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Evidence Suggests Updated Timeline Towards Yellowstone's Supervolcano Eruption (nytimes.com)
Camel Pilot writes: Geologist have been aware of fresh magma moving in the Yellowstone's super volcano system. Previously this was thought to precede an eruption by thousands of years. Recent evidence by Hannah Shamloo, a graduate student at Arizona State University, demonstrates that perhaps the timeline from the underground basin filling to eruption is more on the scale of decades. A super volcano eruption has the power to alter life's story on this earth and even destroy all life on a continent. In light of this, it seems like a good time to invest some effort and resources into finding ways to prepare, delay or deflect the potential threat. The research was presented at the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) 2017 conference in Portland, Oregon.
Based on the debris from the last two Yellowstone eruptions, over 80% of the continental US, most of unpopulated western Canada, and some of northern Mexico would experience significant ashfall. Weather patterns around the world would be disrupted for years. It would be a larger release of energy into the atmosphere than the most generous estimates of total animal activity since any records of human existence.
Much like most of the other doomsday scenarios, some areas would become uninhabitable, and everywhere else would need to adapt.
Shouldn't we wait until most people are no longer worried about a global warming catastrophe before we create a new armageddon story?
The Yellowstone hot spot has been a cause for concern for a long, long time. It's also one of those things we can't do much about.
We also have case history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... as the hotspot travels and does it's thing. No need for humans to "create" anything.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The scientist said that within the human lifte time we might be able to see the effects of what leads to a supervolcano. Basically within decades we could start seeing signs of a supervolcano that might erupt in 100+ years. That's what the article says.
If you're white he's saying it's your fault.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They are not saying it's a matter of decades from now when it will blow. It about how long it took for magma to move into the system until an eruption. The current study says decades, versus a previous study of another volcano that said millenniums.
There's still debate about about pinning down "the precise trigger of the last Yellowstone event."
None of these super volcanos are going to erupt anytime soon. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...
So clam down. You're much more likely to get hit by car crossing a street then by a super volcano.
The geologic timescale is exactly why the odds are against an eruption in the next few decades. And with an eruption that massive, there are likely to be years of very clear and indisputable warning signs all over the region. I highly doubt a supervolcano eruption will catch civilization by surprise.
As a recent (by geologic scales) example, no one was surprised by Mt St Helens actually erupting. Everyone knew it was coming. Only the precise timing was unknown. And the way it erupted was surprising, of course. But at this point, scientists are pretty good at predicting impending eruptions. I just don't think predicting one decades out is anything more than speculation, considering that this is a pretty radical departure from conventional wisdom.
For extra-ordinary claims like this, you'll need fairly extraordinary evidence. And not to impune Ms. Shamloo, but this is a grad student we're talking about, not a professional volcanologist with decades of actual experience. As such, it's wise to consider the source of this theory in regards to its feasibility.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I remember Mt St. Helens very well, because I was working as a technician in the lab which sent seismometers there. It's an irrelevant example, because the Mt. St. Helens event is something that could be prepared for with a few weeks warning.
The larger scale the event, the longer you need to plan for it. A supervolcano can eject several thousand cubic kilometers of material. Mt St. Helens ejected 0.21 km^3. The last Yellowstone super-eruption was roughly twelve thousand time larger. If it happened today it would bury everything from California to Chicago in 10 feet of ash. It would effectively halt agriculture worldwide for several years. Given that the world's global food reserve is only adequate (if perfectly distributed) for 73 days, how many decades of planning do you think we'd need to be ready? How much of that time would be spent debating whether this was real, then debating on who was going to pay?
Also, I'm not sure you understand what "geologic timescale" means. The usual unit of time used is the Ma or Mega annum. Decades don't enter into it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
We are talking about Yellowstone, so consideration is needed as to how such preventative actions may affect the features which attract visitors.
I certainly hope you forgot your </sarcasm> tag there, since given the choice between "Yellowstone is an uninhabitable crater" and "Yellowstone is the caldera of the supervolcano that destroyed humanity", I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the former option—the one where humans still exist—would be better for tourism.
Last I had heard, they were estimating that an eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano could result in 10 feet (i.e. 3 m) of ash being deposited in Houston. Even without considering the life-ending clouds that would cover the earth for decades, that much ash on the ground would be more than enough to end a civilization for the simple reasons that you wouldn't be able to breathe, move about, or work the land.
Now, for folks who aren't intimately familiar with US geography, this may sound like yet another tragedy for the people of Houston after the recent hurricane that ravaged the city, but that's missing the point entirely. The point here is that Houston is nowhere close to Yellowstone. Nowhere close.
To put it in perspective for any Europeans, the distance from Yellowstone to Houston (i.e. ~1300 miles or ~2100 km as the crow flies) is roughly the same as the distance from Amsterdam to Moscow (or London to Bucharest or Paris to Istanbul). Another way of putting it is that if an eruption of this magnitude happened in Munich, you'd have to travel to the Arctic Circle, the middle of the Sahara, or somewhere beyond Moscow before you'd see less ash than what I described. For any Aussies, it'd mean that if an eruption happened in Alice Springs, the entire country would be under that much ash or more. You'd have to get pretty far into Papua New Guinea or Indonesia before you'd see any less than I described.
All of which is to say, we're talking about life-ending amounts of ash being deposited across entire continents, so preventative measures may be necessary if we want there to be tourism, not just in Yellowstone, but anywhere on the planet.
The drilling plans I've seen is to come in at a very shallow angle. So shallow that the drills would actually start outside Yellowstone itself, intersecting with the magma chamber miles underground on its side.
This is supposedly far less prone to cause destabilization risks..