Concern is mounting over the risk of an eruption on a sprawling volcanic area close to Naples after the area was struck by the strongest earthquake in 40 years.
Seismic activity on Campi Flegrei, a constellation of ancient volcanic craters, has intensified over the past year and especially in recent months, with more than 80 events occurring in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the biggest being a 4.2 magnitude quake.
“Considering that seismic activity has only increased in recent months, at the moment we don’t see an end,” Carlo Doglioni, the president of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), told TGCom24.
Doglioni said the best-case scenario would be that the activity ends, as it did after a long period of unrest in the early 1980s, while the worst would be an eruption akin to the last one in 1538, which created a series of small hills and craters.
Used to live there. Actually on that last volcano. Gorgeous area – and it will be again even if it takes a bit of time if another volcano comes up.
I suppose that the prime requirement for a vulcanologist is to keep finding new ways of saying ‘I don’t know’. “We don’t see an end” is quite good.
‘Search me, guv’ would be even better.
I’ve pointed this out before. Pops was Commodore of Naples last time around, early 80s. Had a vulcanologist over from the same department (UCL) to advise on it. Whose answer was “Yes” and to the question “When” was “Ooooh, next 10k years. Not tomorrow, could be a few weeks or later than that”.
Lovely bloke, I met him. But temporal accuracy is not one of those things in that field.
“D’ye get losts of small earthquakes” “Oooh, yes, and tens and twenties a day that you can just about feel” “How about fumaroles?” “Whassat?” “When out at sea you get spots of hot water” “Oh yes, regularly get fish brought in cooked, even burnt. And of course there’s the mud volcano a mile up the road that’s bubbling all the time”. “Hmm, how about a smell of sulphur” “Yes, some days. Just seems to come up out of the ground.”
“Yes.”
“But when?”
“If you see a blister of land rising metres in a few days. That’s when to pack the car and go. And if you can actually see it rising, visibly moving, don’t pack, go”
And there’s the problem. 40 years later it’s still a gorgeous part of the world to go see, live in.
What that means is that a vulcanologist can’t tell you whether there will be a bit of bother before the ice returns. And if the ice returns first there’ll be few left who’ll care much about temperamental Italian volcanoes.
Mind you, Wokeypedia claims the ice won’t return for 50k years (and, of course, that yer global boiling will delay it further). This amused me; people used to guess at 5k – 10k years. Has the science advanced much in my lifetime? Could be, but it’s just as likely that the prediction has been changed because it’s easier to get new predictions published than to get repeats of old ones published.
People take the risk of living near volcanos because the land is so fertile. I once stayed in a village between Mt Bromo and Mt Mahameru where they grew cuboid cabbages.
Not that they did it for the easy packaging. They just chucked them in the back of a Toyota flat bed.
. . . while the worst [case] would be an eruption akin to the last one in 1538, which created a series of small hills and craters.
This seems quite a specific and remarkably optimistic limit. Although current seismic activity isn’t sufficient to indicate an everything-must-go mega sale, this is still a complex supervolcano with enormous potential. Everything can be steady and predictable until suddenly it isn’t.
On a tour of one of the Canary Islands- I think Lanzarote- the guide took us to an area where 36 new volcanoes had popped up in the space of six years.
And in the middle of that, 3 years in, they had built a church, which was still there.
You gotta doff your cap to them for having faith.
Maybe I should visit there one of these days. But bugger actually living there!!
If you see a blister of land rising metres in a few days. That’s when to pack the car and go.
I am told that Yellowstone was doing something similar ( bit more slowly) but the threat has receded now.
Probably just indigestion.
ps Astronomy is even worse. Apart from the Asteroid of Doom, the next big event is supposed to be Betelgeuse blowing up. Might have already happened, but is certainly imminent ( ie next 100k years ).
If I were an Italian volcanologist I’d be packing my bags about now. Does anyone know what became of the last lot that were convicted in court for not predicting one?
That was an earthquake….
“temporal accuracy is not one of those things in that field”
Given that geological time scales are millions to billions of years, a human lifespan is just noise.
CJ Nerd – He isn’t a tame lion.
“Used to live there. Actually on that last volcano. ”
Logic says only the very poor or the very stupid would build a house there. Although, as Phil points out, you might want to farm it. But Italians.
Well, yes. The tourist place owned by friends has hot springs, which is one nice thing. Actually, almost certainly the hot springs that used to feed Cicero’s villa – now under the volcano cone.
“Logic says only the very poor or the very stupid would build a house there.”
Experience or science might tell you that, but logic certainly won’t. Logic is a purely formal science, concerning the formal relationships between concepts and propositions. As such, it tell us nothing about the world – not least because logically valid conclusions can be drawn from false premises….
I would have thought unsafe premises would be more appropriate in this case, Theo