Thursday, March 23, 2006

global warming causing quakes


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11975255/from/RS.4/

Recently I put out a guess that global warming might have an effect on the incidence of earthquakes because of changes in distribution of mass caused by the melting of ice.  I felt that an increase was most likely, due to the release of pressure, but since I didn't know if the increased weight of the oceans might lead to a decrease in earthquakes in other areas that might offset these potential increases, I didn't hazard a guess as to whether there might be an increase or decrease in the total number of earthquakes in the world.  I still don't know about that, but it turns out that the faster than expected warming in Greenland and Antartica are triggering "glacial quakes".   From the rest of the article, it did appear that they were indeed talking about earthquakes, triggered by glaciers "the size of Manhattan".

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