Volcano study may predict massive flooding from glaciovolcanic eruptions
A new study aims to predict flooding from volcanoes.
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Ben Edwards, a volcanologist at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, is camped out in a snow pit next to Russia’s Tolbachik volcano, according to a report by NBC News. The reason: he wants to understand the way snow-capped volcanoes generate meltwater so that scientists can better predict flooding from glaciovolcanic eruptions.
Some of the worst natural disasters arise from massive floods triggered by eruptions of glaciovolcanic urban volcanoes such as Mt. Ranier in Washington State. In Iceland in 1996, heat from the snow-capped Grimsvötn volcano melted its top ice, causing sudden flooding and destruction of part of the national highway.
For Edwards, studying volcanos that erupted through ancient ice sheets is a new way for geoscientists to better understand past ice ages.
“These are volcanoes with unique features that we can use to understand what’s happened to Earth’s climate over the last 10 to 15 million years,” Edwards told Live Science’s Our Amazing Planet.
Most of what we know about the Earth’s history comes from the ocean floor, where chemical signatures are preserved in mud and the bodies of tiny sea creatures. When researchers drill into the ocean floor, they’re rewarded with cores that provide millions of years worth of data about natural temperature swings.
However, matching the cores to glacial retreats and advances on land is difficult because glaciers act like enormous scouring pads, wiping away all evidence of their past movements.
Scientists are also looking for answers from relatively rare tuyas, a type of subglacial, steep, flat-topped volcano formed when lava erupts through a thick glacier or ice sheet. And even though each tuya may have erupted thousands of years apart, reconstructing their histories is shining new light on the advance and retreat of continental ice sheets.
“They act as tide marks of vanished ice, and this information doesn’t exist in any other form,” Dave McGarvie, a volcanologist at the Open University in Scotland, told Live Science. McGarvie has been scaling volcanoes in Chile in order to estimate the past thickness of tropical ice and link it to the marine climate record.
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