Important Takeaways:
- ‘Be prepared for all outcomes’: Inside the saga of a supervolcano that’s waking up
- The most dangerous volcanic threat in Italy right now is one you’ve probably never heard of: Campi Flegrei, or the Phlegraean Fields.
- More than 500,000 of the locals live in what Italy’s civil protection agency has deemed a “red zone,” an area encompassing 18 towns that’s at highest risk in the event of an eruption. An additional 3 million residents of Naples live immediately outside the eastern edge of the caldera, according to the civil protection agency.
- Seismic activity in the area has been intensifying since December of 2022
- The entire volcanic zone is also experiencing a surge in earthquakes that has rattled nerves and sent residents seeking safety out into the streets.
- So far in 2023 Campi Flegrei has recorded more than 3,450 earthquakes, 1,118 of which occurred in August alone. This is more than triple the previous year’s total, according to INGV’s data. More than 500 earthquakes occurred in October, the strongest of which hit 4.0 magnitude, followed by a dozen aftershocks.
- “We can’t yet say for sure what will happen. The important point is to be prepared for all outcomes.”
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Luke 21:11 There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.
Important Takeaways:
- Europe’s most dangerous supervolcano ‘on verge of eruption’ and may spark global winter
- An eruption could cause mass extinctions, obliterate crops, and see people living nearby evacuated – but scientists deny such an incident is “inevitable” and explain what triggers would push it to potential breaking point.
- The crust of the Campi Flegrei volcano, near Naples in southern Italy, is becoming weaker and more prone to rupturing, “making an eruption more likely”, research recently published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment said.
- If the eruption was to be similar to its largest previous one, it would launch molten rock and volcanic gases high into the stratosphere.
- This would lead to 100-feet-high (33.5 meters) tsunamis and the spread of sulfur and toxic ash that could plunge Earth into global winter for years, destroying crops and wildlife alike.
- And most at risk are the roughly 500,000 people whose homes lie near the super volcano – many of them in the coastal town of Pozzuoli
- Lead author Professor Christopher Kilburn (UCL Earth Sciences) said: “Our new study confirms that Campi Flegrei is moving closer to rupture.”
- There is an evacuation plan in place for those living near the dormant volcano. People would be moved out within three days, either by their own transport or buses, trains and boats.
- However, scientists are not saying a huge eruption of the scale capable of causing global winter is inevitable, with two conditions being necessary before that happens.
- For volcanoes to blow, gases must build up faster than they can escape, and magma also needs to be able to move rapidly through the crust where a crack has formed. Scientists cannot know for certain these conditions have been met until an eruption takes place.
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