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This loss of glaciers could lead to loss and change in supply of drinking and irrigation water, leading to more falling rocks, and destroy the European ski industry.
On an average around 3 percent of Alpine glacial ice is lost every year, according to Roland Psenner, a fresh water scientist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. That corresponds to around 3.3 feet (1 meter) of ice thickness.

Ten percent of the ice was gone in the record-breaking heat of 2003. Around seven percent was gone in 2006 according to Psenner.
“If the melting goes on at this pace, glaciers will be gone by 2030 to 2050—except some high-altitude sites in the French, Swiss, and Italian Alps,” he wrote in an email to National Geographic News.

Yet another Warning!

Lonnie Thompson is a glaciologist at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University. He says that the loss of glacier ice in the Alps is consistent with global trends. It is the same story all over the world.

“At all these sites it’s the same story. Not only are the glaciers retreating, they are accelerating in the rate at which they are retreating,” Thompson said. “That’s very consistent with what’s going on with the glaciers in the Alps.”

That Alpine glaciers are melting fast is old news to European ski resorts, which are watching the multimillion-dollar winter tourism trade trickle away.
Cause for Melting

Global warming along with the greenhouse gases seems to be the main cause of the melting glaciers. Studies also suggest that Alpine glaciers almost disappeared at least once in the past 10,000 years.
This melting trend is consistent with the projections that were made based on warming occurring due to increase in greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

It is important to note that the past glacial melting occurred when atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) were 280 parts per million. Today’s carbon dioxide levels are approaching 385 parts per million.

A surprising discovery was made when a survey of genetic diversity in the United Kingdom was performed based on the male Y chromosome.This sex-determining chromosome is inherited from father to son, providing a record of male ancestry.

This uncommon DNA, is a chromosome called hgA1, that was previously been detected only in a region of West Africa that includes Mali, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau, the team says.

“It’s a really special chromosome, one that’s only been reported before in a handful of men in Africa,” said Mark Jobling, a genetics professor from the University of Leicester who led the research team.

This chromosome is based at the root of the family tree of Y chromosomes in Africa, according to Jobling. “It’s an ancient type that’s African specific.” The team found hgA1 in one white British male who took part in the survey, even though the man has no known African family connection. According to recent research,, this unusual DNA has been present in Britain for over 250 years.

Distinctive Surname

After making this surprising find, Jobling’s team tested other British men who had the same east Yorkshire surname as the original man found with the African chromosome. Genealogical research and further genetic testing were used to date the arrival of the African DNA in northern England.

Records like birth and marriage certificates traced the men’s surname to two individuals who were born in Yorkshire in the 1780s. This closely matched the date reached from analyzing mutations in the studied Y chromosome.Such mutations build up through generations at a predictable rate, allowing the study team to work back to the time when the men likely shared a common ancestor.

“Both those lines of evidence say that this chromosome has been around since at least the mid-18th century,” Jobling said. The finding suggests that black people have contributed to the “indigenous” British gene pool despite previous evidence to the contrary.

Africans were first recorded in northern England some 1,800 years ago, part of a Roman garrison brought in to defend Hadrian’s Wall against raids by tribes in what is now Scotland, the study team said.

But slaves from West Africa, Jobling said, were the most likely source of the African DNA revealed in the study. The new study, Thomas added, “makes the point that we do all have very mixed ancestry.”

A very rare river terrapin was found for the first time since 20 years in the Thai province of Phang Nga. This river terrapin was considered to be extinct in Thailand, before the villagers caught this female turtle on January 3, 2007, in a mangrove canal on the country’s Andaman coast.

According to local conservationist’s turtles are are a common food for this part of Thailand, This turtle was luckily purchased by a villager who was a conservationist and alerted the local conservation authorities. This young 20-inch-long (51-centimeter-long) turtle will now be raised in captivity and then released back into the wild.

The pre-Aztec city of El Tajin, which is located on Mexico’s Gulf coast, is famous for its temple pyramids and the intricately carved relics. Acidic air pollutants that are being pumped out by oil-drilling platforms and power stations along the coast are slowly ruining these carvings, according to Humberto Bravo, an air pollution specialist.

“The deterioration is alarming … and could cause irreparable damage to monuments that are an important part of our cultural heritage,” said Bravo of the University of Mexico’s Center for Atmospheric Sciences.

El Tajin was built in what is now considered the state of Veracruz by the Totonac, a civilization that reached the peak in early 9th to the early 13th century A.D. Major of El Tajin city name refers to the names for the Totonac god of thunder that still remains unexcavated. The most famous building prevalent in the site is an elaborate niche-studded pyramid.

This center also has many temple pyramids, palaces and courts for playing a ritual Mesoamerican ball game that is sometimes compared to basketball. Now the carvings depicting the game are eroding at an alarming rate, according to Bravo.

Bravo and his colleagues spent many years to increase the effects of polluted air and acid rain on El Tajin’s soft limestone buildings. They found that the erosion may have been caused due to contaminants like chlorine, sulfates and nitrates in the air from power stations and oil refineries.

They also claim that the erosion is caused due to acid rain because of the sulfuric acid and nitric acid that reacts with the calcium carbonate to form gypsum that just flakes off. Acid rain is caused when the pollutants in the air mix with water droplets in a cloud. The pollution is then carried down to earth along with the rain.

“The Vera Cruz region has some of the highest acid levels in the air in Mexico,” Bravo said.

Common Problem

Other scholars expressed similar alarm at the detrimental effects of pollution on El Tajin.

“The art of El Tajin is crucial to our understanding of the ancient history of the Gulf coast,” said John Machado, a pre-Columbian art historian at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

“It gives evidence of a powerful and complex civilization that had broad interaction with Mesoamerican cultures in both central Mexico and Maya-controlled regions but still cultivated its own unique Veracruz style and iconography.”

“The loss of these images would be devastating to the cultural heritage of the area,” said Machado, who has done extensive research at El Tajin. But the problem of pollution affects archaeological sites throughout Mexico.

The sources of degradation vary, said Maria Lourdes Gallardo, chief conservator at the main Aztec temple, Templo Mayor, in Mexico City. “The pollutants … in the archaeological zone of Templo Mayor … range from the smog to water filtrations underground,” Gallardo said.

“We found that there had been a significant change in the rate of pollutants derived from sulfur, which had reduced to a great extent, compared to an increase in the quantity of chloride and heavy metal pollutants.”

The site has Olmec-style bas-relief carvings that can be dated back to 700 B.C. in granodiorite, a rock that is harder than limestone.

Gas drilling on the Indonesian island of Java has triggered what can be called a “mud volcano” that had killed around 13 people and has made four square miles (ten square kilometers) of countryside uninhabitable for years.

According to a recent report released, a team of British researchers says that the deadly upwelling began when an exploratory gas burst out through a rock of 9,300 feet (2,800 meters) below the ground, letting hot, high-pressure water to escape.

The water along with it carried mud to the surface, where it spread to a region of 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in diameter in eight months since the eruption began. The mud volcano is similar to a gusher or blowout, which occurs in oil drilling when oil or gas squirt to the surface, according to the team.

Eventhough the eruption isn’t as violent as a typical volcano, around dozen people died in this event. The volcano also known as Lusi, will leave more than 11,000 people permanently displaced.

Human Reasons

Mud volcanoes are caused when pressures deep in the Earth cause the mud to squirt to the surface.

According to Richard Davies, lead author of the study:

“It’s simply an eruption of mud and liquids,” added Davies, who directs the Center for Research into Earth Energy Systems at Durham University. “There are probably a couple of thousand on planet Earth.”

Typically, the eruptions are caused by tectonic forces or by the compaction of sediments at the deltas of large rivers, such as the Mississippi. “They’re very common features,” Davies said.

But even though an earthquake had occurred in the Java region only two days prior to the eruption, the delayed mud release confirms a human cause.

Danger Continues

Another unusual feature of the Indonesian eruption is that it is a very thin, liquid mud, according to another researcher, Richard Swarbrick of Geopressure Technology Ltd. It is unfortunate that it is thin mud because this could flow for long distances, increasing the devastation and destruction.

Another concern is that the mud is getting eroded from deep underground, causing a cavern. This means that the land around the volcano might collapse to form a crater, Swarbrick said.

The duration of the volcano’s activity is of concern. Usually, mud volcanoes erupt quickly, and then become a slow ooze intermingled with the occasional major upwelling. But in Java the flow rate appears to have doubled since the eruption began, Swarbrick said.

At its center, the pancake-like deposit is already about 33 feet (10 meters) thick, Durham University’s Davies added. “It’s carried on for a long time at a high rate, which suggests it’s not going to stop tomorrow,” he said.

It’s summer down under, and at many Australian beaches the sands have turned as blue as the water. Many big armadas of toxic bluebottle jellyfish have swamped the Australia’s east coast in such huge numbers on the peak beach season.

Around 30,000 people have been stung by the blue jellies along this coast last year. In just a single weekend earlier in the month, beachgoers had reported more than 1,200 stings, many of them requiring hospitalization.

This has happened because of a wind shift that pushed these invertebrates ashore. The actual truth according to scientists is that 6-inch-long (15-centimeter-long) jellyfish are growing in number due to the warming ocean waters.

“[Their] numbers are closely tied with environmental changes, and last year was obviously a very aggressive year for them,” Lisa-Ann Gershwin, a jellyfish expert with SLS, told Reuters news service.

This incident happened at the wake when there are growing droves of jellyfish worldwide, like the giant Nomura’s jellyfish in Japan and rafts of jellies that swamped Mediterranean shores last summer.

“Jellyfish have been around for 600 million years,” Gershwin told the Sydney Morning Herald. “They have perfected the art of survival and are very good at taking advantage of changing conditions.”