Eyjafjallajökull messing with Europe

Posted on April 16, 2010 by Moonage

For starters, this is a cool pic:

Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud heading to Europe

Now, as cool as it looks, it’s driving Europe nuts. The ash plume has shut down flights from England to Norway to France. And, flights going to Europe from other parts of the world have been cancelled as well. It’s a mess. Some people are wondering what all the fuss is about. It just looks like smoke. Well, it’s not. When you burn most stuff, you get a very soft, very fine piece of stuff that falls apart very easily. Volcanic ash isn’t like that. It’s little rocks with jagged edges that will cut up anything it comes in contact with. In other words, it’ll wreck an engine in a heartbeat.

The really scary thing is Eyjafjallajökull may just be warming up.

Ice melting in Iceland

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Moonage

(CNN) — Icelandic authorities evacuated about 800 people early Wednesday when a volcano erupted beneath the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, an emergency spokesman said.

“The volcano is under the glacier and it’s melting parts of the glacier,” Olafsson said. “The rivers will rise and potentially make some damage.”

Not too long ago, when the global warming debate was “over”, scientists had a totally different thought:

“We don’t believe the volcanoes had much effect on the overlying ice,” Reeves-Sohn told LiveScience, “but they seem to have had a major impact on the overlying water column.”

Rushing to windows to watch an exploding volcano is OK

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Moonage

The Sun is running a neat picture taken by a passenger flying over Montserrat. They have it blocked, but it looks something like this:

Soufriere Hills has been very active for a few years. The story is kinda cool. I’d love to have been on that airplane. But the comments are even more fun.

Is that not dangerous ,passegers moving from one side off the plane to another ???

The wittiest response:

Quite right Nobynoah. Whenever there is a plane crash, the first thing accident investigators do is establish if all the passengers rushed to one side to have a look out the window.

The more pragmatic, the mass of 1/2 of the passengers moving from one side of the plane to the other is a tiny percentage of the total mass of the airplane. Given the inertia of the other half of the passengers in addition to the mass of the plane traveling at several hundred miles an hour, very little effect is created to the left. If it does, I’m sure the pilot will rev the engines a little.

And:

Does the pilot realise, if the ash from the volcano gets within the engines of the plane, it can shut down all the engines simultaneously. This would then require the pilot to start-stop the engines about twenty times to restart them all.
Not only this, flying through the ash, will indefinately scratch the planes windshield, so that visibilty is nun.

Dont you love the discovery channel.

Best reply:

Wow, Shan-abbas, pilots everywhere will be thanking you for this top tip. How’s the plane-spotting going, by the way?

The answer is actually quite simply. It depends on which way the wind is blowing. They’re quite far away. If the wind’s not blowing directly at them, it will dissipate a long time before it gets there.

So, if you see a volcano erupting while you’re flying, as long as it’s in the distance, rush to the window and take pics. I think they’re sooooo cool!

Bad week for carbon footprints

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Moonage

In an effort to convince the planet to spend more money on stocks Al Gore owns, a bunch of people got together in Denmark. They called themselves COP15. The problem is there aren’t fifteen of them. It should be called the COP18000 or so. The problem that creates is in an effort to convince everyone to ignore the bad science and just listen to them, they created 46,200 tons of carbon. That’s a lot. It would take 2,300 typical Americans one year to match that. Hell, it would take 660,000 Ethiopians to match that. They accomplished this by flying in private jets and renting over 200 limousines. Thoroughly convinced by the COP15 that what they went there to promote is truly what they want to promote, they’ll take limousines to the airport to fly their private jets home to tell us how to reduce our carbon footprint by taxing an imaginary concept that does nothing to reduce carbon. However, it did give Al Gore yet another reason to state facts completely wrong in such a profound way as to merit another Nobel.

Not to be outdone, mother nature came back with her own shot:

I can’t get an exact estimate, but the carbon footprint of Mayon is very big. Seeing a goldmine, Al Gore calculated the carbon footprint of Mayon with an abacus and pencil and paper and figured out how much more we need to pay in taxes to earn him his next $100,000,000. Obama plans to work with Nancy Pelosi to sponsor new legislation she will call “Cap and trade some more”. Obama is meeting with his insults czar preparing for any opposition to his new plan.

The only upside for Earth lately of course was Elin Nordegren eliminating one really big SUV with a golf club.

Volcano Chaiten pics are real

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Moonage

A while back I featured a picture of the Chaiten Volcano. It was cool because it showed all this lightning in it. Well, here it is again, I love it:

Well, apparently someone couldn’t believe this was real. So, they asked Snopes.com. Although Snopes cites the Boston Globe, I’m sure they came here to find out it most definitely is real. Here’s a couple more:

Stunning.

Waiting on the next Carrington Event?

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Moonage

The last couple of years have been pretty boring as far as sun gazing goes. I don’t do that, but I do enjoy following the numbers. Zero’s just aren’t all that exciting. In the meantime, our summers have been equally exciting, we’ve danced all over record lows here for a month, again, same as last year. No record highs were ever in peril. Today in my email I got an article from spaceweather.com about an event in 1859. An amateur sun watcher was watching the sun when it pretty much erupted directly at him. His recollection of the event is enjoyable to read. The event itself would be named after him, the Carrington Super Flare. What he saw was a brilliant flash that lasted only a few minutes. When it was gone, it didn’t come back. However, the next morning, the skies were lit with borealis all the way to South America:

Carrington Event

It knocked out telegraphs all over the planet. Lines and papers caught fire. It knocked out all communication for a couple of days. Back then, that was an inconvenience. Today, it would be catastrophic. Cell phones, GPS, television, even toilets would be affected. It would create an electronic mess that would take a year to fix, or more. The solar flare of 1989 created all kinds of problems.

Damage from the 1989 solar flare

That thing is nothing compared to Carrington. 1859 was a peak year from what had been a rather quiet period:

Sunspot cycles

The previous two cycles had been rather active. The cycle they were in, not so much. The cycle we’re in now, not so much either. In fact, practically non-existent. Atlantic tropical storms had also been somewhat unexciting:

1859 began a five year stretch that stayed rather busy ( given record keeping prior to 1901 ). Kinda like now. Our tropical storms have been rather unexciting the last couple of years. Additionally, there was a spike in temperatures the following twelve months. So, although the obvious occurs such as electrical disturbances, I just gotta wonder what the geophysical effects were. 1989 saw a massive solar flare that wreaked havoc all over the planet. It was tiny compared to Carrington. The solar flares generally run in eleven year cycles. The second complete cycle since 1989 would be 2011. I’ll be keeping an eye on the sun that year for sure.

Moon scoops science again ( yes, there is lightning in volcano plumes )

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Moonage

Here’s today’s headline I’m whining about:

For the first time, scientists have been able to “see” and trace lightning inside a plume of ash spewing from an actively erupting volcano.

When Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano began rumbling back to life in January, a team of researchers scrambled to set up a system called a Lightning Mapping Array that would be able to peer through the dust and gas of any eruption that occurred to the lightning storm happening within. Lightning is known to flash in the tumultuous clouds belched out during volcanic eruptions.

The lightning produced when Redoubt finally erupted on March 22 was “prolific,” said physicist Paul Krehbiel of New Mexico Tech.

Here’s my story from May 7, 2008:

Amazing image of the Chaiten Volcano – Chile

Although I didn’t go into a lot of detail then, that is lightning in the plume of the volcano. Lots and lots of lightning. Guess I should have been more obvious.

UPDATE: Universe Today has a much better write-up on this story. Notably:

Lightning is a frequent occurance during volcanic eruptions. The Lightning Mapping array allows scientists, meteorologists and storm chasers to pierce the veil of clouds to “see” lightning as it occurs

Obama to block the sun

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Moonage

This is the headline:

The president’s new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air.

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed.

One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

“It’s got to be looked at,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.”

They’re borrowing from the concept of global cooling. Volcanos often send so much ash into the atmosphere it will cool the Earth for a while.

Meanwhile, we’ve had this happening in Alaska:

And, we’re experiencing this in Chile:

I don’t think Obama’s team needs to be worrying too much about sending particulates into the atmosphere, the Earth does that just fine.

Additionally, if they DO send particulates into the upper atmosphere, and then we do have serious volcanic activity, the consequences could be a lot more severe than doing nothing. Given my druthers, I’d just as soon they not mess with the atmosphere until we have a better grip on what’s going on up there.

Mount Redoubt

Posted on January 29, 2009 by Moonage

Mount Redoubt near Anchorage, Alaska, has been rumbling a lot lately. It last erupted in 1989 and created a lot of headaches. Nothing serious tho. However, it’s a big volcano in a very active region. It could get exciting. So, I’ve attempted to stick the Mount Redoubt-HUT webcam on here. If it doesn’t work, click here and it should take you to their page. I plan on keeping and eye on it. I LOVE a good volcano!

Redoubt – Hut webcam

Underwater volcanoes not melting the ice?

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Moonage

That is a typical underwater volcano. I love to watch them. Something eerie looking, kinda alien. So, I finally found a story that gives me the opportunity to show at least a picture of one. Here’s today’s story:

Volcanoes Erupt Beneath Arctic Ice

New evidence deep beneath the Arctic ice suggests a series of underwater volcanoes have erupted in violent explosions in the past decade.

Hidden 2.5 miles (4,000 meters) beneath the Arctic surface, the volcanoes are up to a mile (2,000 meters) in diameter and a few hundred yards tall. They formed along the Gakkel Ridge, a lengthy crack in the ocean crust where two rocky plates are spreading apart, pulling new melted rock to the surface……

Which, I read with special interest since CNN ran a poll about the story of the polar ice caps melting entirely this summer. There has been quite a bit of media interest and speculation as to why the polar ice caps are melting. Now, we had been through this scenario before. Everythign was melting in Greenland, and it was all man’s fault. Until, that is, they figured out there was a large volcano underneath Greenland heating everything up. Once they figured that out, Greenland hasn’t been mentioned since in the global warming debate and the polar ice caps immediately started melting. Not one person thought to see if the same thing was happening at the North Pole as it was in Greenland. Well, now that they have found that the same thing IS happening at the North Pole, this is what they figured out:

“We don’t believe the volcanoes had much effect on the overlying ice,” Reeves-Sohn told LiveScience, “but they seem to have had a major impact on the overlying water column.”

Now, I’m inclined to believe they don’t want to believe it has any effect on the overlying ice. My limited science background does tell me that heat rises. And, it also tells me volcanoes are very hot. Now, granted these volcanoes are under a lot of water, that heat still has to go somewhere. It just bugs me that although “scientists” are more than willing to research the connection of gases moving from continental US and photosynthesizing over the Arctic, thereby trapping the sun’s rays closer to earth and slightly warming the atmosphere by less than five degrees and thereby causing all of the ice at the North Pole to melt, they are unwilling apparently to explore the concept that a volcano releasing lava at 1,250 degrees directly below the ice would melt it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I would hope anyone reading these articles will scratch their heads as well.

My bet, in the not too distant future, someone is going to hypothesize that the extreme heat of those underwter volcanoes is contributing to the melting ice directly above them.

Duh.

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