TOKYO (AP)—Much of Japan’s Pacific coast could be inundated by a tsunami more than 34 meters (112 feet) high if a powerful earthquake hits offshore, according to revised estimates by a government panel.
The panel of experts says any tsunami unleashed by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake in the Nankai trough, which runs east of Japan’s main island of Honshu to the southern island of Kyushu, could top 34 m at its highest.
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Leading scientists on Thursday called on the upcoming Rio Summit to grapple with environmental ills that they said pointed to “a humanitarian emergency on a global scale.”
In a “State of the Planet” declaration issued after a four-day conference, the scientists said Earth was now facing unprecedented challenges, from water stress, pollution and species loss to spiralling demands for food.
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Climate change is amplifying risks from drought, floods, storms and rising seas, threatening all countries but small island states, poor nations and arid regions in particular, UN experts warned on Tuesday.
In its first-ever report on the question, the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said man-made global-warming gases are already affecting some types of extreme weather.
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Climate change has accelerated in the past decade, the UN weather agency said Friday, releasing data showing that 2001 to 2010 was the warmest decade on record.
The 10-year period was also marked by extreme levels of rain or snowfall, leading to significant flooding on all continents, while droughts affected parts of East Africa and North America.
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Authorities in Beijing say it will be at least two decades before they can get air pollution under control, after the Chinese capital almost topped a recent list of the world’s most polluted cities.
The city authorities in Beijing have been stung by a wave of criticism of the accuracy of their pollution figures.
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The Greenland icesheet is more sensitive to global warming than thought, for just a relatively small — but very long term — temperature rise would melt it completely, according to a study published on Sunday.
Previous research has suggested it would need warming of at least 3.1 degrees Celsius (5.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, in a range of 1.9-5.1 C (3.4-9.1 F), to totally melt the icesheet.
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Scientists on Thursday launched a mission to the seabed off Japan where a massive quake triggered last year’s devastating tsunami, to get their first proper look at the buckled ocean floor.
Researchers from Germany and Japan are sending high-tech vehicles to probe the seabed up to 7,000 metres (23,000 feet) below the surface where the massive seismic shock hit last March.
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Affluent Singapore had the largest carbon footprint per head in the Asia-Pacific in 2010, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said Monday.
The environmental advocacy group said Singapore’s 2010 per capita gross domestic product of more than $40,000 — one of the highest in the region — fueled exorbitant consumption habits.
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..The head of environmental pressure group Greenpeace warned Friday the world faced a “perfect storm” of crises and was heading for what he termed a crisis of “epic proportions.”
Speaking for the first time at the Munich Security Conference, Kumi Naidoo presented an apocalyptic version of the state of the world and accused leaders of “sleepwalking” into disaster.
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Two decades after the United Nations established the Framework Convention on Climate Change in order to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” the Arctic shows the first signs of a dangerous climate change. A team of researchers led by CSIC assures so in an article recently published in Nature Climate Change.
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..A reactor at the San Onofre nuclear power plant near San Diego has been shut down after a radiation leak which was not big enough to cause public harm, the US atomic safety agency said Wednesday.
Radioactive gas escaped from a pipe in a building located next to the reactor on Tuesday evening, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said.
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India has the worst air quality in the world, poorer even than its neighbour China, according to an annual survey based at Yale and Columbia universities in the United States.
Of all the countries surveyed in the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which measures the effects of polluted air on human health, India ranked the lowest at 132
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Around 1630 BC, a super-volcano blew apart the Aegean island of Santorini, an event so violent that some theorists say it nurtured the legend of Atlantis.
More than three and a half millennia later, the big blast is yielding forensic clues which help the search to predict future cataclysmic eruptions, scientists said on Wednesday.
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Japanese scientists are studying how radiation has affected plants and animals living near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, according to an official.
Researchers are examining field mice, red pine trees, a certain type of shellfish and other wild flora and fauna in and around the 20 kilometre (12 mile) no-go zone surrounding the plant, an Environment Ministry official said on Monday.
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Swarming locusts may be drawn to overgrazed fields because the insects prefer to feed on low-nitrogen plants in areas where the soil is depleted, US and Chinese researchers said Thursday.
In bad years, locust swarms can inhabit as much as 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, particularly in Asia and Africa, and negatively impact the livelihoods of one in 10 people, according to the article in the journal Science.
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..The world has no chance of sealing an emissions cut deal unless companies lobby their governments for an accord, the UN climate chief told the global business elite in Davos on Thursday.
“Even though governments have said in Durban ‘yes we’re going to dedicate the next three years to negotiating and agreeing by 2015 a new legally binding agreement’, let’s be very clear, that is not going to happen,” said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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