More than 1,500 people have fled their homes in southern Chile after the Chaiten volcano erupted, throwing a huge cloud of ash and lava into the sky.
More than 1,500 people have fled their homes in southern Chile after the Chaiten volcano erupted, throwing a huge cloud of ash and lava into the sky.
UK Telegraph: Thousands flee as Chilean volcano erupts
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
So this is going to add to the global nonwarming?
And in the same article it says: “They have also instructed residents not to drink tap water, which may have been contaminated by the sulphurous ash that has floated into reservoirs.
Emergency workers are meanwhile distributing face masks to help people breathe more easily.”
This is quite interesting – the volcanoe erupts because deep down a small part of the lithosphere has melted to then erupt at the earth’s surface as a volcano, implying that a lot of energy has been focussed in one small area to cause rock to increase in temperature and melt to form magma.
This magma then erupts at the earths surface which fills the atmosphere with aerosols and gases which causes the earth’s surface to cool for a year or two. And it’s totally unpredictable using existing geoscience theory.
So what caused the temperature surge deep down in the lower crust in the first place?
And can anyone point to a computer climate model that factors this phenomenon into the GCM algorithim? How does one predict when and where a volcanoe will erupt.
And if subduction is real, why does partial melting only occur locally and not, more or less, uniformly along the length of the subduction zone? The mechanism implies that friction, and thus melting, has to be more widespread than observed.
Yet this isolated volcanic eruption will have a significant effect on the earth’s surface climate, but is a totally unpredictable natural phenomena which by its nature cannot be incorporated into any global climate model.
If we had competent climate models, factoring in a volcano should be a simple matter.
What should be a *very* simple matter–the simplest of all, amidst the controversy–is determining what the global temperature is.
Today.
And then, we could be told what the global temperature is, tomorrow.
I personally would like to see a publicly available “world temperature thermometer” which would accurately tell me what the planet’s up to.
So would insurance companies, grain traders, traveling circuses, and others.
Fact is, if nobody can say what today’s world temperature is, today, there isn’t the sort of grip on reality you’d usually expect of people who want to run your life for you.
Fact is, nobody knows what today’s global temperature is.
Louis, you must be sniffing some of the gas coming from the volcano.
Volcanos erupt almost daily somewhere on the planet. There are some volcanos that have been continuously erupting for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Chaiten is just another eruption at this time. It is a little remarkable because it was considered to be extremely dormant – almost considered extinct. The Ash plume has risen to a very high level however.
Volcanos have some effect on climate when eruptions are sufficiently large enough to push ejecta into the stratosphere which is then carried globally by winds and cause some blockage of sunlight.
Pinatubo, 1991 the second largest event in the last century is believed to have caused between 0.5 and 1.1 degree of cooling for approx 1+ years.
Tambora Indonesia 1815 was the largest eruption of the 19th century was 100 times more powerful than Pinatubo caused widespread climate cooling for up to three years. Major famines caused by up to three degrees of cooling caused many fatalities. Year without summer.
Beano
Not sniffing but pointing out the sheer unpredictability of these things. Given the influence these things have on the global climate, it makes climate modelling somewhat problematical.
Not really. Effects are usually only short term – 1-2 years.
What am I saying! One cannot model the earth’s climate in any case, because in order to do that they must also figure out how to predict the next ice-age as well. It’s happened in the past and will happen in the future.
Louis, what you are saying is totally correct. It is impossible to model the earth’s climate. There are too many variables.
I was involved in satellite communications in the early eighties. We were trying to calculate and model some inter-working comms equipment to a high degree of accuracy re timings of signals between the ground station and the satellite. It was impossible. Too many variables. The most we could get was 70% reliability for our purposes. We could get the instruments right and aligned at both ends however the weather,atmospheric conditions at any given time, radio-magnetic interference etc etc etc the list of variables went on and on.
And re volcanic events, it would be interesting to see the climatic conditions resulting from an event VE5.8 to VE6.5 had it occured just prior to the harsh Northern months of February – March just gone.
Beano,
I am in the mineral exploration business and we have one rule of thumb when dealing with geophysical phenomena – as long as it’s linear we can deal with it. But when it’s non-linear, all bets are off. In fact we don’t even try.
But when your science is essentially restricted to a virtual world, all manner of things become possible. The problem is that climate scientists seem to confuse virtuality with reality.
I can just hear the excuses from the Alarmists as we see no warming and probably cooling for at least the next couple of decades. But it’s the volcanoes! (which they continue to conveniently ignore as a factor in the 80’s to mid-90’s).
We’ll have to sic Luke on them!
And not just new eruptions but old standbys are changing their spots:
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080427/NEWS01/804270379/1001/LOCALNEWSFRONT
Read and weep climot…I mean Luckless Lukey!
Hi,I am here at chile,well,like you guys said,the chaiten volcano erupt…And it had a HUGE gray cloud in the sky!!!The police woke up EVERYONE in the middle of the night.
Most of the people say that,in a few more years,the huge cloud that contains something like poison smoke,will fall down and break half of chile,but if it falls in the ocean,it will be MORE DANGEROUS!!!
Well,byebye!