Yellowstone is a supervolcano in the United States. For several years now, the world has been agitated by the news that it is about to wake up, a catastrophe will happen, America will end, and the world will plunge into a nuclear winter. While the supervolcano sleeps.
Worst case scenario
The most pessimistic scenario for the awakening of a supervolcano is as follows: it will be an explosion comparable to the explosion of 1000 atomic bombs. The ground part of the supervolcano will collapse into a funnel with a diameter of fifty kilometers. An ecological catastrophe will occur on Earth. For the United States, the eruption of Yellowstone will mean the end of existence.
The saddest thing is that not only alarmists, but also experts say about such consequences. Jacob Loewenstern from the Yellowstone Volcanic Observatory (USA) said that in all previous eruptions of the supervolcano (there were three of them), more than 1,000 km³ of magma fell outside. This is enough to cover most of North America with a layer of ash up to 30 cm (at the epicenter of the disaster). Loewenstern also noted that the air temperature throughout the world will drop by 21 degrees, visibility will be no more than half a meter for several years. An era similar to the nuclear winter will come.
Hurricane Katrina showed that the US civil defense system is not ready for such large-scale cataclysms - and no civil defense system of any country will be able to prepare for them.
Domestic scientists do not tire of predicting the eruption of the supervolcano. The head of the Department of Dynamic Geology of the Geological Faculty of Moscow State University, Nikolai Koronovsky, told Vesti what would happen after the eruption:
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“The winds are prevailing from the west, so everything will go to the east of the United States. Will cover them. Solar radiation will decrease, which means that the temperature will have to drop. The famous case of the eruption of the Krakatau volcano in the Sunda Strait in 1873 lowered the temperature by about 2 degrees in the equatorial part for a year and a half, until the ash dissipated.
Supervolcano
Such forecasts are not surprising if we remember that we have a supervolcano in front of us. What is it? Supervolcanoes can be called the most dangerous areas on the globe.
Yellowstone is a huge caldera buried underground. Its area is 4000 km2. For comparison: the area of Moscow is 2500 km2, that is, Yellowstone is one and a half times larger than the capital of Russia, twice as large as Tokyo, and four times larger than New York.
Scientists did not know about the existence of supervolcanoes until the first geosatellites were launched. Yellowstone is so huge that it does not even form a cone, so it does not look like a typical volcano.
The threat is near
Alarming predictions of an imminent eruption come from the scientific community. Geology professor Bill McGwire, who constantly monitors the park, assesses the situation: “America lives, literally, on a powder keg. Satellite images and the movement of the earth's crust indicate that active processes are taking place deep in the depths. There are other signs that he might wake up. The surface of Yellowstone Park emits 30-40 times more heat energy than the rest of the continent."
Panic peaked in the spring of 2014. Since the beginning of 2014, 60 tremors have been recorded in the volcano area. The strongest - on the morning of March 30 - its magnitude was 4.8 - a record since 1980.
The Internet community also did not stand aside. A video showing bison rushing away from the territory of the park got millions of views on Youtube. However, the reserve workers immediately announced that this was seasonal migration - there was nothing to worry about.
As it was before
The last major eruption of Yellowstone happened about 640 thousand years ago. Its power was 2,500 times greater than the power of the largest eruptions of Mount Etna, and as a result of them, the coastline of the ocean was changed and the Mediterranean Sea was frozen.
It's hard to visualize, but for the Earth it was a disaster.