Death Valley: hot enough for you?{credit}Courtesy of peterp via Flickr under Creative Commons{/credit}

Posted on behalf of Michele Catanzaro.

The world’s highest temperature ever recorded has fallen from 58 °C (136.4 °F) to 56.7 °C (134 °F), after a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) assessment, published on 13 September, showed that the previous record was a mistake. As a consequence, the hottest spot ever measured has moved from Libya, where it has been believed for the past 90 years to be, to Death Valley in California.

The long-lasting mistake is due to an incorrect measurement performed on 13 September 1922 by an inexperienced member of the Italian military in El Azizia, approximately 40 kilometres south–southwest of Tripoli, according to the study. A WMO committee found that the military used a problematic instrument (a Bellani-Six thermometer) in non-standard conditions (on asphalt instead of on sand). As a result, the record does not match the temperatures observed at the same time in nearby locations, and successively at the same site.

The record for the next-hottest spot is held by a measurement performed at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley on 10 July 1913. “Available evidence supports the validity of this measure,” says Randall Cerveny, WMO rapporteur of weather and climate extremes, and head of the committee that examined Libya’s evidence. “However, there are undoubtedly places with hotter temperatures: here we are comparing only places where standardized measurements have been done,” he points out.

A 2010 blog post by meteorology writer Christopher Burt raising doubts about the 1922 measurement first brought the issue to Cerveny’s attention. Cerveny formed an international commission that included two representatives from Italy (Libya’s colonizer in 1922) and one from Libya to examine the evidence. They concluded that the 1922 measurement was an error.

The rebuilt wetlands will form Europe's largest coastal wildlife reserve.{credit}The RSPB{/credit}

Posted on behalf of Nicky Guttridge.

Construction has begun on a new nature reserve in the Thames Estuary, east of London, a project that will create the largest human-made coastal reserve in Europe. The venture is headed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) with help from Crossrail, a huge rail project in London, and will put 4.5 million tonnes of earth excavated from rail tunnels being dug under the city to good use.

Crossrail will displace some 6 million tonnes of earth. The majority of this will be repurposed to build-up Wallasea Island, situated in the Thames Estuary, Essex. The island is now about two metres below sea level and is used as low-lying farmland, but the earth supplied by Crossrail will help to raise the site and create a 670-hectare expanse of mudflats, wetlands and marshes. This aims to attract and house tens of thousands of migratory and rare birds, amongst other wildlife such as otters, herring and saltwater plants. The reserve is expected to be completed in 2020.

Officially launched today by the UK Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, the reserve forms part of a government plan to recreate 3,600 hectares of habitat by 2015 — an attempt to tackle the losses of land caused by coastal flooding and climate change. The RSPB warns that much coastal habitat has been lost over the past 400 years, and that a further 1,000 hectares could be lost in the next decade, owing rising sea levels. This would threaten the habitats of many bird species and marine life.

“The primary purpose of the reserve is to provide habitat for wildlife, rather than for scientific research,” says Nik Shelton of the RSPB. “But there will be regular surveys to monitor progress.”

Posted on behalf of Nicky Guttridge.

Japanese deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu has bored into the sea bed and recovered rocks from more than 2.11 kilometres beneath the sea floor, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology announced on 6 September. Although oil wells frequently reach deeper, this is the first scientific expedition to retrieve core samples from such depths.

This tops the previous record, set by US research ship JOIDES Resolution at the Costa Rica Rift, by mere centimetres. The ship will continue to drill deeper into the sea bed during the remaining 3 weeks of the expedition.

Chikyu is part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), an international programme of research that uses ship-mounted equipment to drill down into the sea. It aims to access and sample regions beyond Earth’s crust, such as the deep seisomogenic and biosphere zones. Chikyu is drilling off the coast of Japan in the fault zone responsible for the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, collecting samples in order to study the region’s geological history. By examining deeply buried formations of rock and coal, the Chikyu team also hope to learn more about deep-sea hydrocarbons and microbial activity.

Chikyu first broke records in April of this year for deep-sea drilling when it reached 7.7 kilometres below the ocean surface. This represents a hole in the crust 860 metres deep, as the measurement includes the 6.9 kilometres of water sitting atop the sea floor. This exceeded the previous record depth of 7.05 kilometres, set in the Mariana Trench in 1978 by US vessel Glomar Challenger.

The expedition hit a setback when the Tohoku fault sprang to life in March 2011, causing a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Chikyu was docked on Japanese waters during the tsunami — filled with schoolchildren on a field trip. Nobody was hurt, but the ship scraped the sea floor and suffered damage that required several months to fix.

Posted on behalf of Claudio Angelo.

A regulation passed earlier this month by the Brazilian government is stirring anger among indigenous people and environmentalists, as it allows dams, roads and military bases to be built in indigenous territories without consent if the projects are considered to be relevant to “national security”.

The act follows an already controversial pruning of seven federal protected areas in the Amazon to accommodate hydropower plants passed by Congress in June, just before the Rio+20 environmental summit. Most of the parks targeted for shrinkage are in the Tapajós river basin, a wilderness area of “extreme relevance” for biodiversity.

The new regulation, issued on 17 July by Attorney General Luis Adams, targets the Amazon, where 13% of the forest is now delimited as indigenous territory. In 2007 a study showed that these areas are more effective than national parks in stopping deforestation and the ensuing CO₂ emissions. However, some of them “stand in the way” of planned infrastructure, such as the Belo Monte megadam on the Xingu River. Construction is opposed by tribes who claim that the development threatens their traditional way of life, and that the consultation process was unfair.

The regulation allows government to skip consultation altogether, leaving decisions in the hands of the 12-member National Security Council. It also freezes any expansion of indigenous lands. Adams told Nature that the measure only aims to ensure “legal stability”.

But according to Raul do Valle, a lawyer with indigenous-rights organization Instituto Socioambiental, the act violates both the country’s constitution and international treaties signed by Brazil, such as the 169th Convention of the International Labor Organization, which warrants prior informed consent of Indians regarding any intervention on their lands. “The act is authoritarian,” he says.

The move has been unpopular even within the government. The National Indian Foundation publicly criticized it, causing Adams to suspend application until September.