This week, Science featured a cover of hot spring water steam rising over a volcanic vent. In Yellowstone National Park, near Wyoming, USA, there is a lake heated by the warm heat of underground magma. The name Yellowstone comes from the sulfur-containing hot spring water that flows through the limestone layer and dyes the rocks yellow.
Science published a paper on the 1st (local time) by a research team from the Department of Geology at the University of Illinois in the United States, stating that there is a greater amount of magma than initially estimated under the Yellowstone volcano. Magma refers to the melting of rocks underground by heating them to high temperatures.
Ross McGuire, a professor of geology at the University of Illinois in the US, measured the speed of seismic waves under the Yellowstone volcano through seismic tomography and estimated the amount and distribution of magma under the volcano through 3D modeling. As a result, he discovered that there is a greater amount of magma than expected in the magma reservoir.
“Previous studies have estimated that 5 to 15 percent is molten, but up to 20 percent has been shown to be molten,” McGuire said. It is generally believed that the more molten the rock is, the more likely it is to erupt.
However, the results of this study do not mean that Yellowstone Volcano will erupt immediately. Michael Polen, senior researcher at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, said: “Although the possibility of an eruption is slightly higher than previously thought, the results show that the 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 be 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.
