From the National Science Foundation via press release:
Scientists explore origins of ‘supervolcanoes’ on the sea floor
Ancient goliaths blamed for multiple mass extinctions
“Supervolcanoes” have been blamed for multiple mass extinctions in Earth’s history, but the cause of their massive eruptions is unknown.
Despite their global impact, the eruptions’ origin and triggering mechanisms have remained unexplained. New data obtained during a recent Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) expedition in the Pacific Ocean may provide clues to unlocking this mystery.
To explore the origins of these seafloor giants, scientists drilled into a large, 145 million-year-old underwater volcanic mountain chain off the coast of Japan.
IODP Expedition 324: Shatsky Rise Formation took place onboard the scientific ocean drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution from September 4 to November 4, 2009. Preliminary results of the voyage are emerging.
“‘Supervolcanoes’ emitted large amounts of gases and particles into the atmosphere, and re-paved the ocean floor,” says Rodey Batiza, marine geosciences section head in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Ocean Sciences, which co-funded the research.
The result?
“Loss of species, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and changes in ocean circulation,” says Batiza.
In fall 2009, an international team of scientists participating in IODP Expedition 324 drilled five sites in the ocean floor. They studied the origin of the 145 million-year-old Shatsky Rise volcanic mountain chain.
Located 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) east of Japan, Shatsky Rise measures roughly the size of California.
This underwater mountain chain is one of the largest supervolcanoes in the world: the top of Shatsky Rise lies three and a half kilometers (about two miles) below the sea’s surface, while its base plunges to nearly six kilometers (four miles) beneath the surface.
Shatsky Rise is composed of layers of hardened lava, with individual lava flows that are up to 23 meters (75 feet) thick.
“Seafloor supervolcanoes are characterized by the eruption of enormous volumes of lava,” says William Sager of Texas A&M University, who led the expedition with co-chief scientist Takashi Sano of Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. “Studying their formation is critical to understanding the processes of volcanism, and the movement of material from Earth’s interior to its surface.”
About a dozen supervolcanoes exist on Earth; some are on land, while others lie at the bottom of the ocean. Those found on the seafloor are often referred to as large oceanic plateaus.
Current scientific thinking suggests that these supervolcanoes were caused by eruptions over a period of a few million years or less–a rapid pace in geologic time.
Each of these supervolcanoes produced several million cubic kilometers of lava–about three hundred times the volume of all the Great Lakes combined–dwarfing the volume of lava produced by the largest present-day volcanoes in places like Hawaii.
Since the 1960s, geologists have debated the formation and origin of these large oceanic plateaus. The mystery lies in the origin of the magma, molten rock that forms within the Earth.
A magma source rising from deep within the Earth has a different chemical composition than magma that forms just below Earth’s crust. Some large oceanic plateaus show signs of a deep-mantle origin. Others exhibit chemical signatures indicative of magma from a much shallower depth.
The IODP Shatsky Rise expedition focused on deciphering the relationship between supervolcano formation and the boundaries of tectonic plates, crucial to understanding what triggers supervolcano formation.
JOIDES Resolution departing from Yokohama, Japan, on the Shatsky Rise expedition.
A widely-accepted explanation for oceanic plateaus is that they form when magma in the form of a “plume head” rises from deep within the Earth to the surface.
An alternative theory suggests that large oceanic plateaus can originate at the intersection of three tectonic plates, known as a “triple junction.”
Shatsky Rise could play a key role in this debate, because it formed at a triple junction. However, it also displays characteristics that could be explained by the plume head model.
“Shatsky Rise is one of the best places in the world to study the origin of supervolcanoes,” says Sager. “What makes Shatsky Rise unique is that it’s the only supervolcano to have formed during a time when Earth’s magnetic field reversed frequently.”
This process creates “magnetic stripe” patterns in the seafloor. “We can use these magnetic stripes to decipher the timing of the eruption,” says Sager, “and the spatial relationship of Shatsky Rise to the surrounding tectonic plates and triple junctions.”
Sediments and microfossils collected during the expedition indicate that parts of the Shatsky Rise plateau were at one time at or above sea level, and formed an archipelago during the early Cretaceous period (about 145 million years ago).
Shipboard lab studies show that much of the lava erupted rapidly, and that Shatsky Rise formed at or near the equator.
As analyses continue, data collected during this expedition will help scientists resolve the 50 year-old debate about the origin and nature of large oceanic plateaus.
The general claim is that heat and CO2 come from man and not volcanoes. Of course for some odd reason these are not far from the Japanese current and it is just possible they can bring heat to the water.
One more thing that has a bigger impact than “C02”
very interesting article.
Still waiting for Yellowstone to blow before C02 does us in !!!
Fascinating & interesting article. It’s really amasing this old planet of ours. The experts really ought to say “We have a complete & utter understanding of absolutely nothing whatsoever, just when we think we know, it turns out we only know a small part of it!”.
AND then there’s this – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8611771.stm
What is the world coming to, all that heat & sulphur/CO2/CH4 etc billowing out of the ocean floors – must be caused by global warming!
Maybe all of the WUWT readers should convene a conference in Tahiti (UN funded, of course) to study the global impact of this new potential “threat” to the survival of the world!
Geology is filled with ambiguous observations–made ambiguous by lack of adequate time resolution. Did an asteroid do-in the dinosaurs, or was it the super eruption that formed the Deccan Traps? Or did the asteroid impact, itself, cause the eruption of the Deccan Traps? Or was it climate change, or did the asteroid and Deccan Traps cause the climate change? Fun, isn’t it?
What do you suppose the eruption at Shatsky Rise did to the pH of the ocean? A little acidic maybe?
We must fund more research into supervolcanoes and their connection with dangerous anthropogenic global climate change AKA Global Warming. The amount of dangerous carbon dioxide one of those babies releases would make humans blush.
Another example that Earth is NOT the steady state, perfectly utopian garden of eden that the Gaia worshipers believe it is. We should get rid of the worry and stress about what could happen in the future. Just get on with the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, and enjoy the short time we all have here. It’s going to end some day, one way or the other, and there is nothing we can do about it.
Greg, San Diego, CA (06:48:23) :
Maybe all of the WUWT readers should convene a conference in Tahiti…
Need to find a “taxable” entity to blame for super volcanoes, first 😉 Then, the funding for research to prove their guilt will flow freely.
We sailed through the results of an undersea volcanic eruption in October 2007 between Fiji and Tonga.
The sea was a floating mass of porphyry, I mean miles of this stuff.
We knew what it was because we had been through the Mount Pinatubo eruption in the 80s, that washed up on our beach at home, and while we were sailing though the Great Barrier Reef. We have some nice rock samples in our garden.
We learned after this new eruption that an island had started to build, like little Krakatoa is doing now quite actively, as is Karkar off the coast of PNG.
I wonder what one would observe at the surface, when a vulcano erupts 3000 meters below …….
Ok you meteorologists, tell me what happens in the atmosphere with all that heat coming up through the water?
A hyper-hurricane?
Are there any simple hurricane modelling programs?
mrpkw (06:18:22) : I hope Yellowstone waits until after my family and I visit this summer.
What ever happens to the idea that California could break off and fall into the sea That was a good thing to worry about.
The Eruptions blog has a brief look at the super-volcano article:
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/04/monday_musings_submarine_super.php
They say, in part, “I would delve into this article from Live Science, but it sadly again does a dreadful job with a lot of this – remember, “supervolcano” is a made-up word by the BBC with no strict definition, so trying to say there are a dozen supervolcanoes worldwide is just silly.”
Paul
I have always said that the amount of volcanism that goes on in the world (and that produces CO2) is not really known because most of it is underseas and therefore cannot be measured. I also don’t believe that it is possible to separate that caused by human activity and that caused natural. (since both come from earth). But since there is talk of trying to “bury” CO2, why don’t we first plug the holes where we know CO2 is blowing from down below?
Before you get too excited
“The US Geological Survey (USGS) reports that human beings produce 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoes.”
“Plimer tried to argue that the US Geological Survey only measured emissions from terrestrial volcanoes – not from submarine volcanoes. Jones, who had plainly done his homework, pointed out that a UK journalist (I think he was referring to the Guardian’s James Randerson) had gone back to the USGS and asked them whether or not submarine volcanoes were included in its calculations. They were.”
I am citing a George Monbiot piece from The Guardian, I know he is on the
wrong side, but complaints should be sent to USGS.
These supervolcanoes did have a tremendous impact on Earth’s geology.
From the post: “Shatsky Rise is composed of layers of hardened lava, with individual lava flows that are up to 23 meters (75 feet) thick.”
As the article mentions there are a number of ancient supervolcanoes on land. The Indian subcontinent also has an ancient supervolcano:
“The Deccan Traps are a large igneous province located on the Deccan Plateau of west-central India (between 17–24N, 73–74E) and one of the largest volcanic features on Earth. They consist of multiple layers of solidified flood basalt that together are more than 2,000 m (6,562 ft) thick and cover an area of 500,000 km2 (193,051 sq mi).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps
The Deccan Traps were truly massive and may have played a role in the dinosaur extinctions: “The Deccan Traps formed between 60 and 68 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period. The bulk of the volcanic eruption occurred at the Western Ghats (near Mumbai) some 66 million years ago. This series of eruptions may have lasted fewer than 30,000 years in total. Although it has been suggested that the gases released in the process may have played a role in the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, which included the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, the consensus among the scientific community is that the extinction was triggered by the Chicxulub impact event in Central America.”
In Siberia, there is also a huge traps thought to be responsible for mass extinctions:
“The Siberian Traps form a large igneous province in Siberia. The massive eruptive event which formed the traps, one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth’s geological history, continued for a million years and spanned the Permian-Triassic boundary, about 251 to 250 million years ago. It was essentially coincident with the Permian–Triassic extinction event, which is estimated to have killed 90% of species existing at the time. The eruption of the Siberian Traps is considered to be the likely cause of this ‘Great Dying’.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps
These supervolcanoes are an example of catastrophic events in Earth’s geologic history which condradict the Uniformitarian perspective of geologic history as expressed and popularized by Charles Lyell, where “the present is the key to the past”.
This complexity means there are many unanswered questions regarding Earth’s geology, the timing of events, and its relation to the pathway of life on Earth’s surface.
As always in Science, there are more questions than answers.
Let us just hope that scientists don’t have the opportunity to study first-hand the eruption of a supervolcano any time soon. Could make for a very bad day for quite a few people.
Tom T (07:29:21), I remember being told by a Texan once that California wasn’t part of the United States. So would it be missed anyway?
Only joking of course!
If anyone is interested in the geology of ocean basins, and want an alternate view to the current Plate Tectonic Theory, they might read this paper by a continental drift sceptic, N. Christian Smoot, who refers to the large igneous outpourings in the Pacific Basin during the Cretaceous.
http://www.tags-21.info/Mission/Documents/Smoot_OSP_Bathymetry_History.pdf
Ref – kwik (07:13:28) :
“I wonder what one would observe at the surface, when a vulcano erupts 3000 meters below …….”
_______________
Today? Not a thing. (I wonder if it was the result of an impact.)
http://modis.higp.hawaii.edu/cgi-bin/modis/modisnew.cgi
mikael pihlström (07:54:14) :
Before you get too excited
“The US Geological Survey (USGS) reports that human beings produce 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoes”
Surely this is rubbish. How was this measured? CO2 is good for life and without it, you would not have anything to drink (apart from water) or eat. The CO2 scare scam is the biggest hoax of this century. CO2 and H2O are like your father and mother . If you say anything bad about them, then what are you saying about yourself?
Look what Wikipedia says:the amount of energy trapped by photosynthesis is immense, approximately 100 terawatts:[3] which is about six times larger than the power consumption of human civilization.[4] As well as energy, photosynthesis is also the source of the carbon in all the organic compounds within organisms’ bodies. In all, photosynthetic organisms convert around 100,000,000,000 tonnes of carbon into biomass per year.
So just plant some trees and plants around you and be satisfied that all will be just as it was planned to be….
Tom T (07:26:44) :
mrpkw (06:18:22) : I hope Yellowstone waits until after my family and I visit this summer.
================================================
Have fun !!
You definitely don’t want to be there when she blows !!!!
Gawd, who writes this crap. Obviously not the researchers doing the study. Its pretty apparent that this pieces author did not have a clue about what they were writing about. I guess its deliberate, would not want to give the public anything that they might be able to learn from. And the dumbing down of science continues …
Whether it’s super volcanoes, planet-killer asteroids, or sudden reversion to an ice age, there are nasty things that can happen….low in likelihood in the short run, highly likely in the long run. I am with Stephen Hawkings, who has been speaking about the desireability for the human race to colonize the Moon or Mars, so that should such a low probability event occur, Mankind will not be extinguished. Given the timescales involved, we can do this in a deliberative, rather than panicky, manner.
KW
OT
Forget volcanoes, the world will be saved from Cancun.
You should all thank god for resort towns!
Yvo de Boer
“He said officials will meet at least three more times before a final meeting of ministers in Cancun, Mexico at the end of the year where it is hoped the world will finally reach an agreement on the best way to stop catastrophic warming.”
http://tinyurl.com/y7odn83