When the ice melts, the Earth spews fire
GEOMAR researchers discover a link between climate and volcanic eruptions
It has long been known that volcanic activity can cause short-term variations in climate. Now, researchers at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Germany), together with colleagues from Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) have found evidence that the reverse process also occurs: Climate affects volcanic activity. Their study is now online in the international journal “Geology”.
In 1991, it was a disaster for the villages nearby the erupting Philippine volcano Pinatubo. But the effects were felt even as far away as Europe. The volcano threw up many tons of ash and other particles into the atmosphere causing less sunlight than usual to reach the Earth’s surface. For the first few years after the eruption, global temperatures dropped by half a degree. In general, volcanic eruptions can have a strong short-term impact on climate. Conversely, the idea that climate may also affect volcanic eruptions on a global scale and over long periods of time is completely new. Researchers at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Germany) and Harvard University in Massachusetts (USA) have now found strong evidence for this relationship from major volcanic eruptions around the Pacific Ocean over the past 1 million years. They have presented their results in the latest issue of the international journal “Geology”.
The basic evidence for the discovery came from the work of the Collaborative Research Centre “Fluids and Volatiles in Subduction Zones (SFB 574). For more than ten years the project has been extensively exploring volcanoes of Central America. “Among others pieces of evidence, we have observations of ash layers in the seabed and have reconstructed the history of volcanic eruptions for the past 460,000 years,” says GEOMAR volcanologist Dr Steffen Kutterolf, who has been with SFB 574 since its founding. Particular patterns started to appear. “There were periods when we found significantly more large eruptions than in others” says Kutterolf, the lead author of the Geology article.After comparing these patterns with the climate history, there was an amazing match. The periods of high volcanic activity followed fast, global temperature increases and associated rapid ice melting.
To expand the scope of the discoveries, Dr Kutterolf and his colleagues studied other cores from the entire Pacific region. These cores had been collected as part of the International Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) and its predecessor programmes. They record more than a million years of the Earth’s history. “In fact, we found the same pattern from these cores as in Central America” says geophysicist Dr Marion Jegen from GEOMAR, who also participated in the recent study.Together with colleagues at Harvard University, the geologists and geophysicists searched for a possible explanation. They found it with the help of geological computer models. “In times of global warming, the glaciers are melting on the continents relatively quickly. At the same time the sea level rises. The weight on the continents decreases, while the weight on the oceanic tectonic plates increases. Thus, the stress changes within in the earth to open more routes for ascending magma” says Dr Jegen.
The rate of global cooling at the end of the warm phases is much slower, so there are less dramatic stress changes during these times. “If you follow the natural climate cycles, we are currently at the end of a really warm phase. Therefore, things are volcanically quieter now. The impact from man-made warming is still unclear based on our current understanding” says Dr Kutterolf. The next step is to investigate shorter-term historical variations to better understand implications for the present day.
Reference:
Kutterolf, S., M. Jegen, J. X. Mitrovica, T. Kwasnitschka, A. Freundt, P. J. Huybers (2012): A detection of Milankovitch frequencies in global volcanic activity. Geology, G33419.1, http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G33419.1
rockdoc says:
December 21, 2012 at 6:25 pm
I must agree with you there: No one can use a “biblical reference” as a correction to “science” without also recognizing that all of the sequences described in that Text do match excatly the sequence of events “science” now confirms as happening.
Dates are a little bit off – but heck, can you blame a bunch of itinerant shepherds who needed 40 years to cross the desert to keep track of powers-of-ten when the zero had not yet been invented? 8 fluids => interstellar dust + gasses + plasma + ions) from the waters below (waters => fluids => solar system dust + gasses + plasmas condensing into the planets and their atmospheres) were gathered into one sea – even though at the time of the writing there were clearly many “seas” around the land – and “one sea” confirms that there was only one land at some time.
Even though “science” didn’t agree until the mid-60’s when plate tectonics and continental drift was accepted by the “powers that be” in academia. And obviously, plants had to come from that sea (and clear up the air) before the stars and moon became visible.
Equally, birds (flying dinosaurs) existed before today’s mammals. And today’s snakes came last of all in the evolutionary stream …. Well, Man was last.
Although the data between the events shows a link, there is no established cause and effect. In other words does the change tectonic activity cause the climate change or does the climate change cause the tectonic activity change, or is there some other effect that causes both to correlate.
It is quite possible that the changes in the weight of water or ice over wide areas will have an effect on the tectonics, as a matter of fact vulcanologists and seismologists have been studying that possibility in an attempt to predict eruptions and earthquakes. There is one factor that this particular group has ignored when it comes to the shifting of large masses across the earth’s surface. They happen approximately twice a day and involve the shifting of millions of tons of water across the earth’s surface. They are caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon and can also be transmitted to the magma beneath the earth’s surface. As you may have guessed I am talking about tides and the tidal forces. The following study involved the tidal effect on eruptions at Mt Etna: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006GL028190.shtml
Unfortunately that is only the abstract. It would be interesting to read the full study.
Per chance I finished reading Robert Felix’s book “Not by Fire but by Ice” last night. I am not promoting his book but it revolves around reversal of the earth’s magnetic field being the prime motive for instant changes in the earth’s climate and the many major extinctions of life over the ages via ice ages and undersea volcanic eruptions. It seems pretty well researched and its conclusions make sense to me, however I’m an engineer not a geologist or researcher in earth science.
Stephen Rasey says: December 21, 2012 at 12:04 pm
RE: St. Helens, @tgmccoy and mpainter: the blast caused the landslide
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The operant term is eruption, given in the vernacular as blast. Obviously the imminence of the eruption pushed the side of the mountain out until the mass dislocated. It is a quibble, but the eruptive process and the dislocation of the mass were one and the same, i.e., the mountainside was blown away. The “slide” was the dislocated mountainside gliding on a cleavage initiated and defined by eruptive gas, and accelerated by that gas, as shown in the film as the grey ash cloud at the slide and contrasting with the black ash cloud that erupted above the collapsed mass. Appearances that the “slide uncorked” the eruption confuse the initiation of the eruption with its effect. In fact, the eruption uncorked itself.
Felix says:
December 20, 2012 at 9:23 pm
“Any half-decent theory is a model, even if it’s completely wrong. […] Science, and anything in real life, is replete with models. And imaginary life is itself a model! People are model-making machines.”
Yes, but so much climate science seems to be based on models based on models based on models. They use one unproven model, as if it were real data, in the calculations of another model. Too many ifs and buts and assumptions and prejudices.
Perhaps the Mayans used wavelet analysis to determine the statistical significance of the cycle that was to end the world yesterday…
Seems like every month I learn of a new Milankovitch period. I believe there are five for eccentricity alone. With so many to choose from is it any wonder we can find statisticaly significant yet unsatisfying correlations?
Mt St Helens left a few inches of ash over a moderate area but tuffs from the Long Valley Caldera near Mammoth have been found in Sonoma County, CA. I drive to work past Miocene tuffs thirty feet deep in Sonoma and ask myself where on earth such tuffs are being formed today? Can’t answer that question.
Dennis Nikols, P. Geo. says:
December 21, 2012 at 12:56 pm
My God! They discovered isostatic adjustments, again.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Darn it there goes my tea all over the screen again.
That should be up for the quote of the week.
Thanks for the laugh. (I was thinking the same thing, Remove Ice and thing start jumping, aka isostatic adjustments.) Don’t they teach that in GEO 101/102 anymore?
As an aside, the focus on other lifetimes is underscored
by an incident in my childhood. My mother told me one day when I was talking
to her about the possibility of reincarnation, that
something strange had happened when I was a baby which led her to believe it to be true.
Here, I must digress to say that, as a Catholic, I do not believe in reincarnation, and since then
have posited many other reasonable explanations for the occurrence.
However, at the time, when I was in my teens,
though raised Catholic, my family had ventured from the teachings of the Church in some areas, and
reincarnation was one of them.