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
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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 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.