Passage of Typhoon Yagi kills at least 39 people across the Philippines, South China, and Vietnam.

Typhoon Yagi is now known to have killed at least 39 people as it swept across the  Philippines, South China, and Vietnam between 2 and 7 September 2024. The storm was initially detected as a low pressure system to the northwest of Palau by the Japan Meteorological Agency on 30 August 2024. By 1 September it has moved to the northeast, gaining in strength to become a tropical depression as it entered the Philippine Area of Responsibility (an area of the northwest Pacific monitored by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration. The system was identified as Tropical Depression 12W by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, and named Enteng by red by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, then as it intensified to become a tropical storm, formally named Tropical Storm Yagi by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Typhoon Yagi made landfall in Aurora Province on Luzon Island, the Philippines, at about 2.00 pm local time on Monday 2 September, taking fifteen hours to move across the island before emerging over the South China Sea at about 3.00 am on Tuesday 3 September. During this time the storm lost considerable energy, particularly as it passed over the Cordillera Central mountain range, but still causing significant disruption. The storm raised the waters of the Marikana River, which flows through eastern Manila, to rise by 16 m, leading to flooding in the Metro Manila area, as well as in the provinces of Bulacan, Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Cavite, Laguna, Northern Samar, Pangasinan, and Rizal. A number of ships were driven aground in Manila Bay, with two colliding and catching fire. Twenty people are currently known to have died as a result of the storm on Luzon, nine of them in Rizal Province, with at least more 26 missing and at least eighteen injured. Around 28 000 people in Metro Manila, Calabarzon, and Bulacan, lost their electricity supplies during the storm, schools were closed for two days, and most flights to and from Luzon Island cancelled. About 80 000 people were evacuated from low-lying areas, with 459 homes destroyed and another 6128 damaged. Several dams had to be opened to prevent them being damaged by high waters, adding to the flooding in areas beneath them.

Flooding in Rizal Province, the Philippines, on 2 September 2024. AP. 

After passing over Luzon Tropical Storm passed across the South China Sea, merging with a smaller depression and gaining significantly in strength as it moved west towards China. By 5 September the storm had gained suficient energy that the Japan Meteorological Agency upgraded it to a Super Typhoon, which is to say a typhoon with windspeeds of 240 km per hour or above, the equivalent to a Category 4 or 5 storm on the Saffir–Simpson scale.

In preparation for this 420 000 people were evacuated from low-lying areas on Hainan Island, and 500 000 from low-lying areas in Guangdong Province, with widespread cancelation of flights, non-essential travel, and coastal activities in both provinces as well as Hong Kong.

Typhoon Yagi made landfall near the city of Wenchang on Hainan at about 4.20 pm local time on Friday 6 September, bringing with it sustained windspeeds of 195 km per hour, making it the strongest storm to hit the island since Typhoon Ramassun in 2014. It passed across the island making, and over the provincial capital, Haikou, before briefly making landfall in Xuwen County, Guangdong Province, then passing out over the Gulf of Tonkin. Four people are reported to have lost their lives on Hainan Island, with another 95 injured, and 1.2 million people losing electricity supplies. Aa further nine people were injured in Hong Kong.

Heavy rainfall and fallen trees in Wenchang City on 6 September 2024. Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG/Getty Images.

Typhoon Yaagi gained in strength again as it passed over the Gulf of Tonkin, reaching Vietnam as a Category 4 Typhoon (i.e. a storm with sustained winds in excess of 209 km per hour), making it one of the strongest storms ever to hit northern Vietnam. In preparation for the storm schools were closed and fishing and outdoor gatherings advised against, as well as most flights, ferry services, and sporting events cancelled. The storm made landfall over the city of Haiphong, binging high winds and extensive flooding to the Red River Valley. fifteen people are known to have died in Vietnam, including four people hit by flying debris, another four, described as a family, by a landslide in Hoa Binh, and another man in Hai Dong hit by a falling tree.

High winds caused by Typhoon Yagi on the shore of Phuong Luu Lake in Haiphong. Nhac Nguyen/AFP.

Tropical storms are caused by the warming effect of the Sun over tropical seas. As the air warms it expands, causing a drop in air pressure, and rises, causing air from outside the area to rush in to replace it. If this happens over a sufficiently wide area, then the inrushing winds will be affected by centrifugal forces caused by the Earth's rotation (the Coriolis effect). This means that winds will be deflected clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the southern hemisphere, eventually creating a large, rotating Tropical Storm. They have different names in different parts of the world, with those in the northwest Pacific being referred to as typhoons.

The structure of a tropical cyclone. Wikimedia Commons.

Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms. 

The formation and impact of a storm surge. eSchoolToday.

See also...

Glossobalanus weii: A new species of Enteropneust Hemichordate from Hainan Island, China.

The Superphylum Deuterostomia is one of the major divisions of the Animal Kingdom, comprising three Phyla, the well-known Echinoderms (Sea Urchins, Starfish, etc.) and Chordates (the group which includes the Vertebrates), and the less familiar Hemichordates. The Hemichordates, while not a major part of modern marine faunas, were an ecologically significant group in the Palaeozoic, and understanding them has been an important part of understanding the history of the Deuterostomes as a group. Taxonomically, the Hemichordates are divided into two groups, the Enteropneusts, or Acorn Worms, and the Graptolithoidea, a group which includes the living benthic Pterobranches and Palaeozoic planktonic Graptolites (although it has been claimed that at least one Pterobranch is actually a living, benthic, Graptolite).

Acorn Worms have bodies divided into three portions, an-acorn shaped proboscis, a thick fleshy collar, and a long worm-like bodies. Most Acorm Worms are between 9 and 45 cm in length, though the largest reach about 1.5 m. Acorn Worms typically live in burrows, using their proboscis to scrape food from the surrounding sediments, though some deep-sea species area active on the sea floor, and will even venture into the water column for brief periods. Seven species of Acorn Worm have been recorded from the waters around China, two of which, Glossobalanus polybranchioporus and Saccoglossus hwangtauensis are accorded first class protected status by the Chinese government, with the remaining five species granted second class protected status.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 27 May 2024, Xianan Fu, Weijian Guo, Zhongwen Ding, and Wenliang Zhou of the Center for Evolution and Conservation Biology at the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, and Funwen Wei, also of the Center for Evolution and Conservation Biology at the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, and of the Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology at the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the College of Forestry at Jiangxi Agricultural University, describe a new species of Acorn Worm from Hainan Island, China.

The new species was discovered during a field study of the coast around the village of Toudong on the northern coast of Hainan Island in February and July 2023. It is placed in the genus Glossobalanus, and given the specific name weii, in honour of Fuwen Wei to commend his contributions to Zoology and Conservation biology.

External form of Glossobalanus weii. (A) Whole body of female GML-23021883041 under natural conditions. (B) Proboscis and collar of paratype male GML-23021883042. (C) Branchial region dorsal side photo of paratype male GML-23021883042. (D) Intestinal canal containing food. (E) Hepatic region photo of paratype male GML-23021883042. Fu et al. (2024).

The examined specimens of Glossobalanus weii are between 176 and 196 mm in length, with a proboscis twice as long as the collar, a dark spot on its tip. The collar is covered in longitudinal pleats, with the posterior part being broad, its dorsal margin is shorter than its ventral margin. Specimens of Glossobalanus weii are delicate and broke up easily when placed on a flat surface, making it necessary to examine and photograph them in water.

See also...

Lomariopsis longini & Lomariopsis moorei: Two new species of Lomariopsid Ferns from Vietnam, China, and Taiwan.

The genus Lomariopsis currently contains about 60 species from the Neotropics, Africa, the islands of the Indian Ocean, Asia, and the Oceanian region. However, this is probably an underestimation of the true diversity of the genus, and it is thought to be understudied, and recent reviews have left out regions where it is likely to be more specious, notably Asia and Oceania. This is made more complicated by the ability of some species to produce gametophyte-only populations, which can establish as long-lived, asexual colonies (unlike Seed Plants, Ferns have a two stage life-cycle, with the familiar Plant being the diploid sporophyte; this produces spores that grow into a haploid gametophyte, which are either male, producing sperm, or female, producing eggs, with the fertilised female egg growing into a new sporophyte), which can sustain themselves through vegetative reproduction, meaning that quite different-looking Plants can be different stages of the same species.

In a paper published in the journal Phytokeys on 20 December 2021, Yi-Hsuan Wu of the Institute of Molecular & Cellular Biology at the National Tsing Hua University, Chih-Yun Sun of the Department of Life Science at the National Tsing Hua University, Atsushi Ebihara of the Department of Botany at the National Museum of Nature and Science, Ngan Thi Lu of the Department of Biology at the Vietnam National Museum of Nature, and the Graduate University of Science and Technology of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Germinal Rouhan of the Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, the  Centre national de la recherche scientifique, the Sorbonne Université, the École pratique des hautes études, and the Université des Antilles, and Li-Yaung Kuo, also of the Institute of Molecular & Cellular Biology and Department of Life Science at the National Tsing Hua University, describe two new species of Lomariopsis with distributions in Vietnam, south China, and Taiwan.

The first new species is named Lomariopsis longini, where 'longini' aludes to the Lance of Longinus, which was reputedly used to pierce the side of Jesus during his crucifixion, in reference to the shape of the terminal pinnae of sterile leaves. This Fern grows from a scaley red underground rhizome, producing both sterile and fertile fronds about 60 cm long, though the fertile (spore-bearing) fronds have notably more contracted pinnae (leaflets) than the sterile ones. This species was found growing in the understory of evergreen broad leaf forests, at altitudes below 1000 m, in Nghe An, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Vinh Phuc provinces in northern Vietnam, and Yunnan Province in southwest China. 

 

Illustration of Lomariopsis longini based on the holotype. Wu et al. (2021).

The second new species is named Lomariopsis moorei, where 'moorei' honours Shann-Jye Moore, a noted Taiwanese expert on Ferns, after whom the Mr. Shann-Jye Moore Memorial Scholarship of the Taiwan Society of Plant Systematics is named. This species also grows from a scaley red subterranean rhizome, reaching about 50 cm high. It can be distinguished by a swollen ring at the region of articulation on the abaxial side of the pinnae (especially the upper pinnae). This species was found growing in the understory of evergreen broad leaf forests, at altitudes below 1000 m, in Taiwan and Hainan Province, China.

 

Illustration of Lomariopsis moorei, based on the holotype. A fallen fertile pinna is at the left bottom. Wu et al. (2021).

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Twitter.

Chinese rocket crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Mauritania.

A 30 m long, 17-8 tonne Chinese rocket-stage fell into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Mauritania, slightly after 3.30 pm GMT on Monday 11 May 2020, from the Wenchang launch centre on Hainan Island in southern China. The piece of space junk was the main rocket stage of a Long March 5B heavy launcher which took off on Tuesday 5 May. The rocket was initially lifted from the ground by three smaller kerosene fuelled rocket boosters, then powered the main lift of the spacecraft by using a cryogenic hydrogen system. The rocket delivered a prototype manned crew capsule (without any crew) into orbit, and was expected to burn up high in the atmosphere as it fell back. However, the much of the body appears to have survived, and was tracked by the US Air Force, passing over New York about 15 minutes before eventually vanishing off the coast of Mauritania.

The trajectory of the Long March 5 rocket-booster (orange line), and it's last known location. Jonathan McDowell/Twitter.

Pieces of space junk re-entering the atmosphere, and even reaching the ground (or sea) are not that unusual, but objects of this size are somewhat rare, with the last object of this size having been the 39 tonne Soviet Salyut 7 Space Station in February 1991, which crashed into the Pacific Ocean southern Pacific Ocean. The Colombia Space Shuttle, which was disintegrated during re-entry in February 2003 is not usually counted as 'space junk' as it was manned, but weighed 2000 tonnes, so this could be considered the largest such object.The Russian Fobos-Grunt Probe, which fell into the Pacific Ocean in January 2012, after an unsuccessful launch in November 2011, weighed about 13 tonnes.

The re-entry orf the Long March stage was planned, but it's survival into the lower atmosphere was unexpected, as it was essentially a hollow tube. It is possible that only the rocket engines survived re-entry, reducing the size of the object at impact. In either event, a returning rocket launcher presents a far lower risk to anyone on the ground than an asteroid of similar mass, as its velocity is much lower, with asteroids travelling far faster due to their orbital velocity, as their trajectory seldom matches that of the Earth.

The launch of the Long March 5B heavy launcher from Hainan Island on 5 May 2020. CNN.

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.

Teloganopsis setosa: A new species of Spiny Crawler Mayfly from Hainan Island, China.

Mayflies, Ephemeroptera, are an ancient group of insects related to the Dragonflies and Damselflies. They have a long aquatic larval stage followed by a short flying adult phase, which typically does not feed, simply emerging from the water, mating, and laying eggs at a new site. This adult form, called the imago may survive from a few hour to a few days, depending on the species. Spiny Crawler Mayflies, Ephemerellidae, are a distinctive group of Mayflies found in North America and the UK. They have three tails (as opposed to two in most Mayflies), and the larvae have the habit of raising these up in a Scorpion-like posture when disturbed. These larvae are found in a wide variety of aquatic environments, and can often survive out of the water for some time.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 6 November 2017, Wei Zhang, Zhen-Xing Ma, Ze Hu, Juan-Yan Luo, and Chang-Fa Zhou, all of the Key Laboratory of Jiangsu Biodiversity and Biotechnology at Nanjing Normal University, describe a new species of Spiny Crawler Mayfly from Hainan Island in China.

The new species is placed in the genus Teloganopsis, which currently contains only a single species, from the eastern United States, and given the specific name setosa, meaning 'hairy'. It is describe from a number of both adult and larval specimens gathered in the Ba-Wang-Ling National Forest Park, in Chang-Jiang County, Hainan; the larvae were collected by hand-netting, while the adults were attracted with an ultra-violet lamp. Some of the larvae were subsequently raised in captivity, confirming they were the same species.

Teloganopsis setosa, male adult. Zhang et al. (2017).

Adults of Teloganopsis setosa measure 5.0-6.0 mm (males) or 6.5-7.0 mm (females). Adults of both sexes are pale in colour, the males have red markings on their eyes and wings, in the females these are smaller and a dull brown colour. The larvae are a dark, reddish brown.

Male nymph of Teloganopsis setosa. Zhang et al. (2017).

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.

Neotapirissus reticularis: A new species of Planthopper from Hainan Island, China.

Planthoppers, Fulgoromorpha, are members of the True Bug order, Hemiptera, distinguished by their enlarged back legs, which enable them to leap in a similar way to Grasshoppers. Like many True Bugs they feed on plants by drilling into them with specialised mouth parts to drill into their host and drain their sap, and while few species are serious pests in themselves, they are often vectors for plant diseases. Planthoppers tend to be well camouflaged, with many species mimicking leaves or other plant-parts.

In a paper published in the journal Entomological Science on 22 July 2016, Rui Meng and Yinglun Wang of the Key Laboratory of Plant Protection Resources and Pest Management at the Entomological Museum of Northwest A&F University, describe a new species of Planthopper from Hainan Island in southern China.

The species is placed in a new genus, Neotapirissus, meaning 'new-Tapirissus', in reference to a previously described genus from Laos, and given the specific name reticularis, in reference to the venation of the modified forewings, which is reticulated (net-like). The species is described from three specimens, a male, 5.8 mm in length, and two females, 6.1 and 6.2 mm in length, all are black and brown in colour.

Neotapirissus reticularis, male, (1) dorsal view, (2) face, (3) lateral view. Scale bars, 1mm. Meng & Wang (2016).

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.

Promecidia abnormis & Promecidia chui: Two new species of Velvet Ants from south China.

Velver Ants, Mutillidae, are a group of Wasps in which the females are flightless and lack wings, causing them to resemble large, fur covered Ants. The males are winged and capable of flying, seeking out females with which to mate. These Wasps are parasitoids (i.e. their larvae live within the bodies of other Insects, slowly consuming their hosts as they grow) targeting other species of ground-dwelling Wasps and Bees, which the females enter, laying individual eggs close to the larvae or pupas of the host. Targeting other Hymenopterans is a high-risk strategy, and female Velvet Ants are noted for their particularly tough exoskeletons and extremely potent stings.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 16 December 2016, Arkady Lelej of the Institute of Biology and Soil Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Hu-ting Zhou of the Department of Entomology at South China Agricultural University, Valery Loktionov, also of the Institute of Biology and Soil Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Zai-fu Xu, also of the Department of Entomology at South China Agricultural University, describe two new species of Velvet Ants from south China, as part of a review of Velvet Ants of the genus Promecidia.

The first new species described is named Promecidia abnormis, in reference to the presence of a carina (ridge) on the second sternal segment of the male, which is a common feature in members of the genus Zeugomutilla, but which is highly unusual in a member of the genus Promecidia. The species is described from two male specimens, one collected from the Nankunshan Provincial Nature Reserve in Guangdong Province and the second from the Jianfengling National Nature Reserve on Hainan Island. These are 8.5 and 10.2 mm in length respectively, and black in colour with a distinctive reddish brown area on their backs.

Promecidia abnormis, male specimen from Guangdong Province. Scale bar is 1 mm in length. Lelej et al. (2016).

The second new species is named Promecidia chui, in honour of the Chinese entomologist Chu Joo-tsu, an expert on the Hymenoptera. This species is described from twelve male and one female specimens from several locations in Yunnan and Hainan Provinces. The males range from 6.8 to 11.9 mm in length and black with reddish brown markings, the female is 7.65 mm in length and reddish brown with black and yellow markings.

Promecidia chui, male specimen from the Nabanhe National Nature Reserve in Yunnan Province. Scale bar is 1 mm. Detail of mandible inset. Lelej et al. (2016).

 Promecidia chui, female specimen from the Diaoluoshan National Nature Reserve on Hainan Island. Inset bottom left: Metasoma, dorsal view. Inset bottom right: Metasomal terga 5 and 6, dorsal view. Scale bar 1 mm. Lelej et al. (2016).

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.