Scientists warn: the world is not prepared for a super eruption

by time news

Let us suppose for a moment that humanity manages to get rid of its greatest current threats: the danger of a new world war, the explosion of a large nuclear power plant, climate change… Let us even suppose that we also already have effective means to deflect an asteroid and avoid catastrophes like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago… Even so, the world has already come into our hands ‘equipped’ with a series of great dangers, some of them barely experienced by our species. Trying to avoid the impact of an asteroid is very good, and in fact there are only a few weeks left before NASA’s Dart mission will check for the first time if it is possible to divert the trajectory of one of them in mid-flight. But that’s not all that could happen to us, and as Michael Cassidy, a volcanologist at the University of Birmingham, and Lara Mani, of the University of Cambridge, point out in Nature magazine, we shouldn’t let anxiety about asteroids distract us. attention to another colossal danger lurking right under our noses: volcanoes. “Over the next century,” the researchers write in their Nature commentary, “large-scale volcanic eruptions are hundreds of times more likely to occur than asteroid and comet impacts combined. And while preparing for asteroids is prudent, we are doing very little about the much more likely event of a volcanic ‘super-eruption’.” Lack of resources Cassidi and Mani stress that agencies around the world are spending hundreds of millions on ‘planetary defense’, improving the detection of asteroids or carrying out experiments, such as the aforementioned NASA Dart mission, whose cost is around 330 millions. But there is no comparable investment to prepare for a super eruption. “And that – the scientists write – has to change.” Volcanoes may be less exotic than the fireballs of space, that’s true, but unlike asteroids, they’re already here on Earth, scattered across the planet and loaded with tremendous destructive potential. Humans have witnessed many terrible eruptions throughout their history, but most of those events pale before the power of super volcanoes, which erupt about once every 15,000 years. A ‘super eruption’ is considered one with a magnitude of 8, the highest rating in the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI), and the last one took place about 22,000 years ago. But in much more recent times, in 1815, a magnitude 7 eruption took place on Mount Tambora in Indonesia, killing more than 100,000 people. Smoke and ash lowered global temperatures by an average of one degree, causing the so-called ‘year without a summer’ in 1816. Numerous crop failures around the world led to famine, disease and outbursts of violence. We are not prepared Of course, the monitoring of volcanoes has improved a lot since then, as has our ability to provide humanitarian aid anywhere in the world in the event of a disaster, but that improvement is not nearly enough to offset what a ‘super volcano’ could do. The researchers explain that the human population has tripled since the 19th century, and some large urban areas have flourished right next to dangerous super volcanoes, as is the case, here in Europe, of the metropolitan area of ​​Naples, a few km from the super volcanic caldera of Campi Flegrei. In a 2021 study based on data from ancient ice cores, researchers found that the intervals between catastrophic eruptions are hundreds or even thousands of years shorter than previously believed, so the danger could be closer than expected. what we think Cassidi and Mani point out that much more research is needed than is done to better understand the ‘super volcanoes’ and assess which are the areas of greatest risk, especially in Asia, where a greater number of them are concentrated. And more research is also needed to know how exactly a super volcano could suddenly paralyze the progress of civilization affecting agriculture, energy, infrastructure or the main commercial networks. The researchers note that volcanologists have long yearned for a satellite specialized in observing volcanoes, something that has not yet arrived. The awareness and education of society are also keys to survival. People need to know if they live in volcanic hazard zones, how to prepare for an eruption, and what to do when it happens. Public alerts According to the researchers, in addition to preparing, authorities also need ways to broadcast public alerts when volcanoes erupt, such as text messages with details about evacuations, tips for surviving an eruption, or directions to shelters and emergency facilities. medical care. The conclusion reached by the article is that we are absolutely not prepared to face one of these events. Super eruptions that, sooner or later, are sure to occur. As far as is known, no one has ever died as a result of a falling meteorite, but the victims of the eruptions number in the hundreds of thousands. And that’s without having yet faced any super-eruption in modern times. LEARN MORE news No They create a new system to extract hydrogen from humid air, even in the desert news No A subtle change in a single gene allowed modern humans to generate more neurons than Neanderthals In fact, the only time humanity experienced what what a super volcano can do was about to become extinct. It was about 74,000 years ago, with the explosion of Mount Toba, in Sumatra. It has been estimated that only a few hundred humans around the world managed to survive its consequences. Our species has never been closer to extinction.

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