Earthweek: a diary of the planet

Rising tides

Global sea levels have been rising 25 percent more quickly than they did during the 1990s, when scientists started to measure the trend by satellite. A new study by researchers at France’s Laboratory of Geophysical and Oceanographic Studies found that the accelerated melting of Greenland’s ice sheet has caused sea level rise to increase by 0.1 inch per year since observations began. The increase was about 0.03 inches per year faster between 2004 and 2015. That was when the Greenland melt quickened.

Long eruption

Costa Rica’s Poás volcano erupted for 48 hours, spewing hot vapors and incandescent rocks that smashed the windows of a national park office, prompting the evacuation of all park rangers. Nearby communities reported falling ash and the smell of sulfur from the eruption, which caused eye and respiratory irritation.

Earthquakes

Two dozen Indonesian homes were damaged by a sharp temblor that struck West Java’s Tasikmalaya district. No fatalities or injuries were reported from the shaking. Earth movements also were felt in central Chile and parts of Venezuela, Trinidad, southeastern Pennsylvania and around Santa Barbara, California.

Tropical cyclones Short-lived Tropical Storm Arlene became only the third such storm on record to form in the Atlantic during

April as the 2017 hurricane season got off to a premature start. Tropical Storm Muifa formed briefly over a remote area of the western Pacific.

Climate shift

A growing number of Kenyans are switching from traditional livestock to drought-resistant camels because of the changing climate. Longer and lesspredictable droughts have resulted in three times as many camels being owned today than a decade ago. “My husband and I had over a hundred cattle until 2005. But as the climate became drier in this region, the cows stopped producing milk, and 20 to 30 of our cows even died every year,” Mariam Maalim told Germany’s Deutsche Welle broadcaster. She says her new camels produce milk even during drought.

Urban foxes

There are now four times as many foxes living in urban areas of England than 20 years ago, or about one for every 300 city-dwelling humans. Researchers found that London has about 18 foxes per square kilometer (about 247 acres). The whole of England is home to about 150,000 of the urban omnivores. But Trevor Williams, of the rescue group the Fox Project, said he thinks that many foxes have become urban dwellers because cities have expanded into their historic habitats. Foxes also seem to thrive in places like London because of the abundance of rats and mice.

Antarctic melt

Vast areas of Antarctica are teeming with small streams each summer as the continent undergoes extensive melting — even in areas that scientists once thought were too frigid for water to flow. “I think most polar scientists have considered water moving across the surface of Antarctica to be extremely rare. But we found a lot of it, over very large areas,” said glaciologist Jonathan Kingslake of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Research published in the journal "Nature" documents how a threaded network of pools and streams flows out on all sides of the continent. Colleague and polar scientist Robin Bell says that a warming climate is likely to cause the phenomenon to become more pronounced.