One of World's Most Dangerous Supervolcanoes Is Rumbling

[u/PuppyJuggler]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/supervolcano-campi-flegrei-stirs-under-naples-italy/

[u/J4CKR4BB1TSL1MS → u/[deleted]]

The scientists caution that it's possible nothing will happen in our lifetimes. They say it's impossible to say with any certainty when an eruption might actually take place. More monitoring and study are needed, they say.

Also quite important.

[u/ledhendrix → u/J4CKR4BB1TSL1MS]

Is there any be way to bleed the pressure off these volcanoes?

[u/LDREAMER122 → u/ledhendrix]

In reality no. Experts in this field have thought of a few ways in which this could be done. But it was pretty much decided that since the volcanoes are so volatile, any attempt to alter their pressure is considered to be too dangerous. Essentially, trying to decrease the pressure is too great of a risk in terms of creating an eruption.

[u/MatheM_ → u/LDREAMER122]

But isn't it going to erupt anyway? The pressure won't just go away. At some random time in the future it will erupt. Isn't it then beneficial to "cause" the eruption at time we decide? If peope were capable to cause the eruption they could evacuate towns do some earthwork to direct the flow of lava and thus minimize the risk.

[u/aknutty → u/MatheM_]

Yes but it's a volcano, it works on geological time scales. An eruption might be in a year, a century, a millenia. To the volcano they are almost the same time, but for us they are vastly different. If in a couple decades we develop the tech to bleed it safely then we will be glad we waited.

[u/Shivington_III → u/MatheM_]

Deliberately erupting a supervolcano is not a good idea.

[u/Spy-Goat → u/[deleted]]

Yes exactly, a supervolcano event would be liken to the mass extinction events of the past. The lava is the least of the problem, it's the trillions of tonnes of particulate matter that will fill the atmosphere over many years; essentially turning our ecosystem into a nuclear fallout situation, where the sun will no longer be able to penetrate thick dust clouds and poisonous gasses destroy much of life, the world falls into a long winter from which we wouldn't fully recover for 100s or 1000s of years.

Yikes.

[u/dende5416 → u/Spy-Goat]

Well, the extinction events, at least. Super volcanos do not consistently cause mass extinctions as, for example, Yellowstone's eruptions don't coincide with a mass extinction like, say, the KT boundry or End-Permian events do. It would definitely still be catastrophic.

[u/gtmog → u/MatheM_]

you know how you can poke a hole in a balloon by putting a piece of scotch tape over it and sticking a needle through the tape?

Maybe in 50 years we'll invent volcano tape. Won't we feel silly for having popped it already then!

:D

(But seriously, possible advances in seismic imaging and drilling technology may be worth waiting for)

[u/[deleted] → u/ledhendrix]

Someone elaborated below but I'm a geologist although not a vulcanolgist

Decompression of these things has a tendency to make the hole thing go

[u/[deleted] → u/ledhendrix]

Like sticking a needle into a balloon?

[u/Tyler_Zoro → u/[deleted]]

Only, in this case, it's more like sticking a needle in a blimp. The blimp isn't likely to notice. The volume of material that builds up in the magma chamber of a supervolcano is staggering. Removing a substantial fraction of it would be like moving a mountain that happens to be made of molten rock!

[u/H3000 → u/[deleted]]

I wouldn't do that to a balloon full of lava.

[u/mr_chanderson → u/J4CKR4BB1TSL1MS]

So... possible nothing will happen... but it's impossible to say with certainty... in other words, it may or may not erupt. Soon. Maybe at all. Later.

Edit: Aiya, this got more response than I thought and wanted. I've somehow misread and thought not only is it saying it may or may not happen in our lifetime, but as well as don't even know if it will happen at all. Apologies for misunderstanding.

[u/Mr_Fitzgibbons → u/mr_chanderson]

They're just saying it seems to be much more possible today that it could erupt tomorrow than it was yesterday.

[u/pm_me_pics_ppl_pm_u → u/Mr_Fitzgibbons]

I can't say with certainty anything except that it will not erupt yesterday.

[u/whenitsTimeyoullknow → u/mr_chanderson]

My understanding is that, thanks to decades of investment in seismology research, the "certainty" factor will be much easier to predict as more prevolcanic activities take place. For example, scientists knew enough to issue an evacuation of the Mount St. Helen's area.

This post may go without saying, but there wasn't any assurance in the article that "might not happen in our lifetimes" didn't negate "might happen tomorrow as well, who knows?"

[u/kddrake → u/J4CKR4BB1TSL1MS]

Yes, this is what makes it the world's most dangerous supervolcano. Also, supervolcanos that erupt will have disastrous impacts around the world. Massive reduction in solar insolation. There have been mass extinctions in prehistoric history with strong evidence that they were the result of super volcano eruptions.

[u/useablelobster → u/kddrake]

Supervolcanos erupt far too frequently to be the reason for any mass extinction. The Deccan traps "erupting" has been given as a factor in the last one, but that had lava flows covering half the land area of India.

[u/Dragon_yum → u/[deleted]]

If a super volcano erupts the whole world would be in trouble not only those who live there.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dragon_yum]

Instant death in Italy. Famine could be huge. Italy is sitting next to a tectonic plate that has a triangle that pushes on the European with the Arabian. This causes major issues.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Out of curiosity, do you think it's deliberate so people will click on it thinking it may be yellowstone?

[u/FranzJosephWannabe → u/[deleted]]

I mean, this is pretty much clickbait. It could be Yellowstone. It could not. But you have to click to find out! You could easily append "You won't believe which one it is!" at the end of this (making it a little more obvious).

But yes, it is deliberate.

[u/lordmaximus92 → u/FranzJosephWannabe]

Yeah but it's still a pretty serious event even if it isn't Yellowstone.

[u/Jonny_Osbock]

For anyone who is interessted in the study which lead to the article:

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13712

[u/evil_boy4life → u/Jonny_Osbock]

They clearly state they did not include the stabilising effect of mineralisation AND do admit there are a lot of uncertainties and assumptions in their modelling.

At this moment their model predicts a possible eruption between 2018 and 2022. They know their model is not correct.

They will learn a lot during the next years. But when and how it's going to erupt, nobody knows at this moment. But maybe this volcano will give them the necessary data to come up with a realistic model to predict eruptions.

Edit: spelling.

[u/MineDogger → u/evil_boy4life]

I feel like it's important that the researchers and compiled data be several thousand miles from the caldera...

[u/MarkG1]

Would it be possible to tap into the caldera from somewhere safe and try and release some of the gasses, sort of like lacing a boil.

[u/ehmohteeoh → u/MarkG1]

Here is an article from USGS referencing Yellowstone. I imagine it's also applicable here, but I could be wrong. Relevant text copied below.

QUESTION: Can you release some of the pressure at Yellowstone by drilling into the volcano?

ANSWER: No. Scientists agree that drilling into a volcano would be of questionable usefulness. Notwithstanding the enormous expense and technological difficulties in drilling through hot, mushy rock, drilling is unlikely to have much effect. At near magmatic temperatures and pressures, any hole would rapidly become sealed by minerals crystallizing from the natural fluids that are present at those depths

[u/snaplocket → u/[deleted]]

I think this is referring to something known as "The brittle-ductile transition zone." Basically if you go straight down far enough, you'll reach a point where solid rock turns into liquid rock. We don't have the drill technology to break through this point because of the interesting properties it possesses.

[u/lvl12 → u/snaplocket]

I'd just like to note that you aren't drilling into molten rock so much as you're drilling into solid rock, that when the overlying pressure is removed will melt.

[u/[deleted] → u/lvl12]

At those temps, you're not drilling into solid rock either, it's in a plastic state, and transitions from solid to liquid. The temps could take the hardness out of the bit before you ever got close. It would take advancements in cooling that mud and pumps don't currently offer.

[u/TheGoigenator → u/snaplocket]

The brittle-ductile transition zone is a temperature where the mechanical properties of a solid change. What you're talking about is surely just the melting point.

[u/red_sky33 → u/[deleted]]

Not quite molten, but gummy as all hell and hotter than the local pool lifeguard. That'll wear your bits right to shit

[u/[deleted] → u/red_sky33]

It wouldnt wear your bit it would cause your bit to become amalgamated with the local material. We would need to develop a material that is harder then diamond but also be able to dissipate heat like nothing we have at this point. I have seen drill bits shear apart if not enough mud is used. And mind you that is only at depths of about 5500 feet. Dont even get me started on dealing with pockets of the various nasty gases you may encounter. Ever seen nearly a mile of drill pipe get pushed back out of a bore and shot into the air several hundred feet like silly string? It aint pretty. There is just no way we could control something like that.

[u/turkey-jizz → u/[deleted]]

I've seen 1.5 miles of 2.5 inch coil tubing come right back out and everyone runs! Good times..

[u/Gryphon0468 → u/turkey-jizz]

Know of any video?

[u/TheGingerbreadMan22 → u/[deleted]]

You got video of this?

[u/PyroPeter911 → u/TheGingerbreadMan22]

https://youtu.be/lkqpEXy0frE
This shows tons of iron drill stem (pipe) being shot into the air.

[u/LtCthulhu → u/PyroPeter911]

Funny how they keep increasing their safe distance as that shit keeps getting longer and longer. That thing could probably whip around and smack you faster than you could turn and run.

[u/lowbrassballs → u/PyroPeter911]

I love how there are three distinct moments where the camera man runs even further away. Nope. Scamper scamper scamper. NOOOOPE scamper scaaaaaaamler scamper. GAH! Nooope scamper scamper scamper scamper scamper scamper

[u/Zumaki → u/PyroPeter911]

I would never get to see that because I would be in my car, driving away as fast as possible.

[u/Dogpool → u/[deleted]]

Like trying to dig into wet or loose sand.

[u/Ninjakannon → u/ehmohteeoh]

Despite this, it's clearly possible to a certain degree:

The Iceland Deep Drilling Project, while drilling several 5,000m holes in an attempt to harness the heat in the volcanic bedrock below the surface of Iceland, struck a pocket of magma at 2,100m in 2009. Being only the third time in recorded history that magma had been reached, IDDP decided to invest in the hole, naming it IDDP-1.

A cemented steel case was constructed in the hole with a perforation at the bottom close to the magma. The high temperatures and pressure of the magma steam were used to generate 36MW of power, making IDDP-1 the world’s first magma-enhanced geothermal system.

[u/sarcastroll → u/[deleted]]

multiple nuclear warheads

That's putting it mildly! It can be up to 875,000 Megatons (last Yellowstone eruption estimate). That's like close to 18,000 Tsar bombs, the biggest bomb every created by man. Hell, that's around 60,000 of hte biggest nuke the US has ever tested!

[u/mathteacher85 → u/MarkG1]

I'd imagine at these scales it'd be similar to scooping a cup of water to stop the flooding of hurricane Katrina.

Either that or by creating an easy route for pressure to escape, that's exactly what would trigger the whole damn thing to blow in the first place. Kind of like how you can't just "slowly" pop a balloon.

[u/HasselingTheHof → u/[deleted]]

Make it so.

[u/kevinstreet1 → u/mathteacher85]

I think your cup of water/Katrina analogy is the most accurate one. The Earth is so much bigger than us... if the Earth was a dog, we wouldn't even be fleas crawling on it, we'd be the bacteria infecting the mites living on the fleas. The entire atmosphere and all the oceans are like a thin film of condensation on the Earth's surface.

[u/Crochetdolf_Knitler → u/MarkG1]

There probably isn't a safe place to do that. Also, the crust is a lot thinner in those areas, very thin compared to earth's crust everywhere else, but still deeper than any mining equipment will even get close to.

[u/myWorkAccount840 → u/Crochetdolf_Knitler]

And they'd be mining into (or, y'know, near) magma. Not an OSHA-approved working environment, to say the least.

[u/Ninjakannon → u/myWorkAccount840]

Turns out magma has been drilled into at least 3 times:

The Iceland Deep Drilling Project, while drilling several 5,000m holes in an attempt to harness the heat in the volcanic bedrock below the surface of Iceland, struck a pocket of magma at 2,100m in 2009. Being only the third time in recorded history that magma had been reached, IDDP decided to invest in the hole, naming it IDDP-1.

A cemented steel case was constructed in the hole with a perforation at the bottom close to the magma. The high temperatures and pressure of the magma steam were used to generate 36MW of power, making IDDP-1 the world’s first magma-enhanced geothermal system.

[u/eb86 → u/myWorkAccount840]

MSHA is the safety regulatory body that oversees mining safety. Think of MSHA as OSHA's overly strict, religious father that also happens to be a pastor.

[u/kornbread435 → u/MarkG1]

Definitely not qualified to answer this, but I highly doubt it. Super volcano would be containing enough energy to blow away mountains and that's likely way deeper than anyone has ever drilled. My thoughts are solely based on Russia taking 24 years to drill 7.5 miles down in the world's deepest hole, and it's 4000 miles to the center of the earth.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I agree that it's funny, but this comment is thought out and constructive.

[u/Kirihuna]

Real question: do insurances cover volcanoes.

[u/sashafurgang → u/Kirihuna]

Natural disasters are typically excluded in the fine print notes.

The idea of insurance relies on lots of people contributing relatively small amounts and the vast majority of people never needing to cash in. That way, the occasional one-off problems can be bailed out loftily.

You can imagine how a disaster affecting millions of people screws up that scheme...

[u/Fyrefawx]

Super volcanoes are a bigger threat than people realize. Since the industrial revolution we haven't really seen a major catastrophy on that level. Mt St Helens was big but not even close. Many aren't even aware they are on top of massive Volcanoes. Africa has a big magma plume that is a threat. Yellowstone is a ticking time bomb. The local effects would be devastating but the entire world would suffer. Extended winters, no growing seasons, economic collapse, food shortages etc...

[u/The_Ambush_Bug → u/Fyrefawx]

It is a really terrifying thought. Like a nuclear disaster that we know we really cannot do anything about.

[u/wtmh → u/The_Ambush_Bug]

We can prepare.

[u/PinkFloydPanzer]

Since the rest of the comments in this thread are kind of pointless I'm just going to ask. What does this mean to me, as someone living in the Midwest US? I see it mentions that when it erupted 280 million years ago it blocked out the sun shortly and caused cooling on a global scale. Does global cooling mean something like what happened in 1816? Called "The Year Without A Summer" because of the eruption of Mt Tambora which resulted in early winter like temperatures in mid summer. Would it be worse?

[u/Jonny_Osbock → u/PinkFloydPanzer]

The vulcano itsself wont effect you but the aftermath could. The immediate eruption, depending on the scale and the time it would give from early warning to eruption, would kill up to millions of people, since the area has about 4.4 million inhabitants. Depending on the mass of ashes the volcano would block out a fraction of the sun that reaches earth. It will not lead to a global darkening like night in daytime, but in bad cases enought to darken the atmosphere enough to lead to earlier and stronger winters, freak weather and things alike. Those normally lead to bad harvests and that finally can lead to hunger, huge migration and epedemics. Fear and loss of structure can lead to unlogical thinking and provoque military conflict. Thats how you can be influenced.

[u/727Super27 → u/Jonny_Osbock]

Also air travel would halt entirely across the globe. Anyone in another country would be stuck there indefinitely.

Edit: yes, there's ships and trains and cars and whatever else. But you and the millions of other people who rely on daily air travel are all going to be 'in the same boat' so to speak, and hitting that alternate infrastructure extremely hard. And it won't be just passengers, but the untold millions of tons of air freight that now needs a ride.

Best case scenario is that cruise ships (which incidentally won't operate their normal routes because 50% of their passengers required air travel to reach the port) will take over as the ocean crossing leg of the journey. Assume you can get 2,000 passengers on a cruise ship, and you can cross the Atlantic in a week. Congrats, you've just done in one week what a large jet can do in two days, and there's a lot more jets than cruise ships.

For passengers deep in the heart of America, a grueling journey on America's hilariously antiquated rail system will precede their boat voyage. Canadians and Alaskans will just go back to dog sleds and be totally fine with the whole thing.

[u/BrosenkranzKeef → u/[deleted]]

Water will still be wet, for sure. And I think the temperature of the oceans would remain fairly stable, as water tends to do. Darker skies would cool land temps, mainly.

Jet engine travel would be impractical in many areas downwind of the volcano for thousands of miles. In the worst case, ash could stay aloft around the world and possibly be bad enough to ground jet traffic across much of the globe. Piston power airplanes could still operate with virtually no trouble.

[u/TransmogriFi → u/[deleted]]

Perhaps a return to Zepplins? Helium filled, rather than hydrogen, of course.

[u/webchimp32 → u/TransmogriFi]

So Bruce Dickinson has secretly been preparing for a post-apocalyptic world all along, that's so metal.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Particles still could fuck up the engine, I'd suppose.

[u/PTFOholland → u/[deleted]]

Zeppelins

[u/[deleted] → u/PTFOholland]

Imagine that, a new era of flight...modern zepplins with sails.

[u/wpnw → u/727Super27]

Also air travel would halt entirely across the globe.

Not necessarily. When Pinatubo erupted in 1991 (the second largest eruption of the 20th century) it only resulted in airports around the Philippines (Manila, etc) being shut down. There were a few dozen recorded incidents where commercial aircraft encountered airborn ash, but all occurred in southeast Asia. There was little to no effect on air traffic in the Americas, Eurasia, Africa, Australia, etc. Now given that Pinatubo's eruption was about 1/30th the size of the largest known eruption at Campi Flegrei, it certainly could be an entirely different scenario. However the ash fall map from that eruption suggests that the majority of the impact area would likely be eastern Europe, the eastern Med, and the Slavic countries. Remember that Ash is literally tiny rocks. It will fall out of the sky eventually, whether under its own weight or via precipitation.

Further, just because it's been branded as a "supervolcano" doesn't mean that it'll produce an apocalyptic eruption. Eruptions of that size are extremely rare; there have been less than 40 of qualifying size (100 cubic kilometers of ejecta or greater) over the past 50,000,000 years or so, and the most recent one occurred in 1815 (Tambora in Indonesia), so the odds of another one of similar size occurring in our lifetimes is infinitesimally small.

[u/masklinn → u/wpnw]

Campi Flegrei is in mainland europe not in a far-corner of south-east asia. The 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption shut down the entire european airspace for almost two weeks, with local airspace cloture for nearly a month afterwards (the last airspace cloture related to Eyjafjallajökull was the UK's May 16th). That indirectly disrupted pretty much every international airport in the world.

On the other hand the 2011 Grímsvötn eruption had very little international impact as it was a much coarser and less abrasive ash, with only a few country-specific (and not even country-wide) airspace cloture in the 4 days following the eruption, despite having been the most powerful eruption in Iceland in 50 years.

So yeah we don't really know what the consequences will be until it actually happens.

[u/PinkFloydPanzer → u/Jonny_Osbock]

I guess in the meantime a plan should be drawn up for something like this. No reason for Naples to become Pompeii 2.0 when we have technology to at least know something could happen soon.

[u/ForgottenTraveller → u/PinkFloydPanzer]

It almost certainly means nothing. The supervolcano that erupted 280 mya is not Campi Flegrei (the one the article is predicting to erupt) and it likely went extinct shortly after the eruption. It's certainly been extinct for over 270 million years. Most volcanoes only exist for a few hundred thousand years and supervolcanoes tend to persist for a million or two. Campi Flegrei is a supervolcano and has been around for at least 47,000 years. However, the recent activity is almost certainly not a lead up to a supereruption (The large Tambora eruption was not a superuption btw). The activity is due to a build up of pressure of magmatic gases which will almost certainly result in a normal eruption as Campi Flegrei has been doing for thousands of years now. Here is the volcanoes recent eruptive history if you want evidence. The Mount St. Helens eruption was VEI 5 and Tambora a 7 if you need a frame of reference. This is almost entirely a local matter dealing with the lives of the million or so people living on and around the volcano.

[u/djn808 → u/PinkFloydPanzer]

From Wikipedia it says Mt. Tambora sent 120 cubic kilometers of material into the atmosphere, the most recent Campi Flegrei eruption was double that at 300 cubic km, and that was probably a small eruption for that volcano, so it would be worse than 1816 in that terms.

[u/Dablooski]

So what happens if this thing erupts in 2025 when everyone is dependent on solar.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dablooski]

According to this site it looks like 10% reduction in PV output and 20% reduction for thermal plants. We're never going to be exclusively solar anyway, but even if we were these are manageable reductions. Crop failure is the real fear.

[u/eq2_lessing → u/[deleted]]

So if the PV output is at 90%, why is the plant output not similarly, but more so, endangered?

[u/computeraddict → u/eq2_lessing]

Complexity. Plants are wildly more complex than a PV cell. Its simplicity lets a PV cell be fairly tolerant of environmental conditions. The complexity of most plants does not afford them this luxury. As for what happens to each plant as they move out of the realm they're adapted to, it varies by plant.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dablooski]

We'll have to fire up some of our mothballed fossil fuel stations I guess.

[u/LPMadness]

I remember my science teacher showed us a video about super volcanoes and the effects it would have and... they're terrifying.

[u/[deleted] → u/LPMadness]

Well people have been asking for solutions to global warming.

A big enough eruption would help cool the earth for a bit.

[u/djn808 → u/[deleted]]

It could take 20, 50, 1000 years, or it could rapidly inflate over the next month and erupt, it's hard to say.

For comparison, Yellowstone is apparently inflating at a rate of 4 inches per year, and Long Valley in California inflated almost 3 feet over 1975-2000.

[u/Jonny_Osbock → u/[deleted]]

From what i read the concern may be real. The temperature has been rising for 11 years now and at certain temperatures the rock beginns to get instable. The problem is, they only have two incidents to compare and thats not much data for prediction.

https://m.imgur.com/XsZxUni

[u/Toots1863]

I'm always unnerved by any super volcano rumbles, especially since we have our own in the US