From “Scientific” American via Reuters, proof positive that global warming is omnipotent and is intertwined into anything you choose it to be. Why, even the inner Earth bends to its will. And we all know that once the inner Earth gets out, we’re doomed, because Al Gore tells us it is millions of degrees.
Ice cap thaw may awaken Icelandic volcanoes (link fixed)
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) – A thaw of Iceland’s ice caps in coming decades caused by climate change may trigger more volcanic eruptions by removing a vast weight and freeing magma from deep below ground, scientists said on Friday.
They said there was no sign that the current eruption from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier that has paralysed flights over northern Europe was linked to global warming. The glacier is too small and light to affect local geology.
“Our work suggests that eventually there will be either somewhat larger eruptions or more frequent eruptions in Iceland in coming decades,” said Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a vulcanologist at the University of Iceland.
“Global warming melts ice and this can influence magmatic systems,” he told Reuters. The end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago coincided with a surge in volcanic activity in Iceland, apparently because huge ice caps thinned and the land rose.
“We believe the reduction of ice has not been important in triggering this latest eruption,” he said of Eyjafjallajokull. “The eruption is happening under a relatively small ice cap.”
Carolina Pagli, a geophysicist at the University of Leeds in England, said there were risks that climate change could also trigger volcanic eruptions or earthquakes in places such as Mount Erebus in Antarctica, the Aleutian islands of Alaska or Patagonia in South America.
…
He said that melting ice seemed the main way in which climate change, blamed mainly on use of fossil fuels, could have knock-on effects on geology. The U.N. climate panel says that global warming will cause more floods, droughts and rising seas.
h/t to WUWT reader Sean Peake
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UPDATE: A rebuttal to this premise has been made by WUWT’s Steve Goddard. See it here.
Ref – hippie longstocking (09:55:40) :
“John Egan (07:58:47): Does global warming cause male pattern baldness?”
Yes it does and I have the “hole in the ozone layer”-like thin patch on my head to prove it! There is no other possible explanation…
__________________________________
I hate to be the one to pass this on but the exact opposite is true of women. DO NOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THE LATEST DISCOVERY IN ANTHROPROGENIC CLIMATOLOGY AND GENETICS BUT GLOBAL COOLING DURING THE LAST GLACIAL PERIOD CAUSED WOMEN TO DEVELOP SEVERE PATTERN BALDING.
At the beginning of the last glacial period men and women had the same amount of body hair AND muscle mass. There is something in an Ice Age that seems to make women more attractive and men get less so and more hairy.
Some of the Thule archaeological sites in northern Greenland are now underwater. But so is Roanoke colony in Virginia. Anyway, yes, it is happening, Helsinki is rising and the Kola Peninsula on the White Sea is sinking, Australia is also doing this table-dip thing…
I’m confused. Help a poor layman out here. I’d thought that the submerging shorelines were being caused by rising ocean levels due to global warming (sic) but now I’m told that the earth is falling?
Or is it the increased weight of the additional water causes the earth to subside?
Related to earthquakes:
USGS Newsroom
Is Recent Earthquake Activity Unusual? Scientists Say No.
Released: 4/14/2010 2:55:24 PM
source: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2439
“China’s tragic magnitude 6.9 earthquake on April 13 and the recent devastating earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Mexico, and elsewhere have many wondering if this earthquake activity is unusual.
…
“With six major earthquakes striking in the first four months of this year, 2010 is well within the normal range. Furthermore, from April 15, 2009, to April 14, 2010, there have been 18 major earthquakes, a number also well within the expected variation.
“While the number of earthquakes is within the normal range, this does not diminish the fact that there has been extreme devastation and loss of life in heavily populated areas,” said USGS Associate Coordinator for Earthquake Hazards Dr. Michael Blanpied.
Andrew (09:41:33) : That scenario ocurred in the 1970 earthquake where part of a glaciar broke down and interred the city of Yungay, in the peruvian andes. That earthquake caused 70,000 deaths.
If that’s the *real* Door To Hell, then where’s the Road Paved With Good Intentions?
*gratuitous straight line provided at no additional charge*
Story on a sinkhole swallowing a car in California. Global warming causes BOTH sinkholes and volcanic eruptions. Both weather temp increases and decreases. It also causes both rain and drought? http://news.yahoo.com/video/local-15749667/19175673
Just say it.. AGW causes everything.. take our money now.. before we sin again.
ps humm shouldn’t you be burning that evil money instead of living like a King?
Here is the biggest hole in the world that is actually sucking up lots of money…
http://www.nps.gov/piro/parkmgmt/images/WhiteHouse.jpg
Tim Clark (09:43:15) :
Think about it.
Good advice, I’d recommend you try it. Your response was not “a particularly well thought out” one.
Geologically speaking, what exactly is around the same time? Perhaps the volcanoes blasted off and precipitated the ice age.
10000 years is not relevant to the geologic timescale, which is generally measure in millions, not thousands of years. But no, <a href="http://geoleoedocs.sub.uni-goettingen.de:8080/dspace/bitstream/gledocs-108/1/Andrews%2BGudmundsson.pdf")vulcanism increased in Iceland after the start of the current interglacial. You could have investigated that yourself with one Google search if you were really interested.
Volcanism causes global cooling by the emmission of reflective ash and aerosols, sulphur compounds in particular.
Explain how would that end an ice age?
The hypothesis is not that the vulcanism ended the ice age. You’ve got it exactly backward, clearly because you haven’t even bothered to read the article.
If you’d followed the link and read it rather than skimming the edited excerpt above, you’d have seen that Dr. Pagli theorized that the weight of the ice prevented rocks from expanding and turning into liquid magma. “As the ice melts,” she explained, “the rock can melt because the pressure decreases.”
Of course, you can always try to argue against something you haven’t even read, but it’s hardly persuasive.
It seems to me that increasing ice cover will put more stress on rock over a magma chamber, push the cap rocks into the magma and will also lead to breaking rocks and more eruptions.
What we really need to do is monitor the pressure in the magma dome and add ice (better, rocks – denser and don’t melt) to keep the magma in place. One would think the increasing pressure might lead to a really big eruptions should the cap be breached, but this article assures us that only reducing pressure leads to bigger eruptions.
sphaerica (10:10:25) :
Tim Clark,
You have it backwards. The surge in volcanic activity did not end the ice age, but rather the end of the ice age increased volcanic activity (which is further evidence supporting the scientist’s claims).
References please. The authors coincide.
Oops. The authors “said” coincide.
Elizabeth (Canada) (09:08:43) “I have actually been waiting for someone to link earthquakes to global warming, as impossible a feat as this seemed. Impressive how Pagli snuck that in there.”
I haven’t brought ice variables into this study yet, but it’s clear that there is some kind of multivariate coupling at play:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/SAOT_Lunar_aa_SOI.png
More details here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/VolcanoStratosphereSLAM.htm
The coupling could be a very big deal as the coupling direction appears to vary by timescale (which means this is going to be a serious pile of work to sort out – i.e. the usual assumptions thrown into conventional decompositions might be a joke inviting hearty laughter).
John from CA (10:39:25) :
Related to earthquakes:
USGS Newsroom
Is Recent Earthquake Activity Unusual? Scientists Say No
So rest assure that the next ones: The Big One (wich will specifically affect a known prophet’s property) and the New Madrid (*), are within POST NORMAL STATISTICS (Ya know: That LEVY WALK thing).
(*)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1812_New_Madrid_earthquake
Ot but climategate II?
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/4/16/actons-eleven-the-response.html
I am sceptical of global warming causing volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. However what is certain is that geothermal development is causing earthquakes.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=geothermal-drilling-earthquakes
The recent earthquake in California was preceded by foreshocks whose epicenter was at the Cerro Prieto geothermal field in Mexico, the worlds largest.
An article published by the Seismological Society of America pointed to evidence of earthquakes being generated by the geothermal plant.
http://bssa.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/1A/93
I have tried to bring this to the attention of California newspapers with no luck.
If I understand the logic here, the current ice caps are pushing down ground. But doesn’t this mean that the ground is rising/bulgingsomewhere else? Thus causing problems somewhere. Then when the ice melts the trouble is under the old ice and the bulge problem somewhere is reduced. The AGW people truly can have it both ways. My apologies to the English enforcer and anyone who is rational.
Since any measurable variable that increases or decreases across time is due to CO2 emissions, then we must conclude that CO2 emissions are causing an increase in human population. The following two graphs illustrate this disturbing trend:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png
http://ecology.com/features/population/images/7.gif
Another remarkable effect of AGW, it fries the brain of climate scientists.
A long time ago I enjoyed scientific american. I have since cancelled my subscription due to their rigid adherence to AGW orthodoxy. I am sorry I clicked on their link and gave them site traffic.
Tim
Paul Daniel Ash,
” Dr. Pagli theorized that the weight of the ice prevented rocks from expanding and turning into liquid magma. “As the ice melts,” she explained, “the rock can melt because the pressure decreases.”
The earth’s crust is on average 100km thick. Given that the density of rock is 2.5 times that of ice, the 100km of rock is equivalent in pressure to 250km of ice. That seems like a lot of pressure already. How much difference will another kilometer of ice make?
Colour me sceptical on that one.
Tim Clark (10:48:19) :
References please. The authors “said” coincide.
The Reuters reported wrote “coincide,” but if you would stir yourself to do the tiniest bit of reading before opining, you’d have seen that the researchers were noting increased volcanic activity at the start of the Holocene interglacial, not before it.
The “reference” you request is at the top of this page: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ice-cap-thaw-iceland-volcanoes
melting ice caused the volcanoe……hmmmm….oceans cover most of the earth and there a lots of undersea volcanoes….has to be true….
/sarc off….
repeat after me….we believe in AGW….we believe… ok enough….
Tim Clark (09:43:15) :
Think about it.
Paul Daniel Ash (10:44:56) :
Good advice, I’d recommend you try it. Your response was not “a particularly well thought out” one.
10000 years is not relevant to the geologic timescale, which is generally measure in millions, not thousands of years. But no, <a href="http://geoleoedocs.sub.uni-goettingen.de:8080/dspace/bitstream/gledocs-108/1/Andrews%2BGudmundsson.pdf")vulcanism increased in Iceland after the start of the current interglacial. You could have investigated that yourself with one Google search if you were really interested.
The hypothesis is not that the vulcanism ended the ice age. You’ve got it exactly backward, clearly because you haven’t even bothered to read the article.
If you’d followed the link and read it rather than skimming the edited excerpt above, you’d have seen that Dr. Pagli theorized that the weight of the ice prevented rocks from expanding and turning into liquid magma. “As the ice melts,” she explained, “the rock can melt because the pressure decreases.”
Of course, you can always try to argue against something
Let me interpret my initial post.
I was lamenting the weasel term coincide. I was using the pre/post volcanism coment sarcastically. I was not postulating a novel ending for the ice-age, that, by my interpretation of available data, is orbital variations; nor was I suggesting that geologic time was not long.
That being said, thank you for the reference. It bolsters my point concerning the coincidence of the end of the ice-age and it’s effect on the onset of volcanism: from your reference-
Abstract: Holocene shield volcanoes (lava shields) are common in Iceland, but they are restricted in space and time. As regards space, most of the shield volcanoes in Iceland occur within two bands in the West and North Volcanic Zones. There are no shields in the East Volcanic Zone apart from the island of Surtsey. The shields are mostly at the margins of or outside the volcanic systems. As regards time, many Holocene shield volcanoes formed some 5000–10000 years ago during early postglacial time. Apart from the shield on top of the island of Surtsey, there are no known shields in Iceland younger than about 3500B.P….
Yesirree.. they got that baby nailed down.
Vincent (11:09:30) :
How much difference will another kilometer of ice make?
Colour me sceptical on that one.
Good! Being skeptical would necessitate that you investigate claims, rather than blindly accepting or rejecting them.
The researchers actually address your question right at the beginning of their 2008 paper (http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~earcpa/2008GL033510.pdf):
1 Pascal = 1 newton per meter squared (a newton is the amount of force required to accelerate a kilogram one meter per second per second)
They agree with your assessment of the pressure exerted by rock as being about 2.5x (17/5) that of ice, but your guess of the thickness of the Earth’s crust is off. Continental crust is mostly 35 to 40 km. The researchers note that “crustal thickness in Iceland varies from 15 to 46 km.” For this study, they “use an average thickness of the crust of 25 km.”