Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The Solomon Islands, where I lived for eight years, is just north of Australia and just south of the Equator. It is part of the “Ring Of Fire”, the area of strong earthquake and volcanic activity that encircles the Pacific. You can see below that the islands are on a plateau, with a clearly visible earthquake fault just south of (below) the island group. This fault is actually the line where the Indo-Pacific plate (lower left) dives under the Pacific plate (upper right), and has been diving there since forever. As a result it is the location of an unending string of earthquakes, tsunami, and vulcanism. You can also see another fault that starts just above the lower left corner and comes up to the right.
Figure 1. The Google Earth view of the Solomon Islands. The capital is Honiara, on Guadalcanal Island.
And along the main fault, in the location shown by the red circle, is an underwater volcano named Kavachi. There is excellent information about the volcano at the Smithsonian Global Volcano Program, including a photo gallery, an eruptive history, and the following geological description:
Kavachi, one of the most active submarine volcanoes in the SW Pacific, occupies an isolated position in the Solomon Islands far from major aircraft and shipping lanes. Sometimes referred to as Rejo te Kvachi (“Kavachi’s Oven”), it is located south of Vangunu Island only about 30 km N of the site of subduction of the Indo-Australian plate beneath the Pacific plate. The shallow submarine basaltic-to-andesitic volcano has produced ephemeral islands up to 1 km long many times since its first recorded eruption during 1939. Residents of the nearby islands of Vanguna and Nggatokae (Gatokae) reported “fire on the water” prior to 1939, a possible reference to earlier submarine eruptions. The roughly conical edifice rises from water depths of 1.1-1.2 km on the north and greater depths to the south. Frequent shallow submarine and occasional subaerial eruptions produce phreatomagmatic explosions that eject steam, ash, and incandescent bombs above the sea surface. On a number of occasions lava flows were observed on the surface of ephemeral islands.
So it has been sitting under there, smoking and muttering and bubbling and putting out ash and steam and gas for about a century and likely much more. And it has continued right up to near the present, viz:
Most Recent Weekly Report: 29 January-4 February 2014
According to NASA’s Earth Observatory, a satellite image acquired on 29 January showed a plume of discolored water E of Kavachi, likely from lava fragments and dissolved gases. A bright area above the submerged peak suggested churning water. There was no sign that the volcano had breached the sea surface.
Why is Kavachi of interest in the climate discussion? Well, the National Geographic was interested in what was going on inside the underwater volcanic crater, so they organized an expedition with the usual underwater camerafolk and scientists and the like. As they had expected, the water inside the crater turned out to be a) hot, and b) acidic. Not phony “acidification” like the alarmists are all up in arms about, which is really partial neutralization of the normally alkaline sea water. And as they might not have expected, the water in the crater was acidic enough that it was burning the skin of the divers, so they couldn’t actually enter the crater. The expedition leader said:
“Divers who have gotten close to the outer edge of the volcano have had to back away because of how hot it is or because they were getting mild skin burns from the acid water.”
This makes sense, because the volcano puts out large amounts of sulfur and CO2, and when lots of either sulfur or CO2 hits water you tend to get lots of sulfuric acid and carbonic acid. The NatGeo article says:
Despite the fact that Kavachi was not actively erupting, the video shows carbon dioxide and methane gas bubbles rising from the seafloor vents, and the water appearing in different colors due to reduced iron and sulfur.
So we have hot acidic water loaded with carbon dioxide, iron, methane, and sulfur … sounds like a recipe for a barren landscape, although perhaps a fascinating one. I can see why NatGeo was interested.
And even though the divers couldn’t go inside to get a look, they still wanted to find out just how few creatures were living in that extreme environment.
Well, this being 2015, the scientists pulled out their nifty robot camera and dropped it into the hot, acidic ash plume filled waters of the volcanic crater … and when the camera popped back to the surface after its allotted hour, to their immense surprise they found an entire ecosystem going full bore inside the crater, with fish, both silky and hammerhead sharks, and other usual undersea suspects.
As the expedition leader says, this brings up an interesting question:
“These large animals are living in what you have to assume is much hotter and much more acidic water, and they’re just hanging out,” Phillips says. “It makes you question what type of extreme environment these animals are adapted to. What sort of changes have they undergone? Are there only certain animals that can withstand it? It is so black and white when you see a human being not able to get anywhere near where these sharks are able to go.”
My conclusion? I gotta say, when I see life going on at a rate of knots in hot ocean water that is not just slightly less alkaline but instead is actually acidic, it merely reinforces my belief that the slight neutralization that will likely come with increasing CO2 will have little measurable effect on the ocean. Life is amazingly adaptive, and the amount of pH change predicted from CO2 is quite small. Given this discovery that fish and sharks can hunt and feed in hot, CO2 laden, acidic seawater, water humans can’t even enter, it’s just more evidence that the ocean life likely won’t have much trouble dealing with such a small change in its current level of alkalinity.
Regards to all,
w.
You Might Have Read This Before: If you disagree with anyone, could you please quote the exact words that you disagree with? That way we can all understand just exactly what you object to.
Hot is hot and some of these wonderful creatures adapt to the conditions. Oh of course the other AGW will come up with some cherry picked data in an attempt to distort these claims. Thanks Willis.
OA is a scam, a fallback catatrophe claim when the warming catastrophe is falsified.. By now any serious analysis will show that even high pCO2 will not cause the oceans to become hostile to diverse aquatic life. The buffering power of vast basalts and submarine Calcium carbonate (aka Tums) will prevent of the proposed lowerings of pH below the already wild ocean swings of “normal” pH.
As for the vulcan contributions of CO2 and sulphur to the oceans around those islands, the added minerals those inject are just fertilizer to a highly adaptable ecosystem.
On note related to geothermaol CO2 hotspots, has there been any new updates from the OCO-2 mission data? I’m guessing the NASA pols have the OCO-2 team on a data news blackout. If I’m right it’s because they are seeing natural CO2 sources and sinks in their data swamping man’s puny CO2 sources, and that would be politically “un-useful” before COP21.
I should say, “now that the warming catastrophe has been falsfied by the data. As it’s only in the fervid wetdreams of the model believers does CO2-temperature catastrophism still exist.”
fervid? ‘Febrile’ more like, though possibly ‘delerious’ too.
Or even delirious.
: > )
What is interesting to me is the impact of Fe on the volcanic areas fish life.
In my mind one of the biggest drivers on pH change is Fe deficit driven by industrial fishing without fertilizer replacement.
The green movement are very scared of this Fe deficit as it would demand a non Marxist solution.
True.
They’re terrified that the “solution” to the “problem” could be as simple as iron dust in the oceans.
That would mean turning the Greenpeace boats into iron filings.
Probably about time for a FOIA request.
Given this “discoverty”
A minor spelling error.
Ditto “vulcanism”. I never thought curing rubber was found there.. 😉
We’re picky today huh..? Interesting post though Willis, thanks.
I think vulcanism is in fact a correct alternative spelling of ‘volcanism’ – ‘pertaining to volcanoes’
I would have thought that a “vulcanism” was a witty saying or comment originating with Mr. Spock!
Ed,
Did Mr Spock ever have a forename – or a family name, if his father was Sarek?
Auto – curious, because . . . .
Live long and prosper!
According to memory-beta, a wiki-style site, his full name is “S’chn T’gai Spock”.
That is volcanism in a region which produces rubber.
Thank you Willis. A very enlightening article.
Yes, thanks Willis!
That’s good, Willis. As the ‘reality difference’ between models of global temp and observed temp widens, and people get to see that releasing CO2 hasn’t made the world a warmer place, I think that the crazy warmist media will start to focus on ‘CO2 changes other stuff’. This will be stuff that we cannot actually feel, like less-alkaline oceans. You could even say it’s started already. I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but I think I’m seeing more articles on the subject, and a slight veering away from ‘CO2 boils the world’ stuff. I am so glad to see Willis not use ‘ocean acidification’, and we really must start contacting editors when their journals use it.
Yes I have searched for the best way to talk about the Acidification wording and Willis has hit it, “Ocean Neutralization”.
At current rates of ocean neutralization we should get to neutral in X years.
Straight lining it would suggest millions of years. Someone tell us when it could get to be acid at current rates so we know when to start worrying.
The Ocean “Acidification” brigade are very fond at looking at life near “CO2 vents or seeps”, but they are remarkably blind to what else is coming out at those places, such as sulfur, which of course produces sulfuric acid. I guess those people would be more scared of soda water than of sulphuric acid.
Can I have some other opinions in a little off-topic matter? It regards water vapour. In this article:
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html
It states:
“it is warmer on a cloudy winter day than on a clear one”
It may be that I have literally just got out of bed and haven’t had any coffee yet, but I’m struggling with it. The statement is true on Winter days, as it says, but definitely not on Summer days, so surely the point is moot, isn’t it? I am away from my PC all weekend, but would appreciate anyone looking at the article and commenting. Thanks.
In general, clouds warm us in the winter and cool us in the summer, which I find remarkably nice of them. However, that doesn’t make them “moot”.
w.
Living in a desert makes you notice that if clouds move in on a hot day (as in afternoon thunderstorms) they will tend to slow the cooling into nightfall. Cloudless skies will get much cooler overnight. In winter high cloud cover will tend to slow the rate of warming through the day and again cloudless skies go much cooler at night. freezing fog is just miserable and cold cold cold so if that is the night time cloud cover bundle up!
Yes, more vapour in air means warmer winter in Arctic, but colder summer days everywhere. They say this is an active research area, which cannot be true, since the climate science is settled.
I would say that a clear winter day can often be warmer than a cloudy one during the day, but will almost always be a lot colder at night. The article is standard “alarmist” posturing, trying to downplay water vapour in order to scare us all about CO2. They claim that CO2 is the driver, and water vapour just responds, but that would clearly be ridiculous if there were only a few CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. Their argument about CO2 being the driver does not invoke the concentration of CO2, so must be regarded with suspicion.
The article seems very reasonable to me. They conclude:
“Thus the possible positive and negative feedbacks associated with increased water vapor and cloud formation can cancel one another out and complicate matters. The actual balance between them is an active area of climate science research.”
There has been an increase in water vapor on the planet. One can see the effect from this in the form of increased global warming coming from the higher latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere(where the planet loses more heat than it gains from solar radiation and clouds blanketing the sky keep some of that heat in) as well as warmer night time temperatures on the planet being responsible for most of the warming vs not much warming during the day……… many more record high lows have been set in recent decades, than any other type of temperature record.
We know this has happened with certainty but assuming that it will continue to progress in the same manner by using equations in global models that represent the processes involving H20 that we think caused it, then extrapolating out is exactly why most global climate model projections have been too warm, many much too warm the past 2 decades.
Wouldn’t it be great if all we needed to do is plug in the value of CO2 into the models and, since we can represent all the physical processes with all the right mathematical equations, including those that involve water vapor……….we could project temperatures for the next century.
20 years ago, this seemed possible. However, the disparity in temperature between models and observations since then…….all in the too warm direction make it clear that this is not the case.
Many scientists continue to defend those model equations because they represent the ‘known” and “best” physics we have to represent the atmosphere. They look for reasons to explain the “temporary” jog in the cooler direction being caused by the system being unexpectedly effected by natural forces, including things like heat recycling in the oceans.
My position is that these scientists have gone long past the point where they should have started making adjustments to the equations that represent their theory vs looking for reasons/excuses to justify why the theory is solid “science is settled” and looking every where else for the the disparity.
Back to clouds. Since the planet has failed to warm the same way it did in the 1980’s/90’s over the last 15+ years, I suspect that clouds may have been a factor. Has the decrease in cloud height over that period been a factor, causing an unexpected negative feedback? Lower(warmer) clouds radiate heat out more effectively than high clouds. There has been a big increase in evapotranspiration from the vegetative health index of the planet soaring higher(CO2 fertilization) which has contributed to an increase in low level moisture. No way is this properly represented in the models as well as many other processes.
If this discussion was 20 years ago or even 10 years ago, I could see the argument for not changing the models or the theory. However, it’s delusional in 2015, when the models are obviously too warm and the global temperature has no chance of catching up to the models to be making statements about increased confidence in models or the theoretical science that they represent, when what should have been done a long time ago is making more adjustments that cause a decreasing slope of temperature projections and being frickin honest about it……………..stating that “We don’t think the warming will be as bad as we thought it might be 20 years ago”.
Doing the exact opposite, defending something that’s broken is the entire problem that skeptics have with this issue………..even those of us that agree with most of the basic physics but see the glaring disparity between the theory and reality.
When Chaos Theory came out in the 1970s I remember discussing limits on weather prediction with Stan Barnes at NOAA and Doug Lilly at NCAR in Boulder, Colorado. With the butterfly effect in mind, they were saying we would have to take into account the energy transfer on a scale to account for every little dust devil in order to have our then computer models be accurate beyond a week or two.
I don’t know when weather modelers forgot this, but it behooves them to learn or remember it.
noaaprogrammer,
“With the butterfly effect in mind, they were saying we would have to take into account the energy transfer on a scale to account for every little dust devil in order to have our then computer models be accurate beyond a week or two. ”
Do you have any idea what the term dissipation means and how it applies in the real world?!?!
You are telling us about mythology for scientists.
@noaaprogrammer: +1,000
Agree with comments, but more importantly – here we have a clear insight (actual data, albeit circumstantial self-reporting with n of 1) into the place of WUWT in the daily life of a WUWT regular.
While being “away from my PC all weekend” Ghost says “I have literally just got out of bed and haven’t had any coffee yet”. So we have spotted the NEED to check in at WUWT first thing in the day, literally “before coffee” (BC), and post a comment with a link for fellow WUWTers to investigate and comment upon over the weekend so that Ghost, upon his return to PC land, can benefit from all of our (well your) hard works, knowledges, and insights.
Have a great weekend, Ghost. (I did same game last weekend with the exception of revealing my NEED.)
p.s. I look in before bedtime, too, but refrain from keyboarding due to well-known effects of distilled spirits.
It also depends on where the clouds gather in terms of whether or not their effects cancel out and become a moot point. Clouds that gather around higher latitudes versus clouds that gather around equatorial latitudes may indeed be moot in one location, and centrally important in another location.
During the summer, people who hunt snakes by driving low traffic rural roads after dark have found that it stays warmer longer and that the snakes stay out much longer. I believe this is because the clouds reflect the outbound radiation back to the ground.
Except for small birds, …… there is more “snake food” roaming around after dark than during the light of day …… and with the snake’s IR “sensor” …………. a “KERSTRIKE” is more productive.
Let me correct your English grammar error.
“”””””…..“it is warmer on a cloudy winter day than on a clear one”……”””””‘
Should read: ‘ It is cloudier on a warmer winter day, than on a cooler one. ‘
There now it is grammatically correct.
g
The increased warmth causes both the increased warmth and the increased clouds (later in the day)
I disagree with your intended interpretation, at least in New England. Things are a bit more complicated in the lee of the Great Lakes.
A cold winter day in New Hampshire generally means we have a NW wind bringing in cold, dry Canadian air. The wind keeps things mixed, and it’s colder than average during the day, warmer than it will be in another day or two when the high pressure system is overhead.
Then convection during the day can keep daytime temps pretty low, but the wind chill is much warmer and the Sun helps make things comfortable. During the long night what little heat makes it through the blanket of snow radiates like crazy and the air is so dry that when we reach the frost point the temperature fall barely slows down.
Cloudy weather generally has east or southeast winds, and the air mass is warmer over all. There’s much less cooling at night thanks to the clouds and we often don’t make down to the frost point.
On nights with good radiational cooling but with midlevel clouds moving in, reflected IR from the clouds stops the temperature fall. When the clouds move on, the fall resumes, sometimes catching up to nearly what we’d have with a clear night.
I’m going to have to spend some time this winter collecting satellite photos and matching them with my temperature traces. I wonder if I can dig up old METAR data, that would at least have information about cloud cover and height.
george e. smith July 11, 2015 at 1:50 pm
A much better example of the effect of clouds is what happens on a clear winter night when a cloud comes over. You can immediately feel the increase in downwelling longwave radiation.
This is because on a cold clear winter there is little of the main greenhouse gas, water vapor, in the atmosphere. As a result, we’re pretty much exposed to just the microwave background radiation of space at something like ~3 Kelvin. That is to say, there is little downwelling longwave radiation on a cold clear winter night.
But when the cloud comes over, it is somewhere around I don’t know, say between -30°C to 0°C or so. This provides downwelling radiation of something like 200 to 300 W/m2. The contrast between virtually no downwelling radiation when the sky is clear, and two or three hundred W/m2 downwelling radiation from the clouds, is quite palpable.
It is also, of course, subject to measurement by IR detectors of various kinds, so this is not some theory. The downwelling radiation is real, it is palpable, and it is routinely measured by scientists all over the planet.
w.
Willis Eschenbach (replying to george e. smith)
True, very true statement. But …
(And you knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you? )
What is the actual fiormula for the relevent radiant heat loss?
Real world values – not the “heard it described 10,000 times” general wave-your-hand case as we read above.
Assume two cases in the Arctic Ocean: Sea level, 1020 mm pressure, T_water = 2.0 degrees C, T_Air = -25.0 deg C at 2 meter, T_Dew = -32 deg C, 1 meter/sec wind speed, clear skies, but T_Sky_10,000 meters = -50 deg C. How much heat is lost at this relative humidity up towards “pure space” at -273 deg C?
Or is the T_Sky the relevent temperature of the heat sink?
Second case: Arctic Ocean again, T_Icepack_Surface = -20 deg C, T_Air = 5 deg C, T_Dew = 2 deg C, Pressure = 980, T_Sky_10,000 meters = -50 deg C again. Cloudy.
How much heat is lost from the ice surface?
The internet doesn’t present any consistent answer, nor do my heat transfer textbooks, nor do the available (commercial) radiant heat transfer calculators (since they are designed for inside-furnace-gaseous-burning-very-high-temperature environments, not cold-water-radiation-to-clear-skies environment.
Oddly, I cannot even find agreement between various on-line papers about the heat sink definitions: T_air, T_air-corrected for relative humidity), T_sky (at what altitude?), or T_space. Hundreds of papers use generic averages of generic “ground-into-space-at-0-K” … But that general description is not useful when you are trying to determine the radiant heat loss changes caused by humidity and clouds.
So Willis, if what you say about down welling IR is true, then cloudless nights in 2015 must be warmer than cloudless nights in 1805 due to the 400 ppm of CO2 versus the 280 ppm of CO2…….right? (since CO2 and H2O are both GHGs)
Joel D. Jackson July 12, 2015 at 10:19 am
That would only be true IF all things were equal AND IF the climate system were not self-regulating.
The temperature of the earth is not set by the amount of forcing. If it were we’d have gone off the rails long ago. Instead, it is regulated by a host of phenomena that only emerge when the temperature passes a certain threshold, and which act to greatly reduce the temperature of the surface.
w.
All bodies above Absolute Zero (0 Kelvin, or 0 K) emit electromagnetic radiation (light) according to their temperature, primarily in the infrared until the temperature gets to around 2000 K or so, which is why incandescent light bulbs work. The exact nature of the emission varies with the object’s surface, but is generally in accordance with the Planck curve (you can search on that and get a lot of references).
At night, with a clear sky, you’re essentially looking up directly into the 4K (i.e. liquid helium) background temperature of the universe, and most of the heat radiated by you and the ground upwards just keeps going. If there are clouds the water (droplets, not vapor) absorbs the IR radiation and re-radiates much of it back downwards, serving – more or less – as insulation.
The actual mechanism of the “greenhouse effect” gets a little complicated, but it boils down to how much of the heat near the Earth’s surface is radiated into space, and how much is absorbed by various gasses and vapors in the atmosphere, and at what altitudes.
I suspect that 4K background temperature is neither constant nor uniform when measured through the thermosphere.
Willis, I would appreciate your take on the articles published about coral on the Great Barrier Reef dying off if water temp increases 2C. I read a comment in one of these articles (Guardian Australia I think) from a retired diving guide who said that temps in the Solomons, Bougainville, East PNG, etc are always 3 – 5C warmer than GBR waters, and the same species of coral thrive in the warmer locations.
Good question, Mick. Coral thrives in a variety of temperatures, but it’s not the same coral symbionts. Instead, different kinds of coral symbionts (the actual creatures that create the reef) are adapted to different temperatures. When the temperature exceeds whatever the current symbionts can stand, they die out leaving just the white coral skeleton. This is called “bleaching”.
However, it’s not a bad terrible thing as portrayed in the media. Instead it is the natural way that the coral reef survives through temperature changes. As soon as it bleaches, the reef skeleton becomes prime grade A-1 real estate for colonization by a coral reef symbiont that CAN survive in the new temperature range.
So the answer to your question is yes, the current GBR reef inhabitants would die off … but they would soon be replaced by their cousins who are perfectly happy in warmer water. Which is why there are corals in say the Solomons, despite it being warmer than the GBR.
w.
Thanks Willis. Next time I see the claim that the GBR has lost ~50% of its coral cover over the past 30 years or so, I’ll respond with “hang about – as Arnie said “I’ll be baaaaack”
According to NOAA coral bleaching can be caused also by coral sweeper tentacles (detect and damage adjacent coral colonies), mesenterial filaments (enabling external digestion of neighboring colonies), and terpenoid compounds (coral chemical warfare).
http://coralreef.noaa.gov/aboutcorals/coral101/turfwars/
It is a fact (GBRMPA) that the average water temperature difference between the north and south extremities of the healthy GBR is 8-9 degrees Celcius. One would expect that the the isotherms are continually migrating. The GBR is resilient enough to survive any temperature increases hypothesised by CAGW alarmists.
Surely you are joking, Mr Evans! The habitat loss is a huge problem[1][2][3] and happening in an ever increasing, unprecedented speed[4][5][6] at all major reefs[7][8][9][10].
I’m sure I could find sources for those claims in a few minutes, but this is still just sarcasm. There is an upper limit for intake of panicky messages from various advocacy groups. I’ve reached that.
It reaches all the way to NSW. If warming really killed coral then of course the Philippines would die off first and Australia would have a monopoly on reefs. Until they start growing in Antarctica.
the Great Barrier Reef dying off if water temp increases 2C….
….but over a hundred in hot sun and bone dry does not hurt it one bit
http://www.danintranet.org/media/adimg/13641.jpg
http://www.danintranet.org/media/adimg/13641.jpg
Ah ! I can see it changing before my eyes .
Latitude.
Thanks for the info and pictures, I’ve never thought of exposed coral heads and temperature, this is shocking. does this mean the sea level is rising and the coral is growing to compensate or the sea level is dropping and exposing the poor dehydrated coral. We need a grant to run a model THAT will show just how harmful this travesty is!
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in green philosophy.
Every time I see Japanese Knot Weed forcing its way through concrete I feel like stopping to applaud.
And then there are extremophiles that live in underwater volcano vents
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/extremophile.html
The main acidity in this case is from SO2, not CO2, as that forms a stronger acid (H2SO3, sulfurous acid) than CO2 (H2CO3). Even may be oxidized to sulfuric acid (H2SO4) which is a very strong acid. With CO2 the pH can only go down to around 4 at a saturated solution (all ocean buffer used up), with SO2 it may go down to pH 1.1, depending of the concentration, even if it is called a “weak” acid. I didn’t find any information about pH measurements in the plume, but to attack the human skin, it should be pretty low…
Anyway, interesting to see that fish has far more resistance to acidity than human skin, even when there is far more close contact between water and their bloodstream via the gills. Or do they close their gills when diving in the plume (as there is probably less/no oxygen too)…
Right.
A 1 molar solution of CO2 in water gives a pH of 3.2
A 1 molar solution of SO2 in water gives a pH of 0.9, that without dealing with SO2 oxidation, as you said.
Willis won the internet, again.
Little Willie was a chemist
Little Willie is no more
What he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4
I can attest to that; having swum in H2SO4.
g
They didn’t seem to be diving in the plume, they seemed to be living there.
Makes it even stranger, as there should be a lack of oxygen there… It is a pity no pH and temperature (or composition, including SOx, oxygen,…) measurements were made…
Suggested here that gills in hagfish developed to deal with pH variations [then later for breathing] ….
http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150609/srep11182/full/srep11182.html
So possibly a lot of other fish can put up with acidic conditions as well…….especially as SO2 rich plumes would not be rare……all that volcanism associated with both subduction zones and spreading at mid-ocean ridges
Paper on coral heat tolerance from Science last month:
http://m.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1460.abstract
Thanks for this. Quite enlightening.
In that Science article I liked “…..as our climate warms.”
I wish they had been in eastern North America last winter.
Ian M
From the descriptions in the article, it sounds like Kavachi actually erupts at times. I should think that a serious eruption is going to wipe out all life in and near the crater no matter how well it is adapted to heat and acidity. And that suggests that either there are nearby environments that can restock the crater with volcano adapted organisms, or that the current population are just normal organisms — genetically identical to those in nearby less stressful environments — who have blundered into the crater and find it a suitable place to set up housekeeping.
Interesting.
Mick,
You’re welcome. As noted elsewhere, CACA advocates ignore the tremendous adaptability of organisms.
Ian,
An obeisance needed for the funding, no doubt. Should have been easy for the authors to get funding for such a study.
Locations of the six authors:
1Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, 205 W. 24th Street C0990, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
2Department of Integrative Biology, Oregon State University, 3106 Cordley Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.
3Australian Institute of Marine Science, PMB 3, Townsville MC, Queensland 4810, Australia.
Those at UTA would have experienced a bit of the Arctic blast last winter. The PNW was mild in Jan & Feb, but unusually cold in Nov and Dec.
Reply should be up one comment. Sorry.
The sharks are cold blooded creatures so perhaps that makes a difference.
Solomon Island geology is complex. Your map actually shows what looks like teo subduction zones, one to the NE, one to the SW. Solomon Island earthquakes are severe but they all are near subduction zones. The only info I have found is dated 1975 so may be too old for up to date sea floor geological information.
John, not all sharks are cold-blooded (Short and Longfin Mako, Great White, and Thresher are classic examples) although the ones listed in the article are. Maybe there is an electrical connection drawing the hammerheads to the crater or an audible component drawing in the Silkys? Who knows.
As for the geology, it reminds me a bit of the geology around Tokyo or the Pacific Northwest (USA) with a triple conjunction of subducting plates – and that makes for an interesting and hazardous area to live and study.
I wonder if the passing sharks view it as a cleansing steam bath much the same way humans do.
golly, can someone send this to the howling so called marine biologist? or whatever she thinks she is.. featured on another article?
I saw this video too, and wondered exactly how hot the water was at the camera’s location (and what the pH was at that location too) As far as I can tell, there was no thermometer or pH tester included with the camera.
It’s possible that the temperatures are hotter at the edges than at the center of the crater, but I doubt it. In any case, sensors on the camera would have been nice.
Without the temperature and the pH etc., how do we know that the camera was actually inside the volcano?
This is National Geo after all…Maybe they missed and were outside the volcano…
Just sayin…
They should have more data.
Yes, but what if the oceans boil, eh? Or, is James Hansen that much of a kook?
Hey, I want you to apologize to the kooks right now!
Could it be the sharks and rays are using the plumes as an easy way to dislodge parasites?
Yes.
Sounds like a good idea Geoff. Parasites are used to blood temperature between certain values and cold blooded animals will heat up beyond normal values so the parasites hop off.
Here we have Gaia just kvitching and kvetching at Kavachi. What is a mother to do with all this C02 and global warming and global warming and C02. It is enough to just have to sit down and drink a double shot of Manischewitz.
… while gazing at your kovachii orchid!
We need more data to judge and conclude anything. What’s the pH and temperature in the specific location where they see marine life. How long does the fish and others stay there. It may be just that they find this interesting and go there to get a “good feeling” for a short while, the same way we humans can walk on fire for a while but cannot live there!
Very interesting! I’ve heard that sharks will swim into fresh water to get rid of parasites. I wonder if something similar is going on here. Or, perhaps there is something in the area to eat, which is also adapted to the environment?
Perhaps they’ve developed a taste for their seafood poached…
Amazing. To think that sea life also loves luxurating in hot springs!
To an actual scientist, new observation and experiment leads to new and better questions, while to religious believers in the God CAGW, the science is “settled” which is equivalent to dogma, which cannot be questioned.
These observations are interesting to science and point to areas for future exploration and experiment, while to the CAGW cult, they are inconvenient truths to be suppressed. Somebody better tell the marine biologists we see in the video that they risk career death if they continue this line of inquiry.
THERE IS NO C IN AGW!!!!
Sorry, I was channeling Joel for a minute.
There is no F in AGW either!
That’s it!!
Let’s call it FAGW from now on.
I’m not responsible for whatever you want F to mean.
Fallacious might be too close to fellatio for comfort, given that formulation.
Can I say that here?
In 1972, Sir John Maddox, editor of the British journal Nature, noted that though it had once been usual to see maniacs wearing sandwich boards that proclaimed the imminent end of the Earth, they had been replaced by a growing number of frenzied activists and politicized scientists making precisely the same claim. They rightfully figured out that crisis is where the money’s at…no crisis, no money. As with everything in life, follow the money. Not to mention that being on the “right” side gets you fawning press and invitations to the really cool parties.
CAGW is nothing more than the usual Progressive cause du jour. They want you to live as they see fit, because whether its fracking, global warming/cooling/climate change or any of a number of other perceived crises, Progressives argue that the threat of catastrophe can be averted only through drastic actions in which the ordinary political mechanisms of democracy are suspended and power is turned over to a body of experts.
Sulfur is non-ionic and does not form sulfuric acid directly with water. It has to become oxidized to sulfur dioxide and trioxide, which are also emitted by volcanoes.