# The Mystery of the Rapidly Inflating Volcano



## entropy13 (Oct 25, 2011)

Should anyone ever decide to make a show called "CSI: Geology," a group of scientists studying a mysterious and rapidly inflating South American volcano have got the perfect storyline.

Researchers from several universities are essentially working as geological detectives, using a suite of tools to piece together the restive peak's past in order to understand what it is doing now, and better diagnose what may lie ahead.

It's a mystery they've yet to solve.

Uturuncu is a nearly 20,000-foot-high (6,000 meters) volcano in southwest Bolivia. Scientists recently discovered the volcano is inflating with astonishing speed.




Full article here.


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## twilyth (Oct 26, 2011)

I've posted this idea before and it always gets ridiculed, but it makes sense if you think about it.  As sea levels rise, the worlds oceans put more pressure on those sections of the crust.  This can cause magma to be diverted to other sections of crust that offer less resistance.  I think that will mean more vulcanism as global warming continues apace - especially in areas that are relatively close to a shore line.


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## xBruce88x (Oct 26, 2011)

well as long as yellowstone doesnt do the same...


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## hat (Oct 26, 2011)

xBruce88x said:


> well as long as yellowstone doesnt do the same...



That or any of the other handful of "super volcanoes" out there. Yellowstone isn't the only one, it just gets the most attention. In any case, if one goes off, everyone's screwed.


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## xBruce88x (Oct 26, 2011)

agreed... since its about as bad as getting hit by a small asteroid or comet. i knew about the others... just couldnt think of their names lol.


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## largon (Nov 13, 2011)

...And for some reason some think the planet is "fine tuned" for human life. _Actually_, we're sitting on a timebomb just waiting for it to go off and we got absolutely nothing we can do about it. 

Life's good. 
=]


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## lilhasselhoffer (Nov 13, 2011)

twilyth said:


> I've posted this idea before and it always gets ridiculed, but it makes sense if you think about it.  As sea levels rise, the worlds oceans put more pressure on those sections of the crust.  This can cause magma to be diverted to other sections of crust that offer less resistance.  I think that will mean more vulcanism as global warming continues apace - especially in areas that are relatively close to a shore line.



Help me understand where you are coming from, because somewhere this does not make sense.

We must agree that matter is conserved, and that there are very few things adding matter to our planet (occasional comets) right now.

Under this assumption, sea levels rising must be some sort of redistribution of matter.  Said matter is mostly water, so the only thing that could be increasing sea level is if water either locked on land or locked in glaciers is being placed into oceans.  It isn't coming from land, because anything lost on land is replenished by the water cycle.  So it must come from the sea.

Ice floats on water, _so glaciers that melt were at least partially above sea level, and thus must increase sea level when they melt._


Now the simple mechanics are over.  How does matter that was already in the sea, being more evenly distributed in the sea, cause greater pressure?

Assuming that you mean the pressure being distributed more evenly, rather than focused on the glaciers, then you've assumed the area beneath glaciers can somehow support more pressure than everywhere else on earth.  Our limited sciences relating to this suggest that lava flows (cracks that vent lava into the seas due to pressure differences) exist everywhere that the ocean is deep enough, so that cannot be true.  If this is not, then what is this arguement "proving."



Apparently I am missing something fundamental about where you stand.  Will you please tell me what I am missing, so I can understand where you are coming from?


Edit: Minor change in wording to improve clarity.  New phrasing in italics.


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## largon (Nov 13, 2011)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> Ice floats on water, so glaciers that melt were above the water, and thus must increase sea level.


You _might_ want to review that statement...


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## twilyth (Nov 13, 2011)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> Help me understand where you are coming from, because somewhere this does not make sense.
> 
> We must agree that matter is conserved, and that there are very few things adding matter to our planet (occasional comets) right now.
> 
> ...



Part of the global warming dogma is that sea levels are in fact rising, glaciers are retreating and disappearing, ice cover is becoming thinner etc.  Did you know that there are now plans for a NW passage across the Canadian arctic now because the sea ice completely melts in many places?  Yes that particular ice is irrelevant to sea levels but supports the idea of AGW.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Nov 13, 2011)

twilyth said:


> Part of the global warming dogma is that sea levels are in fact rising, glaciers are retreating and disappearing, ice cover is becoming thinner etc.  Did you know that there are now plans for a NW passage across the Canadian arctic now because the sea ice completely melts in many places?  Yes that particular ice is irrelevant to sea levels but supports the idea of AGW.



Dogma, or not, this does not answer the question.


Where is the extra pressure coming from?
What matter is exerting the extra pressure?
What does a north west passage, that is feasible due to seasonal melting, have to do with this (assuming there is a seasonal freeze on the opposite side of the globe to compensate for a seasonal thaw)?


I am not in a position where I can understand your ideas, and want to see where you are coming from.


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## twilyth (Nov 13, 2011)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> Dogma, or not, this does not answer the question.
> 
> 
> Where is the extra pressure coming from?
> ...


Sorry to be rude isn't that obvious at this point?  I thought I just answered you explicitly, but apparently not.

If AGW is correct, and I believe it is as do the vast majority of people who study climate, then ice that is currently on land where the crust tends to be thicker and therefore less flexible, is melting and contributing to a rise in sea levels.  Rising sea levels mean what?  More water and therefore more weight bearing down on the relatively thinner crust that underlies the oceans.  I really don't see what the big mystery is here.

edit:  to give you an idea of what I mean, did you know that the N. Am. crust is still rebounding from the weight of ice it bore during the last ice age?  Look it up if you don't believe me.


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## Bundy (Nov 13, 2011)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> Ice floats on water, _so glaciers that melt were at least partially above sea level, and thus must increase sea level when they melt._



Even corrected, this remains incorrect lol. here




lilhasselhoffer said:


> Now the simple mechanics are over.  How does matter that was already in the sea, being more evenly distributed in the sea, cause greater pressure?





lilhasselhoffer said:


> Dogma, or not, this does not answer the question.
> 
> 
> Where is the extra pressure coming from?
> ...



What Twilyth is referring to is that the pressure due to weight of glaciers will be redistibuted globally from places such as Antarctica and Greenland, to the oceans. This global increase in ocean height will cause increased pressure on continental shelves etc. Many continental shelves sit over subduction zones and the increased pressure/weight from above is thought to be a likely trigger for earthquakes. Hence global warming causing tsunamis/ earthquakes etc.


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## twilyth (Nov 13, 2011)

Bundy said:


> Even corrected, this remains incorrect lol. here
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thank you.  A much more eloquent explanation and from someone who actually has the credentials to back it up.


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## Bundy (Nov 14, 2011)

twilyth said:


> Thank you.  A much more eloquent explanation and from someone who actually has the credentials to back it up.



aw shucks


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## lilhasselhoffer (Nov 15, 2011)

Bundy said:


> Even corrected, this remains incorrect lol. here



Ok, I don't get it.

Density of water>Density of Ice
Less dense floats on top of more dense
Ice floats on water.  What am I missing?
Perhaps you meant that the density difference between solid ice and water would make up for the melting effect with concerns to total volume of liquid?  Archimedes postulated that a solid floating in liquid displaced a volume of liquid until the pressure from the displaced liquid was equal to that of the force applied by the weight of the solid, which I believe you thought I did not get...   


First, let me concede that I did not understand your point.  Land locked ice melting would increase the level of sea water, with a corresponding decrease on the pressure exerted on continents.

Second, and this took some time to research which is why I'm late to the party, the redistribution of pressure has a fundamental flaw. 

I am going to state flat out that I subscribe to the theory of plate techtonics, which forms the basis for my argument.  Let's think back to the glaciers forming.  More pressure would have to be present on land, thereby increasing volcanism in the oceans.  Increased volcanism there would generate more material at underwater subduction zones, and alter the chemisty of the water due to increased volcanic emissions.  

Both of these things lead to extinctions of sea creatures (heat and chemistry), and a large increase in the amount of below sea plate formation.  We are observing the death of certain sea creatures with a change of only a few degrees in average water temperature, let alone temperature and chemical composition shifts.  What history records, to the best of my research into the relatively new subject, is that plate formation has been relatively consistent over the past several million years.  Additionally, no great sea creature extinction has occured between the start of the ice age and today.


The only way to counteract the argument that pressure redistribution has not historically altered life is to subscribe to the expanding Earth theory.  Assuming Earth expands constantly then redistributing pressure would definitely cause different areas to form faster than others.  Of course, the expanding Earth theory falls short on explaining volcanism, continental drift, and a handful of other things that are assumed correct because fossil evidence suggests a very different continental orientation hundreds of millions of years ago.


So I guess my real question, now that I have found a concise way to put it, was "what theory do you subscribe to that accounts for volcanism and earthquakes?"  This underlying theory determines how you believe a redistribution of pressure will influence plate formation and the subsequent dynamics of where volcanic activity is likely to occur (land, sea, or only at techtonically unstable regions).

We seem to subscribe to fundamentally different theories on the underlying explanations, which has given rise to very different opinions on the matter.


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## HossHuge (Nov 15, 2011)

twilyth, may have a point.

There are scientists that believe that dams/reservoirs increase the amount of earthquakes in the area.


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## twilyth (Nov 16, 2011)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> 1. First, let me concede that I did not understand your point.  Land locked ice melting would increase the level of sea water, with a corresponding decrease on the pressure exerted on continents.
> 
> 2. Both of these things lead to extinctions of sea creatures (heat and chemistry), and a large increase in the amount of below sea plate formation.  We are observing the death of certain sea creatures with a change of only a few degrees in average water temperature, let alone temperature and chemical composition shifts.  What history records, to the best of my research into the relatively new subject, is that plate formation has been relatively consistent over the past several million years.  Additionally, no great sea creature extinction has occured between the start of the ice age and today.
> 
> ...


1.  The argument vis-à-vis volcanism is limited exclusively to land ice.

2.  Please show your source for this statement.  The mid-Atlantic ridge is an area of active plate formation and there are no mass extinctions.  Precisely the opposite.  There are entire ecosystems that develop in such areas.  It stretches from Iceland almost all of the way to Antarctica.

Source



> The ridge sits atop a geologic feature known as the Mid-Atlantic Rise which is a progressive bulge that runs the length of the Atlantic Ocean, with the ridge resting on the highest point of this linear bulge. This bulge is thought to be caused by upward convective forces in the asthenosphere pushing the oceanic crust and lithosphere.
> 
> This divergent boundary first formed in the Triassic period when a series of three-armed grabens coalesced on the supercontinent Pangaea to form the ridge. Usually only two arms of any given three-armed graben become part of a divergent plate boundary. The failed arms are called aulacogens, and the aulacogens of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge eventually became many of the large river valleys seen along the Americas and Africa (including the Mississippi River, Amazon River and Niger River).
> 
> The ridge is about 2,500 meters (8,200 ft) below sea level, while its flank is about 5,000 meters deeper.[10]



3.  Moot point.

4.  The driving force of plate tectonics isn't relevant.  The question you want to ask is what is the relative rigidity and thickness of different types of crust.  Continental lithosphere (crust) is relatively thick, while the oceanic version is thin.  Therefore, oceanic crust is more easily deformed than continental.  However neither are absolutely rigid.  It's just that the thicker crust is naturally less flexible.

So as sea levels rise, oceanic crust may be deformed to a much greater degree than the continental crust.  IOW, while the continental crust showed some deformation as the result of the ice it has lost, it will be much less significant that what the oceanic crust will experience from the addition of the same amount of weight.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Nov 16, 2011)

According to the International Union of Geological Sciences http://www.iugs.org/.  The last major extinction was over 14.8 to 14.5 million years ago.  This mass extinction was directly related to a cooling trend.


You utilize one example of a relatively stable subduction zone.  If I were to use the same logic and focused on say France, I could extrapolate that all humans speak French and enjoy wine.  As you can see, one hyperbole does not represent the whole.  A stable volcanoe may generate slow plate growth, releasing relatively minute amounts of chemicals that will spur biodiversity in a given environment.  A sudden explosion, due to increased volcanism, doesn't allow adaptation so much as wipe the area of life.

Perhaps the most recent example is the volcanic event that grounded European planes for days.  This event drastically changed the surrounding area, and people had to cover their mouth to prevent lung damage.  The same event under water would eliminate species by evaporation, as well as tainting the surrounding water for miles.


Plate techtonics matters a great deal.  Volcanoes do not form in the middle of stable plates.  The plates themselves serve to create boundaries, that do not directly conform to land and sea masses.  As such, the assumption that one region having more pressure applied to it than another shows a direct correlation with volcanic activity must be proven as more than conjecture.  As such, I cannot say the anecdotal evidence provided amounts to adequate reason for me to agree to the conclusion.

If you were to subscribe to the expanding Earth theory then expansion would be greater where relative pressure was the least, so taking matter from the land and redistributing it into the sea would change expansion patterns.  This is why I brought the postulate up.


Engineering time.  Rigid and flexible mean absolutely nothing whener it comes to applied pressure.  I offer the following thought experiment.  A paper balloon is inflated until popping.  A rubber balloon of the same unstretched surface area is inflated with the same pressure.  The rubber balloon obviously deforms under the pressure, and does not pop.  This is the exact same pressure, with different visual results.  Whenever the same thing happens underwater small vents and fissures form despite being more flexible than land, assuming that the pressure isn't increasing at a great rate.  So the exact same volcanic activity does not appear as influential underwater as it does on land.  

This is an example of elastic deformation under water, compared to plastic deformation on land.  Apples and oranges both might be fruits, but they share very little else in common.  Analytically, an exploding volcanoe may take as much energy to produce as a hundred years of under water volcanic vents.  It's inherently difficult to liken the two without lifetimes of historical data.

Here is the biggest problem.  Volcanic data and seismological data have only recently started to be recorded.  Incomplete, and inherently short-sighted, conjectures based upon anecdote and limited observation are flawed.  If they were true then observing the midwest during January would lead to the conclusion that the place was always bitterly cold.  A series of observations over the course of years would result in more accurate trend information.

To give more exact dates, plate tectonics has only existed for less than 50 years.  Such a young science, coupled with the inherently difficult to measure and observe subject, poses an interesting challenge.  This uncertainty, to the detriment of this discussion, implies that nether of our conclusions can be backed by more than anecdotal observations and loosely linked "proof" of our conjectures.


Lest we ignore the final elephant in the room, in the last few decades we have news reporting that takes hours, not weeks.  If I were alive in the 1940's nothing like the European volcanoes would have ever reached the main stream populace of the midwest.  Perhaps a bit of the "increase" could be attributed to better global media coverage than has ever existed before.


In the spirit of lack of proof, this is my last post here.  We obviously have fundamentally irreconcilable differences in our considerations.  Continuing the discussion would likely lead to an actual argument, so before that I will concede to silence.


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## twilyth (Nov 16, 2011)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> According to the International Union of Geological Sciences http://www.iugs.org/.  The last major extinction was over 14.8 to 14.5 million years ago.  This mass extinction was directly related to a cooling trend.
> 
> 
> You utilize one example of a relatively stable subduction zone.  If I were to use the same logic and focused on say France, I could extrapolate that all humans speak French and enjoy wine.  As you can see, one hyperbole does not represent the whole.  A stable volcanoe may generate slow plate growth, releasing relatively minute amounts of chemicals that will spur biodiversity in a given environment.  A sudden explosion, due to increased volcanism, doesn't allow adaptation so much as wipe the area of life.
> ...


Nothing you've said addresses the issue of increased volcanism due to plate deformation - except to say that it's conjecture.  However that point was never in issue.

My original post said in part "As sea levels rise, the worlds oceans put more pressure on those sections of the crust. This *can *cause magma to be diverted to other sections of crust that offer less resistance."

Please note the use of bolded word, "can".  It is used there in the sense of 'may' or 'could' or 'possibly'.  If you are contesting that it is even a possibility, then the burden of proof would be on you to show that it is not possible.  And I'm quite sure you can't do that.  In fact, you can't even give evidence to support the idea that the theory of plate tectonics in any way prohibits the possibility.

In your last post, you provide one citation that isn't even relevant.  All you've managed to do is talk around this issue in an attempt to appear authoritative.  Apologies, but that attempt has failed.


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## Bundy (Nov 16, 2011)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> Ok, I don't get it.
> 
> Density of water>Density of Ice
> Less dense floats on top of more dense
> ...



I think you now understand but I will be more precise (to be sure). The rise in sea levels can only be attributed to land based ice entering the oceans. Ice already floating on the ocean will not increase the sea levels. You can prove this by getting a glass of water and floating some ice cubes in it. Mark the level and then check it again when the ice has melted. There will be no change in the water level.

The earthquake issue is due to changes in localised pressure. As you correctly describe, earthquakes and volcanos occur in zones where large stresses have accumulated, usually from large scale/long term tectonic actions. Relatively small scale/short term local changes in supporting structures or pressures however can induce those large accumulated stresses to release. That is why earthquakes can be triggered by dams, mining or increased sea levels, they are circuit breakers.

Measured over a long period of time, increased sea levels should not cause more earthquakes because earthquakes are fundamentally caused by tectonics as you say. A likely odd effect of this might be that earthquakes would be more common whilst sea levels increased and then might become rare because much of the accunlated stresses have been relieved. It may take 100,000's of years to rebuild the tectonic stresses. Please note though that these concepts, although becoming generally accepted in the geological and engineering world as risk factors, remain unproven as theories. Given that much of the evidence is held by mining companies, don't hold your breath for the full story.

Hope that made sense.


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## Athlonite (Nov 19, 2011)

Who the F cares we're all here for the ride if tomorrow the world was to say thanks for all the fish and goodbye and promptly blew itself up what the hell would science do about it..... NOTHING thats what

So enjoy the ride while it lasts people because it's not going to last forever


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