Set to blow? Supervolcano Campi Flegrei reawakening near Naples, could hit 500,000 people

a reply to: [post=21728260]TrueAmerican[/post

I'm with you on this one, especially after reading your book!!

a reply to: TrueAmerican

I don't think skepticism and concern are mutually exclusive. I'm skeptical, but VERY concerned about this. My point was just to illustrate that we've seen this kind of apathy toward something before, with disastrous consequences and loss of life resulting.

Peace.

Any thoughts on the recent earthquakes near Rome? I haven't had time to look into this too much, apart from the article, which was very interesting to read.

Ok, it seems Vesuvius had a huge eruption 2000 years before the Pompeii eruption - and it appears to have been so sudden that remains have been found in the act of fleeing (much more sudden than its better known eruption). Geologists have found evidence for at least 8 huge Vesuvius eruptions, every 2-3 thousand years.......and it has been 2000 since the last major event.

Beyond this, BBC had a documentary on a couple of weeks ago about Italy's lost towns / buried history. The first episode was around the Bay of Naples and they found at least 5 other towns in the region that have all either sunk beneath the waves or risen to be destroyed by ground deformation.......since the Pompeii eruption.

So have have a huge caldera and a much more massively active than suspected Vesuvius causing regular damage in the area.

Some of the towns they dived on indicated pretty sudden destruction. For example, by simply wiping away sand sediments, floors were almost perfectly preserved. This means that despite being submerged, they didn't have time to weather at the surface first (sudden deluge). This, in turns, indicates that Campi Flegri "breathes" pretty damn deeply......

Wait for them earthquakes starting to hit Rome.

Probably just a pointed eared Vulcan running around pretending to be an elf with his volcanic elf ears.

originally posted by: Miracula2
Probably just a pointed eared Vulcan running around pretending to be an elf with his volcanic elf ears.

Speaking of elves. Doesn't Amatrice where all the earthquakes have been happening translate into amateur?

Meteors....

Ebola...

Seems the pressure is still building up in Italy...
youtu.be...

originally posted by: Snellius
Seems the pressure is still building up in Italy...
youtu.be...

Well if it is, it sure isn't manifesting as seismic activity. Since I posted this story about 5 months ago, I have been watching and checking the webicorders there daily. I've seen literally nothing. Not even a mouse peep, seismically. It appears to be in one of its rest periods. I just saw this story posted again like yesterday on Drudge. I guess they get a kick out of scaring people. Problem is, people there SHOULD be scared, and SHOULD be getting the hell out of dodge while they still have the chance.When all hell breaks loose, what do you want to bet that some of my tax dollars are going to end up being spent trying to save people, when they were given ample warning.

a reply to: TrueAmerican

It has ever been thus, TA. People who know warn people who don't...and then the rest of us pick up the pieces.

This is the reason I DON'T live in Seattle!

a reply to: TrueAmerican

The Phlegrean Fields area (where a lot of houses are now built) seems to give serious indications that activity is picking up before an eruption (from the numerous historical records). The same cannot be said for the (what appears to be) periodic huge uplifts and down shifts in land height around the Campi Flegrei area in total.

So, from this, i thing Campi Flegrei is "breathing". If the Phlegrean Fields start acting up though it could be something else entirely........

a reply to: Flavian

Understanding all of this in a greater context though is where the latest science comes in. And the news is not good. Just three days ago a new study was published, which identifies a particular trend of VT (volcanic-tectonic) earthquakes in relation to accumulated stress in the rock. It is complicated, but for the adventurous ones, here:

www.nature.com...

What this boils down to is that the VT trends identified are consistent with rock in the caldera getting ready to reach failure. And transition from a stressed state still containing the magma, to a failed state, which does not contain it. This study is saying that if another episode of uplift occurs to a particular point of about 6 meters, it may be enough to cause catastrophic failure of the rock. To what degree an eruption would happen is still unknown.

But the critical part of this study is the comparison of these VT trends with other volcanic systems, and the similarities indicate the rock is near or at failure stress levels. Now combine that with the OP article here on the state of the magma, the high melt ratio, and everything else.

I mean every indicator is pointing to this thing going off. What more do people there need to GTFO of there? Note that this new article linked above in this post also explicitly warns people of the potential to misinterpret the next episode of uplift like before- that it is just breathing, and not to expect an eruption. And the article makes it clear that this next time, that will be a fatal mistake- because of the accumulated stress and the hair-trigger state of the rock currently.

Another story which interprets this article:

“By studying how the ground is cracking and moving at Campi Flegrei, we think it may be approaching a critical stage where further unrest will increase the possibility of an eruption, and it’s imperative that the authorities are prepared for this,” explained Dr Christopher Kilburn, Director of the UCL Hazard Centre.

“We don’t know when or if this long-term unrest will lead to an eruption, but Campi Flegrei is following a trend we’ve seen when testing our model on other volcanoes, including Rabaul in Papua New Guinea, El Hierro in the Canary Islands, and Soufriere Hills on Montserrat in the Caribbean. We are getting closer to forecasting eruptions at volcanoes that have been quiet for generations by using detailed physical models to understand how the preceding unrest develops.”

Movement of magma three kilometres below the volcano has caused the episodes of unrest. An eruption becomes more likely when the ground has been stretched to its breaking point, because the molten rock can escape to the surface when the ground splits apart. It is difficult to predict when an eruption may occur because, even if the ground breaks, it is possible for the magma to stall before reaching the surface.

The unrest has already caused severe social upheaval in Campi Flegrei. The three episodes of uplift have together pushed the port of Pozzuoli, near the centre of unrest, more than three metres out of the sea.

www.ucl.ac.uk...

According to the report below,we're safe for now anyway........
www.livescience.com...

Eruptive history If that sounds wonky, it is. But it's also important. Campi Flegrei is a large caldera, sometimes called a "supervolcano," that sits outside of Naples, Italy, and partly under the Gulf of Pozzuoli. At two points in the past — about 36,000 years ago and 15,000 years ago — the caldera erupted quite violently. Its eruptions in recorded history though, have been fairly tame. The last one, in 1538, simply formed a small cinder cone called Monte Nuovo. "The type of eruption this could be leading to is not like the big one 30,000 years ago," said Erik Klemetti, a volcanologist at Denison University in Ohio who was not involved in the research. Still, around 350,000 people now live in Campi Flegreiand another million live next door in Naples, so another small eruption would be disruptive, Kilburn said. Kilburn and his colleagues were also interested in studying Campi Flegrei's dynamics, because more than 130 other similar calderas around the world have been active in the time since humans started leaving records. A second look at Campi Flegrei The researchers developed a new model for understanding the volcano's periodic rumblings. Since 1950, Campi Flegrei has had three periods of seismic unrest: between April 1950 and May 1952, between July 1969 and July 1972, and between June 1982 and December 1984. During each of those periods, the ground would pulse upward by about 1 to 2 feet (0.3 to 0.6 meters) per year, for a total uplift of about 9.8 feet (3 m). This uplift was probably driven by injections of magma from a reservoir 4 to 5.5 miles (7 to 9 kilometers) deep into layers closer to the surface, about 1.8 miles (3 km) deep, Kilburn said. Such magma puts stress on Earth's outer layer, the crust, as the material squeezes into available subterranean spaces, causing tiny earthquakes and uplift, he said. The assumption, Kilburn and his colleagues wrote May 15 in the journal Nature Communications, was that the stresses that accumulated during these periods of uplift dissipated between those periods, essentially resetting the caldera to zero. Now, Kilburn and his colleagues have used their new modeling technique and data taken from a drilling project at the volcano to argue that about 80 percent of the stresses accumulated during these uplift periods remain in the crust. That accumulated stress makes the caldera more prone to shaking and breaking than previously believed, the researchers said. This does not mean an eruption is imminent, the scientists said, as Campi Flegrei is currently quiet. Its last activity report on the Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program's website describes a swarm of tiny, magnitude-1.9 quakes back in 2012. But if Campi Flegrei were to wake up again, the volcano might be preloaded with enough stress to make it shake more and erupt more readily than previously expected, the researchers said. "This idea of stress accumulating at the crust in volcanos is a fairly new idea of how to look at the events leading up to an eruption," Klemetti said. This is interesting, he said, but it's possible that the older interpretations are correct and the volcano's restless periods might be discrete events that don't add up to anything. Kilburn said the same model has accurately described volcanic activity at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, Soufrière Hills on Montserrat in the Caribbean, Kilauea on Hawaii, and Rabaul in Papua New Guinea.

No need to cancel my stay in Naples in just under a month from now!

a reply to: Imagewerx

You are gonna love it. I just came back from a month in Italy, had a blast!

If you want the best, most authentic pizza you will ever eat, go to pizzaria pellone, it' s like 2 minutes from the train station. Some of the staff are grumpier than heck, but man the food is amazing

originally posted by: bronco73
a reply to: Imagewerx

You are gonna love it. I just came back from a month in Italy, had a blast!

If you want the best, most authentic pizza you will ever eat, go to pizzaria pellone, it' s like 2 minutes from the train station. Some of the staff are grumpier than heck, but man the food is amazing

Thank you! It's not just Naples but the whole West Coast starting in Palermo and ending up in Venice.It's a bit of a volcano spotting trip as well as I've never seen an active volcano before,shame I won't have time to get out to Stromboli though.Looking forward to food just to get away from the crap we get in England!

originally posted by: Imagewerx

originally posted by: bronco73
a reply to: Imagewerx

You are gonna love it. I just came back from a month in Italy, had a blast!

If you want the best, most authentic pizza you will ever eat, go to pizzaria pellone, it' s like 2 minutes from the train station. Some of the staff are grumpier than heck, but man the food is amazing

Thank you! It's not just Naples but the whole West Coast starting in Palermo and ending up in Venice.It's a bit of a volcano spotting trip as well as I've never seen an active volcano before,shame I won't have time to get out to Stromboli though

.Looking forward to food just to get away from the crap we get in England!

Nice! We went the opposite way, started in Venice and worked our way down.
The UK is on our bucket list, can't wait to see it

a reply to: bronco73

It's a shame Etna seems to have calmed down now after her angry outburst a few months ago.At least we know we're safe from Volcanoes here in the UK,but we do have a few things for tourists to see!

Having been all over Europe, South Italy is the only place I go now.

But I recently read about the Mafia burying hundreds of tons of nuclear waste in farmers fields...where they grow olives amongst other things... which then go in your pizza :/ Not sure I will be going back. It is so bad that the US Navy who have a base there, banned all its troops from going off-base, permanently, because the soil is so contaminated.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

en.wikipedia.org...(Italy)

Well I was at Campi Flegrei today and can reassure everyone that it was the most safe and reassuring piece of ground I've ever walked on.

So there you have it,proof if ever it was needed that we're safe for the next couple of weeks at least.

originally posted by: Imagewerx
Well I was at Campi Flegrei today and can reassure everyone that it was the most safe and reassuring piece of ground I've ever walked on.

So there you have it,proof if ever it was needed that we're safe for the next couple of weeks at least.

Signed,
Harry R. Truman