American scientists, studying 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 southernmost continent of the Earth will be very hot - although the eruptions are unlikely to be able to melt the entire Antarctic ice sheet, but they are quite capable of dumping most of it into the ocean.
As we know, the glaciers of Antarctica are extremely stable and for many millions of years - during the periods of all climate warming on our planet, they did not retreat a millimeter and did not give up their positions. Even now, when the Arctic is rapidly melting, at the opposite end of the Earth there is not only cold "stability", but even some growth of ice caps of the southernmost continent is observed. However, according to geologists, everything can change at one moment - Antarctica is literally one step away from melting. And such drastic changes in Antarctic weather can be caused by volcanic eruptions, which are more than enough on this earth.
This alarming forecast was put forward by seismologist Amanda Loch, as well as her colleagues from the University of Washington in St. Louis (USA). However, before making such a statement, the researchers thoroughly studied the information from seismic stations located in the area of the continent known as Mary Byrd's Land. Let me remind you that this is the name of the desert region of Antarctica, which lies deep under the West Antarctic ice sheet. However, a mountain range with the interesting name of the Executive Committee Ridge passes through it, which is an almost straight line of volcanoes.
Interestingly, the farther south the fire-breathing giant of this ridge is, the younger it is - for example, the age of Whitney Peak is 13.2-13.7 million years, and the more southern giant Waish was 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 the ice sheet). Geologists have found evidence that even after the glaciation of the mainland, lava erupted due to the movement of blocks of the earth's crust from underground magma basins repeatedly broke through the ice in these places.
However, 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 seismic monitoring stations installed there in 2007-2010, the data of which was used by Dr. Loch's group. As a result, scientists saw that quite recently in these places there were several small earthquakes, some of which occurred in January-February 2010, and the other in March 2011. These vibrations of the earth's surface were quite unusual, as 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? After doing a number of calculations, scientists found that the waves that caused the earth's shaking were born at a depth of 25-40 km at the epicenter, which was located about 55 km south of Mount Waish. Well, this point, according to geologists, is just one of the zones of underground volcanic activity - in the event that it continues its traditional displacement along the ridge to the south. Thus, it was suggested that the earthquakes were caused by the movement of magma deep beneath volcanoes.
However, this can only mean one thing - the fire-breathing giants of the ridge of the Executive Committee are not sleeping at all, or they are actively waking up and starting to erupt in the very near future. By the way, the picture drawn by seismographs is very well known to scientists - something like this is constantly recorded by instruments in the area of active volcanoes in Hawaii. It is possible that the same geological scenario is now playing out on the southern continent, when anomalously "slow" earthquakes precede an increase in volcanic activity.
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In order to test their hypothesis, Dr. Loch and her colleagues conducted a series of studies, including magnetic reconnaissance and georadar surveys of the area. Alas, it looks like everything turned out exactly as they predicted - the magmatic activity under the ridge of the Executive Committee turned out to be very high. For example, it turned out that the area under these mountains has a slightly stronger magnetic field compared to the surrounding area. In addition, GPR surveys revealed a layer of volcanic ash in the ice surrounding the ridge - most likely, these are traces of the last eruption of Waisha, which took place about 8 thousand years ago (from a geological point of view, this is quite recent). And although traces of later eruptions have not been found, researchers suggest that the volcano may wake up at any time,because the magma beneath it cannot calm down in any way.
But if the assumptions of scientists from Dr. Loch's group are plausible, then what will happen to the Antarctic ice if the volcanoes in Mary Byrd's Earth do wake up? Since this center of current volcanic activity is covered by a kilometer-thick glacier, only an extremely powerful eruption can completely melt it. However, it is likely that since the falling snow constantly increases the mass of the glacier, the shield itself constantly slides towards the sea. Thus, having melted the base of this ice massif, the eruption will give it speed and thereby simply throw the entire ice shell into the ocean.
You yourself understand that as a result of such an event, a significant part of the ice will certainly melt, and as a result, in a fairly short time, the level of the World Ocean may rise significantly. Moreover, since there are no guarantees that the volcanic eruption of the ridge of the Executive Committee will not trigger similar phenomena on other mountain ranges (as, for example, we have in Kamchatka, where one eruption immediately activates two or three more), it is not excluded, that in this way most of the Antarctic ice will be in the ocean. And in this case, the jump in sea level across the planet will be quite fast and abrupt - according to scientists' calculations, in just a few years the World Ocean will "jump" to a height of more than one meter.
However, not all colleagues of scientists from Dr. Loch's group support such a pessimistic scenario. For example, the glaciologist Robert Binshadler of the NASA Space Flight Center. Goddard believes that it is unlikely that the eruptions, even the strongest, will be able to throw the entire ice sheet into the sea - most likely, they will simply only slightly accelerate its sliding. Well, this slight "acceleration" will not affect the level of the World Ocean at all …