Huge Underwater Volcanoes Discovered Near Antarctica

[n2doc]

by Andrea MustainDate: 11 July 2011 Time: 04:24 PM ET


A string of a dozen volcanoes, at least several of them active, has been found beneath the frigid seas near Antarctica, the first such discovery in that region.

Some of the peaks tower nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) above the ocean floor — nearly tall enough to break the water's surface.

"That's a big volcano. That's a very big volcano. If that was on land it would be quite remarkable," said Philip Leat, a vulcanologist with the British Antarctic Survey who led a seafloor mapping expedition to the region in 2007 and 2010.

The group of 12 underwater mountains lies south of the South Sandwich Islands — desolate, ice-covered volcanoes that rise above the southern Atlantic Ocean about halfway between South America and South Africa and erupted as recently as 2008. It's the first time such a large number of undersea volcanoes has been found together in the Antarctic region.


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http://www.livescience.com/15006-underwater-volcanoes-discovered-antarctica.html

[dipsydoodle]

1. Would be interesting

to say the least if one of those really blew.

[Scuba]

2. Fascinating. Thanks for posting.

[Gman]

3. I believe El Niño/La Nina is caused by this type activity

On the floor of the Pacific.

[TheMadMonk]

6. Funnily enough, meteorologists are not in concordance. AND...

...have the computational models to back them up.

Care to elaborate on your hypothesis?

[snot]

4. I have to wonder, do these contribute to ice melting?

[Igel]

8. If they're active, they could.

It's been claimed by some anti-AGW folk that a large part of the Arctic ice-cap melting 3 or 4 years ago was caused by volcanic activity reported undersea in the Arctic Ocean.

I suspect the energetics work out poorly, but as a contributing factor I doubt it can be ruled out. Unless, of course, the reports of volcanism there a few years ago were overblown or incorrect.

[hootinholler]

5. Several thoughts...

First I wonder if that slide triggered a tsunami.

Were these under the ice pack so that surveys were enabled or are we just now getting to survey these areas? Hmmm, seems to be the latter.

"We knew there were other volcanoes in the area, but we didn't go trying to find volcanoes," Leat told OurAmazingPlanet. "We just went because there was a big blank area on the map and we had no idea what was there; we just wanted to fill in the seafloor."

The team did so, thanks to ship-borne seafloor mapping technology, and not without a few hair-raising adventures.

Leat said the images of the seafloor appear before your eyes on screens as the ship moves through the water. "So it's very exciting," he said. "You go along and suddenly you see the bottom start to rise up underneath you, and you don't know how shallow it's going to get."

At one point, in the dead of night, the team encountered a volcano so large it looked as though the RRS James Clark Ross, the team's research vessel, might actually crash into the hidden summit. "It was quite frightening, actually," Leat said.

Interesting find. I was on a deep ocean survey ship back in the day. We charted a new volcano off Hawaii once.

-Hoot

[TheMadMonk]

7. Most of the ocean floor is a big blank area.

Whilst it might be possible that receding ice might have opened up this area to investigation. Odds are though, that it's simply a case of someone getting around to taking a looksee.