Eruptions

Fitz,

The idea of a contest to predict the next eruption occurred to me too.

Now, I would set the bar at VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) at maybe 6 (or lower).

The Mt. Pinatubo eruption just tipped the scale at VEI 6.
Krakatua was 6.5
Tambora was 7.3
The only 8 on my list Tambora 8.8 was thought to have wiped out most humans then alive. If we get anything that big ... a toy dinosaur isn't going to mean much too much to me. LOL

Great idea though. You probably saved your money and didn't buy the hundreds of dollars in Volcano books that I just got.

My source for those eruption magnitudes was Encyclopedia of Volcanoes p 265

When will I learn to be frugal?

Posted by: Thomas Donlon | December 10, 2009 11:52 AM

Correction: I meant that I haven't been observing earthquake activity too long - and I don't know whether or not the South Pacific is getting more quakes. If anyone has any studies confirming what Fitz says I'll be delighted to read about it.

Posted by: Thomas Donlon | December 10, 2009 12:13 PM

If theres a VEI 8 and all of humanity is wiped out, I'm DEFINitely gonna spend some of my final time getting one of those dinosaur things. In 65 million years when some smart dinosaur digs me up, it'll freak em out.

When they tested the first atom bomb, all the scientists had a pool on the size of the blast. Our pool wouldnt be quite that morbid. I do see some merit in having a "DANGER INDEX" that Erik could post as a peer prediction, sort of the way the Bullitin of Atomic Scientists do their Doomsday clock. Theres a scientific term for it which I dont know, but the more people you get to make an educated guess on something, the closer to a good answer you generally get.
Have a list of potential next eruptions and what size we guess they'll achieve.

Posted by: Fitz | December 10, 2009 4:46 PM

Bruce Stout,

I think I'll get some dinner and maybe a glass of wine and start nibbling at that article you provided the link for which (when pasted into Microsoft Word) is 25 pages or 11,000+ words long and very, very informative looking.

Posted by: Thomas Donlon | December 10, 2009 8:00 PM

Ha! Thomas, I see we share a couple of interests! The Geonet article is a bit dated unfortunately but still quite interesting. There are quite a few large submarine calderas between NZ and Tonga, whether any of them would result in a large subaerial eruption remains to be seen. The 100 km3 estimate for the Sandy Bay ignimbrite on Macauley looks like it might be a bit excessive. the GVP puts that eruption at VEI 6 but I don't know of any recent research on it.

Posted by: bruce stout | December 11, 2009 10:01 AM

I personally am not worried about Rabaul too much - that volcano is venting continuously since 15 years, so it seems to be more in equilibrium than before the eruption started in 1994. Neither am I too worried about the absolutely cataclysmic scenarios because the odds are none will happen during our lifetime (maybe none even while humanity is still there), but I am very worried about all the s**t going down in everyday life, starting from car accidents and slipping in the bathtub and so on. I am worried about the chance that climate will change so rapidly (with or without human influence) as it has apparently done in the past, as new geological studies reveal, and I would recommend that humans avoid whatever possible negative influence they MAY have on climate.
And yes, I am worried about some bad volcanic catastrophe to happen one of these days, but I fear it will be from a volcano that nobody is thinking about these days ... none of those cliché places like Yellowstone, but some unconspicuous volcano like Chaitén was, or Cerro Machín is.

Posted by: Boris Behncke | December 11, 2009 11:17 AM

I'd put pins in yellowstone, the German Eiffel region and that Volcanic complex outside rome, All just sitting like silent assasins waiting till nobody looking....

Posted by: Stephen Tierney | December 11, 2009 4:02 PM

Because...?

The Eifel would be 'nice' however ;-) . VEI 5-6 just South of Laacher See... If it happens, I think the old Drachenfels lava dome near Bonn would be a very nice place to use as an observatory. Who's joining me ;-) ?

Posted by: Gijs de Reijke | December 11, 2009 5:13 PM

Because ? Wow..didn't expect to be put on the spot Gijs.
Ok I not as clued up as you guys (or gals) and I learn from you all everyday. So I respect you all...

My humble gut feelings is that we know a little less on caldera eruptions but we know they reocur over thousands or tens of thousand of years. Some just show enough activity to keep us interested some possibly lie undescovered.

I wonder if we might witness a volcanic collapse into its own magma chamber?? Which volcano could be a possible ne crater lake? Etna? Mauna loa?, Maybe mt Fuji Presume it would be one of the bigger one's.Just guessing all input welcome.. (go on tell me off lol)

Posted by: Stephen Tierney | December 11, 2009 5:44 PM

I watched a recorded TV program a couple days ago. It is part of the NAKED SCIENCE series that was titled something like Vesuvious: Ticking Time Bomb.

I learned a few interesting things about the 79 AD eruption and the eruption that took place about 2,000 years earlier than that one.

They noted that a strong quake hit Pompei in 62AD - 17 years prior to the big eruption. They also noted that the locations where people were building buildings gave evidence of a fluctuating coastline -- evidence of a lot of inflation and subsidence in the Vesuvious area prior to the 69AD eruption. Sometimes buildings weren't near the coastline. Othertimes the sea came in much closer and they needed much higher sea defenses. They didn't have real clear dates - I don't know if this subsidence and inflation took place over hundreds of years, decades or just years - but the sea level in relationship to the coastline seemed to me to easily vary several meters. Waterlines were evident on buildings - and yet these buildings were on top of other earlier buildings that were once built above sea level.

It is just evidence that sometimes a volcano can be very active (swelling and subsiding) for many years and not erupt. So perhaps Machin could be on a long ramp-up and erupt in another decade - or more? I'd like to keep an eye on the Lazufre area (in the Central Andes) too - and try to figure out if there has been unusual earthquakes in that area that is accompanying its' slow inflation.

Perhaps more interesting (or dangerous) about Vesuvius is that the eruption that took place 4,000 year before present ( about 2,000 years before Vesuvius buried Pompeii ) sent a Pyroclastic flow over the area that is now Naples. A strong eruption like that one was isn't the basis for current emergency planning around Naples. It is much easier to plan for the smaller and midsize eruptions. The TV showed experts pointing out that the arbitrarily selected zoning of what is a dangerous area near Naples now has a hospital being built outside the danger area - but the hospital is still being built on top of a Pyroclastic flow from about 4,000 years ago. So is the area really safe for a hospital? But, then again would building the hospital a few meters beyond the Pyroclastic deposit be guaranteed safe either?

Another thought is that it will be very frustrating for residents, volcanoligists, and public officials, if Vesuvious does undergo a long ramp up of activity that takes decades to culminate in a big eruption. (This though is still much preferable to an eruption that gives insufficient notice.)

Anyway, I just thought I would share what I learned from a TV program. Now, I don't think there was any mention on the TV program about Camp Flegrei - which also needs to be monitored.

I am still totally ignorant about Eiffel(sp?) in Germany.
I kind of agree with Boris Behnke about Rabaul. However, the whole tectonic plate is so seismically active and I think there is probably a big magma chamber there - I'd worry something big could happen if there was a strong quake right in the area.
And I am still trying to wrap my mind around another big magma region (The Taupo ....) I haven't researched it yet either.

I also got the feeling that Erik has wanted us to select Ruapehu for a volcanic profile. I think Erik may have visited there - he may know a lot about it and I'd be much delighted if he would share with us his knowledge of a volcano that he has extra familiarity with.

Best to everyone!

Posted by: Thomas Donlon | December 11, 2009 10:27 PM

@ Stephen: no offence meant ;-) . I'm just very interested in what makes people here think that there's maybe something going on at those volcanoes (among others) that's worth looking at a little bit closer. For the Eifel and Colli Albani it's obvious: both areas don't get enough attention at this moment (especially the Eifel). Yellowstone on the other hand is being monitored very well, and 'the world' knows about it's potential. And if I'm correct, the nature of gas emissons from yellowstone are currently not very alarming. I read somewhere a couple of years back we 'should' be ok for at least the next 10.000 years or so. But what does that mean at a volcanic system we've never seen in real action before... New surprises pop up every once in a while, like the speed of the rhyolite under Chaitén... Yellowstone is rhyolitic as well... Can we apply what we learned from Chaitén to Yellowstone?

@ Thomas Donlon: The Eifel has two quartenary volcanic fields: the West Eifel and the East Eifel. Most of the volcanoes there are scoria cones and maars, but in the East Eifel a group of small calderas can be found. The most recent eruption in the East Eifel occurred around 13.000 years ago, which also happened to be biggest eruption of all eruptions in the Eifel so far. It happened at what is now known as Laacher See, and ejected an estimated 6.3 cubic kilometers of phonolitic to trachyphonolitic materials. A devastating eruption at that time, but there are hunderds of thousands of people living and working in the area nowadays. An event of that size would probably also do a lot of damage to the economies of Germany and the surrounding countries. Although we think the area is relatively quiet right now (some 'mofettes' can be found there, and small, shallow earthquakes occur regularly just South of Laacher See), the problem is that there's almost no monitoring of what's going on in the East Eifel. There are currently three permanent seismometers keeping an eye on things, and for as far as I know no permanent equipment to measure gas emissions.

Hans Ulrich Schmincke has a very nice chapter on the Laacher See eruption in his book 'Volcanism', which is by the way a must have for anyone who's really interested in the subject.

Posted by: Gijs de Reijke | December 12, 2009 9:02 AM

@ Herr Behncke: you beat me to it ^_^ . Didn't see it till I posted my comment.

Posted by: Gijs de Reijke | December 12, 2009 9:09 AM

to Gijs once more ... it is true that the monitoring equipment in the Eifel is nothing like the instrumentarium that we have all over Etna and Vesuvius and even the Colli Albani.
And I wonder what would happen if ever there would be a clear increase in signs of unrest, what response it would cause in Germany. That country has experience with disasters such as flooding and heavy gales, and occasional landslides, but certainly not with volcano emergencies.

Posted by: Boris Behncke | December 12, 2009 9:17 AM

To Boris: Yeah, I meant the East Eifel. The West Eifel has indeed seen some more activity after the Laacher See eruption. Even the Dauner Maare formed after that (Schalkenmehrener Maar around 11.000 years ago, Gemündener Maar around 10.750 years ago, and the Weinfelder Maar around 10.500 years ago). With the RTL-movie came a documentary, which is now online at youtube. Ulrich C. Schreiber describes the lack of monitoring in the Eifel, so that's where I got my information from (although the documentary is meant more for those who don't really know a lot about volcanism). Documentary on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=70E792B55330AE5E&search_query=Ausbruch+Eifel

Another very interesting area is the Massif Central in France. Comparable to the Eifel (young volcanic fields), only more complex. I wouldn't want to live in Clermont-Ferrand...

Posted by: Gijs de Reijke | December 12, 2009 9:34 AM

Sorry, it already exists ;-)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eifelturm

Posted by: Gijs de Reijke | December 12, 2009 1:41 PM

Boris Behncke: The KVERT website (linked from comment 23) has some great volcano pictures. The most intriguing one for me is the one taken on 17 August 2007 and the cloud hanging on the top of the volcano.

I was just pondering that many volcanoes that will have the most powerful eruptions aren't always going to be the very tall ones. They would blow themselves apart with a very powerful eruption!
Calderas of course are often powerful. But some types of little volcanoes (Chaiten) - and even Mt Pinatubo wasn't that tall yet they packed a big punch. I guess I am going to have expand my thinking of what a powerful volcano is.

You did help enlighten me about the Eifel volcanic field - and you have helped enlighten me about other things too here at this blog and at Dr. Harrington's blog.

Gijs de Reijke:
You were also helpful in helping me understand the Eifel volcanic field. The link you provided to the Youtube video (in German) was worth watching (at least part 1 was) for me who doesn't speak German. The video was so well done that I watched the rest of the approximately 10 minute segments too. (I think only the first one though - jumped across the language barrier.) I am left wondering if there has been active quake activity in the area - they were showing seismograph recordings. They also showed some maps of areas that might be in danger if they had a big eruption.

I appreciate you reminding me about the book 'Volcanism' which I actually just bought about a month ago - along with several similar books. The graphics in the book are very good and the topics presented in it do interest me. Unless I find a more exceptionally well-written volcano book in my tiny collection - it might be the first geology or volcano textbook that I complete reading.

I am just curious: Your name isn't typical American fare and you have knowledge of German. Do you live in Europe?

Bruce Stout: You have a good knowledge of the dynamics of the East Pacific plate. Do you live in that area - Australia, New Zealand? I have a vague memory that some contributor to this website was from that there.

To Non-US residents: I like that people bring to this blog a knowledge of the geology of their parts of the world. A while back there was some earthquake activity in Saudi Arabia and some people from that region helped bring us up to speed on the volcanic and geological history of the area. I assume that the earthquakes in Saudi Arabia have gradually become less frequent and there is no immediate threat of one the many little volcanoes there erupting.

To all the readers and contributors from around the world - I (and I think many others) appreciate your perspectives and insights.

Posted by: Thomas Donlon | December 12, 2009 7:39 PM

Fitz,

I wholeheartedly agree with you on the lack of an easily accessible, visually friendly database of Caldera eruptions. The Smithsonian (I recall) has a few databases (one is in EXCEl format) of the most powerful eruptions that have taken place in the world.

If no one else does a better job categorizing all these volcanoes, and putting them on the web by area - it just might spur me to categorize them and put them online. Wading through technological options to do this is rather time-consuming. Better get my new computer set up so at least I can run Google Earth!

Posted by: Thomas Donlon | December 12, 2009 11:55 PM

@ Thomas: yeah, I'm Dutch actually. In fact, I live only 2½ hours of driving from the Eifel.

Just to add some nice calderas to the topic:

- The 'Monts Dore caldera' (also called 'Haute Dordogne caldera' and 'La Grande Nappe' (The Big Napkin)) that formed around 2.5 million years ago in the 'Massif Central' in France. It ejected an estimated 8 cubic kilometers of rhyolitic ash and pumice
- The Sancy caldera. I don't know the dimensions of the caldera forming eruption(-s), but it happened between 250.000 and 1 million years ago. Most of the materials that can be found there are trachyandesitic.

Posted by: Gijs de Reijke | December 13, 2009 10:37 AM

I have good lists so far for some of the Western US and E Africa.
Italy has several, theres at least one in Bulgaria. I have 1 caldera in Virginia. Theres supposed to be a volcanic belt from Ohio to Texas but I've only found mention of Taum Sauk in Missouri. There are several old caldera in SW Texas.

W Europe, Russia, Kamchatka, Japan, China/Koreas, the Philipines/N Pacific, W Africa, Central America, Alaska and Canada would all deserve a good days research each. The Andes and S Pac/New Zealand would be tough regions to look at.

The Holocene volcanos are pretty well covered on the net, but once you go past 10,000 yrs you mostly see the standard areas. If you find one, get the name, age, location, size in km or miles, and possibly how much ash/lava it ejected, or the thickness of its tuff, and where you found the info.

Posted by: Fitz | December 13, 2009 2:05 PM

Boris,

thanks for that link to the Schminke and Park article. Very, very interesting. Taupo also had a similar effect on the Waikato River after its last big eruption. The lake level is estimated to have been something like 20 m higher (quoting from a shaky memory) after the eruption until a tephra dam broke and actually changed the course of the river. What is interesting is how fast the Rhine managed to create a lake of that size. It was just a matter of days!!! That doesn't leave a lot of time for disaster mitigation. Also fascinated to see quite how high the tephra fallout was so far from the vent. That looks larger than a VEI 6 to me (judging by Taupo and Pinatubo) but I'll accept the experts' assessment: 5 - 10 cm ash fall all the way to the Swiss border? Wow.

PS here's a link to the paper on the ephemeral lake following the Taupo eruption:
http://books.google.de/books?id=JF8kUBhLvFoC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=taupo+%2B+waikato+%2B+lacustrine&source=bl&ots=Cu_45nPeov&sig=3VJzCRGIfrrb6Jqx9waEgCaOCik&hl=de&ei=alwlS-qDD4-qsAap8JHiBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=taupo%20%2B%20waikato%20%2B%20lacustrine&f=false

Posted by: bruce stout | December 13, 2009 4:32 PM

Thanks TD, I've been in the Smithsonian site a hundred times and didnt know you could do that.

Unfortunately, as good as it is, I have found a bunch of calderas missing from that list. Taum Sauk, Mt Rogers and Questa arent in it.

I fear a lot of research is in my future.

Posted by: Fitz | December 13, 2009 9:09 PM

oh far out, I just checked out the Alban Hills in Google Earth. It's not just Naples that's sitting on an active caldera system, Rome is too!!! I had no idea. Once again, hat tip to Boris! Enter these coordinates into Google Earth:

41°44'0"N 12°42'0"E

you'll get the idea. Even a small phreatomagmatic eruption from one of those maars could have huge consequences.

Posted by: bruce stout | December 14, 2009 4:19 AM

Yes, all the way back. Most caldera are long extinct, and of little concern, but its still fascinating to find out how close you might be to one.
I'd say send all the info to my disaster website, but frankly, its a lousy website and I dont want to pilfer any of Eriks audience.

Gijs: I cant find anything on a caldera under the Netherlands, but some quick surfing found you're on top of the Lower Rotliegend (Layer) from 300 Million yrs ago, which is flood basalt and tuff. And the Silverpit Crater is near you to the west I think. Possible meteor origin.

Posted by: Fitz | December 14, 2009 1:00 PM

Gijs: What is the status on the 'caldera list' of those where no visible trace now remains thanks to erosion, but one very probably existed at one time? I'm thinking of the Tertiary volcanics of Western Scotland. The islands of Mull and Skye are both mostly basal wrecks of massive basalt shields, which quite probably had summit calderas during their active life but have been deeply excavated -on Skye to the level of a gabbroic former magma body (the 'black' Cuillin Hills)

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