The Lost Continents of Atlantis and Mu reappear: Disruption to Transport

Question

In a single event, the lost continents of Atlantis and Mu arise from the deeps over the course of about half an hour, accompanied by a low-magnitude earthquake felt worldwide.

For the purpose of this question (though in my story they are not so simple), let us assume that both Atlantis and Mu are effectively circular landmasses with diameters of 2,000 km, and that their points of appearance correspond to their centre. Each has a ring of mountains around their centre as high as the Himalayas and 1,000 km in diameter.

Atlantis appears at the Atlantic Pole of Inaccessibility, 24.1851°N 43.3704°W.

Mu appears at Point Nemo, the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, at 49.0273°S 123.4345°W.

My question is: How disruptive would the reappearance of these two continents would be to modern transportation?

Answers should include the potential for aircraft or ships to be lost during the reappearance event, and how long it would take the authorities and news media to provide warnings to shipping and the general public.

EDIT:

1. Sea levels do not change as a result. There are no tsunamis.

2. I am not concerned with government responses beyond the timing of warnings to operators of vessels or aircraft already in the affected areas.

Edit 2:

To be clearer, I am interested in the numbers of vessels that may be damaged or lost as a result of this occurence, and the timeline for public awareness of this event.

I am not interested in the potential political or climatic ramifications. Anything that happens more than 12 hours after global public awareness of the event is out of scope.

Answer 1

This is kind of an odd question but I'll take a crack at answering it in the most straight forward way I know how.

By drawing a 2000km circle in the middle of the Atlantic and counting how many ships are in it.

Looks like Atlantis takes out around 100 ships if it appears in the middle of the day (I realize its not at exactly 24.1851°N 43.3704°W, 3d projections on 2d surfaces are weird, so give or take 20-30 ships)

And the same for point nemo Mu might take out a couple of research vessels and some fool lost on a yacht.

Zero planes are getting even remotely damaged by either island, planes flying over the Atlantic and Pacific are cruising at much higher altitudes than the Himalayas.

As for response time? Pretty damn fast.

I'm going off the basis that underneath each island its connected to the surrounding sea floor, the Atlantic has an average depth of around 3.6km, you say in a comment that each island rises in half an hour to its final height with the mountain tops reaching 8,8km (The Himalayas) for a combined height of 12.4km rising in the span of 30 minutes. Or 410m per minute.

There is no way in hell ships aren't going to notice parts of the ocean floor decreasing in depth by a kilometer in 3 minutes. Anything with sonar in that area is already sending messages up the chain of command that something is wrong.

Within 5 minutes NOAA is losing their minds because DART and Tsunami Warning Centers are indicating a large portion of the Atlantic/Pacific sea floor is moving upwards very fast.

Earthquake warnings are going out to every country bordering the Atlantic/Pacific to prepare for an apocalyptic seismic event.

In under 10 minutes, mountains have started jutting out of the ocean, by this point every major government is monitoring the situation in whatever way they can. I'd imagine most available weather satellites over the Atlantic/Pacific have captured something and intelligence agencies likely have high resolution satellite images of each new island within minutes.

410m per minute is very fast when it comes to changes in topography, especially changes that are 2000km wide. Even with very early warnings, I'd say half the ships wouldn't have time to divert off course far enough to escape the islands. But certainly once NOAA is involved, any ships in the Atlantic would be diverted pretty fast so I doubt any other ships would be lost unless they were sailing with zero communication equipment and were literally blind.

By the time Atlantis and Mu have risen halfway, the entire world would be on alert and images of these islands would be circulating in every major government and possibly to the media.

Answer 2

Answer: minimal disruption in the south, huge disruption in the north. The appearance of a new continent in the North Atlantic would disrupt the busiest sea lane routes in the world i.e North America to Europe due to the sudden need for all shipping to now take long circuitous voyages around the new continent. Air routes would be disrupted temporarily while adjusting for the changes in flight altitude required. Meanwhile shipping routes in the South Pacific and to a lesser extent air routes would only suffer relatively minor disruption overall compared to the northern hemisphere because the location of point Nemo would basically only effect flights to and from Australia South America etc

Once everyone realized there were no major geological repercussions i.e. no massive tsunami's (which there would be) no sunlight blotting volcanic eruptions (which there would be) and no catastrophic changes in sea levels (which there would be) and the minor issue of Gulf Stream having to radically change course? Shipping would adjust in relatively short order although the greatly increased cost of shipping goods (due to the much longer voyage times) would lead to a rise in global inflation.

There would also huge disruption to communications because a large number of transatlantic sub sea optical cables which would need to be replaced at great expense. Again the effect would be much less in the south given few cables pass through the relevant zone there.

Russia, America, Canada and the rest of Europe would probably also start a massive war over who 'owns' Atlantis and everyone would want to claim a piece. Same would happen in the South with China making a claim and everyone else trying to grab a share of Mu before it was too late.

EDIT: It has been pointed out I referred incorrectly to the Arctic POI instead of the Atlantic POI. That dramatically changes the answer re; disruption to sea lanes etc in the northern hemisphere. The answer remains largely unchanged int he southern hemisphere.

Answer 3

As far as aircraft are concerned, based on FlightAware's live tracking map; Atlantis is almost certainly going to cause disruption to a fair number of flights, maybe as many as ten could be trapped in the rising mountains and destroyed at any given time, if they are below their usual cruising altitude for any reason. In the case of Mu you would be unfortunate to effect even one flight.

In the case of surface shipping MarineTraffic's live map leads me to believe that the case is similar, Atlantis will cause major disruption with the uplift of dozens of ships; Mu might capture one directly, maybe.

In short Atlantis will be detected immediately due to the possible lose of many lives the definite lose of many ships and possibly some planes. Mu on the other hand may be detected immediately, but it's kind of unlikely. Mu does however lie on the direct flight path between Santiago Chile and several destinations in both New Zealand and Australia, there are a number of passenger flights each day. Mu will be detected the day it emerges even if it doesn't come up under/into anyone directly.

I would expect preliminary warnings to air traffic and shipping will go out to the relevant entities while Atlantis was still emerging from the waves. These warnings won't do the vehicles already in the new continents' footprint much good but they should be able divert further shipping and aircraft from entering the danger zone. Mu could well emerge entirely unseen but will be noted and warnings issues within hours.

That's assuming the continents need to be encountered by the ships and/or aircraft affected, in reality both will show up almost as soon as they start to move due to their disruption of both undersea cables and sea-level monitoring/tsunami warning systems like DART and GLOSS that use deep sea buoy networks.

Answer 4

Hundreds of ships lost, one major and several minor shipping lanes will require significantly longer routes.

The image below represents the current tracking information of ships in the Atlantic. A rough estimate of the number of ships which will end up grounded on the new 2000 km diameter continent is about 200. The information of a new continent appearing will be almost instantaneous, and would be reported by news agencies within minutes, although it may be a matter of hours to get that information to some affected ships without modern satellite communications. There is only one major shipping lane which will be significantly impacted. That lane goes from the straight of Gibraltar to the Panama Canal. Other minor lanes will also be impacted.

The situation in the pacific will be far less impactful, only an estimated 10-30 ships would be grounded by the new continent, based on the corresponding tracking information for the Pacific. No major lanes will be affected, only some very minor ones, and the news situation will be similar to that in the Atlantic.

Flights will be largely unaffected by what lies beneath them, except for the change in the wind patterns, but we're ignoring the climate impacts for the purpose of this question. There will also be an increased demand for flights going over these new continents filled with people who want to see (or visit when that becomes an option).