Japan has heightened monitoring on the Island of Kyushu, in the wake of a 6.4 Earthquake. Kyushu is a highly volcanic region which includes a the Aira Caldera and Mount Aso, VEI-7 volcanoes. The last major VEI-7 eruption, the eruption of Mount Tambora, is associated with the year without a Summer, a period of widespread famine and crop failure which occurred in 1816.
Japan earthquake: thousands flee fearing volcanoes and aftershocks
At least 44,000 people evacuated following 6.4-magnitude quake that killed at least nine.
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from earthquake-hit southern Japan as dozens of aftershocks struck and officials monitored nearby volcanoes for signs of activity.
A total of 44,000 people were evacuated late on Thursday in the town of Mashiki after a magnitude-6.4 earthquake collapsed buildings and damaged other infrastructure. Nine people have been confirmed dead, ranging in age from 29 to 94. A further eight are in serious condition, and more than 850 were injured.
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has warned there are likely to be strong aftershocks for the next week and advised people to stay away from any buildings that look unstable.
There are also concerns about volcanic activity in the wake of the quake. The island of Kyushu, where the earthquake happened, is a highly volcanic area. A level 2 warning – meaning people should not approach a volcano’s crater – has been in place for Asosan in Kumamoto prefecture on the island since November 2015.
If, and this is a big if, this situation develops into a Tambora scale explosive eruption, the results could be devastating, both for Japan, and potentially for the entire Northern Hemisphere. Modern transportation may mitigate some of the effects, by allowing food from the Southern Hemisphere to be supplied to regions experiencing crop failures. But the resulting spike in food prices would be likely to cause severe hardship for the world’s poor.
Meanwhile our politicians pointlessly fritter away their time and our money, conducting climate witch hunts, and plotting to bankrupt affordable energy suppliers.
Update (EW): Added information about Mount Aso / Asosan
Publication bias by GreenDream media: It’s two hundred years anniversary of the Tambora eruption but is hardly mentioned, because it goes against the CAGW narrative to admit that natural things change the climate Greatly
Rome fiddled while Neo Feudalled.
Or something.
Rome fiddled while Aira fumed?
Would have liked to reply to your post below, but I could not. So I will post it here. I could not see Robertvd’s video (work restrictions), so I guess I am missing something. Nevertheless, am I a bigot because I do not believe in a supernatural being? What does that say about somebody’s scientific mind who believes in something for which there is no evidence but is taken on FAITH? Is that not the definition of religion? How is man-made climate change any different? It is simply taken on FAITH, as there is no concrete evidence that man has any impact on the climate. I have no problem in reality with you believing in a god. I do not think you are a bigot because we don’t agree. I have no desire, nor ability for that matter, to change your mind. You have free will and can choose to believe in what you want. But somebody who does not believe in a god does not need be vilified either. Again, not sure what the video was, so….grain of salt and apologies if I missed some point.
Mike,
It is not clear to me that ‘faith’ is a definitive element of religion; any religion. May be of some, but accepting anything, without proof (whatever that means) does not imply something religious.
G
“””””….. Tom O
April 15, 2016 at 11:43 am …..”””””
What you are asserting below is NOT ‘atheism’.
” Anti-theism ” would be more correct.
‘True’ and ‘false’ are not always the only choice. And atheism is not a religious belief; it simply is no belief; which is NOT a belief in nothing.
G
Well, Mike, it seems you did miss something – like the title of the video: “Religion Is A Mental Illness”.
As for “no evidence” for a supernatural being, it seems to me there is a spiritual analogue to color blindness. Yet, to their credit, color blind people accept the fact that the colors they can’t see really are there.
Perhaps you’ve heard this before, but you might take a piece of paper and draw as big a circle on it as you can. That circle represents All That is Knowable. Next, please draw another circle inside the first circle, representing the portion of All That is Knowable that you personally know. I can tell you confidently that you can write the word “God” inside the big circle, but outside of your circle.
And yet, the number of deaths caused by the fact that current global average temperatures may be as much as 1 degree warmer than those in the depths of the little ice age = none.
Or perhaps we could claim a huge negative figure, since warmth is beneficial to life.
And if it happens to be another whole degree warmer by the end of this century, then we may expect similarly non-dramatic results.
Meanwhile one trillion dollars each year are misallocated in the truly insane effort to solve a non-problem and to prevent a slight warming that may or may not occur. And to manipulate a climate system that shows absolutely no indication that it is vaguely responsive to our imbecilic gestures.
“It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing”.
Whilst genuine issues of endangerment through natural disasters, human health crises and widespread environmental degradation are pushed to one side, underfunded and neglected.
Well, at least the polar bears are enjoying all the attention!!
We all know that climate never has been the problem but that it just is one of the many tools to take our money and our freedom away. But like I said it’s just one of the many tools. Fear is the best way to control a population.
https://youtu.be/mJM5mipwebw
Oh look, an anti-religion bigot. Great way to start the day! I mean, everybody knows everything came from nothing for no reason whatsoever, right? And then some of the random stuff that came from nothing for no reason started organizing – again, for no reason whatsoever and with no purpose in mind – until we ended up with, well, everything we see today – hundreds of billions of life forms, made up of quadrillions of living cells, teeming with biological nanomachines humming along with the illusion of purpose and design. It’s not really there, of course, it’s just the equivalent of seeing bunnies in the clouds.
I gotta go for now though, because I’m busy: I cut out the smallest ad in this morning’s classified section. I’m going to take it to the copier and make copies of copies of copies of copies, until I have a novel.
I agree, the anti-religion bigots get tiring.
After all, everybody knows that all religions are exactly alike. There is no difference between any of them.
it all boils down to the old, anyone who doesn’t agree with me is evil and stupid.
It is irrelevant as to whether you believe in “God.” There is no more stringent “religion” than atheism. To be an atheist, you have to remove yourself from all things that might tend to be considered “spiritual,” and to do so requires a “religious” effort to be totally removed. Realize that if you mention God, you are, in effect, lending credence to the probably of His existence. The fact that you tell me you don’t believe in a supernatural being says that you are, in fact, saying it might exist, and I would suggest that the world bigot isn’t totally inappropriate, though I personally would not use that to describe a “faux atheist.” Remember, to be an atheist, you have to take “on faith” the fact that there are no such things as gods. And since you are doing it “on faith,” you, too, are practicing religion.
Religion and ideology are the same. They are just human ideas.
That’s the second time in as many days I’ve heard the “one trillion dollars a year” figure. I don’t necessarily dispute that, but just where does that figure come from?
Tom Google can be your friend and not too hard to use.
“The $1.5 trillion global ‘climate change industry’ grew at between 17 and 24 percent annually from 2005-2008, slowing to between 4 and 6 percent following the recession with the exception of 2011’s inexplicable 15 percent growth, according to Climate Change Business Journal,” he writes.
“The San Diego, Calif.-based publication includes within that industry nine segments and 38 sub-segments. This encompasses sectors like renewables, green building and hybrid vehicles.
And the talkers, creatives and handlers too.
“That also includes the climate change consulting market, which a recent report by the journal estimates at $1.9 billion worldwide and $890 million in the U.S.,” Mr. Jergler says.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/11/climate-change-industry-now-15-trillion-global-bus/
couple of minutes to find and write. You lazy much, or just disinterested.
DDMore – It is fine that you know what to look for. Yes, we have been in the information age for quite some time, but all people have not bothered or had a reason, for that matter, to learn how to do research. If they did, there still wouldn’t be any one that believes in CAGW. It’s nice you know how to do something that quite possibly TomB doesn’t. Too bad you couldn’t have been merely helpful instead of having to resort to putting him down. By doing so, it doesn’t elevate you, but certainly dropped my opinion of you with your closing comment. By the way, take a little time off and learn to write grammatical English as well, or “are you lazy much, or just disinterested?”
The reason why sites like this one fail to modify thinking is because AGW is totally a political issue. It’s all about controlling energy and the transfer of wealth from producing entities to non-producing populations.
When you argue science your narrative is a non-starter. You need a Churchill on your (my) side not Einstein.
Actually, very few people go to sites that exist to change their minds, they prefer to go to sites that will reinforce their beliefs. As a race, we are no longer taught to be “open minded.” I saw a statement made by a professor once that said something like “it is my job to teach my students to use their minds, not merely fill them full of facts.” That is no longer the case. Students now go to school to have their minds filled with facts, not to learn to use their minds as a problem solving device.” When you go to argue something like science, you need an open mind, not a politician. All politicians, and Churchill in particular, are/were dedicated to an agenda, and nothing, including the truth, can stand in the way of completing the agenda. The real question when it comes to AGW is what, exactly, is the true agenda? I have my beliefs, but it is not impossible that my beliefs are wrong, though I suggest the odds favor my being correct.
CAGW is the new Marxism newspeak.
If this does erupt I foresee the warmista using it as the perfect excuse for cooling/hiding the CO2 AGW warming? I.e prolonging the scam..
Unfortunately everything one reads in the Guardian must be taken with a pinch of salt.
I am finding that true in many other news sites also.
With the Guardian more like a large shovel full of salt.
Are you sure that was salt on that shovel?
The Guardian is better than many mainstream media outlets for quality of facts. Unfortunately, I can’t bear to read it any more since they took up the Climate Change issue, and they push it at every opportunity.
I predict that if there is a major volcanic event, they will manage to find a way to blame CO2 emissions for it. That’s how corrupted they have become on this issue.
BTW – WUWT is getting very balky these days – yesterday it wouldn’t work on Chrome, today it won’t work on Internet Explorer but is fine on Chrome, last week it was sticky on Firefox. I wonder if some climate activist is h@cking it in some way as yet unidentified?
I haven’t had any trouble and I’m in daily. I use Chrome. I also use AdBlock and that speeded things up for me considerably, it used to be slow and long threads would often “jam”. Maybe AdBlock would help?
WUWT often works very badly for me. Sometimes it depends on location. I’m currently at a popular location, that has a lousy router, and a great many users all day long. I usually have no problems at home. No other web site besides WUWT gives me as much grief, but the Nikon web site is often molasses slow.
Could relate to total content. But I keep getting notices of a bad certificate of some sort for WUWT, but never for anywhere else. I’m using M$ Internet Explorer.
G
I always run an adblocker for almost all sites. Several weeks ago, I unblocked WUWT from the adblocker. I have a habit of loading multiple posts from WUWT on my browser, and then I shut down my internet connection while I read the posts and comments. After unblocking WUWT, when I shut down my internet connection my cpu immediately spiked up over 50%. I tried this several times, and had the same result. So I put WUWT back on ad block. That ended the cpu overrun.
This is off topic, but perhaps someone will pick it up as a lead article.
this morning the Guardian have published an attack on Tory, London Mayor candidate Zac Goldsmith – in which they suggest that he attempted to use his ministerial influence to criticize solar subsidy cuts whilst not declaring family financial interest.
A fascinating case of ideological schizophrenia for the Guardian. They never before were willing to accept that green grants were manufactured to serve the interests of the rich. But now they need to attack anti-E.U. Goldsmith and so all of a sudden corporate cronyism in the green industry is on the table.
It’s strikingly odd that the Guardian has missed almost an entire decade of such stories involving hundreds of billions of wealth transfer to the super-rich with links to government.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/15/zac-goldsmith-did-not-declare-family-interest-in-green-grant-cuts
There have been a lot of scandals alleging green conflict of interest in British politics, James Delingpole’s pieces on the subject are well worth a read.
Seems to be alot of “if and maybe” in the article. Kind of taking a leaf out of the alarmist playbook. Is this a parody? Even in earthquake and volcano prone areas the two are not always related. Not even usually related. Most of the active fault lines do not have active volcanos on them.
There’s no doubt a VEI-7 eruption will happen again, probably in the next few centuries. A big earthquake near some big volcanoes is cause for concern.
“The next few centuries?” If you’re talking Tambora scale explosions, then I deem that alarmist. Some estimates say it was the largest eruption in 10,000 years, IIRC. If you’re talking about any VEI-7 eruption, a Wiki page suggests the frequency is ≥ 1,000 years, though their examples list three in the last 1,000: Mazama (c. 5600 BC), Thera (c. 1620 BC), Taupo (180), Baekdu (1000), Samalas (Mount Rinjani) (1257), Tambora (1815)
It could happen next week, it could happen next millennium. It probably won’t happen in the next few centuries.
Note also that when the eruption occurs is vitally important. The Indonesian volcanoes release a lot of SO2 which leads to the stratospheric aerosol that take a year or two to clear. I don’t know much about Japanese volcanoes, it may be a ordinary VEI-7 from there will have less impact than the VEI-6 Pinatubo did, an we survived that pretty well. Annoyed the astronomers though….
That Taupo eruption in 180 sure played havoc with the rainbow trout fishing for a couple of days.
g
Some interesting trivia:
When I was looking into the Tambora eruption I discovered that there was a similar layer of ash in the ice-core records, only around five years earlier. As far as I know, the location of this other eruption has never been discovered.
In any case, Tambora was a double whammy. This encourages those who suggest big eruptions occur in clusters, perhaps due to some solar influence. I myself have no answers, but enjoy sitting back and watching, as long as it is far away, and doesn’t make New Hampshire any colder than it already is.
Tambora seemingly caused such a loopy jet stream that a huge discharge of arctic sea-ice occurred. This was great for whalers, as there was much less sea-ice left to the north, but it filled the Atlantic with so much ice that bergs were grounding on the shores of Ireland. This may explain how chilly it got over Europe, and “the year with no summer.”
Lots of good comments and links in this old WTWT post:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/1815-1816-and-1817-a-polar-puzzle/
Indeed it is somewhat alarmist. Earthquakes in Japan are frequent. It seems the last massive eruption of Aira was 22000 years ago, and of Aso 90,000 years ago.
No more frequent that any other zone prone to quakes. Now try to comment on volcanic eruptions. And try not to confuse the tow.
Yeah. The volcano bit is way over-hyped. There is no indication of anything remotely close to a Tambora-scale eruption.
The people that live there are monitoring the volcanoes. Shall we from our locales advise Japanese officials to stop wasting their time? Seismicity in places made out of volcanoes is a good reason for concern and vigilance.
No one suggested not monitoring volcanic activity. Aso is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. There just isn’t one scintilla of evidence that a Toba-scale eruption is any more likely now than it has been at any other point in the past 90,000 years.
http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/aso.html
Of course not. Any eruption there will have human impact. I’d tell them to worry about the smaller eruptions until there’s some real indication that a VEI-7 is a possibility. They’d probably look at me and think “Stupid Yankee, of course that’s what we’re doing.”
Hmmm…perhaps not?
https://www.rt.com/news/339788-japan-volcano-eruption-quakes/
Since this article, it turns out that this was only a foreshock for a 7+ quake and according the the USGS it is a comparatively shallow one. Anyone care to revise their thinking about the sensibleness of monitoring the volcanoes on this island that is made out of volcanoes?
And didn’t Willis pretty much quash the Tambora=Year Without a Summer meme?
‘A powerful magnitude-6.5 earthquake has hit Japan’s south-western island of Kyushu, collapsing homes, sparking fires, leaving at least nine people dead and injuring hundreds, government officials say, as the scramble continues to rescue people feared trapped in the rubble.’
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-15/strong-earthquake-hits-kyushu-japan-leaving-nine-dead/7328284
Some years ago now when I lived in Wellington, New Zealand there was an earthquake swarm. Lots of sub magnitude 3 quakes, dozens if memory serves (Not unusual for Wellington in fact). In debate with someone who’s name I forget, claimed that the swam was as a direct result of A-CO2 driven climate change. I kid you not!
And another “debate” I was told methane had 4 carbons. Stupidity is endemic in humans! I am not worried about climate change. But I laugh at those who “believe” it seem so reliant on their smart phone dial-a-pizza apps that they would not know how to pick fruit from a tree…and there are people who have no idea where fruit comes from (An online order from their smart phones).
They even ask where Kangaroo tail soup and Oxtail soup come from.
The app? I know people who simply do not understand where steak comes from. I say a cow. You should see their faces.
Patrick MJD,
Mountain oysters don’t come from cows! 🙂
“Stupidity is endemic in humans!”
Not meaning to be picky, I see that differently. Maybe ignorance is a better word. Stupid, I am told, means unable to learn. We/most can learn but too many are too busy to do so!
Well methane does have four carbons, but only with an extremely small amount of methane.
g
I’m sorry to confirm…
I have a Tengelo Tree (think “almost an orange with flavor of tangerine”) over the main sidewalk into the fron door. Wife had to duck a bit (and complained about it) to avoid having head hit by ripe Tangelo…
Was brining home bag of oranges from the store…
No, no smiley. Not a joke. Dead flat honest truth…. Took all I had to not erupt…
For grins, ask someone how water gets to their faucette… or what holds the stop sign in the ground (and how stop lights gets lit up…) Have Scotch or Gin on hand. Copius quantities…
“Phil R April 15, 2016 at 6:54 am”
The daughter of a friend of mine has a medical implant derived from a cow. Her mother is Hindu Indian.
Thought I would post this Wheat Exports chart, sorry Eric the Southern Hemisphere doesn’t have a hope in hell of supplying the worlds demand for wheat let alone any other grain. Alot of deaths due to hunger I’m afraid. for http://www.agweb.com/blog/minneapolis_grain_exchange_research/look_to_the_southern_hemisphere/
The Year Without a Summer didn’t stop all food production in the NH, but it put a big dent in them. I’m hopeful that a combination of modern technology (e.g. lots of heaters to prevent unseasonal frost) could produce a better outcome than 1816, with any remaining gaps filled by shipments from the SH. But who knows – every event is different.
The reason that the Year Without a Summer put a big dent in food production in North America is simply because …. in 1816 the southern latitudes across the US, from Virginia to Oregon, were sparsely populated and very little to zilch “food production” was occurring in said latitudes.
“e.g. lots of heaters to prevent unseasonal frost”
Or turn Iowa into a big greenhouse. People in Winooski Vermont considered building a dome (with HUD money) over their town.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TVOH9Y4bLbs/VIL_Skd4OXI/AAAAAAACO10/UoQJYLsPzCM/s1600/under_giant_dome_01.jpg
If the timing is like Tambora, then there’s some time to prepare. E.g. we could have eaten down the animal herds between 1815 and early 1816 so we wouldn’t need to grow food for as many, we could move planting zones southwards, e.g. instead of corn, plant wheat in the northern extent.
One concern is that US policy has led to lower grain reserves, something that probably won’t change until the are shortages.
Eric – If you re hoping that Australia is going to be able to grow huge amounts of the worlds crops in a worse case senairo, think again. Our powers that be have decided that some of our most fertile growing areas have fabulous quanities of coal under the ground, and have all but signed these area over to the Chinese and Indian mining companies, saying there will be work for thousands of australians in these mines. hahahaha. not with robotic mining technology. Also we have history of being able to water the outback by diverting rivers in the far north, this would have saved the Gt Barrier Reef from all the bleaching, called the Bradford Scheme, never has come to fruition, which has been one of the worst mistakes some of the pundits believe australian govts have made. Sorry Eric, maybe playing the devils advocate here in Australia.
What i forget is throw in the drought queensland has experienced in the last 4 years.
Heaters? Is that missing a sarc tag? 100% of the energy humans produce today goes into the environment and doesn’t move the needle. Where exactly are we to find energy and equipment to heat a couple million square miles?
Scaling up production if demand is high is not an impossible task.
Many S.H. Countries have vast areas that are simply uneconomic to farm currently.
I is just a matter of the cost/benefit.
@Lyn:
THE big Savior here is just that we feed most grains (corn, soy, etc.) to cows, chickens and pigs; and increasingly cars… There is something called “feed conversion ratio”. It is how many lbs (or kg) of DRY feed you put into an animal to get one (WET!) pound (or kg) of flesh to eat. That wet / dry matters, as an animal is about 75%+ water, so while you can live on one DRY pound a day of grains and beans, you would need about 4 lbs / day of animals…
So now consider a horrid EOTWAWKI (End Of The World As We Know It) event. First off, we eat the animals… then we swap over to eating the grain we fed to them. (This was commonly understood in the 1800s and before, now not so much…)
What’s the feed conversion ratio? Well, it varies by species. Some farmed fish is about 1:1 (remember, dry to wet, so no magic in that… it’s still about 4:1 if you did “dry : dry”…)
But for chickens and pigs, it is closer ot 3:1 (or about a 12:1 dry to dry basis…)
Now for that nice juicy 1 lb beef steak or pot roast, it’s a 10:1 ratio (or 40:1 dry : dry).
For the Buick? Well, not so much as it’s hard to eat a short block V-8… but at 10% BY LAW in the USA, and about 10 gallons a week, call it a gallon of ethanol / week. That’s a LOT of grain. (a huge part of the USA Corn crop…).
The “bottom line” is that there’s LOTS of food available once we start eating corn bread and soy cakes and rye gruel… and there’s no reason anyone needs to starve. Well, other than the cows and pigs and chickens… but they will be served first… and the Buick will need to put up with Real Gasoline again 😉
That’s the good news…
The bad news is that The Government et.al. will be WAY too clueless to figure this out for at least a year, so you really really need to make it through that first year on your own… The Mormons have a great deal of wisdom on emergencies and food storage systems, having lived through a few of them… “On year of food and guns to defend it” was the mantra in my old Mormon Home Town. ( I wasn’t one, but that didn’t stop me from learning where wisdom was available…)
One Dry Pound per person per day is 365 lbs / person-year. That’s 7 to 8 x 50 lbs gunny sacks of grain or beans or both. Very very few people are ready for that. Not even me.
Oh, and the USA along with most of the rest of the world long ago gave up on the Biblical “7 years of grain” in storage. Now it is all “Just In Time” inventory globally. There just ISN’T any grain storage. It is “in flight” somewhere…
So my advice:
1) Learn how to cook vegetarian, even as you eat beef steak today. (You WANT those cows around and their feed supplies when the SHTF moment comes…)
2) Have a food storage system, even if only a few months worth. Better to be 6 mos in with most folks long gone and wondering “What next” than be gone in 2 weeks…
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/food-storage-systems/
3) Don’t ever EVER expect the Government to have clue or fix it. DO expect them to try to take your stuff and kill you if you resist. (No, no attitude on my part. Only simple observation of historical facts.) So keep a low profile and help your neighbors, but don’t advertize it.
4) Try not to live in an “Urban Area”. I know that’s impossible for most folks, but the reality is that a suburban lot can grow a LOT of food (even in cold times) in an emergency. Urban core areas collapse and rural areas survive in cold bad times. (Dad and family came through The Great Depression in a rural Iowa farm area and had it much better than Mom in an urban UK area… Dad didn’t have money, but had food… Mum didn’t have food or money…)
5) You ARE on your own. Those who are not self-reliant will die. Those who will do best are the self-reliant who form coalitions and neighborhood groups. Take care of all you can, but do not expect others to care for you.
Sound Skitzo? Sure it is! Reality is like that. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
With any luck, nothing at all will happen. IF it is a SHTF moment, with some luck we just have a lot of “soy loaf and corn bread again tonight?” for a couple of years. IFF the “one in a thousand years” happens, well, you cope, you express your humanity and save as many as you can, and you thank God you prepared…
FWIW, I expect nearly nothing to happen at least for the next decade. About 2030 the odds become higher for a major volcanic / tectonic event as the globe cools and as we get well into the Solar Minimum. (Historical data suggest that volcanic events are maximum on entry to solar minimum. No, no idea why. It’s just what the data say…and could be a statistical fluke. But I don’t like to bet against the house…)
IFF something big happens related to quakes in Japan, I expect it to be reciprocal 9 on the Cascadia for that one they had in Japan a few years back…
The simple fact is that Great Quakes in Japan DO correspond to great eruptions
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/1707-hoei-49-days-fuji/
and to great quakes on the Cascadia system (link in that above link). And that Japan has had a Great Quake a while ago, and now some more strong ones…
That other places have similar odd connections, and that those kind of events seem more frequent during times of solar minima
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/1866-odd-coincidence/
What do I expect? Nothing for at least a decade.
What do I prepare for? What has happened before, even if 400 years ago and I was not there.
Prudent preparation for what has happened before is NOT fear. Fear is what comes to the ill prepared…
E.M. Smith,
I just heard a radio program while driving today. They were discussing the local “NextDoor” email scheme that’s been appearing in towns everywhere, ostensibly to help neighbors to help each other.
The guy had chapter and verse of documentation, saying ‘NextDoor’ is a Mossad/CIA front that is collecting a database of citizens; which ones hate the gov’t, who has guns, etc.
At first, I was extremely skeptical. But the guy was very convincing. He listed lots of websites, which I don’t recall now. But I was reminded of that when you pointed out that governments will do that sort of thing routinely. (“DO expect them to try to take your stuff and kill you if you resist.”)
So don’t advertise yourself. Personally, I’m not on social media. Anyone who thinks the government is acting in its citizens’ best interest is terminally naive and credulous… IMHO. The government is acting in the government’s best interest.
And now even my very mainstream financial adviser (Morgan Stanley) says to keep some cash, plus gold and/or silver coins on hand. That sounds like good advice, in addition to having some food available. Tradeable goods like cigarettes (I don’t smoke) or liquor might be prudent, too.
Thanks, I was hoping someone (like you!) would fill in that gap.
I hope whoever thought that extending “Just in Time” to grain supplies lives long enough to realize what the unforeseen (but foreseeable) consequences can be. If we’re lucky, we won’t see the consequences.
Volcanoes and water are a deadly combination. It makes Yellowstone a bigger threat than without its lake.
A healthy decision with Yellowstone would be to pump the water out of the lake. Of course with and volcanic island that’s impossible.
Not so sure about that as the missing weight of the water might make an eruption more likely?
The problem with the water is that it boils, and with various scenarios, can boil explosively. Yellowstone is a good place to study small steam explosions, they happen several times per century and generally don’t injure visitors.
See http://volcano.si.edu/learn_galleries.cfm?p=10 for a bit more info of smallish eruptions.
Althought large volcanic eruptions are pretty dangerous in local and regional (continental?) scale, it seems that the influence of the volcanic ash on climate is a bit exaggerated – see the nice analysis by Willis: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/15/missing-the-missing-summer/.
I’ve read Willis’ analysis. There seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence that something bad happened in 1815, agriculture problems made an impression on at least some people – a lot of bad things were recorded as happening in that one year. I guess we’ll find out for sure next time there’s a VEI-7 eruption.
Eric it just so happens that Tambora went up in the middle of a Gleissberg cycle, which makes it hard to pinpoint the actual cause of the cooling, but I’m guessing a combination of both may have depressed agricultural production.
There was also the Napoleonic Wars in which most of Europe and Russia was involved and lots of crop land and farms were burned. When the wars ended in 1815, the boundaries of most countries were re-drawn and empires collapsed.
It is not a surprise that agricultural production fell and prices sky-rocketed. In the history of wheat and grain prices, war is the biggest factor in supply deficiencies and price jumps.
Adding more evidence that it was a Gleissberg, reading through the UK agricultural records it appears snow fell heavily in January 1814 and laid on the ground for five weeks.
‘Drifts were 15 feet high in places, and the snow is said to be the deepest for forty years. A Frost Fair was held on the frozen Thames from February 1st to 4th. A sudden thaw in mid-February was followed by severe floods.’
This was the year before Tambora.
Further to Bill’s comment, at the end of the Napoleonic War ‘food prices tumbled and farmers gave up their leases, and an agricultural depression began.’
Eric may take some comfort, in 1816 the UK saw ‘one of the most disastrous harvests known.’ The weather was all over the place, but it was generally cold and wet all year with ‘much distress and food riots.’
The quotes come from J M Stratton’s Agricultural Records AD 220-1977
My sense is that as with all such tales, stories of the “Year Without A Summer” have grown in the telling until they would be unrecognizable to someone who lived through the period …
w.
Going back a little earlier the Thames froze solid in the winter of 1788-89 and not a Gleissberg in sight.
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl4.html
Eric you maybe aware that the Bathurst district of NSW rarely gets snow these days, but in August 1815 the whole country was snow covered. According to Rowland Hassall, the superintendent of government stock, ‘it was like a winter’s day in the month of January in England.’
The solar and the volcanic come together. No, I do not know why. It is just what is seen in the history.
So it was cold, and a volcano happened, and the sun was quiet, and crops failed. It would all just be some grand randomness but for it happening that way a few times… (See the fall of Akkad and the First Intermediate Period and several more in history…)
I can’t explain it, but I can observe it.
People seem to have forgotten on this thread that in the little ice age, it was simply colder. Yeah maybe a volcano or two had some effect for a year or two but that wouldn’t be enough for the many years it took for Swiss glaciers to come down into the main valleys and crush villages hundreds of years old or probably not enough for the many years that the sea froze along the east coast of USA (Bosphorus, Thames, etc.). Did you know that Washington’s troops stole into occupied Manhattan to a warehouse where US cannons were stored and spirited them away by rolling them over sea ice to N.Jersey? That was 40 years before the volcano everyone is talking about. Remember the volcano story was cooked by the TEAM to marginalize natural variability.
Mt Lassen last erupted in 1914/17. That was towards the end of a Gleisberg cycle. The JG/U 2K tree ring study shows a steep downward temp trend lasting around 30 years, with the 1914 eruption coming towards the end years of that cold trend. Perhaps, if the volcano had gone off earlier in the Gleisberg cycle, then that cold trend may have lasted longer, and/or gone deeper in extent. That would allow for a lot of variability during Grand Minima events, and during Gleisberg events.
It is interesting but unfortunately temperature records are not a valid measurement for what amount of photosynthesis took place in the NH. One might assume the distribution of aerosols was not even.
Hard one to work out due to lack of data, though as seen some evidence suggests not everywhere was cold, wind patters of that time would be essential to reconstruct where the ash went and in what amounts I would think.
It’s not the cold, it’s the expectations…
I can grow Barley in Alaska or Oats in ground at 33 F (it germinates just above freezing) and Siberian Kale under snow; but IFF I’ve had 70F soil temps in April for the last 30 years, odds are I have Soy and Corn seeds in the planter, not barley, kale and oats.
THAT is the problem. Not cold. Not temperature. Heck, not even rainfall (Tepary Beans grow in the Desert Southwest of the USA as do some kinds of Buckwheat…) It is matching the PLANTING to what will come. THAT is the art of farming. Seeing the future clearly enough to match plant to what will be.
That we had strong wobbles from warm / dry to cold / wet and back in “1800 and froze to death” was in some ways worse than the cold. Farmers sheared their sheep, then it got cold again and the sheep died. Had they expected cold, they could have held off the shearing and the sheep would have lived.
The mean acidity of the ice core from Crête, Central Greenland, for the layer dating to 1816, one year after Tambora’s eruption, has been found by Hammer, Clausen and Dansgaard (1980) to be nearly three times greater than that of the layer dating to 1884, one year after Krakatau’s eruption. Despite the aforementioned fact, air-temperature data of the Baltic meteorological stations that took observations both in the 1810s and the 1880s (Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Trondheim, and Uppsala), do not show that the coldness of 1816 relative to 1814 was any greater than that of 1884 relative to 1882. Moreover, the year 1812 was much colder than 1816 when the two are compared with 1814 at all Baltic stations, although no known important eruption took place shortly before 1812. It seems plausible that the plumes reaching the Baltic Region following the two eruptions were too ‘thin’ to have produced any appreciable effect on air temperatures.
An examination of data available on grain harvests in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden does not indicate that either in 1816 or 1817 there was any note-worthy crop failure. In contrast, the year 1812 (a cold year) was marked by short-fall of the harvest, in consequence of which in 1813 there was a partial famine in Norway, partly because of war conditions (blockade by the British Navy) it was hard to get supplies from abroad.
Mortality data are also available for the above four countries. Mortality was relatively high in 1812 and/or 1813, but not in 1816–17.
No harvest or mortality data are available for Russia. Lists of famines in Russia show none in 1816. In 1817 there was a price rise in a limited area of the Empire.
All-in-all, the Baltic Region had not suffered from Tambora’s eruption unlike the lower mid-latitudes of Western and Central Europe. It is suggested that the Region, as well as the south of European Russia, were spared as they were crossed by air masses whose stratosphere had become depopulated of small volcanic particles, while the troposphere became cleansed of particles through washout by rain previously.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00149002
As I said, depending on how aerosols were dispersed, some regions did not experience the cold, though those that did might have because of natural variability, as 1812 was a cold one due to natural variability.
See GRL26543 November 2009.
In times of “loopy jet stream” (meridional flow) some areas get warmer, some colder, as compared to zonal flow. Worse, as the dips wobble E/W the warm/cold swaps.
So that one area was warm and not having issues does not say that another nearby area was not cold and having crop failures. I’d assert it means exactly the opposite. IF one spot is doing well, each side ought to be cold and doing poorly during times of meridional flow. As happens when the sun goes quiet.
“So that one area was warm and not having issues does not say that another nearby area was not cold and having crop failures. I’d assert it means exactly the opposite. IF one spot is doing well, each side ought to be cold and doing poorly during times of meridional flow. As happens when the sun goes quiet”
Another illustration of why averaging temperatures from disparate locations is physcially meaningless.
Did you come across any information about the “mystery” super-eruption of 1810, in those ice-core records?
Technically the Sakurajima volcano is listed as a stratovolcano.
However the space shuttle picture of the volcano sure looks like it is surrounded by a caldera.
http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/north_asia/Sakura.jpg
Sakurajima is a very active volcano.
http://www.photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Sakurajima/JAP09_0795.jpg
http://www.photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Sakurajima/JAP09_0977.jpg
http://www.photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Sakurajima/Jap2013_011.JPG
http://www.photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Sakurajima/Jap2013_367.JPG
Impressive, yes!
Entertaining, no!
Located very close by on Kyushu is Mount Aso; a true VEI-7+ volcano situated in the Aso Caldera. A very active volcano with quite a few active neighbor volcanoes.
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/80000/80027/ISS033-E-022852_lrg.jpg
Let us hope for the best and a quiet continual life for Japan and Kyushu!
I am useless when it comes to winds and such, if this pops, where would the aerosols likely go?
They will probably start a new campaign on something else. Oh, I see you said aerosols! My mistake.
That was funny !
🙂
Is “east” the kind of answer you we’re looking for?
If Britain votes Brexit . The volcano will go ballistic without doubt .
Some people think that only mankind can change the climate.
Tambora’s problem was that pressure had built up.
Sakurajima, located in the Aira Caldera, had a biggish pressure release in 1914. The Aira Caldera itself had an eruption in 2014 which still continues. Mount Aso started erupting in September 2015 and continues to do so. As far as I can tell, there is plenty of pressure relief.
As far as I can tell, the conditions for a huge eruption aren’t there but I am not a geologist. Does anyone know if there is any reason to think there is a pressure build up in the volcanos in Kyushu? Does it matter or not?
Quiet Sun = increased volcanic activity .. fact or fiction??
I think that we will find out in the years to come.
I have been thinking this for years. I have to deal with the problems of thermal expansion at work. This is on a tiny scale in comparison to the circumference of the earth. How much the planet expands and contracts on its circumference with small changes in temperature must be relevant. Heat the Earth and fault line expand…no a big deal. Cool the Earth and the same fault lines have to compact…and therefore compress the Earths core. Something has to give.
Would like to know if there is any data on climate/volcanic activity….with climatic cooling preceding volcanic activity.
VEI-7 level volcanic eruptions are rare. There have been only two such eruptions in the last 2,000 years and Tambora in 1815 was the last one, 200 years ago. Chances are that a VEI-7 volcanic event will not happen for another 1,000 years.
Well, the Mt. St. Helens eruption rates as a VEI-5 event, but it sure messed up a large part of the countryside (hundreds of square miles of wasteland), and we were very fortunate that few people were in the vicinity. I flew over the scene in a light plane some time afterward and the scene of devastation was sobering. It was said to be comparable to a 24 MT nuclear surface detonation and I have no reason to dispute the claim. (The meteor impact forming Barringer Crater in Arizona, which I have also seen, is thought to be equivalent to a 10 MT detonation.) Mt. Rainier was eruptive through the 19th century, so we have even more impressive possibilities to consider!
Any such statement (of duration to next VEI-7 event) is a blind faith.
The globe is covered in caldera and craters and cones of untold sorts. We have no idea at all when they will erupt again. Yellowstone could go tomorrow. It dumped FEET of ash on the USA clear over into Nebraska when extinct animals lived there, not us… It could happen now. It could happen in 100,000 years. It might never happen again. ANY expectation as to “when” is mostly fantasy.
Mammoth Mountain (“Lakes”) could go again. Or it might be that our speculation that the magma has too much crystalline stuff in it to erupt could have some merit. Or not. The volcanoes under the Salton Sea might decide to “do something”, or not. The same forces that made Vesuvius erupt might do it again, or it might be headed to dormancy. 9000 years ago a volcanic process happened on the California Arizona border, it could come again, or not. In 1914 or so Mount Lassen erupted (though smaller than prior eruptions…) and something like 5000? years ago Mount Shasta spouted a new cinder cone (next to I-5 as you drive north…) and could do so tomorrow, or never again.
Heck, near my old home town we have the Sutter Buttes. 6 Million years ago, an active volcano 6000 feet tall, now a dead rock of 2000 feet eroding away. Nothing to ever happen again? Yes!… until the compressive forces holding the faulting system closed slack off just a bit and a new 6000 foot volcano pops up there, rather like one recently did in Mexico… (recent being dozens of years…)
The most basic thing to realize about volcanic areas is: YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHEN.
We do have some statistics about the past; but don’t know if they apply to the future. Volcanoes that are extinct stay that way, until they erupt again… Regular eruptions continue, until they stop.
So please, spare me the all knowing odds. There are way too many “cycles inside cycles” of 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s. etc etc. to ever have a hope of saying how long to the next “big one” will be. I live in quake country, grew up 60 miles from an active volcano, studied geology and quakes, and am presently about 30 miles from a “7 ish” fault (and the same from a 6.x one the other way) and an “extinct” volcano is about 60 miles away. This stuff matters to me rather a lot. After about 50 years of watching it all Very Very Closely, THE number one thing I can say with certainty is just that “I have no clue when” and neither do you.
Go ahead, roll some dice. You just got a “7”, so does that really mean the next 7 is far away?…
That is the nature of your assertion. Now season with not knowing if you have a 6 sided die, or a 9, or a 12, or if you are rolling 1, 2, 3, or 4 die…
BTW, I’ll be writing a post here that will take another look at The Year without a Summer from New Hampshire’s perspective. I have a really good (for the period) source of temperature data and I know of three farmers’ journals from around the state. So far, what I’ve speculated about seems to be holding up. There are some disconnects with events elsewhere not jibing comfortably with the NH record, I may dig into those more deeply.
I’m targeting publishing on June 1, the start of meteorological summer or June 2x, the start of astronomical summer. The former is much better timing, as that’s when people started getting concerned. At the end of June things were looking a lot better.
Will be looking for this. Thanks.
~~~~~
Here’s your date:
June 20 – June Solstice. The June solstice occurs at 22:34 UTC. The North Pole of the earth will be tilted toward the Sun, which will have reached its northernmost position in the sky and will be directly over the Tropic of Cancer at 23.44 degrees north latitude. This is the first day of summer (summer solstice) in the Northern Hemisphere and the first day of winter (winter solstice) in the Southern Hemisphere.
http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy-calendar-2016.html
I’m wish several above. Linking any volcanic activity with a VEI-7 eruption, without good reason (historical or geological) to do so is alarmism. Can’t we raise the bar?
Agreed! Not worthy of what we are fighting for here.
Quite a bit of significant activity over the last couple weeks.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/
For anyone interested, here are some services including notification services on quakes. Notifications by default start at 6.0.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/
Gaia is annoyed with Trump and the Brexit?:-)
Pardon, I think you mean “Hillary and the EU”…
😉
Just got a notification of a M6.2 off the shore of Guatemala to add to the list (preliminary estimate)
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20005ih9#general
Worry! but at a geologic rate.
+1
++^2
Prior to 1826 in the USA and 1836 in Canada inter-connected railroad lines were unknown, and still visionary at that time. And trucks? What’s a truck? Grain elevators – never heard of that. Is it like an elevator in a mall?
Only corn in the left one, please
Unzen and Aso
Parks ain’t so-so.
=============
Uhm, isn’t this going a little bit too far? I mean, ok, there was an M6 quake 10KM deep and several aftershocks in the area, granted. But isn’t springing immediately to a Tambora scale event a bit much in this case? Do we even know that these quakes were volcanic in origin and not tectonic at this point? And even if it is a precursor to volcanic activity, jumping immediately to an event on the scale of Tambora seems somehow a bridge too far.
The BBC did quite a reasonable radio show on the Year Without a Summer, last week ..they hid it away on Radio 3 here
..And actually they have another science discussion prog about it on Thursday at 9am 1816, the Year Without a Summer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the eruption of Mt Tambora,
Apparently there has just been another, stronger quake, M7.1 in the same regions just now. Also 10km deep.
Ok, enough of this for today. Another quake- M7 – in Japan?
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20005iis#general
Yes, just happened according to CNN.
Not good, pretty much a direct hit on the town of Kumamoto-shi. not town, but city – population 680,000.
Eric, while I appreciate your efforts, the historical record shows that the “year without a summer” is not identifiable in the temperature record by inspection alone. See my post Missing the Missing Summer, take the tests to see if you can spot it in the contemporary records. TLDR version? You can’t do it.
Regards,
w.
What do you mean by “contemporary records?” 19th century records in contemporary archives? Or contemporary eruptions, like Pinatubo?
If there was a super-eruption in 1810, it messes up the records.
The eruption of 1810 was mentioned (as being in the ice-core records) in the comments of this old post. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/1815-1816-and-1817-a-polar-puzzle/
I likely should get off my butt and research it more.
Looking at Google Earth, the quakes appear to be associated with a linear feature trending SW to NE along the SE side of the bay. Don’t know if that means they are associated with Aso or not, but they are definitely not right under it.
I live in Japan and have lived through many large quakes and have seen a few small volcanic eruptions during my travels around the country over the years.
There is irrefutable evidence between large quakes being precursors to large volcanic eruptions; especially if they occur near active volcanoes.
Since the huge Fukushima quake in 2011, Mt. Fuji has experienced some increased volcanic actiivty: magma displacement, small tremors, slight increase in gas emissions, etc., leading one famous Japanese seismologist (Dr. Kimura) to predict an imminent Mt Fuji eruption in 2015….
Dr. Kimura was obviously wrong on the timing, but by how much?…
Mt Fuji is actually a very active volcano that has had 16 eruptions over the past 2800 years, or one every 180 years or so. The last big one was in 1707, so we’ll likely get another one sooner than later.
I’m lucky to live on a beach about 150 Km south east of my Fuji, so I get to see a gorgeous view of Mt Fuji almost every day. During the 1707 Mt. Fuji eruption, my area was covered by about 1 meter of ash, so I’ll have a ring-side seat if Mt. Fuji goes off anytime soon..
Don’t forget the happoshu and popcorn. Sounds like you could sell tickets when it blows. /sark
Seriously, the longer it has been since an eruption, the more crowded the area around the volcano becomes. Same thing holds for major earth quake areas and fault lines. People seem to have very short memories for that sort of thing. They are pretty blase about it until it starts smoking or shaking exponentially on a daily basis. Then they panic.
Well, there is a significant difference between a normal eruptive event at Fuji and a Tambora scale event which would blow about a quarter of the mountain away.
SAMURAI April 15, 2016 at 10:34 am
I’d like a citation to your “irrefutable evidence”, thanks. The reason I don’t think it exists is that if such a strong association existed, it would be used to predict volcanic eruptions.
Instead, eruptions are predicted by something entirely different—swarms of “microquakes” caused by the magma filling the reservoir under the volcano.
In any case, a citation would be great.
Regards,
w.
Willis-san:
Here is a good paper from Japanese seismologist Dr. Kimura (whom I referenced earlier) regarding the link between large earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
https://www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/EPS/pdf/2004/5602/56020179.pdf
Please also review the references at the end of this paper for additional research papers on the subject.
I’m certainly not suggesting that all large quakes are precursors to large eruptions, but there is strong evidence (perhaps “irrefutable” was not the best word choice) that prior to large eruptions, there is increased seismic activity, often including very large earthquakes.
Current research on this subject involves identifying unique characteristics of large earthquakes that occur prior to volcanic eruptions and what critical state the volcanoes are in prior to large earthquakes occurring.
BTW, today, an additional swarm of large earthquakes have occurred in Kyushu around Mt. Aso, following yesterday’s original earthquake. Some gas venting at the base of Mr. Aso has been reported, along with some landslides.
a numbers of large buildings are collapsing, including the exquisite Kumamoto Castle, which is slowly being torn apart by all the quakes… The death toll has increased to 11.
FYI, there are actually 5 separate mountain peaks that make up Mt. Aso, of which, Mt. Naka is the most active with 7 eruptions over the last 70 years.
Cheers, mate!
Thanks, sensei. You say:
and
SAMURAI April 15, 2016 at 11:13 pm
Willis-san:
Actually, the paper says the exact opposite. It claims that large volcanoes are the precursors of large earthquakes … see Table 2. So whatever correlations you have drawn from your misunderstanding of the paper are all incorrect … but of course, that’s only IF the paper is correct. So if you think your conclusions are indeed correct … then the paper is wrong.
Not only that, but Dr. Kimura counts large quakes occurring as much as 11 years!!! after the volcano as being supportive of his theory.
Sorry, amigo. I’ll admit that I haven’t run the numbers … but his claims are simply not believable. For example, he says:
Oh, please, spare me. A correlation coefficient of 0.99 is almost never seen in the earth sciences, nothing in earth science works like that. In fact, he has divided eruption-volcano pairs into “related eruptions” and “unrelated eruptions”, and guess what?
The “related eruptions” are astoundingly well correlated, 0.99. Who knew?
Given the large number of earthquakes around Japan, and given that it is a volcanic island with lots of eruptions, I can see how somebody might think that A is a precursor of B … but he certainly has NOT demonstrated that with his data.
Best regards,
w.
5.3
18km NE of Ozu, Japan
2016-04-15 18:03:12 UTC8.3 km
about 15 km from the center of ASO
Is that the third local quake, or a restatement of earlier estimates?
It shows 5 in the last 30 hrs on the significant quake list for that area.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/#%7B%22feed%22%3A%2230day_sig%22%2C%22search%22%3Anull%2C%22listFormat%22%3A%22default%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C%22basemap%22%3A%22grayscale%22%2C%22autoUpdate%22%3Atrue%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3Atrue%2C%22timeZone%22%3A%22local%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A%5B%5B4.825105964032956%2C-237.84468591213223%5D%2C%5B52.2123993369472%2C-181.59468591213223%5D%5D%2C%22overlays%22%3A%7B%22plates%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22viewModes%22%3A%7B%22map%22%3Atrue%2C%22list%22%3Atrue%2C%22settings%22%3Atrue%2C%22help%22%3Afalse%7D%7D
I hope the link works.
How do the 1815 Tambora and 1980 Mount St. Helens events compare for total ejecta?
If Wikipedia is correct, Tambora ejected about 15 times what St. Helens did.
The Tambora estimate varies widely, as you might expect. In my first 1816 web page, I settled on reporting
Pinatubo was some 2.4 mile³s.
My brother collected ash from St. Helens on his car’s winshield in Colorado. I got moderatedly excited when I saw yellow ash on my windwhield in New Hampshire, but quickly determined that the Pitch Pine pollen season had started and I had no ash.
I have a quart jar full of Mt. St. Helens ash my dad scraped off his car 300 miles downwind in N. Idaho. It’s a very light gray color, almost white. He was right in the middle of the ash plume, and day turned to night.
Hah! You should have been here in Georgia a few weeks ago. Blowing and drifting pollen, with yellow-out conditions.
My thoughts go out to my many friends and associates in Japan.
The Japanese have a large experience base on earthquakes that they can draw from in dealing with these two very recent large earthquakes.
John
Another, more powerful one…
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36059487
A more powerful earthquake has rocked the southern Japanese city of Kumamoto in the middle of the night, after an earlier tremor killed nine people.
The magnitude-7.3 quake at a depth of 10km (6 miles) hit at 01:25 on Saturday (15:25 GMT on Friday), causing some damage but no casualties.
Volcanoes like these are intensively monitored through a number of means e.g. distortion measurements and seismic recording. Unlike earthquakes, volcanoes usually give plenty or warning of a pending eruption. The seismic patterns of the 2 events are different. The belly of a volcano starts to rumble, commonly weeks before. A major earthquake is caused by sudden release of static force. There is usually no prior seismic signal.
In this instance, if the 2 are related the Japanese would know about it
The Japanese have some experience with earthquakes.
http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/earthquake.html
Mac
The dangers of concentrated volcanic activity are clearly proven, yet the authorities pay scant attention to the problem and prefer instead to drone endlessly on about the (non-existent) dangers of Global Warming.If, With luck this will not be another Tambora but wittering away resources on illusions means that there is less money to deal with the real crises. The Southern Hemisphere certainly stands ready to help regions experiencing crop failures, but if money had not been so wasted on futile research, wind-turbines, solar furnaces and other bankruptcies, there would be more money in the North, available to meet the disaster.
Exactly. I don’t think the people in Japan are worrying about the damage their CO2 emissions are causing right now; they’re too busy dealing with a real catastrophe. And that’s what this administration should be focusing on – dealing with – emergency preparedness. Atmospheric CO2 is a non-issue.
A bigger problem is air pollution from China. The atmosphere is hazy – not what is normally the case in maritime islands
I agree – I’ve read that even we get their pollution 10 days after they emit it as well. No amount of regulation here will get rid of that.
But to get back to the focus on CO2 emissions here – when there are some other more imminent and greater threats – is sheer insanity. Our government needs to focus on real disasters. CO2 and climate change just don’t qualify as “catastrophes”. I’m also waiting for CO2 to get the blame for the earthquakes…:)
When the Japanese started fracking in 1813, they were warned to stop. But no, they just continued. It was great and the oil was plentiful. Then the predicted earthquakes were triggered, and the huge Volcanic eruption… Of course, it was all covered up that the Emperor’s scientists had developed fracking AND a use for oil. A lesson learned until the evil American oil industry stumbled across fracking 120 years later…. to doom us all. /s
heh
Nice fantasy you have there RobM, but it wasn’t 1933 that the USA started fracking:
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Real-History-Of-Fracking.html
And since Drake’s Well
http://www.drakewell.org/
was found on August 27, 1859, starting the use of oil in the USA, I doubt that there was much facking going on in Japan in 1813…
So IF you had a joke in there, it has flown the coop…
Note that in the USA fracking has been done since 3 years after Drake’s Well… Nothing new is going on other than the use of water instead of explosives…
E.M. Smith… I know, these days it’s tough to spot pure sarcasm because of the way what would have been obvious is no longer the case. So.. I put a /s at he end to ensure my purpose… and a Heh. Your points are well taken. Plus, the Japanese never drill for oil, they just took from the Dutch. Heh
Mount Aso volcano erupts following violent earthquake streak in Japan…
https://www.rt.com/news/339788-japan-volcano-eruption-quakes/
SMALL eruption on Japan’s Mount Aso after earthquake.
8 hours ago
small eruptions are desireable as they release pressure gradually rather than bigs ones
..That doesnt mean its over yet
2nd larger earthquake happened after that I guess
Eric, why oh why the alarmist headline?
If I am correct, Taupo in New Zealand was bigger than Tambora.
Eric wrote: “The eruption of Mount Tambora, is associated with the year without a Summer, a period of widespread famine and crop failure which occurred in 1816.”
Idiocy: Tambora didn’t cause any year’s without a summer. New England suffered an unusually cold summer that was worsened by no more that 2 degC of volcanic cooling. Regional seasonal temperature varies by 2 degC from year to year; the change produced by Tambora was nothing unusual regionally. It is unusually cold somewhere in the world every summer – it happened to be New England’s turn in 1816. Europe suffered from excessive rain that caused crop failures compounded by loss of resilience and manpower during the Napoleonic Wars.
Massive volcanic eruptions are local crises, not global ones.
I have lived here most of my 63 years, and have not once seen it snow in June, nor seen frost in July. 1816 was a terrible year for farmers in New England. Don’t downplay the history.
Also the only record I can find of icebergs grounding on the shores of Ireland comes from that time.
I’m not saying this necessarily proves volcanoes caused the cold, but the history shows it was not a “normal” time.
Caleb: From http://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/record-late-season-snowfalls
According to the National Weather Service, the latest New England snowfall in selected major cities was 0.5″ in Burlington on 5/10/1926 and Boston 5/10/1977. However, before the NWS:
“The even Greater Snow of June 1842. It should be noted that June snowfall in the Northeast is not a unique event to 1816. On June 11, 1842 widespread snow fell over northern New York and New England and snowflakes were observed in Cleveland, Ohio; Boston, Massachusetts; and even Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (a low elevation site). Accumulations of 10-12” were common in Vermont, so this event was actually more extreme than the more famous snow of June 1816.”
According to one website, the average earliest frost in central Vermont can be 9/1 and the average latest frosts mid-June. And lakeside Burlington is milder than central Vermont. Furthermore, 1816 was during the LIA, when GMST was more than 1 degC colder than today, plus the 2 degC of cooling from Tambora.
http://www.victoryseeds.com/frost/vt.html
To a first approximation, the effect of volcanic aerosols is global, not regional. Changes in regional weather for a season are caused by unforced variability (chaos). I’m suggesting that common sense tells us a volcano can’t “cause” unusual cold in one particular region, just cooler temperatures globally that enhance unusual regional cold.
Thanks for the information. I was unaware of the 1842 event.
I’ve read that the effects of a volcano influence land temperatures more than sea temperatures, and this in turn makes the jet stream more loopy or “meridenal”. I imagine it takes a very un-summer-like jet stream to bring cold air down to Vermont.
The huge discharge of sea-ice down the east coast of Greenland after Tambora (perhaps exacerbated by a big 1810 eruption) is suggestive of a jet stream so loopy that it creates a strong cross-polar-flow.
Lastly, I suppose a lot depends on the preexisting state of the jet stream. If it was loopy to begin with you likely would get a different reaction than if the jet stream was very flat and zonal.
All in all it seems more complex than a general world-wide cooling. I think there was a big convention of meteorologists up in Toronto back before the focus became Global Warming (1978?) to discuss the complex reactions to aerosols. Dr. Tim Ball would likely know more.
In any case, thanks for contributing to the discussion and getting me thinking.
Caleb: Note my phrase, “To a first approximation …” AOGCMs have explored El Nino vs non-El Nino year. IIRC, more summer cooling than winter, etc. Stratospheric volcanic aerosol produce tremendous warming in the stratosphere from the SWR they absorb. Could the consequences of changes in the stratosphere be be more severe at some latitudes than others? Absolutely. Effect the jet stream? Sure. Focused on New England?
Clive Best has a video showing monthly global temperature anomalies by grid cell for over 165 years. Regional natural variability is high. Notice the temperature scale. 20th-century warming is the smallest color change displayed (+1 degC). Aerosol cooling from Tambora (-2 degC?), two units of color change. Total natural variability displayed +/-10 degC. Clive points out that others use a logarithmic scale to emphasize GW and downplay unforced variability. Surprisingly, recent cold winters on the East Coast of the US don’t stand out. Try Moscow winter in Dec 1941, when the German advance was halted.
http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=6972
Ecuador just got hit with a 7.4 quake around 20 minutes ago.
franktoo April 18, 2016 at 1:52 am
Thanks, Frank, but you and I must have very different senses. Common sense tells me that the effect of any point-source disturbance will be greatest adjacent to the source, and will decrease with increasing distance. Consider volcanic ash or earthquakes or suboceanic vents as several of thousands of examples. All of them have the greatest effect on the immediate vicinity.
w.