Is the Naples Supervolcano Going To Blow?
The slumbering Campi Flegrei volcano under the Italian city of Naples shows signs of ‘reawakening’, a new study has warned.
Researchers said that the simmering volcano may be nearing a critical pressure point.
For the first time, they have identified a threshold beyond which rising magma under the Earth’s surface could trigger the release of fluids and gasses at a 10-fold increased rate.
This could potentially lead to an eruption, which could be ‘very dangerous’ for the half million people living in the area.
An increase in the release of fluid and gasses would cause the injection of high-temperature steam into surrounding rocks, said lead author Giovanni Chiodini, a researcher at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Bologna.
’Hydrothermal rocks, if heated, can ultimately lose their mechanical resistance, causing an acceleration towards critical conditions,’ he told AFP.
It is not possible at this time to say when – or if – the volcano will erupt anew, he said.
If it did, however, ‘it would be very dangerous’ for the half-million people living inside and near the caldera, he added, using the scientific name for the bowl-like depression created after a volcano blows its top.
Since 2005, Campi Flegrei has been undergoing what scientists call ‘uplift’, causing Italian authorities to raise the alert level in 2012 from green to yellow, signaling the need for active scientific monitoring.
The pace of ground deformation and low-level seismic activity has recently increased.
The Campi Flegrei is located underneath the Italian city of Naples and could prove dangerous for the half million people living within range if it were to erupt
Two other active volcanoes – Rabaul in Papua New Guinea, and Sierra Negra in the Galapagos – ‘both showed an acceleration in ground deformation before eruption with a pattern similar to that observed at Campi Flegrei,’ Chiodini said.
The Campi Flegrei caldera was formed 39,000 years ago in a blast that threw hundreds of cubic kilometers of lava, rock and debris into the air.
It was the largest eruption in Europe in the past 200,000 years, according to scientists.
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