Volcanic eruption could bring world to standstill

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Volcanic eruption could bring world to standstill

NED ROZELL, ALASKA SCIENCE April 23rd, 2011 04:21 PM

On a fine June day about 100 years ago, in a green mountain valley where the

Aleutians stick to the rest of Alaska, the world fell apart.

Earthquakes swayed the alders and spruce. A mountain shook, groaned, and

collapsed in on itself, its former summit swallowing rock and dust until it

became a giant, steaming pit.

About six miles away, hot ash began spewing from the ground in a colossal

geyser. During an eruption that lasted three days, one of the most vibrant

landscapes in Alaska in 1912 became the gray badlands known as the Valley of

10,000 Smokes.

The great eruption that created the valley came from a smallish clump of rocks

called Novarupta. Nowhere near as grand as the nearby Mount Katmai (the mountain

that lost its top), Novarupta spewed an ash cloud 20 miles into the atmosphere,

belching 100 times more ash than did Mount St. Helens.

Though few people know its name, Novarupta was responsible for the largest

eruption of the 20th century.

In the wake of the 2010 eruption of the Iceland volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, that

paralyzed air travel around Europe and the North Atlantic, Anne Welchman

took a look at what might happen if Novarupta happened today.

Welchman is a graduate student from Devon, England, who became enchanted with

volcanoes at the age of 13 when she traveled with her family to Hawaii.

There she saw the ocean quenching molten rock and the hook was set. More

recently, she hiked with volcanologist Eichelberger on his annual summer

field trip to the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. It was like throwing dry pallets on a

bonfire.

That trip inspired her to muse about the effects of a Novarupta eruption

happening today, which is quite possible. She presented a poster on the subject

at the American Geophysical Union's 2010 fall meeting in San Francisco.

" I think people in Europe and Asia don't realize what Alaska could do, " she said

in a cavernous poster hall amid hundreds of other scientists. " Another Novarupta

would be bad news. "

Welchman was referring to a similar eruption's effect on air travel. When

Novarupta erupted, the sky was still the exclusive realm of birds and insects --

Alaska was still a decade away from Ben Eielson's first mail flight from

Fairbanks to McGrath.

" Now the North Pacific is one of the busiest air corridors in the world, "

Welchman said. " More than 200 flights a day go overhead. "

To calculate the effects of a modern-day Novarupta eruption on today's air

travel, Welchman used a computer model called Puff developed by University of

Alaska Fairbanks scientists and refined by research assistant professor

Webley of the Geophysical Institute.

She used the model to spew ash from Novarupta's vent once a week for five years.

She wanted to see which airports in the world would be affected.

" Most airports in the Northern Hemisphere would close, " she said. " Europe seems

to get the brunt of it, but ash even reached Australia. "

Welchman, who hopes to visit more Alaska volcanoes someday soon, summed up the

return of Novarupta as follows:

" An eruption of Novarupta scale in today's society has the potential to bring

the world to a standstill by affecting the majority of airports in North America

and Europe for several days at least, " she wrote on her poster.

" The worse case scenario ... would cost in excess of $300 million just in terms

of passengers and delayed flights. "

Ned Rozell is a science writer at the Geophysical Institute, University of

Alaska Fairbanks.

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