Abstract
Volcanoes constitute dissipative systems with many degrees of freedom. Their eruptions are the result of complex processes that involve interacting chemical-physical systems. At present, due to the complexity of involved phenomena and to the lack of precise measurements, both analytical and numerical models are unable to simultaneously include the main processes involved in eruptions thus making forecasts of volcanic dynamics rather unreliable. On the other hand, accurate forecasts of some eruption parameters, such as the duration, could be a key factor in natural hazard estimation and mitigation. Analyzing a large database with most of all the known volcanic eruptions, we have determined that the duration of eruptions seems to be described by a universal distribution which characterizes eruption duration dynamics. In particular, this paper presents a plausible global power-law distribution of durations of volcanic eruptions that holds worldwide for different volcanic environments. We also introduce a new, simple and realistic pipe model that can follow the same found empirical distribution. Since the proposed model belongs to the family of the self-organized systems it may support the hypothesis that simple mechanisms can lead naturally to the emergent complexity in volcanic behaviour.
Highlights
Volcanoes constitute dissipative systems with many degrees of freedom
Following the trace in Clauset et al.[30] we embraced the following statistically valid approach for investigating the hypothesis of power-law distribution for volcanic eruption durations: we first fitted the power law with a reliable method based on the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE), tested the power-law’s plausibility and we compared the law against alternative distributions
The results presented here suggest that the power-law behaviour in volcanic eruption durations seems a reasonably satisfactory representation of the duration-frequency distribution at least for moderate-to-long eruptions
Summary
Volcanoes constitute dissipative systems with many degrees of freedom. Their eruptions are the result of complex processes that involve interacting chemical-physical systems. An eruption will normally last until the local melt has been depleted, or until the pressure level of the gas inside the magma reservoir reaches the pre-eruption pressure conditions. Some authors have even proposed models based on fluid-rock complex systems to support the hypothesis of emerging self-organization in volcano dynamics[9,18]. We focus on volcanic eruptions exploring the possibility that their durations follow a power-law distribution, at least for moderate-to-long lasting eruptions
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