Oct 20, 2022 06:00:00

What will happen to the earth when the volcano 'Super Volcano' erupts, which poses the danger of erupting magma inside the earth at once?

It has been pointed out that if the magma deep underground explodes and a super huge eruption `` catastrophic eruption '' occurs, it will cause catastrophic damage to the ground and greatly change the climate. A volcano that erupts like this is called a ``super volcano'', but what happens if it actually erupts is explained by the YouTube channel `

` Kurzgesagt '', which introduces scientific content with animation.

What Happens if a Supervolcano Blows Up?-YouTube


A supervolcano eruption would produce an eruption tens of times more powerful than all of the world's existing nuclear weapons combined, rain down toxic ash and gas, and change the climate by centuries in a single year. I'm here.

All eruptions have two causes in the first place. The Earth has seven major plates and dozens of smaller plates, all moving at speeds of up to 15 centimeters per year.

At these plate boundaries, one plate moves under the other. At this time, the rocks and water that make up the plate undergo chemical changes in the extremely hot underground, turning into magma. The resulting magma accumulates and erupts to the surface when enough has accumulated.

Another cause is the 'mantle plume'. Mantle plumes are thought to be pillars of unusually hot rock that extend from the Earth's core to the mantle boundary to the surface. Although it is only a hypothesis, it seems that the mantle is moving like convection inside the earth, and part of it may blow out.

Even if it is called an eruption, the scale varies greatly, and geologists measure the scale of volcanic explosions with an index called the `` Volcanic Explosive Index (VEI) ''. VEI is classified from 0 to 8.

In the eruption of VEI = 2, the amount of lava that fills all 400 pools of 2500 cubic meters will erupt. Although it is relatively small in the classification, it is said that the 2021 eruption of Mt. Semeru on Java Island, which caused dozens of victims, is equivalent to this. About 10 eruptions with VEI = 2 occur each year.

The

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption , which occurred in Tonga in 2022 and caused a tsunami that reached far away Japan, is estimated to have a VEI of 5. When VEI = 6, the impact becomes even greater. In 1883, the ash from the Krakatau eruption in Indonesia lowered the temperature of the earth by nearly 0.5 degrees Celsius, making it the 'loudest sound in history' that could be heard to the other side of the earth. is said to have occurred. An example of VEI = 7 is the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora , which is said to have had a cooling effect on the other side of the world and hundreds of thousands of people starved to death due to famine. .

The largest VEI = 8 eruptions are rare, with the most recent eruptions dating back tens of thousands of years. In the Oruanui eruption that occurred in New Zealand about 26,500 years ago, a super-large eruption that exploded an explosive equivalent to Mount Everest occurred, and it is said that it also brought cooling to the earth. It seems that the eruption of Lake Toba 74,000 years ago dropped the temperature of the earth by 4 degrees, and it seems that it is even thought that it brought drought for centuries.

In the volcanic activity near the

Siberian trap that occurred about 250 million years ago, millions of cubic kilometers of lava erupted and the activity is believed to have continued for 2 million years. It is estimated that more than 90% of the earth's species became extinct due to this effect, and it took about 9 million years to recover.

Kurzgesagt said, 'We haven't seen an eruption even close to catastrophic in millions of years. Supervolcanos are touted as bringing about an inevitable apocalypse, but don't be scared. Rather, it is important to monitor underground changes in order to take early countermeasures against smaller eruptions, and to solve the climate change caused by eruptions.'