Help - dormant volcanoes on earth. The highest active and extinct volcanoes in the world What does an extinct volcano mean?

BAKU, April 19 - "News-Azerbaijan". A huge amount of ash released into the atmosphere after the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland paralyzed air traffic in most of Europe, RIA Novosti reports.

Below is reference Information about dormant volcanoes on Earth.

A volcano that has never erupted in 10,000 years is called dormant. The volcano can remain in this state for up to 25,000 years. If it has never erupted before, it is considered extinct.

Mount Fuji (Fujiyama) is a dormant volcano (according to other sources, active), whose last eruption occurred in 1707. It is located 150 kilometers southwest of Tokyo and, together with the adjacent area, is included in the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park.

The most high mountain Japan has an ideal conical outline and is an object of special honor for the Japanese.

Elbrus is a dormant volcano lying north of Main Caucasian Ridge, has two main peaks with a height of 5621 m (eastern) and 5642 m (western). The western peak of Elbrus is highest point Europe. Are the peaks separated by a saddle? 5200 m and are separated from each other by approximately 3 km.

According to scientists, Elbrus last erupted approximately 1,700 years ago (according to some sources in the 12th century AD). This eruption was accompanied by powerful mudflows and fires, and traces of ash were found at a distance of 300 kilometers from the crater.

Scientists tried to simulate possible situations in the event of an Elbrus eruption, and the data turned out to be disappointing, especially considering that during the last eruption it “launched” powerful volcanic “bombs” over 700 kilometers and they ended up in the vicinity of modern Astrakhan. One has only to look at the map, estimate the distance, and it becomes clear what kind of power lies in this giant. If an eruption occurs, magma heated to several thousand degrees will begin to melt thousand-year-old glaciers, and mudflows will destroy the picturesque areas of the Elbrus region. A sharp rise in the level of Caucasian rivers, such as Baksan, Malka, Kuban, Terek, Podkumok, Kuma, will cause unprecedented floods. Tons of erupting ash will cover vast areas. According to some reports, hot magma can even reach Black Sea coast Caucasus.

Dormant supervolcanoes on Earth are the Long Valley volcanoes in California, Toba on the island of Sumatra, Taupo in New Zealand, Yellowstone and Kamchatka supervolcanoes.

The open caldera of the Kamchatka supervolcano is a giant oval about 35 kilometers long. The caldera begins in the upper reaches of the Paratunka River and ends beyond Bannye thermal springs. Scientists believe that these sources, in particular, are fueled by the heat of an ancient supervolcano. The last time the supervolcano erupted was one and a half million years ago. It was believed that there were no such ancient volcanic formations in Kamchatka, since it is seismologically much younger.

Last eruption The Tobo supervolcano occurred 74 thousand years ago in the area of ​​​​what is now the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. After the explosion, a column of hot gas and ash burst out of the ground at supersonic speed, which almost instantly reached the edge of the stratosphere? 50 km mark. In three days, more than 2,800 cubic kilometers of magma poured onto the surface: in some places there is a thickness of solidified lava? tens of meters. When the volcano's dome collapsed inward, giant, hot clouds of ash rose into the air. They moved at a speed of almost 400 km per hour, melting stones in their path and burning out all living things. After the eruption, colorless ash fell over an area of ​​300 km for several weeks. The sun was not visible for six months. Temperatures throughout the Earth dropped by 15 degrees.

According to the leading expert on supervolcanoes, Professor Bill McGuire of the Banfield Graig Hazard Research Center in London, the Yellowstone and Toba supervolcanoes are two places to watch first.

On the ruins of a volcano in Yellowstone, the Americans built the world-famous Yellowstone national park. Here are the largest geyser fields in the world: 3 thousand geysers and 10 thousand hot thermal and mud springs fed by the heat of the large volcano on the American continent, which last raged 642 thousand years ago.

Until 2004, it was believed that the underground giant was immersed in a “lethargic” sleep, which would end in final attenuation, but the volcano began to stir: the earth’s crust began to rise in some places. According to data from the global navigation satellite system GPS, as well as radar measurements from satellites, the soil is rising at a rate of 7 cm per year, more than triple the average since the 1920s. Other signs of geological activity were also noted: new powerful geysers with hot streams appeared, and the old ones dried up.

According to seismologists at the Yellowstone Volcanic Laboratory, most likely the main driving force behind the process of uplifting the earth's crust is the natural circulation of cold and hot layers of lava. However, scientists do not rule out the accumulation of magma that could cause a new eruption. Currently, magma here lies at a depth of more than 10 km. The area of ​​molten rock is estimated to be comparable in size to Los Angeles.

According to Bill McGuire, the possibility of a supervolcano eruption is 12 times greater than that of a meteorite.

Walk on the body of a dormant volcano in Crimea, capable of destroying vast territories in an explosion, and then find out that it is the oldest dormant volcano in the world and 150 million years ago has already significantly changed everything in these places., writes Sergei Anashkevich

But many of you have been here once. And they walked.
Karadag, southeast Crimea. One of the most beautiful and legendary places on the peninsula.
And a giant sleeping natural bomb.

A view familiar to many vacationers in Crimea is the Karadag massif, prominent far into the sea, on the horizon. Looking at it from this point, you cannot immediately say that a volcano once erupted here, completely changing the landscape of the vast surrounding areas...

Kiev volcanologist Stepan Romchishin says that the Karadag volcano did not die 150 million years ago, but could potentially wake up now: “If Karadag explodes, Crimea will not exist by the end of the day. A cloud of volcanic ash will destroy all life as far as Dnepropetrovsk. The ash column will rise 50 kilometers, and magma will flow out for several days. During an eruption, a cavity is formed under the volcano, so it falls into the abyss and then explodes. The power of such a volcano can be equated to one hundred atomic bombs.”

The scientist assumes that from the explosion, ash heated to 200°C will scatter over a huge area - up to the Russian city of Smolensk in the north and part of the territory of Turkey and other Black Sea countries in the south, west and east. Speed sea ​​wave will reach 400 km/h.
For example, the last one powerful eruption The volcano, according to scientists, was 74 thousand years ago in New Zealand. It almost became fatal for humanity. Millions of tons of ash and sulfur were released into the air. Temperatures around the world dropped by 15 degrees. The ash hung in the atmosphere and did not allow the sun's rays to pass through. Sulfur rains destroyed almost all the forests in Asia. Then it took more than 300 years to restore nature.

Karadag is very different from all others mountain ranges in Crimea. A chaotic pile of ominous black rocks directed in different directions, inaccessible gorge and failures, stone walls plunging into the sea and forming bays inaccessible from the shore, harsh stone figures of the Metro City.

All this is a consequence of the volcano that was active here 150 million years ago.

Diverse and unusual landforms of a volcanic massif with very complex geological structure arose in later periods during weathering and erosion. The gentle and flat continental slope of the Coast Range is protected, like armor, from destruction by a powerful, extensive lava flow...

The modern bowl of Karadag (and if you look at the heights of Karadag, today it is precisely a bowl, the walls of which consist of ridges and peaks) is very diverse in both relief and landscape. Standing at one point, looking in one direction, you will see quite familiar mountain peaks overgrown with grasses and shrubs, forming a fairly familiar Crimean landscape, and looking in the other direction...

...you will see rocks Dead City, on which for many thousands of years at least some vegetation could barely cling. And that’s not true everywhere.

Varied in appearance and mineral composition, the volcanic rocks of Karadag were formed during the solidification of lava. Pillow lava flows are very common.

This is a chaotic accumulation of lava segregations of pillow-shaped, ellipsoidal and balloon-shaped shapes with smooth contours, and each of them has a continuous cooling surface with a hardening crust.

Pillow flows are especially spectacular on the southern slope of the Magnetic Ridge, along which they stretch obliquely in the form of powerful inclined stone walls. There are seven streams with a capacity of 15–25 m each.

The most diverse lava compositions are on the slopes of the Karagach ridge. There are five types here rocks, interconnected by gradual transitions. The change of rocks from bottom to top occurs in the following order: keratophyre – partially albitized porphyrite – porphyrite – bipyrooxene andesite – glassy andesite. It is from these that the famous King Rocks are made.

But based on the name and types of rocks, so as not to make a hole in my and your brain, I will just say that there are some incredible numbers of them here.
Each rock has its own way of shaping rocks and stones into a variety of shapes.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the various craters and places where lava comes to the surface. There are several remains of craters on Karadag. The most famous of them is the Devil's Fireplace.

Perfectly preserved, spectacular, with a beautiful classical concentric shape - a wonderful example of a subvolcanic body.

Here is another part of the giant circle - Parus rock

Separately, it is worth mentioning the numerous dikes.

A dike is a frozen plate-shaped magma intrusion, prepared by weathering from the surrounding less resistant rocks. The most famous Karadag dike is the Lion's Dike.

Located under the Devil's Kamin crater, it is surrounded by several other small and one large dike. In addition, the structure of the Coast Range in relation to the Khoba-Tepe ridge allows scientists to assume that it was here that the main vent of the volcano was located.

Sometimes there is a whole “ stone forest” of giant crenellations, peaks and rock teeth that form in thick layers of volcanic tuff, cut by vertical cracks. These are all the dikes surrounding the Lion's Dyke

Some of them literally cut through mountain ranges. And weathering over many thousands of years on both sides of the ridge formed gorges.

Under some of the ridges that “descended” from the mountains, caves, including underwater ones, were formed. One of them is the Thundering Grotto. It was the sounds from this grotto that formed the famous legend about the Karadag snake, which someone seemed to have once seen, and many often heard its roar in the fog. This legend even formed the basis of the story “Fatal Eggs” by Mikhail Bulgakov.

10 biggest and dangerous volcanoes on the ground.

A volcano is a geological formation that arose due to the movement of tectonic plates, their collision and the formation of faults. As a result of collisions between tectonic plates, faults form and magma comes to the surface of the Earth. As a rule, volcanoes are a mountain at the end of which there is a crater, which is where lava comes out.

Volcanoes are divided into:

- active;
- sleeping;
- extinct;

Active volcanoes are those that erupted in the near future (approximately 12,000 years)
Dormant volcanoes are volcanoes that have not erupted in the near future, but their eruption is practically possible.
Extinct volcanoes include those that have not erupted in the near historical future, but the top has the shape of a crater, but such volcanoes are unlikely to erupt.

List of the 10 most dangerous volcanoes on the planet:

1. (Hawaiian Islands, USA)

2. Taal Volcano (Philippines)

3. Volcano Merapi (Java Island)

4. Volcano Santa Maria (Guatemala)

This is one of the most active volcanoes of the 20th century.
It is located at a distance of 130 kilometers from the city of Guatemala, and is located in the so-called Pacific. Ring of Fire. The Santa Maria crater was formed after its eruption in 1902. About 6,000 people died then. The last eruption occurred in March 2011.

5. Ulawun Volcano (Papua - New Guinea)

The Ulawun volcano, located in the New Guinea region, began erupting at the beginning of the 18th century. Since then, eruptions have been recorded 22 times.
In 1980, the largest volcanic eruption occurred. The ejected ash covered an area of ​​more than 20 square kilometers.
Now this volcano is the highest peak in the region.
The last volcanic eruption occurred in 2010.

6. Galeras Volcano (Colombia)

7. Sakurajima Volcano (Japan)

8. Nyiragongo (DR Congo)

Walking on the body of a sleeping volcano, capable of destroying vast territories in an explosion - Crimea, the entire Black Sea, half of Ukraine and part of Russia...
Therefore, to find out that he is the most ancient of the sleeping ones in the world and 150 million years ago already significantly changed everything in these places...
But many of you have been here once. And they walked.
Karadag, southeast Crimea. One of the most beautiful and legendary places on the peninsula.
And a giant sleeping natural bomb. If she gets tired of a person, she won't spare anyone

2. A view familiar to many vacationers in Crimea - the Karadag massif protruding far into the sea on the horizon. Looking at it from this point, you cannot immediately say that a volcano once erupted here, completely changing the landscape of the vast surrounding areas...
Kiev volcanologist Stepan Romchishin says that the Karadag volcano did not die 150 million years ago, but could potentially wake up now - “If Karadag explodes, Crimea will not exist by the end of the day. A cloud of volcanic ash will destroy all living things as far as Dnepropetrovsk. A column of ash will rise 50 kilometers, and the magma will flow out for several days. During the eruption, a cavity is formed under the volcano, so it falls into the abyss, and then explodes. The force of such a volcano can be equated to one hundred atomic bombs.”
The scientist assumes that from the explosion, ash heated to 200°C will scatter over a huge area - up to the Russian city of Smolensk in the north and part of the territory of Turkey and other Black Sea countries in the south, west and east. The speed of the sea wave will reach 400 km/h.
For example, the last most powerful volcanic eruption, according to scientists, was 74 thousand years ago in New Zealand. It almost became fatal for humanity. Millions of tons of ash and sulfur were released into the air. Temperatures around the world dropped by 15 degrees. The ash hung in the atmosphere and did not allow the sun's rays to pass through. Sulfur rains destroyed almost all the forests in Asia. Then it took more than 300 years to restore nature.

3. Karadag is very different from all other mountain ranges in Crimea. A chaotic pile of ominous black rocks directed in different directions, inaccessible gorge and failures, stone walls plunging into the sea and forming bays inaccessible from the shore, harsh stone figures of the Metro City.
All this is a consequence of the volcano that was active here 150 million years ago.

4. Various and unusual forms of relief of the volcanic massif with a very complex geological structure arose in later periods during weathering and erosion. The gentle and flat continental slope of the Coast Range is protected, like armor, from destruction by a powerful, extensive lava flow...

5. And the opposite slope, facing the sea, is completely different. It is strongly dissected and difficult to pass, cut by gorges and surrounded by inclined ridges of lava flows, stretched out in a string along the slope.

6. The modern bowl of Karadag (and if you look at the heights of Karadag, today it is precisely a bowl, the walls of which consist of ridges and peaks) is very diverse in both relief and landscape. Standing at one point, looking in one direction, you will see quite familiar mountain peaks overgrown with grasses and shrubs, forming a fairly familiar Crimean landscape, and looking in the other direction....

6. ... you will see the rocks of the Dead City, on which for many thousands of years at least some vegetation could barely cling. And that’s not true everywhere.

7. That’s why it’s dead, because many rocks rise up like black dead idols, as if in the famous fantasy Mordor

8. The volcanic rocks of Karadag, varied in appearance and mineral composition, were formed during the solidification of lava. Pillow lava flows are very common. This is a chaotic accumulation of lava segregations of pillow-shaped, ellipsoidal and balloon-shaped shapes with smooth contours, and each of them has a continuous cooling surface with a hardening crust. Pillow flows are especially spectacular on the southern slope of the Magnetic Ridge, along which they stretch obliquely in the form of powerful inclined stone walls. There are seven streams with a capacity of 15 - 25 m each.

9. The most diverse lava compositions are on the slopes of the Karagach ridge. There are five types of rocks here, connected by gradual transitions. The change of rocks from bottom to top occurs in the following order: keratophyre - partially albitized porphyrite - porphyrite - bipyroxene andesite - glassy andesite. It is from these that the famous King Rocks are made.

10. But starting from the name and types of rocks, so as not to make a hole in my and your brain, I will just say that there are some incredible numbers of them here.
Each rock has its own way of shaping rocks and stones into a variety of shapes.

12. Separately, it is worth mentioning various craters and places where lava comes to the surface. There are several remains of craters on Karadag. The most famous of them is the Devil's Fireplace.

13. Perfectly preserved, spectacular, with a beautiful classical concentric shape - a wonderful example of a subvolcanic body.

14. Second prominent representative The crater is the Ivan the Robber rock, which I will talk about separately. Remember the plug that plugged the volcano's mouth?

15. Close-up of the mouth itself

17. Here is another part of the giant circle - the Parus rock

21. Separately, it is worth mentioning the numerous dikes. A dike is a frozen plate-shaped magma intrusion, prepared by weathering from the surrounding less resistant rocks. The most famous Karadag dike is the Lion's Dike. Located under the Devil's Kamin crater, it is surrounded by several other small and one large dike. In addition, the structure of the Coast Range in relation to the Khoba-Tepe ridge allows scientists to assume that it was here that the main vent of the volcano was located.

22. Sometimes there is a whole “stone forest” of giant teeth, peaks and stone teeth, which are formed in thick layers of volcanic tuffs, dissected by vertical cracks. These are all the dikes surrounding the Lion's Dyke

23. Starting at an altitude of several hundred meters, giant ridges descend all the way to the sea

24. Some of them literally cut through mountain ranges. And weathering over many thousands of years on both sides of the ridge formed gorges.

25. Caves, including underwater ones, were formed under some ridges that “descended” from the mountains. One of them is the Thundering Grotto. It was the sounds from this grotto that formed the famous legend about the Karadag snake, which someone seemed to have once seen, and many often heard its roar in the fog. This legend even formed the basis of the story “Fatal Eggs” by Mikhail Bulgakov.

26. The famous Golden Gate is a rock-remnant rising above a gap in the sea and also created by a volcano

27. Remnant figures at the entrance to the Dead City

28. Outcrops of various rocks are found almost at every step

29. Like frozen foam

30. In addition to the geological composition and variety of different shapes, the rocks are also striking in their color schemes

31. Columnar units are found everywhere. I can imagine how much lava poured out here 150 million years ago

32. Lava flows

33. Autumn - unusual structure of the Levinson-Lessing rock.

34. But as for the possibility of an explosion of the Karadag volcano in our time, according to scientists, its probability is only 0.00000 or whatever percent. It will sleep for a long time, because it is not located at the junctions of tectonic plates, but it is from their collision that the earth splits... So you can sleep peacefully)

My previous photo reports and photo stories:

How is magma different from lava?

30 kilometers below your feet is the Earth's mantle. This is an area of ​​super-hot rock that extends to the Earth's core. It is so hot that the molten rock forms giant bubbles of liquid rock called magma chambers. This magma is lighter than the surrounding rock, so it rises to the top, looking for cracks and weaknesses in the earth's crust. When it finally reaches the surface, it erupts from the ground as lava, ash, volcanic gases and rocks. It is called magma underground, and lava when it erupts.

Volcanoes can be active, dormant or extinct

An active volcano is one that erupted in historical times(in the last few thousand years). A dormant volcano is one that erupted in historical times and has the potential to erupt again. An extinct volcano is one that, according to scientists, will not erupt.

Lava fountain in Hawaii

Volcanoes can grow quickly

While some volcanoes take thousands of years to form, others can grow overnight. For example, a cinder cone from the Paricutin volcano appeared in a Mexican cornfield on February 20, 1943. A week later it was 5 stories high, and by the end of the year it had grown to 336 meters. Its growth ended in 1952 and stopped at 424 meters. By geologists' standards, this is quite fast.

About 20 volcanoes are erupting right now

Somewhere in the world, there are about 20 active volcanoes erupting as you read this. Some are just starting, others are continuing. 50-70 volcanoes erupted last year and 160 have been active over the past decade. Geologists believe that there have been about 1,300 eruptions over the past 10,000 years. Three-quarters of all eruptions occurred on the ocean floor, and most of them are still active, but geologists do not know about it. If you add underwater volcanoes, a total of about 6,000 volcanoes have erupted in the last 10,000 years.

Volcanoes are dangerous

But, of course, you have heard about this. Some of the deadliest volcanoes include Krakatoa, which erupted in 1883, creating a tsunami that killed 36,000 people. In 79 AD e. Vesuvius exploded, burying the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, killing 16,000 people. The Mount Pelee volcano on the island of Martinique destroyed a town of 30,000 people in 1902. The most dangerous moment in a volcanic eruption is the pyroclastic flows that move along the side of the volcano at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per hour with temperatures of more than 1000 degrees Celsius.

Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption

Supervolcanoes are truly dangerous

Geologists measure volcanic eruptions using the Volcanic Explosivity Index, which measures the amount of material released. A “small” eruption like St. Helens accounted for 5 out of 8 points, spewing a cubic kilometer of material. The largest eruption is considered to be Toba, which occurred 73,000 years ago. It released more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of material and created a caldera 100 km long and 30 km wide. The explosion plunged the world into an ice age. According to the index, the Toba eruption was rated an eight.

Tallest volcano The solar system is not on Earth

The highest volcano in the solar system is not on Earth, but on Mars. Mount Olympus is a giant shield volcano that rises 27 kilometers high and is 550 kilometers across. Scientists believe that Mount Olympus was able to become so large because there is no plate tectonics on Mars at all. Even one hot spot could swell over billions of years, stretching the volcano higher and higher.

The highest and largest volcanoes on Earth are nearby

The highest volcano on Earth is Mauna Kea in Hawaii, its height is 4207 meters. It is slightly taller than the largest volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa, with a height of 4169 meters. Both are shield volcanoes that rise from the ocean floor. If you could measure Mauna Kea from its base in the ocean to its peak, you would get 10,203 meters (higher than Everest itself).

The farthest point from the center of the Earth is a volcano

You may think that the top of Mount Everest is the farthest point from the center of the Earth, but this is not true. This is actually the Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador. The fact is that the Earth rotates in space and is a geoid. Points at the equator are further from the center of the Earth than at the poles. And Chimborazo is very close to the Earth's equator. Although its height is “only” 6267 meters.