Antarctic Ice Melt May Fuel Eruptions of Hidden Volcanoes

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By Madeline Reinsel, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: A slow climate feedback loop may be bubbling beneath Antarctica’s vast ice sheet. The continent...includes volcanic giants such as Mount Erebus and its iconic lava lake. But at least 100 less conspicuous volcanoes dot Antarctica, with many clustered along its western coast. Some of those volcanoes peak above the surface, but others sit several kilometers beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Climate change is causing the ice sheet to melt, raising global sea levels. The melting is also removing the weight over the rocks below, with more local consequences. Ice sheet melt has been shown to increase volcanic activity in subglacial volcanoes elsewhere on the globe. Coonin et al. ran 4,000 computer simulations to study how ice sheet loss affects Antarctica’s buried volcanoes, and they found that gradual melt could increase the number and size of subglacial eruptions. The reason is that this unloading of ice sheets reduces pressure on magma chambers below the surface, causing the compressed magma to expand. This expansion increases pressure on magma chamber walls and can lead to eruptions.... 

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