Pine Island Glacier - Sub-Glacial Volcano
- From: FrereTuck <none@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:26:24 GMT
just a little detail missing from the current showing of Pine Island
Glacier melt stories.....
Oooohhh now let me see... what are volcanos renowned for... oh yeah
that's it... heat... lots of heat....
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n2/abs/ngeo106.html
Letter abstract
Nature Geoscience 1, 122 - 125 (2008)
Published online: 20 January 2008 | doi:10.1038/ngeo106
Subject Categories: Cryospheric science | Volcanology, mineralogy and
petrology
A recent volcanic eruption beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet
Hugh F. J. Corr & David G. Vaughan
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Indirect evidence suggests that volcanic activity occurring beneath the
West Antarctic ice sheet influences ice flow and sheet stability1, 2, 3.
However, only volcanoes that protrude through the ice sheet4 and those
inferred from geophysical techniques1, 2 have been mapped so far. Here we
analyse radar data from the Hudson Mountains, West Antarctica5, that
contain reflections from within the ice that had previously been
interpreted erroneously as the ice-sheet bed. We show that the
reflections are present within an elliptical area of about 23,000 km2
that contains tephra from an explosive volcanic eruption. The tephra
layer is thickest at a subglacial topographic high, which we term the
Hudson Mountains Subglacial Volcano. The layer depth dates the eruption
at 207 BCplusminus240 years, which matches exceptionally strong but
previously unattributed conductivity signals in nearby ice cores. The
layer contains 0.019–0.31 km3 of tephra, which implies a volcanic
explosive index of 3–4. Production and episodic release of water from the
volcano probably affected ice flow at the time of the eruption. Ongoing
volcanic heat production may have implications for contemporary ice
dynamics in this glacial system.
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1. British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council,
Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK
Correspondence to: Hugh F. J. Corr e-mail: h.corr@xxxxxxxxx
.
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