Just like the United States, Mexico contains dozens of active volcanoes.
One of these volcanoes is located on the outskirts of Mexico City, where is towers to
5,393 meters in elevation. This volcano is called Popocatepetl, and is erupting right now.
For example, here is one of the regular explosions the volcano recently produced.
However, this volcano has produced far larger explosions in the past, and could once again in
the future. This video will discuss this very tall volcano, and mention what its future hazards are.
Popocatepetl began forming 700,000 years ago when silica rich magma erupted onto the surface.
Initially, this magma erupted in a moderately explosive manner, and built a small volcanic
cone 3 kilometers north of the modern summit. Eruptions started at an elevation of 2400 meters,
and continued to built this volcanic cone out of a combination of ash and a cooled volcanic rock
called dacite. By 200,000 years ago, volcano has been built to a height of 4200 meters tall. At the
time, it has numerous volcanic features such as cinder cones and lava domes. Then, a catastrophic
collapse of the volcano occurred. As a large volume of lava and ash was ejected high into
the atmosphere, the existing volcano collapsed to fill the largely empty magma chamber below.
This formed a several kilometer wide caldera, whose northern edge can still be seen today.
After a period of dormancy, a new volcanic cone began growing a kilometer to the northeast of
the modern summit, as a different composition of lava erupted onto the surface. The volcanic
cone which grew from the subsequent eruptions was called Ventorrillo, which was built from a less
siliceous type of lava called andesite. By 30,000 years ago, this towering volcanic cone has grown
to 5000 meters above sea level. However, as the volcano became steeper and steeper, it began to
show signs of structural instability. Moderate sized landslides became relatively commonplace,
resulting in large horseshoe shaped craters forming from partial collapses of a volcanic cone.
Then, 23,000 years ago, a large volume of magma rushed towards the surface at the modern day
location of Popocatépetl. This magma pushed the volcanic cone outwards to the south by
several hundred meters. Suddenly, the pressure was released, in a massive eruption similar to
the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. As the mountain lost several hundred meters in elevation,
several cubic kilometers of rock slid up to 25 kilometers away to the south and southwest. Today,
the areas which were covered by this landslide can be easily seen from satellite, as the higher
elevation areas contain denser tree cover. This collapse created a permanent zone of
structural weakness in the volcano, which could cause
future summit collapses in the same direction. Over the next several thousand years,
two different volcanic cones frequently erupted at the site of the modern summit. Between 14,000 and
7,000 years ago, one of these volcanic cones produced 4 large eruptions. These eruptions
were hundreds of times larger than what has been witnessed at the volcano in the past century. They
resulted in large volumes of ash, lava, and pyroclastic flows travelling up to 20 kilometers
from the volcano's summit. By 4,000 years ago, this volcanic cone erupted for the last time.
Since then, the Popocatépetl volcano produced two more plinian eruptions, the last of which
occurred in 823 AD. All of the eruptions after the fact were much smaller in size, which created
periodic explosions of lava and ash similar to what it seen at Mount Stromboli today. Historical
records of eruptions have been documented since at least 1345. Since these records have been kept,
the volcano has 37 times. The current eruption began on January of 2005, and has continued to
the present day. At night, if you live in Mexico City, you can occasionally see small bombs of lava
ejected during minor explosive volcanic activity. With this being said, Popocatépetl is still a very
dangerous volcano. Although it has not produced a major explosive eruption in some time, it will
again in the future. Towns on the southwest flank of the mountain are at particularly high risk,
as they exist on old landslide deposits. Any future major eruption could damage a number
of towns within a 30 kilometer radius. Hazardous pyroclastic flows, landslides,
lava flows, and lahars could travel such a distance during a prolonged eruption.
Luckily, the odds of such a major eruption are low, at about 1 in 2,000 each year.
I hope that you enjoyed this video! If you would like to request a specific topic,
please leave a comment below! Additionally, to support this channel, consider becoming a patreon.