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How bad can the Global Warming get? This January Antarctica has experienced huge levels of rainfall. What is disturbing is that this is the first time that something like this has happened here.  The most shocking news is the consequence of this rain. Thousands of downy penguins are dying as a result of this rain.

Penguins unfortunately, do not have water repellent feathers which bring about its misery. During rainfall they get totally drenched and remain wet all throughout the day. During night, when the temperature falls below freezing point these penguins, especially the chicks freeze to their death.

Emperor penguins like cold temperature but the rising temperatures at the Antarctic, have taken a toll on their numbers. Their numbers have come down to 50% of their number three decades ago. Global warming has also increased the surface temperature of the sea. This again has lead to vanishing population of Krill, a crustacean, the main food source of Emperor penguins. This is again another cause behind the dwindling population of the penguins.

The environmentalists who are researching on the effects of climate change on penguins have also noticed that climate change has also confused them about their nesting time. The penguins do not know when they have to nest. Even when they do breed there arises another problem.

In a penguin family, it is the female who hunts for food and the male penguin who looks after the chicks or eggs. When the mother penguin sets out to hunt it might not return for days and even months owing to the low population of their food in the sea. There are a number of cases when father penguin had to give in and abandon the babies due to his own hunger.

The condition is making scientists very uncomfortable due to their helplessness in not being able to do anything concrete. The harm has already been done and to return to the conditions prevalent on earth before Global Warming is next to impossible.

Scientists have found a female skeleton, presumed to be that of Eve of Naharon, which is considered to be almost 13600 years old. Experts opine that the skeleton discovered along with 3 others in the underwater caves off the Caribbean coast and Yucatan peninsula could prove to be an important clue to the American populace.

A team of scientists led by Arturo Gonzalez have been involved in the excavations around the town of Tulum since the past four years now. Gonzalez opines that they were still not too sure whether these people came from the continent, jungle or the Atlantic.

Contrary to previous studies, this one, as observed from the skulls of the skeletons, revealed that these people may not have been from a North Asian decent. The scientists believe that the shape of the skulls of the skeletons seem more like that of South Asian people than North Asian.

As per radiocarbon dating, the 3 skeletons seem to have existed as far as 11000 to 14000 years back. These results however cannot be accepted as the Gospel truth of the events and situations that may have happened or existed.

An archaeologist named David Anderson from the University of Tennessee claims that the minerals contained in sea water can actually alter the carbon content of the bones thereby resulting in inaccurate radiocarbon ratings.

The skeletons have been picked up from 50 feet deep caves off the town of Tulum. It is believed that during the time of Eve, one of the skeletons for which the age is determined, the sea levels were 200 feet lower. The Yucatan peninsula on the other hand is believed to have been a wide and dry prairie.

Experts suggest that due to frequent melting of ice, around 8000-9000 years ago, at the ice-caped Polar regions, sea levels rose considerably. This laid ground for a number of skeletons which luckily didn’t get washed away so easily by the ocean currents because of the presence of stalactites and stalagmites.

Interestingly, Gonzalez also found the skeletons of huge animals like elephants, moth and other kinds of fauna in the caves off the town of Tulum. Scientists are looking for more evidences in order to confirm the decent and origin of these skeletons.

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The much glorified Nemo, an orange clownfish made famous by Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios, has been cited to sniff its way home. A recent study claims that this fish uses water odors to identify its home. Geoffrey Jones from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia surveyed the water bodies next to Papua New Guinea for clownfish breeding.

Researchers also revealed that the sea anemones, which the regions clownfish called their “home”, were mostly found around islands and beaches with numerous trees rather than around islands only with coral reefs.

Researchers found that the fish have to make great efforts in finding their anemone. It so happens because when the eggs get hatched near their parents’ anemone, the larvae gets swayed away by the ocean currents. As a result, the fish have to find new anemone to survive.

Researchers conducted this survey with the help of chambers – with 2 open sources of water and with a wall on top that separated the portion from the waters. Towards the lower end, there was no wall but the waters were left unmixed with two different kinds of water flowing in. Researchers then put the clownfish into the water to detect their preference for the kind of water odor.

At the start, researchers compared beach water (vegetated islands) with reef water. It was found that the fish preferred beach water as compared to the reef water and stayed on that side of the chamber almost 99% of the time.

The next endeavor of the researchers was to find out as to why clownfish prefer beach water as against other kinds of water. As earlier researchers had revealed that clownfish remain attracted to the chemical cues of anemones, this survey revealed that clownfish preferred water that was exposed to anemones as against those which were not exposed to the same.

However, what made the researchers even more curious was the fact that since the anemones couldn’t reach out to the fishes and that the fish had to do so, there could have been other cues that actually led the fishes to the islands.

Researchers found that the islands were flocked with trees and the water was covered with different kinds of leaves. The team then studied the preference of the fishes with the different kinds of leaves scattered on the surface of the ocean water. It was found that the clownfish were attracted to all of them.

In addition, the team also found that the clownfish were less or not attracted to the tea tree plants near the swamps thereby assuming that the fish also had their choice for the “right” kinds of trees.

According to researchers this quality of sniffing water bodies to identify their homes is an innate property of the clownfish. For the same, the team of researchers also studied the fish that were artificial sea water in an aquarium. It was found that they too responded to beach water, leaves and anemone as other ocean clownfish did.

Researchers find it very interesting that a living creature actually smells water to identify or reach home. Imagine human beings, they’ve never been cited for doing till late at least. Researchers also opine that it could probably be the leaves that stay scattered on the ocean surface near the islands that may be drawing the fishes closer to find their abode or anemone.

Researchers clearly identify this as a culmination of the terrestrial and marine life where one exists with the need for the other. Also, if you try protecting the reefs, you are actually not protecting the shorelines that call these Nemo’s home.

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Brazilian Amazon is found to be place of towns, villages and cities that were densely packed and well organized. The vast areas of rain forest lands happen to be well- established landscape before the settling of European colonists. These findings were highlighted in a study, the co-author of it being Michael Heckenberger, anthropologist, University of Florida, Gainesville.

These findings by Heckenberger and his colleagues from the US and Brazil were reported in the journal Science.

Heckenberger said that the settlements of Brazilian Amazon were on par with medieval towns of Europe. The findings support the controversial theory that Amazon River  Basin was fully occupied by societies that become non-existent due to diseases by the time Europeans colonist arrived on the scene during the 15th as well as the 16th centuries. It was further observed that the present day isolated tribes were the last survivors of those Amazon Societies.

The cluster of the Amazon Basin towns and villages consisted of a seat of power that was ritualistic. It had wide roads extending to other communities. The cities were organized around a central plaza. They were linked to other cities via well constructed roads. A major road, which is aligned with summer solstice, intersects every central plaza. The towns were walled like medieval town. Between the settlements one came across agriculture fields. The structure of these settlements is well organized political entities and indicates regional planning.

Come spring, when the dark clouds hover over the United States, people can sense the coming of a tornado. What have been of much worry to the scientists is that what causes these twisters, though they make some assumptions that the atmospheric conditions, altitude and supercell (intense thunderstorm which rotates violently in an upward motion) thunderstorms swell up into the sky to form a tunnel of deadly and violent air.

Researchers are of late assuming that the heavy rains accompanied with supercell thunderstorms can be the leading cause for the ensuing of tornadoes. Robert Davies-Jones from the National Severe Storms Laboratory, Oklahoma is of the opinion that heavy rains accompanies with violent supercell thunderstorms can push the air updraft to form a tunnel of violent, gushing air that rotates vigorously and can be identified as a twister.

Robert also opines that a severe storm does not require rains but a tornado is always followed by heavy rains and acute thunderstorms. This simple fact was discovered as early as in 1953 when scientists through a radar peered into the supercells to find that in tornadoes, the rains were caught up in a hook which they named the “hook echo”. Infact, it became a tell-tale radar marker for an ensuing tornado.

Though at that time the “hook echo” was only regarded as a by-product of a tornado, Robert Davies-Jones believes it to be the other way round. According to him, the hook echo is not a passive but an active mechanism by which a tornado really forms.

Jones observed how falling rain would kick-start the upward circulation of air that led to a lethal tornado. He also observed as to how the falling rain also got twisted along with the twisting gush of air and debris, finally passing on its energy to the updrafting air just at the side of it.

It was further revealed through the studies that rain acts like a sheet around the swirling winds with the air inside the rains stretching out as the funnel moves up to touch the skies, thereby increasing the speed and intensity of the storm which gives rise to a tornado.

David Lewellen from the University of West Virginia is of the opinion that further studies and reports are required to confirm whether rains have a hand in the formation of killer tornadoes. He feels that rain is just another weather condition that is just right or appropriate for a tornado to form. David opines that other field campaign experiments which are to follow in the spring months of 2009 and 2010 will hopefully establish what has been presumed – that heavy rains cause tornadoes.

Davies-Jones works’ are published in the August issue of the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences.

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Memories that remain in female elephant’s mind can help the elephants prepare for the hard times in the future, particularly when drought conditions prevail. This fact emerged in a new research conducted by researchers of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

Scientists observed elephant herds that had gathered at the Tanzania’s Tarangire National Park, which had experienced a severe drought from 1958 to 1961. The second drought that occurred in that area in 1993 indicted that elephants that had mothers who had gone through the earlier drought went in search of better places for their food and water supply. This shows that elephant mothers that remembered the difficult conditions of the previous drought were better prepared to face up to the challenges of a recurring drought. In fact, groups that went elsewhere in search of food and water had more calves surviving as compared to family groups that remained in the same place.

Matriarch elephants are strong enough to live through two droughts. In the case of the Tarangire National Park incident, the matriarch elephants were 5years or perhaps older when the first drought had occurred. They were in a position to take precautions during the second drought as they were aware of the pitfalls. The group of elephants, which could not  fend for itself in the second drought, was due to the fact that it  had no elephant in  its group, which had experienced the previous drought.

The study also highlights the fact that groups, which had older members had better survival chances as the past memories of these older elephants  helped them to sustain themselves in the present drought. In the elephant society, the female elephant leads the family and is therefore more prone to remember events for the family welfare.

Researchers favor the protection of veteran elephants as  more droughts are occurring due to global warming.

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