And we didn’t even know it!
Researchers studying the Monowai volcano near Tonga recorded huge changes in height in just two weeks. This latest analysis compared images gathered on May 14 and then June 1-2 last year and even in that short period the volcano had undergone a transformation.
The team found that one volcano, named Monowai, changed dramatically over just a two week time span, collapsing in one part and adding almost 80 meters of height in another. The team has described their findings in a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“The researchers believe the changes are larger than at most other volcanoes. Only Vesuvius and Mount St Helens have recorded larger growth rates.”
Bigger than Mount Vesuvius! That’s the huge volcano that buried Pompeii, and no one
even knew that it had erupted! And we wonder what has been heating the seas?
“A wake-up call that the sea-floor may be more dynamic than we previously thought,” says lead author Tony Watts of Oxford University. “I’ve spent my career studying the seabed and have generally thought it pretty stable so it’s stunning to see so much change in such a short space of time.”
As many as 32,000 underwater mountains have beenidentified around the world and the majority are believed to be volcanic in origin,” says this article by David Shukman. ” Several thousand of these
may be active but a combination of ocean depth and remoteness means that very few have been studied.”
”Several thousand of these may be active . . . and we wonder what has been heaqting the seas.
See all of this fascinating article, along with a video:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18040658
Thanks to Michael Gribble,Benjamin Napier, Mike Wurm and David Wigtil for this link.
8 Responses to Underwater volcano bigger than Mt Vesuvius erupts – Video
SUNSPOTS
11 May - 4 sunspots
Credit: landscheidt.infoGood news! A publisher in Italy has now translated Not by Fire but by Ice into Italian.
La Prossima Era Glaciale
Available hereClick for full size
Ice Age Maps
Are You Prepared?
I recommend this DVD
Warmer during most of
the past 10,000 years
- 525,040
Unique
VisitorsPowered By
Right, the science cannot be settled when we’ve barely researched what’s going on in the oceans, the planet’s primary climate driver.
The time has come, the Walrus said, To talk of many things,
Of ships and shoes and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings,
AND WHY THE SEA IS BOILING HOT
And whether pigs have wings.
Yippee yey hoo! ;o) we’re defo in an ice age…I rhink I need to learn how to make vodka! ;o)
Yes and there has been numerous mag 5 earthquakes around Tonga region past year or so (check USGS)
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/10/185_-25.php
I watched the “sonar video” along with the one they made last year of the Tonga Trench, I think that was the name. I am looking at the coloration as well as the imagine and I can’t perceive this as a “subduction zone” as easily as it appears like a tear. In other words, it looks more like the surface “broke” during an expansion of the region, and not a “subduction” of one plate beneath another.
I have always wondered where the colossal amount of energy was coming from that could drive one plate down and under another plate. If all the plates were drifting in the direction of rotation or against it, I might find it in centrifugal force, but since some are going in different directions, I can’t find a source of the force. tearing, as in an expanding Earth, could be lain to centrifugal force, but that also requires the Earth to be hollow, which makes more sense when you consider the Earth as a collection of mass and not a point of mass, then a molten metal center.
Again, I thought I read that the calculated heat in the oceans had remained relatively constant – not sure if there are ups and downs or a trend. The expansion of sea ice would suggest that there is a decrease in the total heat in the ocean – at least near the poles.
If there are, indeed, more underwater volcanoes, and they are more frequently erupting, thus heating the water, that would seem to me to be an excellent reason for the fact that the ice age, predicted back in the 70s, hasn’t happened already. However, when their dry counterparts start doing the same, yes, it should come in a hurry, but I don’t think I will see 300 mph glaciers streaking across the lands like you do in some “Golly-wood” movies.
Surely there are a bunch of small variable that we don’t understand, or don’t even know about… yet.
The oceans are deep and wide. Without underwater volcanoes perhaps the atmosphere would be cooling at a greater rate?
Perhaps the underwater volcanoes contribute to localized warming of the oceans which then contribute increased moisture to the atmosphere? Perhaps this increased moisture, combined with the effects of low Solar output, Pole shifts on Earth and on the Sun, and increased land based Vulcanism cause greater snow fall in certain regions of Earth which form a cold mass that also contributes its load to the equation… At some point there is a tip into the abyss and PRESTO.. we have an “Ice Age.”
Again, there probably are many, many other factors which figure into the paradigm shift. The actual “trigger” may be a single event, multiple events, or an x factor we have yet to discover. Or, it could be that a single event, multiple events, and x factors have all caused Ice Ages in their own right.
One thing is for sure, we can not depend upon “the government” to give us the straight story on this or any other issue.
And it’s ALL our fault..! If we weren’t causing so much global warming and polluting the oceans the climate wouldn’t change, the glaciers wouldn’t melt, and the volcanoes wouldn’t erupt…. ROFLMBO..!
More realistically, it is readily apparent that “Scientists” don’t know nearly as much about the Earth as they think they do..!!