Growing Yellowstone Supervolcano - Don't Panic

Yellowstone erupting.

still from the BBC docudrama Super Volcano

The Yellowstone supervolcano is getting bigger everyday. That's right, the largest volcano on the planet (all of Yellowstone is inside the caldera), capable of knocking life back to square one if it fully erupted, has shown rapid growth in its magma chamber.

But don't worry, because even though the growth of the caldera is seven times faster than the average, the amount is only 7 cm a year.

From Science Daily:

"There is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption or hydrothermal explosion. That's the bottom line," says seismologist Robert B. Smith, lead author of the study and professor of geophysics at the University of Utah. "A lot of calderas [giant volcanic craters] worldwide go up and down over decades without erupting."

"Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock," Smith says. "But we have no idea how long this process goes on before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again," he adds.

The magma chamber isn't a cavern full of molten rock, like the depths of Mount Doom, but more like a sponge cake, with magma caught in between other sediment.

So, don't worry about pyroclastic surges, the falling ash cloud that will smother us, short-out our power, carbonize our bodies.

Or the change in global weather due to geological ages worth of gas emissions, and mountain ranges of ash, spewing into the atmosphere.

It isn't going to happen today.

But it could happen tomorrow.

To get an idea what a minor eruption would be like, check out this trailer from Discovery/BBC docudrama Supervolcano. If you can find this film, watch it.