Volcanoes are Earth's geologic architects. They've created more than 80 percent of our planet's surface, laying the foundation that has allowed life to thrive. Their explosive force crafts mountains as well as craters. Lava rivers spread into bleak landscapes. But as time ticks by, the elements break down these volcanic rocks, liberating nutrients from their stony prisons and creating remarkably fertile soils that have allowed civilizations to flourish.
There are volcanoes on every continent, even Antarctica. Some 1,500 volcanoes are still considered potentially active around the world today; 161 of those—over 10 percent—sit within the boundaries of the United States.
Scientific measures:
But each volcano is different. Some burst to life in explosive eruptions, like the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, and others burp rivers of lava in what's known as an effusive eruption, like the 2018 activity of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano. These differences are all thanks to the chemistry driving the molten activity. Effusive eruptions are more common when the magma is less viscous, or runny, which allows gas to escape and the magma to flow down the volcano's slopes. Explosive eruptions, however, happen when viscous molten rock traps the gasses, building pressure until it violently breaks free.
Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a new volcanic forecasting modelling program that runs on the university’s Blue Waters and supercomputers. The model was able to successfully predict an eruption that happened in June 2018 in the Sierra volcano in Ecuador; with an error margin of just one single day.
The research has been published in an article titled, “Forecasting mechanical failure and the 26 June 2018 eruption of Sierra Volcano, Galápagos, Ecuador,” in Science Advances.
In 2017, geology professor Patricia Gregg had just set up the model on the supercomputers. At the same time, another team was monitoring activity at the Sierra volcano in the Galápagos Islands. Initially developed on an iMac computer, the model had already proven to be successful by recreating the eruption of Alaska’s volcano in 2008.
During the winter break of 2017-18, Gregg and other researchers ran the Sierra data through the supercomputer-powered model. They completed the test run in January. Even though it was intended as a test, it ended up providing a framework to understand the volcano’s eruption cycles and to prejudice the timing of future eruptions. But no one knew that at the time.
“Our model forecasted that the strength of the rocks that contain very unstable rocks sometime between June 25 and July 5, and possibly result in a mechanical failure and subsequent eruption. We presented this conclusion at a scientific conference in March 2018. After that, we became busy with other work and did not look at our models again until Dennis texted me on June 26, asking me to confirm the date we had forecasted. Sierra erupted one day after our earliest forecasted mechanical failure date. We were floored,” said Gregg, in a press statement.
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