Explaining the Storegga Slide

Bryn, Petter; Berg, K.; Forsberg, Carl Fredrik; Solheim, Anders; Kvalstad, Tore J.

doi:10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2004.12.003

Cited by 388 publications

(183 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…One of the largest exposed submarine landslides in the ocean is the Storegga Slide in the Norwegian continental margin (Bryn et al, 2005;Mienert et al, 2000Mienert et al, , 2005. The slide excavated on average the top 250 m of sediment over a swath hundreds of kilometers wide, stretching half-way from Norway to Greenland.…”

Section: Observationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change

2007

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Abstract. Methane frozen into hydrate makes up a large reservoir of potentially volatile carbon below the sea floor and associated with permafrost soils. This reservoir intuitively seems precarious, because hydrate ice floats in water, and melts at Earth surface conditions. The hydrate reservoir is so large that if 10% of the methane were released to the atmosphere within a few years, it would have an impact on the Earth's radiation budget equivalent to a factor of 10 increase in atmospheric CO 2 .Hydrates are releasing methane to the atmosphere today in response to anthropogenic warming, for example along the Arctic coastline of Siberia. However most of the hydrates are located at depths in soils and ocean sediments where anthropogenic warming and any possible methane release will take place over time scales of millennia. Individual catastrophic releases like landslides and pockmark explosions are too small to reach a sizable fraction of the hydrates. The carbon isotopic excursion at the end of the Paleocene has been interpreted as the release of thousands of Gton C, possibly from hydrates, but the time scale of the release appears to have been thousands of years, chronic rather than catastrophic.The potential climate impact in the coming century from hydrate methane release is speculative but could be comparable to climate feedbacks from the terrestrial biosphere and from peat, significant but not catastrophic. On geologic timescales, it is conceivable that hydrates could release as much carbon to the atmosphere/ocean system as we do by fossil fuel combustion.

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Section: Observationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One is the rapid accumulation of glacial sediment shed by the Fennoscandian ice sheet (Bryn et al, 2005). As explained above, rapid sediment loading traps pore water in the sediment column faster than it can be expelled by the increasing sediment load.…”

Section: Inferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change

2007

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“…margin is the third failure in this otherwise quiet period. Laberg et al (2003) suggest that a contourite underlying the Traenadjupet slide acted as a mechani- Flemings, 2000;Bryn et al, 2005;Leynaud et al, 2007). A delay time is 1026 necessary for the fluid migration to take place which mainly depends on the 1027 permeability of the sediment as well as the distance the fluid has to travel, and 1028 may involve several thousand to a million years (Dugan and Flemings, 2000;1029Dugan, 2012.…”

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confidence: 99%

Timing and frequency of large submarine landslides: implications for understanding triggers and future geohazard

Urlaub¹,

Talling²,

Masson³

2013

Quaternary Science Reviews

172

164

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Large submarine landslides can have serious socioeconomic consequences as they have the potential to cause tsunamis and damage seabed infrastructure. It is important to understand the frequency of these landslides, and how that frequency is related to climate-driven factors such as sea level or sedimentation rate, in order to assess their occurrence in the future. Recent studies have proposed that more landslides occur during periods of sea level rise and lowstand, or during periods of rapid sedimentation. In this contribution we test these hypotheses by analysing the most comprehensive global data set of ages for large (> 1km 3 ) late Quaternary submarine landslides that has been compiled to date. We include the uncertainties in each landslide age that arise from both the dating technique, and the typically larger uncertainties that result from the position of the samples used for dating. Contrary to the hypothesis that continental slope stability is linked to sea level change, the data set does not show statistically significant patterns, trends or clusters in landslide abundance. If such a link between sea level and landslide frequency exists it is too weak to be detected using the available global data base. It is possible that controlling factors vary between different geographical areas, and their role is therefore hidden * Corresponding author Email address: m.urlaub@noc.soton.ac.uk (Morelia Urlaub)Preprint submitted to Elsevier March 1, 2013in a global data set, or that the uncertainties within the dates is too great to see an underlying correlation. Our analysis also shows that there is no evidence for an immediate influence of rapid sedimentation on slope stability as failures tend to occur several thousand years after periods of increased sedimentation rates. The results imply that there is not a strong global correlation of landslide frequency with sea level changes or increases in local sedimentation rate, based on the currently available ages for large submarine landslides.

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“…Evidence of two relatively recent tsunamis from SMFs (Storegga, 8200 BP, and Grand Banks in 1929) in these glacially dominated, northern regions suggests that the present-day hazard here may be high. However, where triggering of failure is mainly through glacioisostatic rebound, the decline in seismicity may well result in the hazard today not being as great as perceived (as proposed by Bryn et al (2005)). Climate preconditioning of sediment failure is recognized in many regions of the Atlantic.…”

Section: (A) Temporal Relationships Between Climate Change and Smfsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Submarine mass failures as tsunami sources: their climate control

Tappin

2010

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Recent research on submarine mass failures (SMFs) shows that they are a source of hazardous tsunamis, with the tsunami magnitude mainly dependent on water depth of failure, SMF volume and failure mechanism, cohesive slump or fragmental landslide. A major control on the mechanism of SMFs is the sediment type, together with its post-depositional alteration. The type of sediment, fine- or coarse-grained, its rate of deposition together with post-depositional processes may all be influenced by climate. Post-depositional processes, termed sediment ‘preconditioning’, are known to promote instability and failure. Climate may also control the triggering of SMFs, for example through earthquake loading or cyclic loading from storm waves or tides. Instantaneous triggering by other mechanisms such as fluid overpressuring and hydrate instability is controversial, but is here considered unlikely. However, these mechanisms are known to promote sediment instability. SMFs occur in numerous environments, including the open continental shelf, submarine canyon/fan systems, fjords, active river deltas and convergent margins. In all these environments there is a latitudinal variation in the scale of SMFs. The database is limited, but the greatest climate influence appears to be in high latitudes where glacial/interglacial cyclicity has considerable control on sedimentation, preconditioning and triggering. Consideration of the different types of SMFs in the context of their climate controls provides additional insight into their potential hazard in sourcing tsunamis. For example, in the Atlantic, where SMFs are common, the tsunami hazard under the present-day climate may not be as great as their common occurrence suggests.

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Explaining the Storegga Slide

Cited by 388 publications

References 25 publications

Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change

Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change

Timing and frequency of large submarine landslides: implications for understanding triggers and future geohazard

Submarine mass failures as tsunami sources: their climate control

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