Arrgh. Three days ago, a New York Times article reported:
Yellowstone’s last supereruption occurred 631,000 years ago. And it’s not the planet’s only buried supervolcano. Scientists suspect that a supereruption scars the planet every 100,000 years, causing many to ask when we can next expect such an explosive planet-changing event.
To answer that question, scientists are seeking lessons from Yellowstone’s past. And the results have been surprising. They show that the forces that drive these rare and violent events can move much more rapidly than volcanologists previously anticipated.
The early evidence, presented at a recent volcanology conference, shows that Yellowstone’s most recent supereruption [let’s use “caldera forming eruption”] was sparked when new magma moved into the system only decades before the eruption. Previous estimates assumed that the geological process that led to the event took millenniums to occur.
There are some ambiguities in the text:
- every 100,000 years.
This should be worldwide, I believe. I’ve never seen a reference to Yellowstone having caldera forming eruptions that frequently.
- can move much more rapidly
This refers to the time from when the volcano starts the sequence of events that leads to an eruption, not the time before the sequence starts.
The third paragraph helps explain what they’re trying to say.
Unfortunately, from that article, the follow-on stories have spawned headlines like:
Yellowstone Supervolcano May Rumble to Life Faster Than Thought
Yellowstone Volcano Could Erupt Much Sooner Than Previously Thought, According to New Study
I’m writing this to tell the WUWT community that “No, don’t worry about a supervolcano eruption at Yellowstone anytime soon.” And spread the word. If you must, feel free to worry about a more conventional eruption (there are places that show some 23 layers of ash fall since the current caldera formed). I finally visited the Norris Geyser Basin the last time I was there, that place is creepy, feel free to worry about a steam explosion. Only half the basin was open the other half was closed because the ground was hot enough to melt shoe soles and there could have been a steam explosion at any time.
The hottest and most acidic part is called the Porcelain Basin, and the thermophilic bacteria and algae can’t live there, leaving the area even more uninviting:
Norris Geyser Basin
The paper that started this is Hannah Shamloo, Christy Till: Petrologic Insights into the Timing and Triggering Mechanism of the Lava Creek Tuff Supereruption, Yellowstone Caldera, WY, USA. It’s paywalled, and the abstract doesn’t provide much information beyond making it clear that they’re talking about activity leading up to an eruption.
A paper I frequently cite (and lose, and find) that makes it clear there’s no caldera forming eruption in sight, is the USGS’s Preliminary Assessment of Volcanic and Hydrothermal Hazards in Yellowstone National Park and Vicinity. While the paper is a decade old now, the new paper doesn’t affect it much.
Update: Snopes has written a useful article on the subject, titled New Research Suggests Massive Yellowstone Eruption Could Occur Sooner Than Expected?, subtitled Research documenting chemical changes in the Yellowstone magma chamber prior to a past eruption does not affect an eruption’s future probability.
Post posting edits: Added forgotten link to the Shamloo and Till paper, fixed typo (erupotion) and put the editorial note within [] instead of (), added update to reference the Snopes article.
Good stuff here for assembling my Dirt Model of Climate.
Because we hear that California is burning, ‘northern forest’ is also burning and succumbing to disease (pine beetle)
Was it true that the indigenous people had a catastrophic plague just before the Europeans arrived?
Also what about the Sahara, supposedly green and lovely 6000 years ago? Or Australia, 30,000 years ago?
Or Syria & Lebanon 3000 years ago?
My Big Question is, How long does dirt last? How long can plants continue to extract food from any given patch of crumbling rock before their food is all gone? (Wake up you there at the back, plants need more than CO2 and water)
Dirt Theory of Climate says that plants determine what happens inside ‘weather’ via their control of water – the thermal inertia it gives to a landscape and of course its evapo-transpiration effects.
The trees that are dying of pine beetle could have been dying from any number of things by the simple fact they are becoming extremely malnourished. Their food supply is fading fast. Same with animal critters, feed them poorly and they become ‘poorly’
Also a generous food supply would have enabled them to lay down a thick carpet of ‘dead trees & stuff’ which would retain huge amounts of water and become extremely resistant to catching fire.
That carpet is not there, thermal inertia is gone, evaporative cooling is gone, a damp forest floor is gone and so, the trees burn.
(Even before the forest is filled with Petrol Bushes and liberally sprinkled with electric arc & spark welders. Mother Nature is gonna give us humans a *really* Big Slap one of these times and by fook, are we gonna deserve it.)
And here we have an idea of how old the North American dirt is because things like Yellowstone are what makes new dirt and covers over the old (worn out, weathered and nutrient-free) stuff.
At 630K years, North American dirt is very old, very poor and its no wonder the trees burn, the beetles bore and the people take badly. Yes, I mean obesity, heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune disease, cancer and dementia.
But but but, it gets boring beyond belief to hear the oft repeated cry ‘life expectancy is greater than ever’
Even more tedious in the belief that cows fart, CO2 makes plants grow ‘better’ and is a GHG
Yesterday on the landing page of MSN UK, they ran an obituary for a celebrity who had recently passed away and to fill out the story, a photo gallery of 148 other celebrities who had died inside the last year. Since Christmas or 12 months I do not know,
The average age that those 148 celebrities died at was 72
Colour me unimpressed, The Bible talks of ‘three score plus ten’
Remind me, just *how much* money is spent. annually or per lifetime, on healthcare is the Western world.
To get 2 years of extra life, typically spent in these modern times with all the physical and mental capacities of a cabbage……..?
It’s arguable we need a volcano, a big one, a little more urgently than a cure for cancer.
(Simply not eating vegetable oil would go a long way in the cancer fight anyway – that’s one little reason why we need that slap from Ma Nature)
The soil in SW Australia is probably the oldest in the world. Millions of years since being “refreshed”. It’s also a very lush place with giant Tingle trees and a few hundred other kinds as well. I’ll credit that volcanoes do enrich the soil. I walked in the lava flow from the last eruption in Bali. It’s a very fertile place now chock full of farms growing food 12 months a year.
Just to make these comments a little less US centered….
There’s a supervolcano in the Naples region which is showing some alarming signs:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/naples-supervolcano-campi-flegrei-eruption-dangers-risk-caldera-italy-hot-zone-magma-pozzuoli-a7959046.html
The USGS defines “supervolcano” as something that has either a VEI 8+ eruption or releases 1000 mi^3 of magma. See http://geology.com/stories/13/volcanic-explosivity-index/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano lists the biggest eruption from Campi Flegri at 240 km^3, i.e. VEI 7. What’s your reference for calling it a supervolcano?
Took two full days to explore Yellowstone this summer. Been to most of the National Parks but not Yellowstone. Hit all of the features within easy walking distance of the roads except the obsidian cliff. No parking near that place because of road work. Two days not even enough to really scratch the surface but was lucky enough to see two Grizzly bears in that short time. One of them digging roots on a hill side about 30 yard of us. Will be going back again. What a magnificent place.
Yellowstone is one of the few places where I don’t cringe when I hear the word “unique.” Or, these days, diversity.
Everyone should try to get there at least once.
A few of my photos from my 2003 trip are at http://wermenh.com/biketour/yellowstone.html , only a two day visit, but I had a good idea what to show my wife and daughter and what I hadn’t been able to see before.
http://wermenh.com/biketour/images/P8100440_reseeded.jpg
I am so old that seeing bears was a normal part of the Yellowstone experience.
Bears are omnivorous.
My short experience with beekeeping end with a bear.
Remember Bear Jams?
Sounds like there’s lots of energy to be harvested, what’s the plan?
It is assumed that some 30% in the Earth’s surface magnetic variability is due to change in electro magnetic coupling between outer core and the mantle.
Comparing the surface radial magnetic field variability at Yellowstone and at the North Pole (Yellowstone is at midway between North Pole and the Equator both on the left-hand scale) it appears the last ‘critical’ point (green line right-hand scale) was around 3500 BC, but we may be approaching another one, still possibly 500 years away to get to the previous peak. Since Yellowstone didn’t go off in 3500 BC it is unlikely to erupt around 2500AD.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Yellowstone.gif
For those intrigued by the ‘out of the trend’ peak around year 0 BC it was actually 30-40 BC (scale resolution is 10 years).
I would recommend Volcano cafe. Post bu Carl: June 2017.
http://www.volcanocafe.org/grimstone-vs-yellowvotn-battle-of-the-giants/
“What is interesting is that Yellowstone’s magma reservoir is now deemed to be larger than previously believed. It is now rated at between 200 to 600 cubic kilometers. Problem is just that most of it is not in the form of melt, between 85 to 95 percent is solid. Only 5 to 15 percent is now believed to be molten. This means that Yellowstone can’t erupt in its current state.
And if we assume a maximum intrusion rate of 1 cubic kilometer per year it would still take between 68 years and 228 years at best until Yellowstone reached the presumed barrier for when an eruption can occur. On top of that there is no evidence at all that magma is intruding into the magma reservoir at that speed. If it had done that Yellowstone would erupt quite often (every few years or so). In reality the magma influx seems to be miniscule at Yellowstone, if it is even influxing at all.”
Hate to say it but Snopes is not exactly the best information site. It’s like getting stock advice from…Jim Cramer.
For the sort of stuff I get from Snopes they’ve been quite good. I was especially pleased we both homed in on the NY Times article, though the trail was an easy one to follow. Perhaps you can come up with examples, preferably with science/engineering topic.
The reason we have these volcanoes is that the Juan de Fuca plate and the Gordo Plate just south of it, as subducting under North America.
http://www.neptunecanada.ca/dotAsset/2449.jpg
These and other plates are responsible for the Rocky Mountains and the subducted plate extends 100s of kms under North America. This has been happening for over 100 million years.
http://rallen.berkeley.edu/img/3dCasc_large-trim.jpeg
The subducted plates slowly melt as they are pushed into the Mantle and being oceanic crust, it is lighter, has more water content and is more likely to melt into magma and produce volcanoes. The Juan de Fuca is responsible for the Cascade volcanoes, the Columbia River super-Eruptions and probably Yellowstone as well. Yellowstone is not a magma plume, other than the fact the Juan de Fuca plate is melting below it.
http://rallen.berkeley.edu/pub/2010obrebski/ObrebskiCoverFig.jpg
There has been a huge earthquake swarm over the last few months just south of Yellowstone at Soda Springs, Idaho which is the site of ancient volcanoes as well. Maybe something is happening here.
Good overview. Thanks. I’m leaving the Pacific NW for Chile soon. The volcanoes there behave better, although the earthquakes are worse. Or at least are until the next Cascadia Subduction Zone megathrust quake and tsunami. If just the southern end of the zone slips, we suffer a Mag 8 quake. If both the southern and northern, as happens about half the time, the last in AD 1700, then a Mag 9 or greater causes a megatsunami to hit CA, OR, WA and BC.
Good stuff. Where did you obtain the info?
Place your cursor over each image to see the source.
On mobile, no cursor, still got it.
‘erupotion’ is not a spelling error. It’s a very important potion that’s obtained from the rare and mighty eru tree that only grows in eru lands. The important potion derived from the important eru tree (which wouldn’t be important if it didn’t produce the important potion called ‘erupotion’) is used for very important purposes which is what makes the potion so important.
I like your position on the non-impotent and important potion from the purposed portion of the eru.
Europe’s Neapolitan supervolcano claims three members of a family, leaving only a horrified seven year-old boy:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-italy-rsquo-s-ominous-supervolcano-erupt-soon/
Since we know it will erupt eventually maybe we should look at ways to survive / adapt. Maybe such an investigation would give us insight about surviving and adapting to any global natural disaster that might happen….
Who is ‘we’ and ‘us’?
Since you will already be dead, adapting will not be necessary.
This falls under the general category of folks who put solar panels on the roofs because we might run out of fossil fuel some day.
in belgium we had an article on this too in the press. Amazing to see what the press made of it in the USA…
what we had was
“eruption of yellowstone may happen faster as expected” (the bait link)
but second header was “scientist found that the eruption seuence may happen faster instead of the presumed hundreds of years”.
the article was pretty neat: it said the following main topics:
– the finding is the eruption seaquence not the interval between eruptions
– yellowstone erupts every roughly 600,000 years
– the earth sees a supervolcabno eruption roughly every 100,000 years as yellowstone is not the only supervolcano
it was for a mainstream press article pretty accurate after reading the paper….
moral of the story in a more humoristic way: yes the earth can sneeze big time it will burp and rumble big time, it will say boom big time and… we can have a rock on our head from out of space big time….
when it happens it happens
we only can adapt 🙂
Hey we need more eruptions to cause the earth to cool even more!!
wait…wait..
something wicked this way comes!
oh it’s Al Gore….
“631,000 years ago.
3 digits of accuracy, are the measuring mechanisms that accurate?”
Let me explain why that is a stupid question by asking another. Do you have food, water, and a plan to be without power for 5 days?
As an engineer who started using a slide rule, this number would be 6.31 x 10^5. However, design criteria for natural events is 2×10^2.
In terms of experience this even during a human life span, 631,000 years is an insignificant number and accuracy does not matter.
There seems to be an inverse relationship to what folks find interesting in science and what is important in science. Science tells us when water freezes. Mundane but very significant.
I do not expect a NYT headline, “Frost Warning, Who Will Die”
Yellowstone is a batholith in progress. It’s not in a subduction zone. As soon as I see ‘Super’ as a prefix (as in superfood) I know someone is trying to sell me something.
Supervolcano is used (and apparently defined) by the USGS. Don’t worry, they won’t sell you a used volcano, and I recommend you avoid new volcanoes for at least 100,000 years.
I’m no geologists or volcanologist but somehow I suspect that a massive eruption at Yellowstone would proceeded by many events including smaller volcanic eruptions, before the big one comes, or not. This is not the impression though that such articles give. They always seem to leave me with the impression that if Yellowstone goes it will come as one big massive eruption proceeded only by more minor events like increased earthquake frequency and intensity, land form changes, increased releases of gases, and blow outs at the geysers and mud pots.
Well, there was the movie and things went boom real quick and even the girl got dead so you can’t argue with that and maybe we should worry?
Here’s a great site for monitoring earthquakes east of the Rockies:
http://folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu/REQ3/html/index.html
Another very useful site for monitoring disasters arising from natural and/or human causes:
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php
Both sites allow you to zoom in/out as desired.
QuakeFeed is an app that monitors earthquakes. You can set the timeframe you want, last day, week, month, etc.
Geology is scary. Bigly, bigly scary.
New Madrid fault could go off again, 9 on the Richter scale in 1811, St Louis would be toast.
Wasatch fault is overdue for a quake near Salt Lake City.
Las Palmas Island (part of the Canary Islands) could drop a chunk off if volcanos continue, sending a tsunami that would go 15 miles inland on the US eastern seaboard.
San Andreas!
Etc., etc., etc.