What If Antarctica’s Dormant Volcanoes Woke Up?

deep beneath the thick layer of million-year-old ice something is lurking quietly waiting to rip through the rigid ice sheets no not that this enormous icy wasteland is sitting on top of a volcanic Ridge and in our hypothetical world these volcanoes are about to wake up could their scorching lava wipe out the surface of earth or would the thick Antarctic ice stop the lava before it makes our planet uninhabitable this is what if and here's what would happen if Antarctica's dormant volcanoes woke up Antarctica is the coldest continent on earth and it's quite mysterious we didn't know it had active volcanoes buried underneath it until 2013 when scientists accidentally detected two clusters of small earthquakes now that we've scanned Antarctica with ice-penetrating radar we know that there are many more volcanoes hiding below the ice 138 to be precise but that's only the ones we know of how many more could be hibernating there and how much trouble would we be in if all those volcanoes suddenly decided their slumber was over it shouldn't be too surprising that these Ash breathing ruptures have been buried underneath Antarctica's ice shield this whole time after all volcanoes are easy to come by even outside our home planet there are volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io Saturn's moon Enceladus and on our planetary neighbor Venus but let's not waste our time there we've got our own world to save do you know what happens when a volcano erupts there are usually warning signs before the real action begins like the waves of earthquakes they indicate that there's molten rock moving beneath the surface then lava and ash join the party accompanied by heated gases it depends on a variety of scenarios and the kind of lava involved but on average lava moves at about 10 km/h pretty easy to outrun but when a major eruption occurs a volcano releases superheated gases and ash combined they create something called a pyroclastic cloud these things are hot reaching up to 700 degrees and they can move at 80 km/h being trapped by one of these would mean the end of days for you but and arcticus volcanoes are a different story they're buried under layers of ice that are more than four kilometres thick in places we wouldn't be dealing with volcanic gasses making their way to the surface at least as far as one eruption goes the heat released would melt massive caverns in the ice creating substantial amounts of meltwater and that's when things would start getting ugly the newly created meltwater would cause the ice above it to move more rapidly the Antarctic ice cover would begin heading into the ocean from there the domino effect would kick in the huge weight of the ice puts all that pressure on volcanoes keeping them stable but decrease that pressure and a volcano gets limbered up and magma finds a way out through an eruption in the case of Antarctica multiple volcanic eruptions could wake up over a hundred other volcanoes and destabilize the entire region as the volcanoes continued to blow their tops more meltwater would be created causing more of the Antarctic ice to slide into the ocean Antarctic ice would be enclosed by warmer ocean currents on one hand we'd get a new look at Antarctic bedrock that's been hiding under the ice this whole time on the other hand the ice wouldn't just disappear into thin air it would melt and if all of Antarctica's ice melted it would raise the global sea level by about 60 meters rising sea levels could contribute to major storms moving slower and dropping more rain hurricanes and typhoons would wreak havoc on the Earth's surface wildlife along coastal areas would lose their habitats and agricultural soil would become contaminated with salt extensive flooding would push millions of people away from the coastline if the eruptions happened in the span of one day we'd be looking at thousands of deaths and storms wiping out everything floating in the oceans but let's go back to Antarctica for a second now that all the ice has melted what about the rampaging magma the good news is it wouldn't turn the earth into a lava world after all the eruptions would occur under water the hot magma would solidify in the cold water of the Antarctic Ocean and maybe add more real estate to Antarctica zone bedrock but things don't end there when volcanoes erupt on land they spew out heated gases including carbon monoxide methane carbon dioxide and nitrogen to go along with this there's usually some water vapor thrown into the mix by some estimates volcanoes are responsible for the release of 645 million tons of carbon dioxide every year if the antarctic volcano eruptions turned out to be powerful enough they would blow open huge expanses of ice allowing the release of even more toxic greenhouse gases when one of Antarctica's surface volcanoes mount to chi erupted some 18,000 years ago it spewed out the chemicals that ate a hole in the ozone layer that hole warmed up the southern hemisphere and caused glaciers to melt it helped wrap up the last ice age now imagine over 100 volcanoes erupting all at once that can't be good for our planet but don't worry Antarctica's volcanoes won't erupt all at once if they start to wake up it would take decades for anything substantial to happen me I still think we should be ready for anything even adapting to living under water when sea levels rise but that's a stir for another what if you

Channel: What If

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Keywords: what if, what happens if, scifi, science documentary, what if scenario, mysteries, what if earth, antarctica lava, Antarctica’s lava lake, Antarctic phenomena, antarctic ice, coldest continent, ice penetrating radar, volcano eruption, lava eruption, Antarctica nature, natural disaster, dormant volcano, dormant volcano eruption, science, climate change effects, antarctica, climate change, documentary, climate, possible worlds, unsolved mysteries, mount erebus

Id: 4_SJW4NcYoU

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 03 2020