Images of some of the most infamous terrestrial volcanoes depict billowing clouds of volcanic ash and debris, which eventually fill the sky and rain down around us. Underwater, some volcanoes erupt in similar ways — producing megaplumes of super-hot liquids and gases that shoot up through the Earth’s crust and scatter debris throughout the surrounding ocean.
While this phenomenon is well-studied on land, the first so-called submarine megaplume was only discovered in 1986. Since then, the precise ways in which they act and affect their environment have largely evaded scientists.
In a study published in Nature last month, researchers from the University of Leeds used detailed maps of volcanic ash settlements in the Pacific Ocean to model how a megaplume formed from a nearby submarine volcano. Their analysis indicates that the heat transfer from expelling these materials equals around a terawatt — about double the energy required to power the U.S. at once.
