iceberg

WASHINGTON - Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday. The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age. "This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement. "Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA." Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA which is passed down through mothers have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal. The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago. The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas. Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently. Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction." Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, IBM, the Waitt Family Foundation, the Seaver Family Foundation, Family Tree DNA and Arizona Research Labs.

LA NINA !! (Apr. 22, 2008) Boosted by the influence of a larger climate event in the Pacific, one of the strongest La Niñas in many years is slowly weakening but continues to blanket the Pacific Ocean near the equator, as shown by new sea-level height data collected by the U.S.-French Jason oceanographic satellite. This La Niña, which has persisted for the past year, is indicated by the blue area in the center of the image along the equator. Blue indicates lower than normal sea level (cold water). The data were gathered in early April. The image also shows that this La Niña is occurring within the context of a larger climate event, the early stages of a cool phase of the basin-wide Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a long-term fluctuation of the Pacific Ocean that waxes and wanes between cool and warm phases approximately every five to 20 years. In the cool phase, higher than normal sea-surface heights caused by warm water form a horseshoe pattern that connects the north, west and southern Pacific, with cool water in the middle. During most of the 1980s and 1990s, the Pacific was locked in the oscillation's warm phase, during which these warm and cool regions are reversed. A La Niña is essentially the opposite of an El Niño. During El Niño, trade winds weaken and warm water occupies the entire tropical Pacific Ocean. Heavy rains tied to the warm water move into the central Pacific Ocean and cause drought in Indonesia and Australia while altering the path of the atmospheric jet stream over North and South America. During La Niña, trade winds are stronger than normal. Cold water that usually sits along the coast of South America is pushed to the middle of the equatorial Pacific. A La Niña changes global weather patterns and is associated with less moisture in the air, and less rain along the coasts of North and South America. This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation 'cool' trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The persistence of this large-scale pattern tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean." Sea surface temperature satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also clearly show a cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation pattern, as seen at: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/sst/sst.anom.gif . The shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, with its widespread Pacific Ocean temperature changes, will have significant implications for global climate. It can affect Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, marine ecosystems and global land temperature patterns. The comings and goings of El Niño, La Niña and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are part of a longer, ongoing change in global climate, said Josh Willis, a JPL oceanographer and climate scientist. Sea level rise and global warming due to increases in greenhouse gases can be strongly affected by large natural climate phenomenon such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation. In fact, said Willis, these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.

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I will issue a summer forcast in 2 weeks time.

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Oui tu a raison mes cest pas ma faute. il ya des journee comme ca !!

Temp de surface... pour Amerique du nord...

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LE 22 AVRIL 2008.

what is the purpose ??? Je pense en donnent plus de information possible sur la meteo ne fait pas mal. Surtout que un nouveau record peut etre battus.

This is the link: http://www.aad.gov.au/weather/aws/dome-a/index.html

pour coyote il ya des route a barrow cest comme une ville. voir google earth.

MAP FOR DOME A

Dome A: Colder than Cold Dome Argus is the highest and possibly coldest place in Antarctica. There's a hot chance that an automatic weather station at Dome A will record the world's lowest surface temperature. The lowest temperature ever recorded was -89.2°C in July 1983, at the Russian station Vostok, inland of Australia's Casey station. Dome A is nearly 600 m higher in elevation than Vostok and the coldest temperature recorded at Dome A was -82.5°C in July 2005. Check here daily to see if the temperature can get colder than cold Latitude: 80 22" 02'S Longitude: 77 32"21'E Height: 4084 m Latest 24-hour-minimum temperature: -70.7°C

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The week's hottest temperature was 113.0 degrees Fahrenheit (45.0 degrees Celsius) at Matam, Senegal. The week's coldest temperature was minus 93.8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 69.9 degrees Celsius) at Russia's Vostok Antarctic research week ending April 18 2008.

GLOBAL WEATHER NEWS FOR MARCH.... Global Highlights The global land surface temperature was the warmest on record for March, 3.3°F above the 20th century mean of 40.8°F. Temperatures more than 8°F above average covered much of the Asian continent. Two months after the greatest January snow cover extent on record on the Eurasian continent, the unusually warm temperatures led to rapid snow melt, and March snow cover extent on the Eurasian continent was the lowest on record. The global surface (land and ocean surface) temperature was the second warmest on record for March in the 129-year record, 1.28°F above the 20th century mean of 54.9°F. The warmest March on record (1.33°F above average) occurred in 2002. Although the ocean surface average was only the 13th warmest on record, as the cooling influence of La Niña in the tropical Pacific continued, much warmer than average conditions across large parts of Eurasia helped push the global average to a near record high for March. Despite above average snowpack levels in the U.S., the total Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent was the fourth lowest on record for March, remaining consistent with boreal spring conditions of the past two decades, in which warming temperatures have contributed to anomalously low snow cover extent. Some weakening of La Niña, the cold phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, occurred in March, but moderate La Niña conditions remained across the tropical Pacific Ocean

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belle photo !!

The staging area is in Barrow Alaska .

The week's hottest temperature was 114.1 degrees Fahrenheit (45.6 degrees Celsius) at Kosti, Sudan. The week's coldest temperature was minus 85.2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 65.1 degrees Celsius) at the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica. week of the 11th april 2008 ending - fin.

http://www.earthweek.com/2008/ew080411/ew080411a.html April 11, 2008 La Niña and El Niño are two natural Pacific currents that produce weather disruptions so vast that they resonate round the world.The head of the United Nations weather agency says that the current La Niña ocean cooling in the Pacific will cause global temperatures to be lower this year than in 2007, bucking a trend toward increased planetary warmth. Michel Jarraud told the BBC that La Niñas worldwide cooling effects are likely to continue into the northern summer, depressing temperatures globally by a fraction of a degree. Weather disruptions caused by La Niña over the past several months have included the coldest winter temperatures in memory across snowbound parts of China, and torrential rains in Australia as well as across parts of Africa. Climate experts at Britains Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research say the world can expect another record-warm year within the next five years or less. They believe the new record will probably be due to another episode of El Niño, the opposite phase from La Niña in the irregular cycle of ocean warming and cooling across the tropical Pacific. Animation: NASA

Deployment in Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen,

Four new web cams have been deployed at the North Pole, and photos are now available. In some of the earlier photos you will see members of the North Pole deployment team in action. Web Cam 3 is a fish eye view, allowing us to see more of the instrumentation in a single view. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html