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Mitigation


The fact that there are natural events (super-eruptions, meteorite impacts) with global rather than local or regional impact is now fully recognised in the scientific community. The impact of population growth, globalisation, and ecological stress on the Earth is causing issues with very long time-scales to emerge as topics for serious political debate and action. Global warming and nuclear waste disposal are examples of this, with time frames varying from decades to many millennia. These are now being addressed with utmost seriousness by individual governments and the international community. When such a super-eruption happens, as is inevitable, it will be a severe threat to the global human civilisation of the time and, in the extreme case, could endanger our species. This could happen tomorrow or in ten thousand years. If it happened now the results would be catastrophic. We are certain that humanity will, at some stage, need to deal with this unavoidable threat.

It is conceivable that technology could provide mechanisms for stopping or diverting NEOs from colliding with Earth. However, at least at the present time, there is no obvious way of preventing a supervolcano from erupting.


All is not as placid as it seems! See image below: The peaceful waters of Lake Taupo in the North Island of New Zealand belie its origin as a volcanic caldera. The northern part of the lake basin was formed by collapse during a 500-km3 (magnitude 8) super-eruption about 26,000 years ago. Taupo is still an active volcano but it is expected that its next eruption will not be as large as the caldera-forming one. The impressive stratovolcanoes at the southern end of the lake, some 60 km from where the photo was taken, were formed gradually by very small eruptions. Mount Ruapehu, with snow-cap, was the site of New Zealand’s latest active volcanic episode in 1994-1997. (Photo by S. Self.)

What can be done? The most immediate tasks will involve action from the scientific community with support from national and regional agencies supporting fundamental research. In the UK the Research Councils provide the main way of supporting research to improve knowledge of these eruptions and their environmental effects. The European Union Framework Programme is an example of a regional agency that can co-ordinate, promote and support research. The UK is in a strong position to contribute to the international efforts, as there is considerable strength in relevant disciplines such as volcanology, petrology, meteorology and the economic studies of natural disasters. We provide below some recommendations of research that should be encouraged. International organisations also have an important role to play.

The International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior (IAVCEI) represents international volcanological science. IAVCEI is being proactive in a number of ways, including a project of the IAVCEI Commission on Explosive Volcanism to make a comprehensive inventory of super-eruptions over the last two million years of Earth history. Recently, most of the members of this Working Group met and the possible effects of super-eruptions were discussed for the first time.

Inter-governmental agreements, like the Kyoto and Montreal Protocols, which attempt to develop global agreements related to the environment, and the United Nations, provide another approach. The resources placed into organisations like UNESCO for international programmes of research or efforts in mitigation of natural hazards are currently small. Our world is repeatedly surprised by natural catastrophes, such as recent floods in Bangladesh and earthquakes in Italy, Iran, or Turkey, which are local or regional rather than global in scale. Global warming has been taken seriously, but global natural hazards have hardly featured as a recognised problem. The recognition by the UK Government that impacts of NEOs are more than science fantasy is encouraging. Now is a good opportunity for the threat of super-eruptions to be similarly recognised.

A significant step forward would be for the international community of governments to recognise that global natural catastrophes are not only possible but inevitable, in the same way that global warming is now taken seriously. Solutions and mitigation can only be found through greatly strengthened international organisations, like the United Nations, support by governments of international scientific programmes, and by international agreements. In the foreseeable future, a super-eruption may be predicted but not prevented. Thus, just as individual countries have natural disaster preparation plans, the World Community needs preparation plans. What might happen if several billion people needed evacuation from most of Asia, and, simultaneously, three or four years of severe volcanic winter threatened agriculture throughout North America and Europe? This is not fanciful, but the kind of acute problem and inevitable consequence of the next super-eruption.

The Working Group makes the following detailed recommendations.


  •  Investment in research to improve our understanding large magnitude explosive eruptions and the regional and global impacts of such eruptions. A major focus should be on collaboration between volcanologists and climate modellers, in particular in relation to investigating the effects of large magnitude aerosol injections into the stratosphere using global climate models. There is also a need to understand much better the controls on the masses of volcanic gas and ash released in such eruptions.
  • One of the key problems is that there is no systematic inventory of the occurrences of super-eruptions. A great deal of research has been done in many parts of the World on the history of volcanism but none of this work has been integrated together systematically. An inventory of potential super-volcanoes would provide the basis for identifying which volcanic centres should be studied intensively. An inventory of the frequency of the occurrences of super-eruptions over the recent geological past (the last one million years), as begun by IAVCEI, would allow the frequency-magnitude relationship to be much better constrained.
  •  There should be initiatives to improve public understanding of the nature of volcanic hazards with regional and global effects.
  •  We recommend the establishment of a Task Force to consider the environmental, economic, social, and political consequences of large magnitude volcanic eruptions. As in the case of Near Earth Objects, these proposed activities will be best developed and served by international collaboration.

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