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I've written about how scientists have moved beyond kid stuff when making models of volcanoes—no more of the baking-soda-and-vinegar mixtures for them. Today computer simulations, field studies, and lab experiments all serve to advance the science of volcanology. A recent paper takes a look at the very largest eruptions, those that give birth to calderas.
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Volcanoes erupt because when magma rises near the Earth's surface, it's under less pressure, and the gases dissolved in the magma come out of solution as bubbles. The higher and faster the magma rises, the faster the bubbles form and expand. The kind of eruption that happens depends on the balance between the bubbles and the magma. A slow-rising magma lets the bubbles out gently, and an effusive eruption happens, with lava simply pouring out of the vent or, if it's a thick, sticky lava, it builds a dome. When magma rises faster, a runaway effect can happen as the bubbles expand faster than the magma can let them out. The result is an explosive eruption. Confined in the throat of the volcano, the expanding magma shoots straight upward, hurling fine ash as high as the stratosphere.
When magma rises still faster, according to the Geology paper, it may reach the surface before the bubbles can even form. Instead the gas comes out all at once in a shattering burst, and the lava explodes in all directions, unconfined by the volcano. As long as the magma comes up, this blast is sustained.
We have examples of volcanic blasts in the historic record. At Mount St. Helens in 1980, for example, the north side of the mountain collapsed and the pressurized magma beneath released a sideways, or lateral blast. The Russian volcano Bezymianny did the same in 1956. But Krakatau set the modern record in 1883 when its caldera-forming eruption was heard thousands of kilometers away.
Even that gigantic eruption, though, was a one-time blast. The sustained blast would keep going and going, perhaps for days. And there's no telling how that would affect the world's atmosphere or civilization itself. It will take more work beyond the first crude model in the Geology paper to make a better scientific guess.
Links
- More about Crater Lake
- More about Yellowstone Caldera
- "Sustained blasts during large volcanic eruptions" by Legros and Kelfoun, October 2000 Geology (abstract only)
- All about Mount St. Helens
- More about Krakatau from Volcanolive.com
