Doomsday volcanoes on the planet are awakening in record numbers: Is a new supervolcano forming in Chile?

November 2, 2013 – GEOLOGY – One of these days, a field of volcanoes you have never heard of will wake up, and if it fulfills its geologic potential, the consequences will be heard around the world. Curiously, Laguna del Maule, situated along the spine of the Andes, doesn’t even look like a volcano. No towering peak, no plume of smoke or steam, no stench of sulfur. But 36 times in the past 20,000 years, volcanic vents surrounding the lake basin have created monster fields of lava — with huge deposits of volcanic glass, pumice and ash. Once, almost a million years ago, this volcano field had an eruption that, if repeated, could change history by affecting air travel, agriculture and climate. Tantalizing scraps of lava indicate enormous eruptions 1.5 million and 336,000 years ago. It’s a maxim of geology: What happened before can happen again. The volcanic field is 20 kilometers in diameter, and the recent surge in attention is largely due to a widespread, 1.5 meter rise since 2007. “That’s phenomenal,” says Brad Singer, a professor of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who began studying this part of the Andes 20 years ago. “There is no other volcano in the world that is going up at this rate.”

 Other causes for concern include swarms of earthquakes, horizontal spreading, spreading faults, and new detections of carbon dioxide gas that likely signal the enlargement of the underground magma pool that powers the volcano. Eruptions can be ranked by estimating the volume of volcanic ash (mainly tiny shards of glass) they release. In 1980, Mt. St. Helens released about one cubic kilometer. In 1991, Pinatubo in the Philippines sent more than 10 cubic kilometers; its ash and sulfur gas injected into the upper atmosphere cooled the planet for two years. About 950,000 years ago, an eruption at Laguna del Maule spewed dozens of cubic kilometers — perhaps more than 100. The eruption blanketed Argentina, downwind, with ash. A 100 cubic-kilometer eruption could cause global cooling, and intense damage to agriculture could affect the entire globe. Santiago, the capital of Chile, is not far from the volcano. It has a population of 6 million people. All of them would be adversely affected by a large eruption. Because the only people around Laguna del Maule are the horsemen who drive cattle in the summer, the immediate human impacts will be limited — unless giant flows of hot rock or debris reach Chilean cities. But dense ash-fall during the growing season could devastate agriculture in Argentina, to the east. Just 50 kilometers north of Laguna del Maule, a similar volcanic field, called Calabozos, has had three super-eruptions in the past million years, spewing about 1,000 cubic kilometers of ash in total. Those eruptions rank among the largest in a million years. –WF

Unrest growing among world’s supervolcanoes: Santorini in Greece, Uturuncu in Bolivia, the Yellowstone and Long Valley calderas in the U.S., Laguna del Maule in Chile, Campi Flegrei in Italy – almost all of the world’s active supervolcanic systems are now exhibiting some signs of inflation- a potential early indication that an eruption could be building in these volcanic systems for the near future. When they will erupt is anybody’s guess? In the meantime, unrest is also growing among the volcanoes of Central America, Kamchatka, Alaska, Indonesia, and Iceland- which is home to some of the most dangerous volcanoes on the planet. The clock is ticking. Their magma chambers are expanding. Tremors are increasing. If any one of these volcanic systems has a major eruption, we’re in deep trouble. If they erupt in cascading fashion; Earth will be reeling through a doomsday scenario. –TEP

Supervolcano remnants found in Maine: Maine has supervolcanoes. Wait, Maine has volcanoes? Yes, and their violent eruptions could have been among the biggest ever on Earth, geoscientist Sheila Seaman reported Tuesday (Oct. 29) at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting. “Long before there were these things called supervolcanoes, we’ve known about giant, big, horrific silicic volcanic eruptions,” said Seaman, of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The most massive of these blasts in recent history was Toba, which blew up an island in Indonesia 2.5 million years ago. The explosion heaved 700 cubic miles (2,800 cubic kilometers) of magma out of the Earth’s crust. Around 420 million years ago, a series of super-eruptions dropped thick piles of ash and lava fragments along the proto-East Coast. There are at least four volcanoes spread out along 100 miles (160 km) of Maine’s coast, Seaman said. –CBS