Posted on 05/14/2002 8:35:23 AM PDT by Junior
It is little known that lying underneath one of America's areas of outstanding natural beauty - Yellowstone Park - is one of the largest super volcanoes in the world. Scientists have revealed that it has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago…so the next is overdue. The next eruption could be 2,500 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.
And the sleeping giant is breathing: volcanologists have been tracking the movement of magma under the park and have calculated that in parts of Yellowstone the ground has risen over seventy centimeters this century.
Normal volcanoes are formed by a column of magma - molten rock - rising from deep within the Earth, erupting on the surface, and hardening in layers down the sides. This forms the familiar cone shaped mountain we associate with volcanoes.
Supervolcanoes, however, begin life when magma rises from the mantle to create a boiling reservoir in the Earth's crust. This chamber increases to an enormous size, building up colossal pressure until it finally erupts. The explosion would send ash, dust, and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, reflecting the sun's rays and creating a cold wave lasting several years. Crops in many areas would fail and many species of animals and plants would face extinction.
The most recent caldera-forming eruption about 650,000 years ago produced a caldera 53 x 28 miles (85 x 45 kilometers) across in what is now Yellowstone National Park (Figure 2). During that eruption, ground-hugging flows of hot volcanic ash, pumice, and gases swept across an area of more than 3,000 square miles. When these enormous pyroclastic flows finally stopped, they solidified to form a layer of rock called the Lava Creek Tuff. Its volume was about 240 cubic miles (1,000 cubic kilometers), enough material to cover Wyoming with a layer 13 feet thick or the entire conterminous United States with a layer 5 inches thick. The Lava Creek Tuff has been exposed by erosion at Tuff Cliff, a popular Yellowstone attraction along the lower Gibbon River.
The eruption also shot a column of volcanic ash and gases high into Earth's stratosphere. This volcanic cloud circled the globe many times and affected Earth's climate by reducing the intensity of solar radiation reaching the lower atmosphere and surface. Fine volcanic ash that fell downwind from the eruption site blanketed much of North America. This ash layer is still preserved in deposits as far away as Iowa, where it is a few inches thick, and the Gulf of Mexico, where it is recognizable in drill cores from the sea floor. Lava flows have since buried and obscured most of the caldera, but the underlying processes responsible for Yellowstone's tremendous volcanic eruptions are still at work.
TINY CRYSTALS PREDICT A HUGE VOLCANO IN WESTERN U.S.
Press Release
MADISON - Reading the geochemical fine print found in tiny crystals of the minerals zircon and quartz, scientists are forming a new picture of the life history - and a geologic timetable - of a type of volcano in the western United States capable of dramatically altering climate sometime within the next 100,000 years.
With insight gained from new analytical techniques to study crystals of zircon and quartz, minerals that serve as veritable time capsules of geologic events, a group of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has proposed a new model for the origin of volcanism in young calderas.
These are volcanoes that occur over "hot spots" in the Earth and they erupt every few hundred thousand years in catastrophic explosions, sending hundreds to thousands of cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere and wreaking climatic havoc on a global scale.
In a series of papers, UW-Madison geologists Ilya N. Bindeman and John W. Valley present a life history of the hot spot volcanism that has occurred in the Yellowstone basin of the western United States over the past 2 million years. Their findings suggest a dying, but still potent cycle of volcanism, and a high probability of a future catastrophic eruption sometime within the next million years, and possibly within the next hundred thousand years.
Today's Yellowstone landscape represents the last in a sequence of calderas - the broad crater-like basins created when volcanoes explode and their characteristic cones collapse - that formed in regular progression over the past 2 million years. The near-clockwork timing of eruptions there - 2 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago and 600,000 years ago - suggests a pattern that may foreshadow an eruption of catastrophic proportions, said Bindeman and Valley.
Beneath Yellowstone and its spectacular landscape of hot springs and geysers is a hot spot, an upwelling plume of melted rock from the Earth's mantle. As the plume of hot, liquid rock rises in the Earth, it melts the Earth's crust and creates large magma chambers.
"These magmas usually erupt in a very catastrophic way," said Bindeman. "By comparison, the eruption of Mount St. Helens sent about two cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere. These catastrophic types of eruptions send thousands of cubic kilometers of ash skyward."
The hot spot deep beneath Yellowstone acts like a burner, said Bindeman. "It's a constant source of heat that acts on the upper crust and forms magma chambers that contain tens of thousands of cubic kilometers" of molten rock.
One of the massive plates that helps make up the crust of the Earth, the North American plate, is slowly moving over the hot spot, said Bindeman. "The plate has been moving across the heat source which makes it seem like the volcanoes are moving across the continent. Moreover, we have a progression of explosive eruptions which seem to have some periodicity."
Bindeman and Valley studied rocks that span the entire 2-million-year long eruptive sequence at Yellowstone with a special emphasis on lavas that erupted the last time one of the massive volcanoes popped off creating what geologists call the Yellowstone Caldera. Their conclusion is that the volcanic cycle is waning, but that there is still a very real potential of an eruption of massive proportions sometime in the near geologic future.
A cross section of a quartz crystal obtained from rocks near Yellowstone. Crystals of quartz and zircon harbor geochemical clues to past -- and future -- volcanic eruptions in the Yellowstone caldera. In the past, eruptions over this "hot spot" in the Earth have been of a magnitude that would have severely altered Earth's climate.
Image credit: Ilya Bindeman and John Fournelle, remastered in Adobe Illustrator by Mary Diman
Such an eruption would disrupt global climate by injecting millions of tons of ash into the atmosphere. Some of the ash would remain in the atmosphere for years, reflect sunlight back into space and cool the planet, significantly affecting life. In addition, a blanket of ash over a meter thick would be deposited in nearby regions and effectively smother life there.
The most recent caldera is 600,000 years old and encompasses an area of more than 2,000 square kilometers. When it erupted, it blasted 1,000 cubic kilometers of volcanic rock into the atmosphere and it settled as ash over more than half of the United States.
After that last major eruption, volcanism in Yellowstone continued in a quieter fashion with another, much smaller eruption occurring 70,000 years ago.
Old Faithful Geyser Yellowstone National Park
http://www.nps.gov/yell/oldfaithfulcam.htm
Today's spectacular geysers and hot springs at Yellowstone are the most visible part of the volcanic system there. They contain heated snow and rainwater which leave a geochemical record that provides insight into the region's geologic activity. Prior to the last catastrophic eruption at Yellowstone 600,000 years ago, an even more spectacular geothermal landscape existed there, said Bindeman.
"The unique thing about Yellowstone is that the volcanic rocks that erupted following the collapse of the big calderas contain up to 50 percent oxygen which was ultimately derived from rain waters," Bindeman said. "The zircon and quartz tell us that rocks near the surface were altered by heated snow and rainwater. These rocks were then remelted to become magmas."
This scenario changes the view of magmatism at Yellowstone and other calderas as representing new magma coming from deep in the Earth. On the contrary, Bindeman and Valley make a case for the total remelting and recycling of previously erupted surface rocks.
Their findings have been published in a series of papers, the first in the August 2000 edition of the journal Geology. Another paper is to appear this month (July) in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, and another is scheduled for publication next month (August) in the Journal of Petrology.
Click here: tech_index
Well...it's pretty obvious that Jerry Nadler is the problem on one coast. I wonder who's causing the problem on the other?
The Volcanic Explosivity Index
The Volcanic Explosivity IndexThe volcano explosivity index (VEI) is a scale used to measure the intensity of volcano eruptions. It is similar to the Richter and Mercalli scales, which measure the intensity of earthquakes. The VEI measures explosivity, volume of ash (tephra), and the height ash reaches into the atmosphere. Additionally, it gives a description of the eruption, a name for the eruption, and the total number of those eruptions in human history. See below for the VEI chart.
Note that in human history, there have been no VEI 8 eruptions.
This does not mean that a VEI 8 eruption has not occurred sometime in the geologic past.
Below are pictures of eruptions of volcanoes from around the world, grouped according to their VEI number
| 0 & 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Click on Yellowstone Caldera.
Not quite as informative as the Yellowstone site, but still it does talk about the potential for massive landslides that would cause a megatsunami to hit the US east coast.
The problem is that a flank, or large portion of land is gradually sliding towards the ocean. When this chunk of land falls into the ocean, it could produce a tsunami thousands of times larger than any tsunami ever recorded. The tsunami will head for the eastern coast of the US. The show indicated that the tsunami would probably reach inland about 12 miles.
What the scientists don't know is, if the next eruption could cause the landslide or some eruption decades or centuries into the future. What they do know is that it WILL happen. It's not a matter of IF, it's a matter of when.
Back to Yellowstone, scientists taking measurements have noticed that one side of the caldera has been rising. Because of the size of this super volcano (most of Yellowstone), scientists say that when it erupts, it could have disastrous consequences around the world. And again, it was not IF, but WHEN.
Of course having seen these shows you know this, but thought I'd comment for those that may have missed the shows.
Raygun: You said,"Actually, this post is a little bizarre. I was just thinking about this in response to some other post recently.
You weren't on this post, Superplumes Rumble Inside Earth, by chance were you?
Interesting apples; I wonder what the effect of a nuke detonated in the ground in Yellowstone would do.
Expose the magma to air and what would the overall effect be for the US?
Well...it's pretty obvious that Jerry Nadler is the problem on one coast. I wonder who's causing the problem on the other?
I don't know. With all the airheads on the left coast it would take someone larger than the Nadler. But perhaps there is a solution here. Truck the Nadler to Yellowstone for the summer.
Increase in earthquakes 1970 to 2001
There are lots of links on this thread [Click here] about Mt. St. Helens and the Cascades. Also:
We should be paying close attention. As we see the Decline of a Nation and America's exportation of abortion worldwide, it would be wise to consider who and what is Babylon.
Jer 51:42 The sea is come up upon **Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.
Mt 18:6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Re 18:21 And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city **Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.
SOL - 8/23/01 3 wks before 9/11
Many are ignoring red flags and warnings which puts them in the category of being a mocker and scoffer who says all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
2Pe 3:3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
This one?
Which could cause this:
and this 
See this link Long Valley Caldera
Also, I think Mexico City is built on a similar caldera, but can't find anything relating to past catastrophic eruptions(perhaps a lack of study). At any rate the potential is there, Popocatépetl is the second tallest stratospheric volcano in the hemisphere and has more than 30 million people living in sight of it's peak. Given the demographics any major eruption will be catastrophic to them, and if it should reach VEI 6 or more it would affect much of the Southern US, as well as, Central and South America.
What a violent and inhospitable planet we live on! But it's far better than the other 8 choices.
The other 8 choices are indeed rather bleak!
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