Farside eruption on the Sun captured!

FARSIDE ERUPTION: Departing sunspot AR1384, currently located just behind the sun's western limb, erupted today around 14:45 UT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the debris flying over the edge of the solar disk. The eruption appears to be connected to magnetic filaments snaking over the horizon to the Earthside of the sun. Will this event affect our planet? Probably not. It is located too far from disk center. Stay tuned, however, to see what kind of CME the blast produced. - Space Weather.

WESTERN LIMB EXPLOSION: A large explosion on the western limb was captured today and a CME will almost certainly be associated with this event. It registered as a long duration C2.4 flare, however because of the location of this blast, it will not be Earth directed. Watch the nice movie below. UPDATE: This event produced a full halo CME, however it is directed to the west and not towards Earth. STEREO Ahead captured the cloud and a movie is now shown below. - Solar Ham.

A massive landslide in Trondheim,Norway

January 2, 2012 – NORWAY – More than 50 persons were evacuated from their homes when a large landslide ripped through a rural area outside Trondheim on Sunday. It was a brutal start to the New Year, following a string of storms that also forced evacuations in western Norway earlier in the week. Geologists said it was too early to determine exactly what caused the landslide at Byneset in Trøndelag, which extended over around half-a-kilometer of farmland. One geologist told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) that the ground in the area was characterized by unstable clay and that the stormy weather of the past week may have contributed to the landslide. It set off full catastrophe alarms Sunday morning but by the end of the day, no homes had been destroyed and no lives lost. The evacuations were made because of the unstable groundmass. “We’re not at all certain that the slide is over,” Kari Øvrelid of the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) told NRK. “We need to keep monitoring this.” She said the danger of more landslides had been reduced, but 22 persons remained under evacuation orders Sunday night. Police, civil defense personnel, geologists and local government officials were using special equipment to monitor ground movement in the darkness. There were also concerns that the huge volumes of earth would clog local creeks and set off flooding. The latest emergency outside Trondheim followed a week of severe storm damage that climaxed with the hurricane known as Dagmar that swept through western and north-central Norway and also hit Trondheim hard. Farther to the west, in Stryn, some families remained without power or telephone connections for the seventh day in a row. “This is really like being back in the good old days,” Anne Sølvi Sande Hoem told NRK. She and her three children haven’t had electricity since Christmas Day, but she considers herself lucky. The house next door in Lodalen was all but destroyed in the hurricane. Sande Hoem said the long-term power outage created practical challenges, not least with three small children in the house. “Things you take for granted, like washing clothes in the washing machine or having an internet connection, suddenly disappear,” she said. A generator has helped save food in the freezer and refrigerator, and wood-burning stoves are keeping the house warm. As in most Norwegian homes at this time of year, they also had lots of candles on hand. –News in English

Is a super-volcano just 390 miles from London about to erupt?

January 2, 2012 – GERMANY – A sleeping super-volcano in Germany is showing worrying signs of waking up. It’s lurking just 390 miles away underneath the tranquil Laacher See Lake near Bonn and is capable of ejecting billions of tons of magma. This monster erupts every 10 to 12,000 years and last went off 12,900 years ago, so it could blow at any time. The Laacher See volcano is similar in size to Mount Pinatubo, which caused a 0.5C drop in global temperatures when it erupted in 1991. It covered 620 square miles of land with ash and rocks and several small earthquakes in the region last year indicate that it could be awakening from its deep sleep. Experts believe that if it did go off, it could lead to widespread devastation, mass evacuations and even short-term global cooling from the resulting ash cloud blocking the Sun. The effect on the UK is hard to predict but it’s possible that large parts of southern England could be covered ash. It’s thought that the volcano is similar in size and power to Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which blew in 1991 and became the biggest eruption of the 20th century. It ejected 10 billion tons of magma, 20 billion tons of sulphur dioxide 16 cubic kilometres of ash and caused a 0.5C drop in global temperatures. Volcanologists believe that the Laacher See volcano is still active as carbon dioxide is bubbling up to the lake’s surface, which indicates that the magma chamber below is ‘degassing.’ –Daily Mail

20 tons of dead fish wash up on Norway beaches

January 2, 2012 – NORWAY – The inhabitants of Troms could hardly believe their eyes on the morning of New Year’s Eve, a very large amount, an estimated 10 to 20 tons of dead herring washed up on the beach, writes Northern Lights. Tromsø city is the ninth largest urban area in Norway by population. The city is warmer than most other places located on the same latitude, due to the warming effect of the Gulf Stream which originates at the tip of Florida. Various theories abound for the incident but no one knows for sure what’s happened in the popular hiking area in Nordreisa municipality. However, various theories have been tossed around, explains Jan-Petter Jorgensen (44), who stumbled upon the mass death in sight on the beach with his dog Molly. People say that something similar happened in the 80′s, and there is speculation among others on the river which flows into the ocean behind a promontory on the site, may have had something to do with it. Maybe the fish have been caught in a deprived oxygen environment, and then died of fresh water? Jorgensen estimates each individual fish to be of 100-150 grams, and that the total might be about up to 20 tons. Now he’s worried about what might happen if no one comes and removing carcasses. -Dagbladet