[Geysers] Heat Traps

[jacross]

It has been documented in Yellowstone that certain hot springs will erupt when 
a large animal falls into them and gets cooked.  Scalloped Spring is the best 
example of this, but I have heard that it happened at Solitary Geyser (in that 
case increasing the power of the eruptions above normal) and at other springs.

Perhaps the fat from the boiled animal forms a layer on top of the water and 
holds the heat in, allowing eruptions to occur.

Jeff Cross
jacross at lamar.colostate.edu

>When soap was introduced, the vent above the water surface quickly filled 
with a mass of soap-suds, and thus it remained, with occasional upward surges 
of suds, for the twenty minutes.  In my opinion the suds formed an "insulating 
layer" above the water surface, reducing the churning and preventing the 
previously steadily boiling water from releasing the steam directly into the 
atmosphere, and thus trapping the heat within the suds and the water below.  
The reduced churning would allow temperatures to rise gradually in the top of 
the water column within the vent.  Eventually water would reach boiling 
temperature at lower depths in the column, and when sufficiently vigorous 
boiling resulted there, projecting water out, pressures further down still 
would momentarily reduce, and the runaway eruption would be initiated.  So, 
Wairoa, I think, is an example of heat-trap triggering.  (It is an interesting 
fact that when it was
>soaped very little of the (sudsy) water was expelled from this geyser before 
the eruption started.)
>
>Ron Keam
>
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