![]() ![]() ![]() “We have to really be on our game, even in the middle of the night,” Hon says. For now, volcanologists and seismologists need to stay vigilant, says Ken Hon, scientist-in-charge at the USGS’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. Until scientists develop a probe that can withstand magma sizzling at around 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, more precise long-term eruption forecasts are unlikely to materialize. “You can’t go down and sample the magma that’s five miles below the surface.” “With volcanoes, we can’t do that,” Moran says. He compares the situation with a physician developing a diagnosis: Temperature, pulse and blood pressure are all symptoms of what’s happening inside a patient’s body, but sometimes doctors order a biopsy to look inside and find out what is really happening. Geological Survey seismologist Seth Moran. While current technology for detecting volcanic activity is “light-years” ahead of what was available in the 1990s, there are still a lot of unknowns, says U.S. “If you tell them to evacuate, and then nothing happens, then the population will understandably not be as impressed next time when someone says, ‘You’ve really got to evacuate right now.’” “If you get it wrong, then the stakes are quite high,” says Tamsin Mather, a volcanologist and a professor at the University of Oxford. Volcanic activity continues to threaten lives and communities across the globe. Researchers are optimistic that these warnings will eventually improve beyond mere hours’ notice. ![]() But many volcanoes display enough early behavioral clues that scientists often simply guess something is imminent ahead of the systems’ warnings-even if the precise moment of eruption is unclear. Today’s most accurate eruption forecasting systems dole out warnings in terms of hours rather than days or weeks. Scientists are swimming in data they just need to figure out what to do with this information in order to speed up their predictions. In the past few decades, technological advances and an expansion of surveillance to more volcanoes have helped inform the more than 500 million people who live within the exposure range of one. He quickly placed more sensors on the volcano, which helped him and his team dispel misinformation and develop the warning system they use today. ![]() When volcanic activity picked up ahead of the 1994 eruption that marked the start of Popocatepetl’s current behavioral pattern, nearby residents were convinced it would “be like Pompeii,” Gutiérrez says. Knowing that an ashfall or eruption will happen is vital, and Gutiérrez’s work helps people prepare for earthquakes or smothering ash clouds. Twenty-two million people live in the volcano’s shadow, and its ashfalls and eruptions are dangerous enough to cancel schools and shut down airports. When Popocatepetl spewed smoke, ash and molten rock in May, Gutiérrez and his colleagues raised the threat level and fed local authorities real-time updates. Equipment used to keep tabs on El Popo, includes 10 seismic stations five video cameras two sonic sensors for evaluating the power of explosions three hydrometeorological stations to measure rainfall and ash five sensors to evaluate how the volcano physically deforms in the run-up to an eruption and a thermal imaging camera.Ĭarlos Antonio Gutiérrez, research director of Mexico’s National Center for Prevention of Disasters, can monitor all the data collected by those devices from his phone. Lying on the outskirts of Mexico City, it is one of the largest active volcanoes in the world and one of the most heavily monitored volcanoes. Look no further than Popocatepetl, or El Popo. Volcanologists have certainly made some progress on this front. If those catastrophic eruptions had occurred today, could scientists have forecast them in time to save lives? A pyroclastic flow from Mount Pelée claimed the lives of nearly 30,000 on the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1902. Toxic gases and ash from Mount Vesuvius took just minutes to asphyxiate an estimated 2,000 Pompeians in C.E. ![]()
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