Tag Archives: Weather

More Mysterious Boom Sounds

Posted on 07/02/2011 | Leave a comment

post found on Global Disaster Watch, 5 Feb. 2011

[There's a list of these under this category along with mystery smells.]

Something is shaking the southeast and has been for quite some time. A Carolina Beach resident was enjoying a Saturday morning when she felt and heard a boom. Many people in her neighborhood ran outside in hopes of finding the source of the noise. “It feels like a Mack truck driving by and it just shakes your whole house. It’s a shaking feeling. More than thunder and more than a truck going by. Initially that is what it sounded like but it turned into something more than that and I guess more movement. I went to Facebook and I asked, ‘Did anyone else just feel a small earthquake?’ And within minutes people were posting from all over town saying, ‘I felt it in Mayfaire,’ ‘I felt it in Pine Valley.’” Dozens posted on her wall and thousands have reported the noises up and down the coast on various websites from Georgia to Virginia. With speculative explanations ranging from the ordinary, like military aircraft to the outrageous like ghosts and aliens.

“I don’t think it’s ghosts, and I don’t think it’s aliens,” said a geophysicist with the United States Geological Service in Menlo Park, California. I think it’s likely to be small earthquakes.” An earthquake produces audible sound by making the “ground around the person listening seem like they are in a big woofer. The ground is vibrating and that sound is transmitted up into the atmosphere and you hear a low rumbling sound.”

But on the east coast another prominent Geophysicist says earthquakes have nothing to do with it. “There are earthquakes occurring all around the world that we are recording here in North Carolina. If we had a local earthquake it would be impossible for us not to record that.” Of all the loud booms heard, recorded and studied there has never been any direct relationship discovered between any seismic activity. “It’s just very unlikely that we could have humans observe this and not have our very sensitive instruments making these observations.”

But the California scientist strongly disagrees saying, “Magnitude twos and smaller could produce an audible sound that and shaking that wouldn’t be recorded on the seismic stations.”  There are a number of aircraft and submarine testing and bombing ranges off the coast stretching from Florida to New Jersey, with more than a dozen off the Carolina coastline. And supersonic flight can certainly make a boom. But no military installation is taking credit for the booms, and no exercises were scheduled at the time.

“We know that these things were reported long before people were flying around at the speed of sound.” In fact the term Seneca Guns, which is often used to describe these sounds comes from a James Fenimore Cooper story explaining the same phenomenon published in 1851, 50 years before man even learned to fly. It just doesn’t make sense how nothing could show up. How could nothing at all show up if all these people definitely felt and heard something that wasn’t thunder, that wasn’t a plane, and wasn’t a truck driving by the house?” Rven the most experienced scientists can’t agree on an answer. You could eliminate some theories by installing a seismometer and sensitive microphones along the Carolina coastline. But, since the booms do little more than rattle windows finding someone to foot the $10,000 to $20,000 bill in our current economy will likely keep the public guessing as to what is causing the mysterious booms. It’s just bizarre.”

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India in A Freeze

Posted on 07/02/2011 | Leave a comment

post found on NOAA

A cold snap during the first week of 2011 brought the coldest temperatures this winter to much of India. Temperatures as low as -10.5 °F (-23.6 °C) were reported across northern India. According to the Indian Meteorological Department, the daily maximum temperature in Delhi only reached 14.6 °C (58.3 °C), which is 11 °F (six °C) below-normal. During the entire winter season, Delhi has been experiencing below normal temperatures. Up to 9.8 feet (3 meters) of snow across the high mountain passes of Rohtang and Kunzam cut off access to portions of far northern India including the Kashmir province. The death toll due to the cold temperatures soared to 30 for the country, as many people do not have viable heating sources in their homes.

The cold air that impacted parts of India during the first week of January moved into Bangladesh during the second and third weeks of the month. Temperatures were 9°F-19°F(5°C-10°C) below normal. The entire country, from the northern higher elevations to the tropical coastal regions, was impacted, bringing life and business to a halt. The cold temperatures hit agriculture the hardest and the impacts will likely have long-term effects on the economic situation in the farming and poorer communities of the country. Hundreds of people, especially children and the elderly, suffered from cold-related diseases including bronchial asthma, pneumonia, coughs and diarrhea.

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Birds, Fish Dieing

Posted on 26/01/2011 | Leave a comment
post by Seth Borenstein, AP Yahoo News, Jan 7, 2011

WASHINGTON—First, the blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year’s Eve in Arkansas. In recent days, wildlife have mysteriously died in big numbers—2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world. Blogs connected the deadly dots, joking about the “aflockalypse” while others saw real signs of something sinister, either biblical or environmental.

The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated.

[Is it?]

Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America. Usually, we don’t notice them and don’t try to link them to each other.

[41 years on Earth and I "haven't noticed" something like this! What a curious thing!]

“They generally fly under the radar,” said ornithologist John Wiens, chief scientist at the California research institution PRBO Conservation Science.

“Since the 1970s, the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin has tracked mass deaths among birds, fish and other critters,” said wildlife disease specialist LeAnn White. At times, the sky and the streams just turn deadly. Sometimes it’s disease, sometimes pollution. Other times it’s just a mystery.

[This is a very confusing statement. In my opinion, if masses of birds, fish, etc die, I would think people would be more than curious as to the cause. I would think there would be articles all over the place and a bit of shock. I find it hard to believe that such events go unnoticed by the public. Just my opinion.]

In the past eight months, the USGS has logged 95 mass wildlife die-offs in North America and that’s probably a dramatic undercount, White said. The list includes 900 some turkey vultures that seemed to drown and starve in the Florida Keys, 4,300 ducks killed by parasites in Minnesota, 1,500 salamanders done in by a virus in Idaho, 2,000 bats that died of rabies in Texas, and the still mysterious death of 2,750 sea birds in California.

On average, 163 such events are reported to the federal government each year, according to USGS records. And there have been much larger die-offs than the 3,000 blackbirds in Arkansas. Twice in the summer of 1996, more than 100,000 ducks died of botulism in Canada. “Depending on the species, these things don’t even get reported,” White said.

[Here's another thought—if these "events" have actually been occurring since the 70s, then wouldn't you think it runs parallel to the climate events that has been happening since then as well. If something can't be explained thoroughly by the scientist we educate, then maybe it's something beyond us. Maybe it's the very thing that atheist deny?]

Weather—cold and wet weather like in Arkansas New Year’s Eve when the birds fell out of the sky—is often associated with mass bird deaths, ornithologists say. Pollution, parasites and disease also cause mass deaths. Some are even blaming fireworks for the blackbird deaths. So, what’s happening this time?

Blame technology, says famed Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. With the Internet, cell phones and worldwide communications, people are noticing events, connecting the dots more. “This instant and global communication, it’s just a human instinct to read mystery and portents of dangers and wondrous things in events that are unusual,” Wilson told The Associated Press on Thursday. “Not to worry, these are not portents that the world is about to come to an end.” Wilson and the others say instant communications “especially when people can whip out smart phones to take pictures of critter carcasses and then post them on the Internet” is giving a skewed view of what is happening in the environment. The irony is that mass die-offs—usually of animals with large populations—are getting the attention while a larger but slower mass extinction of thousands of species because of human activity is ignored, Wilson said.

[Sorry, I don't buy this explanation. The public has always been informed. Before internet technology, people read newspapers. Oh, my God†, remember them! We read Newsweek, National Geographic and other magazines who reported the news objectively. We are not ignorant. The internet may give us the news quicker, or so it seems, but we are no more informed than before. The truth of it is, we may be a bit less informed because objectivity has disappeared from journalism. If it wasn't, than more journalist would being asking the "whys" instead of accepting what's being said right off the back. Instead of concentrating on the stupidity of life like Hollywood, then maybe today's journalist would realize that the public still wants the "truth" and not some far-fetched tale. Publicity seeking scientist and bias journalist have lost their creditability. We all know something extraordinary is going on. We all know that science can't rightly explain it, so why don't they just stop pretending and shadowing what's really going on and come out and just say it?]

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Global Cooling:Coming Ice Age

Posted on 25/10/2010 | 3 Comments

[Very interesting...it's worth reading it.]

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Ice Age: Heed the Warnings

Posted on 25/10/2010 | 8 Comments

post by David Deming, a geophysicist and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma,
on Sott.com May 13, 2009

“Short of a catastrophic asteroid impact, the greatest threat to the human race is the onset of another ice age….Global warming predictions by meteorologists are based on speculative, untested, and poorly constrained computer models….Our knowledge of ice ages is based on a wide variety of reliable data, including cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.…By reducing our production of carbon dioxide, we risk hastening the advent of the next ice age. Even more foolhardy and dangerous is the puppet administration’s announcement that they may try to cool the planet through geoengineering. Such a move in the middle of a cooling trend could provoke the irreversible onset of an ice age. It is not hyperbole to state that such a climatic change would mean the end of human civilization as we know it.”

  • Comment—The above remarks from this thoughtful article provoke the unavoidable speculation that the PTB are trying to induce another ice age with their global warming nonsense. Who needs WMDs when you can kill billions by starvation and freezing cold?

Those who ignore the geologic perspective do so at great risk. In fall of 1985, geologists warned that a Columbian volcano, Nevado del Ruiz, was getting ready to erupt. But the volcano had been dormant for 150 years. So, government officials and inhabitants of nearby towns did not take the warnings seriously.

On the evening of November 13, Nevado del Ruiz erupted, triggering catastrophic mudslides. In the town of Armero, 23,000 people were buried alive in a matter of seconds. For ninety percent of the last million years, the normal state of the Earth’s climate has been an ice age. Ice ages last about 100,000 years, and are punctuated by short periods of warm climate, or interglacials. The last ice age started about 114,000 years ago. It began instantaneously. For a hundred-thousand years, temperatures fell and sheets of ice a mile thick grew to envelop much of North America, Europe and Asia. The ice age ended nearly as abruptly as it began. Between about 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the temperature in Greenland rose more than 50°F.

We don’t know what causes ice ages to begin or end. In 1875, a janitor turned geologist, James Croll, proposed that small variations in Earth’s orbit around the Sun were responsible for climate change. This idea enjoyed its greatest heyday during the 1970s, when ocean sediment cores appeared to confirm the theory. But in 1992, Ike Winograd and his colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey falsified the theory by demonstrating that its predictions were inconsistent with new, high-quality data. The climate of the ice ages is documented in the ice layers of Greenland and Antarctica. We have cored these layers, extracted them, and studied them in the laboratory. Not only were ice ages colder than today, but the climates were considerably more variable. Compared to the norm of the last million years, our climate is remarkably warm, stable and benign. During the last ice age in Greenland abrupt climatic swings of 30°F were common. Since the ice age ended, variations of 3°F are uncommon.

For thousands of years, people have learned from experience that cold temperatures are detrimental for human welfare and warm temperatures are beneficial. From about 1300 to 1800 AD, the climate cooled slightly during a period known as the Little Ice Age. In Greenland, the temperature fell by about 4°F. Although trivial, compared to an ice age cooling of 50°F, this was nevertheless sufficient to wipe out the Viking colony there. In northern Europe, the Little Ice Age kicked off with the Great Famine of 1315. Crops failed due to cold temperatures and incessant rain. Desperate and starving, parents ate their children, and people dug up corpses from graves for food. In jails, inmates instantly set upon new prisoners and ate them alive.

The Great Famine was followed by the Black Death, the greatest disaster ever to hit the human race. One-third of the human race died; terror and anarchy prevailed. Human civilization as we know it is only possible in a warm interglacial climate. Short of a catastrophic asteroid impact, the greatest threat to the human race is the onset of another ice age.

The oscillation between ice ages and interglacial periods is the dominant feature of Earth’s climate for the last million years. But the computer models that predict significant global warming from carbon dioxide cannot reproduce these temperature changes. This failure to reproduce the most significant aspect of terrestrial climate reveals an incomplete understanding of the climate system, if not a nearly complete ignorance. Global warming predictions by meteorologists are based on speculative, untested, and poorly constrained computer models. But our knowledge of ice ages is based on a wide variety of reliable data, including cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. In this case, it would be perspicacious to listen to the geologists, not the meteorologists. By reducing our production of carbon dioxide, we risk hastening the advent of the next ice age. Even more foolhardy and dangerous is the puppet administration’s announcement that they may try to cool the planet through geoengineering . Such a move in the middle of a cooling trend could provoke the irreversible onset of an ice age. It is not hyperbole to state that such a climatic change would mean the end of human civilization as we know it.

Earth’s climate is controlled by the Sun. In comparison, every other factor is trivial. The coldest part of the Little Ice Age during the latter half of the seventeenth century was marked by the nearly complete absence of sunspots. And the Sun now appears to be entering a new period of quiescence. August of 2008 was the first month since the year 1913 that no sunspots were observed. As I write, the sun remains quiet. We are in a cooling trend. The areal extent of global sea ice is above the twenty-year mean. We have heard much of the dangers of global warming due to carbon dioxide. But the potential danger of any potential anthropogenic warming is trivial compared to the risk of entering a new ice age. Public policy decisions should be based on a realistic appraisal that takes both climate scenarios into consideration.

David Deming is a geophysicist and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma

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Something Wicked Coming our Way?

Posted on 25/10/2010 | Leave a comment

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Precursor to Ice Age?

Posted on 25/10/2010 | Leave a comment

post by sott.net, May 7, 2010

As regular readers of SOTT are aware, we collect weather reports from around the world which often point to weird weather occurring in locations experiencing unseasonable weather. This week there has been an especially weird spike in reports of sudden cold and snow affecting many areas of North America and Europe! We think this dramatically illustrates the alarming speed with which the weather can change from stable, warm and dry conditions to turbulent, cold and wet conditions. Global news networks are churning out endless reports on the UK election, the financial shock waves hitting Europe and the Times Square hysteria over some fireworks left in a car. What is not being reported prominently are the unprecedented freak weather events happening around across the northern hemisphere: hail, sleet and snow slamming southern California, deluges devastating the central cities of Nashville in the US and Hunan in China, the Korean Peninsula shivering with a record-low spring chill and reports of snow in Mexico and France.

Are these just unseasonal conditions, an immediate knock-on effect from the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland perhaps? Or are we on the brink of entering an ice age as SOTT has been predicting for a number of years? Was the sudden flip this week—”as though a switch had been thrown”—a taster of the Ice Age to come? Is this ‘mini Winter rebound’ pointing out how suddenly glacial rebound can develop? When will we approach the tipping point as more volcanoes erupt and magma comes up from the ocean floor?

Laura Knight-Jadczyk explains the mechanism that can precipitate sudden climate change towards an Ice Age. “That’s the hard science. There’s going to be the day. It’s already happening. The magnetic field is degenerating. That means magma is going to start welling up under the oceans. It’s already happening because it’s heating the oceans up. When the oceans start heating up, that means more evaporation. When that happens at the same time that the planet is being clouded by volcanic eruptions, which is cooling the atmosphere, you have precipitation that comes down as snow.

“The geological record shows that the onset of every ice-age was so sudden as to be unbelievable. In other words, next winter could be the winter when a lot of undersea volcanoes begin to erupt and dump magma into the oceans. A lot of evaporation takes place. If it happens in the winter time that means that snow can fall in amounts that are beyond your wildest imagining. It’s happened! It’s geologically a fact. It’s happened repeatedly. Can you imagine 9 stories of snow in a single day?”

Below are local weather reports with eyewitness comments from some of our forum members situated in diverse locations across Europe and North America. The first shocker this week came with reports of snow in the south of France. Snow anywhere in Europe in May is unusual, but near the Mediterranean coast? In May?!

  • Comment—“Here in the south of France, we had about a week of warm and sunny weather with one day reaching 30°C—then we woke up to 4°C this morning with heavy wind and a forecast predicting the total average of May’s rainfall within the next week!” Update—”Snowing and hailing in southern France now. It’s considered abnormal and is downright yucky weather here!”

We couldn’t quite believe that it was snowing in the south of France—along valley floors and thus near sea level—so we checked it out for ourselves.  It’s snowing in southern France… in May! Yep, it’s been snowing in southern France! The locals say they’ve never seen anything like it. One forum member there reported something interesting about the texture of snow

  • Comment—“Snowing here, too (Spanish-French border). Looks like 10 inches. (I just went and measured it)—10cm so far and has not stopped since last night.” Update—”It’s still still coming down this evening though it did get warmer (5°Celsius by mid afternoon). Interesting thing is that the snow seems to have more moisture in it. Moving it with a shovel seemed like it was heavier, like wet cement. Usually the snow here has been pretty dry.”

The wave of the century—While snow and hail was falling further inland, waves from 6 to 10 meters were reported all along the French Mediterranean coastline—Cannes struggles to prepare for film festival as unseasonal wind, 10 meter high waves, hail and snow batter France’s Cote d’Azur

“We are lost for words. [The waves] came very quickly. It was calm and then suddenly it started and we didn’t have time to prepare.” Locals agreed that the waves were the biggest seen on the Côte d’Azur for years, if not decades, and were unusual at this time of year….René Colomban, president of the Promenade des Anglais beach attendants’ union, said he had not seen anything like it since 1959….

Yesterday, to the amazement of the south-western town’s residents, snow fell in Carcassonne. The ferocity of the storm in southern France produced gales of up to 130 km per hour and dumped up to 20 cm of snow (9 inches) on the lower valleys of the Pyrenées.

Another member reports on the sudden turn in the weather in Spain.

  • Comment—“Here in Spain there has also been odd weather. After a week of 20 and 30° Celsius, in some areas it went down to 8 degrees. Today we have strong winds and showers. Definitively very unsettled weather.”

What about further north?

  • Comment—“Same here in Belgium. Last week, it felt like summer. This week it’s really cold!”

And in the UK?

  • Comment—“Scotland had another arctic blast at the end of last week and beginning of this one. Although spring weather is quite unstable, still it’s more like November weather.”
  • Comment—“Here in southeast UK, we had a very warm week last week, with lots of sunshine, and then, almost as though a switch had been thrown, the weather changed a few days ago and now it is cold and dull with low level cloud cover.”
  • Comment—“Just to add there was hail 4 days ago here in Sweden, Gothenburg, not unheard of but quite rare this time of year. The thing is, that day had really good and warm weather before and after the hail. Sub-zero rain, that melted just as it hit the ground. Guess the atmosphere is trying to tell us something?”
  • Comment—“Yeh, I was shocked to see really big snowflakes here in Denmark in May today, large hailstones and one hell of a wind. I thought it may be possible for the hailstones to crack or break a window. Then an hour later, sunshine. My hands were feeling icy cold outside today.”
  • Comment—“Yesterday, on 7th of March, we had a hailstorm here in the east of Austria. The hail kept lying on the ground. Surprisingly, in the evening hours, the sky was blue, but it was so chilly that we could see our breath condensing in the air.”

Surely this is a regional phenomenon, a freak event unique to western Europe perhaps? Apparently not, as wintry weather came to the most unlikely of regions, like southern California.

Surely it’s not snowing in the deserts of Arizona?!

  • Comment—“It’s been unseasonably wet and cool in southern Arizona this spring—I’ve actually been really enjoying it, since I usually dread the onset of summer here, but we are usually stuck in the 90°F by May and so far there has been a lot of variation.”

At least this atmospheric shock is pleasant for some then! But wait, what’s this..? It’s snowing in northern Mexico? In May?! It’s snowing in Mexico in May! …snowfall in 18 municipalities. The snow reached 18 centimeters in Ignacio Zaragoza and 12 centimeters in Gomez Farías…. In the state capital [of Chihuahua], the weather phenomenon took people by surprise, since for 32 years it did not snow in May…. In the capital, a light rain began between 4:00 and 5:00 am, with a temperature of 3° Celsius and a wind chill of -2°….

The Pacific Northwest this week equalled or broke the coldest recorded temperatures from this past winter (which was, remember, one of the coldest winters in memory!)

  • Comment—“We recently returned from Southern Arizona where we nearly froze. Couldn’t believe how chilly it was, especially at night. Sure seemed abnormal for May. Yesterday the temperature at 18,000 ft above the Pacific northwest in the United States was as cold as the 2nd coldest measurement taken during the past winter. Colder than any temp during January or February! There was a winter storm warning issued for the mountains nearby—in May. This following a 24 hour period with non-stop wind averaging around 25-35 mph. Totally unlike any May weather anyone around here can remember.”

Canada might expect occasional late flurries of winter snow, but even residents there are struck by the sudden plunge in temperatures.

  • Comment—“Yep, it is snowing in Northern Alberta, Canada, too. Not sure if it’s unusual, since we had the same thing last year. After a period of really nice and warm weather, past several days were really windy and cold including hail-like rain. And now it’s snowing (-1°C outside) but should get warmer toward the end of the week.”
  • Comment—“And it is snowing in Calgary today, too; and it is sooo cold -1° C. I have lived in Calgary for 28 years and what I noticed is that people usually say that it is typical Calgary weather. That is not true. We do get spring snow storms but they usually come and go quickly, and then it is sunny and warm again. This time the cold has stuck around for way too long. We have had 3 snow storms so far in 3 weeks and that is unusual. We don’t get much sun around here to start with and now we don’t get it at all. No wonder so many people have health problems. I take 2000IU of D3 everyday to keep myself healthy. I have been feeling like living a life of an indoor slave. I just work, pay taxes and bills then I go home where I close the door because it is just too cold to keep the door open, or to even go for a bike ride. It is really depressing to live here. Nothing is blooming, the trees don’t have any leaves on yet, the birds are not chirping, and I don’t think they are having any offspring either. Everything looks so gray, even the grass is barely waking up and it is already May 5. I think my worst nightmare is becoming true. We will all freeze to death. Oh, where is my far infrared sauna. I think I will just go and sit in it for an hour and will keep on dreaming about a tropical forest.”

Rather than dream about what we wish the weather could or should be, let’s continue to pay attention to the weather as it is! That way we might be able to see when the Ice Age Cometh and be better prepared to acclimatize, psychologically more than anything else.

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100 Years of Climate Headlines

Posted on 25/10/2010 | Leave a comment

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Iceland’s Katla Volcano Alert

Posted on 27/08/2010 | Leave a comment
post by MSNBC

London—A second, much larger volcano in Iceland is showing signs that it may be about to erupt, scientists have warned. Since the start of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, which caused cancellations of thousands of flights in Europe because of a giant ash cloud, there has been much speculation about neighboring Katla. An initial research paper by the University College of London Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction said, “Analysis of the seismic energy released around Katla over the last decade or so is interpreted as providing evidence of a rising—intrusive magma body on the western flank of the volcano.”

“Earlier seismic energy release at Katla is associated with the inflation of the volcano, which indicates it is close to failure, although this does not appear to be linked to seismicity around Eyjafjallajökull,” it added. “We conclude that given the high frequency of Katla activity, an eruption in the short term is a strong possibility,” the report said. “It is likely to be preceded by new earthquake activity. Presently there is no unusual seismicity under Katla.”

An April 17 NASA image shows the Eyjafjallajokull volcano to the west and Myrdalsjokull ice cap, beneath which slumbers the mighty Katla volcano, to the east.

Icelandic President Ólafur Grímsson has warned governments around Europe that a significant eruption at the volcano is close. “We [Iceland] have prepared—it is high time for European governments and airline authorities all over Europe and the world to start planning for the eventual Katla eruption,” he said.

The UCL scientists, engineers and statisticians also criticized the response to the earlier eruption. “The impact of the eruption on regional airspace could have been predicted and better prepared for as the growing problem of aircraft-ash cloud encounters has been recognized for decades,” the report added. “Similarly, the potential for ash clouds, specifically from Icelandic volcanoes, to interfere with air traffic in UK, European and North Atlantic air-space was appreciated by the aviation industry well before the start of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption,” it said. “The response to the ash cloud’s arrival in UK and adjacent airspace was entirely reactive and therefore less effective than it should have been.”

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New Zealand: Possible Tsunami

Posted on 17/08/2010 | Leave a comment

post by Radio New Zealand News Aug. 16, 2010

[Update: the tsunami did not happen, of course.]

Scientists say the collapse of a massive undersea volcano off the coast of the North Island shows New Zealand could be at a high risk of tsunami. Marine geologists from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) have confirmed a major eruption about 200km northwest of Auckland occurred some time in the last two years.The Rumble 3 volcano, which is larger than Mount Ruapehu, has lost about 120 meters in height.

NIWA principal scientist Dr Geoffroy Lamarche says the undersea mapping shows the seabed is more active than was previously known. “We don’t want to be scaremongering here, but definitely any large displacement of (the) seafloor will pull the water down. “At the surface it will also generate a wave, and this collapse, we know because we’ve mapped it, this collapse is looking south-west, which is directly toward the New Zealand coast.” Dr. Lamarche says scientists will use the data to model the potential impact of a tsunami on Auckland and Bay of Plenty.

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