As of: March 16, 2024, 9:00 a.m
By: Johannes Welte
Comments
Press
Split
View from the prehistoric crater rim of the supervolcano into the Phlegraean fields.
© Baku/wikipedia
The supervolcano in the Phlegraean Fields near Naples is spreading fear and terror with new series of earthquakes.
An expert fears an outbreak that could destroy the entire Naples area.
Pozzuoli/Naples – For months, the supervolcano of the Phlegraean Fields west of the Italian metropolis of Naples has been causing fears of an eruption with constant swarm earthquakes.
The last swarm earthquake occurred on Friday night (March 8th) with shocks with a magnitude of up to 1.6.
In October, earthquakes of magnitude 4 and 4.2 shook the entire bay.
“The volcanic risk in the Phlegraean Fields is permanent and unpredictable”
Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, volcanologist and senior researcher at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology INGV, now warns of a gigantic catastrophe
in an interview with
Corriere della Sera .
“The volcanic risk in the Phlegraean Fields is permanent and unpredictable,” says the expert.
The red circles show the earthquakes of the past 24 hours.
© INGV
“After a moment of weakening at the end of last year, which was also unusual, there has been a clear return of the phenomenon,” he reports.
The uplift of the ground has begun again, the rock is being stressed and there are new earthquakes and high levels of volcanic gas emissions.
Mastrolorenzo: “The faster the ground rises, the more intense the seismic activity.”
“It’s as if there was an eruption in progress, only without the magma being ejected.”
Pozzuoli, the area most affected by uplift, has recorded an uplift of 1.21 meters since 2005.
“We are talking about the highest level that has ever been reached since we have been monitoring this area,” reports the expert.
What creates the huge bulge under the port city of Pozzuoli?
“There is magma in the lower layers.
In the upper sections, in the last few kilometers, there is porous rock with good fluid circulation.”
The undated photo shows a view of the Phlegraean Fields near Naples.
There is a supervolcano right next to an Italian city of over a million inhabitants.
© Istinuto Di Vulcanologia/dpa
The researcher means water vapor and carbon dioxide.
“We are talking about three to four thousand tons of carbon dioxide per day being emitted throughout the central area of the Phlegraean Fields.
It is as if an eruption was underway, only without the emission of magma.” The depth of the quakes is relatively shallow.
“The hypocenters are all in the last four kilometers depth,” says Mastrolorenzo.
“In this area there is significant deformation of the Phlegraean fields, which extends within a radius of about three kilometers around the center of Pozzuoli.”
My news
Swarm earthquake directly under residential area: Fear of supervolcano eruption in Italy grows
Porsche stops public bus on ghost ride in Zillertal ski area – owner talks about “bad feeling” read
2 hours ago
Measles numbers are rising sharply in Austria – experts are alarmed
"Wow!
“Pure goosebumps”: Aida captain woke passengers from their sleep reading in the middle of the night
“Gorilla hail” shoots holes in the ground: storms rage with gigantic chunks of ice
Boeing loses fuselage part in flight reading
“We don’t know exactly where the magma is”
The development is unpredictable.
“Volcanic systems are complex.
These are systems that do not exhibit linear behavior,” explains Mastrolorenzo.
“Even small deviations in some parameters can trigger an eruption process.” The monitoring system provides information about what happened up to the last fraction of a second.
“But it doesn’t allow us to make any predictions; we don’t know exactly where the magma is and what properties it has.”
Clouds of sulfur vapor rise behind the houses of Pozzuoli.
© IMAGO/napolipress
According to the emergency plan, 72 hours are allowed for an evacuation.
Mastrolorenzo raises concerns: “However, I believe that we must be prepared for a quick evacuation at any time.” The rise time of the magma could be very fast, and the location of the possible eruption of the volcano is completely unpredictable.
Mastrolorenzo: “We are talking about an area of about a hundred square kilometers in the caldera.”
A super eruption would be up to 80 times as powerful as that of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii
The Phlegraean Fields are a supervolcano, the likes of which only exist ten times in the world.
“40,000 years ago there was an eruption here that was 70 to 80 times stronger than that of Pompeii, and fifteen thousand years ago there was another eruption that was ten times stronger than that of Vesuvius,” explains the researcher.
There were at least another 70 smaller eruptions of various types afterwards.
Mastrolorenzo's colleague Aldo Piombino recently warned of a huge phreatic steam explosion from the supervolcano.
His INGV colleagues simulated a Plinian lava eruption in a video.
A volcanic eruption like the one here in 1944 on neighboring Vesuvius could soon occur on a much larger scale in the Phlegraean Fields.
© Giovanni Manfredonia/Facebook
Any kind of eruption could repeat itself.
“We don’t have any statistics.
The risk is therefore permanent.
And according to my estimates, it affects at least three million people in the entire Naples metropolitan area,” said Mastrolorenzo.
During the supereruption 40,000 years ago, all life within a radius of 80 kilometers was destroyed.
The expert calls for a revision of the evacuation plans: “We must be able to bring the population to safety quickly and with escape routes within a few hours.
Even by sea and in the unfortunate event that an eruption cannot be predicted.”