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Explosive or effusive style of volcanic eruption determined by magma storage conditions

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 781–786 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Most volcanoes erupt both effusively and explosively, with explosive behaviour being responsible for most human fatalities. Eruption style is thought to be strongly controlled by fast conduit processes, limiting our ability for prediction. Here we address a critical question in the quest to develop timely forecasting of eruptive behaviour: are there conditions in which the outcome of an eruption is predetermined by the state of the magma in the subvolcanic reservoir? We analyse the pre-eruptive storage conditions of 245 units from volcanoes around the world. We show that pre-eruptive crystallinity, dissolved water content and the presence of exsolved volatiles in the chamber exert a primary control on eruptive styles. Magmas erupt explosively over a well-defined range in dissolved water content (~4–5.5 wt%) and crystallinity (less than 30 vol%). All other conditions, namely higher crystallinity, dissolved water contents below 3.5 wt% and, counterintuitively, in excess of 5.5 wt%, favour effusive activity. Between these ranges, there is a narrow field of transitional storage properties that do not discriminate between eruptive styles, and where the conduit exerts the main control on eruptive behaviour. Our findings suggest that better estimates of crystallinity and water content in subvolcanic chambers are key to forecasting eruptive style.

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Fig. 1: World map showing the location of the volcanoes considered in this study.
Fig. 2: Plot depicting the increase in the volume of exsolved volatiles (CO2 + H2O) with crystallization.
Fig. 3: Correlation of eruptive styles with crystallinity, dissolved H2O and water saturation.
Fig. 4: The distribution of crystallinity and storage temperatures with eruptive behaviours.
Fig. 5: Response of reservoirs containing water-saturated and water-undersaturated magmas to recharge events.

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Data availability

The excel source file containing the geochemical and petrological data the meta-analysis is based on can be retrieved from the EarthChem data repository, at https://doi.org/10.26022/IEDA/112061, under the title ‘Global overview of pre-eruptive magma chamber conditions’60. The source files containing the results of the numerical simulations61 can be retrieved from EarthChem, at https://doi.org/10.26022/IEDA/112064. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

O.B. acknowledges funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation grant 200021_178928 and C.H. from National Science Foundation fund EAR-20211328. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Răzvan-Gabriel Popa & Olivier Bachmann

  2. Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Christian Huber

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Contributions

R.-G.P and O.B. conceptualized the study. R.-G.P. collected the global dataset and performed the calculations for the pre-eruptive magma chamber conditions. O.B. performed the calculations for the evolution of the volume of exsolved volatiles with crystallization. C.H. performed the calculations estimating the effect of exsolved volatiles upon magma recharge in the subvolcanic storage region. R.-G.P. drafted the manuscript together with O.B. and C.H. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the results and to the preparation of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Răzvan-Gabriel Popa.

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Peer review information Primary Handling editor: Rebecca Neely, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team. Nature Geoscience thanks Takehiro Koyaguchi, Edward Llewellin and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Data 1

Global overview of pre-eruptive magma chamber conditions and associated references.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Simulation of volatile exsolution with crystallization.

Source Data Fig. 3

Melt viscosity variations.

Source Data Fig. 5

Magma compressibility model output.

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Popa, RG., Bachmann, O. & Huber, C. Explosive or effusive style of volcanic eruption determined by magma storage conditions. Nat. Geosci. 14, 781–786 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00827-9

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