Yellowstone's Reawakened Geyser Won't Spark a Volcanic 'Big One'
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
Yellowstone's reawakened geyser won't spark a volcanic 'big one':
A geyser hiding under Yellowstone National Park recently reawakened. But don't worry: That doesn't mean the supervolcano beneath the park will erupt soon, a new study finds.
In March 2018, following a 3.5-year-long nap, Steamboat Geyser suddenly erupted, spewing steam, mud, sand and rocks into the air. The previously dormant geyser erupted 32 times in 2018, a record-breaking 48 times in 2019 and another 48 times in 2020 (its previous record of 29 eruptions was set in 1964), the U.S. Geological Survey reported Monday (Jan. 4).
Some scientists feared that the geyser's dramatic outbursts were a harbinger of volcanic activity at Yellowstone. But it turns out Steamboat's frequent eruptions do not portend a volcanic blast, according to the new study.
[...] While Steamboat Geyser has reawakened, its sudden activity didn't come along with the underground magma movement often seen before a volcanic eruption.
[...] Moreover, except for the first eruption in 2018, none of Steamboat's outbursts occurred after periods of high seismic activity, the researchers found.
"We don't find any evidence that there is a big [volcanic] eruption coming," Manga said. Nor could they determine why Steamboat reawakened, calling the reason for its reactivation "ambiguous," in the study.
Journal Reference:
Mara H. Reed, Carolina Munoz-Saez, Sahand Hajimirza, et al. The 2018 reawakening and eruption dynamics of Steamboat Geyser, the world's tallest active geyser [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2020943118)
Also at UC Berkeley.
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