Guest post by Steven Goddard
The Washington Post reports today:
An undersea volcano erupts off the coast of Tonga, tossing clouds of smoke, steam and ash thousands of feet (meters) into the sky above the South Pacific ocean, Tuesday, March 17, 2009. The eruption was at sea about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the southwest coast of the main island of Tongatapu an area where up to 36 undersea volcanoes are clustered
Besides the unusual feet to meters conversion in the quote above, I found it interesting because the SST maps show a warm anomaly in that region, and extending off to the east. Is that anomaly a result or coincidence?
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
How much influence do volcanoes have on local climates?
We know that the Antarctic Peninsula (advertised as the fastest warming place on the planet) is a volcanic chain which has seen recent activity.
Noted Antarctic expert Eric Steig tells us that Volcanoes under the ice can’t affect climate on the surface, 2 miles above! This is indeed true and interesting, because CO2 on the surface reportedly can affect the melting of the basal ice, two miles below.
According to some of the best AGW minds, increases of 0.0001 atmospheric CO2 concentration may be more powerful at affecting localized micro-climates than are 2000 degree volcanoes.
In another volcanically active area, the Gakkel Ridge, which was shown to have eruptions last year, the possibility also exists for localized warming. Here is a schematic of the Gakkel Ridge sea floor:
However in that case there is the claim by oceanographic experts that it is impossible for the sea ice above to be affected due to stratifed water layers and thus making the released heat “unable to communicate” to the surface.
Perhaps that is true, but does that stratification remain in a steady state? And is such an inability to “communicate” heat from the depths a feature of our oceans globally?
Speaking of the ocean atmosphere interface this seems to be how it works:
“Changing temperatures induce air circulation changes as the air seeks to restore the sea surface/surface air temperature equilibrium and at the same time resolve ocean induced variations in the sun to sea / air to space equilibrium.
The circulation changes alter all the processes involved in the rate of energy transfer from surface to space. In so far as the air circulation fails for a time to maintain temperature stability then radiation from surface to space will also change but in due course stabilty is always restored between the four said parameters (sea surface / surface air / sun to sea / air to space).
Only huge catastrophic changes capable of altering the temperature of the whole body of the oceans can set a new global equilibrium in the short term (less than millennia). The sun can also do it gradually but it takes centuries e.g. from Roman Warm Period to Mediaeval Warm Period to Little Ice Age to now. The solar effect is heavily modulated over time by ocean cycles. A change in the composition of the air alone (like extra CO2 or increased water vapour) cannot do it.
The role of water vapour combined with the latent heats of evaporation and condensation gives the circulation changes the major part of their ability to accelerate energy transfer from surface to space.
So, the most common and by far the largest forcing at any given time is multi decadal variations in energy emissions from the oceans. In the background are slow century scale changes in solar output.
Temperature changes induced by sun and oceans drive air circulation changes which drive changes in every aspect of climate including convection, conduction, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, windiness, cloudiness, albedo and humidity as regards both quantities and distribution.
Water vapour in itself is not a driver nor does it have cycles or periodicities of it’s own. It’s a very useful contibutor to the whole process though and without it the Earth would be entirely different
Whoah, sorry to disrupt the flow.
Lots of posts appeared while I was responding to Smokey at 10:55:01
Reply: Always a good idea to identify to whom you are responding in your post ~ charles the moderator
Some pictures of the Tonga Eruption:
http://www.nypost.com/photos/galleries/news/worldnews/pp_20090319_tonga_volcano/photo02.htm
If the one below is only a pinpoint and the one above envelopes the entire surface, I’d go with the one above.
@jorge, thanks. don’t take my word on it though! you can do it yourself (and i encourage everyone, especially the author) since you can find the lat/long of tonga easily, and the “hot spot” on the SST anamoly map by the grid.
use this script to find the distance: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gccalc.shtml
@Bob Tisdale, thanks for posting the image. glad i’m not the only one taking the pretty images at face value 🙂
Given the numbers of volcanoes mentioned in the main post, how many are active and therefore pumping heat into the water? Is there ANY way we can quantify this? From the different sites that I’ve seen, the data says there are loads of volcanoes, but many, perhaps the vast majority are dormant or extinct. Look at the Hawaiian islands, the hotspot stays still as the crust moves, therefore there are islands that were volcanoes now slowly being subsumed by the sea.
Heat may be being released from below the ocean, but before we start singing from the rooftops that here is another cause of warming, we need to quantify.
OT but interesting.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/antarctica/5011121/Antarctic-ice-sheet-could-collapse-due-to-global-warming-scientists-warn.html
In the print version dear old Louise or her sub-editor has made the mistake of equating 5C with 41F! Obviously someone has corrected it for the web site.
This isn’t the first time! When will these people actually learn some basic science?
Developing story… 7.7 (yes, SEVEN POINT SEVEN) earthquake off the coast of Tonga. See http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/03/19/tonga.quake/index.html for details.
“The epicenter was located 210 km SSE of the capitol. Meanwhile, just 12 km from the capitol, a submarine volcano has been exploding for several days.”
200+KM is quite a distance. That is like a someone claming that a small eruption of Mt St Helens causes an earthquake in Seattle.
Not impossible, but not a likely connection either.
Amazing. This thread has as I write 82 posts, and only Alex Doru, Jeff L, Tom R and Peter Hearnden seem to have the elementary notion of calorimetry – how much heat does a volcano produce and how much water is there to heat. Instead we get silly things like Steve G’s remarks about 2000 degree volcanoes. Exaggerated (in C), but irrelevant. An oxyacetylene flame is at 3000C, but won’t heat the ocean.
To continue Jeff L’s calc, here are Wright and Flynn with a space measure of 45 land eruptions from 2001-2, which put about 5.3×10^16 J/yr into the air. That’s about 2×10^15 J per eruption, on average. That SST hot spot look to cover about 10^6 sq km, and at about 5000 m depth, that is about 5×10^15 m^3 water. By my calc then, an average eruption would raise the temp 10^-6 C – one millionth of a degree. Maybe ten times that if the heat stratifies near the surface.
USGS is reporting the quake at a 7.9
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php
According to “physics” it is impossible for an undersea volcano to communicate heat to the surface water. And yet steam is ushering forth, as can be plainly seen in the picture.
What we have here is a failure to communicate the communication.
“According to some of the best AGW minds, increases of 0.0001 atmospheric CO2 concentration may be more powerful at affecting localized micro-climates than are 2000 degree volcanoes.”
Aren’t you forgetting “water vapor forcings” and “a teaspoon of arsenic will kill a man”, etc., etc.
Adolfo Giurfa
Your abstract reminds me of the premise of a book from 1974 about the effects of a 1982 alignment of the planets and their effect on earth as far as volcanism and stress on fault lines. I don’t recall much unusual happening that year, but the book called “The Jupiter Effect” is before global warming , and before the days of massive climate and weather data. It’s actually well written and reflects the knowledge of that era. It’s a good read if you can find a copy.
Like Alex, my first thought was holy La Nina! Nice picture
Volcanism is interesting for lubricating the plastic flow of ice in the Western Antarctic and in this case for the effervescence. Spectacular.
I’m just glad they’re getting scrubbed. Don’t need any more direct emissions to the atmosphere to help that La Nina and now apparently cold AMO … and fading sun.
As for that local heat anomaly, it may be plausible the soup from the volcano is boiling up to the east. That it would be that far goes with the stratification idea and then the upwelling could occur because of another local condition. You see this kind of thing in process facilities that deal with fluids at different temperatures and densities.
While trying to see Tonga at Google earth I was surprised watching this swarm of earthquakes:
http://www.giurfa.com/earth1.jpg
Smokey,
Atolls have a more storied history. The ring of coral is the left over parts of a mountain that grew up and out of the ocean. True enough, the volcano started as a young mountain below the water and over active time, built itself up to rise above the water line, then when it passes beyond the area of the opened crust that is feeding it with magma, it stops growing and begins to wear down from the top as well as the bottom. It sinks from below and wears away from above. We know this because of drilled cores in atolls. The core is hundreds of meters deep with coral. Old coral. The mountain sinks, along with the coral, which dies as it sinks below the water to the point that sunlight no longer reaches the coral. New coral forms on top of old in its effort to stay within the reach of sunlight. So atolls are VERY old volcanic mountains that are sinking and wearing away back into mother Earth. Hawaii will one day be nothing but an atoll ringed with coral.
While the effects of gasses and particulates expelled during an eruption are known to be important, the impacts of thermal heat transfer from vulcanism on climate are not likely to be significant – at least not from a single volcano.
Then again there are those LIPs (Large Igneous Provinces) that were active in the SW pacific near the end of the Cretaceous.
Aron: You asked, “What is that anomaly to the east of Argentina?”
In an upcoming post, I identified the global ocean areas that warmed the most over the period of 1880 to 2008. That area off the coast of Argentina happens to be one. I’ve created the illustrations for the post, but haven’t written it up yet. I’m hoping to have it done by Saturday. Here’s the Trend Map from GISS that I used to identify the anomalous warming locations.
http://s5.tinypic.com/fz19pi.jpg
And here’s the graph of the SST anomalies of the area off the coast of Argentina. (Sorry about the color, but I color-coded the areas on another map and ran out of selections)
http://s5.tinypic.com/zwnak1.jpg
Note the apparent climate shift there in the early 1960s.
Steven Goddard:
….Is that anomaly a result or coincidence?
Carl Gustav Jung synchronicity.
http://skepdic.com/jung.html
paraclimatology: [new method]
Tsunami warning cancelled after Tonga earthquake
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0319/breaking73.htm
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_ejb5_h.html
more bear
Mike D. (14:42:35) :
No, a failure to understand the situation.
From what I can gather at http://volcanism.wordpress.com/ there are two vents, one above ground (new island? I’m not sure) and one underwater, but not deep underwater. There’s a big difference between vents 2 miles down and 2 meters down!
I’m sure there’s a big surface underwater and perhaps more vents or other heat releases, but all the photos are of near-surface activity.
Oh – somewhat OT, but here’s a good particle on the Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition (AGAVE) of July 2007
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=44586&ct=162
Jeff Alberts (13:51:57) :
You would not be popular in the kitchen with your hair dryer, if that’s how you think a chef should boil water or fry an egg. 2000 watts concentrated from below, is how a stove works. 2000 watts of hot air in an oven, would take far too long to cook an egg or boil water. But, I think you know that, don’t you. You’re just having a laugh!
Walter Dnes (14:08:55) :
Developing story… 7.7 (yes, SEVEN POINT SEVEN) earthquake off the coast of Tonga. See http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/03/19/tonga.quake/index.html for details.
We had a tsunami warning in NZ (just in case) after this earthquake. I just heard on the radio the the tsunami was about 2 cm high when it passed Tonga. Apparently the quake was very deep so panic over. I wonder how they calculated theh height.
Do the gasses emitted by a volcano count towards your contries emissions for Kyoto? Tonga better hope not.
Oops
Apparenlty the quake was shallow ( about 10 km) so they expected more of a tsunami than they got..
“However in that case there is the claim by oceanographic experts that it is impossible for the sea ice above to be affected due to stratifed water layers and thus making the released heat “unable to communicate” to the surface.”
When I read statements like this in which the word “impossible” is used, it tells me that the scientists really don’t know because they have no theory able to explain how a thermal surge in the lower crust can occur in terms of plate tectonics or other geomythological theories.