The Yellowstone National Park’s steamboat geyser lay dormant for more than three years before waking up again in 2018 and has erupted 129 times since then, raising concerns that it could lead to the volcanic ‘big’.
A team from the University of California – Berkeley has taken on the task of discovering the truth under the world’s highest active geyser and has found little evidence of magma motion, which is the key to an eruption.
Researchers have collected data from geysers around the world and found that due to the size of Steamboat, the geyser stores a large amount of water that provides energy to power explosions. It has a reservoir about 82 feet below the ground and a column of 377 feet.
The study also determined that rainfall and snowmelt may have played a role in the activation, as the groundwater pressure pushed more water into the reservoir causing extra hot water to erupt more frequently.
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Researchers have found little evidence of magma motion, which is the key to an eruption, hiding beneath Yellowstone’s Steamboat Geyser.
The steamer geyser came back to life in March 2018, after sleeping three and a half years, releasing steam, mud and rocks into the air.
In 2018 it erupted 32 times, then in 2019 a record of 49 eruptions was recorded and in 2020 another 48 times. The previous record was 29 eruptions in 1964.
The increased activity has caused fear among some scientists who thought it was a harbinger of possible explosive volcanic eruptions in the surrounding water body.
Yellowstone’s supervolcano has not erupted in 70,000 years, but experts are not deterred from keeping a close eye on any indication that the ‘big’ may appear soon.
The steamboat geyser came to life in March 2018 after sleeping three and a half years, releasing steam, mud and rocks into the air. In 2018 it erupted 32 times, then in 2019 a record of 49 eruptions was recorded and in 2020 another 48 times. The previous record was 29 eruptions in 1964.
The research team took into account that the ground around the geyser increased the seismicity, before reactivating the geyser. The area gives off more heat into the atmosphere, but the temperature of the groundwater that drives the eruptions of Steamboat has not increased.
Michael Manga, professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California-Berkeley and senior author of the study, said: ‘Hydrothermal explosions – basically hot water that explodes because it comes in contact with hot rock – are one of the largest dangers in Yellowstone. ‘
‘The reason they are problematic is that they are very difficult to predict; it is not clear if there are predecessors that enable you to give warning. ‘
Manga and his team took into account that the ground around the geyser rose and that seismicity increased somewhat before the geyser reactivated.
The area gives off more heat into the atmosphere, but it did not cause a reawakening of any other dormant geysers in the basin.
The team also notes that the temperature of the groundwater that drives the eruptions of Steamboat has not increased.
‘We find no evidence that there is a major eruption coming. “I think this is an important takeaway,” Manga said.
Manga and his team decided to answer three questions about Steamboat: ‘Why did it wake up again? Why does the period vary between 3 and 17 days? and why does it spray so high? “They could find answers to two.
The team collected altitude measurements from 11 different geysers in the US, Russia, Iceland and Chile with the estimated depth of the reservoir water from which their eruptions come.
They found that the deeper the eruption jet, the deeper the reservoir.
They found that the deeper the eruption jet, the deeper the reservoir. Steamboat Geyser, with a reservoir about 82 feet underground, has the highest column of 377 feet. This allows the reservoir to fill more water to stimulate more eruptions
Steamboat Geyser, with a reservoir about 82 feet underground, has the highest column of 377 feet.
“What you’re really doing is you fill a container, it reaches a critical point, you empty it and then you run out of liquid which can burst until it fills up again,” Manga said.
‘The deeper you go, the higher the pressure. The higher the pressure, the higher the boiling temperature. ‘
“And the hotter the water, the more energy it has and the higher the geyser.”
To investigate the reasons for Steamboat Geyser’s volatility, the team collected records related to 109 eruptions that were reactivated in 2018.
Melting snow and rain added underground water pressure that provided more warm water for eruptions.
Melting snow and rain added underground water pressure that provided more warm water for eruptions. In the photo, steamboat breaks out on 22 August 2020
The data included statistics on weather and current flow, seismometer and soil deformation readings and observations from the public.
They also looked at previous active and dormant periods of Steamboat and nine other Yellowstone geysers, and data on thermal emissions from the surface of the Norris Geyser basin.
After searching the team, the team concluded that rainfall and snowmelt contributed to the fluctuating period.
Melting snow and rain added underground water pressure that provided more warm water for eruptions.
Manga and his team could not determine why Steamboat Geyser restarted on March 15, 2018, after three years and 193 days of inactivity, although the geyser is known to be much more variable than Old Faithful, which is usually about every 90 minutes.
COULD AN OUTBREAK AT THE YELLOWSTONE SUPERVOLCANO BE PREVENTED?
Recent research has found a small magma chamber, known as the magma reservoir with the upper crust, below the surface.
Nasa believes drilling up to ten kilometers into the supervolcano below Yellowstone National Park to pump water under high pressure could cool it down.
Despite the fact that the mission would cost $ 3.46 billion (£ 2.63 billion), Nasa considers it ‘the most viable solution’.
Using the heat as a resource also provides an opportunity to pay for the plan – it can be used to create a geothermal plant that generates electricity at extremely competitive prices of around $ 0.10 (£ 0.08) per kWh.
But this method of subjecting a supervolcano has the potential to re-ignite and activate the supervolcanic eruption that Nasa is trying to prevent.
‘Drilling in the top of the magma chamber’ would be very risky; However, careful drilling of the lower edges may work.
This image from the USGS shows how a ‘super-eruption’ of molten lava under Yellowstone National Park would spread across the United States
Though the plan to cool Yellowstone with drilling, not just the potentially devastating risks, is not simple.
If you do, it is an extremely slow process that will happen to you at one meter per year, which means it will take tens of thousands of years to cool it down completely.
And yet there would be no guarantee that it would be successful for at least hundreds or possibly thousands of years.