Seismic Activity | CRISISBOOM

Doomsday fire: Millions of volcanoes are stirring beneath the world’s oceans

May 11, 2011 crisisboom Comments off

In 1993, marine geophysicists aboard the research vessel Melville discovered 1,133 previously unmapped underwater volcanoes off the coast of Easter Island. Though some of the newly discovered volcanoes rose as much as one-and-a-half miles above the seafloor, their summits still remained half a mile below the water’s surface- all this in a comparatively small area of only 55,000 square miles, about the size of New York State. The geophysicists had increased the known supply of underwater volcanoes by more than ten percent just in a matter of months. That was 1993. Today, scientists estimate that there are more than three million underwater volcanoes. That’s a three followed by six zeroes! In 2007, oceanographers Hillier and Watts surveyed 201,055 submarine volcanoes. “From this they concluded an astounding total of 3,477,403 submarine volcanoes must reasonably exist worldwide,” said this article by John O’Sullivan. Hillier and Watts “based this finding on the earlier and well-respected observations of Earth and Planetary Sciences specialist, Batiza (1982) who found that at least 4 per cent of seamounts are active volcanoes.” According to Batiza’s survey, the Pacific mid-plate alone contains an incredible 22,000 to 55,000 underwater volcanoes, with at least 2,000 of them considered active. Thinking Read more…

Categories: Pacific Ocean, Seismic Activity, volcano Tags: Arctic Ocean, Asphalt volcanoes, Gakkel ridge, Pacific Ocean, ring of fire, seamounts, Seismic Activity, volcanoes

Extreme weather is moving tectonic plates, scientists claim

April 18, 2011 crisisboom 1 comment

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People who are ridiculed for saying that earthquakes are a result of global warming could actually be right, scientists claim.

Long-term climate change has the potential to spin Earth’s tectonic plates, according to a news study from the Australian National University.

Working with researchers in Germany and France, they have established a link between the motion of the Indian plate over the last ten million years and the intensification of Indian monsoons.

Movements of the earth: Tectonic plate movement could be sped up as a result of the weather

Monsoon rain increased by four metres every year, speeding up the motion in the Indian plate by one centimetre a year, said Dr Giampiero Iaffaldano from the ANU research school of earth sciences.

The scientists put information into a computer that indicated how monsoons had eroded the eastern Himalayas over the last ten million years.

They discovered that enough rocks were worn away from the eastern side of the plate to account for the plate’s anti-clockwise movement.

Dr Iaffaldano said: ‘The significance of this finding lies in recognising for the first time that long-term climate changes have the potential to act as a force and influence the motion of tectonic plates.

‘It is known that certain geologic events caused by plate motions – for example the drift of continents, the closure of ocean basins and the building of large mountain belts – have the ability to influence the Read more…