Antarctica's Volcanoes Can Make the Earth Uninhabitable

Bright Side

Have you heard about the volcanoes in Antarctica? Turns out, they could potentially make the Earth uninhabitable! Scientists are discovering that if these volcanoes erupted, they could release massive amounts of ash and gases into the atmosphere, drastically affecting global climate. The ice covering them actually makes the eruptions even more explosive. It's pretty wild to think that the frozen continent could hold such dangerous power, right?  Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00The largest volcanic region on Earth is not in Africa or Japan, but under the ice of Antarctica.

00:07Scientists found

00:08138 volcanoes in its western part, and if they decide to go wild, you'll surely notice it.

00:14They could melt huge amounts of ice that will move into the ocean, raise its level, and make our planet uninhabitable for humans.

00:21But before you pack your things to fly away to another planet, hear me out.

00:26Only two of the Antarctic volcanoes are officially classified as active now,

00:31and it would take a whole series of eruptions decade after decade to seriously impact the whole world.

00:38Mount Erebus, one of the two Antarctic volcanoes currently in action,

00:43proudly bears the title of the world's southernmost active one. It has been continuously erupting since at least

00:501972. It emits plumes of gas and steam and sometimes even spews out rocks.

00:55And scientists call it Strombolian eruptions.

00:58One of the coolest features is a lava lake in one of its summit craters with molten material on the surface.

01:05Such lakes are rather rare because they need certain conditions to make sure the surface never freezes over.

01:11The second active volcano is Deception Island, a horseshoe-shaped landmass.

01:16It is the caldera of an active volcano that last erupted over 50 years ago.

01:22Scientists who monitor it say it shouldn't go wild anytime soon.

01:26Antarctica also has plenty of fumaroles.

01:29Those are volcanic vents that release gases and vapors into the air. In the right conditions,

01:34they can spew out enough stuff to build fumarolic ice towers up to 10 feet tall.

01:41Scientists keep an eye on the Antarctic volcanoes with seismometers that detect when the Earth starts trembling from volcanic activity.

01:49Sometimes they also use more complicated tech.

01:52But it's all really challenging because of how far away this polar region is and how tricky it is to get there.

01:58That's why no one can predict when one of the continent's volcanoes that are now sleeping might erupt.

02:04We can guess what this waking up would look like if we analyze the events from nearly 20,000 years ago.

02:10So, shall we?

02:13One of Antarctica's sleeping volcanoes, Mount Takahe, had a series of eruptions and spewed out a good amount of halogens

02:21rich in ozone back then. Some scientists say these events warmed up the southern hemisphere.

02:26Glaciers started to melt and helped finish the last ice age. For these events to repeat,

02:32we'd need a series of eruptions with substances rich in halogens from one or more volcanoes that are now above the ice.

02:39It's an unlikely scenario, but since it already happened in the past, it's not completely impossible.

02:46As for volcanoes hiding under a thick layer of ice, it looks like their gases would hardly make it to the atmosphere.

02:53But they would be strong enough to melt huge caverns in the base of the ice and produce a serious amount of melt water.

03:00The West Antarctic ice sheet is wet and not frozen to its bed.

03:04So, this melt water would work as a lubricant and set the overlying ice into motion soon.

03:10The volume of water that even a large volcano would generate in this way is

03:14nothing compared to the volume of ice beneath it. So, a single eruption wouldn't make a difference.

03:20But several volcanoes erupting close to or beneath any of the western Antarctica's big ice streams would.

03:27Those ice streams are rivers of ice that take most of the frozen water in Antarctica into the ocean.

03:34If they change their speed and bring unusual amounts of water into the ocean, its level will rise.

03:40As the ice would get thinner and thinner, there would be more and more new eruptions.

03:45Scientists call it a runaway effect.

03:47Something like that happened in Iceland.

03:49The number of volcanic eruptions went up when glaciers started to recede at the end of the last ice age.

03:56So, it looks like for massive changes, several powerful volcanoes above the ice with gases full of halogens

04:03need to get active within a few decades of each other and stay strong over many tens to hundreds of years.

04:10Antarctica stores around 80% of all the fresh water in the world.

04:14And if they melted all of it, global sea levels would rise by almost 200 feet.

04:20And then we'd have to look for a new planet to live on.

04:23But this again is an unlikely scenario.

04:26It's more likely that the eruptions under the ice will lubricate ice streams and seep water into the ocean.

04:32But it wouldn't be the end of the world.

04:37A super strong, super angry, super volcano could do it though. And it has already happened in the past.

04:43Over 200 million years ago, the world went through a major makeover with not one, not two,

04:50but four massive volcanic eruptions in huge pulses.

04:54The super volcano called Camp had been erupting over and over for 600,000 years.

05:00It all happened in Rangelia, a large chunk of land that used to be a supermassive volcano

05:06stretching across what's now British Columbia in Alaska.

05:09And it wasn't the lava or the volcanic ash that ruined the environment. The eruption made carbon levels skyrocket.

05:16The planet would never be the same again.

05:18This volcanic activity might have helped dinosaurs grow from cat-sized critters into giants we saw in Jurassic Park.

05:26It kicked off a two-million-year rainy season. It made the whole world hot and humid. And the dinos just loved it.

05:33Researchers dug deep into sediment layers beneath an ancient lake in Asia to uncover these secrets.

05:39They found traces of volcanic ash and mercury, clear signs of those epic eruptions.

05:45There were carbon signatures showing huge spikes in carbon dioxide levels. It made the atmosphere toasty and the rain poured down.

05:54So the bad news is another eruption like this could happen.

05:58The super volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park has been sleeping for nearly 70,000 years.

06:05But if it wakes up, it would be many times more catastrophic than the eruption of Mount St.

06:10Helens in 1980. It's considered the most disastrous volcanic eruption in U.S. history.

06:16It followed two months of earthquakes and injection of magma below the volcano that weakened and destroyed the entire north face of the mountain.

06:25The eruption column went 80,000 feet into the atmosphere and spread ash over 11 U.S. states and several Canadian provinces.

06:33The last Yellowstone eruption was a thousand times greater than that.

06:37The ground above Yellowstone sits on a hot spot made of molten and semi-molten rock called magma.

06:44This magma stuff flows into a chamber beneath the park about four to six miles down,

06:50making the ground puff up like a balloon. But then, as it cools down, the ground goes back to its usual state.

06:57Volcano watchers have been keeping an eye on this for a century.

07:00They noticed the ground lift up about 10 inches around 20 years ago.

07:04But since 2010, it's been going back down.

07:08The experts say we have no big eruptions on the horizon, so doomsday isn't coming anytime soon.

07:14But there's some underground activity going on lately, which keeps us interested.

07:19Since humans haven't been around to witness every little thing Yellowstone does, it's kind of tough to say for sure what's brewing down there.

07:27Yellowstone has had some epic eruptions within the last couple million years.

07:31They happen like clockwork, with gaps of six to eight hundred thousand years between them.

07:36The last big one was around 640,000 years ago, and it basically reshaped the entire landscape,

07:43spreading ash and debris as far as Louisiana.

07:46You can still see the aftermath of the last big eruption in the Yellowstone caldera today.

07:52Experts say a massive eruption like the last one is an unlikely scenario.

07:56We're more likely to see eruptions of steam and hot water or lava flows.

08:01When and with what force it will wake up remains a mystery to scientists.

08:06That's it for today.

08:07So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

08:12Or if you want more just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.

Category

Transcript

Recommended