Underneath the Yellowstone National Park of the United States is a massive underground reservoir of magma, covered by the park's famous caldera. A supervolcano eruption blasted the region 640,000 years ago, so it is pertinent to wonder what would happen if another Yellowstone Supervolcano erupted today?
A super eruption could blast fast and the Yellowstone magma source is huge. Lava streams would probably be "within the vicinity of the park," said USGS geologist Jake Lowenstern, scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
He added that when a volcano eruption takes place, at least one third of the liquid rock that is emitted falls right back into the volcano's maw.
Air traffic would be disrupted like in the 2010 eruption in Iceland. It would be like an industrial accident, blocking waterways and agricultural areas with toxic muck.
Like all volcanic eruptions, a super eruption begins with an earthquake.Next, enormous vents in the Earth would crack open with lava and superheated gasses shooting out of these vents very quickly, exhausting the magma reservoir underneath the caldera. This in turn would cause the caldera to crumble. Eventually, it would end in an oval-shaped sinkhole.
Lowenstern said there's no motivation to imagine that we'll have an eruption of such intensity any time soon.
Presently, the Yellowstone caldera indicates nothing about a super eruption. That doesn't mean that the area is free from the regular earthquakes. The caldera itself rises and falls all the time as pressure rises and falls in the magma reservoir below.
"It rose about 27 centimeters max over the past 6 years. Calderas are big and hot, so they don't break very easily and they just move up and down. It's the way heat and gas get out of these deep systems - the system breathes," Lowenstern said.
An eruption might "come at any time," admitted Lowenstern. But it probably may not be a super eruption. And even if a super eruption were to strike, the damage would not be the blaze as expected.
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