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In the spring 2010, Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland kaboomed, sending an ash cloud into European airspace. Air travel disrupted (ash + engines = bad) was the largest on the continent since World War II, which had a cost An estimate of $ 5 billion.
And yet it was the dissolution of Eyjafjallajökull moderate, as classified by volcanologists. On “volcanic eruption index”- is based on the volume of expulsions such as ash and rocks. 4. Compare this with the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, which achieves 7: It exploded so much material into the atmosphere that it cooled the planet. , leader widespread crop failures. In the Philippines, Mount PinatuboThe 1991 eruption was 6. It had an economic impact of $ 740 million (adjusted for inflation), although it was 100 times higher than Eyjafjallajökull.
In the news paper was published in the journal today Nature Communications, a team of researchers says that Eyjafjallajökull was a warning, and that smaller eruptions could be perfectly positioned to cause a disproportionate civilization of misery. This is not because they cause a large number of deaths, as they can cause the destruction of valuable infrastructure such as submarine cables and shipping channels. (As the world recently learned, it’s just a matter of sticking a single boat in the Suez Canal dissolution by itself.)
The researchers identified seven major “points” where critical infrastructure exists along with active volcanoes that are likely to have small-magnitude eruptions. Explosions between any of them can lead to devastating waterfalls of economic effects, as Eyjafjallajökull did on a plane trip. “I kept thinking, they’re all in the same place – all of these systems come together,” says social volcanologist Lara Mani of the University of Cambridge’s Center for Existential Risk Analysis (imagine their colder water) as the lead author in the new paper. “And that’s scary. Why didn’t anyone mention that before? “
One point is in Taiwan, where the main manufacturers of computer chips live; the critical importance of the year from iPhones to cars is very clear current (not volcanically induced) chip shortage. Another is in the south, between Taiwan and the Philippines. The Luzon Strait is riddled with submarine cables, nine of which were disrupted after the 2006 earthquake due to underwater landslides and caused almost complete disruptions to the internet. And at the point where the Sino-Korean is, volcanic ash can disrupt some of the world’s most crowded air routes, as well as shipping to the Sea of Japan.
In Malaysia, the Straits of Malacca is a tightening point, as it is also a critical shipping route, with 40% of the world’s trade crossing the route every year. The same is true in the Mediterranean region, where Mount Vesuvius, Santorini and Campi Flegrei are located, all of which can cause eruptions of 3 to 6 volcanic eruptions. The authors state that a tsunami caused by a volcano here could break underwater cables, disrupt ports and seal the Suez Canal. When a ship was stranded for six days in March, it cost the world trade $ 10,000 billion. Now, imagine that a tsunami takes longer without a connection.
Thanks to Eyjafjallajökull we have already seen what happens when ash is thrown over the point of the North Atlantic. And finally, in the Pacific Northwest, so far they are volcanic debris that could reach Seattle. The authors point out that about 5,600 years ago, Mount Rainier caused more than 60 kilometers of mud to flow to Puget Sound and to the now occupied port of Tacoma. Modeling suggests that if a volcano erupted in Level 6 today, there could be a total potential loss $ 7.6 billions more than five years.
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