A project to drill deep into the heart of a “supervolcano” in southern Italy has received the green light.
Campi Flegrei
Yesterday, Italian news agency ANSA quoted project coordinator Giuseppe De Natale of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology as saying that the office of Naples mayor Luigi de Magistris has approved the drilling of a pilot hole 500 meters deep.
Researchers believe that if it erupted, Campi Flegrei – a geological formation just a few kilometers to the west of Naples – could potentially kill millions of people and have a major effect on the climate, but that such massive eruptions are extremely rare.
Ulrich Harms of the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam pointed out that many multikilometer wells have been drilled around the world in order to extract geothermal energy, and that these have not caused explosions.
See entire article:
http://zen-haven.dk/supervolcano-drilling-plan-gets-go-ahead-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/
Thanks to Steven Rowlandson for this link
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Here’s the thing. Any volcano can be a supervolcano if big enough. However, drilling into a supervolcano will make it LESS likely to erupt forcefully, and if it does happen to erupt in the near future, I daresay those holes will save lives. It all has to do with pressure. If you plug up a volcano, it will not stop the eruption. It will delay it and make it more powerful. If you drill holes into a volcano lava WILL most likely come out, but with much less force than if you did not drill it.
By the way, I am 17 years old. I am not an expert.
The problem it comes not from volcano itself but from water that can use the drilling hole to infiltrate in the magmatic chamber causing a freatomagmatic eruption. Due to the great quantity of steam generated this type of eruption is extremely explosive.
Max I would think it would all depend on how pressurized the magma chamber is.
If the pressure is high enough and a hole is punched through to the magma chamber then you might have explosive decompression and an eruption. It isn’t like letting air out of a tire. With volcanoes that have high silica magmas you can have extreme gas pressures in the magma and when the pressure is released the magma explodes violently. Classic examples include Yellowstone and Krakatau.
Great idea!!! Why don’t they employ British Petroleum to do it!!! LMAO!
What does this article have to do with an impending Ice Age?
hi Wayne — good question — keep them coming!
I’m far from wrapping my mind around this, but my current understanding is three things can cause ice ages:
1. dimming sun (happening now)
2. earth’s mag pole reversal (might be happening now) weakens earth’s mag field; cosmic rays descend lower into the atmosphere causing increased cloud formation: reflects more solar heat back into space; precipitates more.
3.volcanoes put more moisture into the atmosphere if underwater (75% are) and atmospheric volcanic ash reflects more solar heat back into space, cooling the earth
in my high-school science classes they said it actually cold enough now to have another ice age, and I believe it. after the winter snow, it takes so many ergs of energy to melt the winter’s snow. if enough falls, then at some point, the sun doesn’t deliver enough energy to melt the snow, and you get an “endless winter” or ice age. a few years ago the summer snow didn’t melt intil mid-summer in Montreal, so probably twice as much snow would be the “tipping point” for an ice age.
“not by fire, by ice” states that during ice age “consumation” snow falls at the rate of 11 building stories a day!!!! that would bury our tallest buildings or structures in a matter of days!!!
one huge volcanoe or may small ones could do the trick.
–> volcanoes have LOTS to do with ice ages.
hope this helps,
-LP
correction re. the Montreal snow melt — that was PILES of plowed snow, not the natural distribution that didn’t melt.
however, the general point is still valid — at some point if enough snow falls in the winter, the summer sun doesn’t deliver enough heat to melt it, and you get another ice age.
submarine volcanoes have enough power to cause that precipitation. an event like the Deccan traps eruption underwater could probably boil off the world’s oceans and create miles-deep ice sheets in a very short period.
the earth’s continents and tectonic plates are max 100 miles deep, and molten rock exists beneath that — LOTS of heat energy available to boil off the oceans I’m thinking peturbations in the Earth’s orbit stress the crust and release the magma for volcanoes.
in my grade school colourng books I thought the dinosaurs LOVED volcanoes. now they scare the living daylights out of me.
Best,
-LP
Thank you so much Mr. Lapsed for responding to my question.
I echo Wayne, Mr. Lapsed, thank you for your explanation. Are you in fact seeing winter snow not melting??? The lower 48 snow cover for the “winter that wasn’t” was the lowest in many a decade, and now we are seeing many areas with drought directly because of that. The southeast US is in the midst of a heat wave, it hit 95 today in Houston. Chicago is still having record heat, 10 to 20 degrees above average for this time of year. It won’t be Hurricane season for another three days in the Atlantic basin, and we have already had two named storms in the Atlantic, one of them almost a full fledged hurricane. Hurricanes form to dissipate excess heat from the equatorial region to the temperate lattitudes. As far as the magnetic reversal, except for GPS, smart phones, computers, and transportation monitoring and planning, how would it effect us??? It would be mighty irritating to have to change all of the devices to show the “new” north and south, but physically and climacticly I don’t see how it would effect us. If increased cosmic rays do in fact increase the formation of clouds, then why are we seeing the equatorial regions getting hotter and the polar regions getting colder? Is the thermohaline “engine” still running??? I don’t see the sun “dimming”. Is there a measurable decrease in solar irradiance???
Oil drilling rigs have bored into volcanic magma many times. There is no danger here.
I should point out that oil drilling rigs have mistakenly tried to bore into magma – the drill bit normally melts before actually hitting the chamber.
I with Max, except I’m 38. I doubt that a 4 – 6 inch diameter hole will relieve significant pressure catastrophic manner. At the same time, perhaps a company well versed in environmental catastrophes should do the drilling :>
If you use google earth and have a look at central Italy from Naples to the circular lakes north of Rome you will see calderas and caldera lakes.
Once you know what to look for they are only too obvious. They even have farms and villages inside the Alban hills caldera just south of Rome. Some one is taking a real big chance.
a 24 inch wide bore hole will do nothing to relieve any pressure that might or might not be building. This will have zero impact on whether or not this volcano goes boom.
This takes playing with fire to an entirely new level.
Does anyone remember the movie “Crack in the World”? Its about a scientist who has the idea of drilling down into a magma layer to release it to access minerals and heat for energy. Except in the movie they used an atomic bomb to crack the ‘barrier’ holding them back. The result was a huge crack in the earths crust and the formation of a new moon. GREAT IDEA…science will be the end of us after all.
If I remember right it took even more nukes to save the earth.
I find the comment made by Ulrich Harms amusing. Sort of like saying “many people have fired 38 caliber bullets at gas filled cans with an 1/8th inch side from 500 yards, and none have exploded, thus suggesting that firing the same round from 50 yards would do the same.
As for relieving the pressure, i would tend to think that doing so might allow the magma chamber to fill more rapidly, not cause the lava to flow through the small tube being drilled. But the truth is, no one really knows what might be the outcome, big or small, and I am not sure “assuming” it will be small would be the smartest thing to do.
This like playing with a loaded gun. Something that people in the known don’t do.
Also to note: with volcanoes, vs a tire as an example you run the risk (and probably will) of drilling through the water table.
It’s widely documented that water + magma = violent explosion. Just look at thermite on ice as an extremely small scale example, and depending on how much water is exposed how quickly (say a subterranean aquifer collapses into the magma chamber) and you could quickly have a catastrophic explosion that no one was expecting. Things are not so simple as they may seem.
This is more like performing ENEMA for a VOLCANO. and everyone knows what happens when you perform ENEMA for constipation… JUST SAYING. It’s as simple as that.