Yellowstone Lake Hints at Buildup to Hugh Blast.

Denver Post ^ | August. 10th, 2003 | Diedtra Henderson, Science writer

[Orlando]

Yellowstone National Park,Wyo.-

The mystery of the deep at picturesque Yellowstone Lake is a BULGE that rises 100 feet from the lake floor, stretches the length of seven football fields, and has the potential to explode at any time.

[Orlando]

>Water temperatures 65 feet below the surface shot as high as 187 degrees Fahrenheit.<

[strela]

Are you series?

(heh heh, he said "bulge" ... heh heh ...)

[boris]

All your bulge are belong to us.

[freebilly]

Wowe! This is vey Series...!

[ThreePuttinDude]

OH NO.......save the wife and kids....not a HUGH Blast....

[Gritty]

If I recall, a lot of people laughed when Mt. St. Helens was doing the same thing.

[Consort]

If the temperature increases another 25°, the lake will start to boil.

[Catspaw]

When we were in Yellowstone in the early 90's, they had the same concern.

[StatesEnemy]

Nope... water pressure, plus MOST of the water at Lake Yellowstone will kill you in summer via hypothermia.

[ClearCase_guy]

Danger at Yellowstone: Women, minorities are likeliest victims.

[Richard Axtell]

They ought to interview this Hugh Blast guy, I'll bet he knows what's going on.

[umgud]

This should have been posted under "bulging news"..

[basil]

I was at Yellowstone a couple of months ago, and heard none of this. But then, I always miss the hugh series stuff.

[John H K]

Well, Yellowstone is a caldera, and everything about calderas is infinately more complicated than a pretty much standard stratovolcano like St. Helens, which is much simpler by comparison.

Long Valley Caldera in CA had a great many indicators of possible eruptive activity, similar to St. Helens, in the 80s and 90s and has yet to erupt.

Also, for those who don't read the article, they're NOT talking about another caldera-forming blast like the ones hundreds of thousands of years ago that would kill everyon in the 3 adjacent states and end agriculture in the midwest, etc; HUGH blasts are a relative thing :-)

[Bobibutu]

The Yellostone Basin was created by a massive blast thousands of years ago ... if memory serves me - there is a story about a geologist that was studying the area and found that the crater was the whole basin. He had been looking for something smaller.

I'll look for a link or 2

[Orlando]

On August 7th, it was reported on the Salt lake tribune
that the ground temperatures now up to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, and that new steam vents, and mud pots have
formed in recent weeks,etc...

Here's that report:

"Strange activity in Yellowstone"


http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Aug/08072003/utah/81920.asp


there are other signs of a possible problem with yellowstone...check-out breaking news section for better information and data...


http://www.volcanolive.com


okay there is a bulge under the lake...

[TC Rider]

I first visited Yellowstone back in '77. Like many dumb tourists, I was astounded to learn the whole area was volcanically active. Geysers, mudpots, fumeroles, hot springs, etc were everywhere.

I always thought Ol' Faithful was all there was.

I travelled through the area regularly, my favorite stop was Thermopolis.

[Ditter]

If Hugh is getting ready to blast I'm outta here!

[Bobibutu]

http://minerals.cr.usgs.gov/projects/yellowstone/task5.html

and

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/628515.stm

Thursday, 3 February, 2000, 10:34 GMT
Supervolcanoes could trigger global freeze

Heat rises from under Yellowstone Park



By environment correspondent Alex Kirby

The threat of climate change caused by human activity could turn out to be a minor problem by comparison with a scarcely acknowledged natural hazard.

Geologists say there is a real risk that sooner or later a supervolcano will erupt with devastating force, sending temperatures plunging on a hemispheric or even global scale.

A report by the BBC Two programme Horizon on one supervolcano, at Yellowstone national park in the US, says it is overdue for an eruption.

Yellowstone has gone off roughly once every 600,000 years. Its last eruption was 640,000 years ago.

Professor Bill McGuire, of the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre at University College, London, told BBC News Online: "We're getting ready for another eruption, unless the system has blown itself out.

"But the ground surface deformation and other signs measured by satellite suggest it's still active, and on the move."

Molten rock

Typically, supervolcanoes are not mountains but depressions, huge collapsed craters called calderas, which are hard to detect.

The Yellowstone caldera is 70 kilometres long and 30 km wide. Eight km beneath the Earth's surface lies a huge magma chamber, containing vast amounts of molten rock.

As pressure rises in the chamber, the surface is also rising and there is a measurable increase in heat. But vulcanologists do not know when Yellowstone will blow.


Supervolcanoes are related to giant calderas

Professor McGuire, whose book, Apocalypse! A natural history of global disasters, portrays a possible Yellowstone explosion in 2074, says there have been two such events every 100,000 years for the last two million years.

The areas where supervolcanoes are most likely to be found, he says, are subduction zones, where the Earth's plates are dipping below one another. The Pacific Rim and southeast Asia are especially vulnerable.

But there is a caldera in the Phlegraean Fields near Naples in southern Italy. Dr Ted Nield, of the Geological Society of London, told BBC News Online: "It could do the same as Yellowstone, though on a smaller scale".

Nuclear winter

"When a supervolcano goes off, it is an order of magnitude greater than a normal eruption. It produces energy equivalent to an impact with a comet or an asteroid.

"You can try diverting an asteroid. But there is nothing at all you can do about a supervolcano.

"The eruption throws cubic kilometres of rock, ash, dust, sulphur dioxide and so on into the upper atmosphere, where they reflect incoming solar radiation, forcing down temperatures on the Earth's surface. It's just like a nuclear winter.

Animals not caught in the eruption would face major climate change

"The effects could last four or five years, with crops failing and the whole ecosystem breaking down. And it is going to happen again some day."

Ice-core records show that the eruption of Toba in Sumatra about 74,000 years ago may have caused global cooling of from three to five degrees Celsius, and perhaps as much as 10 degC during growing seasons in middle to high latitudes.

Even ordinary volcanoes can affect the climate. When another Indonesian volcano, Tambora, erupted in 1815, several years of globally cold weather followed, with the annual global mean surface temperature about one degree Celsius below normal.

The Geological Society, in evidence to the UK Parliament, is urging more research into the risk from supervolcanoes and their probable climatic effects.

Horizon is on BBC Two at 2130 GMT on Thursday, 3 February.

[MarkL]

It's the global warming! Better sign the Kyoto treaty, quick!

Mark