16 April 2010 How deep the glacier how high the sky

16 April 2010 How deep the glacier how high the sky


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/opinion/16winchester.html?th&emc=th

“A Tale of Two Volcanoes

By SIMON WINCHESTER

Published: April 15, 2010

Sandisfield, Mass.

IN planetary terms, it was just a tiny pinprick that opened up last month underneath the Eyjafjalla Glacier in southern Iceland, when a long-forgotten volcano started to erupt again after a quiescence of nearly 200 years. But insignificant though the rent in the planet’s fabric may have been, uncounted millions have been suddenly affected by it…”

Oh, to be in Iceland now that spring is here!

This is a great tale to explore, reminding us of how little we are in comparison to the power resident in the interior of this planet. I’m going to hope for some sunset and sunrise changes that will mark the ash plume’s circumnavigation. I’m also going to look up some of the paintings from the time.

Hopefully this eruption will diminish and re-seal its vent before the ash cloud becomes large and diffuse enough to create another example of atmospheric cooling such as that we noted after Mt. Pinitubo erupted or Mt. Tambora.

“The Year Without a Summer (also known as the Poverty Year, Year There Was No Summer and Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death[1]) was 1816, in which severe summer climate abnormalities destroyed crops in Northern Europe, the Northeastern United States and eastern Canada.[2][3] Average global temperatures decreased about 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1.3 °F),[4] enough to cause significant agricultural problems around the globe.

Historian John D. Post has called this "the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world".[5]

Most consider the climate anomaly to have been caused by a combination of a historic low in solar activity with a volcanic winter event; the latter caused by a succession of major volcanic eruptions capped off by the Mount Tambora eruption of 1815, the largest known eruption in over 1,600 years.”

Just to keep things in proportion, on the way home from class I noticed a “service engine soon” light/alarm in my Pathfinder. I was able to get into a local dealership this afternoon. I go back Monday morning to have an O2 sensor replaced. I’ll miss class rather than delay service until the 26th, the next available slot.







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