TORONTO - A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada’s northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said Wednesday.

Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, told The Associated Press that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and the 19-square-mile shelf is now adrift in the Arctic Ocean.

“The Markham Ice Shelf was a big surprise because it suddenly disappeared. We went under cloud for a bit during our research and when the weather cleared up, all of a sudden there was no more ice shelf. It was a shocking event that underscores the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic,” said Mueller.

Mueller also said that two large sections of ice detached from the Serson Ice Shelf, shrinking that ice feature by 47 square miles — or 60 percent — and that the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has also continued to break up, losing an additional eight square miles.

Mueller reported last month that seven square miles of the 170-square-mile and 130-feet-thick Ward Hunt shelf had broken off.

This comes on the heels of unusual cracks in a northern Greenland glacier, rapid melting of a southern Greenland glacier, and a near record loss for Arctic sea ice this summer. And earlier this year a 160-square mile chunk of an Antarctic ice shelf disintegrated.

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WASHINGTON - The tropics seem to be going crazy what with the remnants of Gustav, the new threat from Hanna, a strengthening Ike and newcomer Josephine. Get used to it.

Hurricane experts say all the weather ingredients, which normally fluctuate, are set on boil for the formation of storms. And it’s going to stay that way for a while, they said.

Four named storms at the same time is a bit odd, but not unprecedented, meteorologists said. In 1995 five named storms lived simultaneously. And in 1998 there were four hurricanes at the same. But wait and see what happens next.

“Give us time, this is only Tuesday,” said meteorologist Dennis Feltgren, spokesman for an all-too-busy hurricane center in Miami.

The peak of hurricane season isn’t until Sept. 10 and this season already has 10 named storms, which is the long-term average for an entire season.

“Normally in an active season, there are bunches of hurricanes and lulls. It just doesn’t seem like there’s been bunches of lulls. I sure hope we’re not talking (hurricanes) Christmas Eve,” said meteorology professor Hugh Willoughby at Florida International University.

Two hurricane prognosticators — including William Gray, who pioneered the field of storm season forecasts — predicted Tuesday that this month would be almost twice as busy as an average September. They forecast five named storms, four of them hurricanes and two of them major.

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WASHINGTON - The difference between a monster and a wimp for Gulf of Mexico hurricanes often comes down to a small patch of warm deep water that’s easy to miss. It’s called the Loop Current, and hurricane trackers say Gustav is headed right for it, reminiscent of Katrina.

Gustav is likely to reach this current late Saturday, experts say. What happens next will be crucial, maybe deadly.

If Gustav hits the Loop Current and lingers in that hot spot, watch out. If the storm misses it or zips through the current, then Gustav probably won’t be much of a name to remember.

The meandering Loop Current, located in the southeastern gulf, provides loads of hurricane fuel. It was a key stopover for nearly all the Gulf Coast killers of the past, including Katrina and Camille, said Florida International University professor Hugh Willoughby, former director of the government’s hurricane research division.

Lynn “Nick” Shay, University of Miami meteorology and oceanography professor, flew over the gulf Thursday in a federal hurricane research plane to measure the Loop Current. He saw Gustav’s forecast track going “right down the throat” of it.

“That’s kind of the scary part here,” Shay said. “You look at this and say, ‘Boy I hope this thing doesn’t really explode,’ but it probably will.”

It happened in 2005. “Katrina went over the Loop Current and intensified rapidly,” said Mark DeMaria, a Colorado-based expert on hurricane strength with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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WASHINGTON - More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming “tipping point” in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that sea ice in the Arctic now covers about 2.03 million square miles. The lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1979 was 1.65 million square miles set last September.

With about three weeks left in the Arctic summer, this year could wind up breaking that previous record, scientists said.

Arctic ice always melts in summer and refreezes in winter. But over the years, more of the ice is lost to the sea with less of it recovered in winter. While ice reflects the sun’s heat, the open ocean absorbs more heat and the melting accelerates warming in other parts of the world.

Sea ice also serves as primary habitat for threatened polar bears.

“We could very well be in that quick slide downward in terms of passing a tipping point,” said senior scientist Mark Serreze at the data center in Boulder, Colo. “It’s tipping now. We’re seeing it happen now.”

Within “five to less than 10 years,” the Arctic could be free of sea ice in the summer, said NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally.

“It also means that climate warming is also coming larger and faster than the models are predicting and nobody’s really taken into account that change yet,” he said.

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OSHKOSH, Wis. - This isn’t how a jet pack is supposed to look, is it? Hollywood has envisioned jet packs as upside-down fire extinguishers strapped to people’s backs. But Glenn Martin’s invention is far more unwieldy — a 250-pound piano-sized contraption that people settle into rather than strap on.

As thousands looked on Tuesday, the inventor’s 16-year-old son donned a helmet, fastened himself to a prototype Martin jet pack and revved the engine, which sounded like a motorcycle. Harrison Martin eased about three feet off the ground, the engine roaring with a whine so loud that some kids covered their ears.

With two spotters preventing the jet pack from drifting in a mild wind, the pilot hovered for 45 seconds and then set the device down as the audience applauded.

The Martin jet pack can — in theory — fly an average-sized pilot about 30 miles in 30 minutes on a full 5-gallon tank of gas. The apparatus was unveiled Tuesday at AirVenture Oshkosh 2008, the annual aviation convention of the Experimental Aircraft Association in east-central Wisconsin.

“Wow, that went better than expected,” Glenn Martin said afterward, his accent revealing his New Zealand roots. “People will look back on this as a moment in history.”

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LOS ANGELES - Aerospace engineers have been holed up in a Mojave Desert hangar for four years, fashioning a commercial spaceship to loft rich tourists some 62 miles above Earth. Now the wraps come partially off the top-secret project.

British billionaire Sir Richard Branson and American aerospace designer Burt Rutan are due Monday to show off their mothership, which is designed to air launch a passenger-toting spaceship out of the atmosphere.

The rollout — a year after a deadly accident at Rutan’s test site — marks the start of a rigorous flight test program that space tourism advocates hope will climax with the first suborbital joy rides by the end of the decade. More than 250 wannabe astronauts have paid $200,000 or put down deposits for a chance to float weightless for a mere five minutes.

“Having invested all my faith in it, I’m so excited to see the actual thing,” said artist Namira Salim, a customer who is lined up for a ride on Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

The last time there was this level of buzz in the high desert north of Los Angeles was in 2004, when throngs of spectators gathered to witness SpaceShipOne capture the $10 million Ansari X Prize by becoming the first private, manned craft to reach space. It was designed by Rutan and bankrolled by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Scientists have exposed some of the mystery behind the northern lights. On Thursday, NASA released findings that indicate magnetic explosions about one-third of the way to the moon cause the northern lights, or aurora borealis, to burst in spectacular shapes and colors, and dance across the sky.

The findings should help scientists better understand the more powerful but less common geomagnetic storms that can knock out satellites, harm astronauts in orbit and disrupt power and communications on Earth, scientists said.

A fleet of five small satellites, called Themis, observed the beginning of a geomagnetic storm in February, while ground observatories in Canada and Alaska recorded the brightening of the northern lights. The southern lights — aurora australis — also brightened and darted across the sky at the same time.

These auroral flare-ups occur every two or three days, on average.

A team led by University of California, Los Angeles, scientist Vassilis Angelopoulos confirmed that the observed storm about 80,000 miles from Earth was triggered by a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection. Every so often, the Earth’s magnetic field lines are stretched like rubber bands by solar energy, snap, are thrown back to Earth and reconnect, in effect creating a short circuit.

It’s this stored-up energy that powers the northern and southern lights or, in other words, causes them to dance, according to Angelopoulos.

An opposing theory has these geomagnetic events occurring much closer to Earth, about one-sixth of the way to the moon. More Themis observations are needed to resolve the debate, said David Sibeck, NASA’s project scientist.

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TOKYO - Japanese and Mongolian scientists have successfully recovered the complete skeleton of a 70-million-year-old young dinosaur, a nature museum announced Thursday.

The scientists uncovered a Tarbosaurus — related to the giant carnivorous Tyrannosaurus — from a chunk of sandstone they dug up in August, 2006 in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, said Takuji Yokoyama, a spokesman for the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences, a co-organizer of the joint research project.

“We were so lucky to have found remains that turned out to be a complete set of all the important parts,” he said.

After two years of careful preparatory work, scientists found that the fossilized skeleton only lacked neck bones and the tip of the tail.

Young dinosaur skeletons are hard to find in good condition because they often are destroyed by weather decay or because they were torn apart by predators. The latest find would be a major step toward discovering the growth and development of dinosaurs, Yokoyama said.

The fossil, believed to have died at age 5, measured about 6.6 feet long, he said. Adult dinosaurs of the species are believed to have grown up to 40 feet.

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro’s tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.

More than 400 penguins, most of them young, have been found dead on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro state over the past two months, according to Eduardo Pimenta, superintendent for the state coastal protection and environment agency in the resort city of Cabo Frio.

While it is common here to find some penguins — both dead and alive — swept by strong ocean currents from the Strait of Magellan, Pimenta said there have been more this year than at any time in recent memory.

Rescuers and those who treat penguins are divided over the possible causes.

Thiago Muniz, a veterinarian at the Niteroi Zoo, said he believed overfishing has forced the penguins to swim further from shore to find fish to eat “and that leaves them more vulnerable to getting caught up in the strong ocean currents.”

Niteroi, the state’s biggest zoo, already has already received about 100 penguins for treatment this year and many are drenched in petroleum, Muniz said. The Campos oil field that supplies most of Brazil’s oil lies offshore.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The space station’s two Russian astronauts stepped outside for the second time in less than a week Tuesday, taking a spacewalk that proved to be tame compared to last week’s work with explosives.

Although Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko had a lengthy to-do list, none of the chores were notably complicated or dangerous this time around.

They quickly installed a docking target to be used when a new Russian mini research module arrives next year and the crew size doubles. But Kononenko had trouble taking pictures of the target; he couldn’t aim his camera the right way as he dangled at the end of a 50-foot boom, his body rotating at times.

With Volkov steering the boom from its base and Kononenko on the opposite end, the two looked as though they were riding a giant seesaw.

“I don’t know what the camera is going to cover, but I’m taking pictures,” Kononenko said.

Russia’s Mission Control outside Moscow urged the spacewalkers to photograph themselves as well. “Beloved,” Mission Control teased.

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