Aug 26, 2022 05:38 PM
https://gizmodo.com/humanity-is-woefully...1849457957
INTRO: When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted in Tonga on January 15, the result was devastation. The eruption literally blew up an island, caused mass flooding in the surrounding areas, coated whole communities in a thick layer of ash, and took out telecommunications for weeks.
Yet in that eruption, we got lucky, according to a new commentary article published in the scientific journal Nature. Michael Cassidy, a volcanologist at the University of Birmingham, and Lara Mani, a volcanic risk researcher at the University of Cambridge, say things could have been much worse if the eruption had gone on longer, spewing more gas and ash. Next time, they explain, a similar disaster could have dire global consequences—and we need to be more prepared.
Four people died as a result of the eruption, but if the volcano had been in a more densely populated area, many more could have been killed. A few slight tweaks, and the eruption could’ve triggered mass infrastructure and even global supply chain disruption.
A larger event could’ve easily caused worldwide climate destabilization (much more rapidly than what we’re currently experiencing with human-caused climate change). Which has happened before: The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, the largest ever recorded in human history, triggered a cold period commonly known as the “year without a summer.” Crops failed worldwide.
This year’s Tonga eruption hasn’t been formally ranked on the magnitude scale yet, but Cassidy and Mani have estimated that there’s a one in six risk of an eruption 10 to 100 times larger occurring in the next century. One in six—a roll of the dice. “The world is woefully unprepared for such an event,” wrote the authors. “The Tongan eruption should be a wake-up call.”
So just how concerned should we be? And how can we get ready for the big one? I spoke with Cassidy to find out. Below is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length... (MORE - details, the interview)
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EXCERPT: [...] Gizmodo: A lot of this sounds like what we would need globally for any sort of major disaster. Right?
Cassidy: Yeah, yeah, totally. And I think there’s lots of parallels to nuclear winters or even asteroid winters and other types of large, global catastrophic risks. So I think there’s certainly things that can be learned from past volcanic eruptions.
Gizmodo: Getting back to the more speculative, or sci-fi, ways we could potentially mitigate volcanic eruptions. What do you think it would look like to create a planetary defense system for volcanoes?
Cassidy: There’s a few things. First off, the atmospheric after-effects. We could find almost no studies into this, but it feels fairly intuitive that one of the biggest risks globally for volcanic eruptions is this volcanic winter effect, where large amounts of sulfur are ejected into the stratosphere, and they spread across the world, and they deflect solar radiation, cooling the Earth. That can have impacts on drought, it can push around monsoon areas and things like that, and also destroy crops. This kind of food insecurity problem, it’s caused kind of historic famines in 1815, 1257, after some of these large eruptions. So we know that it’s a really big deal. One of the most intuitive things is really to kind of try and counteract that. So that could look like speeding up the removal of those sulfur aerosols in the stratosphere.
And generally, big eruptions have up to about a five-year impact on the atmosphere, although sometimes it can be longer. What that means is that you can inject short-lived global warming agents to counteract that cooling, just for a few years. So that’s after the eruption has taken place already.
Then there’s the other way, which is kind of being looked at, though I think this is a long, long way off. But it’s to start drilling into the crust. There’ve been about three or five instances where we’ve actually, by accident, drilled into pockets of magma. What it tells us is that we’re able to interact with magma bodies. Granted, these are really, really small—nothing compared to what we’re seeing with these large magnitude eruptions. But by understanding how we can potentially manipulate those magma bodies under the crust, maybe we can increase the fracture networks around those magma bodies so they de-gas.
INTRO: When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted in Tonga on January 15, the result was devastation. The eruption literally blew up an island, caused mass flooding in the surrounding areas, coated whole communities in a thick layer of ash, and took out telecommunications for weeks.
Yet in that eruption, we got lucky, according to a new commentary article published in the scientific journal Nature. Michael Cassidy, a volcanologist at the University of Birmingham, and Lara Mani, a volcanic risk researcher at the University of Cambridge, say things could have been much worse if the eruption had gone on longer, spewing more gas and ash. Next time, they explain, a similar disaster could have dire global consequences—and we need to be more prepared.
Four people died as a result of the eruption, but if the volcano had been in a more densely populated area, many more could have been killed. A few slight tweaks, and the eruption could’ve triggered mass infrastructure and even global supply chain disruption.
A larger event could’ve easily caused worldwide climate destabilization (much more rapidly than what we’re currently experiencing with human-caused climate change). Which has happened before: The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, the largest ever recorded in human history, triggered a cold period commonly known as the “year without a summer.” Crops failed worldwide.
This year’s Tonga eruption hasn’t been formally ranked on the magnitude scale yet, but Cassidy and Mani have estimated that there’s a one in six risk of an eruption 10 to 100 times larger occurring in the next century. One in six—a roll of the dice. “The world is woefully unprepared for such an event,” wrote the authors. “The Tongan eruption should be a wake-up call.”
So just how concerned should we be? And how can we get ready for the big one? I spoke with Cassidy to find out. Below is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length... (MORE - details, the interview)
- - - - - -
EXCERPT: [...] Gizmodo: A lot of this sounds like what we would need globally for any sort of major disaster. Right?
Cassidy: Yeah, yeah, totally. And I think there’s lots of parallels to nuclear winters or even asteroid winters and other types of large, global catastrophic risks. So I think there’s certainly things that can be learned from past volcanic eruptions.
Gizmodo: Getting back to the more speculative, or sci-fi, ways we could potentially mitigate volcanic eruptions. What do you think it would look like to create a planetary defense system for volcanoes?
Cassidy: There’s a few things. First off, the atmospheric after-effects. We could find almost no studies into this, but it feels fairly intuitive that one of the biggest risks globally for volcanic eruptions is this volcanic winter effect, where large amounts of sulfur are ejected into the stratosphere, and they spread across the world, and they deflect solar radiation, cooling the Earth. That can have impacts on drought, it can push around monsoon areas and things like that, and also destroy crops. This kind of food insecurity problem, it’s caused kind of historic famines in 1815, 1257, after some of these large eruptions. So we know that it’s a really big deal. One of the most intuitive things is really to kind of try and counteract that. So that could look like speeding up the removal of those sulfur aerosols in the stratosphere.
And generally, big eruptions have up to about a five-year impact on the atmosphere, although sometimes it can be longer. What that means is that you can inject short-lived global warming agents to counteract that cooling, just for a few years. So that’s after the eruption has taken place already.
Then there’s the other way, which is kind of being looked at, though I think this is a long, long way off. But it’s to start drilling into the crust. There’ve been about three or five instances where we’ve actually, by accident, drilled into pockets of magma. What it tells us is that we’re able to interact with magma bodies. Granted, these are really, really small—nothing compared to what we’re seeing with these large magnitude eruptions. But by understanding how we can potentially manipulate those magma bodies under the crust, maybe we can increase the fracture networks around those magma bodies so they de-gas.