+112°Boulia,

Queensland Gita

Sanba

4.82.0

5.6

4.6 4.7

Earthweek: Diary of a Changing WorldWeek ending Friday, February 16, 2018

By Steve Newman

The rate at which sea lev-el is rising around the world has increased in recent years, according to a study of sat-ellite observations over the past quarter-century.

Scientists writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci-ences say sea level could become 26 inches higher by the end of the century. The rate then would have in-creased from the current 0.1 inch per year to about 0.4 inches annually.

“This acceleration, driven mainly by accelerated melt-ing in Greenland and Ant-arctica, has the potential to double the total sea level rise by 2100 as compared to pro-jections that assume a con-stant rate,” said study author Steve Nerem. He adds that the prediction is a conserva-tive estimate.

Scientists have long pre-dicted that melting glaciers, combined with the thermal expansion of the ocean due to global warming, will cre-ate a far different coastal landscape for the next gen-eration of humans.

Rising Tides

La Niña Fading

Yellow Fever Panic

Ant Triage

Balinese Calming

Tropical Cyclones

Earthquakes

The La Niña ocean cool-ing across the tropical Pacific is predicted to disappear dur-ing the next few months, ac-cording to the U.S. National Weather Service.

The phenomenon is typi-cally less disruptive to weath-er patterns than its warming counterpart, El Niño.

But the last two months have seen much of North America, Europe and Asia plunged into the coldest po-lar vortex chills in years. And drought-prone California has suffered from a protracted dry spell this winter.

Residents around the Bra-zilian resort city of Rio de Janeiro have slaughtered scores of wild monkeys in fear that the primates could be spreading yellow fever.

The disease has caused 25 human deaths so far this year in Rio state alone, and killed untold numbers of monkeys in the forests across southern Brazil during 2017.

Health officials are alert-ing residents that the dis-ease is spread by mosqui-toes, not monkeys. They add that infected monkeys of-ten provide the first indica-tion of where the disease has spread, so killing them is not helping to fight the outbreak.

A species of sub-Saharan ant has been observed administering medical care to wounded comrades after battle by intently licking the injury.

Matabele ants are among the largest on Earth, and were already known to carry those wounded in battle back to the nest for treatment, where most lived to fight again.

In further studies, lead researcher Erik Frank of the University of Lausanne found that the soldier ants actu-ally conduct a type of triage on the battlefield.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Frank said it is actually the wounded ant that decides whether it lives or dies by simply not cooperating with the helpers if it feels too injured to recover.

Geologists assured resi-dents of Bali that the Indo-nesian resort island’s Mount Agung volcano is calming down and not likely to pro-duce a violent eruption in the near future. Thousands of people living for months in evacuation shelters can now return home. Tourists are also coming back.

Cyclone Gita was the strongest typhoon on record to strike the tiny South Pa-cific kingdom of Tonga as it reduced the parliament, churches and other buildings in the capital to rubble.

• At least 13 people on Mindanao in the southern Philippines perished in mud-slides triggered by Tropical Storm Sanba’s downpours.

A rare and unusu-ally strong quake jolted residents of northwestern

France out of bed before dawn on Feb. 12 without causing any damage.

• Earth movements were also felt in India’s remote Andaman Island, China’s Hubei province, South Ko-rea and New Hampshire.

Sea surface temperature anomalies on Feb. 12 show a lingering La Niña. Two Matabele ants treat a wounded comrade. Photo: Erik Frank

Dist. by: Andrews McMeel Syndication©MMXVIII Earth Environment Service

-62°Vostok,

Antarctica