Beneath Yellowstone National Park lies a supervolcano. It sparked when new magma moved into the system. Yellowstone's last supereruption was 631,000 years ago. Results show that the forces causing these erruptions move faster than anticipated.
Yellowstone's supervolcano has the ability to expel more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of rock and ash at once-- 2,500 times more material than erupted from Mount St. Helens in 1980, which killed 57 people. This could blanket most of the United States in a thick layer of ash and put Earth into a volcanic winter. New York Times writes "As the research advances, scientists hope they will be able to spot future supereruptions in the making...But understanding the largest eruptions can only help scientists better understand, and therefore forecast, the entire spectrum of volcanic eruptions — something that Dr. Cooper thinks will be possible in a matter of decades" (1). Geologists must figure out what kick starts the rapid movements leading up to supereruptions.
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March 2018
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