© Ian Hamling
A drawing looking south along the Taupo Volcanic Zone showing the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the North Island of New Zealand. Uplift of the surface measured by satellite radar and GPS suggests the presence of a magmatic body beneath the Bay of Plenty coast at a depth of 9.5 km
A drawing looking south along the Taupo Volcanic Zone showing the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the North Island of New Zealand. Uplift of the surface measured by satellite radar and GPS suggests the presence of a magmatic body beneath the Bay of Plenty coast at a depth of 9.5 km
Geophysicist Ian Hamling said that since 1950, enough magma to fill 80,000 Olympic-size swimming pools has squeezed up beneath the surface near the coastal town of Matata, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) southeast of Auckland.
A paper published Saturday in the online journal Science Advances outlines the findings. Hamling, the paper's lead author, said that while other parts of New Zealand have active volcanoes, there have been none near Matata for at least 400,000 years.
"It was quite a big surprise," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Using GPS data and satellite images, the scientists say they discovered an area of land about 400 square kilometers (154 square miles) has risen by 40 centimeters (16 inches) since 1950.
Hamling said a period of quick uplift between 2004 and 2011 likely triggered thousands of small earthquakes. Scientists had previously thought tectonic shifts caused the quakes.
Comment: El Nino is a climatological phenomenon that has been recorded for centuries. To attribute these disasters to "anthropogenic (man-made) global warming" is ridiculous. Planet Earth has its own cycles and rhythms. However, there may be a connection between man and natural earth events, but not as most people would think.
Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection