Supervolcano & Basalt Lava Flows
Nobody still knows what goes on beneath our feet. Underneath us we have a crust that is 3-6 miles deep under the oceans, so there is probably a lot more volcanic action going on under the sea than we can see on land by a very large degree. Under the continents it is about 20-30 miles thick. Our crust is mainly formed of the lighter rock forming elements, the majority being deeper down. Below this is the upper mantle where the bottom of the world’s tectonic plates sit, moving around on the lower mantle.
All this is based on using seismic and magnetic data, but nobody really knows what is really down there as the farthest anybody has drilled to is about 2 miles above the upper mantle. The view of what is actually down there is based on models, simulations and stuff that just comes to the surface.
There are a couple of ideas that may prove useful:
- That when the earth enters a more volcanic stage the temperatures of the thinnest points are rising and may heat up the ocean more, raising CO2 levels and releasing more methane from clathrates as an effect, as warm water reduces the storage capacity for both.
- That the core isn’t a homogenous mix, but is banded by densities in a similar way to Jupiter’s atmosphere. The banding passes through weak spots as it moves and the extra pressures of each band make themselves known by quicker plate movement and volcanic activity.
- The spin of the bands, although affected by the earth’s spin, aren’t completely consistent and can be indicated by the movement of the magnetic poles.
The question is therefore; are volcanic eruptions and earthquakes linked to magnetic pole shift?
I’ve sketched out a few diagrams that suggest the line of my thinking.
Later if I have the time I may be able to work out the rough dimensions of the banding.
The timings of magnetic movements seem to correlate with past seismic events.
Particular bands that seems to be moving northwards at about 30 miles a year. I need to plot the lines on an exact globe as the projection has a lot of inaccuracies.
Plot volcanic eruptions along the line of magnetic movement.
The question is a knotty one, based on spin and upward pressure caused by that movement of the bands, but various seismic events seem to be showing a distinct similarity in timings and increasing and clustered occurrences.
22/11/2021 Vulcano? 2022 New Island at 60N 15W?
There have been a number of unusual events on the lines of the third photo recently suggesting something may be going on.
The Deccan traps (66 million years ago) was only one of a
number of massive outflowing’s of lava in the past. That had an estimated
200,000 square miles of about 1 mile deep, so also 200,000 cubic miles. The
Siberian Traps (250 million years ago) was another that was 3 million square
miles to 1/3rd of a mile deep, so 1 million cubic miles. Compare it to the 79AD
Vesuvian eruption that sent out about 1 cubic mile, Mt. St. Helens, less than a
cubic mile, or the fast flow Kilauea, they are a couple of orders of scale
larger.
For assessing the level of combustion, look at a coal fire,
multiply it by the number of people currently on the planet, then multiply it
by 7,500 years worth, the Deccan Traps was hotter, Siberian traps 5 times as
much as that.
Both were at the time of extinctions, Dinosaurs appearing
shortly after the Siberian Traps and disappearing shortly after the Deccan
traps, a coincidence? Though they didn’t really take off until the
Triassic–Jurassic extinction event about 200 million years ago.
Both the Deccan traps and the Siberian traps burnt a massive
amount of the coalfields and vegetation in the area, so for the Deccan Traps it
probably at a minimum added around 1.2 trillion tonnes of CO2, and the Siberian
traps around 6 trillion tonnes, so you can guarantee that the level of CO2 at
each time was much higher than at present, probably more than humans have ever
added in their entire existence in both cases.
People quite often quote that mankind is having a
destabilising effect on the planet, when throughout it’s history it has never
been stable at any time. We go on estimates from scientific assumptions for
anything past 10,000 years, as there is no record except from indirect data,
and no way really of checking it. But we have a number that point to humans
complete with their current mental capability having been around for about
300,000 years, but nothing is know really before 10,000 years ago and pretty
unknown before 2,000 years ago. So mankind was desperately surviving on the
edge or twiddling their thumbs for 290,000 years. We know next to nothing about
2,000 years ago, and less about people 15,000 years ago than is claimed about
the environment 3 billion years ago when multi-celled life took off and covered
the planet. So our knowledge of known history covers probably something like
0.00007% of the time of complicated life on earth.
Comparing it to a person’s lifetime would be like meeting an
average 84 year old person for a day, then writing down everything they’ve ever
done every hour in every day in detail.
Probably what controlled the evolution of 300 million years
ago to today is what tends to control it today. Competition, nutrition, and
energy. Dinosaurs expanded when plant life was flourishing because of the higher
levels of CO2, and were originally small and vegetarian, better nutrition
allowing the larger ones to compete better and go on to eating each other, as
meat is one of the most highly dense forms of nutrition. Oxygen was also increasing, allowing for dinosaurs to attain larger dimensions for a lower overall input. But every so
often there was either an asteroid impact that set the forests and vegetation
alight, reducing the oxygen content within a short time, or the oxygen balance
got to the point where conflagrations were more common. So the size/energy
balance again favoured the small, dinosaurs taking on smaller more energy
efficient forms, and small mammals surviving until plants regenerated the
oxygen in the atmosphere, then growing to larger sizes. Further conflagrations
reducing the oxygen, and the cycle starting all over again. This cycle has
probably happened hundreds of times over the age of the earth. I recently read
an article by a professor of biological modeling that stated that the oxygen
level is at it’s highest it’s ever been, but the research shows that it was a
lot higher during the peak time of the dinosaurs, possibly as much as 28%. This
would allow creatures to be much larger, but would cause problems if it fell to
modern levels, and there is evidence that points to this currently happening,
with oxygen levels decreasing on land and water.
But what of large scale lava flows? For examples of this we have the Deccan and SIberian Traps. The Deccan Traps is a large igneous area in the South Western area of India. It it probably what’s called a large shield volcano that started forming around 66 million years ago and may have lasted for 30,000 years, the time of the dinosaurs disappearing and the Chicxulub asteroid hit and covered an area of about 600,000 square miles with lava to a depth of about 1.2 miles, 720,000 cubic miles of very hot lava and enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, possibly 12 trillion tonnes. Mount St. Helens was about 1 cubic mile. There may also be an asteroid hit in the form of the Shiva off the West Coast of India around this time.
The Siberian Traps happened around 252 million years ago and coincided with another mass extinction event that was even larger being an area of about 3 million square miles covered to about 1.3 miles deep, so about 4 million cubic miles of lava and maybe as much as 64 trillion tonnes of CO2. Both of these events have been suggested they were linked to ‘mantle plumes’ with a weaking of the earth’s mantle below this point.
The have been smaller traps such as the Emeishan traps in China that is about 200,000 square miles of lava about 265 million years ago, but only to half a mile, so 100,000 cubic miles, and the Viluy trap, about 373 million years ago, the newest of these being the Chilcotin field in Colombia being about 780,000 years ago, about 30,000 square miles to a depth of maybe 1/10th of a mile.
The coincidence of large asteroid impacts and the traps forming may be just be that, but it is a worrying prospect that evidence of some known impacts are very close to these areas suggesting the puncture or weakening of those areas by such an impact has the effect of ‘spillage,’ the earth still being under constant pressure and stress, and that the reason we don’t have evidence of bigger impacts is that they are covered by the various traps.
Looking at the data for flood traps and possible asteroid punctures, if you take the ones over the last 500 million years they occur at a rate of about every 5.3 million years, but if you take the last 10 million years they occur at a rate of about every million years. This 10th ratio suggests that such events are lost at a ratio of about 9 out of every ten smaller valid events, which also suggests based on recent data that the earth conceals 90% of this type of data and that based on the very latest of events such events could be as high as every 14,000 years. That human activity seems to go back for an age of 14,000 years with little evidence before of activity this coincidence of timing may not just be coincidence, but a fact of the risks we face. Something that ‘resets’ civilisation that the effects are guessed by the peoples of that time. Deliberately burying of some of their most sacred areas being examples of this.
There seem to be signs that Taupo volcano that erupted last about 1,836 years ago, around 186AD is becoming more active. Records of bad weather and other meteorological effects were noted by Fan Ye of China, 7,000 miles away and Herodian of Rome, 11,500 miles away. There have been hundreds of small earthquakes recently beneath it’s caldera. It was the largest eruption within the last 5,000 years expelled about 40 times the amount of St Helens in 1980. Mount St Helens was known in the local Indian language as the ‘smoking mountain’ and Taupo in Maori mans ‘the black and yellow cloak.’
It’s not a rare event various volcanoes popping off at various times. You can see many seemingly activating for a while then deactivating and becoming calm again for long periods, but it does seem that the North African plate is affecting the area more than normal, with earthquakes and volcanoes starting to become more active at the same time in the West european plate, possibly pushing on the Iberian area. This may be just short lived, but it may mean that some of the Italian and Sicilian volcanoes, such at Etna, Vesuvius, Stomboli, Volcano possibly including the Cartagena areas may be at risk. Some of the faults around Turkey seem more active with a possibility of a major event at Thera.