"It Was 30 Years Ago Today"

I give it a 50/50 chance……..how’s that for a solid commitment?
I’ll bet my prognostication proves accurate!

Yes but when. Recent discussion on here is that when the current volcano stops erupting the pressure builds up in the chambers and spreads to Katla where it goes kaboomb!

Just a little more from Gilbert White in 1783:
‘From June 23rd to July 20th inclusive, during which period the wind varied to every quarter without making any alteration in the air. The sun at noon looked as blank as a clouded moon and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms, but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting.’
‘All the time the heat was so intense that butcher’s meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed, and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic and riding irksome. All the while, Calabria and part of the isle of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes, and a volcano sprung out of the sea on the coast of Norway.’

If the conditions that would cause Katla to erupt come about, most likely Katla will then erupt.
Sorry, just testing my IPCC speak.

I’m wondering how you could have skied uphill in ten feet of snow behind a valley. But that would sure be something I would remember.

Katla will likely erupt at some point soon. While such an event is never good, an eruption of Katla combined with other cooling factors that seem to be occurring would be amplifying the pain of a cooling world.

The eruption of mount St. Hellens was absolutly devistating to all aircraft on the continental United States. Aircraft were falling out of the skies at a rate of 100 per hour between Boise Idaho and New York City. The deaths from all these aircraft crashing numbered in the thousands.
NOT!
Sometimes, people and computer models need a reality check…

Glenn
Nordic skis are designed to go up hills, down hills, or on flat ground.
http://www.xcski.org/

The most hilarious thing I see is 25 year old trees creeping up the mountain side, or the bs hitting the fan over and over for every time the green muppets said over and over that it’d take like a “million years” for nature to reclaim that mountain.
When I hear greenies and their muppets say they are nature folks, being one with nature and all that crap I go ROFL and call ’em by name–hippies!

Iceland–I spent the summer of 69 making surface deformation measurements w/eysteinn tryggvason on katla and other locations,including surtsey and hekla.
that katla might also blow is very probable. a bigger concern for europe is hekla-
its effect on climate in the dark ages lead europeans to consider it the gateway to hell!
lanny

I made a comment a couple days ago to make a point about cycles in the climate:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/16/volcano-update/#comment-391470
The relevant part is:
From TimesOnline ( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7127706.ece ) comes the following story:

The Icelandic eruption that has caused misery for air travellers could be part of a surge in volcanic activity that will affect the whole of Europe for decades, scientists have warned.
They have reconstructed a timeline of 205 eruptions in Iceland, spanning the past 1,100 years, and found that they occur in regular cycles — with the relatively quiet phase that dominated the past five decades now coming to an end.
At least three other big Icelandic volcanoes are building towards an eruption, according to Thor Thordarson, a volcanologist at Edinburgh University.
“The frequency of Icelandic eruptions seems to rise and fall in a cycle lasting around 140 years,” he said. “In the latter part of the 20th century we were in a low period, but now there is evidence that we could be approaching a peak.”

Just because Eyjafjallajokull is erupting is no guarantee that any other volcano will blow its top. However, given the history of volcanic activity in Iceland over the course of centuries, I’m guessing that it’s likely we’ll see a major eruption by mid-century. {Damn! With that sort of prediction, I’m sounding like I could land a job with the IPCC. *shudder* Now that makes me feel unclean}

DirkH
“I think Katla will erupt within a few months. There is this relationship between solar minima and earthquakes and volcano eruptions; we had a long solar minimum and Katla hasn’t erupted since 1918.”
I doubt there is a scientifically convincing relationship between solar minima and tectonic events. What could connect them?

Last Tuesday’s soccer practice was cancelled because of a blizzard. Today it was because of a tornado warning.

A climate significant eruption will be the saving grace for the AGW advocates. Any cooling will be attributed to the volcano. What the skeptic camp needs to emphatically prove its case is a sustained period (at least five years) of global cooling with no special inputs.
For that reason alone it is desirable for the Earth to keep its hat on for a while.

—
Vulcanism is a persistent phenomenon, and involves the episodically waxing and waning of gaseous discharges in extremely large volumes.
Is there any source of information on the character and quantity of such discharges – as a total impact upon the earth’s atmosphere – whereby these may be compared to emissions secondary to purposeful human action?
The warmist True Believers are persistent in their dismissal of vulcanism as a contributory factor in the atmospheric changes to which they attribute anthropogenic global warming. I wonder how much validity there is in these creatures’ claims.
—

PJF says:
May 18, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Actually, it’s up to AGW to prove it’s case what with the 10 years there was no cooling and no major eruptions circling the globe.
We don’t need no 5 years, ’cause we already got twice that much.
5 years of big poppers circling the globe will surely summon the Ice Cream Truck Monster.

The Thames froze solid for two winters in a row between 1783 and 1786, just as solar cycle 3 was nearing bottom.

Amino Acids in Meteorites presented Ms. SallieLouise Baliunas video of
climate and the societal response-very informative- now, 500 years later and we still have “witches”! Hekla erupted~1300–200 years earlier (beginning of little ice age).
Might one suggest cause?
Lanny

Geoff Sherrington
Continental crust is less dense than the mantle rock underneath.

jaymam
The more interesting eruption of Taupo, imo, was the circa 200 CE eruption. This was large enough to cause months or years of brilliant sunsets/sunrises as far away as Rome, where it was recorded. Perhaps this event was the trigger for the ending of the Roman Warm Period? An estimated 50 cubic kilometres of fine rhyolite tephra must have played havoc with the albedo of the atmosphere and as a source of water droplet nuclei.

Thirty years ago, at the silver mine I worked at in southwestern Idaho, we had a betting pool as to which day Mount St Helens would cease huffing and puffing and just blow its top, big time, as some types of volcanoes have a habit of doing. The mine manager won the pool and then took the whole staff to dinner using his winnings.

“Will Katla erupt?”
Eventually, yes. The thing that I think people should keep in mind is that volcanoes in Iceland can erupt for years much like volcanoes in Hawaii. This is a volcano over a mantle hot spot, like Hawaii but unlike Hawaii it is also at a rift. Iceland is fairly large and hasn’t existed very long (in geological time). I think something like 85% of all lava erupted on Earth in the past 500 years has been in Iceland.

Glenn: May 18, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I’m wondering how you could have skied uphill in ten feet of snow behind a valley. But that would sure be something I would remember.
And it was uphill both ways, too.

I’m glad that governments are starting to abandon their computer models and allowing flights through the present ash cloud
They are not. They are trying to map paths through the cloud and they are also raising the threshold for exposure. They have now raised it twice. The first is sensible and reasonable. The second is probably not, at least not to do it any more. What is likely to happen as a result is that they will raise it a third time, and that will be once too often.
The problem is that the effects of ash are dire, and cumulative. They probably did over react on the first announcements. But a little further down this path we’ll get to engine failure and forced landings. If you fly, or if you live under a flight path, you do not want to risk this.
The problem is nothing to do with models, and the problem has nothing to teach us about climate forecasts. The techniques used to forecast cloud movements are the same as those used to forecast the weather. If you look at the Met Office site, you will speedily realize that they cannot consistently forecast the weather over the UK one week ahead. In very settled periods they can be right on the next couple of days for a week at a time. Then a changeable period comes, and the forecast for a couple days out changes twice a day, so its just about useless.
Given this, they are sailing very close to the wind with the current flight permissions. You have fairly unpredictable movement of an ash cloud of varying height and density, coupled with unknown safety levels for exposure to ash. We must wait and see, but it looks from here like a recipe for a low probability, high payoff disaster.

If anyone doubts the wisdom of not flying into a cloud of volcanic ash the tale of a British Airways B747 which encountered an ash cloud 100nm south of Sumatra on 23 June 1982 should come as a salutary warning. At 37,000ft the aircraft lost power on all four engines almost simultaneously.
The story is here

I doubt there is a scientifically convincing relationship between solar minima and tectonic events. What could connect them?”
I don’t know but here’s a writeup from the chiefio:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/ecuador-volcanic-activity-report/
And others find correlations between increased seismic activity and solar maxima.
http://stugood.org/forum/topic/88/solar-cycles-and-natural-phenomena
Given the solar cycle is only 11 years long and that the “duration” of min or max is arbitrary and subjective anyway (the above link also has lags to help out!) and further that no sensible physical mechanism is offered as to why increased/decreased solar activity would make any difference, you can draw your own conclusions.

“David Chappell says:
May 19, 2010 at 4:15 am
If anyone doubts the wisdom of not flying into a cloud of volcanic ash the tale of a British Airways B747 which encountered an ash cloud 100nm south of Sumatra on 23 June 1982 should come as a salutary warning. At 37,000ft the aircraft lost power on all four engines almost simultaneously.”
NOBODY!!!!!! And I mean NOBODY, doubts the wisdom of flying through an ash CLOUD a la Sumatra. Ash clouds bad.
But I’ll repeat for the umpteenth time there is NO ash cloud over Europe. the skies are perfectly clear. The flights are banned from areas of slight traces suggested by a model and not backed up by observations. Give the thing a wide berth [300 miles] by all means but don’t you think 1000’s of miles is a bit too far? We are banning flights up to 5000 miles away from a relatively small eruption!
Don’t you get it? Without super computers, algorithms and modelling we would happily and harmlessly be flying about our business without any worries. And how do I know this? Because that’s what happened before our ‘detection’ sensitivity got so advanced. It’s called epidemiology – study of the population [in this case aircraft]. Expose thousands of jet aircraft historically [60 years] to TRACE ash and count the damage, incidents and crashes. Ooh – none!
cheers David

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
May 18, 2010 at 6:13 pm
What Mrs.Bailunas tells is that many people (the skeptics of that epoch) were accused of “weather cooking” and the “precautionary principle” was then applied, sending to the stake millions of people.This is precisely what now the Green Church is about to do if climate worsens. Beware!

Katla Earthquake May Presage Next Volcanic Explosion
http://www.investingcontrarian.com/global/katla-earthquake-may-presage-next-volcanic-explosion/

“J.Hansford says:
May 19, 2010 at 5:35 am
Will Katla erupt? What do readers think?
—————————————————————————
Katla would probably be showing more signs if it was going to do anything soon… So no”
Lets have a sweep. Put me down for Xmas 2010.
I admit to having a bit of ‘insider’ knowledge, literally, having spent a couple of weeks surveying the lava tubes under the Laki lava field. 🙂
cheers David

I was working as a Charter pilot and Fed Contractor in the Tri Cities. The cloud went right over the Richland, Wa area, but we didn’t get much ashfall but that wasn’t the case for the rest of the Columbia Basin. Or Yakima. Made Air Ops quite interesting for weeks lots of filter and oil changes, not much in the way of overt damage,at least to Piston engines, there was a Mitsubishi MU-2 operator that fried both engines, but that may have been due to his insistence of operations when there was visible ash in the air.
Flew lots of USGS Surveys and Battlle NW flights before and after the eruption…
Then many,many tourist flights..
July 22nd,1980 was worse for the Tri Cities in some ways….

AndrewsDad says:
May 18, 2010 at 3:15 pm
… We were talking last night about how the animal species, specifically the reptiles, have returned and changed in the area.
Chances are, if armageddon happends, some GREEN REPTILES will return too….

The Eruptions blog has a “Memories of Mount St. Helens” series:
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/05/memories_of_mount_st_helens_on.php

Thanks for the links, DirkH, Yarmy, Ulric, Enneagram, some show correlation with minima and some with maxima.
The reduction in load of a continental glacier melting might contribute to or accelerate an eruption, or trigger movement on a fault to start an earthquake, less likely melting of an alpine glacier. Changes in atmospheric pressure? not impossible to find a correlation, but the events are still inevitable, not caused by a strong wind or deep low pressure, but by internal processes. Lunar tidal effects are constant and regular enough that they will probably not cause an eruption or earthquake that would happen anyway, though there might be a correlation between high or low tide and the onset of an earthquake or eruption. More distant objects like the sun or other planets will have that much less effect.
Correlation between solar minima or maxima seems like it has got to be coincidence, though magnetic perturbations could do something in the earth’s core, which might affect tectonism. It might be worth checking for increased volcanism at periods when the earth’s magnetic field reversed, earthquakes would be harder to date accurately enough.
Gravity is the important force in the workings of the earth, and interactions between gravity and energy from the sun run the oceans and atmosphere.

Didn’t I read somewhere that it is likely that Eyjafjallayokull and Katla have magma chambers that are thought to be connected and that Katla usually goes off a few months after Eyja?
We are told that the ash plume will have no effect on British weather, but up until yesterday, the spring here has been pretty cold. I only turned the central heating off on Monday night, that’a bout a month later than usual. And a dark grey sand did fall on my car.
Our prevailing weather in the UK is from the SW but recently it has been from the NW, hence cold arctic air and volcanic ash coming over. The ash is not the cause of the cold weather, at least at this stage, but they are both coming this way together because of the wind direction.

Flask:
Don’t think there is a relationship per se between min/max solar cycles and volcanic eruptions though there is significant solar radiation pressure on the earth’s surface, when the huge suface area being affected is considered, that changes with radiation changes. Of course in any one smaller area this pressure would be minor. See: http://www.blazelabs.com/f-g-rpress.asp. More likely Earth’s orbital eccentricity, axial tilt and precession which would all cause changes in sun’s tidal forces upon the earth and its magma would have a more direct effect upon eruptions. Dr. Iben Browning of the New Madrid Fault fame spoke of some of these issues back in the 80’s.

According to the Institute of Earth Sciences Katla seismicity discussion, Katla volcano under the Myrdalsjokull glacier (fills the caldera) does show seasonal seismic activity with activity concentrated in the latter part of the year and is attributed to deloading of the thin crust above the magma chamber due to summer melting of ice, and to high ground water pressure in the caldera roof. Perhaps this information coupled with the apparent affinity of Katla to erupt soon after an eruption at Eyjafjallayokull might cause a betting person to lay a wage that Katla might erupt in late summer.
BYW – the study of the geometry of the Katla magma chamber indicates a shallow magma reservoir with a bottom at a depth of 3 km , a thickness of 1 km , and a approximate volume around 10-12 km3. This geometry would indicate onset of a rapid eruption with the potential of significant volume of eruptives (the Solheimar eruption circa 12,000 ybp estimated at 6 to 7 km3). The 1918 eruption (most recent) was responsible for extending the Southern coast by 5 km with lahar flood deposits.
see http://www2.hi.is/page/ies_katla

Sorry, I somehow managed to leave out that the time period for those 21 Katla eruptions I was talking about in my last comment was from around 900 A.D. to present.

Ulrick,
To me the Milankovich cylcles are only one part in the on-going geologic play and to my thinking they could indeed have an effect upon volcanism via tidal forces which would be a second part in the multiple variables that determine climate, though this second factor may have a different timing and not equal effects in each occurance. Add to these the many other potential factors such as large impacts, continental drift changing ocean conveyors over geologic time scales, periodic super volcanic eruptions, etc and you have your saw tooth effect. Consider also the different types of volcanic activities. Here in Wyoming the effects of these are readily visible in the different thicknesses of bentonite (volcanic ash) which is mined here. Some eruptions may spew more greenhouse gas while others may, indeed, cause nuclear winter such as that which a cataclysmic Yellowstone blow might be capable of producing and everything in between. This is a gigantic multivariate regression job for which we know what the causal variables might be but do not know their exact timing or intrinsic value in each event. In any event, it is doubtfull that my Ford F150 is having much impact.