What If the Yellowstone Supervolcano Erupts?

livescience.com ^ | June 02, 2012 11:42am ET | Natalie Wolchover |

[BenLurkin]

With enough warning, the states near Yellowstone could be evacuated, which would largely avoid a tremendous loss of life caused by the downpour of ash, the scientists said. But that's just in the short term; the aftermath would be the rub. For several days, ash would hang in the air, making it difficult to breathe. And that blanket of ash covering the country would smother vegetation and pollute the water supply, quickly leading to a nationwide food crisis. "A lot of people would perish," said Stephen Self, director of the Volcano Dynamics Group at the Open University in the U.K. He envisions American refugees lining up at the Mexican border.

...inhospitable conditions would persist in the midwestern U.S. for about a decade. "The records show that [new] vegetation starts to take hold about 10 years after supereruptions. It depends on how much rainfall the area receives, as rainfall is the main way you clear ash off the land..."

Based on the new models, the scientists now think the vast majority of Earth's species would weather a Yellowstone supereruption just fine (except, of course, for those knocked out due to proximity of the initial blast). They don't see any evidence in the geologic record of mass extinctions coinciding with supereruptions, and they don't predict extinctions to result from such geologic events in the future.

...

Yellowstone's last full-scale outburst occurred 640,000 years ago, and the ones before that occurred 1.3 million and 2.1 million years ago — but each of these events was a tad smaller than the one before it. This geologic hotspot could be growing cold. Or it might have one last hurrah.

[Ozark Tom]

Yahoo News???

[UCANSEE2]

Probably. There are many other news sites that do the same. It’s a way to recycle old stories to get clicks.