The study indicates that large earthquakes are the cause of the warming Arctic

Photo: Aleutian Islands is an archipelago of dozens of islands with 40 active volcanoes and 17 dormant volcanoes.

Credit: Shutterstock

A researcher from MIPT has proposed a new explanation for the rapid arctic warming. In his recent Earth Sciences research paper, he suggested that the temperature rise could be caused by a series of great earthquakes.

Global warming is one of the pressing issues facing civilization. It is widely believed to be caused by human activity, which increases the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, this view does not explain why temperatures are sometimes somewhat abrupt.

In the Arctic, one of the drivers of climate warming is the release of methane from permafrost and gas hydrates dispersed in the shelf region. Since researchers began monitoring temperatures in the Arctic, the region has experienced two periods of sudden warming: the first in the 1920s and 1930s, and then beginning in 1980 and continuing to the present day.

Leopold Lubkovsky, the author of the study mentioned in this story, is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and head of the MIPT Geophysical Research Laboratory in the Arctic and the continental margins of the World Ocean. In his paper, the scientist hypothesized that sudden changes in unexplained temperature may be caused by geodynamic factors. Specifically, he referred to a series of great earthquakes in the Aleutian Arc, the closest seismically active region to the North Pole.

To test his hypothesis, Lobkovsky had to answer three questions. First, did the dates of major earthquakes coincide with temperature jumps? Second, what mechanism enables lithospheric disturbances to propagate over more than 2,000 km from the Aleutian Islands to the Arctic Shelf? Third, how do these disturbances intensify methane emissions?

The answer to the first question came from an analysis of historical data. It turns out that the Aleutian Arch was indeed the site of two great earthquakes of the 20th century (more details below the text). Each of them preceded a sudden increase in temperature by about 15 to 20 years.

It took an excitation dynamics model in the lithosphere to answer the second question. The model used by the researcher describes the spread of so-called tectonic waves and is expected to travel at a speed of about 100 kilometers per year. This is consistent with the delay between each series of large earthquakes and the subsequent rise in temperature, as disturbances took 15 to 20 years to travel to more than 2,000 kilometers.

To answer the third question, the researcher proposed the following explanation: The deformation waves reaching the shelf region cause slight additional stresses in the lithosphere, which are sufficient to disrupt the internal structure of the stable gas hydrates and permafrost that store the captured methane. This results in the release of methane gas into the shelf water and the atmosphere, thus warming the climate in the region due to the greenhouse effect.

“There is a clear relationship between large earthquakes in the Aleutian arc and the phases of climate warming. There is a mechanism to effectively transfer pressures in the lithosphere at appropriate velocities. These added pressures are capable of destroying stable gas hydrates and permafrost., Releasing methane. Each of the three components in this scheme It is logical and lends itself to mathematical and physical interpretation. Most importantly, it explains a known fact – the sudden rise in anomalous temperatures in the Arctic – which has remained unaccounted for by the models, “Lobkovsky commented.

According to the researcher, his model will benefit from the discussion and is likely to be improved, and there is much more to be done to confirm or exclude the proposed mechanism.

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The research mentioned in this story was conducted at MIPT with the support of the Russian Science Foundation, Grant No. 20-17-00140.

A series of two great earthquakes. The first earthquake began with a magnitude 8 earthquake in 1899 in the eastern part of the Aleutian Arc, followed by two other great earthquakes in the western part of the islands, with a magnitude of 8.3 and 8.4. The second series began with an 8.6 magnitude earthquake in 1957, followed by an Alaska earthquake of 9.3 magnitude in 1964. The following year, an 8.7 magnitude earthquake struck the western part of the arc. Each of these devastating seismic events had underground sources spanning hundreds of kilometers.

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