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 scorching lake boiling and roiling in it, or lava pouring down a slope like brilliant pink candle wax, or large clouds of gray ash exploding into the air.
It’s all unbelievable, highly effective imagery, however it’s additionally actually simply the tip of the volcano-berg.
If I had been to descend down via my imaginary volcano, shifting down via layers and layers of earth, I’d discover what may be a fair extra unbelievable function: my volcano’s pulsing, fiery furnace of a coronary heart, also referred to as its “magma chamber.” That is the cause that scorching 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 wish to. We’re not even good at depicting them.
“We draw them as pink balloons,” says Mike Poland, a geophysicist and scientist-in-charge on the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. “They aren’t. However it’s a really tough factor to characterize.”
Magma chambers are so onerous to characterize as a result of they’re so advanced. They are often 1000’s of levels Fahrenheit and have blends of strong materials and scorching liquid rock. These chambers have totally different temperatures in several spots, and totally different minerals melting at totally different heats or shifting round in several 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 may higher characterize magma chambers — and simply typically higher perceive precisely how they work — Poland says we’d be capable of 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 scorching 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 may have a glass-bottomed volcano that we may form of look into and go like, Oh, that’s what’s happening? What if we may construct, say, a bit observatory deep down below the bottom, proper within the scorching little coronary heart of a volcano? It sounds absurd, and but…
“ There’s a mission 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 tools within the gap. … That will give us some concept of what’s happening in there.”
The mission is named the Krafla Magma Testbed, or KMT, and the researchers engaged on it suppose it may 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 rather more predictable than, say, earthquakes — they have an inclination to provide us some warning indicators earlier than they erupt. However alternatively, it’s onerous to completely interpret these warning indicators, which implies the predictions volcanologists could make with our present know-how could be each extremely useful and frustratingly imprecise.
For instance, for the final yr 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 earth), and settling like a positive dusting of gritty, grey, unmelting snow on vehicles and lawns and leaves of bushes.
Individuals are understandably frightened a couple of repeat efficiency, and the Alaska Volcano Observatory is monitoring the scenario intently.
Matt Haney, the scientist-in-charge at that observatory, advised me whereas he can make sure that the volcano is displaying a number of key warning indicators, he can’t make certain precisely what the upcoming volcanic exercise may appear to be — if there might be one eruption or many, precisely how intense they are going to be, or after they’ll happen.
“That isn’t doable within the present ranges of know-how that we’ve got,” he stated. “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 knowledge in regards to the Alaskan volcano — even with units measuring how it’s altering form in response to incoming magma, with planes circling within the sky to know the venting of gases, and with an infinite quantity of actually spectacular work — these volcanologists nonetheless can’t give us as clear an image of the longer term as we’d like them to.
That’s difficult sufficient whenever you’re coping with the prospect of a clogging and choking coating of volcanic ash, however it will get much more sophisticated whenever you’re attempting to make determinations about folks’s lives.
“That is the issue. How are you aware how large 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-Seventies, it began venting steam. That, paired with elevated earthquake exercise, had folks frightened {that a} dramatic eruption may be brewing.
They usually had superb cause to fret: In 1902, one other Caribbean volcano eruption despatched a lethal mixture of scorching fuel and ash and rock careening via a close-by metropolis at 300 miles an hour, killing 27,000 folks. 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 folks 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 viewpoint, 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 children’ education.
Generally, although, evacuations are extraordinarily vital. 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, folks had been evacuated. However this time, the choice to desert the world saved 1000’s 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 large 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 great distance for the reason that Seventies, and even the Nineteen Nineties. Scientists have rather more monitoring tools arrange on volcanoes, they usually have made higher tools over time. Their potential to make predictions about volcanoes has improved dramatically in consequence.
However because the case of Mount Spurr reveals, even now — in 2025 — the sphere nonetheless grapples with the identical basic downside of precision of their predictions.
So how do these predictions get higher? How may volcanologists additional enhance their predictions with the intention to assist folks make choices about the best way to put together for eruptions?
Poland has spent a good period of time occupied with the solutions to this query. He wrote a complete paper about it, in truth. And he thinks that bettering volcano forecasting shouldn’t be simply about persevering with to enhance our monitoring tools. As an alternative, he says, what we actually want is best details about volcanoes themselves, and the new molten rocks that energy them.
What can molten rock train us about eruptions?
Let’s discuss how we at present forecast volcano eruptions. Quite a lot of volcano prediction includes making very knowledgeable guesses about what a volcano may do sooner or later primarily based on what that volcano has completed prior to now — what Poland calls sample recognition.
Take, for instance, fuel emissions or earthquakes. Primarily, he says, researchers will take a variety of very, very exact measurements of these phenomena that can enable 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 prone to evolve over time.”
This method has been extremely helpful. It’s saved a variety of lives and helped scientists make some actually good predictions about how a volcano may behave, broadly. However Poland likes to attract a comparability between this method and with how we forecast the climate. As a result of prior to now, climate scientists additionally relied closely on sample matching. If the strain was dropping and it was getting colder, say, they could anticipate a storm to come back via.
However then, climate forecasting went via a form of revolution. Scientists used satellites and different devices to gather details about clouds and winds and rain. They collected enormous quantities of information in regards to the ambiance, and other people even flew straight into the eyes of phenomena like hurricanes to measure what was taking place inside of these storms.
“This actually plentiful data was then utilized by modelers…to work out the physics of what’s happening,” Poland says.
Climate scientists nonetheless use a variety of historic knowledge to tell their understanding of the longer term (and now, with AI, are literally turning again to their large our bodies of information to strive some extra superior sample recognition), however they’ve additionally constructed actually subtle fashions of the physics of the ambiance that assist them make their predictions. And it has paid off: Final yr, in response to the Nationwide Hurricane Heart, hurricane forecasters set new data for accuracy of their predictions for the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
“We will now forecast, with a point of accuracy, whether or not a hurricane will kind, how intense it’ll be, the place it’s going to go,” Poland says. “Clearly not each forecast is ideal. And that’s as a result of our data 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 straight 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 will’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 had been tree rings.
This has been useful, however it’s form of like finding out your neighbors by eavesdropping on their conversations via the wall and going via their trash as an alternative of simply speaking to them straight.
In order that’s why some researchers are hoping to speak to volcanoes straight — to look at their magma chambers in actual time.
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 international locations, every greater than a decade in the past. In every case, folks 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 had been a giant shock to the folks doing the drilling, however to John Eichelberger, they had been a giant alternative.
Eichelberger has been finding out volcanoes for round 5 a long time. For a lot of that point, he’s been interested in magma chambers. He thinks that figuring out extra about them couldn’t solely assist us forecast volcanoes higher, but in addition possibly faucet into them for geothermal energy. Sadly, he says, for a very long time, it was tough to discover a solution to drill into magma chambers and discover out extra about them, as a result of folks weren’t certain what would occur in the event you did. What in the event you triggered an eruption?
“Actually the one manner [drilling down to a magma chamber] may occur was by serendipity,” Eichelberger says.
Serendipity like these three drilling accidents. They supplied some real-world examples of what would occur in the event you drilled right down to a magma chamber. And the reply was, it seems, not all that a lot. In every of those three circumstances, the drilling corporations hit the magma chamber and as an alternative of like scorching rock capturing out of their gap in a scorching plume of fireplace, the magma mainly 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 in every of these accidents. That consultant let him know that they might 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 the perfect a part of per week collectively looking concepts as to…what may we study if we had been to do that?” Lavallée syas, “What may we study if we had 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 concept 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 start out drilling,” Lavallée tells me.
As they drill down, issues will get hotter and warmer. They are going to pump fluid via, which is able to cool issues down. Ultimately, as they begin to method the magma of the magma chamber, the fluid will even begin to settle down a bit little bit of that magma, too.
“It can vitrify to a glass,” Lavallée says. This glass will probably not be clear like a window. As an alternative, will probably 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 varieties of professional quality supplies that we put into issues like jet engines and different supplies that may stand up to extraordinarily excessive temperatures.
As soon as all the pieces’s in place, they may 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 absolutely within the magma of the chamber.
Then, hopefully, the researchers will lastly have their observatory: a set of measuring units feeding them real-time knowledge about an energetic magma chamber.
If this primary mission succeeds, then Eichelberger and Lavallée are brimming with concepts for additional drilling tasks that might assist them tease out extra details about volcanoes. They each hope this analysis may assist the world faucet into volcanoes as a supply of energy, but in addition that it may 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’d revolutionize volcanology.
“I don’t suppose we are able to actually absolutely conceive the way it’s going to vary issues,” he says.
Clearly, Lavallée has a transparent cause to suppose this fashion, however once I requested Poland, who has no involvement with this mission, what he thought, he was additionally fairly enthusiastic.
“I’m excited to listen to what they will give you,” Poland stated, “I imply, you go right into a magma chamber, you’re going to study some issues.”
