Jonathan Rougier

Predicting the next apocalyptic volcanic super-eruption!

Hazards tend to be summarized in terms of their frequency/magnitude curve. For explosive volcanic eruptions, a super-eruption at the top end of the magnitude range is large enough to return us to a "pre-civilisation state", but even a large eruption poses a serious hazard for a country. Inferring the global frequency/magnitude curve from the volcanic record is complicated, because the record is unreliable going back more than a few hundred years. In this talk I will look at the maths of the frequency/magnitude curve, show and discuss the curve we fitted for large explosive volcanic eruptions, and describe the response of the media to our results.

Jonathan Rougier is currently an independent scientist and consultant. He was formerly Professor and Head of Statistics at the University of Bristol. He has worked extensively on natural hazards, in particular on climate science and volcanoes.