spacedaily-staff writers,New York (UPI) Jul 31, 2013
A Costa Rica volcano may have been fast-tracked for eruption triggered by magma rising over a few short months rather than thousands of years, researchers say.
A study by scientists at Columbia University is the latest to suggest deep, hot magma can set off an eruption fairly quickly, a university release said Wednesday.
That finding, from a study of Costa Rica's Irazu volcano, could potentially provide another tool for detecting an oncoming volcanic disaster, the researchers said.
"If we had had seismic instruments in the area at the time we could have seen these deep magmas coming," said study lead author Philipp Ruprecht, a vulcanologist at the university's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "We could have had an early warning of months, instead of days or weeks."
