Posted on 06/22/2006 9:19:33 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
ROME (Reuters) - An underwater volcano with a base larger than Washington D.C. has been discovered just off the shores of Sicily, a scientist with Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology said on Thursday.
The volcanic structure, which incorporates peaks previously thought to be separate volcanoes, was named Empedocles after the Greek philosopher who named the four classic elements of earth, air, fire and water.
Legend has it that the philosopher died by throwing himself into Mount Etna, the nearby Sicilian volcano.
Giovanni Lanzafame, who works at the institute and led the research, said Empedocles was at least 400 meters (1,300 feet) high -- taller than the Eiffel Tower.
He said the base of the structure was 30 km (18.6 miles) long and 25 km wide, spanning an area larger than the U.S. capital and making it Italy's largest underwater volcano.
But Lanzafame said Sicilians did not need to worry about the sleeping Empedocles. "At this point, there's no imminent danger of an eruption," he told Reuters.
Lanzafame and another official said the volcano had numerous fumaroles, openings in the Earth's crust that emit steam and gases, like the ones at Yellowstone National Park in the United States. But they described it as largely inactive.
The identification of Empedocles came during research into the submerged volcanic island of Ferdinandea just off Sicily's southern coast. Often held to be the tip of a small volcano, Lanzafame said it was just a part of Empedocles.
Volcanic activity has raised the island out of the sea several times in recorded history, with underwater eruptions first described during the first Punic War of 264-241 B.C.
Its emergence in 1831 caused months of international wrangling, with several nations making territorial claims before it submerged again. It is now about 7 meters below the surface of the water.
Cesare Corselli, president of the National Inter-University Consortium for Marine Science, which helped with the research, said previously the volcanic centers had been seen as separate.
"People used to think that there were small centers of emission, distant from each other," he said.
"The hypothesis made by Mr. Lanzafame is that this is a singular volcano that, like alongside Etna as an example, can have a central eruption or a series of lateral eruptions."
Lanzafame said he had been working on the theory about the Empedocles's existence for more than a year before being able to confirm it with new survey equipment.
A computer-generated graphic of an underwater volcano off the shores of southern Italy, released June 22, 2006. An underwater volcano with a base larger than Washington D.C. has been discovered just off the shores of Sicily, a scientist with Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology said on Thursday. NO ARCHIVES NO SALES EDITORIAL USE ONLY REUTERS/HO/Roberta Tedeschi-VIRTUAL GEO (ITALY)
And I thought they weren't making any more water front property????
(1) The seas comprise 2/3 of the earth's surface, are not mapped in detail everywhere, have not been explored in detail and contain thousands of features like the one described here, many of which do have some ongoing level of activity, if only the continuous slow (not "eruptions") release of extremely hot steam and gases.
(2) The seas, next to the sun, represent the next single largest single factor in the dynamics of world weather patterns, because of the literally unmatched degree to which the seas conduct the exchange of heat and moisture with the atmosphere.
(3) In lieu of (1) and (2) above, volcanism, below the seas, in all its forms - lava, fissures releasing steam and gases and simply the termperature difference of the ground just above hot volcanic sources - represents one of the largest missing segments of data on natural sources of global warming, in nearly all "global warming" data models.
And as we know - GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.
As a related anecdotal point: A very large area in the far north-central Pacific Ocean developed a hot-spot a couple years back (very high surface water temperature) and climatologists then and now cannot identify a cause for the hot spot in the circulation patterns of the Pacific Ocean (such as incoming warmer water from the south Pacific getting deposited and remaining there).
Many such features exist at the bottom of the oceans and are dispersed and contribute to the general temperature and flow of the oceans, before reaching the surface as a distinct source.
Now, if we could just move it to DC, where it belongs...
Note: this topic is from 6/22/2006. Thanks NormsRevenge.
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Thanks FN! And I’m glad to see you active again!
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