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Seafloor Sensors Record Possible Eruption of Underwater Volcano

Posted by timothy on from the good-time-to-be-shoreside dept.

vinces99 writes: Thanks to high-tech instruments installed last summer by the University of Washington to bring the deep sea online, what appears to be an eruption of Axial Volcano on April 23 was observed in real time by scientists on shore. "It was an astonishing experience to see the changes taking place 300 miles away with no one anywhere nearby, and the data flowed back to land at the speed of light through the fiber-optic cable ... in milliseconds," said John Delaney, a UW professor of oceanography who led the installation of the instruments as part of a larger effort sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Delaney organized a workshop on campus in mid-April at which marine scientists discussed how this high-tech observatory would support their science. Then, just before midnight on April 23 until about noon the next day, the seismic activity went off the charts. The gradually increasing rumblings of the mountain were documented over recent weeks by William Wilcock, a UW marine geophysicist who studies such systems. During last week's event, the earthquakes increased from hundreds per day to thousands, and the center of the volcanic crater dropped by about 6 feet in 12 hours. "The only way that could have happened was to have the magma move from beneath the caldera to some other location," Delaney said.

20 comments

  1. Could be worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There could be a volcano under the antarctic ice!

  2. Easily astonished? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "It was an astonishing experience to see the changes taking place 300 miles away with no one anywhere nearby,"

    Apparently this guy hasn't been following technology much over the past several decades. Either that, or he's very easily astonished.

    1. Re:Easily astonished? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Astonished is he that near light speed is attained on fiber optics, yes astonished is he.

    2. Re:Easily astonished? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      I was flabbergasted when I read of his astonishment.

    3. Re:Easily astonished? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you had any idea of how expensive and how slow it is to send a ship out to make the same measurements... I forget, I haven't worked at that university in a while, but it's like $10k per day for the science vessel? So yea, it's not astonishing that fiber optic cables can... and all that... but it's astonishing that you can check a website instead of writing proposals for a year, in hopes one of them will be funded, at which point more money than your yearly salary will be used up just getting out to that point, and that's assuming you've got good weather, and....

  3. Caldera OpenDOS 4 Lyfe! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I support the use of five separate assemblers.

  4. It's just sad how Republicans... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    deny that volcanoes exist. I live in Seattle, and I work with several of them that deny that Mt Saint Helens happened. They're just so stupid. So stupid. So many of them care volcano deniers.

  5. Re:It's just sad how Anonymous Cowards... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    One, I'm so tired of posters splitting their comments between the subject and the content. I usually skip reading the subject of every post so to see a comment start in mid sentence is jarring.

    Second, if this was an attempt at political humor, it failed miserably. How do you connect Repubs with denying volcanoes? Is this a veiled reference to the birthers, or climate change, STEM, or what?

    .

  6. Connection? by Anna+Merikin · · Score: 1

    There is a warm "blob" of water almost directly above this volcano http://news.slashdot.org/story...; additionally, this volcano last erupted in 2011, just before the blob and the drought began. Might there be a connection?

    1. Re:Connection? by itzly · · Score: 1

      In the news release, the researchers say the warm blob is only 300 feet deep, so no.

      http://news.agu.org/press-rele...

    2. Re:Connection? by rahvin112 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Before engaging in such speculation maybe you should calculate the volume of water you are talking about and the amount of energy it would require to raise that volume of water the temperature difference and compare that amount of energy to the known heat output of volcano's assuming every bit of energy is converted to heat.

      Once you've done that calculation then you can come back and speculate knowing that there is no way in hell a volcano could actively heat that volume of water and hold that temperature fairly constant for several years unless it was the largest super volcano the planet has ever seen. It takes a LOT of heat to raise the temperature of even small volumes of water and the volume of water you are talking about is NOT small.

      No volcano's aren't raising the temperature of the ocean in anything but the smallest of areas directly adjacent to the eruption, nor are they the source of climate change. If what you suggest was possible all the water around the island of Hawaii would be near boiling because of all the lava entering the ocean there.

    3. Re:Connection? by itzly · · Score: 4, Informative

      Another way to look at this: total energy from the sun that hits the earth is 170 petajoule/second. Size of the blob is 1000x1000 miles, or 0.5% of the earth's surface. That means that the blob gets an average of 0.85 petajoule/second from direct sunlight. Energy from the Krakatoa eruption (largest volcanic eruption in recorded history) is estimated at 800 petajoule.

      In other words, just the sun hitting the area of the blob provides the same energy as a Krakatoa-sized eruption every 15 minutes. I think we would have noticed if such huge eruptions were going on.

      And this doesn't even take into account your point that the warming from the sun is from above, and the volcanic warming would be through several miles of cold ocean water.

    4. Re:Connection? by ananamouse · · Score: 1

      >And this doesn't even take into account your point that the warming from the sun is from above, and the volcanic warming would be through several miles of cold ocean water.
      Might be a good thing to do. The solar input is balanced in some way by something (radiative emission?) to a very large degree since the planets temperature is stable to +/- 100C for at least the last billion years. Actually for the last 10K years the band is even tighter. So, adding a mess of petajoules to the water mas from the bottom of the mass could be interesting in terms of altering currents.

  7. What if it's not an underwater volcano? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What if it's Godzilla?

    1. Re:What if it's not an underwater volcano? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I watch this with worry. There has been a spat of reports about underwater events in northern Europe all of which have been linked to Putin although admittedly no Putin (or submarine with his torso attached to periscope) has been seen. Could this be that this volcano is in fact Putin too? We shall not be caught off guard against this monster who is almost as bad as daring (OMG!) as our own overlords.

  8. Priorities? by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    "...University of Washington to bring the deep sea online..."

    I'd prefer if they'd bring the high mountains online, there are millions of people there every year, in the deep seas not so much.

    1. Re:Priorities? by PPH · · Score: 1

      Cthulhu has fiber and I'm stuck with Comcast's excuse for broadband.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  9. greenwow is a fool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He doesn't even qualify as a troll, just a fool.