Crustal magma chambers can grow to be hundreds to thousands of cubic kilometers, potentially feeding catastrophic caldera‐forming eruptions. Smaller volume chambers are expected to erupt frequently and freeze quickly; a major outstanding question is how magma chambers ever grow to the sizes required to sustain the largest eruptions on Earth. We use a thermo‐mechanical model to investigate the primary factors that govern the extrusive:intrusive ratio in a chamber, and how this relates to eruption frequency, eruption size, and long‐term chamber growth. The model consists of three fundamental timescales: the magma injection timescale
The loss of volatiles from a magma reservoir affects the magmatic overpressure responsible for driving ground deformation and eruptions. Although the high‐temperature metamorphic aureole around a magma chamber is typically considered to have low permeability, recent theoretical, experimental, and field studies have highlighted the role of transient permeability in magmatic systems. Also, direct measurements suggest that passive degassing is a significant component of total volatile loss in both basaltic and silicic volcanoes. Consequently, the effective permeability of the crust when magma is present in the system can be many orders of magnitude larger than that of exhumed rock samples. We develop a fully coupled porothermoelastic framework to account for both the flow of volatiles as well as associated effects on the stress state of the crust and calculate an analytical solution for spherical geometry. We then combine a magma chamber box model with these solutions to analyze eruption dynamics in magmatic systems. We find that in addition to viscous relaxation, magma recharge, and cooling timescales, the pore pressure diffusion timescale exerts a first‐order control on volcanic eruptions with moderately high crustal permeabilities of order 10−17to 10−19m2. We describe a parameter space to identify which components dominate in different regimes for volcanic eruptions according to these different timescales.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10455763
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth
- Volume:
- 124
- Issue:
- 8
- ISSN:
- 2169-9313
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 7869-7901
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract. Mount Somma–Vesuvius is a stratovolcano that represents a geological hazard to the population of the city of Naples and surrounding towns in southern Italy. Historically, volcanic eruptions at Mt. Somma–Vesuvius (SV) include high-magnitude Plinian eruptions, such as the infamous 79 CE eruption that occurred after 295 years of quiescence and killed thousands of people in Pompeii and surrounding towns and villages. The last eruption at SV was in 1944 and showed a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 3 (0.01 km3 of volcanic material erupted). Following the 1944 eruption, SV has been dormant for the past nearly 79 years, with only minor fumarolic and seismic activity. During its long history, centuries of dormancy at SV have ended with Plinian eruptions (VEI 6) that signal the beginning of a new cycle of eruptive activity. Thus, the current dormancy stage demands a need to better understand the mechanism involved in high-magnitude eruptions in order to better predict future eruption magnitude and style. Despite centuries of research on the SV volcanic system, many questions remain, including the evolution of magmatic volatiles from deep primitive magmas to shallower more evolved magmas. Developing a better understanding of the physical and chemical processes associated with volatile evolution at SV can provide insights into magma dynamics and the mechanisms that trigger highly explosive eruptions at SV. In this study, we present new data for the pre-eruptive volatile contents of magmas associated with four Plinian and two inter-Plinian eruptions at SV based on analyses of reheated melt inclusions (MIs) hosted in olivine. We correct the volatile contents of bubble-bearing MIs by taking into account the volatile contents of bubbles in the MIs. We recognize two groups of MIs: one group hosted in high-Fo olivine (Fo85–90) and relatively rich in volatiles and the other group hosted in low-Fo olivine (Fo70–69) and relatively depleted in volatiles. The correlation between volatile contents and compositions of host olivines suggests that magma fractionation took place under volatile-saturated conditions and that more differentiated magmas reside at shallower levels relative to less evolved/quasi-primitive magmas. Using the CO2 contents of corrected MIs hosted in Fo90 olivine from SV, we estimate that 347 to 686 t d−1 of magmatic CO2 exsolved from SV magmas during the last 3 centuries (38–75 Mt in total) of volcanic activity. Although this study is limited to only few SV magmas, we suggest that further study applying similar methods could shed light on the apparent lack of correlation between the volatile contents of MIs and the style and age of eruptions. Further, such studies could provide additional constraints on the origin of CO2 and the interaction between the carbonate platform and ascending magmas below SV.
