SUPERVOLCANIC MAGMA reservoir BUBBLING under Yellowstone Park Geoboffins have claimed that a massive lake of magma found under the Yellowstone National Park's supervolcano could fill the Grand Canyon 11 times over. The study, published in Science this week, follows from the University of Utah's seismologists discovering and surveying a deeper reservoir of partly-molten rock which lies 12 …
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I seriously was expecting the amount of magna to be calculated in something more graspable than the 11.4 times the volume of the Grand Canyon. Elephants maybe, or magnums of champagne.
No, really. If you were to spread this magna out across the USofA, how many millimeters thick would it be? I hope it would make it to DC!
The American Standard shitload is only about 1.6 gallons (6 liters)
Magma can't flow for hundreds of miles. If a supervolcano blows, it is explosive like Krakatoa was. It would release many cubic miles of ash, so more of it would settle near the volcano, less the further east (following the jet stream etc.) I recall suggestions of maybe a foot of ash here in the midwest, maybe that will be upgraded if the reservoir is bigger. Kind of a downer for agriculture, I would imagine.
The good news is that the rest of the world would share in the bounty, as enough ash to at least cover your car in a nice layer would settle in Europe, and block a good portion of sunlight for years worldwide. Ice fairs like in the 1600s could return to the Thames - probably year round.
"Magma can't flow for hundreds of miles"
The Deccan and Siberian traps would indicate otherwise.
There is only one other supervolcano "we" on earth should be worried about - and it goes off a good deal more regularly than Yellowstone does (although, as with Yellowstone, most of the eruptions are small, not catastrophic), being about due for its bi-millenial pop.
"If my calculations are correct that would be the entirety of the USA under about sixteen feet nine inches, so c. 5100mm. Not that it would be so evenly spread of course."
Sounds like enough to solve the America problem. Is there anyway we can speed it up?
I would think it would make it as far as the Mississippi River. If the flow makes it past that point, it still has to pass Lake Michigan. Unless we build a lava canal for it to flow directly to Washington, leaving most of the other space mostly unscathed.
When dealing with really huge numbers can't they come up with something like cubic kilometers or something cool sounding? 11.x Grand Canyons is a bit abstract? No?
Comparing X to something you've actually stood next to is about as concrete as it gets.
Well said! Especially given that it was defined as having a volume of 1,000 cubic miles which should have been good enough for those that were looking for something a little more abstract1.
1 Fine! It comes to about 18,653,228,928.7794 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
"When dealing with really huge numbers can't they come up with something like cubic kilometers or something cool sounding?"
The US does have an official measurement for large volumes like this, but since pretty much only the Army Corp of Engeners and water resource boards use it for tracking how much water is in lakes, it is not surprising the researchers did not include it.
It is called an Acre-Foot, which is the volume of one acre filled to a depth of one foot of substance.
So it is 43,560 cubic feet or 1,233 meters squared; for the purists, Acre-Foot = Chain x Furlong x Foot.
As GBE wrote, the volume of the Grand Canyon is certainly abstract to anyone who has seen it in person. Near the Grand Canyon Village, the south rim is close to a mile higher than the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon. Also keep in mind that there are no roads crossing from the south rim to north rim between Hoover Dam and maybe 50 miles upstream of the Grand Canyon Village.
"Isn't there a risk that could be a little like sticking a pin into a balloon?"
Doesn't seem to have resulted in the destruction of Iceland. However, every country has its Nimbys, and I'd guess that the tree huggers would object to the remote risk of losing Yellowstone's geysers, the national park authority would object under its "object to everything" mandate. Throw in the US' predilection for pork barrel politics, and the chances of anything happening are next to nil.
There's also the fly in the ointment that 12 miles below the surface might be relatively shallow, but it is sufficiently deep that it doesn't follow that you could easily get high volume power extraction to drive steam turbines.
" I'd guess that the tree huggers would object to the remote risk of losing Yellowstone's geysers, "
That's a big risk, but the other risk is that a new field will open up elsewhere and not where it may be expected:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craters_of_the_Moon_%28geothermal_site%29
"A most important change in the region has been the building of the Wairakei Power Station (150 MW) in the 1950s, about 2 km. north of the field. This reduced the pressure in the hot water systems below the earth surface. Since then much of the geothermal activity in the region has dramatically changed, as did the geothermal activity at Craters of the Moon. The geysers at Wairakei Geyser Valley totally disappeared, but the heat output at Craters of the Moon increased. A lot of hydrothermal eruptions occurred, which formed the craters."
And doesn't geothermal require a bit of that precious substance, H2O. That stuff has been in short supply recently, even/especially in the Rockies. I believe much of it is siphoned off to Calif agriculture and other important needs but the replenishment hasn't recently been raining down.
Interesting that the Clear Lake area also uses sewage water to power its geothermal plant. Unless I'm mistaken, there isn't much sewage available in the Yellowstone area. Perhaps we could truck it in from DC.
The US idea of a national park was a generally useless but pretty and natural piece of property far away from the cities where one could meet with like minded people and not be disturbed by dreadful people of the middle class (let alone the working classes) that could be maintained at the nations expense
if a use could be found for it, I'm sure it could be deparkified in short order.
"with such a large cap of potential thermal energy, why not try and tap it for electrical power generation?"
Geothermal energy extraction has "side effects" - not least of which is rampant water pollution.
There's no danger of triggering an eruption, but there are significant problems with extraction efficiency (rock is a bloody awful conductor of heat) which means places like Iceland do well (there's always rock upwelling there), but other geothermal systems (eg, New Zealand) don't work nearly as well over prolonged periods.
"Estimations whether such an eruption would be an extinction event are difficult to make before such an eruption occurred."
SO, if anyone is left alive in the rubble afterwards, we'll know it wasn't QUITE an extinction event, and if it was, then nobody will be around to discuss it afterwards.
Folks, we NEED to develop spaceflight and space habitats. Planets are just too dangerous to live on.
> "Planets are just too dangerous to live on."
Okay, imagine we colonize the entire solar system with habitats, and then we get into one of those pesky civil war things. They do happen. I guarantee there won't be much life among the ruins afterwards. At least on a planet the life support system would remain partially functional under all but the most extreme circumstances.
"..how about a bunch of virgins waiting for you."
Folks, we NEED to develop spaceflight and space habitats. Planets are just too dangerous to live on.
and
Or failing that, how about a bunch of virgins waiting for you.
Me, I'm leaning towards mine-shafts right now...
But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years."
be a world extinction event. If that or any of the other super volcanoes erupted just the ash clouds alone would cover the northern hemisphere in a week or two. It wouldn't be a month before they would cover the Earth and block out all the light. I don't expect thats conducive to horticulture.
I think thats enough reason to "let sleeping dogs lie" and forget trying to drill a geothermal well into the magma chamber area.
If nothing else, for purely selfish reasons as I and several hundred million people are living downwind of it.
Even as a child, we were taught that the Earth had a thin crust (Mmmm Pizza...) but beneath the surface was a hot molten core. Drill far enough down, and it's hot enough to melt rocks.
Where's the news story here - there's a bit of a crack in the Earth and it could leak through - whoop-de-do- break out the news alerts - we're explaining volcanoes.
I am continually surprised we have never had reports of droves of 'we live only to kill' terrorists, armed with jack-hammers and blasting equipment, heading to Yellowstone or La Palma with the intent of triggering far greater devastation than a mere nuke could bring.
Thanks for reminding me of La Palma, well worded wikipedia entry linked from that (for Teneguia)
Quote
" It has also been predicted that the volcano will show some more activity and is a possibility of a land slide causing some of the island to fall off. This will cause a tsunami. It's most likely going to destroy a lot of south England and the east coast of America. The governments of both countries are quite aware. New York have already carried out evacuation plans."
LOLs.
Just wait for the agw debate crowd to get hold of that tidbit.
Sorry folks it is most definitely NOT like sticking a balloon with a pin. Latex and rock have substantially different functional responses to stretching events.
As for fluids to run the geothermal bits on, I'd suggest that the vendors of nutribullet and waring get together and come up with a 'congrenatorator' device -- we might, after cleaning out three or four governments, have enough liquefied polititician to set up at least one thermal conduit.
Some history of Yellowstone.
The above is interesting because it shows that the lava cavern is moving in relation to the crust which is moving due to continental drift.
But if you don't live in the US, then there is always your that may be closer to you volcano.
Super Volcanoes around the world.
I remember Mount St. Helens. It was an interesting time. Having all this ash falling from the sky that you didn't brush off of your nice car because it would strip the paint. Yellowstone would be so much worse.
Of course there is a volcano in the Atlantic that may not be large but if it erupts, the amount of soil being shifted would cause massive tsunamis.
Have a good weekend.
"How come the Hawaiian island chain isn't on that list?"
1: Most of them are dead remainders of the hotspot they moved over (only one island is erupting, there's another one building up undersea a few miles away)
2: The type of lava produced there is benign midoceanic basalts, producing shield volcanoes (you need dissolved water and carbonates from subducting oceanic plates to get explosive eruptions)
3: The hotspot is pretty small.
4: Threatening houses is a long way from threatening the globe
5: There's a far greater danger posed to hawaiian housing from the island slumping (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilina_Slump) and similar dangers apply at the Canaries (Cumbre Vieja partially slumped and then stopped when it erupted in 1949 - another eruption could finish the job and even the best-case scanariao would be a 2-3 metre wave hitting the USA east coast.)
You too. Have a good weekend. And thanks for the reminders that there are plenty of other spots around the globe that would make a nuclear missile tournament look like a game of tiddlywinks.
Earthlings, you better enjoy it while you can because SHE is going to do a purge someday soon.
The current scenario is that we will probably have hit "The Singularity" in 2033 well before Yellowstone becomes a threat again, by which time force fields arranged carefully should allow the ash and gases to be re-used as building material for a silicon carbide nanotube based Beanstalk using nanites and the abundant geothermal energy in the plume(s).
The SOx could be a pain though, perhaps recycle that into FeS and use it as building material?
"Fool's gold" is remarkably stable stuff long term and if nanoassembled into an aerogel-like structure with said nanites would be ideal for any number of applications.
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