Campi Flegrei, the supervolcano that could obliterate Europe

January 2, 2011 – Tremors are increasing at one of the deadliest super-volcanoes in the world. Campi Flegrei is a large 13 km (8.1 mile) rising caldera that is sending incinerating streams of sulphurous gas through the streets of Pozzuoli. “Two thousand years ago Mount Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii. Today, a larger, far more deadly supervolcano lurks on the other side of Naples. If it erupts, Campi Flegrei could wipe out all life in Europe. It begins with a swarm of 1,000 small earthquakes that ripple under the pavements of Naples. Air-conditioning units fall from the sides of buildings and tiles slip from the walls. Inside the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology’s control centre, a bank of screens indicates that the quakes aren’t being generated by the giant Mount Vesuvius, which looms over the city. These quakes are coming from something far bigger, from one of the largest and most dangerous volcanoes in the world: the Campi Flegrei caldera. Vesuvius, which destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii, incinerating and suffocating thousands, is nothing more than a pimple on the back of the sleeping dragon of Campi Flegrei, an active four-mile-wide sunken volcano. A call is quickly put through to Civil Defence and the Italian Ministry of the Interior: the city must be evacuated immediately. A short distance away, the ground around the ancient town of Pozzuoli is stretching, swelling, doming. Fumaroles – vents emitting columns of steam rich in CO2 – open up in the broken Tarmac. Four-and-a-half miles below the surface a bolt of magma has escaped the main reservoir and is rising upwards, changing and solidifying…Now an international team, including scientists from the UK, wants to drill down inside the caldera to try to better understand exactly why part of it has risen 10ft since 1969. The area at the epicentre of the swelling has seen whole streets of houses crumble and collapse. The threat is imminent. The last time the ground rose like this (between 1430 and 1538) there was an eruption that caused the formation of a new volcano. The people of Naples seem to be damned if they do and damned if they don’t, but is it really possible that one simple drill hole could cause an eruption that could end life as we know it in Europe? Should the people here be worried? ‘There is always a possibility of further eruptions in our lifetime,’ says De Natale. ‘The problem is that Neapolitan people are conscious of Vesuvius, but few of those who live in this area know about the caldera, or that all of this land is volcanic. Vesuvius is small compared to the caldera, and in my opinion the caldera presents a greater risk. Vesuvius is surrounded by a lot of people, but has nowhere near the population density of Naples.’ –UK Mail

Across the Planet: One by one, the monster super-volcanoes are awakening...as Earth's population continues to swell in such high-risk seismic and volcanic zones, many are unaware that a change of geological epochs is already underway and Earth is poised for catastrophic changes...