Supervolcanoes 'can grow in just hundreds of years'

The largest volcanoes on our planet may take as little as a few hundred years to form and erupt.

These "supervolcanoes" were thought to exist for as much as 200,000 years before releasing their vast underground pools of molten rock.

Supervolcanoes 'can grow in just hundreds of years' 6058063344034

Researchers reporting in Plos One have sampled the rock at the supervolcano site of Long Valley in California.

Their findings suggest that the magma pool beneath it erupted within as little as hundreds of years of forming.

That eruption is estimated to have happened about 760,000 years ago, and would have covered half of North America in its ash.

Such super-eruptions can release thousands of cubic kilometres of debris - hundreds of times larger than any eruption seen in the history of humanity.

Eruptions on this scale could release enough ash to influence the global weather for years, and one theory holds that the Lake Toba eruption in Indonesia about 70,000 years ago had long-term effects that nearly wiped out humans altogether.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18269593#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

Supervolcanoes 'can grow in just hundreds of years'

Supervolcanoes 'can grow in just hundreds of years'

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