Volcano erupts near Eyjafjallajoekull in south Iceland
An Icelandic volcano, dormant for 200 years, has erupted, ripping a 1km-long fissure in a field of ice.
The volcano near Eyjafjallajoekull glacier began to erupt just after midnight, sending lava a hundred metres high.
Icelandic airspace has been closed, flights diverted and roads closed. The eruption was about 120km (75 miles) east of the capital, Reykjavik.
What volcanic scientists fear is the fact that this eruption could trigger an eruption of Katla, one of the most dangerous volcanic systems in the world.
Eruptive events in Eyjafjallajökull are often followed by a Katla eruption. The Laki craters and the Eldgjá are part of the same volcanic system. Insta-melt could occur:
At the peak of the 1755 Katla eruption the flood discharge has been estimated between 200,000–400,000 m³/s; for comparison the combined average discharge of the Amazon, Mississippi, Nile, and Yangtze rivers is about 290,000 m³/s.
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katla
Video of the eruption:
Volcano Eruption in Eyjafjallajökull Iceland 20 Mars 2010.
The volcano near the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier began to erupt shortly after midnight, leading to road closures in the area.
No one was in immediate danger, but 500 people were being moved from the area.
It is almost 200 years since a volcano near Eyjafjallajokull, 120km (75 miles) east of Reykjavik, last erupted. The last volcanic eruption in the area occurred in 1821.
Taken from C-FQWY / TF-SIF DHC-8-314Q Dash 8
James F. Evans (20:33:44) :
“No, not if the Earth expands. Surely, you are aware of Samuel Warren Carey (1911 — 2002)?”
Evidently you are not aware of gps data which shows the earth is not expanding. James, we are actively measuring the earth to the centimeter & it is not expanding! Case Closed. Need I say more – probably, to hammer the point home.
“So, how did the Rocky Mountains form?”
This website provides a reasonably well illustrated explanation :
http://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/usgsnps/province/rockymtn.html
Again, as I posted before, plate tectonics is a framework to interpret DATA within – not a model which tells you all the answers. This framework concept is fundamental to all geologic interpretation. No conflicts here, as you suggest there are.
The funny thing is I just read your link to the expanding Earth hypothesis. Whoever dreamt this up clearly had no concept about the concept of conservation of matter. If the Earth is expanding with time & no additional materials are being added, by definition the average density must be decreasing with time. So, let’s explore that idea in some more detail. In the models presented, it is hypothesized the Earth was once 40% of it’s current size (to get all the parts to fit).
The appropriate formula is V=4/3*pi*r^2 , approximating Earth as a sphere.
If we use our current radius as 1, then the current volume is 4.1888.
If we use our paleo-radius as 0.4 (40%), then our paleo-volume is 0.6702. So, by your hypothesis, the average density of the earth has decreased by a factor of 6.25 (4.1888/0.6702).
How are you going to accomplish this, given the fundamental chemistry of the rocks & gravity of the earth( which, by the way , we do know both quite well via geophysical imaging of the deep interior of the earth via earthquake seismology & extensive gravitational datasets) ???
The current average density of the earth is approximately 5.5 g/cc See:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/KatherineMalfucci.shtml
This suggests the paleo-density was a ridiculous 34.375 g/cc. For reference, that is approximately 3 times denser than lead at 11.35 g/cc. It roughly 77% denser than gold at 19.32 g/cc. The calculated paleo-density is 50% denser than the most dense naturally occurring element (Osmium at 22.6 g/cc). Nickel & Iron, which are known to be at the current core of the earth come in at a measly 8.9 & 7.87 g/cc – 4 to 5 times less dense than our calculated paleodensity.
See :
http://www.lenntech.com/periodic-chart-elements/density.htm
for element density data.
James, I’m sorry, but there is absolutely no way this hypothesis works. It is literally physically impossible – and I havent even touched on the sub-surface data where you can demonstrate contractional structures with 100’s of kms of net shortening. If you dont understand why it is impossible based on the data I have guided you to, then I cant help you. As I posted earlier, believe what you want – but that’s what the we are trying to get away from on this site – belief must be backed up by data, otherwise it is simply a matter of faith, not science.
Mike Lorrey (22:18:18) :
You too, my friend are off base in most your comments, but they do bring up some good points for James to contemplate.
“ever heard of this thing called the San Andreas Fault? It runs all the way up the west coast. North American Plate is subducting the Pacific Plate and the San Juan plate underneath it. Makes things like Mt St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, Hood, Shasta, Bachelor, Baker, and other western volcanos erupt from time to time.”
The San Andreas has nothing to do with anything you list here. See :
http://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/usgsnps/province/rockymtn.html
for how the Rockies formed.
All the volcanoes you list are formed by the subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate under the North Am plate – which, if you notice the southern most volcano of the Cascade range (Lassen) corresponds with the south end of the Juan de Fuca plate & the north end of the San Andreas – another one of those pesky geologic observations supporting plate tectonics (for James & others who doubt)
“and that megavolcano, known as Yellowstone National Park, in the Rocky Mountains…”
That’s an entirely different issue – that’s a hot spot under the North Am plate – which by the way documents the motion of the north Am plate through the Tertiary, just as the Hawaiian Island chain does on the pacific plate, which in concert show net convergent motion on the western boundary of the North Am plate through the Tertiary – yet another pesky piece of geologic evidence supporting plate tectonics, James.
” the Appalachians were formed by the Mid Atlantic Ridge spreading seam back when North America was just starting to be disconnected from Gondwanaland).”
No, the Appalachians were formed as Gondwanaland was formed from the continental collisions, creating a a long lived compressional event, thrusting up the mountains The mid atlantic ridge didnt form until well after the formation of the Appalachians – it formed as part the rifting apart of Gondwanaland & formation of the Atlantic ocean – it did not exist prior to then.
Enough geology lessons for today.
James F. Evans, just because there is variability within the types of trenches doesn’t refute plate tectonics. It’s like stating baldness invalidates the fact that one key mammal attribute is hairs!
“But the Rocky Mountains chain that runs from Canada through the U.S. into Mexico is not associated with any alleged “subduction” activity. So, how did the Rocky Mountains form?”
So orogeny is now supposed to be resulting from one single process, one type?… really this makes no sense at all, is not supported by analysis, mapping of various orogens of various ages, caledonian, variscan and alpine.
Considering this expanding earth theory is supposed to explain present day structures, how is it supposed to explain variscan orogenies known the globe over? Ophiolitic sutures and complexes have been identified through most of these orogens showing old oceanic lithosphere existed then…
Life is too short for this. eom.
One thing I like about this site is how it occasionally goes off topic, and teaches me things about subjects I never expected to be researching.
For example, subduction. The Icelandic volcano has nothing to do with subduction. However I am reading fascinating links to the geology of Mexico and Indonesia.
As usual, nature turns out to be more complex than the simple pictures we are given in high school geology text books.
I would say the same thing is true for El Ninos. The current El Nino is very different from the 1998 one. It almost deserves a name all its own, “El Fred” or something.
In the same way various types of subduction will likely get different names, or at least adjectives, “crooked subduction” or something.
The fact nature is full of variety should fill us with wonder, but instead it seems to lead to two extreme sorts of thinker. One is stuck-in-the-mud, and the other throws-baby-out-with-bathwater. It is sort of fun to watch the ferocious quibbling, and people becoming so righteously indignant about stuff, but I also think people need to calm down. We need both imagination and practicality to work hand in hand.
One person who worked with Winston Churchill during World War Two stated his brilliant mind had a hundred ideas a day, three of which were good. He needed practical people around to tell him “That won’t work, Winston, because…” 97 times a day. However he also needed those people not to be such stick-in-the-muds that they missed seeing the 3 ideas, which turned out to be ideas that defeated a despot.
All in all, I deeply enjoy watching all the minds at work on this site.
“Layne Blanchard (14:06:39) :…….Ah, Yes, that inexorable, devastating rise of 3 molecules in 10 Thousand …..to 4 whole molecules in 10 Thousand… shocking! Devastating. I’m melting already.”
——————–
Anu (17:21:29) :”Do you have a problem with the mathematics of strychnine poisoning too ?
0.2mg/kg of victims body weight works nicely – that’s 0.2 ppm.”
Anu, please, don’t try a poison analogy. CO2 is not poison. You are 19% carbon. I get tired of scaremongering hypotheticals. How about some real quantifiable experimental data that show real demonstrable effects of the increase of CO2, like the ag research from U of Illinois: http://soyface.illinois.edu/results/AAAS%202004%20poster%20Leakey.pdf
They increased the test plot atmospheric CO2 to the projected 2050 level of 550ppm(5.5 per 10,000) and watched soybean (C3) yields go up 14-16% while corn yields (C4) yields went up 26%. Water use efficiency went up, and when they added elevated ozone the yields went up even more. By the way, the corn and ozone outcomes confounded their hypothesis. Such is science.
I think we can agree that coal is an incredibly filthy energy source, but the CO2 emissions are not pollution or poison, they are nutrients for our biosphere. Any farmer will tell you that cold is worse than warm for crop yields. The homeless will tell you that the cold is the enemy, the warm is their friend. The Achilles heel of climate science is the inability to run controlled experiments. With so many independent variables how can we assign cause and effect to the dependent variables?
You need to reconcile with the idea that flux and change are the norm in this wonderful world and equilibrium is a chimera. I hope you are adaptable.
Here’s some more photots of it.
http://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=126&aff=16&aft=512242&afv=topic
Amazing eh?
After 4 or so billion years and still have massive pressure build-up under our crust.
One day scientists will learn that when in rotation, and it is slowing down, super-compressed gases(liquid) relax and they expand.
Nice to see some science discussed here.
Back to the original subject.
Eruption Fissure now 2 kilometres long. At least one Volcanological explosion shooting a plume to 8000metres. Continuous plume now up to 3 – 4000 metres.
This eruption is expanding. Hopefully not to the Laki precedent.
This may get very interesting
I won’t repeat the good points brought up by my fellow geologists, but may I suggest interested parties read introductory texts on plate tectonics or contintental formation (e.g. Geological Evolution of North America or Evolution of the Earth; these are older texts as I’m an old fart). Essentially, there is more than one way to build a mountain.
For more “entertaining” reads about earthquakes and volcanoes, you could try Simon Winchester’s “A Crack in the Edge of the World” (about the San Francisco earthquake and its effect on the study of earthquakes) or “The Day the World Exploded” (about the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883). Both books discuss geology in a way that is interesting and informative.
Jeff L (22:18:40) :
Well gee, if it didn’t work in the past, and doesn’t work now, let me be the last to posit that it could work in the future if we simply employ the Hollow Earth Hypothesis. Sorry!
I thumbed through http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/global/expanding_earth.html ad noted it has the decent to present some of the conventional side, e.g. palaeomagnetic data … limiting the amount of potential Earth expansion to less than 0.8% during the last 400 million years.
The only way an expanding Earth could be viable is if Earth is still accreting matter – and there’s no doubt that it is. However, meteors, comets, and other stuff are bringing several orders of magnitude too little new material. Accretion would have trouble explaining why some multi-billion year old rocks are on Greenland’s surface and why traces of past impacts (e.g. the osmium layer between, umm, whatever the geologic break was) are not deeper, as well as the chemistry and isotope makeup of the crust.
I am pleased at the growth here of the number of people who can handle these sorts of issues and keep things pretty much on track. I’ll have more to say in the upcoming 40,000,000 hit thread, which I confidently predict will occur (duh).
Many thanks to the real scientists here to take the time to apply the “sniff tests” to concepts that have some interesting ideas but are built on a foundation of fantasy.
Jeff L (23:01:08) :
Mike Lorrey (22:18:18) :
“and that megavolcano, known as Yellowstone National Park, in the Rocky Mountains…”
That’s an entirely different issue – that’s a hot spot under the North Am plate – which by the way documents the motion of the north Am plate through the Tertiary, just as the Hawaiian Island chain does on the pacific plate, which in concert show net convergent motion on the western boundary of the North Am plate through the Tertiary – yet another pesky piece of geologic evidence supporting plate tectonics, James.
One of the things I really like about hotspots is that plate tectonics doesn’t explain them (as far as I know) and doesn’t need them, but they provide some of the simplest and most wonderful confirmation of plate tectonics.
I was stationed in Iceland in 1970 during a Hekla eruption. Early May I think. The Icelanders had bus tours of the volcano from the bus station in Reykavik. I took one and got up close and personal with Hekla. We parked close to a lava flow that was at least 15 feet high. We were given hard hats when we walked around outside. We were allowed to walk up to the lava flow and people took home small samples. It was something to remember.
GREEN ALERT!
Quick!
Somebody get the Goreacle on the horn and gas up his fleet of personal luxury jets with Greenpeace approved biofuel. We’ll need to airdrop Leonardo DiCrapio directly into the erupting Eyjafjallajökull fissure in order to forestall a climate catastrophe. Prince Charles has already been notified of the crisis and the Eurozone has been placed under a Level 4 Tipping Point Watch. Politicians, Hollywood celebrities, and prominent members of the mainstream news media have already been evacuated to a luxurious Balinese resort in order to ensure the continued survival of mankind should DiCrapio fail in his mission.
Ordinary citizens are advised to breath more slowly and refrain from farting until the crisis is over.
Even though I eventually chose a combination humanities-social sciences profession, my first love was geology-geography. Thanks for the excellent updating by geologists on this thread — and, I guess I am also grateful for those exposing our collective (as well as individual) ignorance. Provides great opportunities for brief, persuasive lessons. There may have been others, but Leif’s paarticipation is the model I know the best and treasure. Patience to the nth and commitment to (re)education. Thanks to all.
For a polar view of seismic activity, with a spin..eh.
1963-1998 N.Pole magnitudes >3.5
http://denali.gsfc.nasa.gov/dtam/data/ftp/polar_nor_gt3.gif
1963-1998 S. Pole magnitudes >3.5
http://denali.gsfc.nasa.gov/dtam/data/ftp/polar_south_gt3.gif
1963-1998 Global
http://denali.gsfc.nasa.gov/dtam/data/ftp/global_gt3.gif
Home Page
http://denali.gsfc.nasa.gov/dtam/index.html
~
James Evans, I am wondering how we explain the sunken cities that have been found offshore Japan, India etc..
Earthquakes and volcaninc eruptions increase during solar minimums..a troublesome “correlation”.
Additional links:
http://leucos.lstilde.org/divers/iceland/eq/data/reviewed_data_hourly_wide.png
http://www2.norvol.hi.is/
Wilson Flood (10:47:09) : …the next “turn of the screw”, in the current minimum, will also include some “revolutions” also as cold makes its job…
Amusing aside; I was at a charity ‘do’ last week when I heard a an elderly ‘Green’ state; “If we stopped all the bombing there wouldn’t be all these eruptions and Earthquakes.”
We did try and explain plate tectonics 101 to her, but it was no good.
/facepalm
maz2 (11:01:02) :
The island’s worst eruption in modern times was in 1783, when the Laki volcano blew its top. The lava shot to heights of 1.4 kilometres and more than 120 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide was released into the atmosphere.
How many SUV exausts would equal this and how many unstoppable Prius would avoid it?
Jeff L (12:47:26) : What if both are right? Actually the las chilean earthquake, instead, of subduction happened the contrary.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/chile-earthquake-moved-entire-city-10-feet-to-the-west/
Perhaps in “interesting times” nature doesn’t like to follow settled science. We should keep our eyes and mind opened.
Daniel H (06:52:59) :
GREEN ALERT!
Bali is a good place for them to stay during this minimum, though I would suggest instead the new Krakatoa’s baby island.
“Iceland volcano eruption intensifies
REYKJAVIK – Icelandic authorities warned Monday of increased disturbance in the area of the volcanic eruption that forced more than 600 people to flee their homes on Sunday.
“Police have increased surveillance in the whole area around the Eyjafjallajokull and Myrdalsjokull glaciers because of increased disturbance this morning in the volcanic eruption,” the police and civil protection department said in a statement.
Police warned there could be danger in travelling or driving in the vicinity of the volcanic area and closed some of the area’s roads.
Public broadcaster RUV reported small earthquakes in the region of the volcanic eruption were measured early Monday.
It also said the 800 metre (yard) fissure caused by the eruption was getting larger and heading towards the Myrdalsjokull glacier, which sits on top of the powerful Katla volcano.”
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Iceland+volcano+eruption+intensifies/2710954/story.html
well.. I went through and read.. every Post.. as always.. was marvously educated.. and amazed .. at what can be learned .. and what brave minds will theorize..
a few questions..
can.. Katla.. Erupt at a VEI of or better given all that is known..
Is there any credence to the I dea, that the Mega Thrusts off chile and in Indonesia.. and the eventual can have been precursors, or catalysts for volcanic events in number that could tip us towards a true rapid cooling..
@richard G. (01:00:58) :
The argument was made that CO2 in the atmosphere could not be consequential, since the numbers were so small :
Ah, Yes, that inexorable, devastating rise of 3 molecules in 10 Thousand …..to 4 whole molecules in 10 Thousand… shocking! Devastating. I’m melting already.
I merely gave a counterexample of an even smaller ppm molecule having a large effect on a system. If you think this implies that CO2 is a poison, you have totally missed the point of the example.
The Achilles heel of climate science is the inability to run controlled experiments.
Have you ever heard of Astronomy, or Cosmology ?
Do you think they build stars and universes to test their theories ?
Different sciences have different approaches and methods, despite what you may have heard in high school. You would be wise to not dismiss the work of thousands of highly trained scientists, working for decades, based on your spare time reading.
Of course flux and change have happened on the Earth for billions of years, but that doesn’t mean I want to die tomorrow, or become obese in 10 years, or have Civilization end this century. Some changes are to be actively avoided.