Name: 为什么科学家无法预测基拉韦厄火山喷发？（Why Can’t Scientists Predict the Kilauea Eruption?）
Uploaded: 2021-05-19T08:14:54.000Z
Duration: 5 min 57 s
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Kilauea, the big island's friendly neighborhood volcano, is splitting open in unexpected places

The ground is expanding and contracting all across the island, over a thousand people

have had to evacuate, and each day brings scary new surprises and terrifying… but

And it's natural to wonder if we could've predicted any of this ahead of time.

Well, there were signs that something was coming.

But volcanoes are complicated, and that means even the experts didn't know exactly what

Even now, there's still too much we don't understand about eruptions to confidently

Kilauea has been pretty much continuously erupting for more than thirty years, making

it among the most active volcanoes in the world.

It's also one of the best-studied: about sixty seismic stations monitor how the ground

changes as lava shifts around, along with GPS stations, radar, and webcams.

And around the end of April, that extensive monitoring gave volcanologists a tip that

Kilauea's biggest lava lake — which is exactly what it sounds like — was so high

The same pressure that was raising the lake had also lifted ground throughout the island

by as much as 20 centimeters and sent lava moving through the rest of the volcano.

And it's a big volcano, so there's a lot of room for lava to shift around.

Even under normal circumstances, Kilauea's lava is always moving and setting off small

But around the same time the lava lake filled up, those earthquakes started getting bigger

And that told volcanologists that things were changing quickly; the lava was moving more

Then, over the last weekend in April, the summit lava lake dropped by about 15 meters,

and a second lava lake completely drained.

Where that lava went soon became clear, as cracks in the ground called fissures opened

up last Thursday in a residential area more than 30 km from the summit.

Lava spewed out of the fissures, lighting fires and releasing poisonous gases like sulfur

dioxide into the air at alarming rates — right next to people's homes.

The first was a 5.4 on the Richter scale, and an hour later there was a 6.9 that caused

And there were more earthquakes over the weekend, and even more fissures—at least a dozen

in total have opened — some of which launched their lava 70 meters in the air.

Most stopped pretty quickly and none of their lava spread very far, but dozens of homes

have still been destroyed by the eruptions.

And scientists think there's more to come.

Between April 30th and May 7th, the summit lava lake dropped a staggering 220 meters,

And measurements of the ground in the early part of this week—when we filmed this episode—showed

that lava was still moving around beneath the big island.

This isn't the first time Kilauea's erupted so far from the summit.

We might think of volcanoes as a steep cone with a single, explosively erupting spout—like

But larger, flatter shield volcanoes, like Kilauea, can have networks of lava chambers

And that means the most active spot can shift over time, depending on where rocks are weakest.

Still, Kilauea isn't normally considered that dangerous.

Instead of exploding like other volcanoes, it usually oozes, because its lava is low

in silicate and hotter than average, which makes it somewhat runny.

That lower viscosity also allows gas bubbles to get squeezed out before enough pressure

is built up to drive an explosive eruption.

But the situation right now is reminding a lot of people of 1955, when at least 24 different

There were also similar patterns of rapid lava movement followed by fissures in 2011,

So this could be a repeat of 1955 or 2011, or it could all be building up to something

A recent study showed that Kilauea has had some violent eruptions in the last few thousand

years — eruptions that were much closer to what you see with your typical volcano.

Or all this drama could end pretty soon, and Kilauea might return to its normal oozy happy self.

There's just too much we don't know about what's happening underground, and why volcanoes

erupt in the first place, to be more certain.

Volcanology involves so many variables interacting at the same time that it's tough to make

predictions — even if we can recognize signs of something happening.

Even our best instruments can't perfectly map the network of chambers and tunnels the

And to be able to predict an eruption, scientists would not only need that map, they'd also

need to know the lava's composition, temperature, and what gases are trapped within it.

We just don't know enough about what's under Kilauea's hood to predict its behavior.

So when and where the next fissure will open up, and how much lava will come out of it

when it does, remains an unanswered question — for now, at least.

But every time it erupts, volcanologists learn more about Kilauea.

So scientists in Hawaii hope that these sudden outbursts from a normally placid volcano will

teach us something about how to better predict eruptions the next time around.

In the meantime—if you're on the big island, stay safe, and don't park your cars in front

And for the most up-to-date information, check out the United States Geological Survey's

Kilauea status updates, local news outlets, or some of the links we've included in the description.

Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow, and a special thanks to our President of Space

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