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Tremors Mean Antarctic Volcanism May Be Heating Up
The L.A. Times reports on the discovery of seismic events (nearly 1400 tremors were recorded by researchers in 2010-2011) which seem to indicate the presence of volcanic activity 15 to 20 miles beneath the surface of western Antarctica. According to the article, "The area of activity lies close to the youngest in a chain of volcanoes that formed over several million years, and the characteristics and depth of the seismic events are consistent with those found in volcanic areas of Alaska’a Aleutian Islands, the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii and Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, the study concludes." Volcanism isn't a new discovery (Mt. Waesche, a volcanic mountain, is the believed origin of some ash mentioned in the article), but the newly detected seismic activity may be a harbinger for local melting from below of the Antarctic ice sheet, and possibly have long-term effects on the flow patterns of the overlying ice.
We are getting rid of that ice as fast as we can.
Pretty soon, dinosaurs will be pouring out of the hollow earth.
Probably just the StarGate.
and just how do we get to "western Antactica"???
Summary mentions an article from the LA Times.
Here's the link:
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-volcano-ice-antarctica-20131115,0,6645564.story
I would not be surprised if the loss of the weight of the ice that has already melted is itself contributing to the emergence of the volcanoes. Less weight pressing down might make it easier for them to come to the surface.
Disclaimer: I am not a geologist.
Amarie
(Off the top of my head as a Star Trek geek, I'm sure there are other examples....)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Antarctica is not a single point on the south pole. Have a look at a globe and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Antarctica
Wiki has the answer.
Its just a general term for that part that falls into what people consider the western hemisphere.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It's the part where your longitude has a W in front of it.
Congratulations, you win today's prize for gratuitous mention of the ACA.
/. today.
Really, it's just a random drawing of the 34,547 posts by twits on
There's a great book covering some of the science on this topic; reviewed here on NewScientist; very much worth the read. Actually what happens is that the crust "rebounds" in two phases. You can use the first phase to weigh the ice sheet as they are doing in Greenland. Then, the athenosphere (the molten layer, 15-150km deep which the crust/lithosphere sits atop) slowly slops in there and supplies extra heat and magma; generally quite a slow process, with some rebound from the last ice age still occurring.
Upshot: it's certainly possible that the events are related.
Is that even if we could completely reverse the effects of global warming tomorrow, the ice around Antarctica might still melt anyway due to mother nature?
Hmm.
Yes. It appears that "climate change" nee "global warming" has mechanisms independent of humanity, of which this is just one. It sort of humbles you, doesn't it?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The Antarctic ice is growing due to increased precipitation from global warming.
So on the balance you could say GW postponed the volcanoes and bought us time.
Pretty soon, dinosaurs will be pouring out of the hollow earth.
Or cockroaches that start fires by rubbing their cerci together.
As opposed to garden variety man eating cockroaches. All cockroaches are man eaters as conditions permit, but these couldn't wait. Living in the tropics I was occasionally awakened by a large cockroach gnawing, or what ever it is they do, on a toenail. Makes you feel glad to be alive.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
beneath the surface of western Antarctica
They're lying: every part of Antarctica lies to the north.
:p
“It’s not something that’s going to cause major issues. You’d have to have a huge, huge eruption.”
Which leads me to say:
There was supposed to be an earth-shattering KABOOM!
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
In some ways you are correct. Depressurization is one of the 3 big ways to generate a melt (magma). Just in case you wonder, the other two ways are 1:simply add heat, and 2: add volatiles such as H2O or CO2.
But the isostatic rebound being fast enough for us to see it in our lifetime is highly doubtful, same with the resulting melt travel time to possible eruption. What they are seeing now most likely is melt from more than just a few years ago.
Disclaimer: Undergrad Geologist, not PhD yet.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
That's fine as far as it goes, but it seems like there has been a lot of volcanic activity over the last couple of years, and little of that can be explained by changes in the thickness of ice. In some cases it involves volcanos that have been quiet for decades or longer. There has been eruptions or activity on Mount Etna in Italy, Mount Sinabung in Sumatra, Sakurajima in Japan, Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland, Popocatepetl in Mexico, Puyehue in Chile, Fuego in Guatemala, Tungurahua in Ecuador, Shiveluch in Russia, Cleveland Volcano in Alaska, Mayon in the Philippines, and plenty more.
Volcanoes that erupted in April 2013
Didn't I see the first picture here in Lord of the Rings?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I blame all this on fracking.
Just to be clear, the Antarctic sea ice, the ice that forms on the ocean when it gets cold enough has increased some lately. But it melts nearly completely out every Antarctic summer so there is no "memory" of it from one year to the next. The Antarctic ice sheet, the ice that is sitting on land is still shrinking, particularly in West Antarctica. Volcanism can melt some of the ice but the area of volcanism is so small compared to the total area of ice it's really insignificant for ice melt. If you think that's wrong look at Iceland which is one of the most volcanic areas on Earth yet still has major ice caps.
I really don't understand what you are arguing for or against. Volcanic eruptions are not something new, there are hundreds to thousands every year, just as there has been since the Hadean. They range from little burps of gas to the big ones like in your second link.
Most of them that you listed are located on the arcs surrounding subduction zones, with at least one other for sure ( Eyjafjallajokull ) on a rifting zone. Rifting causes decompression, subduction causes volatiles to be added, both producing melts. There is a reason all of those ( I don't recognize any hotspot volcanoes like we have in Hawaii on the list off hand ) are on the ring of fire, it's where most of the volcanism is located for exactly the reasons I just listed.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
I guess Florida counts as the tropics. In the 70s I lived in an old house on a potato farm. No air conditioning so the windows were open all the time. We had five-striped skinks that wandered in and out. The adult males were almost a foot long and loved french fries. My wife made them every day during spring harvest season. If you didn't give them enough fries they would nibble your toes. We had green anoles in the curtains and tree frogs in the shower. Having a pine bark scorpion drop onto your chest while your laying in bed will wake you up real fast.
His point is still valid though. Pick a point on the main body of Antarctica, walk west. Eventually you will reach your starting point again. Theoretically, anyway.
It would be like walking across Tamriel, looking for a witch's coven you discovered on a later save. It only works if your angle is perfect.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
On normal maps of Antarctica it's hard to see where the (rock) mountains are. I made a script for that 15 years ago, and it's still there.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Another one from the quiver of the science deniers - was that from Ian Plimer's pile of crap from a decade back - pretend an entire field of science is really a religion and then attack religion in general? Another bullshit comparison from the "when all you have is a hammer everything looks like nails" school of blinkered thinking.
Meanwhile reality as recorded with some incredibly good data since 1957 and bit from before, disagrees with what you shamelessly pulled out your arse to show to us all. I hope you enjoyed doing it because you are not fooling anyone.
But the isostatic rebound being fast enough for us to see it in our lifetime is highly doubtful
By replacing our fragile frames with sturdier robotic ones we can both mitigate our concern over climates we can't yet tolerate and witness the isostatic rebound. We could both achieve cyborgodhood and solve the climate issues if only non-Artifical intelligence wasn't illegal on this planet.
If you outlaw the future only outlaws will be future in laws.
As for myself? I would like to see falsifiable predictions.
How moderate and scientific of you to say, well spoken. But that would completely upset the most popular 'canard' (great word) of devastating sea rise that is being sold and re-told. It's the most effective way to terrify small children who are instinctively afraid of being drowned.
The data is there but gets lost in the noise. Sea level rise is 4-8 in/century, no evidence of acceleration but some land subsidence (land height changes) accounting for regional difference.
Now there is a gentleman in the Philippines who is on hunger strike because he is convinced that we -- the carbon emitting 'others' -- have sent them this killer typhoon.
This is our doing. James Hansen (I am so glad he left NASA) was chided by weather forecasting professionals and climate scientists alike for putting out his own view that hurricanes (from Katrina onwards) have this statistically significant blame factor. In our time, right now. This increasingly pissed off NASA because not only was he out on a scientific limb, but his hurricane musings were far out-pacing any news coverage of NASA's other endeavors. Talk about mission creep.
To those seeking carbon taxation and treaties, There is no time even to wait for even short-term falsifiable hypotheses. We must skip directly to the conclusions to achieve maximum panic right now.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
According to the Rolling Stone, they're playing near the heliport of the continent's Carlini Argentine Base on December 8 2013. I gotta think their music is loud enough to split ice-sheets and shake the earth where it generally should remain unshaken for the sake of avoiding the trigger of a natural disaster.
Ooo... I flipped out some politically correct neo-ecovist liberal who can't take a reality punch line so they call anything they don't like a Troll. Keep on denying - it won't do you any good in the real world.
Reminds me of the BOC live intro to Godzilla.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Volcanism May Be Heating Up
If the Vulcans are heating up, it must be their every-seven-years pon farr.
It's a good point, and I'm sure in areas where the sheet is no longer grounded the force applied to the bedrock is more a function of the depth than how much ice remains above. Want to see some science of that, too? How about a sedimentary core project from the very sheet in question? They found that the sheet responds to immense warming by disintegrating, which it did not do during the last few interglacials. On the longer scale (eg, since India collided with Asia), it has done it several times.
That was the hottie from the original A-Team, you realize?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.