Latest news with #climateChange
The Independent
7 hours ago
- Business
- The Independent
A small plane crashes into the terrace of a house in Germany. 2 people are dead
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Your support makes all the difference.
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- Climate
- Daily Mail
More than 150 are dead and 3,000 made homeless as rainfall unleashes massive flooding in Nigeria
More than 150 people are dead and at least 3,000 have lost their homes after torrential rainfall unleashed massive flooding in Nigeria. Heavy pre-dawn showers lashed a market town on Friday, leaving roofs barely visible and residents waist-deep in water. The rain affected at least 500 households across three communities in Mokwa, about 230 miles west of Nigeria's capital Abuja, Niger state agency spokesman Ibrahim Audu Husseini said. Communities in northern Nigeria have been experiencing prolonged dry spells worsened by climate change and excessive rainfall that leads to severe flooding during the brief wet season. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said he has directed the activation of the national emergency response centre to quickly assist the state. 'Search-and-rescue operations are ongoing, and all relevant federal agencies have been mobilised to support the state government's efforts,' Mr Tinubu said in a late night message. 'Relief materials and temporary shelter assistance are being deployed without delay. We will ensure that no Nigerian affected by this disaster is left behind or unheard of.' More than 150 people are dead and at least 3,000 have lost their homes after torrential rainfall unleashed massive flooding in Nigeria Residents were mourning the dead on Saturday as some awaited news of their loved ones still unaccounted for. They also lamented the destruction caused in the town, a major meeting point where traders from the south buy beans, onions and other food from farmers in the north. 'We lost many lives, and the properties, our farm produce. Those that have their storage have lost it,' said resident Kazeem Muhammed. It comes after in September 2024 hundreds of thousands in Nigeria fled their homes to avoid sweeping floods that devastated the country and allowed nearly 300 prisoners to escape a single jail. Maiduguri, the capital of the northern Borno state, suffered its worst floods in decades, which decimated a dam that was holding back the water. The flood killed at least 30 people according to the country's emergency agency and affected a million others, with hundreds of thousands of people forced into camps for displaced people. In Maiduguri, the floods 'brought down the walls of the correctional facilities including the Medium Security Custodial Centre, as well as the staff quarters in the city,' officials said. This lead to nearly 300 prisoners escaping. But, regular citizens weren't quite as lucky. Fatima Yakubu told AFP she woke up in the middle of the night to find her legs submerged as water rose in her home in northeastern Nigeria. She screamed and people helped her escape with her six children. Flood waters displaced more than one million people in and around Maiduguri and thousands of homes were engulfed by rapidly rising waters after a dam burst following two days of torrential rain.
The Independent
9 hours ago
- Climate
- The Independent
Death toll from reaches 151 in north-central Nigeria town submerged in floods, thousands displaced
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Your support makes all the difference.
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tracking Maine's wild mussel beds: declining or retreating into the deep?
May 31—The wild blue mussel beds that once blanketed Maine's dynamic intertidal zone are disappearing, driven out by warming water that not only hurts the mussels themselves but benefits one of its chief predators, the highly invasive and always hungry green crab. Scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute want to know if the intertidal disappearing act is a sign the blue mussel population is in decline or in retreat, with its local beds gradually moving out of the easy-to-spot intertidal into the colder waters of the more far-flung subtidal zone. "For the last 10 to 15 years, everybody has been saying mussels are disappearing," said research associate Aaron Whitman. "We think the beds are just moving out past the low tide line. But just because you don't see them twice a day doesn't mean they're not out there." A 2017 study estimated Maine's wild blue mussel population has dropped 60% since the 1970s. Like baby lobsters, however, the mussel beds may have simply traded warmer for cooler, fleeing the warm intertidal for the somewhat cooler subtidal, inch by inch, one generation at a time. But that makes the beds much harder to find. That is why GMRI is enlisting the help of citizen volunteers to help it find, measure and track these subtidal beds, the edges of which are only visible at extremely low tide, so it can document the health of the local population, especially in a changing climate. On Friday morning, Whitman and Carissa Maurin, GMRI's aquaculture program manager, led a group of two dozen employees of M&T Bank out to Mackworth Island in Falmouth to document its subtidal mussel bed during peak minus tide, or one that was about a foot lower than normal. "I love the environment," said Roxanne Gray, a mortgage originator in the Brunswick branch. "I've been a Mainer my entire life, so for me, being able to be a part of what keeps Maine a beautiful, healthy state, is really important." They documented conditions (muddy), recorded the presence of predators (green crabs) and measured individual mussels (from three-quarters of an inch to almost five inches) at a mussel bed that Whitman said appears to have shrunk in size since GMRI surveyed it last year. The bed has slowly moved, too, not just into colder subtidal waters but around the island itself, according to old state survey maps. The maps date to the early 2000s, which is the last time Maine surveyed mussel beds. Updating the state list will be harder now that many beds are submerged most of the time. That is why GMRI encourages groups like M&T as well as everyday Mainers all along Maine's 3,500-mile coastline to monitor their coastal areas on minus tide days, record what they see (even if there aren't any blue mussels), and share it by entering the data into GMRI's Ecosystem Investigation Network. "We can't just take our boat and map all of Casco Bay, much less the rest of the state," Maurin told M&T employees gathered around her in ankle-deep mud. "We don't have that much time, or enough staff. So knowing where to start looking is super important. That's where you come in." M&T offers all of its 22,000 employees 40 hours of paid time to do volunteer work like this, according to Regional President Philip Cohen, who was trudging across the flats alongside employees Friday despite a braced knee from a recent surgery. GMRI scientists will use that information to decide where to employ acoustic equipment to investigate a mussel bed, Whitman said. The equipment bounces sound waves off the sea bed and measures the echo, much like a dolphin does, to detect different bottom types and find active mussel beds. Mussels are important because people like to eat them, making them a part of Maine's fishing economy. And the wild mussel beds are critical suppliers of the spat, or fertilized eggs, needed to seed Maine's next mussel crop, Maurin said. Oyster farmers can get spat from hatcheries; Maine's mussel farmers need wild spat. Mussel beds provide critical habitat for juvenile fish, with the kelp and seaweed that grow there able to hide them from predators. Mussels also function as living water filters, removing excess nitrogen and phosphorus, while sequestering carbon into their shells. While beds are retreating into colder, deeper waters, the Gulf of Maine is also rising. The gulf is warming three times faster than the planetary average and rising about 2.5 times faster in recent years than it did over the last century, according to the Maine Climate Council. Some data suggests deeper waters in the Gulf of Maine may be cooling because of a recent shift in currents, while surface temperatures that affect mussel beds have been rising fast. About 90% of global warming is occurring in the ocean, causing the water's internal heat to increase, according to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Heat stored in the ocean causes the water to expand, which is responsible for one-third to one-half of global sea level rise. The sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine in 2021 and 2022 were the warmest on record. The gulf spent 97% of 2022 in a marine heat wave. With an annual average of 52 degrees, the surface temperature of the gulf is about 2 degrees hotter now than it was 30 years ago. Copy the Story Link
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tracking Maine's wild mussel beds: declining or retreating into the deep?
May 31—The wild blue mussel beds that once blanketed Maine's dynamic intertidal zone are disappearing, driven out by warming water that not only hurts the mussels themselves but benefits one of its chief predators, the highly invasive and always hungry green crab. Scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute want to know if the intertidal disappearing act is a sign the blue mussel population is in decline or in retreat, with its local beds gradually moving out of the easy-to-spot intertidal into the colder waters of the more far-flung subtidal zone. "For the last 10 to 15 years, everybody has been saying mussels are disappearing," said research associate Aaron Whitman. "We think the beds are just moving out past the low tide line. But just because you don't see them twice a day doesn't mean they're not out there." A 2017 study estimated Maine's wild blue mussel population has dropped 60% since the 1970s. Like baby lobsters, however, the mussel beds may have simply traded warmer for cooler, fleeing the warm intertidal for the somewhat cooler subtidal, inch by inch, one generation at a time. But that makes the beds much harder to find. That is why GMRI is enlisting the help of citizen volunteers to help it find, measure and track these subtidal beds, the edges of which are only visible at extremely low tide, so it can document the health of the local population, especially in a changing climate. On Friday morning, Whitman and Carissa Maurin, GMRI's aquaculture program manager, led a group of two dozen employees of M&T Bank out to Mackworth Island in Falmouth to document its subtidal mussel bed during peak minus tide, or one that was about a foot lower than normal. "I love the environment," said Roxanne Gray, a mortgage originator in the Brunswick branch. "I've been a Mainer my entire life, so for me, being able to be a part of what keeps Maine a beautiful, healthy state, is really important." They documented conditions (muddy), recorded the presence of predators (green crabs) and measured individual mussels (from three-quarters of an inch to almost five inches) at a mussel bed that Whitman said appears to have shrunk in size since GMRI surveyed it last year. The bed has slowly moved, too, not just into colder subtidal waters but around the island itself, according to old state survey maps. The maps date to the early 2000s, which is the last time Maine surveyed mussel beds. Updating the state list will be harder now that many beds are submerged most of the time. That is why GMRI encourages groups like M&T as well as everyday Mainers all along Maine's 3,500-mile coastline to monitor their coastal areas on minus tide days, record what they see (even if there aren't any blue mussels), and share it by entering the data into GMRI's Ecosystem Investigation Network. "We can't just take our boat and map all of Casco Bay, much less the rest of the state," Maurin told M&T employees gathered around her in ankle-deep mud. "We don't have that much time, or enough staff. So knowing where to start looking is super important. That's where you come in." M&T offers all of its 22,000 employees 40 hours of paid time to do volunteer work like this, according to Regional President Philip Cohen, who was trudging across the flats alongside employees Friday despite a braced knee from a recent surgery. GMRI scientists will use that information to decide where to employ acoustic equipment to investigate a mussel bed, Whitman said. The equipment bounces sound waves off the sea bed and measures the echo, much like a dolphin does, to detect different bottom types and find active mussel beds. Mussels are important because people like to eat them, making them a part of Maine's fishing economy. And the wild mussel beds are critical suppliers of the spat, or fertilized eggs, needed to seed Maine's next mussel crop, Maurin said. Oyster farmers can get spat from hatcheries; Maine's mussel farmers need wild spat. Mussel beds provide critical habitat for juvenile fish, with the kelp and seaweed that grow there able to hide them from predators. Mussels also function as living water filters, removing excess nitrogen and phosphorus, while sequestering carbon into their shells. While beds are retreating into colder, deeper waters, the Gulf of Maine is also rising. The gulf is warming three times faster than the planetary average and rising about 2.5 times faster in recent years than it did over the last century, according to the Maine Climate Council. Some data suggests deeper waters in the Gulf of Maine may be cooling because of a recent shift in currents, while surface temperatures that affect mussel beds have been rising fast. About 90% of global warming is occurring in the ocean, causing the water's internal heat to increase, according to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Heat stored in the ocean causes the water to expand, which is responsible for one-third to one-half of global sea level rise. The sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine in 2021 and 2022 were the warmest on record. The gulf spent 97% of 2022 in a marine heat wave. With an annual average of 52 degrees, the surface temperature of the gulf is about 2 degrees hotter now than it was 30 years ago. Copy the Story Link
