If a Civilization-Ending Volcano Eruption Happens, Humanity Will Have a 1-Year Warning Only

By Regin Anthony Salo Olimberio, CP Contributor Monday, July 25, 2016

A year is the only time humanity has to brace up if a volcano somewhere in the globe erupts into another unprecedented magnitude like what happened tens of thousands of years ago or even hundreds of thousands of years preceding such events.

Associate professor Guilherme Gualda of Vanderbilt University authored a study that suggests that a series of giant volcanic eruptions—the recent happened in New Zealand 26,500 years ago—may happen again. Gualda affirms that the research is also verified by scientists from University of Chicago to get the accurate result.

The time calculation is based on quartz crystals gathered from the sites of eruptions. The group then analyzed them to determine how long it took rims on the crystals to grow. The phenomenon is a factor that indicates how much time there is before a super volcanic eruption. The research constantly yields a result that such rim growths were shorter than one year.

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The researchers focused on the kinds of giant volcanic eruptions that haven't happened for a very, very long time, like a super eruption in New Zealand's Taupo Volcano that occurred 26,500 years ago. Another of these super volcanic eruptions happened in California 760,000 years ago. The study also states that apart from the two major catastrophic eruptions during the past two million years, several others happened in the American continent together with Italy and Indonesia, totalling into six incidents so far.

The primary question that baffles scientists is how much time humanity has before the onset of a super volcanic eruption. Professor Gualda said that their research points out that even if it usually takes hundreds or even thousands of years for a huge amount of magma to build up prior to such magnitude, the actual eruption process will only take one year.

"We have shown that the onset of the process of decompression, which releases the gas bubbles that power the eruption, starts less than a year before eruption, they are places where super-eruptions have happened in the past so are more likely to happen in the future," Gualda said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Gualda assured that none of the previous eruption sites pose another civilization-ending threat as of date. Neither are the six active volcanoes on the planet at risk of eruption nor hosting a melt-rich or giant magma build-up that is needed to produce these cataclysmic thousand times more destructive than average volcanic eruptions.