Magma under Yellowstone
The “supervolcano” at Yellowstone National Park has been hit by a swarm of hundreds of earthquakes in recent weeks.
And now, there is more bad news from scientists – it could blow far sooner than anticipated.
Evidence recently presented at a volcanism conference in Portland, Oregon, suggests the process which led to Yellowstone’s most recent supereruption developed far more quickly than experts had thought.
Hannah Shamloo, a graduate student at Arizona State University, found fresh magma might have been injected under the supervolcano only decades before the eruption. The New York Times quoted Shamloo as observing, “It’s shocking how little time is required to take a volcanic system from being quiet and sitting there to the edge of an eruption,” though the graduate student also cautioned it is too early to identify a precise time scale.
