14 | February | 2011 | Stephen Leahy, International Environmental Journalist

Landfall Feb 14 Valentine’s Day

[Update 17 Feb: Cyclone Bingiza to Worsen Mozambique, Madagascar Floods, UN Says see here for South African flooding NASA sat pix]

This is a big Cat 3 cyclone expected to affect 100,000’s of people. Sustained wind speeds of 160 kilometres per hour with gusts of up to 220 kilometres per hour, have been reported

NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of Bingiza at 10:00 a.m. local time on Feb. 13, 2011. In the image, Bingiza’s eye approaches northern Madagascar, and a spiral arm grazes Antananarivo.

The Yin and Yang of Climate Extremes We Will See More of

Hurricane Madness – 3 Hurricanes Spinning At One Time PIX

World’s Forests Losing Their Green. Billions of tonnes of CO2 Released

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Feb 3, 2011 (IPS)

Last year’s severe drought in the Amazon will pump billions of tonnes of additional carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, a new report has found.

Researchers calculate that millions of trees died in 2010, which means the Amazon is soaking up much less CO2 from the atmosphere, and those dead trees will now release all the carbon they’ve accumulated over 300 or more years.

The widespread 2010 drought follows a similar drought in 2005 which itself will put an additional five billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, Simon Lewis of University of Leeds in the UK and colleagues calculate in a study published Thursday in Science. The United States emitted 5.4 billion tonnes of CO2 from fossil fuel use in 2009.

The two droughts will end up adding an estimated 13 billion tonnes of additional CO2 – equivalent to combined emissions in 2009 from China and the U.S. – and likely accelerating global warming.

“New growth in the region will not offset those releases,” Lewis told IPS.

This independent environmental journalism depends on public support. Click here learn more.

After the 2005 drought, Lewis and Brazilian scientist Paulo Brando from the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) led teams of researchers on the ground to assess the impacts. They determined that only a few trees died per hectare, and so while the forest canopy cover looked relatively unchanged, there had been a significant change in the forest’s carbon balance. Continue reading →