Huge volcanic eruptions: time to prepare

Abstract

he massive eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano this January in Tonga, in the south Pacific Ocean, was the volcanic equivalent of a 'near miss' asteroid whizzing by the Earth. The eruption was the largest since Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines blew in 1991, and the biggest explosion ever recorded by instruments.Ash fell over hundreds of kilometres, affecting infrastructure, agriculture and fish stocks. The damage caused amounted to 18.5% of Tonga's gross domestic product. Submarine cables were severed, cutting off Tonga's communications with the outside world for several days; farther afield, the blast created a worldwide shockwave and tsunamis that reached Japanese and North and South American coastlines. Mercifully, the eruption

ParEvo: A methodology for the exploration and evaluation of alternative futures

“…‘risks that could lead to human extinction or civilisational collapse’ (CSER, 2022). These include climate change, nuclear winter, pandemics, super volcanoes, unconstrained artificial intelligence, and other possible harms caused by emerging technologies, including biological research (Cassidy and Mani, 2022; Christian, 2020; Hobson et al, 2022; Kemp et al, 2022; Maas et al, 2021; Witze, 2020). Although largely focussed on undesirable futures, there is also a significant thread through the associated literature that focuses on describing desirable futures and ways in which ‘human flourishing’ and other states can be achieved.…”

The Ethics of Volcano Geoengineering

“…A large-magnitude volcanic eruption would threaten the lives of billions affecting local communities, but also even those in distal regions, through climate effects and continent-scale damage (Cassidy & Mani, 2022;Newhall et al, 2018;Papale & Marzocchi, 2019;Self, 2006;Sparks et al, 2005). Even expressed just as a monetary loss it would easily run into tens of trillions of dollars (Mahalingam et al, 2018), and if recurrence times of Tambora-sized eruptions are on the order of 625-1,200 years (Lin et al, 2022;Rougier et al, 2018) it would make expenditures on the order of several billions of dollars per year a good investment (Cassidy & Mani, 2022). Smaller eruptions still pose noticeable risks to the world system, not just in terms of costs but in terms of potential destabilization of infrastructure, transport and trade that people and countries are dependent on (Mani et al, 2021).…”

“…Post‐eruption mitigation geoengineering: This would take place after or during a large explosive eruption and could include, for example, a high‐altitude aircraft adding non‐toxic substances that bind with sulfate aerosols to accelerate the coalescence or coagulation enhancing their removal from the atmosphere (Cassidy & Mani, 2022; Fuglestvedt et al., 2014; Muri et al., 2014; Parker et al., 2018).…”

Geochemical variability as an indicator for large magnitude eruptions in volcanic arcs

“…Analysis of past large magnitude eruptions provides evidence of considerable environmental impacts, including widespread cooling 3 , 4 , which resulted in cultural disruption including forced migration and increased mortality 5 , 6 . In today’s technologically interconnected world, an eruption of this type would likely have cascading impacts on critical infrastructure that go beyond historical accounts, stressing the need to address challenges in forecasting capabilities for such events 7 . Large caldera-forming eruptions have never been monitored with modern geophysical or geodetic techniques, but due to experience with smaller explosive eruptions in the past, short-term warning signals in the form of seismicity, surface deformation, thermal anomalies and increased degassing will likely be detected 8 – 10 .…”