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The caldera within Yellowstone National Park spans the three states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana and poses a significant threat in the event of a super eruption. Although such an eruption has not occurred for more than 640,000 years, the system is constantly monitored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for any changes. There have been many unsupported claims that the supervolcano is “overdue” for an eruption, after the mean time between each event has been calculated.
But the Discovery Channel’s “Curiosity” series revealed how University of Wyoming geochemist Professor Kenneth Sims studied the volcano’s radiocarbon isotopes to see if a long-term prediction could be made.
Prof Sims said: “There have been three major eruptions in the past as super eruptions.
“This is the danger we are facing in Yellowstone.”
The series went on to explain why scientists want to be able to predict a future Yellowstone eruption.
It said, “Thousands of times more powerful than Mount St Helens, an eruption of this magnitude will bury western North America.
“A haze of sulfur would obscure the sun and plunge the whole world into a volcanic winter.
“There is a battery of equipment here to monitor soil deformation, gas emissions and earthquakes.”
The narrator detailed how the USGS work would allow them to have a warning in the event of a super eruption, but ideally, the researchers would like to know much more in advance.
He said, “These are great for short-term predictions, but can science find a way to predict super eruptions well in advance?
READ MORE: Yellowstone Volcano Discovery: USGS Concerns “About Charging the Hydrothermal System”
In a study published in 2016, scientists found that “radon anomalies appear to be suitable for predicting eruptive episodes.”
The paper, published in the “Geological Society of London”, concluded that: “Radon mapping is an effective tool for assessing diffuse and concentrated surface degassing.”
The team studied its use in Vesuvius (Italy), La Soufriere (Guadeloupe), Stromboli (Italy) and Villarrica (Chile), where they found “faults and fracture systems that control radon degassing”.
Scientists also recently uncovered evidence of two unknown “colossal” eruptions in Yellowstone using a combination of techniques, including radioactive isotope analysis.
University of Leicester volcanologist Dr. Thomas Knott, said: “We found that the deposits previously believed to belong to multiple smaller eruptions were actually colossal sheets of volcanic material from two previously unknown super-eruptions about 9.0 and 8.7 million years ago.”
The study indicates that, during the Miocene period, Yellowstone erupted on average every 500,000 years.
However, the study led scientists to predict that Yellowstone’s power is “waning.”
Dr Knott said: “So it appears that the Yellowstone hotspot has experienced a threefold decrease in its ability to produce supereruption events. This is a very significant decline.”
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