Yellowstone Lava Dome Filling Up Quickly

[Ed Mahmoud]

I took about 30 something hours of geology in school, sadly (in this case, anyway) most of it was sedimentary and structural/petroleum geology.

[CajunMama]

Could you explain what this is please?

[HURAKAN]

Sorry!

It represents the movement of the Yellowstone HotSpot. The numbers are millions of years.

[azsnowman]

We need Steve AKA Aslkahuna to post, he's the expert on such occurances and just about ANYTHING else you NEED to know

[JTD]

Every 700k years, roughly, and its been almost that long?



Geologist in my office says one of the latter Yellowstone eruptions deposited ash up to 2 meters deep in parts of Northwest Texas. Lets just hope this thing blows during Summer, when prevailing winds would take most of the ash to the lightly populated Prairie Provinces of Canada.

Of course, a months long event would allow the wind to take the ash everywhere.

Umm, .3 million in Alberta, just under 1.0 million in Saskatchewan and 1.1 million in Manitoba.

5 million is sparsely populated?

Just googled the population of of Idaho and Montana. It's about 2 million, less than Canada's.

I'm not mad or anything but I do take offence at that statement.

[Extremeweatherguy]

One thing is for sure...if Yellowstone erupted I would expect to see a major climatic impact. The world would probably cool quite a bit as the ash helped block out the sunlight. Also, the air travel industry would take a major hit. With all that ash, many flights would have to be cancelled or re-routed and plane travel would become increasingly dangerous as the ash spread out in the atmosphere around the globe. Overall, this entire situation would not be pretty.

BTW: here is an image of where the ash fell during Yellowstone's last eruption.. http://www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli/perm/ ... shfall.jpg ..That is more than half of the USA covered in ash!!

[Derek Ortt]

most people in the world would not survive a yellowstone eruption and the aftermath

[Opal storm]

eh...seems like every year we hear about something like this and everyone gets hyped up and then nothing happens. Chances are we're not going to see a eruption like that in our life times, I'm not sweating over it.

[Brent]

most people in the world would not survive a yellowstone eruption and the aftermath

Exactly, I don't get all this business about "prevailing winds". It may make a difference in the very short-term but it won't in the long term.

That being said, I am not concerned about an eruption anytime soon.

[Squarethecircle]

This is a rise and fall pattern. If there was an imminent eruption, then this kind of thing wouldn't necessarily happen anyway.

[Andrew92]

I know there's also talk about Yellowstone being "due" for its next eruption. However, I'm going to use a simile here. Every year, it seems like in the Talkin' Tropics Forum, people talk about how certain areas are "due" or "overdue" because the period since their last major hurricane is average or above.

The fact of the matter is, nature doesn't know what "due" means. Nature goes by what nature wants to do. So, just like some areas of the Atlantic appear to be overdue for a major hurricane and keep getting lucky, Yellowstone appears to also be due or overdue but is not really acting like it's erupting at least in our lifetimes (yet).

I won't be convinced that Yellowstone is going to erupt until I see more consistency and hard data from scientists in the area that it is going to erupt during our lives.

-Andrew92

[f5]

we like to talk about NYC worst case scenario in the talkin tropics forum .Yellowstone is the world worst case scenario why say hello to the biggest Ice Age in world history.so maybe instead of doing a movie called An Inconvenient Truth which focus on global warming how about An Inconvenient Eruption Yellowstone and the coming snowball earth which seems to be more reality rather than hype

[Andrew92]

Just one question about super eruptions:

There have been many over the course of the earth, with life impacted. How did that life survive the impacts? Just wondering, I don't claim to know much about this subject.

-Andrew92

[WindRunner]

Just one question about super eruptions:

There have been many over the course of the earth, with life impacted. How did that life survive the impacts? Just wondering, I don't claim to know much about this subject.

-Andrew92

"Super eruptions" cause ice ages, as the sheer density of the ash would blot out the sun enough to lower global temperatures on the order of tens of degrees celcius . . . so life would survive this the same way that it has survived previous ice ages.

[DanKellFla]

What do the numbers on the pic mean?

[LSU2001]

I think that the numbers represent previous locations of the yellowstone hot spot. As the plate moved over time the "new volcano" emerged over the same crustal hotspot.
Tim

[Kelarie]

if yellowstone (or any other super volcano, probably Toba with all of the quake activity there in recent years) were to blow, it is not going to make much of a difference what the seaosn is. We had better all have an alternative place to live

Well an alternative place to live would be great, the thing is if this volcano goes, the effects would be felt worldwide. The possibility of the global temperate decreasing by 1-2 degrees. If you dont think that is significant it, is. The amount of ash that would be thrown into the air would prevent any significant sunshine from reaching the earth.

The geologist in me thinks this would be the coolest thing, but I try and be practical. This would be devasting for the US, Canada and Mexico.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Just one question about super eruptions:

There have been many over the course of the earth, with life impacted. How did that life survive the impacts? Just wondering, I don't claim to know much about this subject.

-Andrew92

"Super eruptions" cause ice ages, as the sheer density of the ash would blot out the sun enough to lower global temperatures on the order of tens of degrees celcius . . . so life would survive this the same way that it has survived previous ice ages.

So Florida becomes the New Minnesota, and Panama becomes the new Florida?

[Squarethecircle]

Just one question about super eruptions:

There have been many over the course of the earth, with life impacted. How did that life survive the impacts? Just wondering, I don't claim to know much about this subject.

-Andrew92

"Super eruptions" cause ice ages, as the sheer density of the ash would blot out the sun enough to lower global temperatures on the order of tens of degrees celcius . . . so life would survive this the same way that it has survived previous ice ages.

So Florida becomes the New Minnesota, and Panama becomes the new Florida?

Yes, but Florida might also have some problems with the central eruption itself as well, though it wouldn't make much of a difference.