[LEAPSECS] Comments on predictions for this century

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

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In message <E517A9AF6A49AA479D731EC5F891C0BB010A6217E1 at echo.usno.navy.mil>, "Ma
tsakis, Demetrios" writes:

>I am unaware of any authoritative computations about whether the
>very recent rotational speed-up is due to what is loosely called
>"global warming" or if it is a classical decadal fluctuation related
>to the motion of the Earth's core.

We have had almost overlapping hiatuses in global warming and
leap seconds in the last 10-15 years.

Volcanoes have just now been implicated in about 1/6th of the former:

   http://www.livescience.com/43588-volcanoes-global-warming-pause.html

This makes my coincidence detector rattle and googling a little bit
found this article:

   http://theconversation.com/could-there-really-be-such-a-thing-as-volcano-season-32060

If nothing else it sounds like we may indeed live in interesting times.

I can see the earth rotation <--> volcano eruption link going both ways,
as a matter of stresses in one direction and lubrication in the other.

As interesting as this might be intellectually, if melting ice-sheets
case an order of magnitude more volcano eruptions leap seconds will
not be our most pressing problem.

Poul-Henning

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