I guess it's better than Mt Fuji erupting, at least for Tokyo, (I'm just guessing, really),
but still:
Some
7,300 years ago, a supereruption devastated the southern islands of
what is now Japan, burying most of the archipelago in thick ash. Known
as the Akahoya eruption, the blast was so powerful it caused the
volcano’s magma chamber to collapse, leaving a 12-mile wide scar called
Kikai Caldera, which is mostly underwater.
Now
in a study published Friday,
scientists have discovered that a dome of lava lurks beneath the
caldera. By studying its magma plumbing, volcanologists could gain
insight into the entire caldera system, which could help them better
predict when another eruption in the Japanese archipelago might occur.
“The
most serious problem that we are worrying about is not an eruption of
this lava dome, but the occurrence of the next supereruption,” said
Yoshiyuki Tatsumi a volcanologist at Kobe University in Japan and lead
author of the study that appeared in the journal Scientific Reports.
Dr. Tatsumi’s previous work has suggested that the chances of a supereruption happening in the Japanese archipelago in the
next century are only about 1 percent.
But if a volcano in this area erupts, it could eject nearly 10 cubic
miles of magma, covering almost all of the country and its 120 million
people in nearly eight inches of thick ash, he found.
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