Hundreds of Volcanoes Will Soon Erupt in Antarctica if Humans Don’t Do This One Thing

Beneath the icy façade of the 760,000-square-mile West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) bubbles a hotbed of 100 active volcanoes is kept restrained by the thick layer of ice. But as the icy blanket melts little by little due to rising temperatures, it weakens the thick grip of ice over the sizzling magma trapped inside. In a new study published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, researchers explored this delicate connection between the ice above and the fire beneath. They reflected that if the ice sheet keeps on melting at such a rapid rate, it could release the volcanoes entrapped below, which would unleash a catastrophe upon not just the polar regions but the entire world, just like the shocking explosion of bubbles that follow when a new champagne bottle is uncorked. 

If this volcanic champagne is spurred to life, humans may have to pack their bags and head for another planet. It's a ticking time bomb under Antarctica unless humans find a way to wrestle with the rising mercury. Unbeknownst to the cool surface ice, Antarctica hosts a dense cluster of volcanoes within its bosom, hundreds of them. Take, for instance, Mount Erebus, one of the most ferocious active volcanoes in Antarctica. Erebus not only cradles a scorching lava lake but also spews gas, dust, lava bombs, and rock every now and then. Then, there is a hidden network of volcanic vents that release gases and steam, often forming fumaroles that can tower high in the sky.

Apart from these, there are sleeping volcanoes, like Deception Island and Mount Sidley, which have been dormant for many years but may jolt wide awake anytime, given this rate of global warming. If these volcanoes open their mouth, they’d blast out substances rich in halogens. Not every volcano may be aggressive enough to tear apart the ice sheet above, but they would certainly be powerful enough to melt the solid caverns sculpted inside the ice. By lubricating the ice, they’d generate meltwater. This meltwater would spill into the surrounding lakes and oceans, causing the global sea levels to rise at an alarming rate.

In this study, a team of researchers led by Brown University’s Allie Coonin investigated the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, “one of the Earth's largest reservoirs of land ice.” They described that this ice sheet is quite vulnerable to collapse, yet “its position atop an active volcanic rift is seldom considered.” They discovered that volcanism and glaciation are highly interrelated, a connection never studied before in such detail. When a volcano underneath ice erupts, it churns the magma chambers underground and starts melting the ice sheet. On the flip side, the ice melting due to global warming decreases the pressure that the ice's weight lays upon the magma, prompting the magma to explode. It’s an endless feedback loop. “In regions like West Antarctica, volcanic eruptions occur underneath ice sheets.

When hot magma comes in contact with ice, it can accelerate the melting of the ice cover. Beyond this, as climate change causes ice sheets to shrink, the decreasing weight on a volcano may affect its likelihood of erupting,” the team described in the paper. They also noted that the volcanoes beneath the shrinking ice sheets are "sensitive to the rate" at which ice sheets are shrinking. 

WAIS, they said, sits atop West Antarctic Rift System (WARS), one of the largest volcanic provinces on the planet, which began forming around the time when dinosaurs were beginning to disappear from the planet, around the early Jurassic era. The authors pointed to an earlier study as evidence that the rift remains active. However, thankfully, humans may not have to leave the planet after all. These volcanoes aren’t going to erupt anytime soon. The authors emphasized that the process is slow, taking place over hundreds of years. But the study is still interesting, as it shows that the feedback loop of volcanoes and glaciation would continue long after humans have gone extinct and the icy blanket is completely vanished.