On the night of July 23-24, among the public following the seismic events in Yellowstone National Park, there was a colossal reason for panic: at least four seismographs began to show, if not the beginning of an eruption, then at least an earthquake with a force less than 5.0 points on the Richter scale:
Such a seismic picture cannot exist in principle, since the sensors are very dense, at a distance of several miles from each other, therefore, if one of them registers an earthquake of 5.0 magnitude, it must somehow be reflected on the neighboring seismographs. We do not observe this.
But we observe that at least four more sensors (YHR, YNR, YUF) do not work at all and four more are definitely malfunctioning. This, too, can not be, in principle, for the rhinestone 12 sensors to break.
But what is it then? Software glitch? Calibration? Violation of communication lines through which readings come from sensors?
To clarify the issue, we went to the USGS website to see what happened to the earthquakes:
As you can see from the readings of the monitoring service, there are almost no earthquakes in the caldera area, or the US Geological Survey is hiding them. Therefore, it is impossible to understand what is happening with the sensors from this diagram.
Promotional video:
However, as we have already repeated more than once, real couch volcanologists are accustomed to be content with little and use the sources that are. And we assure you that these sources are enough.
The figure above shows a screen of the monthly dynamics of the water temperature in Steamboat Geyser, which the USGS does not hide from anyone, nor does it hide the temperature with other hot springs and geysers in the park:
Echinus Geyser:
Porkchop Geyser:
Vixen Geyser:
The temperatures of other geysers can be viewed here. The dynamics of the Porkchop Geyser is far from everywhere, the temperature of which jumped from 70 to 85 degrees in a month, but the temperature rise takes place EVERYWHERE. What does this mean?
Three processes are responsible for the transfer of heat from one physical body to another: conduction, convection, and thermal radiation:
Geysers work in a similar way to a teapot:
As can be seen from the figure, there is no conduction, that is, there is no direct contact of water with magma, the water is heated by the hot rock, which in turn is heated by the magma, the temperature of which will melt the rock and instantly evaporate the water. In case of direct contact with the main source of temperature, the geyser will simply explode. But geysers don't explode as water builds up temperature gradually. The gradual accumulation of temperature is possible only when it is transmitted by thermal radiation.
Therefore, if ALL Yellowstone geysers show a simultaneous rise in temperature, then the upper magma chamber began to emit more heat energy. The temperature there is increasing, which indicates either an increase in heat release from the mantle plume, or a thinning of the layer of relatively cold rock between the plume tip and the Yellowstone magma chamber.
As far as one can believe modern theories of geology, the temperature of the mantle is stable and at one depth or another is constantly within certain limits. Therefore, if the mantle plume began to emit more, this can only be associated with the movement of its top closer to the surface.
The boiling point of the water is low, so geysers are the first to react to this situation - they start firing more often and the water in them becomes more and more hot. However, over time, the rock will reach its melting point, turning into magma and causing swarms of small earthquakes, which we will observe in the caldera pretty soon.
Even later, the softened rock will begin to fill underground voids, causing local collapses there and, as a result, an earthquake of up to 5.0 points. It is possible that the process of movement of the mantle plume will stabilize at this point, although it is more likely that the process will continue to develop. In this case, most likely, no one knows what will happen next.
It will be a very good development of the situation if a new geyser basin begins to form to the southeast of the caldera, some fissures are formed (the rocks are already cracking there) and Yellowstone will begin a leisurely Hawaiian-type eruption. But the eruption can be accompanied by an explosion, which throws hot rock over a part of the North American continent. But this is a question of an uncertain future.
In the present, we see failures in the readings of 12 sensors at once, the most likely explanation for which is thermal deformation of the rock in the caldera region. Almost all of the seismographs in the national park are in wells and are carefully calibrated according to their topography.
Naturally, if the rock around any of the wells is deformed, the sensor will need to be re-calibrated, which we often observe after significant earthquakes in the caldera - seismographs near the epicenter show something incomprehensible for some time until the park staff puts them in order, that is, will calibrate.
But in this particular case, the calibration failed once for 12 sensors, which indicates global temperature deformations of the softened rock, deformations throughout the caldera. And the temperature curves of heat sources confirm this assumption.