A Bit More Than the Usual Rumbling Hits Yellowstone
In the past week or so, some 400 earthquakes have added to the already precarious land at Yellowstone National Park. Although the area is the largest supervolcano in North America, the rumbling is a bit more than normal.
Like bees, when earthquakes occur in great amounts in one area, it’s called a swarm, reports NPR. But this swarm is bigger than the usual that would happen. The swarm has a magnitude of 3.9 on the Richter scale, and the quakes have happened at greater frequency than the norm.
And all of the earthquakes have occurred under Yellowstone Lake. The last time something like this happened was 20 years ago, reports Wyoming’s Local News 8. Said one geologist on the station: “We think it’s where more magma heat and steam escaped through cracks in the crust. That’s probably what’s causing the earthquakes.”
No one knows for sure why this is happening, though. But no worries to the people living around Yellowstone - the last huge volcano eruption was about 640,000 years ago.
Earlier in the year, around April, the same thing happened in Oregon, except it was 600 earthquakes in 10 days. That one, though, was different - it didn’t occur around any places where tectonic plates meet, the vast land areas that form the Earth’s crust. Three of those quakes had a magnitude of 5.0 or higher. Most, however, happened out at sea, and were barely felt on land.
>> See Also: United States Opening 190 Million Acres to Geothermal Energy Development
Casualties of global warming? Who knows. There’s not much anyone can really do about these, except wait them out.
Photo Credit: moonjazz at Flickr under a Creative Commons License
Demonstration of Eruption (Yellowstone, Hudson Bay)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zULevzGwGn0&feature=channel_page
This You Tube video is my experiment to determine how a magma chamber would erupt if inundated by a lake.
I know where the fault that will rupture is located. I how Yellowstone will erupt. And I know when.
Watch,and find out more,if you’re curious. Ask a question and I’ll provide the answer.
“…no worries to the people living around Yellowstone - the last huge volcano eruption was about 640,000 years ago.”
The problem with the above statement is that scientists have revealed that Yellowstone Park has been on a regular eruption cycle of 60,0000 years. That means that from a historical perspective, Yellowstone is 40,000 years behind its eruptive schedule.
Casualty of Global Warming?
What on earth does a bunch of little earthquakes and steam venting in Yellowstone and off the coast of Oregon have to do with Global Warming?
First… Global Warming?
What, did the earth warm up to the point where the lake started rumbling like a boiling pot of water?
But seriously. This has been happening at Yellowstone for as long as they’ve been recording and they’ve actually subsided since the 6th.
The park actually gets over 3,000 quakes a year with a magnitude >2.
There probably will be an eruption in the relatively near future… what you want to look for is a harmonic resonance in the quakes, which we’re not seeing here.
When that does start to happen, pack up the kids and head south, cause it’s going to get a little bumpy.
I saw this article on Digg and like the last poster commented “Casualty of global warming”…
Are you kidding me? Tell me the relation there, unless like all other environmental crazy people you are mixing up your facts. Volcanoes are actually the main cause of global warming, not the other way around- nice try. And before you try to write an article check your sources (which you have absolutely none of). Your whole article is a bunch of cockamamie and leave actual science to scientists.
Global Warming? Are you kidding me! What Global Warming, there is no Global Warming. It’s being proven that the earth is actually cooling not warming…..But of course when you have folks like Hansen on the loose…and the media. This is what you’ll get.
How can you possibly link earthquakes, plate tectonics, and a rumbling volcano to Global Warming? You lose all credibility when you make such ridiculous allegations. This article (and probably this whole website) is a waste of time.
I hope you’ll clean up this article, Amanda… sloppy stuff like this is what people like Gary and TB read and then conflate environmental science with “environmentalism”. If anyone outside of academia is going to take the data seriously, people inside need to stick to rigor and facts instead of flippant comments like this.
Amanda, eres una pendeja.
Wow dude that is truly amazing! Well done