Posted on 01/31/2006 10:11:38 AM PST by cogitator
Link above or this shows pictures from the ongoing activity of Augustine, which was a bit more vociferous this past weekend and yesterday.
Related thread:
Geology Pictures of the Week, Jan 29-Feb 4, 2006: Augustine (AK) Eruption and Kootenai Falls, MT
Very cool.
Thanks!
Very impressive pictures.
Need an oversize bottle of peptobismal to calm this one down.
How many tons of green house gasses does a volcanic eruption put into the atmosphere?
Ohh. Has a Mt. Fuji look to it.
Sssshhhhh, Earth Firster and the Sierra club DO NOT want to talk about that. I love to bring up that question when talking to tree huggers. They go crazy. They sputter and spit and don't have an answer. I love to tell them to get the volcanoes and forest fires under control, then we will talk about the green house gases produced by humans.
Very little CO2, actually, which is a greenhouse gas. This question comes up a lot, and I usually quote a page indicating that the CO2 from volcanoes is about 150 times less than the CO2 from fossil-fuel burning for energy.
Volcanoes put out a lot of SO2 (sulfur dioxide), which creates aerosols in the atmosphere that, in sufficient concentration, block incoming solar radiation and can induce a cooling effect. On average, volcanic SO2 emissions are about 25% of that from coal in a given year, both from human burning and natural coal fires. However, SO2 from a big eruption like Pinatubo can be a lot more than annual SO2 emissions from coal.
See post 10 for the real answer. Also, CO2 from the fire itself of a forest fire is not a net gain or loss of CO2 from the atmosphere, because the carbon was removed from the atmosphere as the vegetation grew. There is a slight CO2 contribution to the atmosphere post-fire, because bug and bacterial decomposition of the wood is respiration, but the main gain term is due to the "liberation" of soil carbon by bugs and bacteria due to the erosion of soils in a burned area.
Bush's fault.
cool picture.
Very cool pictures! Here's a question though - in the photos the sky looks very clear and sunny. Isn't that part of Alaska mostly dark at this time of year? How many hours of daylight are they getting right now? I was under the impression that even during the "daytime" of an Arctic winter, the light is never that bright and clear.
Yes, but we're a month removed from the winter solstice, so the days are getting longer, and Augustine is fairly far south (near Anchorage). Without knowing for sure, I'd guess they're getting 3-4 hours of daylight now.
I checked Weather Channel and my guess was pretty far off; sunrise at Anchorage today was 9:23 and sunset is 5:06, so they have about 7.5 hours of daylight.
http://www.anchorage.net/605.cfm
Here's a link that will answer some of your questions. The Interior of Alaska and the Arctic regions are much darker during the winter months than the southern areas of the state. Worlds apart, really.
My God, what have we done?
Here's some information from http://www.themilepost.com/daylight.html.
"The farther north you travel in summer, the longer the days become. It's common to see people mowing their lawns at midnight in Fairbanks or Anchorage. Here are some sample daylight-hour maximums and minimums."
Summer Maximum (June 21)
Whitehorse, 19 hours, 11 minutes
Fairbanks, 21 hours, 49 minutes
Anchorage, 19 hours, 21 minutes
Winter Minimum (Dec. 21)
Whitehorse, 5 hours, 37 minutes
Fairbanks, 3 hours, 42 minutes
Anchorage, 5 hours, 28 minutes
Well there you have it. The answer to "global warming".
We just set off a few volcanoes every year and we're fine.
Very interesting - thank you :-)
It appears today we can see the Ash "cloud" going up towards the Knik Arm from Anchorage.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.