Now it’s getting serious: experts warn of the eruption of the supervolcano near Naples For the first time ever: Pope will participate in the World Climate Conference

The population in the so-called red zone around the southern Italian port city of Pozzuoli near Naples has not been sleeping well for a long time: for months, the earth in the Phlegraean Fields has been shaking dozens of times a day – usually barely noticeable, but occasionally relatively violent, just like before three weeks. The reason: a supervolcano rumbles beneath the Campi Flegrei (“burning fields”).

Hot gases and water vapor keep pushing the surface of the so-called caldera, the volcanic cauldron, upwards – now at 15 millimeters per month, and the trend is increasing. This creates enormous tensions that are released during earthquakes. The ground has been raised a total of 2 meters since 2006 – 20 centimeters more than during the last ‘critical situation’ forty years ago.

The researchers from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) had always put residents’ fears of a potentially imminent, devastating eruption of the supervolcano into perspective, saying that there was nothing to indicate that the uplift of the ground was not only due to was due to gases, but rising magma was also involved.

Rising magma increases fear

However, this assessment has now apparently changed following new, intensive research in recent weeks. “According to the opinion of the Commission on Major Risks for Civil Protection, there is increasing evidence that magma is also involved in earthquakes and ground uplift,” Italian Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci emphasized on Tuesday evening.

That would be very worrying and Minister Musumeci is therefore considering raising the danger level for the Phlegraean Fields from yellow to orange (“pre-alert”). This means that an outbreak no longer threatens ‘in a few months’, as with danger level yellow, but ‘in a few weeks’.

Danger level orange would mean that supervision will be tightened again and the population will be extensively informed about evacuation plans, escape routes and rules of conduct. However, an effective evacuation would only take place when the danger level was red (“alert”). The disaster would affect approximately 500,000 residents in seven communities in the Phlegraean Fields and should occur within 72 hours.

The mayor of the small town of Bacoli, which is also located in the volcanic caldera of the Phlegraean Fields, has accused the civil protection of scaring away tourists with its warnings.

In fact, a timely prediction of an eruption is virtually impossible: “In recent decades it has been shown that the reliability of eruption predictions is very low – at 30 percent if all goes well,” wrote geophysicist Giuseppe De Natale in 2020. aargauerzeitung.ch)