platinumdude
7th March 2011, 08:15 AM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1363850/Theres-thing-dormant-volcano-scientists-warn.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Next time you take a holiday trip to that lovely volcanic island, you might want to think twice.
Scientists have claimed that volcanoes are not really dormant and can be reawakened far more quickly than previously thought.
In just a matter of weeks they can go from calm and stable to spewing out lava onto the area around them, they said.
It had been accepted before that they could take years to make such a transformation.
The warning could force a rethink on resorts which rely on the draw of volcanoes to pull in tourists.
Many of the Greek islands have dormant sites, as does Italy while the Spanish island of Lanzarote was formed by an eruption.
In countries as far afield as Japan, however, tourists are taken on tours to walk in the huge craters which form where previous eruptions once happened
The re-evaluation was carried out by Dr Alain Burgisser, a vulcanologist with French Orleans Institute of Earth Sciences.
He said the widely accepted theory that when a volcano’s magma chamber cools it could be years before it heats up with fresh magma could be wrong.
He and a researcher from the U.S. examined eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 and the ongoing eruption of the Soufriere Hills volcano in Montserrat in the Caribbean and found that in reality it could take just a few weeks.
In Pinatubo, for example, it took as little as 20 days to reactivate versus 500 years it had been previously thought.
The reason is that hot magma rising forces the heavier magma to mix which increases the overall temperature 100 times faster than previously thought.
Dr Burgisser said that the discovery should change attitudes towards emergency planning and evacuation procedures.
He did, however, note that seismic shocks could serve as an early warning of an eruption, giving people plenty of time to get to safety.
The warning comes after scientists said the world’s biggest super volcano could soon erupt with a force a thousand times more powerful than the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980.
Yellowstone National Park’s caldera has erupted three times in the last 2.1million years and researchers monitoring it say we could be in for another blow-out.
Should that take place two-thirds of the U.S. could become uninhabitable as toxic air sweeps through it, grounding thousands of flights and forcing millions to leave their homes.
Next time you take a holiday trip to that lovely volcanic island, you might want to think twice.
Scientists have claimed that volcanoes are not really dormant and can be reawakened far more quickly than previously thought.
In just a matter of weeks they can go from calm and stable to spewing out lava onto the area around them, they said.
It had been accepted before that they could take years to make such a transformation.
The warning could force a rethink on resorts which rely on the draw of volcanoes to pull in tourists.
Many of the Greek islands have dormant sites, as does Italy while the Spanish island of Lanzarote was formed by an eruption.
In countries as far afield as Japan, however, tourists are taken on tours to walk in the huge craters which form where previous eruptions once happened
The re-evaluation was carried out by Dr Alain Burgisser, a vulcanologist with French Orleans Institute of Earth Sciences.
He said the widely accepted theory that when a volcano’s magma chamber cools it could be years before it heats up with fresh magma could be wrong.
He and a researcher from the U.S. examined eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 and the ongoing eruption of the Soufriere Hills volcano in Montserrat in the Caribbean and found that in reality it could take just a few weeks.
In Pinatubo, for example, it took as little as 20 days to reactivate versus 500 years it had been previously thought.
The reason is that hot magma rising forces the heavier magma to mix which increases the overall temperature 100 times faster than previously thought.
Dr Burgisser said that the discovery should change attitudes towards emergency planning and evacuation procedures.
He did, however, note that seismic shocks could serve as an early warning of an eruption, giving people plenty of time to get to safety.
The warning comes after scientists said the world’s biggest super volcano could soon erupt with a force a thousand times more powerful than the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980.
Yellowstone National Park’s caldera has erupted three times in the last 2.1million years and researchers monitoring it say we could be in for another blow-out.
Should that take place two-thirds of the U.S. could become uninhabitable as toxic air sweeps through it, grounding thousands of flights and forcing millions to leave their homes.