Fløien mountain overlooks Bergen, Norway, and has a number of small waterfalls on its slopes.
Read the caption to see what stars are on there
Australia's Great Barrier Reef: Counting the cost of bleaching
Images of devastation are emerging as authorities progressively survey the damage following on from the still ongoing global coral bleaching event associated with the strongest El Nino on record (see http://bit.ly/1t8y8wS for out recent coverage, and the posts linked below for an explanation of what bleaching is and our coverage as it spread). Fully a quarter of the coral over the entire reef is dead, and some areas have been totally wiped out. Many are now covered in algae which inhibit coral regrowth and collapse reefs to greater depths than those at which coral grows, and are hence potentially lost forever. If these events become more common as expected with global warming, we are facing the disappearance of the most productive ecosystems in the oceans, upon which an estimated half billion worldwide depend for protein and tourist revenue.
Survey diver Richard Vevers, a man who makes it his business to document the death of bleached reefs worldwide, (needless to say he's had a very busy couple of years) reports it as the worst event that he has ever witnessed in over 30 years of diving, having recorded some areas such as Lizard Island just before, during and now after the bleaching. The greatest horror was apparently the stench, as millions of dead animals that once lived in the reef supported food web rot. In his own words “The hard corals were dead and covered in algae, looking like they’ve been dead for years. The soft corals were still dying and the flesh of the animals was decomposing and dripping off the reef structure.”
While corals can often recover, it takes up to a decade, and does not always happen. The bottom line is that if the oceans warm too much, the corals will be heat stressed into extinction, and events are already taking a grim turn before the extra degrees induced by our greenhouse gas emissions over the 20th century really gets a chance to kick in. Already the reef has been damaged and stressed by previous mass bleaching events, including the global one of the last king hell Nino in 1998 and again in 2002. Each event has been more severe and damaging than the last, implying a long term developing trend that does not bode well.
By the mid 2030's this year's exceptional nature is expected to have become the new normal unless some drastic and rapid emission decreases happen now. We're already at 1 degree of warming (Celsius), the UN reports that a 2 degree rise will wipe out 95% of the world's reefs, so unless humanity changes its ways fast, you'd better get out there and visit what's left of one of the wonders of the world before it's too late.
Not only that, but this year the reef got lucky, the majority of the touristy places escaped the worst, as the fortuitously timed Cyclone Winston that damaged Fiji earlier in the year cooled the waters with its extensive rainfall. Next time it might not get away with it.
Our previous coverage of the current global bleaching event: http://bit.ly/28i5BVz, http://bit.ly/1Ukj0lJ, http://bit.ly/1ssKFKZ, http://bit.ly/23xFbMY, http://bit.ly/1EhnfaO, http://bit.ly/1MJqONe
Loz
Image credit: The Ocean Agency. http://bit.ly/1X84CmX http://bit.ly/28h72Dx www.theoceanagency.org
Source: facebook.com
earthstory reblogged
Yesterday’s field trip to see the old red sandstone in arbroath, Scotland. There were some well preserved river channels in the rock and though the weather was from for the most part and we nearly got stranded by the tide it was a good day nonetheless.
Several thousand years ago, a site in Yorkshire, England, hosted a mighty waterfall as glaciers melted. The nearest stream at that site goes underground and no longer falls over the huge limestone wall. However, recent rains in the area were enough to restore the waterfall. We’ll have a fuller post on this later, but this video shows the first time in centuries that the Malham Cove Waterfall has existed. Check it out.
Great view of the valley and snowstorm of a glacier in Patagonia. Look how big that chunk of ice is!
Video captures the panic on Mt. Everest as base camp is hit by an avalanche triggered by the Earthquake in Nepal on April 25. NSFW language warning.