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WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department on Tuesday ordered non-essential personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen to leave the country following the threat by al-Qaida that has triggered temporary shutdowns of 19 American diplomatic posts across the Middle East and Africa.

The department said in a travel warning that it had ordered the evacuation of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen "due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks" and said U.S. citizens in Yemen should leave immediately because of an "extremely high" security threat level.

"As staff levels at the Embassy are restricted, our ability to assist U.S. citizens in an emergency and provide routine consular services remains limited and may be further constrained by the fluid security situation," the travel warning said. The U.S. Embassy is located in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.

A U.S. intelligence official and a Mideast diplomat told The Associated Press that the current shutdown of embassies in the Middle East and Africa was instigated by an intercepted secret message between al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri and Nasser al-Wahishi, the leader of the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, about plans for a major terror attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The U.S. has pummeled terrorist leaders in Yemen with targeted drone strikes. On Tuesday, Yemeni security officials said a suspected U.S. drone killed four alleged al-Qaida members in a volatile eastern province of the country. The drone fired a missile at a car carrying the four men, setting it on fire and killing all of them, the officials said.

The Yemeni officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to talk to the media, said they believe one of the dead is Saleh Jouti, a senior al-Qaida member. It's the fourth drone attack in the past week to hit a car believed to be carrying al-Qaida members.

The State Department on Sunday closed a total of 19 diplomatic posts until next Saturday. They include posts in Bangladesh and across North Africa and the Middle East as well as East Africa, including Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius.

Jen Psaki, spokeswoman for the State Department, said in a separate statement issued early Tuesday that the department issued the order for Yemen because of concern about a "threat stream indicating the potential for terrorist attacks against U.S. persons or facilities overseas, especially emanating from the Arabian Peninsula."

The statement said U.S. citizens who choose to stay in Yemen despite the travel warning should limit nonessential travel within the country and make their own contingency emergency plans. "From time to time, the Embassy may temporarily close or suspend public services for security reasons," Psaki said. "Emergency assistance to U.S. citizens during non-business hours (or when public access is restricted) is available through embassy duty personnel."

Britain's Foreign Office also announced that it had evacuated all staff from its embassy in Yemen due to security concerns. The office said the British embassy staff were "temporarily withdrawn to the U.K." on Tuesday, but declined further comment. Previously, the U.K. had said the embassy would be closed until the end of the Muslim festival of Eid later this week.

AQAP, gathered in small cells scattered across Yemen's vast under-governed regions, has proven to be a tenacious enemy.

Officials say al-Zawahri, who took over for Osama bin Laden and works from Pakistan, has reached out to the Yemeni branch, cementing their ties and further signaling the AQAP is once again looking to target U.S. and Western interests after a sustained period of more local and regional focus.

For puzzled Americans who've been told that al-Qaida is on the decline, the latest warnings raise questions about how successful America's war on terror has been and whether the terror group has been able to reorganize and reconstitute itself since bin Laden's death in May 2011.

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Map shows U.S. embassies and consulates that will remain closed through Aug. 10; 3c x 4 inches; 146 …

And, although U.S. officials agreed a year ago to restart military aid to Yemen, it's unclear how much of the new aircraft and weapons have arrived. After aid to Yemen was frozen for some time, the U.S. military is once again on the ground there training Yemeni special operations forces and has delivered more than a dozen helicopters to the Yemeni military and provided training for them, U.S. defense officials said.

But other weapons and equipment are still in the pipeline, according to a Mideast official.

The latest terror alert was triggered in part when the secret message between al-Zawahri and al-Wahishi was intercepted several weeks ago.

There long has been movement of fighters between Pakistan and Yemen, and discussions between the two groups, but the latest communication triggered worries and prompted the U.S. to take steps to boost security. The embassy closures came one day after a meeting between President Barack Obama and Yemeni President Abdo Rabu Mansour Hadi.

AQAP has been widely considered al-Qaida's most dangerous affiliate for several years. Even though the group lost Anwar al-Awlaki — one of its key inspirational leaders — to a U.S. drone strike in 2011, al-Wahishi and the group's master bomb maker, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, remain on the loose and determined to target the U.S. and other Western interests.

The group is linked to the botched Christmas Day 2009 bombing of an airliner bound for Detroit and explosives-laden parcels intercepted aboard cargo flights a year later — both incidents involving al-Asiri's expertise.

In recent years, however, AQAP has been focused more on making gains at home, taking advantage of an unstable government and overstretched military that was forced to concentrate on protecting the political center in Sanaa. As a result, said a senior defense official, AQAP was able to expand its foothold in the south, capture more weapons and gain control of additional territory.

Obama and others have consistently alluded to the weakening of core al-Qaida in Pakistan — particularly since a Navy SEAL team killed bin Laden in Pakistan two years ago. Obama frequently touts bin Laden's death in his speeches, and has declared that the terror group was "on the path to defeat."

But while core al-Qaida may be on the ropes, officials have warned repeatedly that its offshoots in places like Yemen and Africa, as well as homegrown believers in the U.S., have grown increasingly dangerous and more difficult to track.

On Monday, officials declined to be more specific about the latest threat.

"What we know is the threat emanates from, and may be focused on, occurring in the Arabian Peninsula," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "It could potentially be beyond that, or elsewhere."

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Associated Press writers Lara Jakes, Kimberly Dozier, Robert Burns and Julie Pace in Washington and Ahmed Al-Haj in Sanaa, Yemen, contributed to this report.

Threat level 'extremely high'

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By Antoni Slodkowski and Mari Saito

TOKYO (Reuters) - Highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an "emergency" that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country's nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.

Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co are only a temporary solution, he said.

Tepco's "sense of crisis is weak," Kinjo said. "This is why you can't just leave it up to Tepco alone" to grapple with the ongoing disaster.

"Right now, we have an emergency," he said.

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Tepco has been widely castigated for its failure to prepare for the massive 2011 tsunami and earthquake that devastated its Fukushima plant and lambasted for its inept response to the reactor meltdowns. It has also been accused of covering up shortcomings.

It was not immediately clear how much of a threat the contaminated groundwater could pose. In the early weeks of the disaster, the Japanese government allowed Tepco to dump tens of thousands of metric tons of contaminated water into the Pacific in an emergency move.

The toxic water release was however heavily criticized by neighboring countries as well as local fishermen and the utility has since promised it would not dump irradiated water without the consent of local townships.

"Until we know the exact density and volume of the water that's flowing out, I honestly can't speculate on the impact on the sea," said Mitsuo Uematsu from the Center for International Collaboration, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo.

"We also should check what the levels are like in the sea water. If it's only inside the port and it's not flowing out into the sea, it may not spread as widely as some fear."

NO OTHER OUTLET FOR WATER

Fukushima Nuclear Disaster AnniversaryPlay video."

Tepco said it is taking various measures to prevent contaminated water from leaking into the bay near the plant. In an e-mailed statement to Reuters, a company spokesman said Tepco deeply apologized to residents in Fukushima prefecture, the surrounding region and the larger public for causing inconveniences, worries and trouble.

The utility pumps out some 400 metric tons a day of groundwater flowing from the hills above the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the basements of the destroyed buildings, which mixes with highly irradiated water that is used to cool the reactors in a stable state below 100 degrees Celsius.

Tepco is trying to prevent groundwater from reaching the plant by building a "bypass" but recent spikes of radioactive elements in sea water has prompted the utility to reverse months of denials and finally admit that tainted water is reaching the sea.

In a bid to prevent more leaks into the bay of the Pacific Ocean, plant workers created the underground barrier by injecting chemicals to harden the ground along the shoreline of the No. 1 reactor building. But that barrier is only effective in solidifying the ground at least 1.8 meters below the surface.

By breaching the barrier, the water can seep through the shallow areas of earth into the nearby sea. More seriously, it is rising toward the surface - a break of which would accelerate the outflow.

"If you build a wall, of course the water is going to accumulate there. And there is no other way for the water to go but up or sideways and eventually lead to the ocean," said Masashi Goto, a retired Toshiba Corp nuclear engineer who worked on several Tepco plants. "So now, the question is how long do we have?"

Radiation rise at Fukushima say TEPCOPlay video."

Contaminated water could rise to the ground's surface within three weeks, the Asahi Shimbun said on Saturday. Kinjo said the three-week timeline was not based on NRA's calculations but acknowledged that if the water reaches the surface, "it would flow extremely fast."

A Tepco official said on Monday the company plans to start pumping out a further 100 metric tons of groundwater a day around the end of the week.

The regulatory task force overseeing accident measures of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, which met Friday, "concluded that new measures are needed to stop the water from flowing into the sea that way," Kinjo said.

Tepco said on Friday that a cumulative 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium had probably leaked into the sea since the disaster. The company said this was within legal limits.

Tritium is far less harmful than cesium and strontium, which have also been released from the plant. Tepco is scheduled to test strontium levels next.

The admission on the long-term tritium leaks, as well as renewed criticism from the regulator, show the precarious state of the $11 billion cleanup and Tepco's challenge to fix a fundamental problem: How to prevent water, tainted with radioactive elements like cesium, from flowing into the ocean.

(Additional reporting by Kentaro Hamada; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Photo By Graeme Clark, The University of New South Wales

Fan worms (turquoise) and sponges (orange) currently dominate the underwater ecosystem under the sea ice in East Antarctica, but could be lost with an increase in sunlight reaching them.

Seaweed could smother polar underwater ecosystems as melting sea ice exposes the seafloor to more sunlight, new research shows.

Animals that dwell on the seafloor of the Arctic and Antarctic spend most of their lives in total darkness: Sea ice blocks rays during the spring and early summer, and the sun sets completely in the winter. Late summer and early fall — when the ocean warms up enough to thaw the ice — often marks the only time these critters see light.

But as climate change causes sea ice to begin melting earlier and earlier in the summer, shallow-water ecosystems will soak up increasingly more rays. New research from a team of Australian biologists suggests this could cause a major shift in the seafloor communities along the coast ofAntarctica, where invertebrates like sponges, worms and tunicates — globular organisms that anchor to rocks on the seafloor — currently dominate. A manuscript of the report is currently in press at the journal Global Change Biology.

"Some areas where ice breaks out early in summer are already shifting to algal domination," saidGraeme Clark, a biologist at the University of New South Wales who was involved in the study.

Seasons and tipping points

Early-summer ice melt not only lengthens the amount of time photosynthesizing organisms likemacroalgae (or seaweed) can thrive under the sun during the summer, but it also increases the intensity of that exposure. The sun sits highest in the sky during the summer solstice — the period when Earth tilts most directly toward the sun — that occurs between June 20 and 23 in the Northern Hemisphere and Dec. 20 and 23 in the Southern Hemisphere, depending on the phase of the Earth's orbit. Rays travel directly to the seafloor during this time. During spring and fall, however, low-angle rays reflect off the sea surface and often never make it to the seafloor.

This compounding effect of a longer sunlit season and higher-intensity rays could exponentially increase the amount of sunlight hitting benthic, or seafloor, communities in the coming decades and cause major tipping points for those invertebrate-dominated ecosystems, Clark said. [6 unexpected Effects of Climate Change]

Tipping points occur when relatively minor environmental changes — like sea ice melting several days earlier than usual — cause rapid and significant ecological transformation. In this case, the tipping point would push ecosystems from invertebrate-dominated to algae-dominated.

Antarctica algae

To assess how algae might respond to increased sunlight, the team conducted a series of laboratory experiments to determine the light limits for several species of algae. They then surveyed the same species along the coast of East Antarctica to confirm their results in the field, while also collecting several years of sunlight data from light monitors deployed off eastern Antarctica.

The team found that algae routinely encroached on regions with higher levels of sunlight, and calculated that these plantlike organisms could replace up to one-third of seafloor invertebrates in regions that become ice-free during the summer.

Sponges and other invertebrates provide important ecological functions — including filtering seawater and providing surfaces for other species to grow on — so if algae overruns these species, animals throughout the ocean food chain would likely be impacted. [Earth in the Balance: 7 Crucial Tipping Points]

"A lot of fish and other invertebrates use the benthic invertebrate community as habitat and for food, so they are going to be affected," Clark told LiveScience.

Further out to sea, where the seafloor is too deep for sunlight to reach, increased melting may actually benefit seafloor invertebrate communities. One recent study found that sponges proliferated in the years following the collapse of the massive Larsen A Ice Shelf, likely because phytoplankton bloomed in the newly exposed waters, and eventually sank and provided food for thesponges.

But researchers agree that closer to shore, where sunlight bathes the benthos, algae will likely smother such sponges.

"It's probable that the light will increase and the macroalgae will explode," said Laura Fillinger, a researcher in Germany involved in the recent sponge study concerning the Larsen A collapse. "If they do, they will outcompete the sponges."

Arctic algae

A long-term study in the Arctic Ocean has documented this trend already occurring off the coast of Svalbard, Norway, suggesting that algae could smother pockets of shallow marine ecosystems at both poles, Clark said.

Determining where, exactly, these pockets will occur remains difficult, given substantial variability from year to year and across different regions of the poles. For example, sea ice has expanded around some regions of Antarctica but has begun melting up to five days earlier each summer in other regions, Clark said. [Images of Melt: Earth’s Vanishing Ice]

In their future work, the researchers plan to take a closer look at changing sea-ice cover, and hope to conduct a more detailed survey of algal distribution in relation to these changes. They also plan to more closely explore how algal growth will affect invertebrates.

"These [invertebrates] have taken millions of years to evolve, so we obviously want to retain as much of that biological information as possible," said Clark. "Even if there is no clear immediate benefit, they have intrinsic value."

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