Yellowstone is North America’s largest volcanic field, produced by a “hotspot” – a gigantic plume of hot and molten rock – that begins at least 400 miles beneath Earth’s surface and rises to 30 miles underground, where it widens to about 300 miles across. There, blobs of magma or molten rock occasionally break off from the top of the plume, and rise farther, resupplying the magma chamber beneath the Yellowstone caldera.

The Yellowstone “supervolcano” rose at a record rate since mid-2004, likely because a Los Angeles-sized, pancake-shaped blob of molten rock was injected 6 miles beneath the slumbering giant, University of Utah scientists report in the journal Science.

The upward movement of the Yellowstone caldera floor – almost 3 inches (7 centimeters) per year for the past three years – is more than three times greater than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923, writes lead author Robert B. Smith, professor of geophysics at the University of Utah, geophysics postdoctoral associate Wu-Lung Chang and colleagues.

This digital elevation map of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks was overlaid with elevation change data (colors) from Global Positioning System receivers and satellite measurements. A University of Utah study of the data indicates the giant Yellowstone "supervolcano" is rising upward faster than ever observed. The red arrows pointing up represent uplift of the Yellowstone caldera, or volcanic crater, while the downward red arrows show sinking of the land near Norris Geyser Basin. The black arrows indicate lateral or horizontal ground movement. Credit: Adapted by Wu-Lung Chang, University of Utah, from E.V. Wingert in "Windows into the Earth," Smith and Siegel.
“There is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption or hydrothermal explosion. That’s the bottom line,” says Smith. “A lot of calderas [giant volcanic craters] worldwide go up and down over decades without erupting.

“Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock,” Smith says. “But we have no idea how long this process goes on before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again,” he adds.

The magma chamber beneath Yellowstone National Park is a not a chamber of molten rock, but a sponge-like body with molten rock between areas of hot, solid rock.

Chang, the study’s first author, says: “To say if there will be a magma [molten rock] eruption or hydrothermal [hot water] eruption, we need more independent data.”

Calderas such as Yellowstone, California’s Long Valley (site of the Mammoth Lakes ski area) and Italy’s Campi Flegrei (near Naples) huff upward and puff downward repeatedly for decades to tens of thousands of years without catastrophic eruptions.

Smith and Chang conducted the study with University of Utah geophysics doctoral students Jamie M. Farrell and Christine Puskas, and with geophysicist Charles Wicks, of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.

The orange shapes in this image represent the magma chamber -- a chamber of molten and partly molten rock -- beneath the giant volcanic crater known as the Yellowstone caldera, which is represented by the rusty-colored outline at the top. The red rectangular slab-like feature is a computer-generated representation of molten rock injected into the magma chamber since mid-2004, causing the caldera to rise at an unprecedented rate of almost 3 inches a year, according to a new University of Utah study. In reality, the injected magma probably is shaped more like a pancake than a slab. The two rusty circles within the caldera outline represent the resurgent volcanic domes above the magma chamber. Credit: Wu-Lung Chang, University of Utah.

Previous research indicates the magma chamber begins about 5 miles beneath Yellowstone and extends down to a depth of at least 10 miles. Its heat powers Yellowstone’s geysers and hot springs – the world’s largest hydrothermal field.

As Earth’s crust moved southwest over the Yellowstone hotspot during the past 16.5 million years, it produced more than 140 cataclysmic explosions known as caldera eruptions, the largest but rarest volcanic eruptions known. Remnants of ancient calderas reveal the eruptions began at the Oregon-Idaho-Nevada border some 16.5 million years ago, then moved progressively northeast across what is now the Snake River Plain.

- University of Utah