This week, Science featured a blanket of thermal water vapor rising over a volcanic vent. In Yellowstone National Park near Wyoming, USA, there is a lake heated by the hot heat of underground magma. The name Yellowstone comes from the sulfur-containing thermal water that flows through the limestone layer and dyes the rocks yellow.
Science has published an article on the 1st (local time) by a research team from the Department of Geology of the University of Illinois in the United States, stating that there is more magma than initially estimated under the Yellowstone volcano. Magma refers to the melting of underground rocks by heating them to high temperatures.
Ross McGuire, a geology professor at the University of Illinois in the United States, measured the speed of seismic waves under Yellowstone Volcano through seismic tomography and estimated the amount and distribution of magma under the volcano through 3D modeling. As a result, it was discovered that there is more magma than expected in the magma reservoir.
“Previous studies have estimated that 5 to 15 percent is fused, but up to 20 percent has been shown to be fused,” McGuire said. It is generally believed that the more molten the rock, the more likely it is to erupt.
However, the results of this study do not mean Yellowstone Volcano will erupt immediately. Michael Polen, senior research scientist at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, said: ‘Although the chance of an eruption is slightly higher than previously thought, the results show that Yellowstone volcano is mostly solid.’
Meanwhile, Yellowstone Volcano has erupted a total of three times in the past 2.1 million years. There was a major eruption 640,000 years ago and the most recent eruption is estimated to have occurred 70,000 years ago. Volcano experts predict that if Yellowstone erupts, it will be more than 1,000 times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of St. Helens, devastating two-thirds of the United States.
