Scientist pinpointed catalyst for ‘catastrophic’ yellowstone eruption

The supervolcano was formed during the last three big events – the Huckleberry Ridge eruption 2.1 million years ago, the Mesa Falls eruption 1.3 million years ago and the Lava Creek eruption

approximately 630,000 years ago. Located below Yellowstone National Park, the area is constantly monitored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for signs an eruption is on the way.

The last supereruption is believed to have ejected more than 1,000 cubic metres of lava and ash into the atmosphere – enough to bury a large city, By comparison, the last eruption of Mount

Pinatubo in the Philippines, which caused a 0.4C drop in average global temperature for the following year, was 100 times less forceful. But supervolcanoes do not function the same way as

normal volcanoes, which erupt when magma fills their chambers and spews through an opening when the pressure reaches a critical point. For this reason, scientists have long tipped

earthquakes or other tectonic events that open up the Earth’s crust to be the catalyst for eruptions. However, an international team of researchers concluded that a supervolcano can erupt

“at any time” without any outside trigger, making predicting such an event more difficult. According to a study published in Nature Geoscience magazine, this is due to a phenomenon called

the “buoyancy effect”. This occurs when the molten magma inside the mostly underground supervolcano reaches critically high pressures due to the much denser rock around it, forcing it to the

surface. In tests conducted at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, researchers recreated the intense pressure and heat inside the caldera of a supervolcano in

order to understand how it erupted. Using synthetic magma inside a diamond chamber, they fired high-energy X-rays inside to measure the changes that occurred as the pressure inside the

chamber rose. READ MORE: 'NO PART OF US IS SAFE' YELLOWSTONE WARNING ISSUED AFTER 'RISING MAGMA' SIGNS IDENTIFIED By understanding how such supervolcanoes work, the

researchers hope they can predict future eruptions. Thankfully, the USGS estimates the probability of an eruption at one in 730,000 in any given year. A recent study also suggests that the

hotspot could currently be in a state of decline. This finding was based on an analysis of volcanic deposits that were scattered across tens of thousands of kilometres in the region.