The Etna volcano is one of the most documented geological structures. Reports of its eruptions go back thousands of years. And yet, scientists are struggling to divine its behavior.
Right now, the volcano is pretty active. So far since February it has belched and spewed 13 times.
There are so many sensors on the volcano's sides, that Etna sends out gigabites of data each day. And because it has been so incredibly active lately, scientists are becoming concerned that its behavior is departing from its usual. The lava streams, or fountains, are also becoming anomalous, with several flowing in a very short span of time.
Located at the very edge of the European and African plates, the volcano is one that will never find peace. Lava flows upward in powerful spurts from the earth's entrails to the magma chamber 2 kilometers below the summit.
The magma below is believed to move in a stream like fashion, so that it comes in wave after wave. The time lapse between waves is considered the volcano's heartbeat. Each wave comes about 72 times per minute, incredibly similar to a human's heartbeat.
The long term study of the volcano has practically erased the smugness with which its activity was considered. In the past decades, Etna's eruptions were seen as occurring in a stable and almost predictable manner. Its deep and established lahars, in the absence of a destructive type of explosion, meant that most of the lava flow was directed away from cities and other densely populated areas.
But the recent studies of the volcano have unearthed a much more dangerous truth. The volcano is much more unpredictable than it was once thought, and there is no way to discern whether a much larger eruption, one that could destroy the cone, could occur in the future. In fact, Etna was studied so intensely because its illusive regularity made scientists believe it could be used as a model for predicting volcano behavior. Now, these scientists no longer think of it as a model, but rather it has upended just about everything they believed in.
Right now the mythical mountain is spewing lava at the rate of about a million tons of water vapor and 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide each day.
But every few thousand years, as has been recorded historically since ancient times, the volcano erupts violently. The problem is now there are millions of people in its path, and evacuation could pose some serious problems.
Source : Spiegel 5.24.13
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