Why methane is to blame for recent Yellowstone activity

NOTE: This is an updated article originally written in April
Yellowstone National Park has been making headlines lately and it’s not the geological activity that persists but rather, the notion that animals are fleeing from the park. There’s a You Tube video that’s gone viral of bison running down from a slope out, onto the road and making a bee line right towards the Yellowstone exit.

Another report from park officials a couple of weeks ago stated that about half of the elk herd is missing and they aren’t sure of their whereabouts. They said that it’s not uncommon for both the elk and the bison to migrate out of the park in autumn and then migrate back in during the spring time looking for cooler climates. The You Tube video was taken in mid-March, spring time, so the bison should have been coming into Yellowstone instead of fleeing.

The question on many minds is what do the animals know that we don’t? Locals who live in the area claim that other animals are also fleeing from Yellowstone and they believe that it may signal that an eruption may occur at the park sometime soon.

Here is a quote about the history of eruptions at Yellowstone that I saw on the LAsinkholebugle.wordpress.com blog;

“The volcanic eruptions, as well as the continuing geothermal activity, are a result of a great cove of magma located below the caldera’s surface. The magma in this cove contains gases that are kept dissolved only by the immense pressure that the magma is under. If the pressure is released to a sufficient degree by some geological shift, then some of the gases bubble out and cause the magma to expand. This can cause a runaway reaction. If the expansion results in further relief of pressure, for example, by blowing crust material off the top of the chamber, the result is a very big gas explosion.”

I finished my book Fever Rising on March 19. In the days prior to finishing, Yellowstone was making headlines for a number of geological activities taking place, so I wrote a piece about it in the chapter dedicated to sinkholes, land cracks and other land subsidence events. In the time since, a fairly large 4.8 earthquake occurred at the park, the largest that struck Yellowstone in 34 years. This event raised some eyebrows. Activity continues.

Last week, officials made an extra effort to convince the public that there is nothing to worry about with Yellowstone. They believe that the Yellowstone caldera is more dormant than active meaning that it may be a million years before it erupts again if it even erupts at all. They suggest that Yellowstone is most likely a dying volcano.

I’m not buying it. I’m not saying that I believe it will erupt any time soon, but I do believe all this recent activity would signal anything but a dying volcano. Honestly, would officials warn the public if there was an imminent eruption about to occur? I doubt it. For one, a full-scale Yellowstone eruption would destroy up to 500 miles away, cover a third of the United States in a volcanic ash cloud creating a volcanic winter and cool the planet for a few years causing major earth changes. Millions would die as a result and that’s not something officials would warn the public about when there wouldn’t be much anyone could do about it. Think about, where and who and how would people evacuate? In my opinion, officials would most likely determine rather than causing a mass panic, let the chips fall where they may.

I describe in my book, Fever Rising, in great detail why I believe that this current activity at Yellowstone is due to the escalating amounts of methane gas in the atmosphere. I’ll just put a brief synopsis here, but it basically has to do with the blanket of methane trapping the sun’s heat, raising air and ocean temperatures, causing land and sea ice to melt in the Polar Regions. This melting ice is adding a lot of extra weight to the thin continental shelf’s off the ocean coasts, thus the rising activity around the ‘Ring of Fire.’ It’s also decreasing extra pressure on the earth’s crust below the melting permafrost as the ice melts into the oceans. More weight in the oceans and less weight on land equals major earth changes and that’s why we are experiencing more earthquakes, volcanoes, sinkholes, landslides, land cracks, land slips and any other land subsidence events, including failing infrastructures in countries all around the world.

To finish off this blog entry I’m going to print an excerpt from the book, from chapter 20, Sinkholes, Land Slips and Land Cracks;

This next story is very disconcerting because it involved the super volcano known as Yellowstone. Officials were tracking some major earth deformation that took place at Yellowstone, such as the formation of a circular pattern from some small ground changes. A 3.5 inch uplift was tracked from a GPS station there in one section of the park. The same ground had moved in a southerly direction about a centimeter and a half. This was tracked over a five-month period. During this period, other events ensued in the same area. Combined, they formed a large circle, like the round mouth of a volcano.

Scientists said this land deformation episode was consistent with an underground build up or minor pressurization about five miles deep near Norris Junction.

And what really worried the scientists was that Yellowstone started emitting helium-4 gases from below. This is a precursor to other volcanic eruptions, such as El Hierro volcano in the Canary Islands. That volcano had some groaning and rumbling sounds for seven months as the gas built up and seeped through the soil and sediment, and then finally erupted with a large plume.

All these events are things that were observed at other volcanoes just before eruption, for instance, elevation of the ground, development of new cracks, earthquake swarms, and the presence of helium-4 coming out of the surface. A week prior to this report about the helium-4 gas, one of the largest earthquakes in the United States for that week erupted near the park which was evidence of magma movement below the crust.

If Yellowstone were to erupt, which hasn’t happened in 640,000 years, it would be one of the worst disasters we’ve ever witnessed, destroying everything up to 500 miles away, creating an ash cloud that would cover 2/3^rd of the United States and cooling the entire planet within a month. It would be earth-changing.

Here is a story from the Los Angeles Times about the helium-4 gas releasing.

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/19/science/la-sci-sn-yellowstone-helium-degassing-20140218

It’s up, up and away for ancient trapped helium at Yellowstone
Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 2014
By Monte Morin

Talk about passing gas: Vast stores of helium are escaping from the steam vents and hot springs of Yellowstone National Park after being trapped within Earth's crust for up to 2 billion years, according to new research.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey determined that the famed national park was releasing hundreds -- if not thousands -- of times more helium than anticipated.

In fact, researchers say, the escaping helium -- about 60 tons per year --  is enough to fill one Goodyear blimp every week.

Steam plumes rise above thermal features along the Firehole River at Yellowstone National Park. Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey determined that the famed national park was releasing hundreds — if not thousands — of times more helium than anticipated. (Ken McGee / U.S. Geological Survey ) 

They also calculate that this "sudden" release of gas began roughly 2 million years ago, with the advent of volcanic activity there.

"That might seem like a really, really long time to people, but in the geologic time scale, the volcanism is a recent phenomenon," said study coauthor Bill Evans, a research chemist at the USGS office in Menlo Park, Calif.

Helium, or more accurately the isotope helium-4, is produced in Earth's crust as uranium and thorium decay. Often, this nonradioactive, crustal helium is swept away by groundwater, or freed as a result of tectonic movement.

But in areas where there is little groundwater or movement in Earth's crust, helium-4 can remain trapped and build up over time. This is especially true at Yellowstone, where inactive rocks, or what geologists call "craton," have been estimated to be 2.5 billion years old. (The park is located primarily in Wyoming.)

"The Yellowstone crust is among the oldest on Earth, and for most of its history had been part of the tectonically moribund core of North America," said lead study author Jacob Lowenstern, a research geologist and scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

Things began to change roughly 2 million years ago, however,  when hot magma intruded on the crustal system from below and triggered several enormous volcanic eruptions, the most recent about 640,000 years ago.  

"Think of it this way: You have these old crustal rocks just sitting around for hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of years," Evans said. "They have this boring little existence, and then suddenly somebody puts the heat on under them and they start giving up all their long-held secrets."

So what do we know about current Yellowstone activity; the ground is rising and moving southeastward in a large circular pattern like the mouth of a volcano; helium gases suddenly appeared and when these gases have appeared at other volcanoes there was usually an eruption; and also prior to eruptions, earthquakes usually appear, which Yellowstone has had recent swarms as well as a 3.6 just outside the Yellowstone crater.

NOTE: (The Following added August 31)

It might be noted that I wrote this original piece in April of this year, and as of the end of August, 2014, the caldera remains active. All the activities that were present earlier, such as ground uplift, helium gases and earthquakes, still persist. Also, earlier in the summer, a road was closed near Yellowstone Lake due to the melting of the road. It was claimed at the time that the road was closed because of hot air temperatures. The temperatures were only in the 80’s for a few weeks. It would take temperatures in the 110’s to actually melt a road. They did come out after a few days and say that the geothermal activity below the road had also “aided in the melting.”

There were also rumors of sinkholes appearing around the Yellowstone Park, and a large landslide did appear in Jackson, Wyoming, just 40 miles south of Yellowstone.

Another bit of information that I stumbled on at AboveTopSecret.com was that a tour guide had said to his group when a certain geyser erupted as he was doing the tour, it was the first time he had seen that one. Later, Yellowstone said that that geyser erupted regularly. So, which were true, regular eruptions and the tour guide had no idea what he was talking about, or was it the first time? Who knows, but new geyser eruptions, sinkholes, landslides and melting roads, would indicate that something peculiar is going on at Yellowstone. Add that to the earthquakes, ground uplift and helium gases, it makes one wonder.

Does that mean there is an imminent eruption coming? Absolutely not. It may indicate that there is magma pressure below and it needs relieving. How much of a gas explosion would be necessary to relieve the pressure is the main question. We may see an increase in activities leading to either a slight eruption or a major eruption or it may relieve itself without an explosion. Only time will tell, but, it does appear that there is an uptick in activity at Yellowstone and officials may not be telling the whole story.

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