A new study has found that massive volcanic eruptions that took place over the past 70,000 years in Nicaragua could have injected enough gases into the atmosphere to temporarily thin the ozone layer. The study also concluded that if such an event took pace today, the amount of gases released could equal twice the
Mount Tambora, the volcano that caused the most deaths in known history (71,000) may explode again soon…
The volcanic island of Guadalupe, seen below peeking through the clouds near the top of this image taken by the European Space Agency’s satellite Envisat, is the cause for the beautiful swirls in the clouds.
Hello Planetsavers! I thought I’d start doing a monthly wrap-up of our top 20 posts for people to have a glance at. Many of the top stories this month, as you’ll notice, were clearly tied into major world news events. Google is the main traffic driver for the large majority of sites on the Internet and ours isn’t an exception. Covering environmental news consistently, this often results in the biggest news stories rising to the top.
The Russian volcano Bezymianny erupted on the morning of April 14, this year. The images below were taken over a week later on the 22nd, and shows the extend of the eruption by the the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.
astrologer has also predicted that such a close perigee would/must somehow perturb the earth’s (tectonic) integrity so much that it will trigger major earthquakes and even volcanoes (not simply severe storms). Although he is not clear on the exact lunar-geo-mechanisms that would produce these quakes, never-the-less this lunar-induced disaster scenario quickly set the Web abuzz with yet another wave of doom-and-gloom “apocalypticism.”
Timing is everything.
The scientists used a general circulation model known as ModelE (developed at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York). The model calculates ocean-atmosphere coupling effects in addition to allowing varying aerosol inputs.
The initial input for the simulation was 5 teragrams (megatons) of black carbon particles injected into Earth’s upper troposphere. This is the estimated result of the surface detonation of 100 Hiroshima-size bombs (each equivalent to 15K tons of TNT).
It is the fundamental structural element of all living things. It is a key component of many energy sources, and, it is a crucial player in our planet’s climate system. The natural cycling of this element — Carbon (C) — between earth, atmosphere and ocean maintains the habitable conditions that all Life depends upon. Much
The Permian-Triassic extinction event – also known as the Great Dying – is recorded as the most significant extinction event in Earth’s history, seeing a whopping 96% of marine species killed off, 70% of land-based animals, and is the only extinction event to have affected insects. Researchers at the University of Calgary believe that they
I know, you are extremely curious to find out which posts on Planetsave got the most views in 2010. I was too. Here they are, the top 30. Did you read them all? 30. Amazon River (10 Friday Photos) People love pretty pictures, (especially of the Amazon). 29. Top Environmental Organizations in the United States (7 Green
A common claim of climate change disinformers is that humans don’t release a significant amount of CO2. Bringing that absurdity to another level, you may even see claims out there that volcanoes release more CO2 than humans. Way wrong. “Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes — the
An Ohio State University honours undergraduate student has found that the Hawaiian Island volcani chain sits atop a single magma chamber which is much closer to the surface than was originally supposed. “Hawaii was already unique among volcanic systems, because it has such an extensive plumbing system, and the magma that erupts has a unique
A new research paper published in the latest issue of the journal Nature shows that in the months preceding the eruptions of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, it had been restless as a result of magma flowing beneath the volcano. “Several months of unrest preceded the eruptions, with magma moving around downstairs in the plumbing and
Geophysicists who have been monitoring the Grimsvotn volcano in Iceland have announced that floodwaters are receding and tremors are decreasing. This after fears just a few days ago that the country’s most active volcano could erupt soon. The lake and surrounding glacier had begun melting, with water levels having tripled according to Gunnar Sigurdsson of
“Indonesia has raised the alert for its most volatile volcano, Mount Merapi, to its highest level and warned villagers in threatened areas to move to safer ground,” BBC has just reported. The activity in the volcano has reportedly increased to a great degree over the past few days and local residents have been told to
Scientists have long wondered why the world’s most volcanic regions are thousands of kilometres long, but only a few tens of kilometres wide. One of the most obvious examples is the Ring of Fire, a ring of volcanoes that stretches from southernmost Chile, via Alaska and Japan, to New Zealand. Oxford University scientists have finally
An international team of researchers will visit the region of the North Atlantic Ocean affected by ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in an effort to determine the impact the volcano had on the ocean biology. Aboard the UK’s Royal Research Ship Discovery, the team will make their second cruise to study the region, the
Apart from the major disruption in flight traffic and the economy, the Icelandic volcano eruption promises in the short-term to disrupt upper atmospheric circulation patterns and temperatures, with an additional impact due to sulfuric acid “nucleation” and subsequent acid rain. But the medium to long-term impacts of continuous, or increasing, volcanic eruptions is a matter of on-going scientific debate.
