Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel Bomb here with another classic from our podcast's archives.
Speaker 1: This one covers a natural phenomenon that you probably don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about, but that's nonetheless fascinatingly terrifying. Exploding lakes.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb Here. Today we're talking
Speaker 1: about a rare but incredibly deadly natural phenomenon, exploding lakes
Speaker 1: aka limnic eruptions. A limnic eruption is what happens when
Speaker 1: deadly gases like carbon dioxide explode out of volcanic lakes.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the carnage unfolds on multiple fronts. Just as lethal
Speaker 1: clouds suffocate humans and animals, the abrupt displacement of water
Speaker 1: is liable to create tsunamis. That exact combination of events
Speaker 1: killed more than seventeen hundred people one grim summer day
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six in the West African country of Cameroon.
Speaker 1: And now sign up. Wonder if an even bigger limnic
Speaker 1: eruption is in the making. But how does such an
Speaker 1: explosion happen? Let's start with water pressure. Water pressure increases
Speaker 1: with depth. That's why scuba divers can't venture too far
Speaker 1: below the surface without the right equipment. The force that's
Speaker 1: exerted upon a submerged object by the weight of all
Speaker 1: the liquid above it is called hydrostatic pressure. Normally, this
Speaker 1: pressure intensifies by fourteen point five pounds per square inch
Speaker 1: or one hundred kilopaskels or one bar for every ten
Speaker 1: meters of water depth. That's about thirty three feet. But
Speaker 1: the key to limnic eruptions lies in temperature. Gases dissolve
Speaker 1: more easily in cold, high pressure water. Limnic eruptions can
Speaker 1: only occur in deep bodies of water with a lot
Speaker 1: of hydrostatic pressure at the bottom. There must also be
Speaker 1: a significant difference in both the pressure and temperature between
Speaker 1: the surface water and the lower depths, with the lower
Speaker 1: depths being much chillier. Stratification will act like a barrier,
Speaker 1: keeping that dissolved gas confined to the lake bottom, where
Speaker 1: it can't depressurize and escape out into the atmosphere. Because
Speaker 1: it's trapped, the dissolved gas accumulates in massive and potentially
Speaker 1: deadly quantities. Explosions are impossible in lakes whose lower and
Speaker 1: upper water levels intermingle on the regular For build up
Speaker 1: to occur. The water also needs a continuous supply of
Speaker 1: some highly soluble gas, like carbon dioxide or methane, and
Speaker 1: that's where volcanism comes in. At localities with active volcanoes,
Speaker 1: buried magma is liable to send methane, CO two and
Speaker 1: other gases seeping up through thin sections of Earth's crust.
Speaker 1: If a lake is overhead, the gas may pass right
Speaker 1: into the water, traveling by volcanic vents and other roots.
Speaker 1: That brings us back to Cameroon and to its lakes.
Speaker 1: NEOs and Monoun both are located in a volcanic field,
Speaker 1: and both lake bottoms are oversaturated with carbon dioxide, which
Speaker 1: underlying magma sends their way. On August fifteenth of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, some of the deep water in Monoun that
Speaker 1: had been loaded up with the dissolved gas ascended to
Speaker 1: the surface. No one knows why this happened. It's possible
Speaker 1: that heavy rainfall and an earthquaker a landslide displaced some
Speaker 1: of the lake bottom water. Regardless, as the water rose,
Speaker 1: the dissolved carbon dioxide lurking inside it became depressurized and
Speaker 1: formed bubbles. Those bubbles drove even more of the water
Speaker 1: up to the top of the lake, resulting in a massive,
Speaker 1: vowel smelling cloud of carbon dioxide gas. Under the wrong
Speaker 1: set of circumstances, this gas is extremely dangerous to people.
Speaker 1: Large quantities of CO two cling to the ground and
Speaker 1: displaced oxygen, which can lead to death by suffocation. The
Speaker 1: eruption killed at least thirty seven people, and two years later,
Speaker 1: on August twenty first, nineteen eighty six, Lake NEOs experienced
Speaker 1: a limit eruption of its own. Once again, there was
Speaker 1: a sudden, mysterious upheaval of carbon dioxide laden water from
Speaker 1: its frigid, high pressure depths, but this time the body
Speaker 1: count was much higher. Carbon dioxide from the Lake Neo's
Speaker 1: disaster killed approximately one thousand, seven hundred forty six people
Speaker 1: and more than three thousand, five hundred demsic animals. Somewhere
Speaker 1: from three hundred thousand to one point six million metric
Speaker 1: tons of CO two gas burst out of the water
Speaker 1: with enough force to set off a twenty meters tsunami
Speaker 1: that's about sixty six feet tall. That was the last
Speaker 1: recorded limnic eruption. If you're worried about a killer limnic
Speaker 1: eruption coming to a lake, near you. University of Michigan
Speaker 1: geoscience professor Yuxyu Jang says you probably shouldn't be. Lake
Speaker 1: NEOs and Lake Monoon are located just above the equator,
Speaker 1: where it tends to be warm all year round, and
Speaker 1: there's just no way for a limnic eruption to happen
Speaker 1: in a temperate body of water. In places where seasonal
Speaker 1: temperatures vary widely, like in the Great Lakes, lake surfaces
Speaker 1: often cool down, causing the water at that level to
Speaker 1: sink and swap places with the layers of water beneath it.
Speaker 1: Any gas is dissolved in there don't stay trapped. They're
Speaker 1: released as they depressurize nearer to the surface. No gas accumulation,
Speaker 1: no eruptions. However, Jiang and many of his colleagues have
Speaker 1: taken a healthy interest in Lake Kivu, an up and
Speaker 1: coming vacation destination on the border of Rwanda A the
Speaker 1: Democratic Republic of the Congo. Why because it seems to
Speaker 1: have all the necessary criteria for a truly colossal limnic eruption.
Speaker 1: The lake contains about ten point five billion cubic feet
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide. That's about three hundred billion cubic meters
Speaker 1: and two billion cubic feet of methane about sixty billion
Speaker 1: cubic meters, all lurking near the bottom. For those gases
Speaker 1: to explode from the lake's surface, the two million people
Speaker 1: who live around Kivu might find themselves in jeopardy. One
Speaker 1: possible solution, though, harvest those very gases as a possible
Speaker 1: energy source by an extraction barge. Kivu Wat is a
Speaker 1: one of a kind, two hundred million dollar facility that
Speaker 1: uses an offshore barge to draw up water from the lake.
Speaker 1: It then siphons off the methane and sends it to
Speaker 1: a power plant, generating electricity for the area. When life
Speaker 1: gives you lemons, turn it into electricity. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: on the article what makes killer Lakes Explode on HowStuffWorks
Speaker 1: dot com, written by Mark Mancini. Brainstuff is production of
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