Why do volcanoes erupt? – The Hindu

The explosive eruption of Mt Pinatubo within the Philippines on June 12, 1991.
| Picture Credit score: USGS

Deep beneath the earth’s floor, temperature and strain are excessive sufficient to soften components of the mantle and crust to type molten rock referred to as magma. As a result of magma is much less dense than strong rock, it tends to rise and pool in subterranean reservoirs.

When magma ascends, the water vapour, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and different unstable compounds dissolved in it keep trapped by the load of overlying rock. However near the floor the strain drops and permits these compounds to exit and type bubbles, like when a soda bottle begins to fizz while you open the cap. Bubbles enhance the interior strain.

At tectonic plate boundaries or above mantle plumes, fractures and faults within the crust permit this strain to be launched. Magma brimming with increasing gasoline surges by this weak zone, and the sudden strain launch additionally accelerates gasoline growth, taking pictures lava, ash, and gases into the sky.

If a bottleneck within the rock abruptly stops fast-moving magma, it could actually reverberate in opposition to the rock and create low-frequency seismic waves.

A volcano is alleged to be energetic if it’s erupting proper now or will quickly. There are additionally zombie volcanoes like Uturuncu in Bolivia. Though it hasn’t erupted in 2.5 lakh years, it nonetheless emits gases and triggers earthquakes in its environment.

Not too long ago, scientists used a brand new approach to search out that gases are amassing in magma chambers beneath Uturuncu’s crater but in addition that it isn’t prone to erupt any time quickly.