During grad school (late 1980s) I attended a lecture by a visiting pioneer of climate science. I’ve forgotten his name but it made a huge impression when he said climate models were a work in progress: at one point the field realized they’d omitted the oceans as a reservoir for dissolved CO2. Leaving out the oceans – sheesh! But I doubt I would have done better. Consider weather models: just a handful of factors render them hugely complex: pressure, heat, moisture and fluid flow. Now throw in chemistry, biology and human impact, and you have the exponentially greater challenge of climate analysis.
The modeling problem intrigued me, so I periodically read up on emerging factors. Some theories have sounded interesting but failed to pan out. For instance, solar escalation had been hypothesized to over-warm the planet, but it became clear that it doesn’t. Another factor is newly discovered quirks in the nitrogen cycle, due to reactions in soil; the jury is still out on just how that will change the models. And then there’s my current topic, geothermal heating.
Here we’re not talking about the tame hot springs that attract tourists. We’re looking at volcanos with magma that obliterates everything in its path. Volcanos meet glaciers – it sounds like a Godzilla movie. Now, even young children know that eruptions inject massive heat and sulfur oxides into the skies. It’s less obvious that volcanos cut both ways. After Mount St. Helens blew, studies concluded that its soot had a cooling effect. That might seem like a local phenomenon, but the soot spread globally in the atmosphere and stayed aloft, yielding amazing sunsets for several months – and I was 3,000 miles to the East when I was watching them.
Volcanic events aren’t as rare in the oceans. Sea-bottom hydrothermal vents (including lava flows) are common and so perpetual they have their own ecology. Temperatures can surpass 400°C (the water doesn’t boil, because the pressure is huge at those depths). And they provide a reported 13% of the sea’s global energy without throwing up sky-high clouds of bilious soot. Basically, the edge of the planetary core is a nuclear reactor. Heat finds outlets, so eventually some of it seeps through fissures in the ocean floor to energize the water.
Still, that 13% heat contribution was only someone’s extrapolation, since 95% of the ocean floor is unmapped and we don’t know where all the vents are. And as far as I can tell, we don’t actually know that heat transfers in those venues are in an aggregate steady state. The overall trend could be rising, or falling, or oscillating. In theory it could even be driving climate change, though the specialists don’t seem to be assuming that.
So we’re back to continental volcanos. In 2017, dozens were discovered beneath western Antarctic ice, tripling its known number to 138; there may be as many as 1,000. Being frozen, it’s a safe bet they’re not throwing off heat, but some voices worry that anthropogenic warming will melt away their thick icy coat, destabilizing dormant volcanos and escalating global heat.
Hmm. Yet for me the prospect of rising seas could be worse. It could be rising seas with the wretched left to fend for themselves. So what legacy are we creating here – panicky elbows-out survivalism? There seems to be no lack of that. I’m opting for a more inspiring model.
Circling-V ™ 