On Monday, scientists warned the ‘supervolcano’ that is close to Italy is set to erupt way before it was expected to. The volcano, Campi Flegrei, is located nine miles from Naples on the other side of Vesuvius. The scientists of University College London and the Vesuvius Observatory said that it ‘may be approaching a critical stage’.
The Director of UCL Hazard Centre, Christopher Kilburn, in a paper for journal Nature Communications, said, “Further unrest will increase the possibility of an eruption… It’s imperative that the authorities are prepared for this.”
The name Campi Flegrei transliterates to ‘flaming fields’ from Italian and Ancient Greek. Though not as famous as Vesuvius, scientists predict it to be much more dangerous to Naples and Pozzuoli. The paper, however, says that an eruption is not imminent, but a critical phase is approaching fast. The alert level for the volcano was previously green but now has turned to amber.
Scientists have been studying this volcano for over 500 years. They said the volcano has been rumbling from over seven decades, with scattered earthquakes through the 1950s, 70s and 80s. The port of Pozzuoli also reported a rise of 4 meters in water since 1950 and over 20,000 quakes after this. Also, it has been observed the ground water is depleting due to the movement of magma below the crust.
The last known explosion of the supervolcano was in 1538 and erupted after 100 years of activity. A date has not been given by the scientists, but the trends denote that it will be in the very near future. This eruption will affect the lives of a million people in Naples and 3,60,000 people that live on Campi Flegrei’s caldera. This explosion is also expected to disrupt air traffic across the transatlantic.
