's richest biodiversity. The region bakes in intense heat of about 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) at this time of year. The level of the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon River, dropped 12 meters (39 feet) between July and October to a depth of almost 16 meters (52 feet), just shy of the level in 1963 during the region's worst drought in the past century. September hottest recorded month: US weather agency
Washington (AFP) Oct 14, 2005 September was the hottest month recorded on the planet Earth since 1880, US weather trackers said Friday. The global temperature was 0.63 degree C (1.1 degree F) above the mean going back to 1880, when the first reliable instrument recordings were available, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the US Commerce Department. Earth's second-hottest month was September 2003, but September 2005 was only the fourth-hottest month ever for the United States, NOAA said. This year, the US state of Louisiana, where New Orleans in located, had its hottest September in 111 years. The US Gulf Coast was battered by the first of two hurricanes on August 29, during a particularly active tropical storm season. NOAA and other meteorologists follow the temperatures of tropical waters closely, because the strength of tropical storms is related to the temperatures of the waters of the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. On September 28, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported shrinkage of the Arctic ice cap for the fourth consecutive year, as evidence of global climate change. "Considering the record low amounts of sea ice this year leading up to the month of September, 2005 will almost certainly surpass 2002 as the lowest amount of ice cover in more than a century," said Julienne Stroeve of NSIDC. "If current rates of decline in sea ice continue, the summertime Arctic could be completely ice-free well before the end of this century," she said. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express Weather News at TerraDaily.com
MSG2 Will Advance Long Term Monitoring Of Planetary Energy Balance
London UK (SPX) Dec 23, 2005This week's launch of MSG-2 will ensure that satellite images continue to be available to European weather forecasters well into the next decade. It also marks a new chapter in a long-term space experiment measuring the available energy that drives the weather as a whole, and helping to establish how much the Earth is heating up. |
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