Whats going on at yellowstone?

Originally posted by PuterMan
reply to post by Thought Provoker

 

I will also create an upload for Thought Provoker's CSV and add that to the next version so it can plot those for you as well (Unless you don't wish me to do that TP?).

I don't mind. The data belongs to us all. Well, to taxpayers, I guess, which means everyone but huge corporations and most of the Obama Administration. I also added min/max lat/lon selection criteria to the report page last night, which helps narrow down what you want. (Should've been in there all along.) But if you're already importing data from another source like ANSS (the same data set I use, from NCEDC), my data's kinda redundant, isn't it?

If Yellowstone blows, what will the estimated earthquake size be? 9.0? 10.0? 12.0?

I mean, beyond the destruction of the eruption, I wonder how much the ground would shake and for how far away.

reply to post by Thought Provoker


Not really! I may find it easy enough to use ANSS but others may prefer to use your data. Another import is not a problem.

[edit on 28/1/2010 by PuterMan]

In the CSV - date (MST) MST??

[edit on 28/1/2010 by PuterMan]

Hello there. I'm new on this board, but wanted to air my concerns. I am not really confident that the resent swarm events are the result of slip on pre-existing faults and not being caused by underground movement of magma. The reason for that is that if we look at a quake map for Yellowstone between January 17, and January 27, 2010, we see that nearly all of the quake activity not only are centrally located, but when mapped out, the some one thousand plus quakes are clustered together in a very defined area underneath Yellowstone, forming a circular or slight oval shape pattern on a quake map.

I believe that unlike tectonic plates and or fault lines which traverse a straight or jagged line for great distances, a "circular pattern" formed on a quake map not only suggest the movement of magma underground, but pinpoints the central location where magma is most likely to come out of the ground first.

reply to post by harrytuttle


Nobody has ever witnessed a supervolcano eruption, however it's likely that Yellowstone wouldn't erupt all at once like a giant bomb, but that there would be many "smaller" eruptions occurring at the same time, probably in different places of the preexisting caldera, which would eventually merge into one single very large volcanic vent over a probably short period of time.

In the process there would probably be many strong earthquakes (not a single extremely powerful one), up to M6.0 maybe, but probably but not much larger than that. At the same time intense constant shaking (tremors) probably felt by humans not much away from the park area, fast and large vertical ground deformation, disruption of geyser eruption patterns, heat anomalies, would of course occur as magma rises to shallow ground depths.

But again, nobody really knows exactly what would be the behavior of such a large volcanic caldera during a catastrophic eruption. There would be much time to react however, it's not something that would happen overnight.

[edit on 2010-1-28 by Shirakawa]

reply to post by Roald


Welcome. You may be right, but this is how Yellowstone swarms present themselves. The Dec 08/Jan 09 one was almost all under the lake, and the cluster migrated Northwards as it subsided.

It is almost certainly related to the ground uplift and this may or may not be caused by magma, or the movement thereof, but slip it is not IMHO.

I think a M2.8-2.9 earthquake just occurred.
But activity in general still appears to be calming down.

EDIT: it was smaller than I thought.
EDIT2: it's been [automatically] revised to 2.8, so hopefully not!

[edit on 2010-1-28 by Shirakawa]

reply to post by PuterMan
You mention earlier swarms. Is it not strange that for at least the last three years in a row, Yellowstone starts to rumble around the end of each year and or soon after the start of a new year?

hmm all EQ's are in an range of 7 to 12 KM dept... would that say something? is there an map how the rocklayers are build up in the caldera..?

Originally posted by Roald
I believe that unlike tectonic plates and or fault lines which traverse a straight or jagged line for great distances, a "circular pattern" formed on a quake map not only suggest the movement of magma underground, but pinpoints the central location where magma is most likely to come out of the ground first.

You make a great point there. I hadn't thought of it in those terms and tied it back to the initial explanation of what was going on.

reply to post by Roald


end of year ore start of new year seems world wide be an EQ season... tsunami indonesia/haiti... perhaps moor big ones over the past years ??????

reply to post by PuterMan


Puterman, this is probably offtopic, but I'm unable to properly run your QuakeData program after installation. It gives me many Unhandled Exception errors.

reply to post by Vexatious Vex

Well, even more interesting is the fact that when you layer the quake maps on top of each other from the past several years, nearly all of the quakes are centrally located within this circular zone within Yellowstone National Park. If you map it out say, using Google Earth, you can easily see this for yourself.

reply to post by Thought Provoker


Re your CSV file the QuakeData now up on my site will read the files now. You still select ANSS as the type, but it will read either.

reply to post by harrytuttle


During the 1980 eruption of Mt. St Helen's was triggered by a 5.1 magnitude quake. I can't find much information on whether or not actual explosion and landslide caused a major siesmic event. Although big, it's shallow, so I don't think it would be felt widely like a large deep earthquake.

In this You Tube clip, the leading geologists say little about associated earthquakes. In a sceranio such as they present, there must be powerful quakes that occur, and I'm not even sure the geologist know exactly how big they would be. If anyone has that answer, I'd be interested.

www.youtube.com...

If my scenario is correct, the earthquakes that follow with be unimaginable. If the crust is ejected for a massive explosion, .

Words fail. It would be big.

www.youtube.com...

reply to post by Shirakawa


the Volcanic Explosiveness Index of the yellowstone caldera is an 8. you know what that means right..

"mega-colossal" eruption...

Scientists indicate how powerful volcanic eruptions are using the VEI. The VEI stands for Volcanic Explosivity Index. It records how much volcanic material is thrown out, how high the eruption goes, and how long it lasts. The scale goes from 0 to 8.

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

A supervolcano or super volcanic eruption is a volcanic eruption with ejecta greater than 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles), which is millions of times larger than any volcanic event in historic times

for comparison:
en.wikipedia.org...

The best-known eruption of Krakatua culminated in a series of massive explosions on August 26–27, 1883, which was among the most violent volcanic events in modern and recorded history.

With a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 6,[3] the eruption was equivalent to 200 megatons of TNT (840 PJ)—about 13,000 times the nuclear yield of the Little Boy bomb (13 to 16 kT) that devastated Hiroshima, Japan during World War II and four times the yield of the Tsar Bomba (50 MT), the largest nuclear device ever detonated.

The 1883 eruption ejected approximately 21 cubic kilometres (5.0 cu mi) of rock, ash, and pumice.[4]

The cataclysmic explosion was distinctly heard as far away as Perth in Western Australia, about 1,930 miles (3,110 km) away, and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, about 3,000 miles (5,000 km) away.[5]

Krakatoa has a VEI of 6... Yellowstone is an 8, therefore i believe your theory that it will just be a bunch of lil explosions is... absurd.

So, we might not be able to say for sure that the Yellowstone quake data could indicate that the quake swarms are not the direct or indirect result of the movement of tectonic plates, rather it's the ground rumbling on a grand scale from the magma under Yellowstone that's bubbling and churning as the magma tries to work its way closer and closer to the surface once again?

reply to post by Roald


The lady has to relieve herself after the Christmas excesses? No seriously however may be cold is a factor? I don't know.

reply to post by Shirakawa


I have emailed you. Let me know what/where the error is. Running OK here.

Originally posted by TheCoffinman
reply to post by Shirakawa

 

the Volcanic Explosiveness Index of the Yellowstone caldera is an 8. you know what that means right..

Actually it is not because we have never seen it explode! It cannot have an index for something that has not happened. It may have been estimated that past eruptions were an 8, but there have been others that were not. All you can say is that Yellowstone WAS a VEI 8 not that it IS a VEI 8 until such time as it next erupts.

Krakatoa has a VEI of 6... Yellowstone is an 8, therefore i believe your theory that it will just be a bunch of lil explosions is... absurd.

I suspect, but of course do not know, that Shirakawa is correct in stating that it would start off as smaller explosions. He did NOT say it would just be a bunch of smaller ones, just that it would start with them. The chances of a completely unexpected out of the blue cataclysmic event of VEI 8 are almost nil IMHO.

[edit on 28/1/2010 by PuterMan]

reply to post by TheCoffinman


In Shirakawa's defence, we weren't talking about VEI. Harry Tuttle (best online name evar) was wondering what kind of earthquakes we would have if we had a VEI 8. Shirakawa was describing the earthquakes as the chamber "unzipped" and erupted. There may be quakes that are bigger than 6.0, but he/she added that no one knows.

I on the other hand think the eruption will be one big explosion. There could be lots of events as earthquakes escalated, but if there were one big bang, the earthquakes as a result would be 10+. And the whole world would wobble. It would be felt world wide.

Shirakawa, how close to last years swarm in cumulative energy? Please, if you could, express it in terms of one big quake, and or, how many 2.5's combined. We must be getting close.

www.youtube.com...


[edit on 28-1-2010 by Robin Marks]