The Power of Volcanoes Pt. 1: Years without Summer | Full Documentary

volcanoes are sleeping giants roba Titus should they awake millions of people live in their shadows and very close to a looming catastrophe but even Giants far away and long forgotten and suddenly come alive looking at history we come to understand that active volcanoes also need to be reckoned with in the future Okin ologists climate researchers geologists they all want to learn from previous catastrophes in order to save lives in the future [Music] in a way they're like Beauty and the Beast can we protect ourselves from this danger we can't always predict these events people will die [Music] Istanbul is Europe's largest metropolis more than 14 million people live here but few of them know that the eruption of a volcano has shaped this city's destiny [Music] history shows what's in store for many cities around the world because no matter how far away the volcanoes are no one's truly safe in the year 541 ad Istanbul is still called Constantinople a foreign plague decimates the population of the Byzantine capital millions of people died [Music] emperor justinian and the entire country are desperate [Music] an invisible foe has taken over the Empire [Music] your majesty the air we breathe is so bad a pestilence has spread to the city what do you plan to do those who are righteous have nothing to fear then ask the heavens what we've done the city is full of corpses what is the true reason [Music] the answer to this riddle might be found one and a half millennia later and more than 3000 kilometers further north a small international team of researchers has put up their tents at Eastern Greenland they are here to research the climate of the past Johannes Watauga V Alfred Wegener Institute hopes to retrieve information from the ice on how the climate has changed over the last millennia you see he is in search of sudden climate changes Greenland is an inhospitable place even in summer the temperatures cooled down to minus 18 degrees Celsius but here far from civilization is the perfect place for ice core drilling because the ice here is very thin 100,000 years of climate history our deep frozen and only half a kilometer depth [Music] the exact location of the drilling site is key if there are any anomalies in the upper layers it needs to be relocated if you get one cup it goes down until this layer here you can see the melted layer its refrozen melt water from last summer and so below here there's massive ice you want as a muskiness ice the fine layers are like growth rings it's important not to destroy them during the retrieval an annual leader measures about half a centimeter so the researchers are slowly stepping back in time but the work has to be broken off every now and then the drill can't heat up or it would melt the ice the layers have been reached from around the time of the plague as the ice give any indications about the trigger the disease [Applause] the electrical conductivity of the drilling core confirms the suspicions in the 6th century AD the I suddenly points to his shift there was a sudden increase in the atmospheres sulfur content that's so rare that's what is must be a volcanic lake it is quite high and present in 10 centimeters of the ice that equals about 2 years we don't know the time period for sure right now because we don't have the exact determination of the age of the ice again all that humanizes Homme volcanoes are fed by the hot inner core the earth driven by this heat magma rises out of the Earth's mantle and slow currents and accumulates under its thin crust the molten rock also transports a whole mix of poisonous gases to the top [Music] could the mysterious epidemic stand in close relation to the eruption of a volcano before the city was struck by the unknown disease the sky darkened [Music] there are precise accounts dating back to the Year 536 ad for months the Sun has been weak in summer as in winter everyone fears it might never come back the wine is sour the harvest is lean there is so much snow that the birds are dying it is as though hell had crept out of the depths of the earth [Music] historian misha meyer of the university of turin has analyzed the accounts to understand what exactly happened back then index me i will not lose the before cover warning envisioned during the sixth century AD the population is already very wary of anything it sees as abnormal inside from our is this due to a fatalistic view of the world that was quite popular back then dr. sort of waiting for the world to end attitude had fostered any thoughts of the coming two thousand among any sign would do and this unusual weather obviously fit in quite nicely vitaly not relish their good eating scholars have predicted the end of the world to occur at the beginning of the sixth century and every change in the environment was seen as a sign of the coming Last Judgement [Music] and indeed change was coming but much different than people back then expected you [Music] they are testimonies of an almost forgotten catastrophe it's caused a seemingly insoluble mystery [Music] the earth itself keeps destroying life on its own surface because volcanoes spew out not only ashes into the Earth's atmosphere but sulfur II gases as well during massive eruptions they catapult sulfur as high as one kilometer into the air once their of the sulfur mixes with water this creates a layer of clouds made up of sulfuric acid that barely lets in any sunlight a more recent example shows the effects this can have in 1815 in Indonesia the Tambora volcano awakes it's actual eruption only last for three hours in this short time ashes and ash flows kill about 10,000 inhabitants but as cloud claims many more deaths around the world by this time the world had already grown so close that the word about the catastrophe has spread to Europe shortly afterwards the sulfur reaches our continent the clouds color the sky a deep red there are breathtaking sunsets that have been captured by William Turner and are preserved until today but this beauty is the harbinger of a catastrophe what follows are cold spells bad harvests and the biggest famine of the nineteenth century the number of victims of Tambora sulfur clouds can only be estimated on a global scale the volcano probably cost ten times the amount of lives than the eruption in Indonesia and Germany many people are forced to flee their own the ice cores from Greenland are analyzed in the Alfred vigener Institute in Brima - will the suspicion of a volcanic eruption in the sixth century the century of the mysterious disease be confirmed there are hundreds of samples stored in cold chambers it is one of the largest ice core storages in the world until now the volcano that poisoned the climate in the 6th century hasn't yet been found we want to reconstruct the climate on the entire planet to paste together the puzzle that is why we have ice cores from all over the world - the analysis of the core from Greenland confirms it the traces of sulfur actually do stem from the 6th century at the same time the cold spell reached Constantinople a previously unknown volcano covers the northern hemisphere with a cloud of sulfur [Music] but the scientists have a suspicion could it be that within a few years there wasn't just one but in fact two eruptions and indeed the laboratory analyses showed that a few centimeters further there is another indication of sulfur a second volcano had poisoned the climate just a few years after the first and the epidemic follows this eruption the eruption left traces on the North and the South Pole [Music] a volcano that spit them out must therefore be found in the middle close to the equator in El Salvador hidden away from the world until now lies the illa peg all the traces of its last eruption have long since been overgrown by the tropical rainforest Robert dole of the University of Austin Texas has specialized in the study of past ecosystems he is convinced that the Yellow Pongo is responsible for the climate chaos in the 6th century and he is looking for evidence to prove his theory the volcano is basically the lake what you see here is an outline of the entire area that was erupted all at once when this volcano erupted 1,500 years ago so instead of just having a single vent where lava would come up through a single vent we have many vents and all of that material was expelled explosively at once the eruption must have been immense it buried the entire area under a several meter high layer of ashes volcanic ash doesn't have a lot in common with regular ash it is finally scattered rock the force of the explosion ripped apart huge amounts of lava and turned it into dust [Music] we find an ash that's light and color like this it's very exciting for someone like me because what it tells us is that it's both high in silica and that it was erupted explosively in a geologic instant might have been a day might have been two days but a huge amount of material was erupted all at once which tells us of the strength and magnitude and sheer immensity Robert dole tries to reconstruct exactly what happened during the eruption he interprets the geological traces that are invisible to most people [Music] as long as the giant is asleep nothing tells of the danger lying beneath even back then the volcano was a crater lake its magma chamber lies underneath the pressure in it slowly increases until it reaches a critical point the gases that are freed in the molten rock start to ascend steam created by the heat of the magma chamber settles over the landscape like fog until suddenly the roof of the chamber flies up like the cork of a bottle of champagne [Music] [Music] as the eruption column falls back into itself Hiero plastic streams flow over the earth the ash clouds as hot as 700 degrees Celsius destroy everything in their way not only do they flow over the edge and huge sheets but they flow through the valleys and up mountain sides and there's some estimates that they float as high as 1,500 meters in some places up hillsides according to geologists working in this area so you can't outrun these events you cannot outrun a pyroclastic flow you can't hide from a pyroclastic flow you die in a pyroclastic flow [Music] it's unlikely that anyone in a radius of 1,000 square kilometers survive this inferno [Music] today only the ashes showed just how big the eruption was [Music] the size of the eruption by measuring the thickness not only right by the crater itself but as we get further and further away the more measurements we have the more accurately we can estimate the size of the eruption itself in order to discover the world's biggest volcanoes one can't solely rely on the search on land the ship PDR carries a team from the Kiel Research Institute GEOMAR that will examine the ocean floor around Cape bed there is a steel pipe on the underside of the two-ton weight which is supposed to be jammed into the seabed that way it is possible to extract a drilling core of about 9 meters but only if it doesn't hit a spot on the ground that is too hard the gravity core has to sink down to about three and a half kilometers until it reaches the seabed at a speed of one meter per second this can take up to an hour time and again sediment coring continues to unveil previously unknown volcanic eruptions important information in order to understand the impact of volcanoes on the history of the earth the actual success of a team was uncertain but at 8:00 in the morning hope turns to certainty the drilling has succeeded the drill sleeve contains everything that has swept over the ocean floor for centuries even volcanic ash volcanologist f akuto of collect samples of this ash from all over the world he is eager to discover the frequency of big volcanic eruptions once we find 10 layers of ash in a coil we examine in what direction the ashes flew only with the information of dissemination at hand is when able to make other predictions like the volume that came out of this eruption the sediment cores have a big advantage other than sulfur ash can be traced back to a particular volcano it is like a fingerprint every volcano and every eruption is unique in the GEOMAR Institute in Kiel there are samples from all around the world the ashes of the ocean floor can therefore be traced back exactly to a particular eruption Stefan koutaiev has brought in several sediment samples of the Pacific Ocean floor close to Central America's coast the type of crystals in the ashes alone can reveal their possible origin [Music] the volcanologist has a suspicion the mineral is typical for the last big eruption of the Yellow Pongo volcano the exact composition reveals of the ashes are indeed from El Salvador even though he has found them hundreds of kilometres further away on the pacific ocean floor [Music] [Music] everybody's in Vig how am i doing so we could place the marine ash layers that we found and it had previously been undiscovered in correlation with the eruption of the elope angle now we have a result of an expansion of 1.2 million square kilometers which is about four times the size of Germany when you get FEMA funds on this proves that the eruption of Ilopango catapulted more ash and gas into the atmosphere than any other volcano has in the last two thousand years [Music] today buildings cover the ash in many places as a matter of fact the capital of San Salvador was built on it 16 kilometers away from the still active volcano no one is prepared for a possible eruption of the volcano especially not on the scale that the amount of ash of previous eruption suggests the country has other more pressing problems there are however six million people living in a radius of 100 kilometers around a volcano anywhere between North America Central America and South America no country is more densely populated than El Salvador what does that mean there's land scarcity there's not enough room for all these people to live so to think of moving an entire city like San Salvador even to ask people to move off the flanks of a volcano that we know is active is very very difficult because that's all they have therefore it is even more important to examine the early eruptions of the elope Ando [Music] Robert dole wants to get an impression of the area around the crater lake he hopes to find regional indications of the last big eruption of the volcano because the dispersion of the ashes reveal which areas might be in danger in the future generations have settled in this area without even knowing about the volcano's existence the giant has been dormant for several centuries and no one remembers the big eruption was it really a trace of sulfur from here that was found in the ice cores [Music] if you look across this valley now you can see it's a broad relatively flat valley that's quite rich with all the volcanic material to fallen over thousands of years and developed into rich agricultural soils so you can see why people were attracted unto this region in the first place [Music] agriculture has erased the traces of the eruption even further this makes it almost impossible to determine the exact time of the eruption volcanic ash is made up of inorganic material like stone or fragments of glass their age is indeterminable Roberto has to rely on the remains of living beings that died during the eruption wood is a great help here it was carbonized in the scorching ash but didn't burn up completely due to the lack of oxygen that is how it is possible to narrow down the exact time of the eruption it's a time capsule it's it's a precise moment in time that's captured in the sash so when we dig these pieces of wood out the smallest pieces that we find the big tree trunks that we find any piece of wood that we're able to pull out of this ash can then directly be associated with the time of the eruption but is there more what is the second kind of an calientes these are rare moments of joy for Robert Dahl and his colleagues because the carbonized wood has chemical substances that steadily decompose over the years the trees time of death can be determined by measuring the decomposition in the laboratory it's a nemesis ensue me my former days you see Boyle vet these samples have helped us narrow the dating range from 120 years down to more like 20 years and we've really been able to pinpoint and say yes ELA Pongo was not a fifth-century eruption it happened in the early 6th century AD following the eruption there was a cooled spell of 15 years that reached all the way to Constantinople once there the unknown disease spreads further a desperation people turned to religion emperor justinian even mandates forced baptisms to appease the alleged wrath of God but to no avail more and more residents fall sick and die the disease spreads from Asia all the way through the East Roman Empire and here [Music] it's tres goes all the way to Munich and the suburb of ash Heim so many people died within a short time period that several bodies had to be put into the same grave but here time has erased almost all traces the only surviving evidence could possibly be found in the people's teeth [Music] bulgar shows of the Institute for microbiology of the German armed forces hopes to solve the riddle by using forensic methods special suits protect the samples against contamination because one skin flaky loan is all it takes to soil the last DNA samples before their analysis the scientists managed to isolate the genetic substance it belongs to a bacteria that caused the deadliest infectious disease in the history of humankind yes Sania pestis or the plague the up Google the cooling off that happened back then led to further weakening of the population I packaged face water as well there were extreme famines and that meant that people don't have enough to eat mention hutton even rodents that her an important factor for the transmission of the plague retreated to the cities where there was still some food left and that is obviously how humans came into more contact the pathogenicity mentioned are not really familiar with America you contact the coffee the plague bacterium actually feeds off the blood of rodents the connection to humans is created by fleas once the flea changes its host it transmits the pathogen and the risk of an infection increases with every animal a human has contact with [Music] disculpa there was terrible IG the immune system was severely weakened and all that further the expansion of the pathogen which in turn was you cost the lives of millions of people far away the ill upon go and El Salvador changes the climate famine ensues the population becomes more vulnerable to the plague the disease can strike anyone it blurs the lines between the rich and the poor [Music] panic and chaos ensues there is no more food the emperor cannot uphold law and order photographer Dustin Oscar motions to the fact that the Emperor himself was struck with the Plagueis obviously increased the insecurity immensely by the marzipan if one is seeing this says one of God's plans it was clear that the Emperor is being punished and there for a time it was losing the grounds of his illegitimate rule importance I know the dictum of sure even the emperor who was godlike in the eyes of the population is struck by the plague [Music] in view of the span of a human life volcanic eruptions that trigger climate chaos are comparatively rare so rare in fact that their risk is often forgotten but they have nevertheless been present throughout history in 2014 danger came very close the bada boom Go volcano in Iceland had been belching out lava for several months and it still pumps about 35,000 tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the air no one knows yet how the eruption will develop and when it is going to come to a halt the volcano is located under Europe's largest glacier once the lava comes too close to the ice there's a possibility of a hydrogen explosion if this were to happen the gases would rise up even higher and Iceland is close to Western Europe the sulphur could make it all the way to Germany even without such an explosion one look into history reveals the possible consequences the winter of 1784 was one of the hardest ever to hit Central Europe and the following spring melt water and ice flooded down the rivers the flood breaks bridges causing many stretches of land to disappear there are severe floods and birds pork and other cities cologne reports a water level of almost 14 litres the highest water level ever measured [Music] even at the start of the eruption volcanic gases drift to Western Europe John Gratton a geographer at the University of Wales has assembled accounts of contemporary witnesses on the 23rd of June 1783 people across Western Europe woke up to earth to a changed world forests been stripped of their leaves and as an intense smell of sulphur in the air because of the disaster was the Icelandic volcano lacking a giant gap in the earth that produces more than six thousand cubic meters of lava per second within eight months it releases approximately 120 million tons of sulphur dioxide which travels to Western Europe and changes the local climate there are very clear descriptions of people struggling to breathe of an uncomfortable pressure palpitations of the heart of mysterious ages and fevers of outbreaks of terrible diarrhea the bloody flocks there are theories that imply that the Laki eruption is coal responsible for the French Revolution ever since then lucky has been dormant but what would happen if the giant awakens again today the atmosphere is a lot more polluted than during the eruption of locky calculations show that today four hundred thirty thousand people died prematurely due to the effects of dust particles industrial plants and traffic pollute the environment not only through emissions of carbon dioxide but also through very small particles in the air Oh Kenny gases would burden the atmosphere even further scientists have calculated that if this were to happen there would be 140,000 more deaths per year the purpose of the federal office of citizen protection and disaster assistance in bond is to organize quick aid in times of crisis [Music] kristov Unger is in charge of the institution he and his co-workers develop strategies to prepare for multiple instances of crisis are we prepared for a volcanic eruption happening far away of Gaza at the moment we are not preparing for gases or dust particles in the air that might reach Germany but muons that's at least four but the consequences of a volcanic winter are comparable to today's weather extremes the onset of a cold spell could have far-reaching effects as the example of the Monsterland shows in 2005 there is a snowstorm leaving up to half a meter of snow our poles fall over under the weight and there are entire stretches of land that are plunged into darkness 250,000 people are without electricity some even for several days and that was relatively harmless a blackout of a larger area would be disastrous kadu comes files in Clank no radio no TV no computer is hardly any cash left as you can try anything gas stations need electricity to pump gasoline security systems would be working soon your industry it would have a huge impact on our social life competing games is the total in the last year's Germany has repeatedly had to fight with cold weather and high water levels but not to the extent as after the lucky eruption in the 17th century and such a catastrophic case the danger of infectious diseases would increase what would happen if 30% of the population fell sick jihad we have a problem of supplies because the supply chains will break kicking but I think there'd be very different kinds of problems and security in vulnerable institutions I understood where there wouldn't be enough personnel of that business even the question of who was relaxed they do it when swung who will receive the very short supplies of vaccine instead of this agreed to an immense impact on all areas in society as a whole I don't know I secure the residents of Constantinople don't fare any different and not knowing the cause of the disease makes them even more afraid more and more the city is overwhelmed with the plague it isn't just the people that fall sick but the system itself that is beginning to fail panic ensues civilization unravels I'm from er D there simply wasn't enough population and military capacity skirts to protect these regions and these cities for fighting because the plague had decimated too many of them smart and it isn't just the effects on the people's health the plague kills soldiers and taxpayers trust in the power of the state has been gravely damaged even after 100 years the Empire cannot defeat the onslaught of the Arabs [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and that is how the eruption of the illa Pongo might have also heralded the end of antiquity itself since the time of emperor justinian the world population has grown to over seven billion people and more than half of them live in cities and depend on transport trade and telecommunication and you protect all these people against a volcanic eruption with a global effect there are about 1500 active volcanoes worldwide but only 100 of them are under local surveillance by observatories and the last eruption of the other volcanoes isn't even known but even if the volcanoes are well monitored an eruption is still hard to predict [Music] even experienced scientists can make horrendous mistakes [Music] in 1993 an international team of researchers performed measurements on the peak of the Colombian volcano Galeras they are in good spirits nobody seems to be bothered by the mist that covers the view on the crater suddenly the volcanologists are taken aback by a hydrogen explosion rocks and small particles fly up in the air one part of the group is still on the inside of the crater [Music] there is no hope for these nine people others are severely injured a joyous trip has turned into a nightmare [Music] only two months later the volcano erupts again this time it also gets the scientists research station that was seen as secure at the time of the first eruption [Music] so even in modern times even in the developed world and rich countries the level of preparedness is not adequate to handle such a large sudden event and an hour no matter how many instruments we have measuring small earthquakes and measuring the Earth's elevation as it as it rises in anticipation of an earthquake we can't always predict these events so even if scientists know that a volcanic eruption is about to happen do they know the course of the eruption in 1980 mount st. Helens announced another eruption through several small earthquakes it is located on the west coast of the USA close to the major cities of Portland and Seattle Richard weight of the US Geological Survey witness the eruption as so many others he was convinced that he knew what was going to happen by late March this word bulge was in everybody's lips so that it got big enough that and the volcano steep enough that many people suspect that it's kind of at some point it's going to start landsliding what was expected as though is that that'd be a series of small landslides and that would be a warning and people could get out the eruption was announced in the media and drew more and more onlookers to the area but then Mount st. Helens erupts and a totally unexpected way an earthquake lets the entire North Slope slide down the mountain explodes due to the loss of pressure mud and small stones rush down the hillside no that was not anticipated it went over one ridge down into a valley over the next ridge and disc going out and out 20 kilometers 30 kilometers maybe I don't even know how far it went a way out and nobody anticipated anything like that ash clouds and mudslides overrun the fleeing people 57 people died among them are scientists that miscalculated the impact of the eruption the surrounding area is covered in dust 540 million tons of volcanic ash are dispersed over an area larger than the Netherlands only weeks later the immensity becomes clear there is a huge hole in the volcanic cone the desert of cated area in front of the opening is over 600 square kilometers large as a comparison the eruption of the Yellow Pongo and 540 ad was about 10 times as large so we do know that modern science can help us predict somewhat when these events will occur but we've never been tested on the level of Ilopango we've never had a massive eruption of this size near a densely populated urban center never so what happens when this happens near Seattle what happens when this happens in Naples will our technology be good enough to get everybody out there are more than 67 large cities worldwide located close to an active volcano that means there are about 116 million people living dangerously close to these giants there are already 37 million of them living in the area of Tokyo in the shadow of Mount Fuji its last big eruption happened more than 300 years ago geologically speaking this is the blink of an eye if it were to erupted its ashes would destroy the entire infrastructure of the city [Music] the situation in Seattle isn't much better scientists eat Mount Rainier as one of the sleeping giants that could erupt at any time [Music] even in Europe it's dangerous Mount Vesuvius alone could destroy Naples entirely but there's an even larger magma chamber in the Bay of Naples [Music] asou friar Hills volcano located close to Plymouth the capital of the Caribbean island of Montserrat can provide a glimpse into the possible effects of an eruption happening close to a city before the city was buried under its ashes several times there were four thousand people living here hardly anyone has stayed today plymouth is a ghost town volcanic eruptions are a global threat but their awakening also offers new possibilities because with every one of these eruptions scientists learn more about them one such example is Mount Saint Helens even if every giant is unique a few of the results taken from here can be applied to other volcanoes as well is a birthplace to modern Volcanology in many ways especially especially some of the extraordinary events this landslide I mean there's probably four or five hundred volcanoes around the world now that they've had a landslide we know it because of this I mean this is what opened the door to understanding it only a few years ago a young geologist developed a groundbreaking method it enables us to predict a volcanic eruption more precisely today experts from the US Geological Survey fly to the top of the mountain several times down here it's about 30 degrees in the shade but on top the scientists have to deal with very cold temperatures Angella Dieffenbach monitors the volcano from the air the most important point for her is that the method is simple flexible and affordable enough for developing countries where a lot of volcanoes are not monitored on a regular basis you can use a point-and-shoot camera or smartphone camera you just want to make sure you have good lens characteristics so you don't want like a GoPro camera wouldn't be that good for this type of work because you have a lot of radial distortion and that translates into your models [Music] currently there is a plug of coal drama that keeps the volcano shut the so called lava dome is dangerous because it stores pressure underneath it any change in the surface could be a sign of a possible eruption [Music] Angella Dieffenbach shoots her photos from a precisely chosen angle [Music] the brilliance of the idea is that the photos form a basis on which her computer generates an exact 3d replica of the volcano if she then compares the data to earlier flights the smallest change has become visible immediately this method can even be applied during an eruption because it is often in the last moment that one can predict how the giant is truly going to act this particular lava dome doesn't pose much of a threat because it up today slowly and and it was relatively cool when it erupted but other lava domes that other volcanoes tend to collapse either from big explosions or by gravitational forces and when they collapse they produce pyroclastic flows which are very dangerous to people Mount Saint Helens is a very well monitored volcano but there are many sleeping giants all over the world that can hardly be researched there is a huge seething lava lake and the Democratic Republic of Congo for example the Nira Ganga lies in the middle of an area that is torn apart by Civil War and even if the Giants lie in sparsely populated regions like the tug of war and Papua New Guinea their load of sulfur can reach any corner of the world this is why Angela D Fanbox method is so beneficial it helps to assess the risks [Music] but scientists can nevertheless only warn in time they cannot stop an eruption from happening [Music] in the midst of big cities life seems to be as safe as ever but history shows that some things aren't as they seem [Music]

Channel: hazards and catastrophes

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Keywords: Volcano, volcano volcanoes, volcano documentary, volcano documentary national geographic, volcano power of volcanoes, volcano eruption, volcano catastrophe, volcano explosion, volcano and earthquake, volcano storm, volcano scientist, volcano research, volcano research project, volcano death, volcano lava, volcano magma, volcano caught on camera, volcano erupting, volcano etna, volcano crater, volcano bali, volcano the power of volcanos, volcano year without summer

Id: D7fR2Z880z8

Length: 52min 39sec (3159 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2017