(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists were able to predict a volcanic eruption using a supercomputer. An article about this was published in Science Advances.
Geologist Patricia Gregg of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her colleagues created a program to model volcanic processes in 2017.
It was designed to run on the Blue Waters and iForge supercomputers. The model gained attention after she was able to recreate the unexpected eruption of the Okmok volcano in Alaska in 2008.
Using this model, scientists have studied the volcano Santo Tomas in Ecuador, which could erupt in the near future. “Santo Tomas is a well-behaved volcano.
This means that he showed all the signs of an eruption, such as gas emissions and seismic activity. This made it a good test subject for our model,” said Gregg.
In January 2018, scientists ran a simulation that showed that between June 25 and July 5, the magma chamber would become unstable, likely leading to an eruption. As a result, the eruption occurred a day after the earliest predicted date.
The advantage of this model lies in its ability to continuously assimilate data from different sources in real time and quickly process it to provide a daily forecast similar to weather forecasting.
Forecasting eruptions is one of the most difficult tasks in volcanology, which in the future will help to prepare for them in advance and avoid human casualties.
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