EARTHWATCH
Solar heartbeats
New research suggests that solar storms may cause up to 5,500 heartrelated deaths annually in the U.S. alone during years of high solar activity. Harvard researchers made the conclusion after comparing death records in 263 U.S. cities from 1985 to 2013 with solar data. They found more deaths occurred from heart attacks and other cardiovascular complications on days when solar storms were disturbing Earth’s magnetic field. Men with diagnosed heart disease were seen to be especially vulnerable to the effect. Other research links solar storms to higher rates of depression, suicide and even premature birth.
Earthquakes
More than 1,000 people perished around southern Afghanistan’s provincial capital of Khost as the deadliest temblor to strike the country in 20 years caused buildings to crumble.
• Quakes were also felt in central Japan, Taiwan, northwestern Sumatra, Costa Rica, Argentina’s Mendoza province and Georgia.
Polar survivors
As melting polar ice in summer threatens the region’s iconic polar bears with starvation, a previously unstudied population of the bears in southeastern Greenland has been found to survive despite the lack of sea ice much of the year. The genetically distinctive subpopulation has adapted by using chunks of glaciers calving off Greenland as platforms to hunt seals year-round. Since there is sea ice in that region only from February to May, the glacial icebergs help the small population of polar bears to survive for the rest of the year. But that glacial advantage will not be available to polar bears elsewhere in the Arctic as the sea ice around the North Pole disappears due to global heating.
Heat victims
Spain’s earliest intense heat wave in 40 years killed hundreds of baby swifts after the hatchlings fled their sweltering nests too soon. The threatened birds were seen littering the streets around the southern cities of Córdoba and Seville. Residents of both communities gathered all of the dehydrated and starving birds they could find so they could be nursed back to health. “You would walk down the street and there would be 100 chicks, lying at the foot of a building … some barely alive,” said biologist Elena Moreno Portillo of the urban conservation group Ecourbe.
Climatic starvation
Hunger brought on by climate change appears to be behind the deaths of hundreds of small korora penguins that have washed up on the northern shores of New Zealand since May. Also known as little penguins, they were found through autopsies to have starved to death and were not victims of disease or toxins. Warming waters now force the small fish the penguins eat to swim deeper to stay cool. Since the korora can only dive to depths of only 65 to 100 feet, they are increasingly unable to reach their prey, experts say.
Arctic openings
Melting Arctic sea ice during summer may soon become so pervasive if carbon emissions are not drastically curbed that new shipping lanes not controlled by Russia will open up. Current Russian law requires that all vessels passing through the Northern Sea Route off Siberia in summer pay tolls, be piloted by Russians and provide advance notice of their plans to use the route. But a new study by Brown University finds that there will soon be shorter, more eco-friendly maritime routes that bypass Russian control. Arctic shipping routes between Asia and Europe are 30 to 50 percent shorter than using the Suez and Panama canals, and are an estimated 14 to 20 days faster.
Tropical cyclone
Tropical Storm Celia formed off western Nicaragua and was predicted to reach hurricane force over the open waters of the eastern Pacific late in the week.