I posted on a similar story about volcanic eruptions under Antarctic ice earlier this year. What is unique about this situation is that it was a large eruption that went completely undetected, and under pressures that they thought not possible. The big question is then; where did the heat from the volcano go, and what effect did it have on the sea ice environment? Another question is how much CO2 would such an eruption emit, and how long would it take to outgas? Research has been going on looking at volcanism in the ridge but this discovery of a significant eruption in 1999 is new and unexpected.
From Science and The Sea: “In the last few years, for example, scientists have found that a long ridge beneath the north polar ice cap is dotted with volcanoes, and with vents of superheated water that could be home to many new species.”
More info on the Gakkel Ridge here
Today’s Press release from EurekAlert:
International expedition discovers gigantic volcanic eruption in the Arctic Ocean
|
A “lonely ” seismometer drifts with the sea ice. Click here for more information. |
An international team of researchers was able to provide evidence of explosive volcanism in the deeps of the ice-covered Arctic Ocean for the first time. Researchers from an expedition to the Gakkel Ridge, led by the American Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), report in the current issue of the journal Nature that they discovered, with a specially developed camera, extensive layers of volcanic ash on the seafloor, which indicates a gigantic volcanic eruption.
“Explosive volcanic eruptions on land are nothing unusual and pose a great threat for whole areas,” explains Dr Vera Schlindwein of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association. She participated in the expedition as a geophysicist and has been, together with her team, examining the earthquake activity of the Arctic Ocean for many years. “The Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD and buried thriving Pompeii under a layer of ash and pumice. Far away in the Arctic Ocean, at 85° N 85° E, a similarly violent volcanic eruption happened almost undetected in 1999 – in this case, however, under a water layer of 4,000 m thickness.” So far, researchers have assumed that explosive volcanism cannot happen in water depths exceeding 3 kilometres because of high ambient pressure. “These are the first pyroclastic deposits we’ve ever found in such deep water, at oppressive pressures that inhibit the formation of steam, and many people thought this was not possible,” says Robert Reves-Sohn, staff member of the WHOI and lead scientist of the expedition carried out on the Swedish icebreaker Oden in 2007.
A major part of Earth’s volcanism happens at the so-called mid-ocean ridges and, therefore, completely undetected on the seafloor. There, the continental plates drift apart; liquid magma intrudes into the gap and constantly forms new seafloor through countless volcanic eruptions. Accompanied by smaller earthquakes, which go unregistered on land, lava flows onto the seafloor. These unspectacular eruptions usually last for only a few days or weeks.
The installation of a seismometer on an ice floe.
Click here for more information.
- Volcanic ashes on the sea bed of Gakkel Ridge (Photo: WHOI)
- Bathymetric chart of the Gakkel Ridge at 85°E. Photographic bottom surveys were conducted along profiles shown as thin, black lines. The photo showing volcanic ashes on the sea bed were taken at the site, which is marked with a red star and the letter a.
It was the volcanoes wot did it, officer. ‘Onest.
I didn’t need this cheap excuse but, there it is, just waiting in a nice mud pie.
Just goes to show how much we don’t know about the Arctic Ocean and basin. We need a scientific ‘surge’, before we can make any rational policy decisions, concerning global processes. More data less hyperbole.
I await the headline:
“Volcanoes not the source of Artic melt: Scientists”
a similarly violent volcanic eruption happened almost undetected in 1999 –
So, a loud karoompfff was heard by military sonar arrays and, years later, the info was released to civie street to investigate. I bet submariners had already investigated.
Maybe global warming emitted by my pickup truck prompted the volcano to erupt? After all, my pickup caused an earthquake last week.
Just spitballing…………
Here is another interesting area to add to the vulcanism archives:
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110976
Basically the oceans floor heaters. They estimate 1 BILLION Gallons of water a year being heated through this vent system. That is, until late last year when microquakes closed them up!! In time they will most likely open again through the same processes that opened them in the first place. Until then, a lot of heat NOT going into the oceans.
Here are some others:
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/ap_051205_hot_springs.html
Now, considering how much active vulcanism there is under the ocean, I think it is a little narrow minded to completely ignore the possibility that it could be contributing to seeming cyclical cooling and warming events that have no other known causes!!! Yeah, I know, correlation does not equal causation. Of course, that energy DOES go into the ocean when happening. The question, as usual, is HOW MUCH?????
Off topic, but timely.
And yet another part of the equation that’s incorrect: “Tropical oceans expose riddle over global-warming equation”
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ieZJZzkWLLf2ZPP4ytqtD_yXFeZg
Well, ya know, anything which happens below the land surface of the Earth is taboo, much more so with the Core – we don’t want to think about it. Problem, solved.
Thanks, Cynical Joe; Gee, I wonder how come I haven’t heard that phrase before? Isn’t it better to pander first, then leap? :]
3,000,000 underwater volcanoes possibly.
“9 Jul 07 – Researchers have counted 201,055 underwater cones, 10 times more than have been found before, and estimate that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes, 39,000 of which rise more than 1000 meters over the sea bed. ”
http://www.iceagenow.com/Three_Million_Underwater_Volcanoes.htm
REPLY: Makes you wonder how much CO2 they add to the oceans, and thus the atmosphere.
The must be black smokers associated with that ridge. This is quite interesting, I was not aware the sea floor spreading came so far to the East, I thought it was limited to the Western Hemisphere portion of the Arctic. So, the transition from extension (ocean ridge) to compression (Urals) is closer to the Siberian shore than I’d ever imagined.
And here’s another report from last year, stating that scientists have discovered that there are ten times as many undersea volcanoes as previously thought.
For some reason it appears that vulcanism may be more prevalent undersea. So it would be no surprise to find the same thing occurring under the polar ice caps, no?
REPLY: The real surprise would come from knowing just how much CO2 those undersea volcanoes add to the ocean, and by degassing, into the atmosphere.
What is it with scientists these days that they feel compelled to make predictions about what they may find? Good grief. What, precisely, does this phrase mean: “estimate that in total there could be”? Any time a scientist talks like that he should have his grant money taken away for a year.
here’s a batch of news clips from 2005 discussing an increasing amount of undersea volcanic activity. Seems our Arctic episode was mentioned back them.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543202/posts
Here’s another more recent link http://www.iceagenow.com/Ocean_Warming.htm
As I understand the story the interesting news is that this particular bit ocean ridge was thought to be spreading too slowly and too deep to produce any significant volcanism.
I sincerely doubt that the heat generated would be much consequence to ice on the surface. There a lot of cold water in the arctic ocean.
I saw a video of an undersea volcano off of Guam. They recorded great blobs of liquid CO2 (liquid because of the pressure at great depth). They looked kindof like large wobbly soap bubbles coming out of the volcano in a stream.
Makes you wonder how much CO2 they [Volcanoes] add to the oceans, and thus the atmosphere.
And it makes you wonder about how much heat Volcanoes release to the Oceans. I’ve read about how little the Core contributes to Global – land, ocean, atmospheric – temperatures. I don’t believe it.
Bob Tisdale,
Interesting read, although I would have liked them to get the order of greenhouse gases correct – Water Vapor, methane, CO2 rather than seeming to indicate that CO2 is ‘the most powerful’ greenhouse gas, which it is not, by a long shot.
Here’s another article of interest:
Slippery Stretching Explains Ocean Floor Formation
new research suggests the significance of this stretching process as a way of creating new sea floor has been underestimated.
…highly unexpected. After a while, each fault becomes inactive, and is replaced by a newly-emerging fault.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060727180622.htm
As we know, AGW is now causing earthquakes, if AGW causes earthquakes, then it must also cause volcanic eruptions. These volcanic eruptions are causing more global heating, which intern causes more volcanic eruptions, which causes more heat, and more water vapor and even more heat. Another prime example of the AGW positive feedback loop. AGW will now be even more devostating.
Infact, if this volcanicism-heat-watervapor tripple loop continues, the whole planet could explode !! hehe
I`m sure those big exploding mountain thingies, spewing out many square Kms of molten lava, gas and ash have no impact of arctic sea ice compred to a 0.001% increase in CO2 levels ! (10ppm=0.001%)
here’s an unanswered post under RealClimate blog
#1 One week previous to the Barnett press release Scripps issued a press release describing research by Koppers and Staudigel on undersea volcanic activity.
It is my understanding that many oceanographers believe that volcanic activity, including phenomena such as deep-sea thermal vents, can affect ocean currents. Additionally, if a single above-sea volcanic eruption can effect global temperatures, is it not reasonable to assume that the thermal energy released below the sea does so also? How much is known about such effects, if any? Is Barnett’s seeming certainty perhaps a bit premature?
Thanks.
Comment by Rich Rando — 23 February 2005 @ 4:12 PM
Here’s the blog entry from Gavin “Why Looking for global warming in the ocean is a good idea.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/why-looking-for-global-warming-in-the-oceans-is-a-good-idea/#more-124
A general search of “undersea volcanic activity” yields only 3 comments on RealClimate, and no blog entries.
The first comment was above from Rich Rando which was unanswered. The 2nd is http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=243#comment-8289 which was again unanswered.
The 3rd and final comment is posted by Richard Wakefield, is this in the recent blog entry titled “Ice Shelf Instability” on June 12, 2008
Comment #42“The reasons for the ice sheet breaking of is due to tectonic activity along the Antarctic Peninsula. Undersea volcanic activity is warming that part of the oceans.”
“Notice in this NASA image of the warmer oceans along that region:”
“That’s where the volcanic activity is happening along the plate boundary.”
“The melting ice sheet there has nothing to do with global warming. I ask the question again, how many things that do not support AGW must happen before you at RC give up AGW? What is needed to falsify the theory?”
Then here’s Galvin’s response: “The question should be what will it take to stop people grasping at the flimsiest straws before they accept that climate is changing? There is no volcano under the Wilkins ice sheet – nor the Larsen B (actual location). Blaming that for the warming seen thousands of miles away on the other side of the Peninsula is like blaming Mt Etna for the European 2003 heat wave. – gavin]”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=570#comment-89742
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=570#comment-89742
I can’t help myself – the science is settled. So what to do with all this volcanism? Adjust them out of the equations?
The AFP article linked by Bob Tisdale above has an AWESOME quote:
“This unexpected discovery implies that the mathematical model for calculating the various sources of global warming could be flawed, although global warming itself is not being contested, one of its authors said.”
The equations are wrong and potentially yield an incorrect answer but we aren’t saying the answer is wrong…
Recently found undersea volcanoes in the Fiji region and Iceland.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080619093259.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/52527.html
Hmmm, cannot account for all sea level rise from melting glaciers and thermal expansion in the upper ocean. I guess they need to look deeper(and a little wider, maybe).
From the depths below,
from the expanse on high,
climate is made to go awry.
Here I sit, in the middle of the show,
being blamed for the heat and snow.
I went out an started my car,
only to find out, I killed someone afar.
Oh, woe is me!
Send me to jail, and toss the key.
Couldn’t buy the credit,
so incurred one heck of a debit.
Now I’m broke,
barely a penny to my name.
There go the elite,
not one ounce of shame.
A somewhat lasting gift
to the Global Warming game.
My rotting corpse
giving off methane.
Global warming not caused by man, but by volcano!
Not surprisingly, liberals are furious that the volcano has claimed responsibility for melting the ice, and isolating the cute polar bears…if they can’t blame Bush for this, who will they blame? Big oil? That’s out…Conservatives?…Only if the volcano admires Ronald Regan. Perhaps there is the argument that the U.S. military can be blamed for prompting the Russians to move around submarines in Arctic waters, thus stimulating eruptions…
It seems there were two eruptions:
“Satellites can detect volcanoes that are more than 1500 m high because the mass of the submerged mountains causes gravity to pull the water in around them. This creates domes on the ocean’s surface that can be several metres high and can be detected from space.
Data overload
But there is a multitude of small volcanoes that have gone undetected. The only way of identifying them is to manually find their outline on sonar measurements taken from ships.
Since the late 1960s, research vessels have been criss-crossing the oceans using sonar instruments to measure the depth of the ocean floor. They have generated 40 million kilometres of linear profiles showing the topography of the ocean bed between 60° North – the latitude of southern Alaska – and 60° South – corresponding to the tip of Patagonia.
But until now, no one had been able to sift through them all. So, Hillier and a colleague designed a computer programme that was able to analyse the huge amount of data and identify volcano-like shapes in the sonar lines.
The programme found 201,055 volcanoes over 100m tall. Previously, satellite data had identified 14,164 volcanoes over 1500 m high.
Hillier then extrapolated the data to estimate how many volcanoes exist beyond the areas the research vessels sounded out. He estimates there are about 39,000 volcanoes that are higher than 1000 m, leaving nearly 25,000 yet to be directly discovered.”
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12218-thousand-of-new-volcanoes-revealed-beneath-the-waves.html
Methane clathrate, also called methane hydrate or methane ice, is a solid form of water that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure (a clathrate hydrate). Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of Earth. [1]
Methane clathrates are common constituents of the shallow marine geosphere, and they occur both in deep sedimentary structures, and as outcrops on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates are believed to form by migration of gas from depth along geological faults, followed by precipitation, or crystallization, on contact of the rising gas stream with cold sea water. (Wikipedia)
I will once again post the link to the CO2 circulation map, the only one I have been able to find is from July 1993.
I wish the image could be posted. One can see on the southern hemisphere a circulating band of increased CO2 and even “hot spots” where little industrial activity is happening.
http://www-airs.jpl.nasa.gov/Products/CarbonDioxide/
I cannot understand why NASA which has maps for everything under the sun cannot produce monthly maps of CO2 circulation. It would answer a lot of questions, like : where is the CO2 from that huge eruption.and “are the rdige volcanoes releasing significant CO2”?.
Also, since the momentum of such huge eruptions pushes dust into the stratosphere, one cannot dismiss the effect on the ocean temperatures without calculating the amount of energy released in the time released. It might also very well have reached the bottom of the ice shelf for a time.
BillSheldon: That quote jumped out at me also. It reminded me of Dan Rather and the fake documents about President Bush’s National Guard service: the supporting evidence was roundly shown to be false but Dan Rather and his crew still knew the story was true. It had to be true because that is what they at CBS believed. Isn’t this all ass-backwards?
Note that the last El Nino was 1998, and this eruption 1999. You might consider the possibility that both phenomenon might have the same source of energy affecting the thermal stability of the upper mantle. In the electric universe are there are plausible explanations for all this, but not in the current geological paradigm.
[…] Click for full story: Watts Up With That? […]
Underwater eruptions form Lahars. But do they generate a rising column of water? What size of eruption do you need to punch through to the surface? At that depth will hot water rise at all?
[…] Source. (And a thank you to Anthony Watts.) […]
So, what do we have here? Yet another boundary condition that has been ignored by the so-called climate modelers?
Dave K
Simple! Global warming caused the eruptions. Can’t you see this, you fools … everything is caused by global warming – even global warming.
How widely was this ash spead about? That ought indicate a thing or two about the currents that were created.
I wonder what it looked like? Of course, it is pitch dark down that deep, but infra-red imaging might show a billowing cumulous-like structure.
The more I try to get a handle on the factors that control the world’s climate, the more my sense of awe and wonder grows.
I think it must be intellectually pinching to be an Alarmist. Whenever you hear about neat stuff like this, you have to belittle it and discount it. Rather than awe and wonder, all you see is what you see when you look down you nose at everything. You wind up cross-eyed. Then you eyes get stuck that way, just like your mother used to warn you about.
AGW fuzzy math for global warming:
1 (manmade CO2) + 1 (natural CO2) + 1 (solar irradiance) + 1 (volcanic activity) + 1 (obiquity) + 1 (precession of equinox) + 1 (cosmic rays) + 1 (PDO) +1 (whatever else we don’t know yet) = 1 (manmade CO2)
Anna V,
You are right if nasa has these visualizations, why can’t we see them? Maybe they show too much. Does someone have to file papers to see what should be freely available. Knowledge is good and more knowledge is better. If they had these co2 data maps in 1993, we should have tons of them to look at.
Mike Bryant
I did a google search and could find nothing either.
If AGW can cause whole planets to explode, surely it wouldn’t have any trouble causing an occassional mountain or two to go boom as well.
Anna on the site you posted, they say these daily maps are supposed to be released in 2008, I think the right person needs to give them a little nudge. Fifteen years is long enough.
I have a feeling that these co2 maps are not damning to the developed world or we would have seen them before now.
Oops, I made a big mistake the website you posted, Annav, shows the co2 for 2003, so I guess five years is long enough.
im just a passerby here and what an amazing story! great of you to share this.
dougw:
My wife’s sister lives in the Azores, on the 2nd west-most island (Faial). They report that steam comes off the the water’s surface from a rather deep submarine volcano (the drop-off past their shore is very steep).
As for effects: I would tend to think that the Arctic ice would trap that heat, making it accumulate and erode the ice base, and the seismic activity would cause tsunamis that would lend to ice faults.
Since deep-sea vents are cyclic, with episodes of magma flow, this could explain yet more heat being periodically pushed into the system from below. The heat columns would rise vertically through the ocean strata and introduce CO2, sulphuric and nitric acids and ash to the sea surface.
anna v:
Have you ever wondered why with such fantastic mapping of CO2 levels we don’t have a “proof in the pudding” map showing the amount of extra warming anomaly based on concentration and absolute humidity on a cloudless day?
This shouldn’t be tough: A lonely plume of CO2, with low aerosol mix, in a humid spot.
Scientists say……..
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=81bb2fd3-63f1-476f-b0be-f48c0dc90304
“The scientists say the heat released by the explosions is not contributing to the melting of the Arctic ice, but Sohn says the huge volumes of CO2 gas that belched out of the undersea volcanoes likely contributed to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. How much, he couldn’t say.”
There you have it. Volcanoes do not affect ice loss in the Arctic 🙂
Where is CBS on this one?
Remember: It’s settled science.
dan thorne:
Gavin did have one interesting response:
“…if the world started to cool the sea ice would return in short order (5 to 10 years response time).”
Wouldn’t the question of active tectonics along the entire Antarctic peninsula be akin to the matter of wind dynamics currently affecting Arctic ice extents? Except that wind dynamics don’t warm the underlying insulating ice base whereas active tectonics could. Although the bay that holds the ice shelves is relatively shallow, but it doesn’t mean there are no undetected thermal vents.
That the science doesn’t know yet is fine. The proposition that we know all that’s required seems to me an act of hubris. To discount questions exemplifies it.
anna v (and others) there is a fascinating video available at
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/breath-of-a-nation-animated-co2-map/
showing various animations of CO2 production for 2002 over the USA.
WRT the undersea volcano and the various questions about heat produced, it seems generally to be beyond the imagination of most people to understand the vast amounts of heat needed to melt vast amounts of ice. While I’m sure that the volcano would have had some effect, I doubt whether it would have been significant.
crosspatch, I saw that or a similar video, the “bubbles” were sticking to the submersible’s structure, but, strangely showed little inclination to join up into bigger “bubbles”. The video is at
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/04fire/logs/april10/media/eifuku_bubbles_video.html
I suppose the upwelling of lava or movement of the sea floor has a direct effect on sea levels also. I mean if the bath tub fills up with something other than water .The water has to go up over the lip of the tub–
BillSheldon (20:55:56) :
No, of course not. It’s the same sort of justification used when the Hockey Stick was debunked: “The answer was still right!”
There’s a driving need in the AGW camp to protect the answer at all costs.
The science is settled!
Stop asking questions or talking about this stuff or I’ll have Hansen come and arrest you!
The volcano erupts. It is hot (duh). Heat has to go somewhere. If it warms the water around it, that water should rise. The Arctic Ocean is big, so the effect may be small, but as noted, the heat has to go somewhere.
Methinks we do not know all the things we do not know.
Astronomers do this a lot too. Mainly when speaking about Black Holes and Dark Matter. We know very little about the former, and don’t even know if the latter exists. Yet they speak in absolutes about black holes as if we know everything there is to know. Just like referring to Venus as a runaway greenhouse example.
OT: Anthony,
Perhaps this topic has already been talked into the ground before I started following WUWT, but I’d like to suggest a thread that debates the Miskolczi semi-transparent atmosphere model. There was recent comment (David Gladstone (17:59:09)) on the “A Window on Water Vapor and Planetary Temperature – Part 2” asking for the same thing, so apparently I’m not the only one who wants to discuss this model.
The link with the easiest introduction to the subject is http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Proofs_of_the_Miskolczi_theory.htm
REPLY: Done
We know the undersea volcanos can not have any effect on climate change, because they don’t have any money. If they can’t be taxed, they are by definition a non-factor!
The “science” is settled.
“There you have it. Volcanoes do not affect ice loss in the Arctic”
Let’s see now – the huge amount of thermal energy from undersea eruptions has absolutely no effect on sea ice …but a fraction of a degree warming of the atmosphere is enough to melt the whole lot within a few years???????
I would suggest that undersea volcanic activity and it’s effects on climate, and in the case of polar regions, the ice cap. It would make for very interesting and surprising research.
It’s certainly something that has been largely overlooked by climate researchers.
Mike Bryant (05:23:29) :
“Oops, I made a big mistake the website you posted, Annav, shows the co2 for 2003, ”
Oops is mine. What are ten years between friends!! One of those times I look behind the door for creeping Alzheimers ;(. I remembered July correctly though!
Mt St Helens released 24MT of energy.
Thats 1 x 10^17 joules.
Enough to heat 1 cubic KM of water to the boiling point at STP.
A drop in the bucket for the Arctic.
What is fascinating, though, are the sharp yearly ups and downs in the ML CO2 data. These are related somehow to the Boreal variation.
[…] Polar ice cap melting – possibly due to – volcanic eruption on Arctic sea bed. From Josh’s favourite blog. As a geologist, I’m smiling from ear to ear…. […]
[…] Surprise: Explosive volcanic eruption under the Arctic ice found […]
Or enough to heat 100 cubic KM of water 1 degree C. I haven’t checked your calculation btw, but if you are talking about the energy of converting that water to water vapor and not just 100 C, then we up my number an order of magnitude or two or perhaps 500 cubic KM or more (Sorry, I haven’t performed these Physics calculations in more than 30 years).
Now this energy was released by one eruption in a very short period of time, albeit a big one. Now if we are talking about thousands of smaller volcanoes steadily heating water 24/7, this might in fact be significant. If you don’t think a 1 degree temp change of water is a big deal in the Arctic, well…
[…] Gigantic volcanic eruption in the Artic Ocean. How many of these have we missed. Does this contribute to the shrinking polar ice caps? Apparently we should be harnessing the power of Volcanoes. […]
Out of curiousity. It sounds like there are a bunch of volcanoes all over the Pacific floor. Has anyone every considered there effect and if they could at all be a driver of La Nina? Seems to me a lot of heat generated at the ocean floor may cause an upswelling in warm water. I have no idea but I’m am curious.
The eruption of volcanoes is not the main reason for melting of polar ice. The main reason is global warming which is caused by us .
[…] mentioned anywhere in that story is this inconvenient fact from earlier this week. (via Watts Up With That) An international team of researchers was able to provide evidence of explosive volcanism in the […]
nice post keep posting …
Underwater eruptions form Lahars. But do they generate a rising column of water? What size of eruption do you need to punch through to the surface? At that depth will hot water rise at all?
With a volcanoe in the Antarctic, we aren’t talking about heating the entire Atlantic, just the water around Antarctica.
The latest alarmist news about the arctic via Steve Connor, science editor at The Independent:
Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole
“There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water,” said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.” Must be some climate rule written somewhere I missed. Guess the volcanoes must have missed it too.
“The eruption of volcanoes is not the main reason for melting of polar ice. The main reason is global warming which is caused by us .”
POPPYCOCK! Prove it! Remember when you try to “prove it”, using a computer model, ouija board or other non empirical device will not be accepted. Oh, and BTW, it has happened before and will happen again.
Bruce…Yahoo has a lead story from Live Science, basically the same thing with even less “science” referenced.
Possible explanation for ice caps melting? It’s not global warming.
Nope it’s volcanoes and thsoe are not cuased by man though some may find a way to say we are casuing the to erupt more often smehow.
On the DotEarth video that Tony Edwards I think I see the effect of the 1999 volcanic explosion. You can see a big blue spot appear suddenly in 1999 and you can watch it migrate out of the Arctic Ocean, taking a chunk of multiyear ice with it in 2001. There is another possible small one in 1995 from about the same spot. Was there an increase in seaquake activity in 1995?
What I see is subtle, but I don’t think I’m imagining it.
===========================================
here is a write up
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=81bb2fd3-63f1-476f-b0be-f48c0dc90304
given also above by DR, I stress the :
“The $5-million expedition was financed by the U.S. National Science Foundation and NASA, which hopes to use the know-how gained in its hunt for extraterrestrial life.”
Hence the politically for Nasa correct first part of the statement:
“The scientists say the heat released by the explosions is not contributing to the melting of the Arctic ice, but Sohn says the huge volumes of CO2 gas that belched out of the undersea volcanoes likely contributed to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. How much, he couldn’t say.”
And here is the clincher:
“The scientists say they have explored just one small stretch of the Gakkel Ridge and hope to return in a few years.”
Note, a few years to return. Reminds one of the CO2 map cover up. One lovely map in 2003, and maybe some more in a few years. All contributed by the friendly NASA.
[…] the decline in sea ice has nothing to do with Anthropogenic Global Warming. Also, there is a lively system of volcanism under the Arctic Ocean to which we were heretofore unawares. It should also be pointed out that […]
I just did a comparison check from one year ago on Arctic ice coverage. There is more ice now than a year ago. For all of it to melt this summer, surface temps really need to soar and now. If I were to place odds, melting ice would not be the favored bet. Ask any bookie.
http://www.purdue.edu/climate/hestia/
Here is a good reason why we cannot find free maps of CO2 by month.
Somebody is planning to make money out of it with carbon credits etc.
anna v,
What great drama this is! The government, the government financed universities, and opportunistic entrepreneurs lined up on the AGW side and a few dissenters and apparently reality on the other side.
This along with the economic crisis and the stupid wars we are involved in may deal fascism a deadly blow in this country. I hope so; it has been cruising for a bruising for a long time.
Hmmm…
I’ve read the July 1, 2007 was the since day record for Arctic Ice…July 2007 the single largest month for Ice loss.
I wonder if USGS picked up earthquakes in the arctice during the year prior????
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/ortho/270_90.php
[…] so-called missing tropical hotspot (as supposed proof against greenhouse theory) and (2) that sub-sea volcanoes along the Gakkel Ridge is likely to be the cause of accelerated melting of the Arctic summer sea ice. So what is the […]
[…] so-called missing tropical hotspot (as supposed proof against greenhouse theory) and (2) that sub-sea volcanoes along the Gakkel Ridge is likely to be the cause of accelerated melting of the Arctic summer sea ice. So what is the […]
So a vast system of undersea volcanos, that is erupting constantly, absolutely cannot have an effect on the planet’s geo-physics but man’s activity is the primary driver?
Is that the bill of goods being sold by the UN’s IPCC?