Maybe its explosive eruption occured because its magma chamber is shallower. The contact with ocean's water triggered the explosion, like in Hunga-Tonga volcano.

Just a thought, but would an ice age have an effect on this eruption? Not only would the Arctic be cooler then, but there'd be a thick layer of ice over the entire region which would increase pressure on the rock below. Is it possible that the Earth going into an inter-glacial period might then trigger the eruption?

Fellas, if you are wondering...it's the gakkel ridge caldera

Nicely done, quite interesting and you are getting better at the narration all the time. Indeed, I'm starting to get hooked! I safely predict you'll easily pass the 200k subscribers.

This caldera is located on depth of around 4,000 meters below sea level. 10 meter of sea level gives pressure equal to one atmosphere. So, this cauldera is under water pressure of around 400 atmospheres or about 400 bar ( 400x10^5 newtons per square meter). Any eruption on this point will result in creating of a solid magmatic plug that would prevent further eruptions. But seismic waves from this event could provoke power earthquakes far away from that region.

I wonder if the flattening of the earths poles, due to centrifugal force, was another added reason why this caldera is so unique.

To me, the Gakkel Ridge Caldera looks like it's at the leading edge of the mid mid-Atlantic ridge system. Based on the topographic map provided, it doesn't appear to be moving into a subduction zone or a transverse fault system. I looks like it heading into a continental shelf area of Asia (Siberia). This would explain why the ridge is spreading slower than the rest of the spreading ridge because it is newer. This would also explain why the volcano is more explosive because it is incorporating continental crust which changes the mafic composition of the magma. It might be similar to the Gulf of California and Long Caldera Super volcano, but in an oceanic basin carved out by glaciers. Just my Two cents.

This is a so informative and fun ro watch. Love your content. Can not wait for the next one

Fascinating and informative. Great work.

Any thoughts/theories on the relations between the recent solar CME's and the increase in earthquakes and volcanos activity lately?

Most interesting, thank you. A thought: It looks like the caldera is right at the end of the mid-ocean ridge - if one wants to stop a tear in something from propagating drill a hole at the propagation point. Might the presence of this super volcano explain why spreading is so slow in this area? A bit of a circular argument but is this super volcano in some way creating the circumstances for it's own existence? (if so how did it all start?)

I had never heard of the Gakkel Ridge Volcano until I saw this video. These discoveries really make you wonder, what else is out there?

Your videos are always super interesting and educational.

Enjoying your stuff

I see the clear footprint of a previous super volcanic caldera directly behind that which you outlined. Would you agree, and if so, could this be the mechanism used to slowly creep along our rift zones? Maybe worth investigating even earlier footprints to validate the claim. Goid work by the way, love your videos. 💪👊

Very informative, thanks for posting!

that was a fairly good video. you missed a few vital coefficients, which explain why the mid arctic ridge has been as explosive as other arctic surpervolcanoes (eg, aniakchak, great sitka) and why it seems to move slower than other rift zones.. lets begin with location... the arctic is the polar region closest to the sun, where the planets ionosphere, directs slow moving solar radiants to the earth. so theres one source of extra energy(work with me here on the law of energy conservation please). in this same region, greater levels of magnetism from the sun are observed, due to earth being south of the suns equator. ferrous magmas are heavily influenced by solar magnetism. so we got extra slow radiants converging in an area of greater magnetic pull/magmatic uplift. now its been documented that cosmic rays induce lava chambers to act like a boiling kettle. extra energies passing through magma, superheat it and induce bubble nucleation(explosive eruptions). now we get to the tricky bit, which relates to the terra nova that began on November 11th, 2018. on that day, lithospheric drip occurred beneath and adjacent to , Mayotte Island. resulting from that drip, the earth rang like a bell from its core. the reason for the instigation of our current starsystem wide terra nova, is the same as that which ended devonian period and created the carboniferous.. the sun which exists 8 light minutes from earth, transformed into a Gamma Ray/ Positron Pulsar, on January 31st, 2017. its from this transformation into a literal death star, that a mass extinction occurred at the end of the devonian, as its doing today. because it took 22 months for terra nova to begin; post transformation of sol, it will take a minimum of 22 months post solar maximum, for the current terra nova phase to reach a climatic point. supervolcanoes are born of Gamma rays and Muons, with a hint of electro-magnetism. to understand earths future geology, go back and look what happened during the carboniferous...#snowball_earth_from_mass_volcanism

Great vid enjoyed that! 👍

cheers for the well presented content

Is there any chance that this was initiated by a large iron meteor? It looks like a ballistic entry point with a low angle?

I could feel your enthusiasm in what you do. Nice informative video! I subscibed👍

60k subs, nice work sir! and you will get many more.

pole migration man, that thing is so close to that path it's a little scary. I often suspected that ring shaped ridge was a big volcano. thx 4 the vid man😀

One million years ago was the height of the Pleistocene glaciation. An Antarctic-scale ice sheet centered on Hudson Bay covered North America to a thickness of two miles or more and probably spread out into ice shelves on the order of Ross or Weddel. Might they perhaps have been grounded on the Gakkel Ridge? And might this explain both the existence of such a volcano and its anomalous eruption?

I watched a few of the expanding earth theory vids and the Atlantic and Pacific ridgelines that are floating around out there on you tube. This one almost adds answers to those. Cool Video thanks!

Thanks for a great show

Would there be any point to exploring the antipodal region of this caldera, or the region that would have been antipodal 1.1Mya, for an impact event? There is a strangely circular/ovoid landmass around Coats Land that shows on maps of the topography below the ice.

I would like to add that temperature and silica levels aren't the only factors that affect magma viscosity. Although you don't hear about it often, Magneto-hydrodynamics, or magneto-fluid dynamics, also play a part in the viscosity of magma. As you have said, Basalt is rich with Iron and Magnesium with are both magnetic metals and are thus affected by the magnetic fields of the environment they enhabit. A change in that magnetic field will result in a change in viscosity. There is also the presence of Cosmic Rays that has been proven to also affect viscosity via the enhancement of homogeneous nucleation in supersaturated magma, which is suspected to have been a factor in the 1991 Mt Pinatubo eruption. With these new factors to consider, the Gakkal Ridge Super volcanic eruption could have also been caused by either a shift in the Earth's magnetic field and/or an intense bombardment of Cosmic Rays which would have been funneled into the polar region.

THANKS great coverage a surprising aspect of rifts. JG from Pennsylvania

Ice core samples from Greenland might shed more info on the gases from this eruption and the effect on the climate. That would be interesting.

A volcano that hasn't erupted in a million years is not considered to be active. It isn't even considered to be dormant. Moreover, I could only identify the one paper written on the subject. I'm not saying that the alleged supervolcano doesn't exist, but I do question the interpretation of the data. Pyroxene and magnetite are common mineral assemblages in ultramafic rock, coincidentally as they also found peridotite in samples. Nowhere in the paper do I see evidence of advanced differentiation of magma as is commonly seen in silica-rich magmas. If they had found rhyolite or dacite mineral assemblages in the samples, I would have been much less skeptical of their conclusion. The fact that they found pyroxene in association with magnetite and also peridotite tells me that something seems a bit fishy with their interpretation of the data. I could be wrong. A lot more data is needed before I am convinced. Just sayin...

That is a scary thought .......

I don't consider a million years as recent lol, but you do you. Still a very interesting video :) I watched a documentary last night that said there are 50,000 underwater volcanoes all over the world which is quite scary to me.

Wow bro well done on this video

Now I'm wondering if supervolcanism in the arctic and antarctic contributes to ice age formation or propagation.

Not about showing the boreal in the beginning. The very definition of the Arctic is that there can be no trees. That being said, thanks for the great video!

This volcano looks to be at the end of the rift. Could that be a factor. If the rift is 1 centimeter in the middle, the end could be less. Also as other have mentioned the water flashing to steam.

Could gackle ridge be caused by a mantle plume invading the rift zone ?

"Pretend I'm a sea" the most amazing case of the Australian "she'll be right" I have ever seen.

It seems likely that this would occur considering the processes and pressures involved!

Well something caused the Pacific hot spot to take a sudden left turn, very abruptly, or more accurately, the overlying plate took a sudden and abrupt left turn over top of the hotpspot, perhaps that left turn was more global and Gakkal was a result of that. Just spitballing here, I have no way to support that hypothesis but I am fascinated with that sudden left turn of the Pacific plate over the Hawaii hotspot. Frankly, I'm more concerned about that left turn then a super eruption, to some degree.

I know that 1.1 million years ago wasn't very long ago but how about some mention of how the continents were shaped back then? Maybe that point in the crust was at the equator at that time.

The map shows the caldera located at the end of the mid-Atlantic ridge. Would that have a role in the existence of the caldera?

ooooh awesome

From the map you show, it appears the caldera is the end of the line for the rift, that means it could be the hinge point for tectonic movement with compression occuring on the other side. The stresses involed much contribute to the reason the volcano is there in the furst place.

Interesting observation as many you show on your channel. Not sure what your background is, but your conclusions seem reasonable enough, you have at least a long lasting interest in the topic. Keep it up.

One major item not mentioned is that super volcanos are stationary hot spots and long lasting with the surface plates movng over them. While this is the only current one with a speading ridge above it, there should be past examples. Also what evidence is there that super volcanos form at speading ridges. I am happy with various associated volcanic actvity at or near the ridges, but need to be convinced about the super volcano link.

Somewhere I was made aware of many volcanoes under West Antarctica. I’m fairly sure “hundreds” was quoted. Now if it’s just sea floor spreading, then they are not volcanoes. But I’m not very familiar with the Geology of West Antarctica. I’ve also been made aware of cavernous areas below the ice sheet of Antarctica and is of habitable temperature. Do you know more about these volcanoes that are melting the ice sheet from below?

Quite a few explosive volcanoes further south on that ridge in Iceland e.g. Katla and Hekla. Is it possible their magmas are a bit cooler making them more viscous?

Viscosity.... Also pressure from depth / weight of water

You should cite the paper and researchers in your description under the video: Piskarev, A. and Elkina, D. Giant caldera in the Arctic Ocean: Evidence of the catastrophic eruptive event. Sci. Rep. 7, 46248; doi: 10.1038/srep46248 (2017).

Are you able to comment on what is happening with the amount of earthquakes on or near Loyalty Is, near New Caledonia? There has been over 50+ quakes ( aftershocks) in the last 2 days. Thanks

Well, there are active volcanoes on the mid atlantic rift, both at Iceland and on th Jan Mayen islald .. that there should be active volcanoes under the sea floor is no surprise. Is this one super large? Is it new? Is it ongoing?

Wouldn't the colder temperature at the surface create a larger "cap" forcing the magma to have to push against heavier and heavier stone til it erupts?

what's the seismic activity like up there?

I'm not surprised. Remember that our beautiful blue planet at one time was molten & then experienced multiple ice ages & was once a snowball too. How do you get hundreds to thousands of feet of snowball & ice ages to melt & the ice to retreat back towards the arctic & antarctica & basically stay there?!?! Tremendous heat from volcanoes/supervolcanoes from the hot interior of the core of the earth & resulting global warming! Thank god for that too, we human beings would not be able to survive ice ages & snowball earth, unless we became mole people/lived underground off of the geothermal energy of the interior of earth. I spent 3 days in the polar vortex chill of the 2018 winter in wisconsin. Can y'all imagine trying to survive possibly minus 100 to lower temps on a daily basis for many years?!?! We wouldn't be able to do it!! Volcanoes & supervolcanoes: the beautiful the landscapes are, the more violent the processes were to create those beautiful landscapes!!😮

Could it be related to the hotspot that produced the Siberian Traps?

its also on the north pole. the coriolis effect stirs the magma.

Active rift zones are not necessarily particularly hazardous. See: Iceland

Wow, impressive, with the pressure from the few KM of water above the Gakkel ridge caldera, i am surprise it can explode.

When you play back the time, could the position of the super volcano be the position ovelapping with the sibirian trapp eruption when the continent was there 250mio years ago?

Damn those outliers.

Could the proximity of the plate boundary to the caldera be coincidental? The hot spot location being stable. Could that hotspot been responsible for the Siberian Traps volcanic province and it’s location has moved to its present location? Just asking, I’m not a geologist?

Some important things to note - we, as yet, do not understand the following about ANY supervolcano. 1: Why they form 2: How they form: 3: How they erupt - we assume a single massive event, but it is possible that different systems erupt in different ways, with possible smaller eruptions over an extended period rather than a single event - there is some evidence that Toba may have undergone repeated partial collapses and eruptions before the whole thing created the lake we see today - eaully, it appears that Yellowstone produced each caldera in multiple eruptions over several thoudand years - still massive eruptions each one mind - rather than a single event for each caldera. What we do know is that each is associated with a superplume - shield volcanoes are associated with plumes of magam from depper with the mantle that have burnt through the crust and build the cone over extended periods slowly by almost continual eruption - we see this at Hawaii, Reunion, Erta Ale, and other similar edifices around the globe, but these plumes are tiny compared to those associated with the known and confirmed super volcanoes. As an example, the magma chamber under Kilauea is suggested to have a volume of between 40-60 cubic km, however, the magma chamber under yellowstone is estimated to be around 48,000 cubic km - and it is not the largest - recent research in Italy implies that the Campi Flegrei supervolcano, whilst the calderas are smaller than Yellowstone, has a chamber that may have a volume up to 120,000 cubic km - it is this that also made researchers question how these behemoths erupt - when it last became effusive, it created the entire volcanic region around Naples in a few hundred years - this includes all the volcanoes, including Vesuvius, in the region, demonstrating that they may not, at least all, explode in one cataclysmic event, local conditions within the magma are clearly a defining factor in how the event happens, if they are high in dissolved gases they are likely more explosive, as we see with strato volcanoes - more gases, more explosive eruptions (Vesuvius), less gases, more magmatic and effusive eruptions (Etna). The fact is we have a lot to learn about both shield and supervocanoes, we know both are assiated with plumes rising from the mantle, although at vastly differing scales, as we have little idea why this happens - there are theories, some are likely correct, but a fuller understanding is required. That Gakkel Caldera exists should not really be a surpise, and I will bet that when we start to properly map the deep ocean we will find more of these behemoths straddling oceanic plate boundaries - recent research identified another 18500+ volcanoes on the ocean floor that we simply did not know about - and they were only the ones that were obvious - it is likely there are many 1000s more and several supervolcanoes we have yet to identfiy.

So I'm curious, was the caldera in question under water a million years ago?

@OzGeographics, do you suppose the occurrence of the supervolcanic caldera could be due to its proximity to continental crust? Being essentially born on the margin between oceanic and continental crust, as well as it's very slow spreading rate, thus allowing sufficient silica rich magma to build up in the crust causing a supervolcanic eruption? Thats just my thoughts on this. I appreciate your videos!

I have a quick question? I've watched you over the years where you've started and stopped many times. What made you really push to be consistent I have the same issue. What inspired you to just keep going is it looks like you are on it. Don't stop brother got this.

Just because there is no sublimation of rock and sea water doesn't mean sea water isn't intruding, nor does it mean there can't be a mantle plume. I wrote this, by the way, after pausing the video at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="156">2:36</a>s, we'll see what you have to say now.

WOW

Our magnetic pole is headed for the Gakkel Ridge Caldera area. This will allow greater amounts of some energies to pass through Earth in that area, possibly heating the magma more. Solar max, like now, seems to get the pot boiling. Something is "up". The Earth's magnetic pole was in Canada when I learned to use a compass.

Gakkel Ridge is a very weird spreading centre, it's very slow compared to the rest of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and even other rift zones like the East African Rift. Perhaps because the spreading rate is so low at Gakkel Ridge it's possible the magma becomes trapped for far longer than normal underneath the seafloor building large magma chambers and allowing evolution of the normal basalt into more volatile magma types. As for East Africa, there are already numerous large and poorly studied and relatively un-monitored calderas in the rift zone due to low funding, like the Corbetti or Awasa caldera in Ethiopia.

Search Apo Laki Caldera just beside the Benham Rise in the SEA. uts way bigger than that.

How much does the gravity shifts from and in the arctic affect this ridge and the supervolcano? We are rapidly losing Greenland ice sheet and other land based ice sheets in the region. This lessens gravitational pull and pressure in the area. This means changes to the tectonic plates. We have already seen earthquakes that are linked to these changes. The weight of the glaziers are diminishing in the area and that bounces the earth's surface upwards in the area. Changes can be seen already. These changes are not as rapid as melting in the area, but yet still can be measured. We may even lose entire Greenland icesheet (ie. listen what Jason Box says) with its huge volume, pressure against the ground and gravitational pull for nearby water.

Wow! I was just looking at that exact rift just a couple weeks ago! I pondered, 'Could it be a signature of the Magnetic North Pole, pulling on the metals in the crust...🤔?' I absolutely Love your content! Your research is incredibly thorough yet you remain humble and teachable. I learn something new with every video and I Share, Share, Share! Keep being the Man, Oz🔥

The Gakkel Ridge is unlike any type of ridge. Ridges commonly split at 14mm/year, but the Gakkel Ridge splits 9mm/year, meaning large pockets of magma fill up, making the supervolcano.

I wonder if there could be a new hotspot arising associated with this volcano, explaining the type of volcanism seen here.

How deep is the ocean here? Could an overlying weight of water slow things down?

The rift fault looks like it comes from the supervolcano. 🤔

The proximity of a magnetic pole and its attraction of charged articles from the sun and cosmos must be considered. And what happened to the tectonic subduction model?

Quit shallow is bad, this agree with. I should point out, I do enjoy your video even with the criticism, if one isn't critical then one is actively learning.

It could be interesting if you talked about the basalt volcano in Russia that is the size of the USA.

Please, one request to not use expressions like "the magma rises because of buoyancy". Hot matter is *pushed* up by the denser material. It's not like it seeks to escape as that it can be squeezed out by the underlying denser matter, which in turn is being squeezed by the hotter material beneath it.

everytime I hear Geology shows say recently I'm like "oh really?" then they drop a date in the MYA range and I'm like "oh yeah Geology" also that Volcanos Morbin

Here's a question I've had on my mind for a little bit now, so if we have multiple mid-ocean ridges and similar separation of the plates on land were the plates are separating does that mean that the Earth is also growing in diameter when it's doing this?

All I want is for Mt Warning to erupt again....

Just heard Mt Etna has erupted, any news?

Rhyolitic and Andositic eruptions, the former obviously being more volatile when the lid is lifted, in my opinion, would be hard to identify and the bottom of any ocean if it comes from mantle plume rather than sublimation. The assumption that we don't get high silica, high viscosity magma anywhere but along sublimation zones or under continents seems like quite the leap or faith to me. Sure, you consider low silica Nyiragongo and the Arfrican rift zone as fast moving low volatility magma/lava upon our detection but there are many more things we can't see then the few we can see. FYI, add a little water, like Katla and suddenly your rift zone eruptions can be very volatile low silica basalt or not.

It's the pivot point for the tear that created the Global Rift System.

Plato said it was far to the north in a land called Hibernia

You might get it a little wrong i think about winter, you'd probably get a very short period of warming followed by a long winter, because of the volume of water that would initially cause atmospheric warming like it did in the southern atmosphere with the hunga tonga eruption

One fact not looked at is its proximity to the North pole and focused magnetic field pole. In antarctica conspiracy theories ran wild how what looks like a death star laser cut a hole through the ice. But I believe that to be what happens when the sun is most flare active and a flare completely made of x-rays hits earth's magnetic field and becomes focused at the magnetic poles and it can cut though any level of ice just like a death star laser. So it could be an astronomical event that can do some fantastic things to this tiny third rock from the sun.

Well, good thing this rift doesn’t expel any heat into the Arctic Ocean!

3000 cubic kilometers, well some say and believe Toba reached 3000 too, gets kinda hard to tell at that volume though.

Ok, interesting take on that cauldera. However, has it ever occurred to anyone besides myself that Iceland, technically, could be described as a hypervolcano? Multiple caulderas, but essentially, all coming from the same source of magma. While the chance of the entire island e placing like a standard super volcano are at worst, very, very slim, the fact that it could have multiple fissures and could era erupting over an extended timeframe, is something I consider with concern. I doubt that we could be seeing something on the scale of either the Decay or Siberian Traps, coming into existence, the potential devastation that could be created, does seem to require further study.

Could the Super Volcano happened due to salt water going into the Calsera when it was erupting. Like what happened in Tonga eruption back in 2021? Is that why it was so explosive when it erupted?

As an English-man that's concerned about super volconoes, is there nowhere on this planet I can go to get away from them?!?! 😢

I would add that the Yellowstone hotspot is a former mid-ocean ridge super volcano.

I can kinda see a face on that volcano map. Pareidolia is a crazy thing.

if a volcano hasn't gone off in a million years i would not call it active

What if the reason Pangaea split apart is because a giant magma plume slammed into the underside of the oceanic plate near where the Gakkel Ridge is currently, forcing a hole that eventually became a rift fault that started the process of breaking Pangaea apart?