Have you heard? Icebergs began to melt! And soon the water level on the globe will rise as much as 6 or 7 meters! Drown London, St. Petersburg, Odessa, New York and many other coastal cities.
Such rumors circulate from time to time through the media. Should they be believed? Is it just delusions or are there really facts under such judgments? .. Let's try to figure it out.
Recently, American scientists, exploring the volcanoes of Antarctica, came to the conclusion that some of them can wake up from hibernation literally from day to day. And then the most southern continent of the Earth will have to be very hot. Although eruptions are unlikely to melt the entire Antarctic ice sheet, they are quite capable of dumping most of it into the ocean.
This alarming forecast was put forward by the seismologist Amanda Loch, as well as her colleagues from the University of Washington in St. Louis (USA). Before making such a statement, the researchers thoroughly studied the information from seismic stations located in the continent, known as the Land of Mary Byrd. Recall that this is the name of the desert region of Antarctica, lying deep beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet. However, a mountain range passes through it with the interesting name of the Range of the Executive Committee, which is an almost straight line of volcanoes.
It is interesting that the farther south the fire-breathing giant of this ridge is, the younger it is - for example, the age of the Whitney peak is 13.2–13.7 million years, and the more southern giant Wyash generally formed in the last million years. The ridge itself is considered a very troubled place on the southern continent, since the earth's crust in this place is flattened by the West Antarctic Rift (a series of giant rift valleys under an ice sheet). Geologists have found evidence that even after the glaciation of the mainland, lava erupted due to movement of blocks of the earth's crust from underground magmatic pools repeatedly broke through the ice in these places.
Nevertheless, for quite a long time, none of the scientists knew whether magma was still active under the ridge of the Executive Committee or not. The situation was clarified by seismographs set in 2007-2010, the data of which was used by a group of Dr. Loch. As a result, scientists saw that recently, several small earthquakes occurred in these places, some of which occurred in January - February 2010, and the other in March 2011. These oscillations of the earth's surface were very unusual, because during them the earth shook much more slowly than would be expected from the blocks of the earth's crust, which, while in motion, constantly grind each other's edges.
But why were these earthquakes so slow? Having done the calculations, the scientists found that the waves that caused the earthquake to shake were born at a depth of 25–40 km at the epicenter, which was located about 55 km south of Mount Wyash. Well, according to the ideas of geologists, this point is just one of the zones of underground volcanic activity - in the event that it continues its traditional displacement along the ridge in a southerly direction. Thus, it was suggested that the earthquakes were caused by the movement of magma deep beneath the volcanoes.
However, this can only mean one thing - the fire-breathing giants of the ridge of the Executive Committee do not sleep at all, or they actively wake up and begin to erupt in the very near future. By the way, the picture drawn by seismographs is very well known to scientists - something similar is constantly fixed by instruments in the area of ​​active volcanoes in Hawaii. It is possible that the same geological scenario is now being played out on the southern continent, when abnormally "slow" earthquakes precede an increase in volcanic activity.