Pacific Leatherback Turtles' Alarming Decline Continues

The Pacific leatherback turtle's last population stronghold could disappear within 20 years if conservation efforts aren't expanded, a new study finds.

Most of the Pacific Ocean's leatherback turtles, at least 75 percent, lay their eggs at Bird's Head Peninsula in Papua Barat, Indonesia. The number of leatherback turtle nests at the peninsula's beaches dropped 78 percent between 1984 and 2011, the study discovered.

'If the decline continues, within 20 years it will be difficult if not impossible for the leatherback to avoid extinction,' Thane Wibbels, a biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), said in a statement. 'That means the number of turtles would be so low that the species could not make a comeback.'

At Jamursba Medi Beach, on Bird's Head Peninsula, nests fell from 14,455 in 1984 to a low of 1,532 in 2011, the study found. Because female turtles nest multiple times each year, the researchers estimate that 489 breeding females remain in the western Pacific leatherback population. Overall, the total turtle population dropped 5.9 percent each year since 1984, the researchers estimate. [In Images: Tagging & Tracking Sea Turtles]

The findings were published today (Feb. 27) in the journal Ecospheres.

Reasons for the decline

Leatherback sea turtles are the largest of all living turtles and are found throughout the world's oceans. Their unique 'leathery' shells can reach 6.5 feet (2 meters) in length and they weigh up to 1,190 pounds (540 kilograms).

Although Atlantic populations have increased in recent years, the Pacific leatherback population has dropped more than 95 percent since the 1980s. The leatherback turtle was listed as endangered in the United States in 1970.

Much of the decline is due to humans. Before the practice was outlawed in 1993, villagers and fisherman collected turtle eggs by the thousands in Indonesia. Dogs and pigs still dig up turtle eggs along Bird's Head's beaches, Ricardo Tapilatu, lead study author and a doctoral student at UAB, said in a statement.

In the ocean, turtles are often victims of bycatch, unintentional netting and killing while fishing for other prey, as they travel through multiple fishing zones on their long migrations. Pacific leatherback turtles migrate from their nesting site in Indonesia to feeding grounds near the Americas.

Environmental changes caused by the El Niño/La Niña climate oscillation may also have affected turtles by reducing their food sources, particularly jellyfish.

More conservation needed

Conservation efforts at Indonesia's beaches include patrols by local residents to protect nests from predators and relocating eggs to areas with cooler sand. (The sand temperature influences the sex of hatchlings - cool sand means more male turtles.)

But Tapilatu, a native of western Papua, Indonesia, who has worked on turtle conservation since 2004, said beach conservation alone is unlikely to tip the scales in favor of the recovery.

'They can migrate more than 7,000 miles [11,000 kilometers] and travel through the territory of at least 20 countries, so this is a complex international problem,' Tapilatu said.

In February 2012, the United States protected about 42,000 square miles (108,800 square kilometers) of the Pacific Ocean off California, Oregon and Washington as critical habitat for leatherbacks.

Reach Becky Oskin at boskin@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• Shell Shock: 25 Turtle Species in Terrible Trouble
• Video: World's Largest Nesting Population of Leatherback Turtles
• In Images: Incredible Animal Migrations

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New York Aquarium to reopen after Hurricane Sandy

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Aquarium plans to reopen in late spring, nearly eight months after surging seas from Hurricane Sandy flooded the tourist attraction, killing some invertebrates and freshwater fish while sparing the mammals and most sea creatures.

The Wildlife Conservation Society, owner of the aquarium in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, estimated damage at $65 million and announced the reopening on Tuesday, declining to be more specific about the exact reopening date.

Sandy made landfall on October 29, killing more than 130 people with a record storm surge that destroyed low-lying coastal areas of New York and New Jersey. Coney Island fronts the Atlantic Ocean.

The aquarium, which said it attracts 750,000 visitors a year, is seeking private donations. Public officials called the aquarium's recovery an important for the revitalization of South Brooklyn and a marker for storm recovery.

Atlantic water surged over and under the Coney Island Boardwalk to completely or partially flood all the buildings at the 14-acre (5.7-hectare) park, destroying or damaging infrastructure including aquatic life support systems, the aquarium said.

'Losses in the collection were minimal and limited to fish and invertebrates housed in a few tanks,' the aquarium said in a statement.

Most of the sea creatures remained safe in their tanks, although a baby walrus named Mitik was happily swimming through storm surge waters on the first floor and a 3-foot (1-metre) American eel was found alive in a staff shower stall, The New York Times reported.

Among the casualties were freshwater koi, the Times said.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid)

Seals take scientists to Antarctic's ocean floor

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Elephant seals wearing head sensors and swimming deep beneath Antarctic ice have helped scientists better understand how the ocean's coldest, deepest waters are formed, providing vital clues to understanding its role in the world's climate.

The tagged seals, along with sophisticated satellite data and moorings in ocean canyons, all played a role in providing data from the extreme Antarctic environment, where observations are very rare and ships could not go, said researchers at the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystem CRC in Tasmania.

Scientists have long known of the existence of 'Antarctic bottom water,' a dense, deep layer of water near the ocean floor that has a significant impact on the movement of the world's oceans.

Three areas where this water is formed were known of, and the existence of a fourth suspected for decades, but the area was far too inaccessible, until now, thanks to the seals.

'The seals went to an area of the coastline that no ship was ever going to get to,' said Guy Williams, ACE CRC Sea Ice specialist and co-author of the study.

'This is a particular form of Antarctic water called Antarctic bottom water production, one of the engines that drives ocean circulation,' he told Reuters. 'What we've done is found another piston in that engine.'

Southern Ocean Elephant seals are the largest of all seals, with males growing up to six meters (20 feet) long and weighing up to 4,000 kilograms (8,800 lbs).

Twenty of the seals were deployed from Davis Station in east Antarctica in 2011 with a sensor, weighing about 100 to 200 grams, on their head. Each of the sensors had a small satellite relay which transmitted data on a daily basis during the five to 10 minute intervals when the seals surfaced.

'We get four dives worth of data a day but they're actually doing up to 60 dives,' he said.

'The elephant seals ... went to the very source and found this very cold, very saline dense water in the middle of winter beneath a polynya, which is what we call an ice factory around the coast of Antarctica,' Williams added.

Previous studies have shown that there are 50-year-long trends in the properties of the Antarctic bottom water, and Williams said the latest study will help better assess those changes, perhaps providing clues for climate change modeling.

'Several of the seals foraged on the continental slope as far down as 1,800 meters (1.1 miles), punching through into a layer of this dense water cascading down the abyss,' he said in a statement. 'They gave us very rare and valuable wintertime measurements of this process.'

(Reporting by Pauline Askin, Editing by Elaine Lies and Michael Perry)

Extreme Weather Linked to Giant Waves in Atmosphere

Extreme weather events have been on the rise in the last few decades, and man-made climate change may be causing them by interfering with global air-flow patterns, according to new research.

The Northern Hemisphere has taken a beating from extreme weather in recent years - the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Pakistan flood and the 2011 heat wave in the United States, for example. These events, in a general sense, are the result of the global movement of air.

Giant waves of air in the atmosphere normally even out the climate, by bringing warm air north from the tropics and cold air south from the Arctic. But a new study suggests these colossal waves have gotten stuck in place during extreme weather events.

'What we found is that during several recent extreme weather events these planetary waves almost freeze in their tracks for weeks,' lead author Vladimir Petoukhov, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, said in a statement. 'So instead of bringing in cool air after having brought warm air in before, the heat just stays.'

How long these weather extremes last is critical, the researchers say. While two or three days of 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) pose little threat, 20 days or more can lead to extreme heat stress, which can trigger deaths, forest fires and lost harvests. [The World's 10 Weirdest Weather Events]

Monster Waves

The researchers created equations to model the motion of the massive air waves, determining what it takes to make the waves plough to a stop and build up. The team then used these models to crunch daily weather data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

During extreme weather events, the waves were indeed trapped and amplified, the scientists found. They also saw a significant increase in the occurrence of these trapped waves.

Here's how the waves may be getting trapped: The burning of fossil fuels causes more warming in the Arctic than in other latitudes, because the loss of snow and ice means heat gets absorbed by the darker ground, not reflected (as it would by the white snow). This warming lessens the temperature difference between the Arctic and northern latitudes like Europe. Since these differences drive air flow, a smaller difference means less air movement. Also, land areas warm and cool more easily than oceans. The result is an unnatural pattern of air flow that prevents the air waves from circulating over land.

The study's results help explain the spike in summer weather extremes. Previous research had shown a link between climate change and extreme weather, but did not identify the mechanism.

'This is quite a breakthrough, even though things are not at all simple - the suggested physical process increases the probability of weather extremes, but additional factors certainly play a role as well, including natural variability,' study co-author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, also of PIK, said in a statement.

The 32-year period studied provides a good explanation of past extreme weather events, the researchers say, but is too short to make predictions about how often such events may occur in the future.

The findings were reported online today (Feb. 25) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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• 10 Weird Ways Weather Changed History
• Infographic: Earth's Atmosphere Top to Bottom
• The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted

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Rare Baby Crocs Released into Wild

Nineteen baby Siamese crocodiles are being let loose in the wetlands of Laos, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced this week. The effort gives a boost to the critically endangered species, which is thought to include just 250 individuals in the wild.

The rare reptiles' eggs had been incubated at the Laos Zoo after being recovered during wildlife surveys in the wetlands of Savannakhet Province, and they hatched in the summer of 2011.

The baby crocs are being let go near the same spot where they were found, but they will stay in a 'soft release' pen for several months. There they will get used to their surroundings and receive supplementary food and protection from community members, according to the WCS. Rising water levels at the start of the rainy season will eventually let the crocodiles swim away on their own, but they will be monitored occasionally by conservationists.

Siamese crocodiles grow up to 10 feet (3 meters) in length, but right now, these toothy creatures of the Laos Zoo measure only about 27 inches (70 cm). The crocs have never been known to attack humans, according to the conservation agency Fauna & Flora International. Classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Siamese crocodile population has been cut down by overhunting and habitat loss across much of its former range through Southeast Asia and parts of Indonesia.

The release effort was organized by the WCS's Laos branch as part of a community-based program to recover the local Siamese crocodile population and restore the associated wetlands, with a focus on incentives that improve local livelihoods.

'We are extremely pleased with the success of this collaborative program and believe it is an important step in contributing to the conservation of the species by involving local communities in long-term wetland management,' Alex McWilliam, a WCS conservation biologist, said in a statement. 'The head starting component of this integrated WCS program represents a significant contribution to the conservation of this magnificent animal in the wild.'

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• World's Cutest Baby Wild Animals
• The 10 Weirdest Animal Discoveries of 2012
• Alligators vs. Crocodiles: Photos Reveal Who's Who

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Mysterious Birth of Common Pollutants Revealed

The chaotic steps that give rise to microscopic particles in the atmosphere called aerosols were witnessed for the first time in a verdant forest in Finland, an important step in understanding how the particles affect Earth's climate.

Aerosols are solid and liquid droplets tiny enough to float in the air. They can come from soot, dust and chemicals from cars, factories and farming, or natural sources like deserts, sea spray and plants. The particles are a major pollution source, and can affect human health.

How aerosols form, and their role in climate, remains poorly understood, but scientists would like to know more so they can better understand the implications for future climate change. Aerosols seed cloud formation and can reflect the sun's heat, cooling the Earth, said Markku Kulmala, an aerosol physicist at the University of Helsinki in Finland and lead author of the study of aerosol formation. The study is detailed in today's (Feb. 21) issue of the journal Science.

In the Hyytiälä forest in Finland, set aside decades ago to monitor nuclear fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Kulmala and his colleagues built the world's most sensitive aerosol-particle detector. The instrument helped them watch the smallest aerosol precursors in the atmosphere, which had never been seen before.

How aerosols form

The instrument saw that as gas molecules of sulfuric acid smashed together with organic molecules, they formed incredibly small clusters, less than two nanometers in diameter. Lined up side-by-side, about 25,000 of these clusters would still be smaller than the width of a human hair.

The neutrally charged clusters grew slowly at first, until they reached a critical size (about 3 nanometers), the study found. Then, in a burst of activity, the neutral clusters quickly added a heavy coat of organic molecules. 'What is most exciting is that the growth of small clusters [is] size-dependent,' Kulmala told OurAmazingPlanet in an email interview. 'This means that the formation of new aerosol particles is limited by the vapors participating on the growth of 1.5- to 3-nanometer particles.'

Understanding the buildup of clusters, and how they grow, is key to predicting aerosol formation and their effect on climate. 'The importance of neutral clusters and their growth has significant effect on [the] global aerosol load, and also to global cloud droplet concentrations,' Kulmala said.

Impacts on climate

The study site is boreal forest, which covers about 8 percent of the planet's northern latitudes and is expected to expand with global warming. [Top 10 Surprising Results of Global Warming]

The aerosol-forming processes in the planet's tropical forests and urban regions may be different. 'We still have to see if the results can be generalized to other places,' said atmospheric chemist Meinrat Andrae of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, who was not involved in the study.

Andrae also cautioned that the small particles analyzed in the study must grow bigger before they can affect health or climate. 'The particles that are formed at this step (a few nanometers in size) are still a long way away from the size range where they have climate or health relevance,' he told OurAmazingPlanet in an email interview.

Reach Becky Oskin at boskin@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• Image Gallery: Curious Clouds
• Earth in the Balance: 7 Crucial Tipping Points
• Video: The Painterly Mixing of Aerosols In Our Atmosphere

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Report: Failure of Glory climate satellite unknown

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) - A group of experts investigating the launch failure of a NASA climate satellite has failed to come up with a reason.

The Glory satellite plummeted into the Pacific in 2011 shortly after lifting off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base along the California coast.

The panel's report released Wednesday found the rocket's clamshell-shaped covering over the satellite never fully opened. But the experts said they were unable to determine why. The covering surrounds the satellite as it flies through the atmosphere.

The loss of the $424 million mission was an embarrassment for NASA, which similarly lost another climate satellite in 2009.

The rocket was a Taurus XL from Orbital Sciences Corp.

NASA only released a summary of the accident report, citing U.S. security regulations and proprietary company information.

Florida man charged with harassing manatee after posting photos

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Florida man posted photos on Facebook showing himself hugging a baby manatee and was arrested on charges of harassing the endangered sea cow, wildlife officials said on Wednesday.

A tipster saw the photos and alerted the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which arrested Ryan William Waterman on a misdemeanor charge punishable by up to six months in jail and a $500 fine.

Waterman, 21, was released from the St. Lucie County Jail on Monday on $2,500 bond, jail records showed. He told television station WPEC that he meant no harm and did not know it was illegal to touch a manatee.

The Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act prohibits molesting, harassing or disturbing manatees, which are classified as endangered in Florida and are also protected by federal laws.

The photos were taken at Taylor Creek, near Fort Pierce in southeast Florida in January. One showed Waterman lifting the baby manatee part way out of the water and hugging it. Others showed his two young daughters petting the manatee, and one of them sitting on the animal.

Wildlife agents said that could have caused severe stress to the manatee calf, which was likely still dependent on its mother. The large, slow-moving animals gather in warm coastal waters and rivers during the winter.

'The calf also appeared to be experiencing manatee cold-stress syndrome, a condition that can lead to death in extreme cases,' said Dr. Thomas Reinert, a manatee biologist with the wildlife commission. 'Taking the calf out of the water may have worsened its situation.'

A Florida woman was arrested on a similar charge in the St. Petersburg area in November, after she was photographed riding an endangered manatee.

(Editing by Dan Grebler)

NVIDIA unveils new Tegra 4i processor with built-in LTE

NVIDIA (NVDA) on Tuesday announced its first Tegra processor with an integrated LTE chip. The 2.3GHz quad-core Tegra 4i, which brings the company in closer competition with Qualcomm (QCOM) and its line of Snapdragon CPUs, is equipped with 60 custom GPU cores, a fifth processing core for battery conservation and an integrated NVIDIA i500 LTE modem. It also includes NVIDIA's Chimera camera technology that is capable of capturing HDR panorama shots without requiring a single-direction sweep. The company calls its the new processor the most efficient, highest performance CPU core on the market, noting that it will provide "amazing computing power, world-class phone capabilities, and exceptionally long battery life." NVIDIA's press release follows below.

[More from BGR: Do or die: Hands on with the HTC One]

NVIDIA Introduces Its First Integrated Tegra LTE Processor
Tegra 4i Delivers Highest Performance of Any Single-Chip Smartphone Processor

[More from BGR: iOS 6.1.2 jailbreak set to be released later today]

SANTA CLARA, Calif.-February 19, 2013- NVIDIA today introduced its first fully integrated 4G LTE mobile processor, the NVIDIA® Tegra® 4i, which is significantly faster yet half the size of its nearest competitor.

Previously codenamed "Project Grey," the Tegra 4i processor features 60 custom NVIDIA GPU cores; a quad-core CPU based on ARM's newest and most efficient core- the R4 Cortex-A9 CPU- plus a fifth battery saver core; and a version of the NVIDIA i500 LTE modem optimized for integration. The result: an extremely power efficient, compact, high- performance mobile processor that enables smartphone performance and capability previously available only in expensive super phones.

"NVIDIA is delivering for the first time a single, integrated processor that powers all the major functions of a smartphone," said Phil Carmack, senior vice president of the Mobile business at NVIDIA. "Tegra 4i phones will provide amazing computing power, world-class phone capabilities, and exceptionally long battery life."

Tegra 4i's new 2.3 GHz CPU was jointly designed by NVIDIA and ARM, and is the most efficient, highest performance CPU core on the market.

"Tegra 4i is the very latest SoC solution based on the ARM Cortex-A9 processor and demonstrates the ability of ARM and our partners to continue to push the performance of technology and create exciting user experiences," says Tom Cronk, executive vice president and general manager, processor division, ARM. "ARM and NVIDIA worked closely to further optimize the Cortex-A9 processor to drive performance and efficiency in areas such as streaming and responsiveness. This is an example of the collaboration and innovation that enables ARM technology-based solutions to be market drivers through multiple generations of SoC solutions."

Utilizing the same architecture as Tegra 4's GPU, Tegra 4i features five times the number of GPU cores of Tegra 3 for high-quality, console-quality gaming experiences and full 1080p HD displays. It also integrates an optimized version of the NVIDIA i500 software-defined radio modem which provides LTE capabilities, and makes networking upgradability and scalability fast and easy.

"NVIDIA's Tegra 4i appears to outperform the leading integrated LTE chip significantly, and also benefits from an integrated 'soft-modem' that can be re-programmed over-the-air to support new frequencies and air interfaces - something other modem vendors can only dream of," said Stuart Robinson, director, Handset Component Technologies Program at Strategy Analytics."

Tegra 4i mobile processor's camera capabilities include the NVIDIA ChimeraT Computational Photography Architecture recently announced in Tegra 4. This delivers many advanced features, including the world's first always-on high dynamic range (HDR) capabilities, first tap to track functionality and first panoramic photos with HDR.

NVIDIA also introduced its reference smartphone platform code-named "Phoenix" for the Tegra 4i processor to demonstrate its unique mobile technologies. Phoenix is a blueprint that phone makers can reference in designing and building future Tegra 4i smartphones to help get them to market quicker.

The Tegra 4i mobile processor will be demonstrated in the NVIDIA booth in Hall 7, Stand #C110, at the 2013 Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb. 25-28.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

TransCanada: Pipeline would not affect climate

WASHINGTON (AP) - A top executive of a Canadian company that has proposed an oil pipeline from western Canada to Texas says the project will have no measurable effect on global warming.

Alex Pourbaix, TransCanada's president for energy and oil pipelines, said opponents of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline have grossly inflated its likely impact on emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Pourbaix said Tuesday that Canada represents just 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and that oil sands concentrated in Alberta, where the pipeline would start, make up 5 percent of Canada's total. Pourbaix said simple math indicates that oil sands represent just one-tenth of 1 percent of greenhouse emissions.

Opponents say the pipeline would carry 'dirty oil' that adds to global warming.

Climate contradiction: Less snow, more blizzards

WASHINGTON (AP) - With scant snowfall and barren ski slopes in parts of the Midwest and Northeast the past couple of years, some scientists have pointed to global warming as the culprit.

Then, when a whopper of a blizzard smacked the Northeast with more than 2 feet of snow in some places earlier this month, some of the same people again blamed global warming.

How can that be? It's been a joke among skeptics, pointing to what seems to be a brazen contradiction.

But the answer lies in atmospheric physics. A warmer atmosphere can hold, and dump, more moisture, snow experts say. And two soon-to-be-published studies demonstrate how there can be more giant blizzards yet less snow overall each year. Projections are that that's likely to continue with manmade global warming.

Consider:

- The United States has been walloped by twice as many of the most extreme snowstorms in the past 50 years than in the previous 60 years, according to an upcoming study on extreme weather by leading federal and university climate scientists. This also fits with a dramatic upward trend in extreme winter precipitation - both rain and snow - in the Northeastern U.S. charted by the National Climatic Data Center.

- Yet the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University says spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has shrunk on average by 1 million square miles in the past 45 years.

- And an upcoming study in the Journal of Climate says computer models predict annual global snowfall to shrink by more than a foot in the next 50 years. The study's author said most people live in parts of the United States that are likely to see annual snowfall drop between 30 percent and 70 percent by the end of the century.

'Shorter snow season, less snow overall, but the occasional knockout punch,' Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said. 'That's the new world we live in.'

Ten climate scientists say the idea of less snow and more blizzards makes sense: A warmer world is likely to decrease the overall amount of snow falling each year and shrink the snow season. But when it is cold enough for a snowstorm to hit, the slightly warmer air is often carrying more moisture, producing potentially historic blizzards.

'Strong snowstorms thrive on the ragged edge of temperature - warm enough for the air to hold lots of moisture, meaning lots of precipitation, but just cold enough for it to fall as snow,' said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. 'Increasingly, it seems that we're on that ragged edge.'

Just look at the last few years in the Northeast. Or take Chicago, which until late January had 335 days without more than an inch of snow. Both have been hit with historic storms in recent years.

Scientists won't blame a specific event or even a specific seasonal change on global warming without doing intricate and time-consuming studies. And they say they are just now getting a better picture of the complex intersection of manmade climate change and extreme snowfall.

But when Serreze, Oppenheimer and others look at the last few years of less snow overall, punctuated by big storms, they say this is what they are expecting in the future.

'It fits the pattern that we expect to unfold,' Oppenheimer said.

The world is warming so precipitation that would normally fall as snow in the future will probably fall as rain once it gets above the freezing point, said Princeton researcher Sarah Kapnick.

Her study used new computer models to simulate the climate in 60 years to 100 years as carbon dioxide levels soar. She found large reductions in snowfall throughout much of the world, especially parts of Canada and the Andes Mountains. In the United States, her models predict about a 50 percent or more drop in annual snowfall amounts along a giant swath of the nation from Maine to Texas and the Pacific Northwest and California's Sierra Nevada mountains.

This is especially important out West, where large snowcaps are natural reservoirs for a region's water supply, Kapnick said. And already in the Cascades of the Pacific Northwest and in much of California, the amount of snow still around on April 1 has been declining so that it's down about 20 percent compared with 80 years ago, said Philip Mote, who heads a climate change institute at Oregon State University.

Kapnick says it is snowing about as much as ever in the heart of winter, such as February. But the snow season is getting much shorter, especially in spring and in the northernmost areas, said Rutgers' David Robinson, a co-author of the study on extreme weather that will be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The Rutgers snow lab says this January saw the sixth-widest snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere; the United States had an above average snow cover for the last few months. But that's a misleading statistic, Robinson said, because even though more ground is covered by snow, it's covered by less snow.

And when those big storms finally hit, there is more than just added moisture in the air; there's extra moisture coming from the warm ocean, Robinson and Oppenheimer said. And the air is full of energy and is unstable, allowing storms to lift yet more moisture up to colder levels. That generates more intense rates of snowfall, Robinson said.

'If you can tap that moisture and you have that fortuitous collision of moist air and below-freezing temperatures, you can pop some big storms,' Robinson said.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann points to the recent Northeast storm that dumped more than 30 inches in some places. He said it was the result of a perfect set of conditions for such an event: arctic air colliding with unusually warm oceans that produced extra large amounts of moisture and big temperature contrasts, which drive storms. Those all meant more energy, more moisture and thus more snow, he said.

Highway Paleontologist Digs Up a New Species of Whale

Discovered: How a California law lead to a whale fossil discovery; over half of moviegoers want to puke while watching 3D films; dogs sniff out other dogs in crowds; tracking climate change through Rock Hyrax urine.

RELATED: Why the EPA Did an End-Run on Climate Change

Government-mandated paleontologist makes a whale of a discovery. If the state of California hadn't approved a highway-widening project in Laguna Canyon, we may never have found evidence of four previously unknown types of baleen whale which once swam the Earth's oceans. By law, new road projects in the state have to involve on-site supervision from a paleontologist and an archaeologist. That's why paleontologist Meredith Rivin of the John D. Cooper Archaeological and Paleontological Center was there to find 30 cetacean skulls that lead to the discovery of the newly identified toothed baleen whale species that lived 17 to 19 million years ago. Modern baleen whales of course don't have teeth, but these Miocene-era fossils suggest that today's filter-feeding whales descended from toothed ancestors. Nick Pyenson of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History says he'll 'be excited to see what [the researchers] come up with' in terms of what this finding means for our understanding of whale evolution. Though we're sure many a paleontologist has stood idly on fruitless California road-cutting projects, these findings are a big win for government-mandated researchers at transportation project sites. [ScienceNow]

RELATED: Greenhouse Gasses Reach Record Highs

3D movies nauseate a majority of viewers. If the 3D movies trend really is dying, a lot of moviegoers will be thankful. According to a new study published in Public Library of Science One, 3D movie technology makes over half of viewers want to vomit. The researchers gave 497 healthy adults a questionnaire after having them watch a traditional 2D film and a modern 3D film. While only 14.1 percent got nauseous during the flat movies, 54.8 percent reporting wanting to vomit while watching 3D films. 'Seeing 3D movies can increase rating of symptoms of nausea, oculomotor and disorientation, especially in women with susceptible visual-vestibular system,' the researchers conclude. [Discover]

RELATED: A Common Mining Byproduct Spreading Breast Cancer; Reading Palm Trees

Dogs pick dogs out of a crowd. Man's best friend has no interest in man when it's in a crowd - it's busy detecting the other dogs hidden amidst all the commotion. Dominique Autier-Dérian of France's National Veterinary School and his colleagues have found that dogs have a unique ability to find other dogs in crowds. In an experiment that presented dogs with tables of images - some of other dogs, most of various other species - the dogs were able to focus in on their own kind. 'The fact that dogs are able to recognize their own species visually and that they have great olfactory discriminative capacities insures that social behavior and mating between highly morphologically different breeds is still potentially possible and therefore that, although humans have stretched Canis familiaris to its morphological limits, its biological entity has been preserved,' the researchers conclude. [Scientific American]

RELATED: Polar Bears Are Older Than We Thought; Turning a Rat into a Jellyfish

Climate change affects Rock Hyrax pee. Melting ice-caps are one way to measure the progress of climate change. The occurrence of freak weather incidents is another. But one of the more scatological methods involves studying where the Rock Hyrax (a furry, guinea pig-sized mammal that lives in rock crevices in Africa and Asia) urinates. They tend to stay put for generations, with each wave of parents teaching their young where to relieve themselves. As all that urine dries up, it collects pollen, leaves, grass, and air bubbles that capture the atmospheric history of Earth's changing climate. Brian Chase of Montpelier University and his colleagues have studies this urine deposits, finding that places where the Rock Hyrax lives were greatly effected by glacier retreats in the last Ice Age. 'This had a huge local impact in northern Europe but we did not know how the rest of the planet was affected,' says Chase. 'Thanks to rock hyrax urine from the period, we have an answer. There was significant cooling in South Africa, and presumably the rest of the planet, at the time.' [Ars Technica]

Perch exposed to human anti-anxiety drugs become isolated, aggressive - study

BOSTON (Reuters) - Wild perch living in water tainted with a commonly prescribed human anti-anxiety drug aggressively feed, shun other fish and become careless, according to the results of a study presented at a meeting of scientists on Thursday.

'We knew there was a pharmaceutical that was present in the environment that had behavioral-changing capabilities in humans, but what could this do to fish?' said chemist Jerker Fick of Umea University in Sweden.

The findings highlighted the potential ecological implications of even trace amounts of psychiatric pharmaceuticals that are excreted in human urine and survive wastewater treatment plant processes, scientists told a meeting in Boston of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

For the experiment, scientists divided 75 wild European perch into three groups. One group lived in clean water. The second group's water had low concentrations of Oxazepam, a commonly prescribed medication used to treat anxiety in humans.

The concentration was similar to what is found in waterways downstream from sewage treatment plants.

The third group's water had 500 times the amount of Oxazepam typically found in waterways. After a week, the fish were subjected to routine behavioral tests.

'Before we exposed the perch to the drug they were all very shy. They were not taking any risks at all basically. After exposure, they were swimming around much more, like they were unconcerned, and they were not as social. They just wanted to swim on their own. Some even avoided schools as much as possible,' lead researcher Tomas Brodin, also with Umea University, told Reuters.

Fish exposed to Oxazepam also became more aggressive feeders, he said.

'I have no doubt that the behavioral effects we see are true and that they are potentially going on as we speak,' Brodin said.

'This is a global issue,' he added. 'We find these concentrations (of psychiatric drugs) or close to them, all over the world.'

The scientists plan to expand the study to look at the wider ecological effects of Oxazepam and to understand on a molecular level what happens to perch that are exposed to the drug.

The research appears in this week's Science magazine.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Tom Brown, Toni Reinhold)

Drugs Leaked Into Rivers Make Fish Antisocial

BOSTON - Drugs taken by humans can have unintended side effects - on fish, in the natural environment. Turns out, fish fed extremely low concentrations of an antianxiety drug eat more quickly, and act bolder and more antisocial than their un-medicated peers, a new study finds.

'We can see profound effects at the low levels that we find in surface water. Exposed fish are more bold,' Jerker Fick, a co-author and researcher at Umea University in Sweden, said at a news conference here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The study looked at the effect of oxazepam (also known as Serax), used to treat anxiety and panic in humans, on the widespread European perch fish. Researchers gave the fish a concentration of drugs similar to that found in rivers and streams in Sweden and elsewhere, according to a study published today (Feb. 14) in the journal Science. [Trippy Tales: The History of 8 Hallucinogens]

Here's how the drugs make their way into fishy habitats in real life: They get excreted by humans, pass through wastewater treatment facilities, which are not designed to break down such compounds, and then flow into rivers, Fick told LiveScience.

In the lab, perch were exposed to oxazepam in aquaria meant to mimic the animals' natural conditions. Once exposed, the fish became more antisocial, distancing themselves from fellow fish and likely putting themselves at greater risk of predation, said co-author Tomas Brodin, also of Umea University.

Exposed fish also ate more quickly, a trait that could have profound effects on the environment. This quick gobbling of zooplankton (tiny floating animals) could perhaps lead to blooms of algae, which zooplankton eat. If perch devour more zooplankton, more algae could survive, and their populations could explode, Brodin said.

Drug-exposed fish also left the dark enclosures in their lab homes more quickly, venturing out into open areas of the aquaria to feed, Brodin said. Fish not given drugs lingered longer in their refuges, acting more cautiously. 'But the exposed fish didn't care,' Brodin said.

The authors said the drug in question works by relieving stress (in both humans and animals), but a certain amount of stress is needed to prevent animals from taking unwarranted risks. Concentrations of drugs in the muscles of the laboratory fish were similar to those found in Swedish rivers, suggesting the effects seen in the study are likely happening in the environment, Fick said.

Oxazepam is a type of benzodiazepine, a very widely prescribed class of antianxiety drugs. It is the most commonly prescribed such medicine in Sweden, and is also formed when humans metabolize other benzodiazepines such as diazepam, also known as Valium, Brodin said.

These drugs are found in waterways throughout the world, and they likely affect all fish since they act on a cellular receptor found in almost all vertebrates, or animals with backbones, Brodin said.

'It's a global issue,' he said. 'It's probable these behavioral effects are happening around the world as we speak.'

Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

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Nuclear Weapons Sensors Could Monitor Environment

A vast network of sensors designed to detect a rogue nuclear test - like the one North Korea initiated on Tuesday (Feb. 12) - could be repurposed to monitor everything from tsunamis to pollution, scientists argue.

Both weapons sensing and environmental monitoring are 'two sides of the same coin,' said Raymond Jeanloz, an earth scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. 'They are the same desire to monitor what's going on in the environment around us,' said Jeanloz, who co-authored a paper on the topic published today (Feb. 14) in the journal Science.

Cold War relic

More than 254 sensor facilities are currently operated by the international monitoring system as part of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which 182 countries have signed.

When the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963, the Cold War was still in full force. But now that the Cold War has ended and nuclear tests are rare, it may make sense to repurpose some of these sensors, Jeanloz said.

Multipurpose sensors

For instance, the international monitoring system for nuclear tests uses seismic and water-based acoustic sensors, which measure sound waves that ripple through the ground after a nuclear explosion. But those same sensors could have been used to detect the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people, the authors write.

Radionuclide detectors attached to airborne satellites can sense radioactive particles spewed out by nuclear tests. These detectors were used to track the plume of radioactive material after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011. And the Open Skies Treaty allows 34 member states to fly aerial surveillance over their territories to gather military information, but with a few retrofits of archaic sensors, the same planes could monitor air pollution or the spread of microorganisms (like those that cause diseases) across the globe. [The 10 Greatest Explosions Ever]

In addition, hundreds of scientists interpret the data from these sensors, and their expertise could be harnessed for other types of environmental monitoring.

The Comprehensive Test-Ban-Treaty Organization has already agreed to use some of their seismic sensors for tsunami detection and no member objected when the organization used the sensors for the Fukushima nuclear accident, said Annika Thunborg, a spokesperson for the organization. But broadening the use of these sensors for environmental monitoring could run into challenges; the political framework for their operation is centered on nuclear weapons testing or military surveillance, and each country interprets those rules differently.

Bigger opportunities

In their paper, Jeanloz and his colleagues focus on increasing the scientific community's use of such sensor data, but it could have even broader use as a way to bypass government control of environmental data, said Christopher Stubbs, an experimental physicist at Harvard University who has written about more extensive use of such sensors.

For instance, closed-government countries may not want their carbon dioxide emissions tracked, but citizen scientists could agree to receive carbon dioxide (CO2) sensors and then submit their data to a global repository, creating an unprecedented picture of global greenhouse gas levels.

'Suddenly we find ourselves with 500,000 CO2 sensors distributed around the world without any government intervention whatsoever,' Stubbs told LiveScience.

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NASA Climate Scientist Arrested in Pipeline Protest

Climate scientist James Hansen was arrested today outside the White House while protesting the proposed construction of the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline.

The 1,179-mile (1,897-kilometer) pipeline would carry heavy crude oil from Canada (Hardisty, Alberta) to the U.S. Gulf Coast, according to news reports. The project needs the president's approval for a construction permit.

Some 48 activists, including Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah, executive director of the Sierra Club Michael Brune, Bill McKibben, co-founder of the grassroots climate group 350.org, and civil rights activist Julian Bond, practiced civil disobedience in front of the White House. They are demanding the president deny the pipeline construction and address the climate crisis.

Environmentalists argue that not only would the pipeline seal the country's dependence on 'dirty fuels,' adding to the emissions of greenhouse gases and the warming of the planet, it would also disrupt various ecosystems as it slices through critical habitats.

Hansen, director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, argues that promoting both renewable energy and oil and gas production, with projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline, isn't feasible. 'We have reached a fork in the road,' he said, as reported by the Washington Post, 'and the politicians have to understand we either go down this road of exploiting every fossil fuel we have - tar sands, tar shale, off-shore drilling in the Arctic - but the science tells us we can't do that without creating a situation where our children and grandchildren will have no control over, which is the climate system.'

The pipeline would carry what environmental groups call one of the dirtiest types of oil, called tar sands, which is a mix of clay, sand, water and bitumen (a heavy black oil). [The 7 Most Surprising Uses of Oil]

After blocking a thoroughfare in front of the White House and refusing to move (some even locking themselves to gates with plastic handcuffs), the activists were arrested, according to a statement by 350.org. They were brought to the Anacostia U.S. Park Police Station in Washington, D.C.

'The threat to our planet's climate is both grave and urgent,' Bond said a statement. 'Although President Obama has declared his own determination to act, much that is within his power to accomplish remains undone, and the decision to allow the construction of a pipeline to carry millions of barrels of the most-polluting oil on Earth from Canada's tar sands to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. is in his hands.'

Bond added, 'I am proud today to stand before my fellow citizens and declare, 'I am willing to go to jail to stop this wrong.' The environmental crisis we face today demands nothing less.'

Estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency suggest the pipeline would increase the annual production of carbon emissions by up to 27.6 million metric tons, or the equivalent of nearly 6 million cars on the road, according to 350.org.

In the next few weeks, the U.S. State Department is expected to release its environmental impact assessment of the pipeline, according to the Washington Post.

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