2012, Again?

One eruption from this volcano, and all of humanity could be doomed, and no, this isn’t the plot of another sci-fi movie, it’s a fact.

The Yellowstone caldera is a supervolcano located in the Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming , USA.

What is a caldera?

It is a type of volcano. Normally a volcano is in the shape of a mountain but if this volcano erupts and then collapses into itself, its structure changes and instead of the mountain-like shape, the volcano goes flat , this is known as a caldera volcano. There is a scale which measures the explosive potential of volcanoes. It ranges from 0-8, with 0 being the lowest and 8 the highest. Yellowstone has been rated 8 on this scale. The eruption of this volcano last happened 70,000-150,000 years ago according to estimates by scientists. While the probability of this caldera erupting again is quite low, its eruption would lead to a chain of events which could lead to climate change and cause a lot of deaths too.

Scientists have been actively monitoring the activity in the caldera using advanced tech in order to predict through the seismic activity when it would erupt next.

A volcanic eruption is much more than lava at 1000 degrees spilling around, when a supervolcano erupts, there is much more that happens. The lava will spread and destroy anything in its way including concrete buildings. The volcanic ash coming from the explosion, which is a mix of splintered rock and glass will spread in the air. This ash will prove to be fatal to all human, animal and plant life, which ,means that crop yield will be wiped out too, not to mention that air travel will be shut down too and all satellite communication will be blocked.

Climate would be severely affected since the ash would reflect sunlight and not allow it to enter the atmosphere. This means that global temperatures will drop drastically. Not only will this ash spread across US but also across Europe and possibly the entire planet. Volcanic eruption in the past have resulted in an alteration of global temperatures (Pinatubo eruption, ’91, planet cooled by 1 degree and Tambora eruption of 1815 cooled the planet enough to ruin crop production).

On the bright side, this volcano may not have a major eruption, there might be smaller insignificant eruptions. Presently worrying about Yellowstone will do no good since the chances of it erupting are the same as an asteroid hitting our planet and even if it was to erupt, scientists will be able to accurately predict the same.