Guest Post by Steven Goddard
The Guardian image below taken this week near Iceland has the caption “Smoke and ash billows from a volcano in Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland Photograph: Ingolfur Juliusson/Reuters”
The Guardian caption is for the most part incorrect. Note that the volcanic cloud is largely indistinguishable from the other clouds, except for it’s shape. The reason for the similarity is that the vast majority of the volcanic plume is water vapour, not ash and definitely not smoke. Where would smoke come from??? There aren’t any trees on Iceland to burn.
The abundance of gases varies considerably from volcano to volcano. However, water vapor is consistently the most common volcanic gas, normally comprising more than 60% of total emissions. Carbon dioxide typically accounts for 10 to 40% of emissions.
70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water. Where did that water come from? It is generally believed that most of it outgased from the interior of the earth during the first 700 million years of the earth’s existence.
Steam from the interiorToday most authors believe that early steam from the hot mantle but already cool atmosphere, caused the oceans in the very early stages of the planet. They reason from studies of chondrites (space rocks) in space that under compression, enough water could be released to form an ocean. Today one can observe the gases escaping from active volcanoes, and these too contain water. In this scenario, the oceans would still be increasing in size, a gradual process that would never really end.The amount of water stored in rocks of the primary lithosphere is estimated at 25E21kg (Hutchinson G E, 1957), whereas the water in all oceans is 1.35E21kg, so it is quite possible that all this water emerged slowly after rocks were compressed and heated while the atmosphere had cooled already.
We know that the oceans could not have condensed out of the early atmosphere, because even a 100% water vapour atmosphere would only contain 10 metres of liquid water. People have hypothesized that the oceans came from comets, but the hydrogen isotope ratios in the oceans are different than that seen in comets Halley, Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp.
The only plausible origin of the oceans is from the interior of the earth. So why don’t we see oceans on other planets and the moon? Liquid water only exists in a narrow range of temperatures and pressures. Other planets are too hot, too cold or too small to hold liquid water, though some of the moons of the giant planets may have liquid water.
Why is the relationship between volcanoes and water important? Because steam pressure is the primary driver of explosive volcanic eruptions.
Below are some images of potentially explosive eruptions :
Mt. St. Helens 1980 : Mostly steam, some ash, almost no smoke.
The video above shows the moment of the big eruption May 18, 1980
Mayon 1984 USGS photo : Steam rising, ash cloud falling down the sides of the mountain.
Fourpeaked Volcano, Alaska 2006 USGS photo : 100% steam
Tungurahua 2006 NASA EO image : Steam, ash and lava
Eyjafjallajökull 2010 NASA EO image : Steam, lava, ice
Below are USGS images of non-explosive eruptions at Mauna Loa, Hawaii
Note in the image above that there is some smoke on the left side – from burning trees, and a little steam at the summit. So what is the difference between explosive and non-explosive eruptions? The difference is mainly due to the presence or absence of water. Water mainly enters volcanoes from two primary sources.
- Subduction on the sea floor, and transport upwards into a magma chamber. (Mt. St. Helens)
- Melt from snow and ice above. (Eyjafjallajökull and Mt. St. Helens)
Mauna Loa on the other hand has very little water mixed in with the magma, as it is neither near a subduction zone nor is it covered with snow most of the time. So eruptions from Mauna Loa tend to produce lava rather than steam and ash.
Looking at the mechanics, it becomes clear that explosive volcanic eruptions can not occur in the absence of large amounts of steam. Liquids (like magma) have very low compressibility and can not store enough mechanical energy to cause an explosion. Gases on the other hand are extremely compressible and can store vast amounts of energy. Steam has the unique property that it is liquid until it comes in contact with the magma (or the overburden pressure becomes low enough to allow it to switch to vapour phase) – then it converts thermal energy into mechanical energy very efficiently. The world used to run off steam engines based on this principle.
Most modern power plants still use steam to convert thermal energy into mechanical energy. Same principle that makes volcanoes explode.
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and again..
18 April: German airlines question extended flight ban
“The closure of the airspace has been imposed solely on the basis of data from a computer simulation from the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in London,” Joachim Hunold, head of Air Berlin, told the paper.
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100418-26615.html
Met Office: London Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre
http://metoffice.com/aviation/vaac/london.html
johnythelowery (19:29:37)
You aren’t going far enough back.
Matt B (20:02:45)
You’re closer, but still not there.
GE 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. (NASB) He created light and separated the light from the darkness. This was all on the first day of creation. Five more days and He had finished creation. This all occurred a little more than 6,000 years ago.
I keep hearing that one volcano produces more CO2 than all the cars ever made have, but others have said that is not true, which is correct?
Some great Iceland volcano pics: click
With regards to the ash plume modeling, at least one of the numeric models of the Icelandic plume uses SO2 emissions as a proxy for ash – rather than modeling ash dispersal directly.
I’m not sure of the emission relationship between ash and SO2, but I’m pretty certain that the dispersion patterns are quite different. However there must be enough SO2 emissions to make it worthwhile – perhaps for initial airborne measurements?
Other experts promise all the water came from comets and ignored volcanoes. I am so confused.
Amusing and interesting article about how the ‘science’ of water vapour forcing was derived. Basically just a fudge to fit some figures, no science involved!
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5563
stevengoddard (19:02:34) :
but Iceland doesn’t have much in the way of fuel to burn.
But they’ve got plenty of hot girls. That’s a different fuel though.
My favorite definition of an expert is “some guy from out of town”.
johnythelowery (19:29:37) :
Having dinner with the Apostle Peter was probably interesting, especially when he went, as my kids would say, a bit ‘Random’:
‘……the earth was formed out of water and by water…’ 2Pe Ch3v6
Thanks Peter for that. Could you pass the bread please.
Now THAT was funny. I don’t think I completely understood it but nonetheless, I’m laughing quite vigorously. Thanks
Walter M. Clark (20:33:36) :
The word ‘day’ in Genesis 1 is a mistranslation. It is the word yom. It means ‘time period’. Yom is commonly translated day because a day is a time period of 24 hours, and is the correct translation of yom in many cases. But there are other time periods: supereon, eons, eras, periods, epochs, ages, decades, years, months, weeks, etc. So it wasn’t 7 days but 7 time periods (maybe like Hadean/Archean, Paleo-proterozoic, Meso-proterozoic, Neo-proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic). There is no disagreement between accurate translation of the scriptures and science. 🙂
That’s all the farther I’ll go on this because I don’t want to debate it, and I think there’s something in the rules here about not debating religion. I just wanted to present the idea to you.
BBC article about a water foot prints and a “Perfect Storm” and embedded water usage. Its all much worse then we thought, and its time we all radically changed our lifestyle or else…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8628832.stm
johnythelowery (19:48:50)
I have read that there is meant to be lots of water on/in the asteroid Ceres too. Probably no vulcanism though.
“The reason for the similarity is that the vast majority of the volcanic plume is water vapour, not ash and definitely not smoke. Where would smoke come from??? There aren’t any trees on Iceland to burn.”
Maybe nitpicking, but let’s remember: clouds don’t consist of water vapour. It is water. Aerosol.
So is there or is’nt there an ash cloud over Europe? Reading this and reading about the test results from Lufthansa I get the distinct impression the Met Office models have struck again. Wonder if the airlines will be able to bill them for the bogus ban, if indeed it turns out to be bogus? Not flying in the immediate vicinity of a volcanoe I can understand but 2-3000 miles away? WUWT?
I wonder how much of our climate will change, will it be another cold NH summer and winter? Mt St Helen cooled us a bit, what will this erruption do? Maybe we will see iceskating on the river again.. heh.
http://www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli/perm/iceland/eyafallajokull_20100416-en.html
Best photos so far of eruption, check out the galleries!!
What’s the point of having a computer scientist regurgitate Wikipablum when volcanologists offer more professional geophysics commentary ?
An honest tar sand miner could unearth more and better data and link in an hour’s harrowing of the GSA, which hsa published literally volumes on explosive eruptions.
Phil. (20:09:43) :
Ash is formed by violent interaction between magma and water, which cools, solidifies and fragments the magma into small particles. It is another by-product of water interacting with magma.
The city of Los Alamos, NM is built on top of hundreds of feet of volcanic ash from a super volcano eruption about a million years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valles_Caldera#Geology_and_science
The Long Valley Caldera in Mammoth, California is similar, and started showing signs of resurgence about the same time as Mt. St. Helens erupted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Valley_Caldera#Caldera
EU – “EU emergency talks called on volcanic ash air chaos”
“Sixty-three thousand flights have been cancelled in the four days…”
And these people think they can control the Earth’s climate by shaving a small percentage of Co2 from that trace gas Co2. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8628867.stm
Anyone worked out how many tonnes of Co2 have been emitted so far?
Will the airline companies be claiming/selling carbon credits because of the grounding of their aeroplanes?
There does appear to be exposed water ice in patches on the dwarf planet Ceres. I eagerly await the Dawn mission getting there.
Yom with a number and “evening and morning” is always a 24 hour period.
The culprit behind The Wasteland in the Matter of Britain is thought to be either an asteroid impact, a comet airburst, a major eruption in Indonesia – or this particular volcanic complex in Iceland. The dark ages really were dark. 20-25 years without a summer, famine afflicting the grain farming Romano-British and Romano-Gauls, along with plague, the Germanic tribes living differently not so severely decimated, along with the Muslim conquest of Rome’s bread basket and trade routes collapsing the economy until significant recovery began in the 9th century thanks substantially to Alcuin of York (Lindisfarne, actually)
Steve,
Here’s my layman’s (i.e. not an igneous petrologist) view of water and volcanoes.
Water (and other volatiles) are constituents of all magmas. We know this from the nearly ubiquitous presence of fluid inclusions trapped within and between mineral grains in igneous rocks. These inclusions are sort of like the ones in glacier ice that are used to identify the compostition of the atmosphere in the recent past. In this case, the inclusions indicate the relative composition of the volatiles which, in theory, were homogenously mixed with the components of the silicate minerals in the melt at the time when the rock cystallized. These inclusions contain volatile constituents (H2O, CO2,Cl2,SO2,etc) and other incompatible elements that weren’t incorporated into the silicate minerals which make up the rock.
We also know that basaltic magmas, like Hawaii, are higher temperature, lower viscosity and have a lower volatile content than the continental, rhyolitic magmas. In fact, the existence of lower temperature rhyolitic Cascade-type magmas are only possible because of the presence of the volatiles. Anhydrous silicate melts have somewhat higher melting temperatures. When volatiles are added, the temperature of the melting point is lowered analogous to the way salts lower the melting temperture (or freezing point) of water. My understanding of the relatively greater explosive potential of Mt. St. Helens type magmas is due to higher amounts of volatiles combined with higher viscosities resulting from the lower magma temperatures.
Is it possible to exclude any natural event on Earth from the effects of man-made “global warming”? Not according to AGW fanatics.
Now we have the prospect of “man-made” volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis, according to British scientists.
This is from today’s Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7604188/Volcanic-ash-cloud-Global-warming-may-trigger-more-volcanoes.html
“Volcanic ash cloud: Global warming may trigger more volcanoes
Climate change could spark more ”hazardous” geological events such as volcanoes, earthquakes and landslides, scientists have warned.
“In papers published by the Royal Society, researchers warned that melting ice, sea level rises and even increasingly heavy storms and rainfall – predicted consequences of rising temperatures – could affect the Earth’s crust.”
“…The increase in seismic activity could, in turn, cause underwater landslides that spark tsunamis.
A potential additional risk is from ”ice-quakes” generated when the ice sheets break up, causing tsunamis which could threaten places such as New Zealand, Newfoundland in Canada and Chile. The reduction in the ice could also stimulate volcanic eruptions, according to the research…”
And our old friend the “tipping point” makes its reappearance here…
“…Other impacts of rising temperatures include glacial lakes bursting out through rock dams and causing flash flooding in mountain regions such as the Himalayas, as well as rock, ice and landslides as permafrost melts.
And he said there may be ”tipping points” in the geological systems, where the crust reaches a threshold that causes a step-change in the frequency of such events – but it was not clear where those thresholds might lie.”
Yes, it’s all our fault. If only humans didn’t exist, the whole Earth would be one gigantic paradise full of birds, butterflies and frolicking dolphins, and completely unaffected by any geological event, ever. What these guys know about the Earth’s geological history can be written on the back of a postage stamp and still leave room for the Gettysburg Address.