Earthquakes And Volcanoes

[Blue Frost]

When Mount Pinatubo went off the global temps drooped 2 degrees, just think how much a super volcano would drop it. Krakatoa 2.2, and lasted 5 years I believe. Those are just Volcanoes.

[Gary Oak]

I remember after Mount St Helens erupted it rained almost everyday in the Vancouver area that year.

[Blue Frost]

With a super volcano that would be cooler there, and that rain would have been snow.

[Blue Frost]

Something just an eruption can do of a volcano.

Cataclysmic volcano wreaked havoc on medieval Britain

MOLA team
06.08.2012 http://www.mola.org.uk/blog/cataclysmic ... al-britain

The results of the largest archaeological investigation ever to have taken place in London are to be published by MOLA. Some 10,500 human skeletons dating from the 12th century to the 1500s were discovered by archaeologists a decade ago. It has taken ten years to analyse the results of this colossal discovery. Amongst the orderly burials were a number of mass burial pits that had scientists baffled.

Through radiocarbon dating, the mass burials were accurately dated but the timings didn’t marry with devastating events know to have taken place in the medieval period, like the Black Death or the Great Famine. Osteologist Don Walker set about solving the mystery. He turned to contemporary documentary sources, in which he found mention of ‘heavy rains’¹, ‘there was a failure of the crops; upon which failure, a famine ensued…many thousand persons perished’².

The excavation at Spitalfields in East London
Excavating mass burials at St Mary Spital
Osteologist Don Walker

Whilst examining a possible cause for these climatic changes, Don uncovered references to a cataclysmic volcano that erupted at this time. It is believed to have erupted somewhere in the tropics, perhaps El Chichón in Mexico or Quilotoa in Ecuador. Its force was such that ice-core data is evident in both hemispheres. The effects of this massive eruption were felt across the globe, as a ‘dry fog’³ descended across the world, cooling the Earth’s surface.

Don Walker, MOLA Osteologist, said: “This is the first archaeological evidence for the 1258 volcano and is an excellent example of the complexity of knowledge that can be gained from archaeological evidence. It is amazing to think that such a massive global natural disaster has been identified in a small area of East London. MOLA work on such a wide range of projects but I am always surprised when incredible discoveries like this one come to light.”

Bill McGuire, Professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, said: “This was certainly a prodigious volcanic event; one of the largest in the last few thousand years. Consequently, it is not really a surprise that one legacy should be a serious increase in mortality in London. Through their influence on climate, major volcanic blasts can affect any locality on the planet, and an eruption in distant Indonesia - which is one of a number of host candidates for the 1257/8 eruption - could without doubt reach out to take lives in the UK's capital.”

The osteological findings are revealed in the MOLA monograph A bioarchaeological study of medieval burials on the site of St Mary Spital: excavations at Spitalfields Market, London E1, 1991–2007.

[Gary Oak]

I had never heard of this huge eruption. This volcano must have been ginormous much like Krakatoa.

[Blue Frost]

It's part of the dark ages, part of why it's called dark. Illiteracy is another reason.

[Blue Frost]

The reason I bring these up is because most people don't realize the global consequences of a large, or super volcano going off, the death toll isn't local.
The gas, and ash clods can cause an Ice age, and mass die offs world wide.
We have been lucky, the world once was more active with large traps like the Russian steppes, and Iowa covering large areas of continents.

[Blue Frost]

"In the Blink of an Eye" --New Clues Emerge About Earth's Greatest Mass Extinction
August 01, 2017
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... ction.html
Mass extinction can take 10,000 years or less--the blink of an eye, by geological standards--but its effects on the evolutionary trajectory of life are still observable today. A new study by a researcher in the Syracuse University offers new clues to what may have triggered the world's most catastrophic extinction, nearly 252 million years ago.

James Muirhead, a research associate in the Department of Earth Sciences, is the co-author of an article in Nature Communications (Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2017) titled "Initial Pulse of Siberian Traps Sills as the Trigger of the End-Permian Mass Extinction." His research involves Seth Burgess, the article's lead author and a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, and Samuel Bowring, the Robert R. Shock Professor of Geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Their findings suggest that the formation of intrusive igneous rock, known as sills, sparked a chain of events that brought the Permian geological period to a close. In the process, more than 95 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land species vanished.

"There have been five major mass extinctions, since life originated on Earth more than 600 million years ago," says Burgess, who works at the nexus of volcanic and tectonic processes. "Most of these events have been blamed, at various times, on volcanic eruptions and asteroids impacts. By reexamining the timing and connection between magmatism [the movement of magma], climate change and extinction, we've created a model that explains what triggered the end-Permian mass extinction."

Central to their study is a large igneous province (LIP) in Russia called the Siberian Traps. Spanning more than 500,000 square miles, this rocky outpost was the site of nearly a million years of epic volcanic activity. Broad, flat volcanoes likely dispelled significant volumes of lava, ashes and gas, while pushing sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and methane to dangerous levels in the environment.

But that's only part of the story.

"Until recently, the relative timing and duration of mass extinctions and LIP volcanism was obscured by age imprecision," Muirhead says. "Our model is based on new, high-resolution age data that suggests surface lava flows erupted too early to drive mass extinction. Instead, there was a subinterval of magmatism--a shorter, particular part of the LIP--that triggered a cascade of events causing mass extinction."

The trigger? Extreme heat given off during the formation of sills.

"Heat from sills exposed untapped, gas-rich sediments to contact metamorphism [the process in which rock minerals and texture are changed by exposure to heat and pressure], thus liberating the massive greenhouse gas volumes needed to drive extinction," Muirhead says. "Our model links the onset of extinction with the initial pulse of sill emplacement. It represents a critical juncture in the evolution of life on Earth."

There are two ways that magma forms igneous rock. One way is extrusion, in which magma erupts through volcanic craters and cracks in the Earth's surface; the other is intrusion, whereby magma forces itself between or through existing formations of rock, without reaching the surface. Common types of intrusion are sills, dykes and batholiths.

Sills in Siberia's Tunguska Basin, where Muirhead's team carries out most of its research, likely pushed their way through limestone, coal, clastic rocks and evaporates. The mixture of hot, molten rock and hydrocarbon-bearing coals is thought to have set the stage for massive greenhouse gas release and global-scale climate change.

"Sediment composition and the amount of hydrocarbons [petroleum and natural gas] available within these sediments help us understand whether or not an LIP can trigger a mass extinction," says Burgess, adding that his team's model may apply to other extinction events coinciding with LIPs.

[Gary Oak]

Tin that book Magicians of the Gods by Graham Hancock he shows that there is a concerted effort by our governments and educatiion systems to lull us into a feeling of safety that huge cataclysms virtually never happen.

[Blue Frost]

Just a pot boiling over like on the stove

[video][/video]

[Gary Oak]

That is quite a sight. A couple of tourists were nailed by a lava bomb at Krakatoa a long itme ago. It might not be risky to get too close.

[Blue Frost]

Not even the mud volcanoes are safe to be around, and not just from the stuff coming out, the ground can collapse at any time.
In Hawaii people fall in the lava tubes all the time, and some active.

[Gary Oak]

I bet I never heard about people falling into lava tubes and other similar horrible demises as it would be bad for tourism for those news stories to get out. What a horrible way to go.

[Blue Frost]

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/2193 ... -lava-tube

https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/d ... geotourism

[Blue Frost]

Yellowstone’s Supervolcano Could Erupt in a ‘Geologic Snap’: New Study
Posted on October 13, 2017 by postroad | Comments Off on Yellowstone’s Supervolcano Could Erupt in a ‘Geologic Snap’: New Study

(Newser) – Should it ever erupt, a supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park could blanket North America in an ash cloud, wipe out communications, and alter the climate. Given that eruptions of supervolcanoes buried on our planet—and there are several—are thought to occur every 100,000 years or so, however, the likelihood of such an event during your lifetime is small, reports the New York Times. As comforting as that may be, new research out of Arizona State University is far less so. Whereas researchers previously thought such an eruption would be centuries or millennia in the making, an analysis of fossilized ash left over from Yellowstone’s last supereruption 630,000 years ago reveals the process could take only decades.

Tiny crystals left over from underground magma at Yellowstone show the first sign of the last supereruption was a spike in temperature that coincided with the movement of new magma into the reservoir beneath the supervolcano. The crystals also reveal a supereruption followed much quicker than scientists previously thought—perhaps within decades, or what Popular Mechanics calls “a geologic snap of the finger.” This is the first indication that “the conditions that lead to supereruptions might emerge within a human lifetime,” which one researcher describes as “shocking,” per the Times. For now, though, you can rest easy. The lead scientist at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory tells National Geographic there’s no sign of any “magmatic event” at this time. (You might outrun a supervolcano’s lava anyway.)

Excerpted from Yellowstone’s Supervolcano Could Erupt in a ‘Geologic Snap’: New Study
http://www.newser.com/story/249985/yell ... -snap.html
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[Gary Oak]

I saw this on the news this morning. Do Americas enemies have a plan in case this supervolcano does finally erupt ? Yellowstone is such a beautiful world famous park. i wonder how badly it will effect British Columbia. Are Americas nuclear reactors capable of dealing with this possible disaster ?

[Blue Frost]

They had a massive swarm of quakes lately, more in recent history I believe so it's not a happy volcano. Could calm down, it acted up years ago as well, but that's no time for a volcano.

[Blue Frost]

I think this was a day, or two ago.

[video][/video]

[Gary Oak]

Delaware ! I didn't think Delaware or that area got earthquakes.

[Blue Frost]

On occasion there is quakes all over, even in the places that never seem to be hit. The issue with places like the east coast is liquifaction, sand, dirt, and rock can sink into the ocean, some kinds of rock also unless bedrock is there.
Bedrock is what keeps all of us above the waves, we are lucky to have it. coral reefs are very important also, holds a lot of earth on the coast in.