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- Ash from Chilean Chaiten Volcano could last for decades
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Spider Thu, 08 May 2008 17:49:31 PDT About Technocrat.net
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The ash from the Chaiten Volcano is reportedly spreading into the Atlantic, rising from 4.5-10.6km into the atmosphere. The last significant eruption from Chaiten was 9,000 years ago. According to recent reports there is no let up to the amount of ash being ejected.
Will this high atmosphere ash/dust enhance or prevent further global warming?
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- Ash from Chilean Chaiten Volcano could last for decades
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Spider Thu, 08 May 2008 19:54:44 PDT
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Agree. It should assist cooling. As some scientists, including the UN predict that temperatures will be cooler in 2008 the Chaiten Volcano eruption should assist with that prediction. Although not as big a bang as Krakatoa, this volcano is certainly pumping a lot of ash into the atmosphere and therefore will have some effect on global warming. (Perhaps mother nature taking care of the situation). You would think that scientists would have thought of this volcano as being extinct after no activity for 9,000 years. Auckland City in New Zealand is built on numerous "extinct" volcanoes.
As to an "old geezer" report, the city I live in used to have rather bad pollution caused by coal fires, used either in industry or home heating ( a lot of CO2 probably). As a lad playing rugby the grass fields would be so frozen in winter your major injuries would be from "skinned knees and elbows". My grandson does not get those injuries on the grass fields today.
(tks. Ed. for tidy up).
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- Ash from Chilean Chaiten Volcano could last for decades
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President4242 Fri, 09 May 2008 10:28:21 PDT
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Portland, OR has a huge lava dome on the East Side- Mt. Tabor. It's thought to be extinct also. My grandparents, buried in the Park Rose District of Odel, OR, are buried on a lava dome.
This ain't called the Ring of Fire for nothing.
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- particulate matter in the atmosphere
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zogger Thu, 08 May 2008 18:38:35 PDT
- Tends to promote cooling. It's shade, and it "overshadows" the heat and greenhouse gases. That's one of the hare brained schemes proposed to combat warming, high level on purpose spraying of reflective chemicals. Here is a link to a previous big eruption, Krakatoa and the resultant cooling weather patterns. It is also (my theory) why old timers in the US remember it as cooler from decades past.. because it was. We are losing fall and spring and gaining longer summers and shorter winters. You can just see it happen. The US has done a good job of getting pollution particulates out of the air, when the old geezers remember the good old days, we had full soot and ash unregulated, buhzillions of tons of it, daily, it tended to make things a little cooler. (again, pet theory). The sun is a different color now, it used to be more dark yellow way back when, now it is closer to a white (less yellow anyway, more "intense"). Of course, other geezers and neogeezers can confirm or deny, let's recollect here some.
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- particulate matter in the atmosphere
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Martin Blank Thu, 08 May 2008 18:50:05 PDT
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I've been wondering if there's been a lack of eruptions allowing for certain temperature changes. I seem to recall while growing up more eruption news than I hear these days; most of it seemed to end with Mt. Pinatubo. There have been little bursts here at there from Mt. St. Helens or Mt. Etna, but it's been quiet for a long time.
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- particulate matter in the atmosphere
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Thomas Lord Thu, 08 May 2008 22:00:39 PDT
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"neogeezer" report: I remember the sun differently and it does seem harsher than, like 30-35 years ago. But I couldn't even begin to swear that the color differences aren't a mix of aging eyes and projected fears.
The woodlands over that timespan period, however: not my aging; not projected fears; she is suffering, big time. Indeed, even the crazy-urban-garden grounds of the compound I'm in have gone notably downhill since 2004 and this is in spite of *increased* attendant care.
-t
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- particulate matter in the atmosphere
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phred14 Fri, 09 May 2008 08:51:09 PDT
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Probably less "neo", more "geezer", I remember running around shirtless as a kid, sunscreen unheard of, and occasionally getting a mild sunburn. I don't remember the whole sunburn issue being as harsh as it is today. My last memorable sunburn was in 1979 at about age 20, and it strikes me that I burned more easily then than as a kid.
Upshot - I think the whole "ozone layer" thing is if anything understated. The ozone layer is pretty much shot, the sun's UV dangerous, and we've adapted as a society so we don't think much about it any more. I'll allow that maybe cleaning up the particulates has been part of it, too.
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- particulate matter in the atmosphere
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Thomas Lord Fri, 09 May 2008 10:17:01 PDT
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Indeed, you've got a few years on me. Not a lot.
I anecdotally second the sunburn thing. In the seventies it took real work to get burned. Today, it can be hard to not.
Anyone in the audience have a handy dandy UV meter? The news focuses mainly on the "hole" over the Antarctic (record size in 2006; average in 2007; per NASA). Don't hear a lot about what we could probably reasonably presume is an overall serious thinning, just about everywhere.
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- particulate matter in the atmosphere
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phred14 Fri, 09 May 2008 11:18:12 PDT
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Thinking a little more about it, I said, "we've adapted as a society," and I think we have.
But what about the wildlife and plant life? I wouldn't go blaming frog, coral, bat, and bee dieoffs on increased UV due to ozone depletion. However there seem to be indications that they are stress-related, possibly caused by mankind their environments faster than they can cope, and that ozone depletion is just one piece of that.
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- particulate matter in the atmosphere
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Thomas Lord Fri, 09 May 2008 12:18:50 PDT
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It's that damn "principle of industrial resonance" I've been working on.
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- particulate matter in the atmosphere
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phred14 Fri, 09 May 2008 12:42:25 PDT
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It's that damn "principle of industrial resonance" I've been working on.
What's that?
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- particulate matter in the atmosphere
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Thomas Lord Fri, 09 May 2008 13:10:11 PDT
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It's that damn "principle of industrial resonance" I've been working on.
What's that?
Industrialization is based on the idea of taking this or that engineering hack and scaling it way, way up. So, you wind up with factories, plants, labs, farms, etc. that are doing "one thing 'well' (cough cough)" again, and again, and then thrice more for good measure. A ton of X per day. A release of 10000 gallons of Y per hour. A dozen new genotypes a week. That kind of thing.
Step back and look at this in the most abstract yet still meaningful way possible:
This is a human habit of perturbing the biosphere with coherent energy releases at various multi-spectrum "frequencies". "Frequency" isn't really the right word -- part of why I'm still trying to come up with a better formulation of the concept.
The key thing is that lots of energy (relative to the scale of the perturbed environments) is being spent in very coherent ways.
So, stuff -- something -- usually things we don't think of off the top of our heads -- will resonate. They'll absorb and store that energy. Eventually, like the opera singer's fine crystal wine glass -- stuff shatters.
Global trade is a fine idea. Industrial globalism is a nihilistic death wish.
-t
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- particulate matter in the atmosphere
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Simon Fri, 09 May 2008 12:28:15 PDT
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The overall thinning is substantial from what I recall.
But the main problem is in the spring, when the polar vortex breaks down, and air with low concentrations of ozone spreads around the inhabited parts of the planet. I believe this accounts for easy sunburn early in the year (in the Northern hemisphere).
Ozone concentrations can vary quite rapidly even without man made effects, which makes sun burn a difficult beast to get a handle on - hence the forecasts for UV done by a number of Met Services (Canada was the first, I worked at the UK Met Office when they introduced the UK UV forecasts). But, yes, it is easier to get sun burnt due to our use of ozone depleting chemicals, although it is hard to pin down how much of the changes in skin cancer rates are down to ozone depletion and how much to other changes in lifestyle.
The Greeks keep an eye on global ozone, less convenient than a Dobson spectrophotometer, but a lot cheaper.
http://lap.physics.auth.gr/ozonemaps2/
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- Ash from Chilean Chaiten Volcano could last for decades
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David Manheim Fri, 09 May 2008 10:31:58 PDT
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I wonder to what extent this might be a feedback mechanism; it is possible that warming causes an increase in volcanic activity, which has an overall cooling effect. This probably wouldn't be directly due to heating effects, though I don't know about any secon order effects taht would do this.
Of course, the other , scarier possibility is that this will act as an accelerant to global warming, but I always remembered learning that volcanic dust, like that from our happy asteroid impact 65m years ago that led to the development of human life, would cool the atmosphere.
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