Vast magma reservoir found hiding beneath Yellowstone park

newscientist.com ^ | Andy Coghlan

[BenLurkin]

A massive chamber holding enough magma to fill the Grand Canyon more than 11 times over is hiding beneath the steaming volcanic system of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

We knew of a smaller magma chamber closer to surface, holding some 10,000 cubic kilometres of magma and feeding heat upwards. The newly discovered reservoir sits under it and has a volume of 46,000 cubic kilometres. Together, the two form the largest known magma reservoir in the world.

"We can't say definitively that this is the biggest magma reservoir in the world, but we currently don't know of any other that has been imaged that is as large as the two we see beneath Yellowstone," says Fan-Chi Lin of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

The discovery of the much larger reservoir at a depth of 20 to 50 kilometres helps to solve a long-running puzzle relating to the carbon dioxide spewing out from the huge steaming caldera volcano at Yellowstone, creating ripples of tiny earthquakes it does so. The problem is that the upper magma chamber is much too small to account for the 45 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide discharged daily.

"If you combine the upper and lower crustal magma reservoirs, it better accounts for the amount of carbon dioxide coming out of the ground at Yellowstone," says Lin.

... So how did we not notice this chamber before?

...

Features at the depths where the new chamber was found have been difficult to study because the speed of waves from below are dictated by rock closer to the surface. Lin's team got round this by combining readings from local, shallower, and distant, deeper tremors, allowing the distorting effects of the rocks nearer the surface to be filtered out.

[17th Miss Regt]

45 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide discharged daily

Why hasn't this outrage been outlawed already?

[mountn man]

[Bryanw92]

>>Why hasn’t this outrage been outlawed already?

Progs should go protest. First a volcano blows up on Erf Day and now this. If the Erf isn’t careful, the deniers will start to think that CO2 is naturally-occuring instead of just being a pollutant from SUVs and power plants.

[gorush]

When this sucker blows life will change for millions, if not billions, of people. It may happen during our lifetime, it may not. It is very overdue geologically speaking.

[Slyfox]

How soon before some ErfDay idiot blames humans for the huge magma reservoir?

[MaxMax]

All Aboard, climate deniers!

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

We could harness this and supply enough geothermal energy to the Western U.S. for the next 250 years but noooooo....the envirowackos won’t let us.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

I may retire to the Yellowstone Area.

Better to be quick-fried to a crackly crunch than baked to a delicate crunch ... or slowly frozen into a block of ash and ice.

[GeronL]

haven’t we been told about this for a while now?

[who_would_fardels_bear]

The problem with geothermal is not enviro-fascists.

I think it's that any kind of piping you put in there to capture the energy quickly deteriorates or clogs up with mineral deposits.

[Jan_Sobieski]

Calamity has befallen every other nation in history that killed its children. Are we next?

Revelation 6:12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo , there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; 13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. 14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together ; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; 16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: 17 For the great day of his wrath is come ; and who shall be able to stand ?

[ExCTCitizen]

Ted Cruz fault... :-)

Is that soon enough?? :-)

[Salvey]

magma? smegma?

[markomalley]

This is new?

[Cicero]

That’s more carbon dioxide in one second than Al Gore farts in a whole year.

[Zhang Fei]

Which movie do you prefer - Dante’s Peak or Volcano?

[9thLife]

A vast, right-wing magma reservoir?

[Political Junkie Too]

Tell them that fracking caused it.

-PJ

[mountn man]

Dante's Peak!

It's not even close.

Every time I'm flipping thru the channels and come across it, I usually stop and watch the remainder of the movie.