Geologists: We’re not ready for volcanoes

For millennia, people have been in awe of volcanoes' incredible power. Tourists descended upon Iceland earlier this month to witness lava flowing from a fissure eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula. After Eyjafjallajökull erupted in 2010, the so-called "country of fire and ice" experienced a massive surge in visitors.

Despite what might seem to be a magnetic pull, volcanic explosions pose a serious threat to people. There is a widespread misunderstanding of the deadly threat that volcanoes offer to society and the entire planet Earth, according to a study published yesterday in Nature by the University of Birmingham and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge. Despite the fact that a big eruption poses a greater risk than an asteroid hit, the authors Michael Cassidy and Laura Mani claim that this misperception has caused a general lack of interest in being ready for one.

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapai volcano in Tonga experienced its greatest recorded eruption in January. Over hundreds of miles of land and water, ash was poured, having devastating impact on everything from infrastructure to fish species. According to the World Bank, 36.4 percent of Tonga's GDP was affected by the eruption. The nation in the southern Pacific Ocean was cut off from the outside world for a whole month due to the cutting of underwater cables. It launched into space enough water to fill 58,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, and a shockwave caused tsunamis to hit the coastlines of Japan, North America, and South America. A volcanic eruption that lasted barely 11 hours was the source of all this destruction. The effects on the climate, food supplies, and other infrastructure would have been disastrous if it had continued.

The Tonga eruption, according to Mani, "has to be taken as a wake-up call" since it was the volcanic equivalent of an asteroid narrowly missing the Earth.

This danger won't go away. Researchers now believe that the eruptions are more often than previously thought. Recent information from ice cores, which are lengthy cylinders of glacial ice unearthed by drilling into a glacier or mountain, indicates that eruptions twice as frequent as previously believed occur once every 625 years and are 10 to 100 times larger than the one that occurred in Tonga. The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI), which gauges how explosive volcanoes are, classifies these events.

Since the Mount Tambora eruption in Indonesia in 1815, there haven't been any magnitude 7 events in recorded history. An estimated 100,000 people perished across the archipelago as a result of lava flows, tsunamis, damage from enormous rocks, ash damaging crops and buildings, and other collateral losses. Global temperatures fell by as much as three degrees Fahrenheit, resulting in what history and scientists refer to as the YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER and having a significant impact on society. Famine caused by widespread agricultural failures sparked revolutions and epidemics.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises people who live near an active volcano to evacuate if instructed to do so, stay indoors by caulking all doors and windows, and keep a disaster supply kit on hand. The authors of the study emphasize the value of timely, precise communication of volcanic flows, gas plumes, and ash fallout on a more general scale. They claim that more timely communication, ideally via text messages, could help communities get ready for emergencies and provide disaster aid.

The Volcano Ready Communities Project in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is cited by the writers as a current success story. 22,000 people were evacuated as part of the project in April 2021 before an eruption.

Increased research into volcano "geoengineering," particularly the study of containing aerosols emitted by a large eruption, is called for by CSER in order to best prevent further tragedy. These minuscule particles have the ability to hide the sun and cause a "volcanic winter." Further discussion on whether or not to look into manipulating the magma pockets beneath active volcanoes is also encouraged by CSER.

Directly influencing volcanic behavior might seem impossible, but before the establishment of the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office in 2016, it was also impossible to deflect asteroids. "There are huge risks associated with a large eruption that destroys world society. Simply foolish is the current underinvestment in mitigating this risk.