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 10kg and have been known to leave 1,5 metre-wide 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.
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"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 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 - weighed 16 kilograms. A 200kg ice meteor has been found in Brazil, and others in Mexico and Australia. - Reuters
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