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16 comments on Anyone for insurance?

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Stuart Staniford on March 15, 2006 - 1:13am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Hmmm. I just found a very interesting paper:
We have investigated the interaction between large-scale plate driving forces, lithospheric structure, and the stresses induced by bending of the lithosphere as a result of glacial loading and unloading in the New Madrid seismic zone, eastern-central United States. The modeling shows that the removal of the Laurentide ice sheet that covered large parts of the northern United States until ca. 20 ka changed the stress field in the vicinity of New Madrid and caused seismic strain rates to increase by about three orders of magnitude. The modeling predicts that the high rate of seismic energy release observed during late Holocene time is likely to remain essentially unchanged for the next few thousand years.
This suggests melting the Greenland ice sheet might be bad for insurance companies from a whole additional perspective...
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joule on March 15, 2006 - 10:11am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I've seen some previous concerns about the effects of shifting many billions of tons of weight on the earth's surface as the result of glacial loading and unloading. Interesting!

It is a good reminder that our earth is less like rigid baseball and more like a very flexible and fragile water balloon that can be distorted relatively easily by the slightest of perturbations.

I am beginning to come to the conclusion that the earth is such a hopelessly complex and chaotic dynamic system that I seriously doubt we will ever succeed in developing a deterministic model that can accurately predict future conditions. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to gain a better understanding of what is going on, but on a certain level some things are literally unknowable.

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MUDLOGGER on March 15, 2006 - 5:32pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The phenomena is called Isostatic readjustment. It is happening in the North Sea and the Baltic. As Ice load is removed, the continental crust re-adjusts slowly over time and rises quite gently.
You get things like raised beaches. Northern Europe is not very tectonically active so seismic activity due to readjustment is not an issue. Except perhaps on the Great Glen Fault which stirs occasionally.

However (I seem to recall) there is evidence of Submarine slumping off Norway which , in the past may have created a Tsu-Nami that hit the UK very hard.

On the other side of the coin, The south east of the UK and the low countries are sinking slowly.Polar melt will be an issue for these areas. (Thats why the Dutch love boats).

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TN Granny on March 15, 2006 - 11:49am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks for this piece of information. I had been wondering if something like this were possible, but had not seen anything in print from someone who might actually know...
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gunnk on March 15, 2006 - 2:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
No, I don't think the Greenland ice melt will cause insurers too much trouble from a seismic point of view.

The huge ice shelf that covered northern North America caused stress changes when it melted IN THE AREAS IT PREVIOUSLY COVERED.  Greenland may have some seismic activity due to the change in load, but I'd be really surprised to see any activity elsewhere -- and there just isn't that much in insurance liability in Greenland!

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Stuart Staniford on March 16, 2006 - 5:10am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The New Madrid zone is in Missouri right? I don't think the Laurentide ice sheet got down that far. Wikipedia says it only got as far as Chicago in the last ice age.
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16 comments on Anyone for insurance?

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