Situation Report

afro.who.int

Accra, 03 July 2014 – The Emergency Ministerial meeting on Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) has ended today with Health Ministers agreeing on a range of priority actions to end the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The scale of the ongoing outbreak is unprecedented with reports of over 750 cases and 445 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since March 2014.

In a Communiqué issued at the end of the two-day meeting, the Ministers agreed that the current situation poses a serious threat to all countries in the region and beyond and called for immediate action. They expressed concern on the adverse social and economic impact of the outbreak and stressed the need for coordinated actions by all stakeholders, national leadership, enhanced cross-border collaboration and community participation in the response.

PDC Global Hazards Atlas displaying PDC Integrated Active Hazards with Tropical Cyclone Positions and Segments and Cone of Uncertainty (3 and 5 day) layers.  http://www.pdc.org/weather/

gdacs.org - July 4, 2014

Tropical Cyclone NEOGURI-14 can have a high humanitarian impact based on the Maximum sustained wind speed and the affected population and their vulnerability.

Updated: this report is based on advisory number 9.

• Tropical Cyclone Hurricane/Typhoon > 74 mph (maximum wind speed of 259 km/h)
• from 04/07/2014 06:00 UTC to 05/07/2014 00:00 UTC
• Population affected by Category 1 (120 km/h) wind speeds or higher is 7.4 million

(CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION)

CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM THE JOINT TYPHOON WARNING CENTER (JTWC)

CLICK HERE - GDACS Tropical Cyclones - Joint Research Centre

Sites like Pueblo Bonito in northern New Mexico reached their maximum size in the early A.D. 1100s, just before a major drought began to decrease birth rates throughout the Southwest. Credit: Nate Crabtree

Scientists chart an ancient baby boom—in southwestern Native Americans from 500 to 1300 AD

phys.org - June 30, 2014

Washington State University researchers have sketched out one of the greatest baby booms in North American history, a centuries-long "growth blip" among southwestern Native Americans between 500 to 1300 A.D.

It was a time when the early features of civilization—including farming and food storage—had matured to where birth rates likely "exceeded the highest in the world today," the researchers write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A crash followed . . .

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - PNAS - RESEARCH - Long and spatially variable Neolithic Demographic Transition in the North American Southwest

timesofindia.indiatimes.com - June 17, 2014

SYDNEY: Large concentrations of trash in the oceans, also known as "plastic soups", are as dangerous as climatic change, one of the experts in the field, Mike Moore said, Australian media reported.

These high concentrations of ocean garbage "are currently killing a more animals than climate change", Moore said.

. . . "We are facing a new phenomenon. In fact, it is a new habitat which does not have precendents in the planet's history," Moore added.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - Tracking the garbage deserts of the ocean

RESEARCH - Origin, dynamics and evolution of ocean garbage patches from observed surface drifters

(ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE)