Scientists are saying that new research shows an eruption of the Yellowstone volcano is unlikely anytime soon. But what is soon? The Chief Scientist of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, Dr. Michael Poland said that’s hard to define.
“In order to know when something might erupt, we need to have some unrest that we're tracking. So you need to know that something's brewing,” said Poland.
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He took us to a metaphorical kitchen and asked us to think of a pot of water boiling on a stove, adding, “If you know how hot the burner is, how much water there is, that calculation is possible. Well, right now for Yellowstone, the burner's not on. So how can you tell when the pot of water is going to boil if the burner's not even on?”
He went on to say that is exactly what’s happening in Yellowstone right now. He called that, good news: “I think that's also a reassuring bit that, you know, the stove isn't on in Yellowstone. So we're not worried about a volcanic event there in the near future. It would take a while for the water to get to boiling.”
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Poland knows that because of a research technique that is almost more interesting than the finding itself. It’s based on recent updates to a 70-year-old technology called magnetotellurics. It’s often just abbreviated as M-T. The technique utilizes electric currents flowing deep into the earth.
Poland explained, “And that electrical current is not generated by, you know, not generators or anything like that. It's generated by solar particles hitting the earth and worldwide lightning. It's, you know, this is the sort of thing that I do for a living, this sort of geophysics. And it still stuns me that this kind of stuff is even possible.”
Looking at a USGS map of Yellowstone National Park and the three states around it, you see a mass of red triangles, most clustered in or near the park. But some extend out quite a distance from the park boundaries. Those are the M-T sites put in for this latest research.
You’ll also notice black triangles. Those are older M-T sites from an earlier study. The sites reach well into Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. Another shows a different kind of sensor, seismic stations that are mostly just within the park. The current system was mostly complete by 2020.
Poland said, “When we merge the two data sets, that's when things can really come into focus.”
New maps of the magma under the park show distinct, but mostly disconnected pools of hot rocks. Some are molten, some are more like mush, but the big takeaway is that without a connection to each other, or a deeper source of magma, the hot rocks are likely to continue to cool.
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Poland explained, “In order to mobilize it to really feed a consequential volcanic eruption, you would need to re-melt some of that.”
So that means the terror YouTube videos about a Yellowstone eruption are mostly just speculation or outright fantasy. The message from the scientists is clear: don’t believe that stuff, it’s just clickbait.
But there are conditions. It seems there are always conditions. The earth under our feet is not in a static state. The North American continent rests on giant plates that move over the magma in the interior of the planet. All that movement could, at some future time, alter the makeup of those hot rocks under Yellowstone. But, Poland is not that worried. He said that a major, continent-changing explosion is just not indicated anytime soon.
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Poland confided that the largest pool of hot rock under the park might, at some point spark some eruptions, but he said those are much more likely to be similar to what is seen at Kilauea in Hawaii right now, than what happened 640,000 years ago in Yellowstone.
He also cautioned that there are other threats, “One of them is strong earthquakes. Those are present because of the tectonic activity in the whole region. The 1959 magnitude 7.3 Hebgen Lake earthquake is an example. Or these steam explosions like the one we saw last summer.”
