When we think of volcanic eruptions, we think of Vesuvius which razed the city of Pompeii and its surroundings in Antiquity, or even Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland, which blocked air traffic worldwide in 2010. We also think of the impressive lava flows that are swapped by these mountains of fire. A spectacle certainly impressive, but which masks a real danger: scientists sound the alarm in an article published by the journal Nature Communications.
According to a team of geologists from the universities of Florence and Liverpool, we must expect supervolcanoes to wake up much more suddenly in the future, with very few before-courier signs. Experts fear that the risks for the whole world will be clearly underestimated. This is in any case what their research reveals on the Stromboli volcano, Italy, explains Daily Galaxy in an article.
Thus, they noticed that the eruptions – they were normally thought that they developed over several centuries – could actually be triggered by deep magma injections just a few days before the explosion. These discoveries mark a significant advance in understanding the behavior of the most powerful volcanic systems in the world.
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To do this, they combined the oil study (an analysis of The mineralogical and chemical composition) and the modeling of the dissemination of the crystals ejected during the violent eruptions of the Stromboli in 2019. These techniques allowed the team to reconstruct the magmatic system in the depths of the volcano, thus revealing a new chronology of the explosive activity.
“It’s like uncloging a bottle of shaken champagne”
“It is the combination of the strong viscosity of the magma and its gas content that makes supervolcans so explosive. When they erupted, it’s like uncloging a bottle of shaken champagne, on a planetary scale “explains David Pyle, volcanologist at the University of Oxford.
The strong viscosity of the magma, associated with its composition rich in gas, means that when the pressure reaches a critical point, this leads to eruptions which are both violent and large. They are thus able to expel significant quantities of ash, gas and volcanic materials in the atmosphere, which can have a global cooling effect, block sunlight and disturb the weather conditions. Such an event could lead to bad harvests, massive extinctions and generalized environmental changes.
Another eruption that occurred about 74,000 years ago, that of Toba – one of the most studied supervolcans due to its global climate impact – also referred scientists. Thanks to the dating to the zircons (of tiny crystals present in volcanic rocks), they were able to measure the time necessary for the magmatic system to evolve and accumulate pressure before the eruption, thus enlightening the way in which similar supervolcanic events could occur in the future.
As Pyle points out “Supervolcans remind us of the immense power and vulnerability of our planet. Their study is a lesson in humility and an essential company.For him, it is essential to understand how these volcanoes work so as not to be caught when they wake up. “”Should humanity try to interfere with something as colossal as a supervolcana? The risks of inaction are significant, but those of the intervention are just as“Concludes the geologist.
