Under the ocean near California – 700 feet deep in the waters off Santa Barbara in California, a group of football-field-sized asphalt domes pave the bottom of the ocean. They are unlike any other underwater features known to exist–are they underwater volcanoes? (and if so, are they dormant?) We need to know if we have a potential emergency situation here.
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Climate change isn’t just melting ice caps, it’s about melting magma too. This, in turn, will lead to more volcanic eruptions. The recent volcano in Iceland may have disrupted air travel, but what’s even more amazing is that a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia 74,000 years ago changed the course of evolution!
The largest ice cap in Iceland is getting smaller every year at the same time the volcano underneath it is heating up. As the ice disappears, it relieves the pressure on the rocks deep underneath, which increases the rate of magma melt.
In New Scientist, Catherine Brahic quotes volcanologist Bill McGuire as saying, “We are going to see a massive increase in volcanic activity globally. If we look back at previous warm periods, that is what happened.”read more
What’s the latest on the Iceland volcano that’s cancelling flights to Europe? While airlines have grounded their planes and are making test flights to evaluate the situation, winds are sending rocks and debris from the eruption into Europe, and these are not ORDINARY rocks.
Most pilots learn about how to fly through ash during flight training. It’s called “VA,” for “volcanic ash.” In Wired.com, Jason Paur reports that in 2000, NASA studied VA by flying a DC-8 through a cloud of volcanic ash that was too small to be seen by the flight crew. Despite this, a post-flight examination revealed that the plane’s engines were damaged. More than 90 planes have been damaged after flying through volcanic ash over the past 30 years.
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Could last for weeks or even months. – On Thursday, April 14 thousands flights out of many European airports were shut down due to a huge cloud of volcanic ash from an eruption in Iceland. Eyjafjallajokull is astratovolcano like Mt. Vesuvius. They are characterized byexplosive eruptions that tend to end as abruptly as theystart, but their eruptions can sometimes continue for years.Experts are also concerned that the Eyjafjallajokulleruption could mean that nearby Katla, which is much larger,will also erupt. If this happens, the disruptions to suchthings as air travel could spread to the whole northernhemisphere.
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