Ice falling from the skies. Global warming to blame?

[CyberGuy]

FEATURE - Scientist says ice meteors a sign of climate change

SPAIN: October 1, 2002

MADRID - A Spanish scientist says global warming may be to blame for giant blocks of ice which fall from clear skies and rip gaping holes in cars and houses.

Jesus Martinez-Frias has spent the last two-and-a-half years investigating so-called megacryometeors - ice meteors - which tend to weigh more than 10 kg (22 lb) and have been known to leave 1.5 metre-wide (five feet) holes in houses.He fears the formation of these hailstone-like blocks on clear days could be a worrying symptom of climate change.

"I'm not worried that a block of ice might fall on your head ... but that great blocks of ice are forming where they shouldn't exist," said Martinez-Frias, director of planetary geography at Spain's Astrobiology Centre in Madrid.

"Components of the atmosphere, like ozone and water, are changing in different levels of the atmosphere...We think these signs could be evidence of climate change," he said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

While Martinez-Frias said he was far from certain as to why the ice meteors formed, he said they were neither hoaxes nor blocks of ice falling from the bars or bathrooms of passing aircraft, as sceptics have suggested.

"We're not talking about hoaxes," Martinez-Frias said. "It's very easy to tell real and false ice blocks apart."

"It's not water from airplane toilets...Its isotopic composition bears the signature...of Iberian rain."

SMASHING WINDSCREENS

Ice clouds made from crystallised vapour trails of aircraft are well known to pilots, but Martinez-Frias suggests that because global warming involves one level of the atmosphere getting colder while another gets hotter, some ice clouds now remain longer.

Their centres then fall through the atmosphere, bouncing and gathering mass, to end up smashing through a car windscreen or, more usually, landing softly in a field, he suggested.

The first megacryometeor found this year in Spain - by a startled farmer riding his tractor in Soria - weighed 16 kg (35.27 lb).

Three others were found later, bringing the world total over the last decade to more than 50. But Martinez-Frias said only around a fifth of the ice meteors are ever found.

An ice meteor weighing around 200 kg (440 lb) has been found in Brazil, Martinez-Frias said. Other blocks have been found in Mexico and Australia.

The blocks form between four and nine-and-a-half km (two-and-a-half and six miles) above ground, he said.

Some scientists doubt whether hail can form on a clear day.

"Solid ice cannot form in the absence of thick, highly visible clouds," Charles Knight, a hail expert at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado was quoted as saying in a supplement of Science journal.

But geologist Roger Buick of the University of Washington in Seattle told the same publication that a model created by Martinez-Frias and his team showing ice can form on a clear day was an "important advance in that it thoroughly documents and provides an explanation for a spectacular phenomenon."

[CyberGuy]

Ice Chunk Falls From Sky in Japan

TOKYO (AP) - A disc-shaped piece of ice of unknown origin plummeted from the sky onto a golf course near Tokyo Wednesday, narrowly missing players on the fairway but causing no injuries, police said.

Authorities were investigating the bizarre incident, said Saitama prefectural (state) police spokesman Masahiko Kuwashima.

Four players at the Heisei Club golf course in Saitama, just outside Tokyo, heard a loud thud and found a disc-shaped hunk of ice - about 50 centimeters (20 inches) in diameter and 15 centimeters (6 inches) thick - broken into several pieces, Kuwashima said.

He said police investigators have asked the Transport Ministry to check a possibility that ice stuck on an airplane might have fallen, and are waiting for the ministry's response.

There have been several past reports of ice falling in Chiba prefecture (state) near Tokyo's Narita International Airport, Kuwashima said.

But there is no airport in Saitama, and the golf course involved Wednesday is not known to be beneath a flight route, he said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the mysterious incident, Kuwashima said.

``It's puzzling,'' he said, adding that the ice, which weighs 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds), was being kept in a police department freezer.

[CyberGuy]

ICE CHUNK DEMOLISHES ROOF IN FONTANA, CALIF. "A huge chunk of ice that crashed through the roof of a home in Fontana," California (population 128,929) is the center of a Federal Aviation Administration investigation."

"The ice does not appear to be of the 'blue ice' variety that usually falls from airplane toilets. The origin of the ice appeared to be a mystery."

"It's a mystery that homeowner Johnny Worthy would like to solve--if only he can get some sleep."

"Worthy kept the ice ball that nearly killed him Saturday night," August 13, 2005, "in a big plastic jug next to the TV dinners in his freezer."

"It scared the daylights out of Worthy when it slammed into his house while he was doing the dishes."

"'There was a loud explosion and a concussion of the house, and it like scared me to death,' Worthy said."

"When he peeked around the corner, Worthy saw the ice slowly melting into his living room carpet." "'It made a loud explosion,' he said, 'It was like nothing I'd heard in my life.'"

"All the neighbors came out in their yards, Worthy said."

"Worthy's daughter thinks the ice hunk is a weather anomaly called ' megacryometeors,' with 'mega' standing for big and 'cryo' for ice. Megacryometeors are unexplained ice balls that fall from the sky and weigh between 25 and 30 pounds (13 and 15 kilograms)."

"Worthy still wants more concrete answers."

"'Every time I lay down in the bed, and I look up at the ceiling, I'm afraid somethiing's going to hit me,' Worthy said."

Fontana is in southern California, located between Interstate Highways I-10 and I-15 about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Los Angeles. (See the Modesto, Cal. Bee for August 19, 2005, "Ice ball strikes house in Fontana." Many thanks to Tiffany Burton for this newspaper article.)

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Remember this happened in August in Southern California. It is hot in august here in SOCAL

[Amelia]

Looks like I'll need to shop for a better unbrella.

[GreatLakesGramma]

Quote:

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Amelia said:

Looks like I'll need to shop for a better unbrella.

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A hard hat might be a better choice.

[Fran]

Yes, this tells it all. It must be getting hotter, and hotter, and hotter, then hotter than hot!

[CyberGuy]

Quote:

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A hard hat might be a better choice.

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I think that is the best choice.