Erika no longer a tropical storm, loses steam over Cuba

GNN - Erika, a tropical storm that was losing strength as it hit Haiti with heavy rains and strong winds, fell apart on Saturday over eastern Cuba, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

"Erika has degenerated into a trough of low pressure," the Miami-based hurricane center said in a Saturday morning forecast advisory.

Erika's maximum sustained winds had dropped to 35 mph (56 kph), just below the tropical storm threshold.

Dominica in the eastern Caribbean was the island worst-affected by Erika, with 20 killed and some still missing.

Still posing a threat of wind gusts and flash floods, the remnants of Erika were now expected to move over central Cuba, potentially providing welcome relief from a drought, before heading out into the Gulf of Mexico and skirting South Florida.

The NHC said the weather system could still regenerate into a tropical storm before reaching the northwest Florida Panhandle.

Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency on Friday, noting the storm could travel "up the spine of Florida." He planned to give an update on its potential impact later on Saturday.

Forecasters have described Erika, the fifth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, as unusually hard to predict due to disruption from wind patterns and interaction with mountainous terrain.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters with the private U.S. forecaster, Weather Underground, said the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, "has saved us so many times in the past", thanks to its 10,000-feet (3,000-meter) peaks.

"It's probably saved thousands of lives in South Florida over the years," he said.

Impoverished Haiti also appeared to have dodged a bullet as Erika's sustained winds dropped to 45 mph (72 kph) as it moved over the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Friday night, the NHC said.

Haiti is acutely vulnerable to landslides due to widespread deforestation of its hillsides.

After a rainy night, the city woke up Saturday to clear skies and no signs of serious damage. Normally dust-covered trees were a lush green as bulldozers cleared mud from Route 1, the main road north out of the capital.

Dominica's prime minister, Roosevelt Skerrit confirmed in a Friday night address that 20 people had died from swollen rivers and rain-triggered landslides that swept away homes, roads and bridges.

He described the loss of life and economic damage as "monumental", with some communities cut off on the small, mountainous island with a population of about 72,000.

(Reporting by David Adams in Miami and Peter Granitz in Port-au-Prince; Editing by Alison Williams)

China passes new pollution law, sets sights on coal consumption cap

GNN - Legislators have approved amendments to China's 15-year-old air pollution law that grant the state new powers to punish offenders and create a legal framework to cap coal consumption, the Asian giant's biggest source of smog.

The draft amendments were passed by 154 votes to 4, with five abstentions, Zhong Xuequan, spokesman for the National People's Congress (NPC), China's parliament, told a media briefing on Saturday.

The ruling Communist Party has acknowledged the damage that decades of untrammeled economic growth have done to China's skies, rivers and soil. It is now trying to equip its environmental inspection offices with greater powers and more resources to tackle persistent polluters and the local governments that protect them.

The amendments are expected to make local governments directly responsible for meeting environmental targets. They also ban firms from temporarily switching off polluting equipment during inspections and outlaw other behavior designed to distort emission readings.

Tong Weidong, vice-director of the NPC's legal work committee, told the briefing the law would improve the way local authorities were assessed and allow them to draw up their own plans to meet environmental targets.

"Amendments to this air pollution law have strengthened pollution treatment from the source - from sources such as industrial policy, energy consumption and automobile pollution," Tong said.

However, researchers said the changes do not go far enough and that the third reading of the bill should have been postponed until all its shortcomings had been resolved.

Tong said such criticism was "very normal" and that it was impossible to include all proposals in the law.

Chang Jiwen, an environmental researcher with the Development and Research Council, a government think tank, has described the new law as "not very useful".

"It is filled with many slogan-like clauses and is more like a policy document than legislation," Chang told the state-backed newspaper China Business. He said many experts had said the bill should have been postponed.

Lawmakers had rejected proposals to include specific coal consumption targets in the law and also ruled out a clause allowing local authorities to set their own restrictions on car use, the official Xinhua news agency said earlier this week.

Wang Yi, head of the policy committee of the China Academy of Sciences and a member of the NPC's standing committee, has told Chinese media the law fails to set clear goals on emissions and air quality standards.

According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, concentrations of hazardous breathable particles known as PM2.5 fell 17.1 percent in the first half of 2015 to 58 micrograms per cubic meter. China doesn't expect to meet the state standard of 35 micrograms until 2030.

(Reporting by David Stanway and Kathy Chen, Reuters; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Paul Tait)

Philippines braces for typhoon over Easter

(GNN) - The Philippines issued warnings of possible landslides and storm surges, with typhoon Maysak set to strike eastern coastal areas, where many resorts are located, over the Easter weekend.

Maysak, initially a top-rated category 5 typhoon, has weakened to category 4 as it lost strength over the water. It is expected to further lose strength as it hits the mountains of northeastern Philippines on Saturday or Sunday, the weather bureau said.

But authorities are concerned foreign and Filipino tourists spending the long Easter weekend on the beaches along the eastern coasts of the main Luzon island may ignore warnings. The typhoon is expected to make landfall within 72 hours. The Easter holidays began on Thursday in the Philippines.

"This will bring waves which our surfers really like. But this is a typhoon we are facing, even if we say it may become just a storm...The waves will be strong and it will be dangerous for our fellowmen in the eastern coasts," Esperanza Cayanan, an officer at the weather bureau, said in a televised disaster briefing.

Officials of Aurora province northeast of Manila estimate about 10,000 tourists were expected to troop to its Baler Bay, a popular spot for surfers.

Storm surges 3 to 4 meters high were expected along eastern coasts, Cayanan said.

Maysak, packing winds of 175 kms per hour (109 miles per hour) near the center and gusts of up to 210 kph, entered Philippine territory late on Wednesday.

The typhoon was spotted 995 kms (618 miles) east of Catarman in Northern Samar province southeast of Manila before noon of Thursday, and was moving northwest at 19 kph.

Heavy rainfall was expected within a radius of 150 to 200 km (93 to 124 miles) from the eye of the storm, Cayanan said.

The typhoon could damage rice and corn crops in central and northern areas of the Philippines, although damage is likely to be minimal as the major harvest of the national staple rice was finished around February.

About 20 major typhoons pass through the Philippines yearly, and the storms have become fiercer in recent years. After Haiyan, a category 5 typhoon that struck in November 2013, the toll of dead and missing ran to nearly 8,000 people.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Rosemarie Francisco; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Major sandstorm disrupts air traffic in UAE, Gulf region

(GNN) - A major sandstorm across the United Arab Emirates disrupted flights at Dubai's two international airports on Thursday and caused delays at other air transport centers in the Gulf, according to authorities.

The thick orange haze that had blanketed Saudi Arabia on Wednesday moved eastwards and severely reduced visibility, threatening to continue delays and cancellations for the rest of the day, the Dubai Airports live flight status website showed.

Dubai International was the world's busiest airport for international passenger traffic in 2014, replacing London's Heathrow for the first time, as 70.5 million passengers traveled through the airport.

"Bad weather conditions persisting across the Gulf region since morning have affected normal operations at Dubai International (DXB) and Al Maktoum International (DWC)," Dubai Airports, which operates both facilities, said in a statement.

In a later emailed statement, Dubai Airports said it had re-routed some flights during the day to Al Maktoum, Dubai's second airport that mainly handles cargo, and was working with all airlines to minimize disruption.

Flights into the international airport in neighboring Abu Dhabi from Dammam, Muscat, Bahrain, Ras Al Khaimah and Mumbai during the morning were either delayed or canceled, according to the flight status page on the airport's website.

But Abu Dhabi Airports Company, the airport's operator, said in a statement that "flight departure and landing are proceeding as normal with no delays or diversions to any of the scheduled flights from and to Abu Dhabi International Airport due to the sandstorm."

It said a departure from Abu Dhabi to Dammam in eastern Saudi Arabia and another to Bahrain had been delayed, but this was due to the bad weather conditions at those airports.

Air Arabia, which has a base in the smaller emirates of Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah, has also experienced delays to scheduled flights due to the weather, a spokesman for the low-cost airline said.

SAUDI ARABIA, QATAR, BAHRAIN

Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Civil Aviation said in a statement late on Wednesday that flights from Riyadh, Dammam, Qassim and Hafr al-Batin had either been delayed or rescheduled due to the sandstorm.

Operations returned to normal on Thursday, it added.

A Qatar Airways spokesman reported minor disruption to some of its flights at Doha's Hamad International Airport on Thursday morning.

Bahrain Airport's flight schedule shows some canceled and delayed regional flights operated by Gulf Air, with few other disruptions.

(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Reem Shamseddine in Khobar; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Hurricane-strength winds pummel Europe, four killed

(GNN) - At least four people were killed on Tuesday when hurricane-force winds lashed northern Europe in one of the most severe storms in years, forcing flights to be canceled and disrupting road, train and marine traffic.

The Dutch meteorological office issued a red warning for the northern and coastal provinces of the low-lying Netherlands, as gusts of up to 120 kph (75 mph) caused damage estimated at several million euros.

German weather service spokesman Peter Hartmann said winds had reached up to 160 kph (100 mph) on higher ground.

"This is one of the worst storms in recent years," he said, noting that such hurricane-force winds were highly unusual for this time of the year.

Two road workers were killed in the western region of Rhineland-Palatinate when a tree fell on their vehicle, while another man was crushed under a stone wall in front of his house near Magdeburg in eastern Germany.

The fourth victim was in the eastern Dutch town of Ede, where a man was killed when the roof of a warehouse fell on him.

About 140 flights were canceled at Frankfurt airport, where one runway was shut. Around 90 flights were canceled at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.

At Rotterdam, Europe's largest port, two container terminals were closed, with ships forced to queue out at sea. A spokesman said this was a routine precaution when winds rise above gale force seven. Bulk liquid terminals continued to operate.

Dutch authorities warned freight drivers not to travel with lightly loaded vehicles after overturned trucks blocked roads, while in the north some bridges had to be closed.

Near the port of Vlissingen on the Belgian border, authorities were able to refloat a 300-metre (1,000-foot) container ship that ran aground in the small hours.

In Germany, train services were suspended in the northern states of North Rhine Westphalia and Lower Saxony, and disrupted as far south as Bavaria.

In Britain, winds gusted up to 97 mph (156 kph) overnight, with a major bridge over the River Thames closed for several hours because of the bad weather, causing long traffic delays.

In Belgium, the wind uprooted trees and cut power lines to hundreds of homes. In some places, cars and buildings were damaged by flying debris and some rail and road links were briefly obstructed.

(The story corrects headline to drop reference to all four dead being in Germany)

(Reuters)(Reporting by Michael Nienaber, Markus Wacket, Sabine Wollrab, Anthony Deutsch, Erik Kirschbaum, Alastair Macdonald, Stephen Addison, writing by Michael Hogan and Thomas Escritt; Editing by Alison Williams and Kevin Liffey)

Rich nations' fossil fuel export funding dwarfs green spend: documents

(GNN) - Rich nations provided around five times as much in export subsidies for fossil-fuel technology as for renewable energy over a decade, according to OECD data seen by Reuters.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures on export credits are central to a debate on targeting funding ahead of U.N. climate talks in Paris at the end of the year.

Just when the European Union is leading the push for a new global deal on curbing emissions and is phasing out domestic coal subsidies, the documents underline the scale of the developed world's investment in exporting technology for the most polluting fossil fuel.

Earlier this year, a document seen by Reuters provided the closest yet to official figures on coal export credits.

Further documents give the context of all energy export subsidies.

One, dated March 4, when the OECD held closed-door talks on the issue, shows OECD governments provided preferential loans and state-backed guarantees worth $36.8 billion between 2003 and 2013 for exporting fossil fuel power-generation technology, including almost $14 billion for coal.

A document from October 2014 shows another $52.6 billion in export credits was allocated for the extraction of fossil fuels, including coal, taking the fossil fuel total to $89.4 billion.

Export credits for technology for renewable energy, which has no extraction costs, were $16.7 billion.

An OECD spokesman said he could not comment on documents marked confidential. But the documents themselves say the data should be public.

"There would seem to be a pressing need to issue coherent, complete and accurate figures on official export credit support that is relevant to climate change issues," the March 4 document says.

EU officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the March talks made little progress and the issue would be raised again at OECD level in June.

The OECD has said it wants a decision on how export credits can help tackle climate change in time for the U.N. summit that begins on Nov. 30 in Paris.

A debate within the EU, which accounts for two thirds of OECD nations, is deadlocked because Poland has blocked as too ambitious a compromise to allow export funding for only the most efficient coal technology, the EU officials said. Britain and France objected, saying the compromise was not ambitious enough.

Germany, the biggest EU user of export credits both for coal and renewables, the data shows, is planning measures to make operators of coal plants, such as RWE, curb production at their oldest and most-polluting power stations as part of efforts to achieve climate targets.

A letter to the European Commission from industry associations, the European Power Plant Suppliers Association, EU Turbines and Germany's VDMA, said halting coal export credits would lock developing nations into less-efficient technology and curtail European industry's competitiveness.

Environment campaigners dismiss those arguments.

Sebastien Godinot, an economist at WWF, said the industry had "failed to bring any concrete evidence that the OECD export finance policy drives more efficient technology".

(Reuters)(Editing by Dale Hudson)

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Strong quakes strike off South Pacific islands: USGS

(GNN) - A series of strong earthquakes struck off the neighboring South Pacific Ocean states of Samoa and Tonga on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, just hours after a major tremor rattled Papua New Guinea to the west.

A number of 6.8 magnitude quakes struck southwest of the Samoan capital Apia, in waters between the two island states of Tonga and Samoa.

Residents in Samoa told Reuters there were no reports of damage and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said there was no tsunami threat.

The quakes came just hours after a major 7.7 quake struck of the coast of Papua New Guinea coast, near the town of Rabaul, in the country's northeast.

A tsunami warning was issued soon after the PNG quake, though the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said no destructive, Pacific-wide tsunami was expected.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Colin Packham; Reporting by Jeremy Laurence; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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China says 66 golf courses shut in renewed crackdown

(GNN) - Chinese authorities have closed 66 golf courses in a renewed crackdown on courses built in contravention of rules designed to protect arable land and save water, China's top economic planning body said on Monday.

The central government last year ordered the demolition of courses built by five mainly little-known developers, the first real sign of enforcement of a 2004 ban.

The ban was imposed to protect China's shrinking land and water resources in a country home to a fifth of the world's population but which has just 7 percent of its water.

Another reason was because the high use of fertilizer and pesticide to grow grass for golf courses was causing water pollution.

"Governments at all levels and relevant State Council organs have proactively carried out golf course rectification work and have achieved phased results," the National Development and Reform Commission said in a brief statement.

"At present, all levels of government have already banned the building of a series of illegal golf courses, and the rectification work has seen initial success," it added.

Three of the courses it named in its list of the 66 shut were in Beijing, with the others spread out across the country, including in the barren inland region of Ningxia.

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The only part of China supposed to be exempt from the ban is the southern resort island of Hainan, though the list included three courses there.

Golf has come a long way in China since it was banned as a bourgeois excess by late leader Mao Zedong, with many wealthy Chinese seeing it as a way to affirm their status.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Heavy rains trigger flood fears in Kashmir; six dead

(GNN) - A landslide in the Himalayan region of Kashmir killed six people and left 10 missing, police said on Monday, as unseasonal rains swept India, damaging crops and raising fears of flash floods in the mountainous north.

Hundreds of people fled their homes as Kashmir's main rivers began to swell and weather forecasters predicted further downpours in the region that was struck by devastating floods seven months ago.

A hillside collapsed onto a house in Ledhan village, about 40 km (25 miles) from the capital Srinagar, where three families were sleeping on Monday morning, according to Mushtaq Ahmad, a neighbor. Army and police used shovels and diggers to locate any survivors.Local police superintendent Fayaz Ahmad Lone said six bodies had been recovered from the home in the village and the death toll was likely to rise further.

India is experiencing more extreme rainfall events as the global climate warms, a study of 50 years of data by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology concluded.

This year, March has been the wettest month in more than a century, wrecking millions of hectares of winter crops.

The crop damage has been blamed for a spate of farmer suicides in recent weeks.

(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Ratnajyoti Dutta; Writing by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Malini Menon and Jeremy Laurence)

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Harsh weather cripples fishing and tourism on Cameroon's coast

KRIBI, Cameroon (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - For over 15 years, Raoul Meno has been fishing the waters off the coastal town of Kribi in southern Cameroon. He has sometimes had to face down storms and high seas to bring home a catch to support his family. But now, he is scared.

"I go for days without going to sea for my catch because of the frightening weather," he said. A bout of persistent heavy rains and surging tides this year has made fishing in Kribi increasingly difficult and left fishermen like Meno struggling to make a living.

"This is the first time we are witnessing such aggressive weather," he said. "I wonder what is really going wrong with nature."


As Kribi struggles to cope with hard times in its fishing industry, the weather is also hitting tourism, simultaneously threatening to destroy the town's two main sources of income.

With its sandy beach, seaside resort, and beautiful lowland scenery, Kribi contributes significantly to Cameroon's tourism industry. It is the country’s second most popular destination after the Waza and Bouba N'Djida parks in the north of the country.

But statistics from Kribi’s city council show that visits by tourists to the region in 2014 dropped by more that 60 percent compared to the year before.

According to Eric Serge Epoune, a spokesman for Cameroon's Ministry of Tourism, the loss of income from just one coastal town is having a "catastrophic" impact when combined with other pressures on the nation’s economy.

"At a time when the Boko Haram scare has ground to a halt tourism in Cameroon’s far north, a harsh climate is preventing our second most popular tourist zone from pulling in visitors," he said.

"Tourism and crafts are at a dead end, and let's not even talk about the hotel business — it is virtually nonexistent."

PROBLEMS LINKED TO DEFORESTATION

Erratic rains and high tides have also played havoc with Kribi's hopes to give the city a facelift – and an economic boost. According to city council authorities, rains have caused major delays to the start of construction on a new urban-development master plan, due to be completed by 2025.

The revitalization was due to begin once building was finished on a new deep sea port and gas plant, but Cameroon's increasingly extreme weather has slowed down construction on those projects.

Environmental experts in Yaounde, the capital, say all the new construction may have made the area more vulnerable to erratic rains and sea surges as a result of worsening deforestation.

Most of the forests in the Cameroon's south have been sacrificed for development projects, they say, including huge tracts of land around Kribi that have been cleared for the new deep sea port and gas plant.

Experts say mangrove forests along the coast are crucial to protecting the shoreline and mitigating damage from storms and high seas.

"Even if we negate all benefits of mangroves as forests, their value as the 'shoreline protector' should be enough to convince us to conserve them," said Youssoufa Bele, one of the authors of a report by the Center for International Forestry Research last year on the importance of mangroves.

The trees' roots spread across large areas, soaking up water and holding soil and sediment, he said.

Samuel Nguiffo of the Centre for Environment and Development in Cameroon, a non-government organization that deals with forest and land issues, said the first step to protecting the port and gas plant from extreme weather could be through major reforestation efforts.

"A tree-planting initiative by the Kribi local council with support from the government is necessary along the entire coastline," he said. "This would restore the dune ecosystem and reduce the impact of rising sea levels, as well as minimize any future storm surges that could pose a potential danger to the port's infrastructure.”

For now, Kribi is still grappling with the harsh weather that has undercut its economy. While fishermen have become afraid of the sea, the women who buy, smoke and sell fish also are struggling to stay in business.

Many have been left with no alternative but to drive to Douala, Cameroon’s commercial capital, about 250 km from Kribi, to buy imported fish and sell it on at a higher price.

"The selling of fresh and smoked fish is my life," said Helen Taku, a fish vendor in Kribi. "I feed my family and send my children to school on income from the fish trade. I really fear for the future."

(Reporting by Elias Ntungwe Ngalame; editing by Laurie Goering)

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Chile desert rains sign of climate change: chief weather scientist

(GNN) - The heavy rainfall that battered Chile's usually arid north this week happened because of climate change, a senior meteorologist said, as the region gradually returns to normal after rivers broke banks and villages were cut off.

"For Chile, this particular system can only be possible in an environment of a changed climate," Deputy Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization Jeremiah Lengoasa told Reuters on a visit to Santiago on Friday.

The intense rainfall that began Tuesday in an area that is home to the Atacama, the world's driest desert, had resulted in nine deaths by Friday, with 19 people still missing, nearly 6,000 people in temporary housing and some roads cut off, the government's emergency office Onemi said.

Under a more familiar beating sun, people began to trickle back to debris-strewn villages and smashed houses. A curfew is in place in the Atacama region tonight, Onemi said, while operations at some mines in the top copper producer are still on hold.

 Local media reported that one of those who lost his home was Victor Zamora, one of the 33 miners whose dramatic rescue from a mine in nearby Copiapo in 2010 attracted global attention.

While the worst seems to be over, Chile can expect to see more of this kind of event in the future, Lengoasa said.

"This is an example of an extreme (event) - it's an unprecedented event in a place where you would not normally expect it to happen," he said.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Rosalba O'Brien; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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New Jersey lawmakers send post-Exxon pollution bill to governor

(GNN) - New Jersey lawmakers sent a bill to Governor Chris Christie on Thursday that calls for more money from environmental settlements to fund cleanups.

The legislation came after the Christie administration announced a controversial $225 million deal with Exxon Mobil Corp on March 5 over environmental contamination from two of its former New Jersey refineries.

Environmentalists consider the sites, known as Bayway and Bayonne, the most polluted in a state infamous for its industrial contamination.

Christie, a likely Republican contender in the 2016 U.S. presidential election who faces a budget crunch at home, has called the accord a "really good deal" because the money comes on top of what Exxon would have to pay to clean up the sites.

His administration has said money from the settlement would not be available until at least fiscal 2016.

The state's Democrat-led legislature is asking for documents and questioning why the administration would settle a case worth potentially $8.9 billion for so little. The judge overseeing the state's 2004 lawsuit against Exxon must still approve the settlement after a public comment period.

Currently, the first $50 million of environmental settlements, like the one struck with Exxon, is used for restoration. Any remaining money can go into the state's general fund.

The bill that now heads to the governor calls for the use of 50 percent of that remaining money for environmental purposes as well.

"Residents have been terribly shortchanged by this settlement. Using these funds as a short-term budget fix adds insult to injury," said John McKeon, one of the bill's sponsors, in a statement.

Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts said the office does not comment on pending legislation.

"However, as a budgetary matter, this is something we expect will be resolved through budget negotiations," he said.(Reuters)(GNNet)

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Study shows acceleration in decline of Antarctic ice shelves

(GNN) - Satellite data from 1994 to 2012 reveals an accelerating decline in Antarctica's massive floating ice shelves, with some shrinking 18 percent, in a development that could hasten the rise in global sea levels, scientists say.

The findings, published on Thursday in the journal Science, come amid concern among many scientists about the effects of global climate change on Earth's vast, remote polar regions.

The study relied on 18 years of continuous observations from three European Space Agency satellite missions and covered more than 415,000 square miles (1,075,000 square km).

During the study period's first half, to about 2003, the overall volume decline around Antarctica was small, with West Antarctica losses almost balanced out by gains in East Antarctica. After that, western losses accelerated and gains in the east ended.

"There has been more and more ice being lost from Antarctica's floating ice shelves," said glaciologist Helen Fricker of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

The Crosson Ice Shelf in the Amundsen Sea and the Venable Ice Shelf in the Bellingshausen Sea, both in West Antarctica, each shrank about 18 percent during the study period.

"If the loss rates that we observed during the past two decades are sustained, some ice shelves in the Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas could disappear within this century," added Scripps geophysics doctoral candidate Fernando Paolo.

The melting of these ice shelves does not directly affect sea levels because they are already floating.

"This is just like your glass of gin and tonic. When the ice cubes melt, the level of liquid in the glass does not rise," Paolo said.

But the floating ice shelves provide a restraining force for land-based ice, and their reduction would increase the flow of the ice from the land into the ocean, which would increase sea levels.

"While it is fair to say that we're seeing the ice shelves responding to climate change, we don't believe there is enough evidence to directly relate recent ice shelf losses specifically to changes in global temperature," Fricker said.

Oceanographer and co-author Laurie Padman of Earth & Space Research in Corvallis, Oregon said for a few Antarctic ice shelves, ice loss can be related fairly directly to warming air temperatures. Much of the increased melting elsewhere is probably due to more warm water getting under the ice shelves because of increasing winds near Antarctica, Padman added.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Will Dunham; editing by Andrew Hay)

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Seven die in Chile floods, military rescues stranded residents

(GNN) - The death toll in Chile rose to seven after rains battered the north and caused flooding, the government said on Thursday, while 19 others were unaccounted for as the military rushed to rescue stranded villagers.

The downpours in the usually arid region have been the heaviest in about 80 years, although the worst of the bad weather appeared to be over, meteorologists said.

Rivers have burst their banks, flooding towns, making roads impassable and forcing miners in Chile, the world's top copper exporter, to suspend operations.

Chile, a sliver of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains in one of the world's most seismic zones, is used to dealing with natural disasters.

Military helicopters flew in supplies and evacuated residents from three villages in the Atacama region that were entirely cut off and only reachable by air, Mahmud Aleuy, the deputy interior minister, said on Thursday.

"We're transporting medicine and will start a process of mass vaccinations" in order to avoid the spread of diseases, Aleuy added.

The city of Copiapo, some 800 km (497 miles) north of Santiago and home to 160,000 people is also partly cut off, he said, adding that the airports of both Copiapo and Antofagasta further to the north have been closed to commercial air traffic.

The unusual weather phenomenon was caused by a cold front hitting the Andes. Spurred by high temperatures, it produced strong rains at the high altitudes instead of snow, which swept down to valleys and towns in the foothills.

The scenes contrasted with those of parched fields further south, which were desperate for rain after a hot, dry summer that hurt farming and mining production.

But the rains fell in a different part of the country and did not signal the end of an eight-year drought, said climatologist Claudia Villarroel.

"These rains serve to accumulate water, but the superficial run-off is very high. What is best is a little, constant rain," she said.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Antonio de la Jara and Rosalba O'Brien; Additional reporting by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Diane Craft)

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EU regulators take Germany to court over Hamburg coal plant

(GNN) - EU regulators have referred Germany to the EU Court of Justice over a failure to look into alternative cooling processes at a coal-fired plant in Hamburg, operated by Vattenfall [VATN.UL], in order to protect wildlife, the European Commission said.

The first of two blocks at the Moorburg power station on the river Elbe started up commercial power production earlier this month, marking the end of seven years of political controversy over the project.

Moorburg risked having a negative impact on a number of protected fish species passing near the power plant when migrating from the North Sea which is 100 kilometres away from the port of Hamburg to spawning grounds in the Czech Republic some 800 km further upstream, the Commission said.

"The species are harmed by the water abstraction process used to cool the power plant," the EU executive noted in a statement, adding when authorizing the plant, Germany failed to carry out assessments required by the Habitats Directive, a nature legislation adopted in 1992.

A spokesman for the environment agency of the Hamburg state government said the Commission had signaled its intention last autumn.

"We see our chances (of winning) as good as we think we have good arguments on our side," he said.

Hamburg had stipulated that Vattenfall build a cooling tower at the 1,635 megawatt (MW) plant and fish steps at Geesthacht south-east of Hamburg, which had proven to be successful - more fish than expected used them, he said.

Formally, the Hamburg agency comes under the Berlin environment ministry which is targeted by the EU action. Berlin and Hamburg would consult over the process where likely timing could not be gauged, the spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for Vattenfall said, "We are not the subject of this process. We have a valid operating license."

Faced with opposition over carbon emissions from the plant and the fish issue, the Swedish utility in 2010 agreed to environmental measures which it has said will eat into the profitability of the 3 billion euro ($3.28 billion) project.

The European Court has the power to hand out steep fines if it finds in favor of the Commission.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Vera Eckert; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)

Britain's greenhouse gas emissions down 8.4 percent in 2014

(GNN) - Britain's greenhouse gas emissions fell 8.4 percent in 2014 due to a decline in fossil-fuel power generation, preliminary government data showed on Thursday.
The fall largely resulted from a 15 percent decrease in emissions from the energy supply sector as coal-fired generation fell and output from renewable power sources rose.

Output of the heat-trapping gases in Europe's second-largest emitter fell to 520.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) last year down from 568.3 million tonnes in 2013, preliminary data from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed.

Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas blamed for climate change dropped 9.7 percent to 422 million tonnes.

The bulk of Britain's emissions, some 36 percent, came from energy supply, followed by transport at 28 percent, business at 17 percent and residential at 15 percent. The rest came from sectors including agriculture and waste management.

Data published in February showed overall British power generation fell 7.2 percent in 2014, while coal-fired generation which emits almost double the amount of CO2 as gas, dropped to a five year low.

British utilities are major buyers of carbon permits under the European Union's Emissions Trading System (ETS), which requires big emitters to surrender one permit for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit each year.

The fall in emissions is likely to mean Britain's carbon permit demand declined last year.

On April 1, the European Commission will grant access to 2014 CO2 figures for the near 12,000 installations covered by the EU ETS, which account for around 45 percent of the bloc's greenhouse gas emissions.

The data release is an important date in the EU carbon market's calendar as it gives a glimpse of the overall demand-supply balance for EU emission permits.

Britain has a legally binding target to cut its CO2 emissions by 2050 to 80 percent below 1990 levels.

(Reuters)(Reporting By Susanna Twidale Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

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Chinese capital shuts third coal-fired plant in war on smog

(GNN) - China's smog-hit capital Beijing has shut down the third of its four coal-fired power plants as part of its campaign to cut pollution, with the final one scheduled to close next year, the official Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

In 2013, the city promised in its clean air action plan to bring annual coal consumption down to less than 10 million tonnes by 2017, a reduction of 13 million tonnes in just four years.

It said it would shut down all four of its coal-fired power plants within four years, a move that would cut annual coal consumption by around 9 million tonnes.


Officials also plan to reduce coal combustion in heating systems and industrial facilities, partly by switching to natural gas and by relocating some factories out of the city, and to phase out coal consumption completely by 2020.

A 400-megawatt facility owned by the Guohua Electric Power Co. Ltd was shut on Friday and replaced with a gas-fired plant. It followed the closure of a 93-year-old power station run by Beijing Jingneng Power on Thursday.

It shut its first coal-fired plant, the 600-MW Gaojing facility owned by the China Datang Corporation, last July.

Average levels of hazardous airborne particles known as PM2.5 stood at 85.9 micrograms per cubic meters in 2014, down 4 percent compared with the previous year, but still far higher than the national air quality standard of 35 micrograms.

Beijing plans to bring readings down to 60 by 2017, the municipal environmental bureau said earlier this year.

Only eight of the 74 Chinese cities monitored by the Ministry of Environmental Protection met smog standards in 2014. Seven of the 10 worst-performing cities were in the province of Hebei, which surrounds Beijing.

(Reuters)(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Pravin Char)

Spring arrives in winter-weary U.S. Northeast but more snow forecast

(GNN) - Spring arrives in the winter-weary U.S. Northeast on Friday but the weather forecast was for more of the same: another half-foot of snow for parts of the region, prompting widespread flight cancellations and early school dismissals.

After blanketing the Washington, D.C., region, the snowstorm headed north to the New York City metropolitan area, which was expected to get up to 6 inches (15 cm) of the wet, heavy winter souvenir, said National Weather Service meteorologist Frank Pereira.

The worst of the weather was expected to snarl the evening rush hour commute, arriving just in time for the Vernal Equinox, at 6:45 p.m. EDT that marks the start of spring.

"I will admit it's getting late in the season," Pereira said. "I'm sure a lot of folks are ready for spring."

Winter-weary Bostonians are probably at the top of list. The Boston area is expected to get another inch of the white stuff after the city this week broke the record for the most seasonal snow in its history at 108.6 inches (275.8 cm).

The fierce winter drained snow removal and road safety budgets in towns and cities throughout the Northeast.

"We are over budget right now," New York City Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia told WCBS Radio, as the city readied plows for yet another round of street clearing and salting.

As the storm took aim at New York, it left behind the deepest snow in the western Maryland town of Cascade, which recorded 4 inches on Friday.

Poor visibility made travel treacherous and schools in Maryland and Virginia either opened later or were closed for the day. As the weather system moved north, schools in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York dismissed students early.

Nearly 1,000 U.S. flights were canceled, with the heaviest hit airports in the New York area, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., according to FlightAware.com.

Even after the storm ends late Friday, a weather pattern from the Great Lakes is expected to aim for northern New England. Mountain ranges in upstate New York, Vermont and Maine could see as much as 6 inches of snow late Saturday into Sunday, Pereira said.

"For folks who like skiing, this will lengthen the season a bit," Pereira said.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Frank McGurty and Lisa Lambert)

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Nevada wildlife managers reject ban on coyote-hunting contests

(GNN) - Nevada wildlife managers on Friday voted down a proposal that would have banned hunts offering cash and prizes for slaughtering coyotes in competitions across Western states that conservationists decry as "killing contests."

In December, California became the first U.S. state to prohibit inducements like money and merchandise for hunting events of wild animals including coyotes, foxes, bobcats and other creatures classified in the state as fur-bearers and non-game mammals.

The recent push by wildlife advocates to outlaw hunting contests for wild animals like coyotes, which are considered nuisances allowed to be shot on sight in most of the West, comes as increasing numbers of competitions are held in states such as Nevada, California, Idaho, New Mexico and Oregon.

The Nevada Board of Wildlife Commissioners rejected banning the hunts in a 7-1 vote during a meeting in Reno that heard several hours of emotional testimony, mostly from animal activists, said Commissioner Karen Layne.

Layne, who said her seat on the commission obliges her to represent the general public rather than sportsmen, said she voted in support of the prohibition because her constituents oppose the tournaments.

But she said her vote was largely symbolic, because the proposal from wildlife advocates was awkwardly worded and likely would not have passed legal muster in a state where coyotes are not a protected species subject to hunting restrictions.

Fauna Tomlinson, spokeswoman for the conservation group, Project Coyote, spoke in support of the ban.

She said that in some cases the contests have killed hundreds of coyotes per event, and she faulted sportsmen for encouraging young people to join in the "fun."

"That tells children that wildlife has no value, that committing mass slaughter of animals is acceptable," Tomlinson told Reuters by telephone.

Jason Schroeder, organizer of a coyote-hunting tournament that took place outside Reno in December, said the events allow sportsmen to keep coyote populations in check while celebrating the West's time-honored tradition of hunting.

"Any time someone tries to stop hunting, it's so totally ridiculous," Schroeder said of the proposal to ban the contests.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman in Salmon, Idaho; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Sandra Maler)

U.S. sets first major fracking rules on federal lands

(GNN) - The Obama administration's new rules governing fracking on federal lands drew swift criticism from all sides on Friday, with green groups calling the measures "toothless" and the energy industry slamming "unnecessary" regulation of a drilling process that has brought the United States to the cusp of oil and gas self-sufficiency.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a controversial technique that involves pumping water, sand and chemicals into a well to extract oil or gas. The new federal rules include beefed-up measures to protect ground water, one of the main health and safety concerns arising from the drilling process.

Within minutes of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposal being released, the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and Western Energy Alliance filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Wyoming on grounds that the rulemaking was based on "unsubstantiated concerns" over safety.

The rules also require energy companies to reinforce boreholes to prevent water leakage, and to reveal chemical ingredients that are injected into the ground under high pressure to extract crude oil and gas.

Although only about 10 percent of fracking occurs on federal lands, the Obama administration is hoping the rules will become a model for industry standards, especially in states that so far lack fracking rules.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the standards were a long-overdue update to U.S. rules for drilling on federal lands, outmoded since the widespread emergence of horizontal drilling in the past 10 years. She said they were "good for the public and good for industry."

The administration has characterized the BLM action as a step towards balancing public health and safety concerns with regulatory certainty that should allow energy companies to proceed with responsible production.

Industry groups and Republicans warned the rules would slow down the U.S. "energy renaissance."

The new standards require companies to submit detailed information about every proposed operation, including the location of faults and fractures, the depths of all usable water and the depth of estimated volume of fluid to be used.

Companies would disclose the components of the fracking fluids they use on an industry-run website called FracFocus.

“A duplicative layer of new federal regulation is unnecessary," said Eric Milito, a director at industry lobby group the American Petroleum Institute. "We urge the BLM to work carefully with the states to minimize costs and delays created by the new rules to ensure that public lands can still be a source of job creation and economic growth."

Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso called the BLM rules "a solution looking for a problem" since his and other western states already have regulations.

'TOOTHLESS'

Madeleine Foot, a policy analyst at The League of Conservation Voters, praised some safety requirements in the rules, but said telling companies to use the industry-run website FracFocus failed to increase transparency about fracking practices.

Other environmentalists contended the rules failed to match administration rhetoric on combating the high-carbon industries that contribute to carbon change.

"Today's toothless fracking rules are just the latest sign that 'one step forward, two steps back' is beginning to cement as President Obama's historical legacy on climate change," said Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for 350.org, an environmental activist network.

Both 350.org and the Sierra Club, one of the country's largest green groups, have argued for the government to eliminate fracking on federal lands.

Jewell said the BLM had received comments for the standards from over 1.5 million groups and individuals. The rules have been in the works for nearly four years.

Brian Deese, Obama's special adviser on climate change and the environment, said the federal government has an obligation to set "rules of the road" regarding fracking.

"But ultimately this is an issue that is going to be decided in state capitals and in localities as well as in the industry. "We’re going to see ... a conversation that will play out across the country, where it should be," Deese said.

(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Patrick Rucker; Editing by Bruce Wallace, Toni Reinhold)