With the recent swelling of concern over the status of the Yellowstone caldera, many are speculating that an eruption is overdue. Swarms of earthquakes, and the fear of the global devastation it could cause makes it easy for people to go a little overboard when predicting its next possible eruption.
The volcano nestled under Wyoming, Idaho and Montana is one of the largest in the United States, and is constantly being monitored by the US Geological Survey. However, if we go back to a 2014 video made by the scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory Jacob Lowenstern we find that inevitable gloom and doom is farther away than many currently speculate.
First, a super-eruption from the volcano has only happened three times in history: 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago and 640,000 years ago. However, people claim that it erupts every 600,000 years making it 40,000 years overdue. Lowenstern disagrees with the numbers many throw out, he says, “If you average those numbers you come up with something that’s over 700,000 years…So, in reality, even if you tried to make this argument, it wouldn’t be overdue for another 70,000 years.”
Lowenstern also doesn’t agree with the dating arguments as all that reliable. He explains, “The other thing that is important to realize is that when they do statistics based on two eruptive intervals, they are just playing games.” This in reference to the fact that it’s hard to make accurate estimates based on little information, or as he says, “because we don’t know.”
While Lowenstern doesn’t necessarily buy into statistical evaluation of when the volcano will erupt, he does do the accurate arithmetic for those who insist on number based data. Lowenstern says, “The two intervals are thus 0.8 and 0.66 million years, averaging to a 0.73 million-year interval,” continuing, “Again, the last eruption was 0.64 million years ago, implying that we are still about 90,000 years away from the time when we might consider calling Yellowstone overdue for another caldera-forming eruption.”
When it comes to odds of eruption, Lowenstern believes that there is a one-in-10,000 chance that the volcano will erupt by 2100. However, he adds with the unpredictable nature of volcanoes doesn’t mean much saying, “It’s not impossible to rule out, but it’s a remote possibility.”
