Super Volcano In Yellowstone National Park

solcomhouse ^ | Unknown

[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.

[Ken H]

When I was a kid I used to read Frank Edwards' books, such Stranger than Science and Strange World.

I recall a story about a Boston Globe (?) reporter who wrote a piece about a huge volcanic eruption in Java with tidal waves and great loss of life, which the paper published.

It was quite a scandal. Until Krakatoa erupted a few days later.

[TennMountains]

I can see the MSM headlines now: "Yellowstone erupts!! World to end! Women and Minorities hit hardest!!"

[Conservative4Ever]

Oh my God....SHE'S GONNA BLOW!

Red

[oldfart]

"We're all gonna die!!"

Of course we are. We just don't know when or how.

[Cvengr]

Of course, I suppose if the proposed Yellowstone Supervolcano catastrophically erupted, the planet earth would go zipping around the solar system like a ballon let loose....

[norton]

"I wonder if, by drilling into it we could simultainiously relieve pressure, and generate electricity via the geothermal heat ?"

Or accidentally put a bunch of dead guys and a drill into orbit.

[blam]

"ping - when you comin back?"

Ha, ha. Caught me peeking. I'm still dealing with the damage from Ivan...I'll be back in a day or so...I just got my electricity back yesterday afternoon, I'm exhausted.

[Centurion2000]

Your claim of hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than Krakatoa would mean the end of the world.

That's because it would be, or at least the end of the current cycle of civilization.

[reagan_fanatic]

It would also mean global political catastrophe, as the U.S. would, for all practical purposes, disappear, and those nations held in check by America's power would have free reign to do as they please.

It would make the human suffering of WWII pale by comparison.

[Centurion2000]

Actually crops would fail across the world. Governments would fall, wars would break out, and the economies of the entire world would crash.

The last time this happened (about 75,000 years ago) the survival rate for humans was about .1% (one in a thousand).

Basically GAME OVER, insert coin.

[Semaphore Heathcliffe]

When Toba eropted, scientists estimate that there were only a few thousand human survivors out of millions...

Yowza. Ah, well; quothe the Lizard King: "No one here gets out alive."

[Salgak]

The last major Yellowstone Caldera Explosion covered areas up to a couple of hundred miles away with 10 feet of ash and debris. And, of course, it was thicker as you got closer.

Assume 500 miles as the 10-foot radius, and no uptick in ash drop as you move in. Do the math. Just inside that circle would be an absolute minimum of just under 1500 Cubic MILES of ash and debris. . . not including heavier falls closer in, thinner falls farther out, and dust hanging in the air for years. This is an planetary-level catstrophic event, on the order of more than sufficient to start an Ice Age all by itself. . . .

[Salgak]

I know. I was a geologist long before I became a Network Geek

[Xenalyte]

Dude, I just hate it when that happens.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Drill into the hot, pressurized, immense magma pool ..

Relieve a little pressure out a skinny little pipe, but also open a vent for a sudden, catastrophic release of trillions of BTU's of thermal energy and internal pressure that can't be controlled.

What if the "small pipe" that is vented gets blown out, and now you have a volcano's worth of pressure and hot gas that can't be controlled?

[raygun]

Think again. They've found ash deposits attributed to this volcano's previous eruptions that are 8 feet thick in the Carolinas.

[Inge_CAV]

Volcano - Jimmy Buffett

I don't know, I don't know,
I don't know where I'm a-gonna go
When the volcano blows,
I don't know, I don't know,
I don't know where I'm a-gonna go
When the volcano blows

Ground she's movin' under me
Tidal waves out on the sea,
Sulphur smoke up in the sky
Pretty soon we learn to fly
Let me hear ya now

I don't know, I don't know,
I don't know where I'm a-gonna go
When the volcano blows

Now my girl quickly said to me,
Mon you better watch your feet
Lava come down soft and hot,
You better lava me now or lava me not

I don't know, I don't know,
I don't know where I'm a-gonna go
When the volcano blows

(Instrumental)

No time to count what I'm worth,
Cause I just left the planet earth,
Where I go I hope there's rum,
Not to worry, mon soon come

I don't know, I don't know,
I don't know where I'm a-gonna go
When the volcano blows

But I don't want to land in New York City
Don't want to land in Mexico (No no no)
Don't want to land on no three mile island
Don't want to see my skin aglow (No no no)

Don't want to land in Comanche Sky Park
Or in Nashville Tennessee (No no no)
Don't want to land in no San Juan airport
Or in the Yukon Territory (No no no)

Don't want to land no San Diego
Don't want to land in no Buzzard Bay (No no no
I don't want to land on no Eye-A-Toll-A
I got nothin' more to say

I don't know, I don't know,
I don't know where I'm a-gonna go
When the volcano blows

I don't know, I don't know,
I don't know where I'm a-gonna go
When the volcano blows

Now, I don't know, I don't know
I don't know when this stupid song will get outta my head........

It's a conspiracy I tell you.

[Salgak]

I know. I was just putting in a simplifying example to show the sheer SCALE of the Yellowstone Caldera effects. . .

Catastrophic is almost too small a word. . .

[Judith Anne]

Catastrophic is almost too small a word. . .

Apocalyptic? ;-D