This is from January of this year (satellite infrared image at link: http://www.earthmountainview.com/yellowstone/yellowstone.htm
Satellite images acquired by ESA’s ERS-2 revealed the recently discovered changes in Yellowstone’s caldera are the result of molten rock movement 15 kilometres below the Earth’s surface, according to a recent study published in Nature.
Using Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry, InSAR for short, Charles Wicks, Wayne Thatcher and other U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists mapped the changes in the northern rim of the caldera, or crater, and discovered it had risen about 13 centimetres from 1997 to 2003.
InSAR, a sophisticated version of ‘spot the difference’, involves mathematically combining different radar images, acquired from as near as possible to the same point in space at different times, to create digital elevation models and reveal otherwise undetectable changes occurring between image acquisitions.
“We know now how mobile and restless the Yellowstone caldera actually is. Ground-based measurements can be more efficiently deployed because of our work,” Thatcher said. “The research could not have been done without satellite radar data.”
This is from January of this year (satellite infrared image at link: http://www.earthmountainview.com/yellowstone/yellowstone.htm
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ALOT of information on that link...thanks! :)
I interviewed a vulcanologist from Yellowstone a couple of years ago on the Yellowstone supervolcano. He said they believe there are two magma chambers beneath Yellowstone. The thinking is there won’t be a super eruption as long as there are two distinct chambers.
He also said that if there were another eruption the size of the Huckleberry Ridge eruption the North American continent would probably be uninhabitable within a short period of time. I got the opinion he was skeptical if the human species would persist.
One other point: the tectonic plate has been moving southwest over the millenia ... each major Yellowstone eruption has left craters that have been pushed southwest. As the plate moves over the supervolcano, it is becoming thicker. This MIGHT make a major eruption less likely.
13 cm ground deformation in 6 years isn’t much in an active region. Maybe it’s just having a little burp.