What Makes an Old Geyser Faithful?
Source: Yellowstone National Park
May 30, 2008 - 8:55:19 AM
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New research suggests that how often Old Faithful and other Yellowstone geysers
erupt may depend on annual rainfall patterns.
Geysers are rare hot
springs that periodically erupt bursts of steam and hot water. Old Faithful has
remained faithful for at least the past 135 years, showering appreciative
tourists every 50 to 90 minutes (most recently an average of 91
minutes).
USGS researcher Shaul Hurwitz and his colleagues from Stanford
University and Yellowstone National Park have discovered that changes of water
supply to a geyser’s underground plumbing may have a large influence on eruption
intervals; that is, the time between eruptions. For example, geysers appear to
lengthen and shorten their intervals on cycles that mimic annual dry and wet
periods.
Multi-year precipitation records also strongly correlate with
geyser behavior. Based on these results, the study proposes that an extended
drought should result in longer intervals between eruptions, and perhaps even
cessation of activity in some geysers. In contrast, in years with high
precipitation, eruption intervals should be more frequent. The new research
paper, “Climate-Induced Variations of Geyser Periodicity in Yellowstone National
Park, USA,” is published in the June issue of the journal Geology
Additional
information: Geysers are extremely rare; perhaps less than 1000 exist worldwide,
with more than half of them in Yellowstone National Park. The famous Old
Faithful Geyser was named in 1870 during the Washburn-Langford-Doane Yellowstone
expedition and was the first geyser in the Park to be named. Old Faithful
eruptions can be viewed on any computer on Earth via a video camera deployed by
the National Park Service.
Instrumental data which records geyser eruption times is available at http://www.geyserstudy.org/. Long-term
meteorological trends can be inferred from seasonal streamflow trends like those
in the Madison River ().
This
study is a cooperative effort involving the U.S. Geological Survey and the
National Park Service.
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