Will the volcanic eruption be a eruption or an explosion?

Last December, a a gloomy lava flow began to erupt from the summit of La Soufrière, a volcano on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. The discharge was slow at first; no one was threatened. Then, in late March and early April, the volcano began to emit seismic waves associated with rapidly rising magma. The evil smoke came out of the summit by force.

A magmatic bomb was about to explode, scientists sounded the alarm and the government ordered a complete evacuation of the north of the island on April 8th. The next day, the volcano began to explode catastrophically. The evacuation came on time: at the time of writing, no life was lost.

At the same time, a similar but completely different surface was happening on the edge of the Arctic.

Increasingly intense tectonic earthquakes have been rumored under Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula since the end of 2019, which means the world was opening up underground, making space for magma to rise. In early 2021, when the underground snake of the magma migrated across the peninsula to the surface, looking for an escape hatch, the earth itself began to change shape. Then, in mid-March, the first crack of many crossed the ground where scientists could have expected. to a valley inhabited without lava flow Called Geldingadalur.

Here, the locals immediately approached the eruption, picnicking and taking selfies a few stones from the lava flows. A concert was recently held there where people treated the peaks like amphitheater seats.

In both cases, scientists did not specifically suggest that a new eruption was on the way. They also predicted two very different forms that would take these eruptions. While the “when” section of the equation is never easy to predict, getting the right “how” part is particularly difficult, especially in the case of the explosive explosion at La Soufrière. “That’s hard, and they nailed it, they nailed it completely,” he said Diana Roman, Volcanologist at the Carnegie Institute for Science.

Volcanologists are increasingly understanding the conditions that can cause an explosion. Whether or not the presence of groundwater is present, for example, depends on the gases and gloom of the magma itself. And in a series of recent studies, researchers have shown how to read hidden signals — from seismic waves to satellite observations — so they can predict exactly how the eruption will develop: with a blow or a gesture.

Something Wicked This Way Badator

As with skyscrapers or cathedrals, the architectural designs of Earth’s volcanoes are vastly different. You can get high and steep volcanoes, ultra high spread and shallow volcanoes and colossal and wide calderas. Sometimes there is no volcano at all, but rather cracks that are scarred by chains of small depressions or marks like claw marks.

The prediction of eruptions raises many questions. The main one among them is: When? Basically, this question is equivalent to asking when it will pass through a magma channel coming from below (the tube between the magma and the surface opening), like lava and ash, like volcanic glass and a bomb.