One of Alaska's Most Dangerous Volcanoes Is Waking Up

Bright Side

One of Alaska’s most dangerous volcanoes, Mount Edgecumbe, is waking up after being quiet for centuries. Scientists recently noticed unusual earthquake activity and ground swelling in the area, which are signs that magma is moving beneath the surface. This is a big deal because Mount Edgecumbe hasn’t erupted in over 800 years, and now it’s showing signs of life. While it’s not erupting yet, experts are keeping a close eye on it to understand what might happen next. If it does erupt, it could affect nearby communities and even air travel due to ash clouds. For now, it’s a reminder of how powerful and unpredictable nature can be, especially in a place like Alaska!

Transcript

00:00The ground suddenly starts shaking.

00:03Clouds of gas start forming in the sky, making it dark during broad daylight.

00:08Bits of the ground start swelling, lifting, and even collapsing.

00:12These are the tell-tale signs of a volcano that is bound to erupt.

00:17And this is what could easily happen again with Mount Spur.

00:21It's only about 75 miles from Anchorage, one of Alaska's busiest cities.

00:26More than half of the population of the northernmost state of the U.S. live there.

00:32There's also a huge amount of air cargo that passes through its international airport daily.

00:37So anytime a volcano this close to such a vital hub begins to get restless, people start paying attention.

00:45Just FYI, approximately 350 million people in the world live within the danger range of an active volcano.

00:53That means that around 1 out of 20 people live in an area at risk of volcanic activity.

01:01Alaskans probably wish that Spur's reawakening was fiction, but it's actually true.

01:06The Alaska Volcano Observatory picked up on several of these, I'm about to erupt, signs from Mount Spur.

01:13So much so that they raised the alert level to yellow, which means unrest above normal background levels.

01:19Spur erupted twice in the 90s, and it was pretty intense.

01:25If we were ranking volcanic eruptions on a scale from 1 to 10, these eruptions would rank a 6 or 7.

01:32Not that terrible, but still worth 10 to 17 million in damages.

01:37However, these numbers are nothing compared to Alaska's 1988 Redoubt Eruption,

01:43another volcano that erupted and summed up a staggering $345 million in damages.

01:51Mainly because its ashes hit aircraft engines, such as the KLM 747 that lost power after all its engines went off due to the ashes.

02:01If people weren't paying attention to Alaska's unstable geology before that, well, they surely started to after it.

02:08When you think of the hazards of volcanic activity, the first thing that might possibly pop in your mind is Pompeii, Italy.

02:18Of course, that's the worst-case scenario, a city being engulfed by lava.

02:24Spur may seem innocent compared to Vesuvio, but it still took its toll.

02:28The last time it erupted in the 90s, and it threw volcanic aerosols over 60,000 feet into the atmosphere.

02:37Let's get our science straight here.

02:40Think of volcanic aerosols like liquid particles that are released into the atmosphere during an eruption.

02:46These particles are usually created when gases from a volcano, such as sulfur dioxide,

02:51combine with water and other particles that exist in our atmosphere.

02:54These aerosols can actually cool the Earth's surface, since they reflect sunlight directly back into space.

03:02And that's not the worst part.

03:04It can stay in the atmosphere for several years after an eruption, causing lots of health issues.

03:11The eruption unleashed blazing-fast avalanches of hot gas and ash called pyroclastic flows,

03:18along with thick, muddy floods known as lahars.

03:22Oh, and there were also the massive volcanic boulders.

03:27These rock chunks were huge, some over three feet long,

03:31and they blasted out from the volcano like nature's cannonballs, landing more than six miles away.

03:37All that volcanic heat melted part of a nearby glacier,

03:41kicking off debris flows that dammed up the Chakachatna River

03:44and created a whole new lake along the valley.

03:48Some good came out of Spur's first eruption, though.

03:52The main lesson was, volcanic monitoring pays off.

03:56The local monitoring was able to reduce the economic damage done by the eruption,

04:00especially for a city that has an intense air traffic.

04:05Spur is deemed as dormant for the moment,

04:07but it could go off any time soon.

04:11You see, volcanoes are classified as active, dormant, or extinct,

04:17depending on how much action they're putting on.

04:19If it's still active, it's still rumbling and erupting somewhat regularly.

04:24Dormant means it's had some recent activity, but it's still lying low for now.

04:28And extinct, that's when it's been quiet for such a long time that we figure it's done for good.

04:36One of the U.S.'s most dangerous active volcanoes is Mount St. Helens.

04:42This volcano is actually responsible for the most powerful eruption in U.S. history.

04:48Its last blast was so intense, it threw off about 1,300 feet off its summit.

04:55Basically, the top of the mountain vanished.

04:57And if you thought Mount Spur's ash cloud was impressive,

05:01St. Helens wins the competition, since it launched its ashes 80,000 feet into the sky.

05:07Eastern Washington plunged into total darkness.

05:12But it wasn't just that.

05:14In a matter of three minutes, the eruption hurled 3.7 billion cubic yards of blazing rock and dust,

05:21enough to fill a million Olympic-sized pools across 230 square miles of lush forest.

05:28Actually, the earthquakes that anticipated the eruption started weeks before May 18, 1980.

05:35A ground shake of magnitude 5.0 went off, triggering a landslide on one side of the volcano.

05:41By the end of the official eruption date, 57 people had lost their lives.

05:48Nearly 7,000 big-game animals like deer and elk were wiped out,

05:53and millions of birds laid scattered on the burnt earth.

05:57Researchers don't think St. Helens will blow at the same magnitude again anytime soon,

06:02but they're keeping an eye on it, because this volcano is not exactly finished.

06:08By the way, the word volcano comes from the Roman name Vulcan, which was the Roman deity of fire.

06:15And they often happen at the meeting point of tectonic plates,

06:18which are the pieces of the earth's surface that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

06:22The so-called Ring of Fire, located in the Pacific Ocean, is the world's danger zone when it comes to volcanoes.

06:30It contains between 750 and 915 active volcanoes.

06:37The largest volcano located in the Ring of Fire, also the largest active volcano in the world,

06:43is the Mauna Loa. It's over 13,000 feet high, and it's located in Hawaii.

06:50Researchers say that Mauna Loa has been erupting for at least 700,000 years.

06:55Its most recent eruption began on the 27th of November 2022, and it lasted until December 13.

07:03It's been quiet since the 80s, until it decided to wake up again.

07:08Thanks to constant monitoring by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory,

07:11it didn't cause any casualties when it last erupted.

07:14Scientists have been investing big time on volcanic monitoring, not only to reduce economic hazards,

07:22but also to save lives. The most recent attempt has been to drill into volcanoes.

07:29Recently, a group of scientists went all the way to Iceland in one of the world's volcanic hotspots.

07:36There are around 33 active volcanoes in Iceland alone, but the one that is the most interesting

07:42to them the most is the Kraffla volcano. The Kraffla has erupted around 30 times in the last 1,000 years,

07:50and its most recent eruption was in the mid-1980s. The project named Kraffla Magma Testbed,

07:56or KMT for short, is hoping to advance the understanding of how magma behaves underground.

08:02The main advantage of this drilling research is predicting the risk of eruptions,

08:07but it can also help to push geothermal energy forward. I mean, can you imagine having electricity

08:14that is run by the limitless source of volcano power? The KMT team will begin drilling holes deep

08:21into volcanic ground in 2027. They're aiming at reaching over a mile into the ground. After all,

08:28it's different to monitor lava activity when it's on the surface than when it is still below ground.

08:34This will allow researchers to listen to the pulse of the Earth, according to them.

08:40They're saying this research is as revolutionary as the first time man went to the moon. Oh,

08:46and speaking of that, I was shocked to discover that volcanoes exist all throughout the solar system.

08:51Yep, other planets and moons have volcanoes too. The largest volcano in our solar system is Olympus

08:59Mons on Mars. It's a shield volcano, much like the ones that make up the Hawaiian Islands.

09:06It's about 370 miles wide. If we transported it all the way back to Earth, it would almost occupy

09:13all of Poland. Yikes.

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