Radar readings: Image shows a British Antarctic Survey aircraft conducting the survey.
Credit: Carl Robinson/British Antarctic Survey.
PARIS: A powerful volcano erupted under the icesheet of Antarctica around 2,000 years ago and it might still be active today, a finding which raises questions about ice loss from the white continent.
The explosive event – rated "severe" to "cataclysmic" on an international scale of volcanic force – punched a massive breach in the icesheet and spat out a plume some 12 kilometres into the sky, said British scientists behind the find.
Occasional volcanism
Most of Antarctica is seismically stable. But its western part lies on a rift in Earth's crust that gives rise to occasional volcanism and geothermal heat, occurring on the Antarctic coastal margins.
This is the first evidence for an eruption under the ice sheet itself – a slab of frozen water, hundreds of metres thick in places, that holds most of the world's stock of fresh water.
Reporting in the journal Nature Geoscience this week, the investigators from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), In Cambridge, England, describe the finding as "unique."
It extends the range of known volcanism in Antarctica by some 500 km and raises the question whether this or other sub-glacial volcanoes may have melted so much ice that global sea levels were affected, they said.
The volcano, located in the Hudson Mountains, blew around 207 BC, give or take 240 years, according to their paper.
Anomalous radar readings
Evidence for this comes from a British-American airborne geophysical survey completed between 2004 and 2005. This used radar to delve deep under the ice sheet to map the terrain beneath. The team spotted anomalous radar reflections over 23,000 square kilometres - an area bigger than Wales.
They interpret this signal as being a thick layer of ash, rock and glass, formed from fused silica, that the volcano spewed out in its fury.
The amount of material – 0.31 cubic kilometres – indicates an eruption of between three and four on a yardstick called the Volcanic Explosive Index (VEI).
By comparison, the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, which was greater, rates a VEI of five, and that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 is a VEI of six.
ocean warming
Perhaps The Climate Change Models Are Wrong
Lorne Gunter, National Post
Published: Monday, March 24, 2008
Bob Strong, Reuters
They drift along in the worlds' oceans at a depth of 2,000 metres -- more than a mile deep -- constantly monitoring the temperature, salinity, pressure and velocity of the upper oceans.
Then, about once every 10 days, a bladder on the outside of these buoys inflates and raises them slowly to the surface gathering data about each strata of seawater they pass through. After an upward journey of nearly six hours, the Argo monitors bob on the waves while an onboard transmitter sends their information to a satellite that in turn retransmits it to several land-based research computers where it may be accessed by anyone who wishes to see it.
These 3,000 yellow sentinels --about the size and shape of a large fence post -- free-float the world's oceans, season in and season out, surfacing between 30 and 40 times a year, disgorging their findings, then submerging again for another fact-finding voyage.
It's fascinating to watch their progress online. (The URLs are too complex to reproduce here, but Google "Argo Buoy Movement" or "Argo Float Animation," and you will be directed to the links.)
When they were first deployed in 2003, the Argos were hailed for their ability to collect information on ocean conditions more precisely, at more places and greater depths and in more conditions than ever before. No longer would scientists have to rely on measurements mostly at the surface from older scientific buoys or inconsistent shipboard monitors.
So why are some scientists now beginning to question the buoys' findings? Because in five years, the little blighters have failed to detect any global warming. They are not reinforcing the scientific orthodoxy of the day, namely that man is causing the planet to warm dangerously. They are not proving the predetermined conclusions of their human masters. Therefore they, and not their masters' hypotheses, must be wrong.
In fact, "there has been a very slight cooling," according to a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interview with Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a scientist who keeps close watch on the Argo findings.
Dr. Willis insisted the temperature drop was "not anything really significant." And I trust he's right. But can anyone imagine NASA or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the UN's climate experts -- shrugging off even a "very slight" warming.
A slight drop in the oceans' temperature over a period of five or six years probably is insignificant, just as a warming over such a short period would be. Yet if there had been a rise of any kind, even of the same slightness, rest assured this would be broadcast far and wide as yet another log on the global warming fire.
Just look how tenaciously some scientists are prepared to cling to the climate change dogma. "It may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming," Dr. Willis told NPR.
Yeah, you know, like when you put your car into reverse you are causing it to enter a period of less rapid forward motion. Or when I gain a few pounds I am in a period of less rapid weight loss.
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Nothing has changed for over 35 years.
Not meaning climate, but the discussion of it. Assorted experts were discussing in a variety of sources (books, radio, TV, newspapers)in the early '70s, and a lot of them said, we don't know what the result will be in the long term. Ice age, toasted by the sun and our own technology, but something will happen. They weren't calling it "global warming," they were predicting global climate change, and saying that what happened in one area might not be what happened in another. Monsoons in eastern USA, drought in SE Asia. But serious changes, because a change in one place would create other changes elsewhere.
Which in fact, we are seeing. Thousands die from a heatwave in Europe, out of season tornados in America, flooding where there historically never has been flooding, increased hurricane activity. Drought spreading to many new parts of the globe.
What I find troubling is our reaction to it all, both the discussion and the events. Most troubling are self-styled pundits who seem to be saying no changes are occurring, just ignore the weird weather, or who point to the shrinking Mars icecaps and say see? It's not just us. So go ahead and burn all the fossil fuels you want, raise more beef, go back to sleep, the cause is sunspots, natural forces.
Which is sorta like saying you can't stop a hurricane, it's a natural force. So just stand around on a street corner and wait to get skewered by a stop sign. As though there is nothing we can or should be doing.
That's just insane. If you're in a boat being swamped by a storm, do you ignore it? Do you scoop more water out of the sea and pour it onto the deck? Or do you bail?
change
Hurricane activity has NOT increased. Check with NOAA. The historical flooding is for how many years? 100, 200, 2000. 20,000? How about the sun?
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html
Old story
Yeah, right: quote a story from 2003, because you don't agree with the evidence of 2009. Your defence is as outdated as the article.
Ocean Warming
Those supposedly "super accurate" Argo buoys had instrument errors which biased the result to give readings which were colder than the actual temperatures.
http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf
"Correction to “Recent Cooling of the Upper Ocean” Josh K. Willis , John M. Lyman , Gregory C. Johnson and John Gilson
Revised and Resubmitted 10 July 2007 to Geophysical Research Letters
Abstract. Two systematic biases have been discovered in the ocean temperature data used by Lyman et al. [2006]. These biases are both substantially larger than sampling errors estimated in Lyman et al. [2006], and appear to be the cause of the rapid cooling reported in that work."
Those who deny global warming keep clutching at this erroneous result, ignoring Lyman's retraction identifying that thousands of Argo buoys all had the same design defect.
They never mention that the Argo result were at odds with temperature values obtained from other methods. They cherry pick results known to be bogus, because those false results give a message they want to hear.
This is an unfortunate, but all too common situtation.
Those pesky instruments... AussieGuy
There's the Argos, those damn satellites, the stupid people who spent 100 years misreading thermometers. Bloody good thing we have all those computer modellers to tell us how it really is, right? That white stuff in the Australian hills - not snow at all, it's dandruff from trees suffering in the heat.
That heat wave in January in Melbourne? Concentrate on how hot is is & ignore those comments about 'hottest day in 100 years' and 'most hot days in a row for 105 years' - if you think too hard you might realise it means that it was hotter 100 years ago & they had more hot days in a row 105 years ago.
Oh, & don't bother looking at the Bureau of meteorolgy - once the fires distracted everyone they promptly modified DOWN the temperatures they trumpeted - that way next year, in Summer, in a country renowned for hot weather, that it is 'hotter than last year' & everyone will remember how hot it was then & get all scared about the heating of the planet.
Those who deny ANTHROPOGENIC Global Warming do not necessarily deny the changes we see. It's interesting how us sceptics used to be accused of being deniers of AGW but now they drop the A off the front because blind freddy can see that CO2 is not a causative factor in GW.
conections?
now that we see a volcano with these possible results over time, maybe now we can connect this situation i learned about a few years ago. A Canadian scientist has discovered a lost city in the early 2000 off the coast of Cuba and has ruins under water they think predates the pyramids....see this link below.....i wondering if modern man is a lot older than what the bible says(6000 yrs)...you draw you own conclusions:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1697038.stm
James Heroux
Canada
Earth is a lot older. Read
Earth is a lot older. Read Genesis carefully. After Noah and the flood, God said replenish the earth. Replenish means to plenish again. Go to the part in the beginning about adam and eve. They were told to replenish the earth, meaning that there was something there before them. Also in ancient prophecies from the mayans, and hopis, they speak of the world being destroyed 3 or 4 times. The last one was by water and this next destruction will be fire.
Mayan Prophecy and global warming, volcanoes and earthquakes.
Actually, according to Mayan elders, their prophecy indicates that the next renewal (due 2012 (ish)) is renewal by ether, not fire.
As for the Volcano under the ice, well that would also fit in with the earth quake data that showed an earth quake happening March 17th on the Antarctic Ridge. That could provide the energy required to neatly crack a huge chunk of a weakened ice shelf. An ice shelf weakened by a whole summer's warming (normal annual event), volcanic heating and the previous century's modest warming.
I really would not worry about this, The south pole has spent times in the past without any ice whatsoever. In the medieval warm period some 800 years ago, the ice cover would have been significantly less than today.
Sea levels in some parts of the earth are not even rising. According to Dr Vincent Gray, the sea levels in some places are falling. Dr. Gray is one of the 2,000 to 2,500 top scientists from around the world whom the IPCC often cites as forming the basis of its findings. No one has been a more faithful reviewer than Dr. Gray over the years he has been an IPCC expert almost from the start, and perhaps its most prolific contributor, logging almost 1,900 comments on the IPCC's final draft of its most recent report alone.
But Dr. Gray, who knows as much about the IPCC's review processes as anyone, has been troubled by what he sees as an appalling absence of scientific rigour in the IPCC's review process.
"Right from the beginning, I have had difficulty with this procedure. Penetrating questions often ended without any answer. Comments on the IPCC drafts were rejected without explanation, and attempts to pursue the matter were frustrated indefinitely.
"Over the years, as I have learned more about the data and procedures of the IPCC, I have found increasing opposition by them to providing explanations, until I have been forced to the conclusion that for significant parts of the work of the IPCC, the data collection and scientific methods employed are unsound. Resistance to all efforts to try and discuss or rectify these problems has convinced me that normal scientific procedures are not only rejected by the IPCC, but that this practice is endemic, and was part of the organization from the very beginning."
Dr. Gray has detailed extensively the areas in which global warming science falls down. One example that this New Zealander provides comes from his region of the globe: "We are told that the sea level is rising and will soon swamp all of our cities. Everybody knows that the Pacific island of Tuvalu is sinking. Al Gore told us that the inhabitants are invading New Zealand because of it."
"Around 1990 it became obvious that the local tide-gauge did not agree there was no evidence of 'sinking.' So scientists at Flinders University, Adelaide, were asked to check whether this was true. They set up new, modern, tide-gauges in 12 Pacific islands, including Tuvalu, confident that they would show that all of them are sinking.
"Recently, the whole project was abandoned as there was no sign of a change in sea level at any of the 12 islands for the past 16 years. In 2006, Tuvalu even rose."
Other expert reviewers at the IPCC, and scientists elsewhere around the globe, share Dr. Gray's alarm at the conduct of the IPCC. An effort by academics is now underway to reform this UN organization, and have it follow established scientific norms. Dr. Gray was asked to endorse this reform effort, but he refused, saying: "The IPCC is fundamentally corrupt. The only 'reform' I could envisage would be its abolition."
That is fairly unequivocal. The outright abolishment of the IPCC. An organisation that is politically motivated. An organisations whose central goal is NOT saving the planet, or establishing truth about climate change. The central IPCC mission is to prove that mankind's activity is the cause of a global increase in temperature that is unstoppable and catastrophic. Once it has done this, it is up to the Governments of the world to come together and control all of mankind's activities to "reduce carbon output".
Unfortunately, how can the IPCC prove that mankind's activities are creating a global warming that is unstoppable and catastrophic, if the globe has actually been cooling slightly for the past decade?
The Argo Ocean Probes, the Nasa Aqua satellites and other global temperature monitoring organisations ALL show that there has actually been a rather inconvenient global COOLING over the last decade. These measurements are coming from high-level altitudes, to surface level and sub sea level. All show a cooling. Where was that predicted with the 'sophisticated' computerised models?
How can the IPCC provide a motivation for global governments submitting to a global authority to control humanity, if the earth is now cooling slightly? Well that is highly inconvenient to the globalists, isn't it?
Ah well I suppose that it is a good job that the mainstream media is bought off then, and that they willingly censor all contradictory evidence to prevent people from becoming aware of the inconvenient truth of the current cooling trend and that they also over-hype anything that can be spun to support the thoroughly debunked hypothesis of human induced climatic warming.
They are now calling it human induced climate disruption, to allow for natural cooling and blame mankind for that too.
Underwater Cities
You should note that there is a good reason for this too. Read www.thunderbolts.info and check out the new paradigm that explains these mysteries.
The equator had less water around it due to the water beind held up at the poles by the gravitational attraction of "a god". Which, the ancients called 'planets'. Mythology is literally the drawings of Plasma (like the Northern Lights, but a million times more intense) and Planet's which had plasma effects around them.
%100 of cosmology ignores Electro magnetic effects. We should not as plasma makes up %99.98 of the observable universe. And magnetic fields and electric fields affect plasma significantly more than gravity.