By Mike Cassidy and Lara Mani

Ord 2020, and others have suggested that the existential risk posed by volcanoes is the largest of the potential ‘natural’ catastrophes − 100 times that of asteroids and comets combined. As volcanologists we wanted to delve a bit deeper into the x—risks and also global catastrophic risks from large explosive eruptions, adding insight from the latest volcano and climate science, including challenging some of the assumptions that have been put forward so far. Significant global impacts from large explosive eruptions will be described, which have a ~1 in 6 probability of occurring this century.

We highlight that the world is poorly prepared for such eruptions, there is no coordinated action, nor large-scale investment, to mitigate the global effects of large-magnitude eruptions.

There are however, tractable future solutions in this space, which we outline in our Nature piece.