Surprised scientists find that their theories of how undersea volcanoes were thought to behave were wrong. Even when the volcanoes are miles deep under water, they can violently erupt and spew rock, lava and huge quantities of hot gases of all sorts.
Even under the Arctic ice cap.
New evidence deep beneath the Arctic ice suggests that a series of underwater volcanoes have erupted in violent explosions in the past decade.
Hidden 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) beneath the Arctic surface, the volcanoes can range up to more than a mile (2 kilometers) in diameter and a few hundred yards (meters) tall. They formed along the Gakkel Ridge, a lengthy crack in the ocean crust where two rocky plates are spreading apart, pulling new melted rock to the surface.
Until now, scientists thought undersea volcanoes only dribbled lava from cracks in the seafloor. The extreme pressure from the overlying water makes it difficult for gas and magma to blast outward…..
Robert Reeves-Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and his colleagues discovered jagged, glassy fragments of rock scattered around the volcanoes, suggesting that explosive eruptions occurred between 1999 and 2001.
Now there is this standard disclaimer that any of these volcanoes could possibly have anything to do with the melting of Arctic ice is pure fiction, right? Huge volcanoes under the North Pole, melting the Arctic sea ice, naw couldn't be, could it? How would it warm the water it's so deep. I wonder, is the calderas still hot down there? Yes I know it sounds convoluted that volcanoes couldn't possible melt the ice above them and change the Arctic currents, but these days you have to be politically correct.
While much is made by the true believers and the media (yes, that was redundant, wasn't it?) about the melting of Arctic ice, very little is written about the rapidly growing Antarctic ice. And it is growing very rapidly, indeed. See for yourself: North Pole, South Pole. Here's the Southern anomaly. That is not a declining trend, folks.
1 comment:
The Northwest Passage has been navigated before. Since all this limited satellite observation only extends back 25...30 years, it is radically wrong for the observers to say much about the cause and effect. I assume the media have taken the scientists cautious reports out of context again. Let us wait and see, and try to understand natural cycles before leaping to unwarranted speculative conclusions that serve the politician’s ‘economics’.
Incidentally, the centre of Greenland is a hundred metres or so below sea level. Greenland ice will not slip into the ocean because it sits in a bowl of its own making from the sheer weight of the icecap. FYI melting sea ice has no net effect on sea level.
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