Thousand Of New Volcanoes Revealed Beneath The Waves

New Scientist ^ | 7-9-2007 | Catherine Brahic

[blam]

Thousand of new volcanoes revealed beneath the waves

10:04 09 July 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Catherine Brahic

The true extent to which the ocean bed is dotted with volcanoes has been revealed by researchers who have counted 201,055 underwater cones. This is over 10 times more than have been found before.

The team estimates that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes, 39,000 of which rise more than 1000 metres over the sea bed.

"The distribution of underwater volcanoes tells us something about what is happening in the centre of the Earth," says John Hillier of the University of Cambridge in the UK. That is because they give information about the flows of hot rock in the mantle beneath. "But the problem is that we cannot see through the water to count them," he says.

Satellites can detect volcanoes that are more than 1500 m high because the mass of the submerged mountains causes gravity to pull the water in around them. This creates domes on the ocean's surface that can be several metres high and can be detected from space.

Data overload

But there is a multitude of small volcanoes that have gone undetected. The only way of identifying them is to manually find their outline on sonar measurements taken from ships.

[gleeaikin]

Is there a map available which shows these newly discovered volcanoes? I am assuming that this map is an older one, correct me if I am wrong.

[blam]

"Is there a map available which shows these newly discovered volcanoes? "

Sorry. I'm not aware of one.

[aruanan]

I’m sure this is somehow related to GLOBAL WARMING.

Lots of gases released by the active volcanoes.

[VeniVidiVici]

Lots of gases released by the active volcanoes.

Not sure where I was going with this since this thread is over two years old :-) but, on the flip side of your statement, massive volcanic eruptions have always led to a period of severe global cooling too.

[aruanan]

Not sure where I was going with this since this thread is over two years old :-) but, on the flip side of your statement, massive volcanic eruptions have always led to a period of severe global cooling too.

I think that's from the ash that, in the case of undersea volcanoes, wouldn't make it into the atmosphere.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 7/09/2007. Thanks blam.

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