Volcano of the Carpathian Basin to erupt?
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The MTA-ELTE Volcanology Research Group, as part of an international cooperation, has been monitoring and analysing the Csomád mountain chain in Transylvania for 15 years. Their latest report writes about how a magma chamber containing crystal mush can be found even under a volcano that has been inactive for a very long time. Thus, able to erupt again if conditions change.
The Csomád is the youngest volcano of the Carpathians, causing the last eruption of the vast, Central and Eastern European mountain chain around 32 thousand years ago.
The volcanic eruption itself is a periodic process. Some of them erupt over and over again, after only a short time of rest, like Etna. While others are being inactive for a very long time, only to activate themselves again, just as the Taal volcano of the Philippines.
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And there is the third group, like the volcano of the Reykjanes peninsula that took a break of several hundred years, writes origo.hu. However, it is still unknown what exactly causes this regular and unregular periodicity.
Until the first half of the 21st century, scientists and geologists thought that magma chambers and their content have a relatively short lifespan. Until they found that the magma itself contains crystals, whose proportion, in an ideal case, is over 50% of the whole volume of the magma. In this consistency, the magma is physically incapable of ascending to the surface. Thus the volcano can not erupt. When the consistency changes, however, and these crystals are not in a majority, the natural phenomenon of a volcanic eruption occurs.
This knowledge changes many things.
How long can this magma containing the crystal mush exist, and what causes the change of its consistency? Moreover, how long does it take for the magma to turn into a consistency able to erupt?
The international cooperation involves scientists from Hungary, Romania, Switzerland and Germany. Their findings bring us closer to answering these important questions.
Based on their geophysical analysis,
the magma chamber under the Csomád can possibly still contain a high quantity of crystals.
Is Transylvania a country ? Or in which country is this mountain located ????
It is always a good thing to learn new facts. I did not even know that there is a volcano in the Carpathian region.
Thank you, Palma, for such an informative article.