Whenever you image a volcano, what do you see? I personally think about a mountain sticking up into the sky. On the high of that mountain, I see a crater with a fiery sizzling lake boiling and roiling in it, or lava pouring down a slope like vibrant purple candle wax, or huge clouds of gray ash exploding into the air.
It’s all unbelievable, highly effective imagery, nevertheless it’s additionally actually simply the tip of the volcano-berg.
If I have been to descend down via my imaginary volcano, shifting down via layers and layers of earth, I’d discover what is likely to be an much more unbelievable characteristic: my volcano’s pulsing, fiery furnace of a coronary heart, also called its “magma chamber.” That is the explanation that sizzling ash comes bursting up via the floor. It’s the unique supply of my lava and my crater lake. It’s the place a lot of the essential motion in a volcano unfolds — and will maintain secrets and techniques to assist us higher predict when a devastating eruption will happen.
The issue is that we all know a lot much less about magma chambers like this than we’d prefer to. We’re not even good at depicting them.
“We draw them as purple balloons,” says Mike Poland, a geophysicist and scientist-in-charge on the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. “They don’t seem to be. However it’s a really troublesome factor to characterize.”
Magma chambers are so onerous to characterize as a result of they’re so advanced. They are often hundreds of levels Fahrenheit and have blends of stable materials and sizzling liquid rock. These chambers have totally different temperatures in numerous spots, and totally different minerals melting at totally different heats or shifting round in numerous methods. And, making issues much more advanced, there’s a large number of various gases which may make strain construct up earlier than an eruption.
But when we might higher characterize magma chambers — and simply usually higher perceive precisely how they work — Poland says we’d have the ability to dramatically enhance our understanding of how volcanoes function, and subsequently be higher capable of anticipate what to anticipate from an impending eruption. However proper now, as a result of these chambers are so sizzling and so deep underground, it’s onerous to plumb their secrets and techniques.
“We don’t have, like, the glass-bottomed volcano the place you may simply form of look into and go like, Oh, that’s what’s happening,” Poland jokes.
However what if we might have a glass-bottomed volcano that we might form of look into and go like, Oh, that’s what’s happening? What if we might construct, say, a bit observatory deep down beneath the bottom, proper within the sizzling little coronary heart of a volcano? It sounds absurd, and but…
“ There’s a undertaking in Iceland,” Poland tells me, “They wish to construct a magma observatory. They wish to drill right into a magma chamber and put some monitoring gear within the gap. … That may give us some thought of what’s happening in there.”
The undertaking known as the Krafla Magma Testbed, or KMT, and the researchers engaged on it assume it might revolutionize volcanology — and the way we forecast eruptions.
However first, what’s lacking from our volcano forecasts?
One of many key motivations for constructing an observatory like that is that volcanology has a prediction downside. On the one hand, volcanoes are way more predictable than, say, earthquakes — they have a tendency to provide us some warning indicators earlier than they erupt. However then again, it’s onerous to completely interpret these warning indicators, which suggests the predictions volcanologists could make with our present know-how could be each extremely useful and frustratingly imprecise.
For instance, for the final 12 months or so, a possible eruption has been brewing at Mount Spurr, a volcano close to Anchorage, Alaska. Twice within the final 100 years, eruptions from Mount Spurr have rained ash down on town, clogging up roadways, shutting down the native airport (one of many busiest cargo ports on the planet), and settling like a effective dusting of gritty, grey, unmelting snow on vehicles and lawns and leaves of timber.
Individuals are understandably fearful a couple of repeat efficiency, and the Alaska Volcano Observatory is monitoring the state of affairs intently.
Matt Haney, the scientist-in-charge at that observatory, advised me whereas he can make certain that the volcano is displaying a number of key warning indicators, he can’t make certain precisely what the upcoming volcanic exercise would possibly appear like — if there shall be one eruption or many, precisely how intense they are going to be, or after they’ll happen.
“That’s not attainable within the present ranges of know-how that we’ve,” he mentioned. “There’s no definitive timeframe, like, Oh, it’s going to do precisely this, prefer it did in 1992. It’s not the exact identical playbook.”
Even with 11 seismic stations gathering real-time information concerning the Alaskan volcano — even with units measuring how it’s altering form in response to incoming magma, with planes circling within the sky to grasp the venting of gases, and with an infinite quantity of really spectacular work — these volcanologists nonetheless can’t give us as clear an image of the long run as we’d like them to.
That’s difficult sufficient while you’re coping with the prospect of a clogging and choking coating of volcanic ash, nevertheless it will get much more difficult while you’re attempting to make determinations about individuals’s lives.
“That is the issue. How are you aware how massive an eruption’s going to be?”
— Mike Poland, geophysicist and scientist-in-charge on the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory
Look, for instance, on the case of Soufrière de Guadeloupe, a volcano on the Caribbean island of Basse-Terre. Within the mid-Nineteen Seventies, it began venting steam. That, paired with elevated earthquake exercise, had individuals fearful {that a} dramatic eruption is likely to be brewing.
And so they had superb motive to fret: In 1902, one other Caribbean volcano eruption despatched a lethal mixture of sizzling fuel and ash and rock careening via a close-by metropolis at 300 miles an hour, killing 27,000 individuals. So, hoping to keep away from a repeat of this devastating occasion, the governmental authorities determined to go forward and evacuate. Greater than 70,000 individuals left Basse-Terre.
However the subsequent eruption was minor. As one report put it, the “explosive emission of steam and particles was actually spectacular to those that had the misfortune to view it at shut quarters. However from a volcanological standpoint, it represented a slightly trivial outburst.” If something, the largest affect on the volcanic exercise was the evacuation itself — it harm the native economic system and disrupted youngsters’ education.
Typically, although, evacuations are extraordinarily mandatory. In 1991, at Mount Pinatubo within the Philippines, volcanologists as soon as once more learn the volcanic tea leaves — stuff like seismic exercise and steam explosions — and predicted a giant eruption. As soon as once more, individuals have been evacuated. However this time, the choice to desert the realm saved hundreds of lives — the following eruption was one of many greatest within the twentieth century.
“That is the issue,” Poland says. “How are you aware how massive an eruption’s going to be?”
You don’t wish to evacuate too little, or too late, at the price of human lives, he says. However equally, you don’t wish to be the boy who cries wolf, or the volcanologist who cries, “ERUPTION!”
“ It erodes belief within the scientists,” he says.
Volcanology has come a good distance because the Nineteen Seventies, and even the Nineties. Scientists have way more monitoring gear arrange on volcanoes, they usually have made higher gear over time. Their skill to make predictions about volcanoes has improved dramatically consequently.
However because the case of Mount Spurr reveals, even now — in 2025 — the sphere nonetheless grapples with the identical elementary downside of precision of their predictions.
So how do these predictions get higher? How might volcanologists additional enhance their predictions with the intention to assist individuals make choices about easy methods to put together for eruptions?
Poland has spent a good period of time fascinated about the solutions to this query. He wrote an entire paper about it, in reality. And he thinks that bettering volcano forecasting is not only about persevering with to enhance our monitoring gear. As a substitute, he says, what we actually want is healthier details about volcanoes themselves, and the new molten rocks that energy them.
What can molten rock educate us about eruptions?
Let’s discuss how we at the moment forecast volcano eruptions. A whole lot of volcano prediction includes making very knowledgeable guesses about what a volcano would possibly do sooner or later primarily based on what that volcano has achieved previously — what Poland calls sample recognition.
Take, for instance, fuel emissions or earthquakes. Primarily, he says, researchers will take a whole lot of very, very exact measurements of these phenomena that can permit them to then say ‘Alright. X is going on. And when X occurred earlier than, Y occurred afterward, so possibly now Y will occur once more quickly.’
“It’s not essentially primarily based on any particular understanding of the physics of volcanic exercise or that exact volcano,” Poland says, “It’s extra primarily based on…We’ve seen this film earlier than, and we all know the way it’s more likely to evolve over time.”
This strategy has been extremely helpful. It’s saved a whole lot of lives and helped scientists make some actually good predictions about how a volcano would possibly behave, broadly. However Poland likes to attract a comparability between this strategy and with how we forecast the climate. As a result of previously, climate scientists additionally relied closely on sample matching. If the strain was dropping and it was getting colder, say, they could count on a storm to return via.
However then, climate forecasting went via a type of revolution. Scientists used satellites and different devices to gather details about clouds and winds and rain. They collected large quantities of knowledge concerning the ambiance, and other people even flew instantly into the eyes of phenomena like hurricanes to measure what was occurring within these storms.
“This actually ample info was then utilized by modelers…to work out the physics of what’s happening,” Poland says.
Climate scientists nonetheless use a whole lot of historic information to tell their understanding of the long run (and now, with AI, are literally turning again to their huge our bodies of knowledge to strive some extra superior sample recognition), however they’ve additionally constructed actually refined fashions of the physics of the ambiance that assist them make their predictions. And it has paid off: Final 12 months, in line with the Nationwide Hurricane Middle, hurricane forecasters set new information for accuracy of their predictions for the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
“We will now forecast, with some extent of accuracy, whether or not a hurricane will kind, how intense it’s going to be, the place it’s going to go,” Poland says. “Clearly not each forecast is ideal. And that’s as a result of our information continues to be imperfect. However they know sufficient.”
Poland desires volcanologists to construct comparable fashions of the underlying physics of volcanoes, which might imply constructing fashions of magma chambers. Scientists have been engaged on making fashions like this — and have even been engaged on making use of them to forecasting. But when the climate scientists constructed their fashions by flying instantly into issues like hurricanes and taking measurements, volcano researchers have had a little bit of a more durable time doing the equal for magma chambers. They’ll’t take direct measurements, in order that they’ve used seismic and electromagnetic imaging to take the equal of X-rays of the Earth, they usually’ve studied locations the place historical volcanoes have eroded away, bringing their cooled, frozen magma chambers as much as the floor. They’ve even learn the layers of volcanic crystals as if they have been tree rings.
This has been useful, nevertheless it’s type of like learning your neighbors by eavesdropping on their conversations via the wall and going via their trash as an alternative of simply speaking to them instantly.
In order that’s why some researchers are hoping to speak to volcanoes instantly — to look at their magma chambers in actual time.
Krafla volcanic space in Iceland. Getty Photographs/iStockphoto
Introducing KMT: The Krafla Magma Testbed
In some methods, the dream of a magma observatory began with an accident. Or to be a bit extra particular, it began with three totally different accidents in three totally different nations, every greater than a decade in the past. In every case, individuals got down to drill a deep gap into the rock close to a volcano, and in every case, they by accident drilled proper down into the magma chamber.
These accidents have been a giant shock to the individuals doing the drilling, however to John Eichelberger, they have been a giant alternative.
Eichelberger has been learning volcanoes for round 5 many years. For a lot of that point, he’s been interested by magma chambers. He thinks that realizing extra about them couldn’t solely assist us forecast volcanoes higher, but additionally possibly faucet into them for geothermal energy. Sadly, he says, for a very long time, it was troublesome to discover a method to drill into magma chambers and discover out extra about them, as a result of individuals weren’t positive what would occur in the event you did. What in the event you triggered an eruption?
“Actually the one means (drilling all the way down to a magma chamber) might occur was by serendipity,” Eichelberger says.
Serendipity like these three drilling accidents. They offered some real-world examples of what would occur in the event you drilled all the way down to a magma chamber. And the reply was, it seems, not all that a lot. In every of those three instances, the drilling corporations hit the magma chamber and as an alternative of like sizzling rock taking pictures out of their gap in a sizzling plume of fireplace, the magma principally climbed a bit methods up the opening, after which cooled off right into a plug of darkish obsidian glass.
This was superb information for Eichelberger. As he remembers it, he wound up assembly somebody from an influence firm that was concerned in one among these accidents. That consultant let him know that they’d be open to letting Eichelberger and different researchers do some extra analysis close to their energy plant within the Krafla volcanic area of Iceland. And so, in 2014, Eichelberger gathered researchers collectively for a consortium – together with a researcher named Yan Lavallée, now at Ludwig Maximilian College of Munich.
“Fifty or 60 of us spent one of the best a part of every week collectively shopping concepts as to…what might we be taught if we have been to do that?” Lavallée syas, “What might we be taught if we have been to drill again within the magma?”
This was the beginning of the dream of KMT: The Krafla Magma Testbed, named for the volcanic system in Iceland. It’s a dream that Eichelberger, Lavallée, and their collaborators are nonetheless attempting to get funded, however they’ve a transparent thought of how they’d make it a actuality.
“First, we’re going to put in a drill rig on the Earth’s floor, and we’re going to begin drilling,” Lavallée tells me.
As they drill down, issues will get hotter and warmer. They are going to pump fluid via, which can cool issues down. Ultimately, as they begin to strategy the magma of the magma chamber, the fluid will even begin to settle down a bit little bit of that magma, too.
“It’ll vitrify to a glass,” Lavallée says. This glass will seemingly not be clear like a window. As a substitute, it will likely be obsidian — darkish black and stuffed with minerals.
The researchers will then proceed to maintain issues cool whereas they carve into that black glass, creating one thing like a pocket inside it. As soon as that pocket is made, they hope to drop measuring units into it. Lavallée works with instruments in his lab which are product of the identical sorts of industrial quality supplies that we put into issues like jet engines and different supplies that may face up to extraordinarily excessive temperatures.
As soon as every thing’s in place, they are going to cease cooling issues down. Then the warmth of the encompassing molten rock ought to begin warming the obsidian of the glass pocket again up once more slowly, till it melts again into magma and flows again across the devices, submerging them totally within the magma of the chamber.
Then, hopefully, the researchers will lastly have their observatory: a set of measuring units feeding them real-time information about an lively magma chamber.
If this primary undertaking succeeds, then Eichelberger and Lavallée are brimming with concepts for additional drilling tasks that would assist them tease out extra details about volcanoes. They each hope this analysis might assist the world faucet into volcanoes as a supply of energy, but additionally that it might assist with forecasting — to assist us construct the fashions of volcanoes’ hearts that can give us the instruments to foretell their conduct as successfully as we predict hurricanes.
And general, Lavallée thinks that if this dream of theirs succeeds, it would revolutionize volcanology.
“I don’t assume we are able to actually totally conceive the way it’s going to vary issues,” he says.
Clearly, Lavallée has a transparent motive to assume this fashion, however after I requested Poland, who has no involvement with this undertaking, what he thought, he was additionally fairly enthusiastic.
“I’m excited to listen to what they will provide you with,” Poland mentioned, “I imply, you go right into a magma chamber, you’re going to be taught some issues.”
