Supervolcano

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 Updated 28 October 2006      

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Ground moving upward at Yellowstone caldera

74 Small Earthquakes in Yellowstone in two days 
On October 14 and 15, a swarm of 74 small earthquakes struck 
within the Yellowstone Caldera, 12 km NW of Old Faithful.
See: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/
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More information on earthquake swarms at Yellowstone:
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/2004/Apr04Swarm.html
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65 Small Earthquakes in Yellowstone in September
During the month of September 2006, 65 earthquakes were located in the
Yellowstone region. GPS data show that most of the Yellowstone caldera
continued moving upward at the same relative rates as the past year.

The maximum measured ground uplift over the past 24 months is ~12 cm
at the White Lake GPS stations. http://www.mines.utah.edu/~ggcmpsem/UUSATRG/GPS/Site_Info/pboscat_lkwy.gif
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Another recent uplift episode at Yellowstone
Info on long-term ground deformation at Yellowstone: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/2006/uplift.html
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Recent Earthquakes in the Intermountain West http://www.seis.utah.edu/req2webdir/recenteqs/Quakes/quakes0.html
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Yellowstone one of the largest and most active calderas in the world
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Yellowstone/description_yellowstone.html
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Yellowstone Rated ‘High Threat’ for Volcanic Eruption  

– May 6, 2005 - Yellowstone ranks 21st most dangerous of the169 volcano centers in the United States, according to a report from the U.S. Geological Survey. Recurring earthquake swarms, swelling and falling ground, and 
changes in hydrothermal features are cited in the report as evidence of unrest 
at Yellowstone.

Kilauea in Hawaii received the highest overall threat score followed by 
Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainer, Mount Hood, and Mount Shasta.
http://tv.ksl.com/index.php?nid=5&sid=203367
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7789918/

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Five potential super volcanoes – 15 Apr 2005 – 
Here’s a link that will let you track five potential super volcanoes. 
See Five Potential Supervolcanoes
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Mega volcano threatens Sumatra – April 18, 2005 - Volcanic ash forced thousands of people to flee the region near Mount Semeru, southeast of Surabaya, the capital of East Java, Sumatra. Volcanic activity in the region during the past week have signaled an eminent mega volcano. This area is just on the opposite side of the globe from the “Yellow Stone Hot Spot” in America.
 
Toba, also in Sumatra, experienced a massive VEI 8.0 super volcano some 74,000 years ago. Experts say that if that should happen again, the world would experience disastrous consequences. The last time Toba erupted, it wiped out almost 75% of  all living creatures on earth.
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service _id=7819

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Talang Volcano Erupts – Apr 12, 2005 - Talang volcano, just 40 kilometers east of the capital of West Sumatra province, Padang, erupted Tuesday morning, pumping ash some 25,000 feet into the sky. So far 20,000 people have been evacuated. Talang volcano is at alert level 4 (out of 4) and volcanic activity has been increasing following Mentawai earthquake of 10th April. 
More details at http://www.volcanolive.com

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Underwater volcanoes  pose tsunami threat
July 28, 2005 – See Tsunami Threat

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Here’s a compilation from two recent articles, one entitled “Shaky faultline raises the threat of a super-volcano” written by Leigh Dayton and published in news.com.au; the other by Roberta Mancuso in the Australian news entitled “Super volcanoes 'ticking time bomb'.”
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HUGE volcanoes with the potential to kill millions and trigger catastrophic effects for life on earth are well overdue for an eruption, a scientist says. Eruptions could be so powerful that huge amounts of rock and ash could be flung into the atmosphere and there was a risk of tsunamis from volcanic flows hitting the ocean. The blast will toss hundreds of thousands of cubic kilometers of rock and ash into the atmosphere, dwarfing the eruptions of Krakatoa, Mount St Helens, Pinatubo and any conventional volcanic explosion of the past tens of thousands of years.

"These super-volcanoes are potentially the greatest hazard on Earth, the only greater threat being an asteroid impact from space," said Ray Cas, a vulcanologist with Monash University in Melbourne. "A super volcano will definitely erupt," said Cas. "It could be in a few, 50 or another 1000 years but sooner or later one is going to go off."

Prof Cas, of the university's School of Geosciences, said super volcanoes were the largest on Earth and could be found in Italy , New Zealand, Indonesia, South America and the United States. The largest was Indonesia 's Lake Toba, which had a crater diameter of 90km.

The last significant eruption from a super volcano, known scientifically as a caldera, occurred 2000 years ago in New Zealand, said Cas. The 2000-year eruption cycle of many of these volcanoes had passed, said Cas, and vulcanologists around the globe were simply watching and waiting for an imminent disaster. "The potential death toll could reach the hundreds of thousands to millions," Prof Cas said.

“A super-volcanic eruption might cover an entire continent with ash that could take decades to erode,” said vulcanologist Stephen Self of Britain's Open University. "(Such an eruption) could result in the devastation of world agriculture, severe disruption of food supplies and mass starvation."   http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12717924%255E30417 ,00.html

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Another important article about Yellowstone  
"When the supervolcano that lies beneath Yellowstone National Park explodes once again - as it inevitably must - it will spew out enough ash and magma to change the world as we know it."
See Yellowstone Slumbering Giant
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Underwater Volcanoes Erupting Simultaneously 
All Over the World  
14 Mar 05 - See Volcanoes Erupting Around World
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Underwater volcanic activity in Arctic Ocean 
far stronger than anyone imagined
See Volcanoes in Arctic Ocean

 

Volcanism killed the Dinosaurs. "It wasn't the impact of an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, reports Science Daily of new research from Cardiff University in Wales. "It was a mantle plume, a huge volcanic eruption from deep within Earth's mantle...." "The massive outpouring of lava, ashes, and gas can have significant effects on climate." (I agree, I agree, I agree. I think the mantle plume heated the seas. This caused increased evaporation. Then the excess moisture rose into the skies, skies which had  already cooled because of the ash. This lead to massive increases in snowfall, and to an ice age. And that's what I've been saying all along.)

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/package.jsp?name=fte/killeddinosaurs/killeddinosaurs

 

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"Volcanic 'flood' linked to extinction"

"A huge outpouring of molten rock 250 million years ago may have been the decisive factor in the deaths of nearly all life forms on the Earth at that time." So says a recent article in the journal Science. 

The flood basalts at the Siberian Traps covered around 3.9 million square kilometers, says Marc Reichow, of the University of Leicester, UK., an area much larger than previously believed.

Reichow's studies suggest that the "volcanic flood" was about one mile deep, and covered an area half the size of Australia. 
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2030075.stm
(Thanks to Adam Lemanski for this info.)

Question. If the vast majority of volcanic activity takes place under water, wouldn't it seem as if an underwater area several times the size of Australia should have been concurrently covered with a mile-deep layer of lava? 

And every single one of those millions of kilometers of lava would have been incredibly hot; up to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit hot. 

It's not global warming, it's ocean warming, and it's leading us into an ice age. 

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I think the same thing happened at the dinosaur extinction of 65 million years ago. For anyone familiar with that extinction, you know that there was a huge volcanic outpouring at the time known as the Deccan Traps. It covered one million square miles of India and the surrounding areas under successive layers of basalt up to one-and-a-half-miles deep. 

According to paleontologist Dewey McLean, a good portion of the Deccan Traps was submarine. This would explain why ocean temperatures at the dinosaur extinction rose by some 14° to 22°F. See http://filebox.vt.edu/artsci/geology/mclean/Dinosaur_Volcano_Extinction/index.html

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Intense volcanic activity linked to dinosaur-era extinctions - November 1, 2003: Peter Ward, a University of Washington paleontologist, thinks intense volcanic activity may have caused widespread extinctions 250 million years ago at the end-Permian, and about 200 million years ago at the end-Triassic.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/031101/80/ecr08.html

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