Astrum Space
The Supervolcanoes Scientists Say We Should Be Paying Attention To | Astrum Earth
01 May 2025
Welcome to the formidable world of Supervolcanoes - colossal volcanic systems capable of eruptions more powerful than anything in recorded history. From Yellowstone to Toba, discover how these geological giants form, what makes them so dangerous, and the chilling signs scientists are watching for. Could another super-eruption happen in our lifetime? And if it did… what would it mean for humanity?From Alex McColgan and the Astrum team comes an illuminating new adventure that turns our gaze homeward. Astrum Earth invites you to rediscover the most extraordinary planet in our universe - our very own Earth.Journey with us as we explore Earth's most captivating mysteries and marvels, from the global dance of El Niño to the intricate rhythms that have sustained life for billions of years. With the same meticulous research and breathtaking visuals that define Astrum, we'll reveal our planet's stories in unprecedented detail.Narrated by James Stewart, Astrum Earth promises to transform how you see the world beneath your feet and the skies above. Because to truly understand the cosmos, we must first understand home.Discover our new Astrum Earth YouTube channel: hhttps://www.youtube.com/@AstrumEarth
Full Episode
Volcanoes are nature's ticking time bombs. In full flow, one of humanity's most fearsome sights. Mythical, almost otherworldly. Nothing and no one on the planet can alter their course once they decide to remain silent no more. But that really is just the beginning. Because dotted around the globe, super volcanoes are ready and waiting to awaken, with the power to wipe out entire continents.
Some are hidden beneath our feet. Others hide in plain sight. But when they make themselves known, there's nowhere to hide. The most violent volcanic eruption to occur this century was fairly recently. In January of 2022, the eruption of a submarine volcano near the main island of Tonga, about 2,000 kilometres northeast of New Zealand.
The eruption of Hunga Tongaunga Haapi, to give the volcano its full name, constituted an explosion far larger than that produced by any nuclear bomb. It could be heard in Alaska, nearly 10,000 kilometres away. and it generated a tsunami that was two metres high even after crossing the Pacific Ocean to Peru. The 2022 Tonga event was undoubtedly a big one.
But how does it compare to other volcanic eruptions? I'm James Stewart and you're watching Astrum Earth. In this video we'll look at the volcanic rating scale, ancient clues of super volcanic eruptions and potentially dangerous regions across the world. Just how worried should we be about the possibility of future eruptions that are bigger, much, much bigger than the Tonga event? Let's find out.
Geologists quantify the violence of a volcanic eruption using a scale called the Volcanic Explosivity Index . Although a given eruption can be assigned a single score on this scale, exactly what score is awarded depends on a combination of factors, such as the volume of rock ejected by the eruption, the height reached by the volcano's ash cloud , as well as some more qualitative descriptors.
The VEI scale is open-ended in principle, but all known events are graded between 0 and 8. Events scoring 0 are represented by eruptions of low viscosity, or runny, lava at volcanoes such as Kilauea or Manalahu on Hawaii. Although these eruptions can involve large volumes of material and are dangerous in their own right, they are what geologists term effusive in nature.
This means that the lava flows rather than explodes from the volcano's vent. Go up the scale to a VEI of 2 and you reach the sort of eruption represented by the ongoing activity at Mount Etna in Sicily. Keep going, and at a VEI of 3, you get to something like the eruption of Sufriere Hills, which covered much of the Caribbean island of Montserrat with ash in 1996 and 1997.
At a VEI of 4, you reach the 2010 eruption of the Icelandic volcano whose ash clouds spread over Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, disrupting air travel for several weeks. Because many of an eruption's attributes can't be determined with certainty, there's sometimes disagreement about what score should be assigned to a given eruption.
The 2022 Tonga event, with an erupted rock volume of about 1.9 cubic kilometres and a plume that reached a height of 58 kilometres, earns a five on the VEI scale by most estimates, although some volcanologists push it up to a six. This is roughly on a par with the famous 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State in the US.
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