Day: January 1, 2005

From DisasterRelief.org:

The Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Islands’ La Palma island may not erupt again for centuries, but when it does disaster could spread across oceans. Shaken loose by the eruption, a gigantic chunk of the mountain’s western flank could slide into the Atlantic – shoving massive tsunamis toward the coasts of Africa, Europe, South America, Newfoundland and possibly even the United States.

In the worst-case scenario (detailed in an article in the Sept. 1 issue of Geophysical Research Letters by geophysicists Steven Ward of the University of California at Santa Cruz and Simon Day of University College, London) half a trillion tons of volcanic rock would slip into the ocean.

Within five minutes, a wall of water would rise to 1,500-feet high and travel at high-speed 30 miles out to sea. The wave would weaken before it reached land, but it still could be 900 feet high when it would slam into nearby islands.

Over the next five to 45 minutes, a series of waves would ripple outward, their crests reaching 150 feet before barreling into the African coast, Spain and England.

Six hours after the eruption, waves reaching 30 feet would arrive in Newfoundland and 45- to 60-foot waves would bombard South America, swamping large parts of land. Nine hours after the eruption, crests reaching 30 to 70 feet would collide into the East Coast of the United States.

From the BBC via various blogs:

Hidden deep beneath the Earth’s surface lie one of the most destructive and yet least-understood natural phenomena in the world – supervolcanoes. Only a handful exist in the world but when one erupts it will be unlike any volcano we have ever witnessed. The explosion will be heard around the world. The sky will darken, black rain will fall, and the Earth will be plunged into the equivalent of a nuclear winter.

Normal volcanoes are formed by a column of magma – molten rock – rising from deep within the Earth, erupting on the surface, and hardening in layers down the sides. This forms the familiar cone shaped mountain we associate with volcanoes. Supervolcanoes, however, begin life when magma rises from the mantle to create a boiling reservoir in the Earth’s crust. This chamber increases to an enormous size, building up colossal pressure until it finally erupts.

The last supervolcano to erupt was Toba 74,000 years ago in Sumatra. Ten thousand times bigger than Mt St Helens, it created a global catastrophe dramatically affecting life on Earth. Scientists know that another one is due – they just don’t know when… or where.

It is little known that lying underneath one of America’s areas of outstanding natural beauty – Yellowstone Park – is one of the largest supervolcanoes in the world. Scientists have revealed that it has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago… so the next is overdue.

And the sleeping giant is breathing: volcanologists have been tracking the movement of magma under the park and have calculated that in parts of Yellowstone the ground has risen over seventy centimetres this century. Is this just the harmless movement of lava, flowing from one part of the reservoir to another? Or does it presage something much more sinister, a pressurised build-up of molten lava?

Scientists have very few answers, but they do know that the impact of a Yellowstone eruption is terrifying to comprehend. Huge areas of the USA would be destroyed, the US economy would probably collapse, and thousands might die.

And it would devastate the planet. Climatologists now know that Toba blasted so much ash and sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere that it blocked out the sun, causing the Earth’s temperature to plummet. Some geneticists now believe that this had a catastrophic effect on human life, possibly reducing the population on Earth to just a few thousand people. Mankind was pushed to the edge of extinction… and it could happen again.

From Wired News:

Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a sixth sense for disasters, experts said Thursday.

Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island’s coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.

“No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit,” said H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka’s Wildlife Department. “I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening.”

The waves washed floodwaters up to two miles inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka’s biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.