Volcano discovered smoldering under a kilometer of ice in West Antarctica

Its heat may increase the rate of ice loss from one of the continent’s major ice streams

It wasn’t what they were looking for but that only made the discovery all the more exciting.

Or maybe is already increasing the rate of loss. What price AGW if that is the case? Since West Antarctica is one of the areas that Climate Alarmism is concerned about, maybe it actually has very little to do with climate after all?

Uncertain at first, the more Lough and her colleagues looked, the more convinced they became that a new volcano was forming a kilometer beneath the ice.

The discovery of the new as yet unnamed volcano is announced in the online issue of Nature Geoscience.

Following the trail of clues

The teams that install seismographs in Antarctica are given first crack at the data. Lough had done her bit as part of the WUSTL team, traveling to East Antarctica three times to install or remove stations in East Antarctica.

In 2010 many of the instruments were moved to West Antarctica and Wiens asked Lough to look at the seismic data coming in, the first large-scale dataset from this part of the continent.

“I started seeing events that kept occurring at the same location, which was odd, “Lough said. “Then I realized they were close to some mountains–but not right on top of them.”

“My first thought was, ‘Okay, maybe its just coincidence.’ But then I looked more closely and realized that the mountains were actually volcanoes and there was an age progression to the range. The volcanoes closest to the seismic events were the youngest ones.”

The point here is of course that just because it is 'new' to us, it is not 'new' to Mama Nature and has possibly been around a year or two longer before we discovered it. Long enough perhaps to be the contributor to melting ice in the West Antarctic perhaps?

I am not saying this is the case, just suggesting that perhaps what is claimed by AGW might not actually be the case.

“Their best guess is that it came from Mount Waesche, an existing volcano near Mt Sidley. But that is also interesting because scientists had no idea when Mount Waesche was last active, and the ash layer is sets the age of the eruption at 8,000 years ago. ”

What’s up down there?

The case for volcanic origin has been made. But what exactly is causing the seismic activity?

“Most mountains in Antarctica are not volcanic,” Wiens says, “but most in this area are. Is it because East and West Antarctica are slowly rifting apart? We don’t know exactly. But we think there is probably a hot spot in the mantle here producing magma far beneath the surface.”

I love the phrase most mountains are not volcanic but most in this area are. West Antarctica basically is volcanically active and East Antarctica is not but it is not a strict East/West division. The map below shows the volcanoes that show on Google Earth from the Smithsonian, howevere Mt Sidley is not one of them. I have marked Mt Sidley (the area in the article) and it is about in the middle of the image.

Click the image to enlarge

The yellow line running across the bottom left corner is the Anti-meridian/Meridian, the true East/West boundary.

Is it, I have to wonder, just pure coincidence that the greater amount of melt is from the West and the greater number, in fact all virtually, the volcanoes are in the West? The article explains how volcanic activity can affect the Western ice.

On the other hand a subglacial eruption and the accompanying heat flow will melt a lot of ice. “The volcano will create millions of gallons of water beneath the ice—many lakes full,” says Wiens. This water will rush beneath the ice towards the sea and feed into the hydrological catchment of the MacAyeal Ice Stream, one of several major ice streams draining ice from Marie Byrd Land into the Ross Ice Shelf.

By lubricating the bedrock, it will speed the flow of the overlying ice, perhaps increasing the rate of ice-mass loss in West Antarctica.

“We weren’t expecting to find anything like this,” Wiens says

Note here other subglacial eruptions that are considered to have an effect upon the melt.

The discovery could also explain why a fast-moving nearby glacier has experienced sudden jolts in its journey towards the sea.

More on the subject and perhaps a better map of the volcanoes. Note that whist they say not all are active ("Only a few are active") the subject of this post is a recent discovery, thus the statement has to be tempered in the light of more recent events.

A significant statement posted by Erik Klemetti in The mysteries of Antarctic volcanism

We really don't know much about the current and ancient volcanism on Antarctica, but researchers from British Antarctic Survey claim they have found evidence of subglacial eruptions in western Antarctica, mostly in the form of ash and volcanic debris intercalated with the ice. It would not be surprising if there was active volcanism underneath the ice sheets of the continent.

What this is saying is that actually we do not know how much volcanism may be contributing to ice melt as we do not know how much sub-glacial volcanism there is, yet the Climate Alarmist camp would have it that the melt is all caused by CO2 emissions by mankind. The is not logical without being in full possession of the facts, which we are not.

Let me make something clear here before being sniped at. I do not deny climate change. The climate is changing, the climate has always changed and the climate will continue to change long after mankind annihilated itself. The term denier is a ridiculous epithet for the majority of people who do not consider that the major proportion of climate change can be ascribed to the most minor factor in the climate. So called deniers do not even deny that mankind does have an effect up the climate. The only question is the degree. So, hopefully you understand my position. If you still feel the need to behave in a childish manner and sling insults please do continue. Your rantings will make no difference to my position.

reply to post by PuterMan


nice find.
pretty spectacular #e.

reply to post by PuterMan


Great find. S&F


Mother nature never ceases to amaze me.

Uh oh, I can hear the doom porn brigade connecting the 'new' dots. ... " This is it, the disaster we have been talking about." ...

I am surprised and astonished at how a volcano could form there of all places.
Thanks for sharing.

It's certainly plausable the volcanism maybe causing the ice melt.

It's an interesting find. I've heard about these buried volcanoes under ice in Antarctica and one being active.

Hmmmm....where's Prince Harry?...Just asking based on the latest news.....

Prince Harry's race to the South Pole abandoned for safety reasons
Expedition director says he was concerned that wounded servicemen were being pushed too hard in very difficult terrain

www.theguardian.com...

Rainbows
Jane

I would laugh my arse off if it exploded and melted half the ice.

Humans try to stop global warming and natures justs melts the icecaps anyway

In your face greenpeace

The area afected by these volcanos are tiny compared to the size of the ice cap at Antarctica, it might melt a very small localized area, but thats it, but lets blame the volcanos so we don't have to feel guilty and change our lifestyle

Mianeye
but lets blame the volcanos so we don't have to feel guilty and change our lifestyle

Ours?

It not the everyday person that uses the most resources.

If you want a lifestyle change look to the 1% who consume probably more resources in a minute tha I probably do in a year.

crazyewok

Mianeye
but lets blame the volcanos so we don't have to feel guilty and change our lifestyle

Ours?

It not the everyday person that uses the most resources.

If you want a lifestyle change look to the 1% who consume probably more resources in a minute tha I probably do in a year.

Are you seriously trying to claim innocent, and blaming it on the rich

It might be you are using a small amount of energy in your home, but the system you are living under consumes tons of energy, and you are part of that system, together with 7 billion other people, anything you own or consume is made in that system.

reply to post by Mianeye


So what I should turn off all my lights scrap my car and PC , live in a freezing house and eat rabbit food while the rich and powerful jet around the world and do what the F they like? They are the one that control the system.

Sorry but there is plenty of resources to go around. The top need to start makeing sacrifices before I even consider doing my part, not when my part means nothing as I dont control or influance anything.

crazyewok
reply to post by Mianeye

 

So what I should turn off all my lights scrap my car and PC , live in a freezing house and eat rabbit food while the rich and powerful jet around the world and do what the F they like? They are the one that control the system.

Sorry but there is plenty of resources to go around. The top need to start makeing sacrifices before I even consider doing my part, not when my part means nothing as I dont control or influance anything.

That there is your problem, noone want's to change, cause every one think it's personal, it will never change cause people are to egoistic to actually do something together...Pathetic if you ask me.

Lower taxes and higher consumerisme and individual lifestyle based on useless paper notes are more important than a healthy planet.

I am offtopic, so i'll leave it with this.

reply to post by Mianeye


Sorry but what do I change?

Yeah I would love to put solar pannels on my roof but I dont have £5000 to do it.

House is fully insulated. Car does 65mpg. So what else is there for me to do? Except live like a caveman? And I dont see you giveing up modern tecnology.


Anyway we could have solved the worlds resource and global warming issues out decades ago. We could be minning resources from planets and astroids in our solar system by now and have all our polluting industrys off world. But you hippies outlawed the only way to make it economical by getting Nuclear propulsion banned. Smart move.

crazyewok
reply to post by Mianeye

 

Sorry but what do I change?

Yeah I would love to put solar pannels on my roof but I dont have £5000 to do it.

House is fully insulated. Car does 65mpg. So what else is there for me to do? Except live like a caveman? And I dont see you giveing up modern tecnology.

edit on 8-12-2013 by crazyewok because: (no reason given)

edit on 8-12-2013 by crazyewok because: (no reason given)

edit on 8-12-2013 by crazyewok because: (no reason given)

Yes, you missed the part where most of us have to die except for those of us who will be useful as slave class minions to the wealthy.

He probably doesn't put himself in the class that will have to die, so he doesn't see any problem with it. He might squeal a little but when he finds out that he's classified as slave labor, though.

PuterMan
The point here is of course that just because it is 'new' to us, it is not 'new' to Mama Nature and has possibly been around a year or two longer before we discovered it. Long enough perhaps to be the contributor to melting ice in the West Antarctic perhaps?

'The Contributing factor'

How about 'One' of the contributing factors? I mean, the last time I looked, Antarctica was a Continent located on Earth a planet which supposedly has (according to our latest scientific theorists) tectonic plates that move. Volcanoes and Earthquakes are all part of it. Why wouldn't Antarctica (Located on Earth) have such activities found everywhere else on the globe?

As far as it being the cause? I dunno, I've been reading up on "Rebounding" Could be as the great weight of the ice is slowly melted away Volcanic locations [active in the distant past] which were fairly recently (Geologically speaking) have now reawakened due to the pressure pressing down and holding it in check have less resistance presently allowing it to come to the surface.

reply to post by SLAYER69


It would seem, within the normal hum of background activity, there is more happening around the world for things coming 'awake' and going active again. Nothing radical, yet, since there is always so much background noise of small events daily. However, I can't help feel we're certainly transitioning from a near static period of Earth's geologic history, to a more active one for awhile.

I doubt that means good or happy news headlines for future generations until we learn to make peace with and stop fighting the concept that Earth changes, always has and always will...with total indifference to our feelings on the matter.

Antarctica is an attention getter though. I had just recently run a global sim for results of all Antarctic Ice melted (which this could never do, of course..but if) and see level rise is around 200 feet. That's what I mean. It's not a dire threat to end the world, even if the worst happened. It's something we need to 'make friends with' as a reality we'll some day see and have to adapt to though, eh?

Someday..could be a thousand years ..or it could be 10 years by catastrophic eruption events on the bottom of the world. Who knows...

reply to post by PuterMan

What price AGW if that is the case? Since West Antarctica is one of the areas that Climate Alarmism is concerned about, maybe it actually has very little to do with climate after all?

It's good to know what's potentially contributing to the melt. Since the discovery of that particular area climate scientists, or as you call them climate alarmists have been trying to figure out why it's happening at all. Global Warming wasn't supposed to be affecting the Antarctic to the degree that it was appearing to.

reply to post by Kali74


Indeed.... Global Warming, if anything at all, should be a long term trend that comes to impact the currents and sea temps, if that much in that place. Air temp getting 'warmer' in that place is a relative thing. Do we want deep deep DEEP freeze or just hard freeze? lol... It's always freezing tho.

Unless... uh oh..... That big landmass beneath isn't the quiet block of rock we all kinda hoped and thought it might have largely been. Dormant, anyway.

It may be real handy that they've started running hyper-accurate sub-ice surveys of Antarctica with cutting edge radar/lidar and a bunch of other things I don't even understand to describe yet. I stumbled across that last year tho with a couple gov sites where it's all open to download for tech/GIS people to work with..and it's stunning to see it without ice cover..stunning but, hopefully not useful/needed as a practical reference.

* Without ice...it has some odd features too.. A couple abyssal Deep type measurements ..on what would be land, if exposed.

The problem I have in these "Climate, Change. Global Warming etc" discussions is that all too often many will speak in the definitive. The truth is, We don't know, We run computer simulations and then those who are more familiar guess based on the data. Sort of like predicting the weather. Getting better but not 100% yet.

So, short or long term trends?

We will just have to wait and see eh?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Well at least now the false debate can stop over whether the West Antarctic shelf is melting and the fostering of ignorance over the difference between sea and land ice can also stop. Alas now as sea levels rise the blame will shift to that volcano... at least in the well funded echo chamber.

SLAYER69
The problem I have in these "Climate, Change. Global Warming etc" discussions is that all too often many will speak in the definitive. The truth is, We don't know, We run computer simulations and then those who are more familiar guess based on the data. Sort of like predicting the weather. Getting better but not 100% yet.

So, short or long term trends?

We will just have to wait and see eh?

Im with you. There are so many factors to take in to acount.

BUT

I think we do need to consider "good" practice when it comes to our planets resources and pollutants.

In theory I don't think the average person needs to expect a drop in standard of living BUT there are some who are consuming vast amounts of resources who I would say need to be made to cut back. Plus I think the world needs to bite the bullet and go back to focusing on nuclear Tec again as I think that's the key otherwise thing will go down hill fast.