Are higher sea levels causing earthquakes?
 

It sounds like paranoia, but it looks like this has been studied even before the last two earthquakes.

Speedyfit Solar Systems - Extra Weight from Meltwater May Trigger Earthquakes: Researchers
New Zealand's Subduction Zones: To Shake The Earth Just Add Water
Man-made tremor shakes Swiss city of Basel. - swissinfo

So, I guess my question is, instead of the sea level going up, will the extra water weight just push more water into the ground? And will this liquefied mud and rocks cause more earthquakes around the world? Maybe that 2012 movie wasn't so far off. ;)

Or is this a case where I am not a geologist, nor do I want to be. But, the media and schools have not talked about this. Science is boring and not as important as the human story and all that..
Groundwater
Would groundwater make it 70 miles deep (the earthquake in Chile was that deep)? There is gravity and the weight of the water above it, but the water turning to steam and increasing pressure would push it higher at some point I would have to believe.

Can someone explain to me how you think sea levels rise? Polar icecaps melting will not make sea levels rise. The ice is already displacing the ocean water at this time. If they all melted it wouldn't raise the levels one inch.

Icecaps that rest on land, such as those in Antarctica and Greenland, will raise sea levels as they melt. It's just the sea ice that's already displacing water.

I never understood that either Rahl, like ice cubes in a glass the water level never changes.

However as to the OP (haven't read the links yet but will) I can see how, if there is extra weight added to the plates, that it could cause more activity. Im not sure exactly how that would work per say but it does sound plausible I suppose.

see inBoils post

"Basically, Antarctica is a snow and ice "factory" with ice depths on the Polar Plateau reaching 15,000 feet (the continent's average ice thickness is 7,000 feet). Thus, one of Antarctica's most important resources is its ice. It is said that Antarctica's ice accounts for 70% of the world's fresh water. "
its not allowing me to post a link:shakehead:

so youll just have to copy and paste
antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/weather/snowand Ice - Weather in Antarctica -
feet in a mile=5280 feet in a statute mile

3 miles deep in spots +/-
average mile and a quarter +/-

a hell of a lot of scotch on ice

If all the ice and snow was to melt today, it wouldn't have any real devastating effect on the oceans levels.

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthwherewater.html

All the ice, snow, groundwater etc accounts for less than 3 percent of the total water on earth. So yea melting it won't do much

no
only raise it a couple of feet:rolleyes:

" If the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet melts, sea level will rise 8.06 meters (26 feet – referenced shortly). Since this sheet is unstable and could slide much more quickly than melting, sometimes only the unstable portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is discussed. Considering only the portion that might slide off before melting, that part would raise global sea level by 4 to 6 meters

heres the shortly part

"Table: Amounts of water in those planetary ice masses that would raise sea level. Table from Williams & Ferrigno, 1999)

again i cant post links yet
copy and paste time for you
i suppose:sad:
(even had to get rid of yours)
(hope that 12 posts comes quick):shakehead:

We see that committing to melting Greenland commits us to 6.55 m (21 ft) sea level rise, and committing to melting the West Antarctic commits us to an additional 8.06 m (26 ft). Other ice masses, such as mountain glaciers and small ice caps (0.45 m) and the Antarctic Peninsula (shown in Figure 6, adding 0.46 m) will melt more rapidly but have less effect than the major ice masses (these two added together are 0.91 m or 3 feet of sea level rise). (Nevertheless, even 0.91 m would still be a major problem for many coastal cities and towns.)

Some the data you're speaking of is here:

Sea Levels

[QUOTE=Tully Mars;2763804]Some the data you're speaking of is here:

thats the one
this newby thanx you
i understand why this not allowing links till
process
but lord is it frustrating:sad:

My point still stands. Adding the remaining 3 percent of water to the oceans won't have much of an effect to global sea levels. People want to make it out to be some doomsday scenario when that simply isn't the case. we may loose some beach front property...but not much.



I didn't mean to totally derail this thread. Sorry ASU

i also didnt mean to derail
just saw a problem
so ill leave just one more comment
The volume of Earth's oceans is approximately 1.347 billion cubic kilometers
3% of that is a lot

as for causing earthquakes?
interesting theories abound
"VICTORIA — With global warming raising sea levels worldwide, parts of B.C. may be kept high and dry by the same geological forces that bringing earthquakes to the province, a government report says.


Then again, the safety zones, where those earth-moving tectonic shifts will keep pushing the land higher out of the water, don't extend much past the west coast of Vancouver Island.


Meanwhile, other geological forces at work in the Fraser River Delta of the Lower Mainland will push the land downward, so sea levels there will become even higher.

a new map to be drawn?
mapmaking might be a good field to get into

I wonder how all that extra moisture would affect weather patterns.

3% is a small number, but you're dealing with the entire surface area of the oceans. I mean a gallon is heavy to a human, i'm sure 3% of all the icecaps is heavy to the tectonic plates.

If your point is that those 3% won't cause earthquakes, well I don't really know enough about geology to have an opinion on it.

But if its that those 3% don't really matter in any way, well, then you are wrong. A significant number of the world's population live in low coastal areas.

It's not just moisture, it would also change the nature of ocean currents, possibly changing the very nature of the planet beyond the shores of the ocean. For example, a huge slowdown in the Gulf Stream could cause the climate in Britain and parts of Europe to drop in temperature dramatically. (This would devastate their agricultural industries.) Remember, Britain has the same latitude as Siberia and Northern Ontario.

Besides, I'd hate to see polar bears go extinct.

The problem which I have with questions like this goes something thus;

In Fall of 2009, predictions from various media and "authorities" were confident that;

1: The "moderating" of winter weather in the Appalachians was due to Global Wa...excuse me, Global Climate Change.
2: Due to Global Wa...Climate Change, winters would be milder, shorter, and summers longer and hotter.
3: This winter, in particular, would be milder, warmer, shorter, and less of a pain in my ass than those previous.

Well, the Appalachians are -still- dealing with that which Hobbits and Men would call a "Fell Winter." We have spent more time below zero-F, more time below freezing (32F/0C), more days being snowed on, more days without power, and more days with snow on the ground than at any time in living memory. We have had more snow, sleet, and freezing rain this winter since before anyone cal remember, 70+ inches in some areas...and I live in North Carolina! -Literally- nobody can remember a winter like this, and that's -counting- the Blizzard Of 68 (over a 1.5 meters/4ft of snow in less than 36hrs), and records suggest that this may be the hardest winter in more than a century. Every species of game animal I can observe is starving down to their bones (squirrel, rabbit, turkeys, deer, etc), and my poor cows are going through 2.5x their usual ration just to maintain body weight. This on -top- of the fact that, as it turns out, no statistically significant warming has occurred in the last decade or more.

And yet, despite the fact that this all runs 103% -counter- to the effect we were told to expect, and were told would be caused by Global Wa...Climate Change....now we're being told that -this- is the result of the aforementioned hobgoblin. If X happens, it is because of 1. If Z happens, even though it is the direct and diametric -opposite- of X...it's -also- because of 1.

It reminds me of those "End Of The World" prophets who scream and shout and bluster that the End Is Nigh...and when The End doesn't happen, attribute this fact to the prayers of their four followers.

As a consequence of this, I am distinctly inclined to distrust the prognostications of scientists with vested financial interests in scaremongering. This applies equally whether that vested financial interest comes from Governmental or Corporate sources.

One season's worth of weather doesn't say anything about global climate change.

and yet here
we had to truck in snow
i believe it to be just that
global
to say its colder here
well forgive but provincial
its warmer in other spots

Very true.

However, when someone says "This Event (X) is GOING TO HAPPEN BECAUSE OF FACTOR-1!"
And then Event X -doesn't- happen...
And that someone (or those someones) then say "This Event (Z) HAPPENED BECAUSE OF FACTOR-1!"...
...and Event X and Event Z are polar opposites...
...it does say a lot about the person/people making the predictions. It -says- that they are capable neither of admitting error nor explaining it, and it suggests rather strongly that they are snake-oil-selling charlatans.

Isn't there an El Nino effect right now? Toronto's snowfall has plummeted this winter. Maybe there's an El Nino or something....

This is far more exaggerated than anything I've read about global warming. What does that say about you?

This is true. But I don't know of anyone who looks at one season in isolation for any significant long-term purpose.

But are they polar opposites? (Was that a pun?) Do they have the opposite conditions, causes, effects, outcomes, and implications? Is anyone arguing this? Is it really that simple? Before we write off science as snake oil, I'd like to know what exactly you're talking about.

according to a meteorologist friend, this winter has been pretty typical of an El Nino winter, coupled with unusual pressure systems moving the usual Canadian weather south to the U.S. So while it was unusually cold and snowy in the States, Canada had mild weather and, as we saw in the Olympics, much less snow.

In other words, the weather in the U.S. isn't indicative of the global climate shifts. Europe, for example, has had the warmest 11 or 12 years in recorded history over the past 15 years

You do know that more severe winter storms were actually predicted by global warming experts, right?

And you do know that whatever happens in the east coast of the United States, as much as the people who live there might like to think, is not representative of the whole globe, right?

Western Canada just had the warmest january in its recorded history. Brazil just had the warmest january in recorded history. In fact, on average this January was the warmest January globally.

Toronto has an average January temperature of -7 C to -1 C (19 F to 30 F). This past weekend, I think we were up to 9 C (48 F). Although a January thaw like that isn't a freak show here, it is quite uncommon (and quite nice, really).

It's been so mild all winter that I have only taken my snow boots out last week when we finally had some snow dump on us for a change. Yet, our snowfall has only been a quarter of what it should be by now on average. I think I wore my boots twice. The sidewalks melted fairly quickly.

I have yet to complain about the snow and cold this season. There's no reason to. It's been rather nice.

Well here in SLC Utah we have gotten very little snow this season. Of course we both know that the weather in one location is not indicative of the world on average.

Haiti, Chile, now Taiwan: earthquake escalation? - Yahoo! News

It looks like the number of quakes is actually 'normal'. It's just something for the news to cover since they have to do something I guess.

But there wasn't a whole lot of discussion about if the extra water and the weight/pressure would do anything.

don't forget a 6.9 Magnitude earthquake hit off the shore of Japan on February 26th.

Magnitude 6.9 earthquake rocks Okinawa islands in southern Japan

One year data is insignificant as is 15 year data, as is 50 year data. Most of the prognostication is built around financial agenda. Climate Gate and the subsequent NOAA data scandal has made all this stuff questionable. That means it might be real or it might not, but who knows. The idea that all ice caps would melt completely is scaremongering in itself. It might happen but 10 generations will be gone and the world will no longer look as it does today. The idea that man can materially change the climate to me is arrogant, we can do the right thing and do our part to control the things we put into our ecosystems, and we should, but at the end of the day this world will change. That is the truth you can count on.

One of our local radio folks likes to quote that Baffin Island hasn't been void of ice in 1600 years. But it currently losing it's ice cap. My point is "what caused the ice to reform in the last 1600 years and perhaps more importantly why was it void of ice 1600 years ago"? It most certainly wasn't man doing.....Earths weather cycles and man can effect it, but we don't control it.

Back to the question... if all the ice caps melted instantaneously or nearly so (200 - 500 years????) (in my opinion a ridiculous suposition).... I suspect we would have some tectonic reactions to the weight of the additional water. I also think the bigger ticket items would be the, loss of land mass, swallowing of volcanic systems and the flooding of these systems with water, which would most certainly cause weather pattern changes due to the additions of water vapor to the atmosphere. The loss of land mass is also an incredibly complex batch of problems, due to population redistribution into what is left, food sources, land mass effects on storm systems etc . There are some good things regarding an instantaneous melt. 3% additional fresh water means some of the ocean pollution would be disapated, pH which is dropping slowly (many believe, I am one of those) would stabilize ( perhaps) and we would likely have massive changes in the "human" ability to pollute, due to those that drown and the losses of land mass. It is an interesting exercise and I have only touched on a couple of the ramifications.

As a side light I don't buy into the climate change nearly as much as the idea that our CO2 emmissions are effecting the oceanic systems thru PH reduction and chemistry changes. This will get rigth to the heart of the matter and that is the food chain, if organisms cannot evolve fast enough we will have real issues in this area.

Hope I haven't messed up anyones day.

-For some reason lots of oil companies think that the north pole will be void of snow and ice during the summer.

-There may have been lots of volcanoes or a super volcano 1600 years ago. Or maybe the Sun's radiation level flucuates with the amount of sun spots.

-CO2 absorbs more solar energy and makes the radiant cooling at night less effective at ground level.

-The number of humans near earthquake/tsunami zones and near sea level is huge. These people are in trouble if we do nothing and are wrong about this. I thought we only had to be worried about beaches getting washed away and some land getting flooded. But, if there are a lot of earthquakes from water getting into a limestone geologic layer or two, the level of these disasters could become a large problem.

-If the food system has any problems (over fishing/fish can't live in warmer water/farm runoff poisoning), that won't be good.

One of the main effects of global climate change is the increasing variability and unpredictability in local weather conditions and patterns. Weather effects get more radical (ie. utterly unprecedented snowfall levels where you and I each are, unusual heat and drought in other places, etc), and our predictions of them get further and further from the mark.

So it's not that the different outcome from the prediction is being spun as being caused by the same thing. It's that the unpredictability that GAVE the variation from the forecast is a believed result of global climate change. This is a subtle point, perhaps, but it explains something that's otherwise just a complete head-scratcher, as you point out.

On a slightly different topic, anybody else think it's ABSURD that we're discussing this in Tilted Politics? There's something seriously wrong when science and politics are so thoroughly collapsed the way they are in the US. IMO the proper relationship of the two is that science should be done entirely apolitically, and should be used to inform policy decisions by those who are elected to set policy. This might be a whole other thread though.

Your post is defeatist. "The world will change regardless of what we do, but we have a responsibility to try to do something."

Climate change "scaremongers" are actually saying the exact same thing. Many of them just proclaim that we've reached that "point of no return", whereas you clearly deny this. Across much of the world the emphasis is already on disaster relief instead of climate change mitigation or planning for adaptation. I believe we need all three - the first for the polulation, the second for settlements, and the third for all life on the planet. Whilst it is a given that the earth will change, the thing most people don't realise is that the rate of change is the primary issue of concern as far as adaptation is concerned. Earth's ecosystems and biodiversity need both time and space to adapt, and we've accelerated the change.

Vaultboy, I don't think I'm a defeatist, I am more of a pragmatist. I simply don't buy into a lot of what is being sold. I have a strong skeptisism regarding the warming issues, that many others accept. My reason for this is the dishonesty of the governing and reporting entities. If you give me boat loads of data and I choose to use some data that suit my agenda while knowingly disregarding data that disputes my agenda, I am a liar. This is exactly what has occurred. They trashed my trust, because they doctored the data, and as an engineer ansd science guy that is unforgivable. That doesn't mean I'm going to pollute because I can, it means I will do my part because it is the right thing to do and because I want to. I have to live in this world as well. Your last statement we agree on totally. The ecosystem need time and space to adapt. That is my reasoning for the steps I take personally and the message I pass to others.

No, what has happened is that a few scientists, of the thousands around the globe working on it, were caught doing unethical but largely irrelevant stuff.

The data is out there, and I've yet to see anyone actually getting the data and saying warming doesn't exist. Yes, there is a minority but significant position that man made CO2 has a very small impact. But there is no position that it has no impact, as that would be akin to saying that CO2 is a perfect conductor.

Here's the thing. Geologists are saying that we are not having any more earthquakes than the average. It's just that they ones we are having are hitting highly populated areas with poor construction practices.

[quote=dippin;2765809]No, what has happened is that a few scientists, of the thousands around the globe working on it, were caught doing unethical but largely irrelevant stuff.

Sorry but I disagree with this statement vehemently. What may appear to be insignificant is in my opinion critical. There used to be over 400 temperature stations in Canada with more than 20% in high altitude, cold evirons, has been reduced to less than half that total with less than 10 left in those same cold evirons, with saignificant effect on the overall numbers. Similar data site reductions were done with Russia Territories as well.

It is like taking the temperature data from Texas and saying that data is representative of the entire US. It simply is untrue. Particularly if you are comparing to data from years past that included data from North Dakota and Montana. I hope this makes clear my concern.

That isn't the biggest problem. The UK Climategate and NOAA datasets are the main data sets that are distributed to Universities and Scientific outlets world wide. If that data is tainted (or even isn't apples to apples) and I believe it is, then the studies done out of these institutions of higher learning are slanted thru no fault of their own. The conclusions drawn are true based on the data they have been supplied, unfortunately it was agendized. Much of this is born out by the actual documents from the emails from the UK. These documents allude to the burying of data, and the repression of papers and conclusions that don't agree with their point of view.

I don't dispute there is some effect of man's contribution, however, I believe we are being led to believe the effect is much greater than it really is, from a climate perspective. . That doesn't say to me we should ignore it. As I said before I am much more concerned about what we are doing chemically to the oceans which lead directly to the food chain.

To ASU2003...... sorry we have once again thread jacked the question originally posed.

---------- Post added at 10:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:58 PM ----------

I have to ask where the first statement comes from. Oil Companies and the rest of the those that work and live in these environments are pretty solid on the conditions they work in. It is truly a matter of life and death. My suspicion is you have seen the presentation of ANWAR that shows what it looks like in the summer time. In the winter it is a frozen tundra and during short parts of the summer it is a mud flat, but that is NOT the north pole. Did I guess right?

I just want to point out the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect dataset, and that statistical methods have been developed to tak into account gaps in data. I'm not saying that these methods are perfect, or even that they're always adequate. What I am saying is that unless you fully understand the methods being used by these researchers to analyze the data, you're not really in a position to offer a critique. Perhaps you do understand the methods. As far as I can tell, that would place you in the minority of folk who complain about closed cold weather monitoring stations.

Besides, one doesn't necessarily need weather data from colder environs to determine whether trends indicate that warming is occurring. If warming is occurring, it should be evident everywhere, not just the colder places.

I've worked with NOAA data before, and as far as I can tell each data point is associated with a monitoring station via an ID number. In principle it should be trivial to exclude from analysis data from any selection of monitoring stations. In other words, any bias present in the NOAA dataset would be easy to account for. So unless you have some sort of methodological analysis of specific instances where bias hasn't been accounted for, you're just blowing smoke here.

^ My biggest rant against the climate change naysayers. ^

There's a difference between weather and climate. Just because you have snow in Atlanta one day doesn't mean the earth is getting colder. Neither does it disprove that it's getting warmer.

We got over an inch of rain yesterday here in Phoenix - does that mean I no longer live in a desert?

And as far as a few feet of sea level change being insignificant - you might not say that if you lived on an island. Not to mention the effect it would have on ocean currents and global weather patterns.

Oh, and yes, BG - this is an El Nino winter. That's why the desert Southwest is enjoying a warm, wet winter. Conversely, 2009 was one of our driest and hottest years. We got only 4" of rain in 2009 (we average 8.4"); so far in just 10 weeks of 2010 we've had 6". I even have mushrooms growing in my back yard. Not exactly desert-like. But that doesn't mean it's time to start planting rice farms.

El Nino is a perfect example of the influence of ocean currents (or their disruption) on our weather patterns

Yeah, California and the SW stole all our rain :(

This has been a really bad winter here in Oregon--and by bad, I mean it has been entirely too sunny with not enough rain. Our snowpack in the Cascades is incredibly low, and they are already talking about how difficult that is going to make things water-wise come summer. I am not looking forward to it. Spring is 2+ weeks ahead of schedule here, all thanks to El Nino. :eek:

It's 55 F (12 C) and sunny here in the Great White North.

Here too. We had our first thunderstorm of the year today.