Post by FWS on Aug 31, 2014 13:19:57 GMT -6
Armageddon: Yellowstone supervolcano eruption to bring winter in summers
Northern Voices News
August 31, 2014
Armageddon: Yellowstone supervolcano eruption to bring winter in summers. There is no denying the fact that it is real scary.
Yellowstone supervolcano eruption may spread blanket of ash across the North America. Researchers have concluded that while in areas like Rocky Mountains the level of ash will be substantially higher compared to other areas.
Scientists and seismologists are of the view that in Rocky Mountains the level of ash caused by Yellowstone supervolcano eruption may be as much as one meter throughout the region while in other areas it may be one inch or even thicker blanket of ash.
Yellowstone eruption
But this will not be the only consequence of Yellowstone supervolcano eruption. Researchers claim that it may be able to change the weather completely, turning a hot sizzling summer into very cold winter.
In the meantime researchers have worked to understand as to what is under Yellowstone. Seismologists at the University of Utah and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology undertook a study to image the Yellowstone magma reservoir through a technique called seismic tomography. Using improved methods and data from thousands of earthquakes; they discovered that the magma reservoir is much larger than inferred in previous studies. The results from this new approach are published in the Journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Researchers used high tech gadgets to actually understand the subject. To create an “image” of the magma storage region (reservoir), the research team used data from the Yellowstone Seismic Network from 1984-2011 including 4,520 earthquakes and a total of 48,622 individual travel time measurements. They then mapped how fast the P-waves (the fastest type of earthquake wave) moved through different parts of the subsurface beneath Yellowstone. The resulting model reveals a very large region where P-waves move more slowly, interpreted to be due to the presence of warm, partially melted rock; that is the crustal magma storage region that has fueled Yellowstone’s past volcanic activity. The inferred magma body is 90 km long, extends from 5 km to 17 km depth, and is 2.5 times larger than imaged in a previous study.
The latest study actually tries to understand the implications of Yellowstone eruption. U.S. Geological Survey has worked hard to gauge Yellowstone eruption. U.S. Geological Survey researchers discovered that during very large volcanic eruptions, ash transport is dominated by a rapidly expanding umbrella cloud that results in significant distribution of ash upwind from the volcanic vent. “In essence, the eruption makes its own winds that can overcome the prevailing westerlies that normally dominate weather patterns in the United States,” explained USGS geologist Larry Mastin, first author on the manuscript and co-developer of the computer model. “This helps explain the distribution from large Yellowstone eruptions of the past, where considerable amounts of ash reached the west coast.” The authors also note that a fraction of an inch or less of ash is likely to be deposited at distances further than 1500 miles, such as on the east and west coasts of the United States.
Map of projected ashfall.
Northern Voices News
August 31, 2014
Armageddon: Yellowstone supervolcano eruption to bring winter in summers. There is no denying the fact that it is real scary.
Yellowstone supervolcano eruption may spread blanket of ash across the North America. Researchers have concluded that while in areas like Rocky Mountains the level of ash will be substantially higher compared to other areas.
Scientists and seismologists are of the view that in Rocky Mountains the level of ash caused by Yellowstone supervolcano eruption may be as much as one meter throughout the region while in other areas it may be one inch or even thicker blanket of ash.
Yellowstone eruption
But this will not be the only consequence of Yellowstone supervolcano eruption. Researchers claim that it may be able to change the weather completely, turning a hot sizzling summer into very cold winter.
In the meantime researchers have worked to understand as to what is under Yellowstone. Seismologists at the University of Utah and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology undertook a study to image the Yellowstone magma reservoir through a technique called seismic tomography. Using improved methods and data from thousands of earthquakes; they discovered that the magma reservoir is much larger than inferred in previous studies. The results from this new approach are published in the Journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Researchers used high tech gadgets to actually understand the subject. To create an “image” of the magma storage region (reservoir), the research team used data from the Yellowstone Seismic Network from 1984-2011 including 4,520 earthquakes and a total of 48,622 individual travel time measurements. They then mapped how fast the P-waves (the fastest type of earthquake wave) moved through different parts of the subsurface beneath Yellowstone. The resulting model reveals a very large region where P-waves move more slowly, interpreted to be due to the presence of warm, partially melted rock; that is the crustal magma storage region that has fueled Yellowstone’s past volcanic activity. The inferred magma body is 90 km long, extends from 5 km to 17 km depth, and is 2.5 times larger than imaged in a previous study.
The latest study actually tries to understand the implications of Yellowstone eruption. U.S. Geological Survey has worked hard to gauge Yellowstone eruption. U.S. Geological Survey researchers discovered that during very large volcanic eruptions, ash transport is dominated by a rapidly expanding umbrella cloud that results in significant distribution of ash upwind from the volcanic vent. “In essence, the eruption makes its own winds that can overcome the prevailing westerlies that normally dominate weather patterns in the United States,” explained USGS geologist Larry Mastin, first author on the manuscript and co-developer of the computer model. “This helps explain the distribution from large Yellowstone eruptions of the past, where considerable amounts of ash reached the west coast.” The authors also note that a fraction of an inch or less of ash is likely to be deposited at distances further than 1500 miles, such as on the east and west coasts of the United States.
Map of projected ashfall.
