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Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park's flagship geyser, might soon have to be renamed "Only Sometimes."
According to a report published last month, prolonged periods of drought will result in the lengthening of gaps between geyser eruptions and "perhaps even cessation of geysering," throwing a wrench in Old Faithful's long reputation of consistency. The data, compiled from five geysers in the Upper Geyser Basin of the park between 1998 and 2006, show that the time between Old Faithful's eruptions has expanded from about an hour and 15 minutes in 1998 to an hour and 31 minutes in 2006. Daisy Geyser, also located in the park, has tourists waiting more than an hour longer in between eruptions: In 1998, there was about an hour and 40 minutes between eruptions, whereas the study found that in 2006 there was a gap of about two hours and 50 minutes. But with fewer than 1,000 geysers in the world and due to their complex and varying nature, geysers are historically difficult to study. This report, therefore, calls itself the first "systematic investigation of climate-induced changes on geyser dynamics." The study found that hydrological processes significantly affect geyser eruption intervals, or GEIs, and that "geysers respond to both long-term precipitation trends and to the seasonal hydrologic cycle." As the mean annual discharge in the Madison River, which originates in the park, decreases, the GEIs of the five studied geysers lengthen. Climate effects on geysers can be measured. Earthquake changes can'tThe examined geysers responded differently to precipitation patterns on a monthly scale, but over a period of years, the geysers underwent the same trends, study author Shaul Hurwitz told National Geographic News. "As the region went into a drier climate, all intervals got longer," he said. In years with high precipitation, the study explained, pressure in a geyser's reservoir increases, the conduits are replenished faster by hot water, and the water takes less time to boil. The result: shorter GEIs. And while there is little consensus over what effects climate change will have on global precipitation levels, many scientists agree that with rising temperatures will come longer periods of drought. Of course, the intricacy of the geysers means that a host of other issues could be affecting them, too. For example, although a shaky relationship between large earthquakes and GEIs has been studied before, the correlation was found to be inconsistent, with some GEIs lengthening and others shortening, and some geysers not responding to the earthquakes at all.
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