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Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
How recently discovered giant magma 'cap' helps prevent eruption at Yellowstone National Park
MAMMOTH SPRINGS, Wyo. – Scientists found that a "cap" made of a supercritical fluid and magma stands between the magma reservoir underneath Yellowstone National Park and a volcanic eruption. In a recent article published in Nature, researchers were able to make this determination when they pinpointed the depth of the top of the reservoir for the first time, according to lead author Chenglong Duan. Duan and his team found the depth where the reservoir began by using a 53,000-pound vibroseis truck, a vehicle usually used for oil and gas exploration, to send seismic waves into the ground in Yellowstone. They then used more than 600 seismometers to record the signals from the truck. Based on the seismic readings, the research team determined that the reservoir began at just over 2 miles beneath the surface. Yellowstone National Park Gears Up For Summer Season "The motivation behind my research is to advance structural seismic imaging beyond the limits of conventional travel-time methods," said Duan, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Rice University. "Using a wave-equation imaging technique I developed during my Ph.D. for irregular seismic data, we made one of the first super clear images of the top of the magma reservoir beneath Yellowstone caldera." That image is featured below, with the magma reservoir cap noted with a black arrow. The research team also noticed something curious about the top of the reservoir. "Seeing such a strong reflector at that depth was a surprise," said co-author and Rice University Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences professor Brandon Schmandt. "It tells us that something physically distinct is happening there — likely a buildup of partially molten rock interspersed with gas bubbles." More accurately called "supercritical fluid" for their unique state in the magma chamber, Schmandt noted that those bubbles formed when volatiles, or small fractions of elements like hydrogen, carbon and sulfur, in the magma are released in the upper areas of the chamber. He likened the phenomenon to a soda can, which has bubbles that are dissolved in the liquid. When the can is opened, the bubbles come out of the liquid and rise to the top of the can. But also like the bubbles in a pressurized soda can, the bubbles dissolved in the magma underneath Yellowstone have the potential to build up and lead to a volcanic eruption. How To Watch Fox Weather However, researchers found that, in addition to the bubbles rising to the top of the magma chamber, the peculiar geology in the national park is preventing that from occurring. Schmandt noted that the park's systems of hydrothermal features provide passageways for the bubbles to escape the magma chamber and reduce the amount of pressure in the chamber. "Yellowstone's magma reservoir is a lively system that is not very far from the surface, just about 2 miles deep, and bubbles are rising through it," he said. "It's remarkable that we can get detailed information about the subsurface without directly breaking ground, and that technology is important for studying natural hazards and resources."Original article source: How recently discovered giant magma 'cap' helps prevent eruption at Yellowstone National Park
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
There's liquid on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. But something's missing and scientists are confused
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists have known for a while that Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has rivers and seas of liquid methane on its surface. But it's strangely lacking in deltas, a new study suggests. On Earth, large rivers create deltas with sediment-filled wetlands. Deltas form when the mouth of a river empties into another body of water. Besides Earth, Titan is the only planetary body in our solar system with liquid flowing on the surface. Researchers recently looked for deltas on the big Saturn satellite but came up empty. "We take it for granted that if you have rivers and sediments, you get deltas," study leader Sam Birch, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University in Rhode Island, said in a statement. "But Titan is weird. It's a playground for studying processes we thought we understood," he added. Related: Titan: Facts about Saturn's largest moon The researchers were hoping to find deltas on Titan, because these landforms feature lots of sediment. The sediment in deltas tends to come from a large area, and deltas gather it in one place. Studying such sediment could reveal insights about Titan's climate and tectonic histories — and perhaps even possible signs of alien life. "It's kind of disappointing as a geomorphologist, because deltas should preserve so much of Titan's history," Birch said. We know that Titan's surface has flowing liquid methane, because NASA's Cassini spacecraft spotted evidence of the stuff on multiple flybys. Cassini used synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to look through Titan's thick atmosphere during these close encounters and found channels and large flat areas that are consistent with large bodies of liquid. But shallow liquid methane is largely transparent in Cassini's SAR data. Scientists have therefore had a hard time studying Titan's coastal features, because it's hard to make out where the coast ends and the sea floor starts. So, Birch's team came up with a computer model that simulates what Cassini's SAR would see when looking at Earth. But the model replaced the water in Earth's rivers and oceans with Titan's liquid methane. "We basically made synthetic SAR images of Earth that assume properties of Titan's liquid instead of Earth's," Birch said. "Once we see SAR images of a landscape we know very well, we can go back to Titan and understand a bit better what we're looking at." Related stories: — The Cassini-Huygens mission: Exploring the Saturn system — The search for alien life — Largest sea on Saturn's mysterious moon Titan could be more than 1,000 feet deep The synthetic SAR images of Earth that they created "resolved large deltas and many other large coastal landscapes," according to the researchers. They say that new analysis of the Cassini SAR data also revealed other mysteries. For example, Titan's coasts appear to have pits of unknown origin deep within lakes and seas, and deep channels cut across the moon's sea floors offer no clue to how they got there. "This is really not what we expected," Birch said. "But Titan does this to us a lot. I think that's what makes it such an engaging place to study." The new study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on March 25.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Why Climate Change Sometimes Brings Major Winter Storms
A person walks dogs as snow falls on Feb. 12, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. The storm is part of a weather system passing over the central and eastern United States today, triggering winter storm warnings in 14 states. Credit - Scott Olson—Getty Images If the earth is warming, why are we still getting winter storms? Climate change is leading to shorter and warmer winters in North America, experts agree. But that doesn't mean that winter storms will become a thing of the past. In fact, climate change is making storms more intense. As the Earth's atmosphere warms, it's able to collect and hold more moisture—which means more precipitation. 'The atmosphere behaves a bit like a sponge, and that means that it can suck up more moisture when it's warmer, but also that when you wring the sponge out, more moisture can fall out of the sky in the form of precipitation, and in the winter, snowfall,' says Daniel Horton, associate professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern University. As a result, some areas are beginning to get more precipitation year-over-year. 'Winter storms themselves are starting to produce a lot more extreme precipitation totals, freezing rain, sleet, even snowfall, in some of these areas,' says Jason Furtado, associate professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. 'This year in particular, a lot of this snow is actually happening in places we don't think about it happening like New Orleans or on the Florida Gulf Coast.' As the Arctic warms, high pressure systems build in the region's atmosphere, displacing cold fronts and causing them to move south, creating stronger storms. Though the phenomenon has been occurring for years, warming temperatures means these intrusions are occurring more frequently. 'We start to get these big, large, high pressure systems that build across the Arctic, and that serves to actually displace and remove some of that cold air and start to surge it more into our latitudes,' says Furtado. Storms feed off of the temperature difference between the cold Arctic air and warmer lower latitudes. The result is two-fold, says Furtado: 'Now we will have more energetic storms that are able to also hold more moisture from oceans because the atmosphere is slightly warmer.' Lakeside regions—like New York and Michigan—will also find themselves vulnerable to a phenomenon called 'lake effect snow' as the regions see warmer temperatures. 'Our lakes are warming, and they stay warm longer through the winter season,' says Horton. Because of that, they don't ice over as much as they used to, and the warmer water evaporates into the passing cold fronts. 'They have more of a capacity to release their moisture when the cold, Arctic air flows over them.' It's just one example of how, around the United States, winters are no longer looking like they once did. 'We've been used to a certain climate regime for the past fifty plus years,' says Furtado. 'And we're going through this transition now where things are rapidly changing.' Write to Simmone Shah at
