Some of the world's most destructive volcanoes are long overdue for major eruptions. But which will be first? And how can we avert disaster?

"Yellowstone, in Wyoming, is the world's most powerful supervolcano . It is 40,000 years late in its hitherto regular 600,000-year cycle. Yellowstone is due to wake up with a cataclysmic eruptive yawn. Millions live in the firing line. Films such as the BBC's 2005 Supervolcano have attempted to show what the impact of such a blast could be – with ash, rock and debris devastating vast swathes of North America, an ash cloud triggering catastrophic climatic-cooling , which in turn leads to crop failure and starvation around the world – but for many people, volcanoes have remained in the realm of the fantastical. O'Meara says: "A volcano to most human beings anywhere on the planet is something we see in a movie. It's not something we're living next door to."

 Source : The Independent UK

On 3 January 1983, Mount Kilauea came to life – and it hasn't stopped erupting yet. Now officially the world's most active volcano, it has been oozing lava and coughing up hot ash for 24 years. It has destroyed towns and its molten rock has added more than 200 hectares to the volcano's southern shore. So when Donna O'Meara, a world-leading volcanologist, pinpoints the location of her Hawaiian home, it comes as something of a surprise. "I live right on top of Kilauea," she says with a smile.

Since O'Meara moved there in 1993, she has not been blasted by the volcanic cauldron which bubbles away just three miles behind her home. In fact, O'Meara is convinced she's a lot safer than millions across the globe who live their lives oblivious to the very real threat posed by some of the world's most menacing volcanoes.

O'Meara recently returned from a trip to the American Midwest, where people were fascinated to hear of her volcano-top home. "They all asked me, 'Don't you think it's scary that you live on Kilauea?' and I said, 'No, I think that it's really scary that you live on Yellowstone. At least at Kilauea I see it erupting and I know what it's doing."

For there is a rule with volcano-monitors: always watch the quiet ones. While Kilauea's activity is plain to see, other volcanoes follow different eruption patterns, lying dormant for thousands – or even hundreds of thousands – of years before blowing their tops, freeing in one almighty blast the slowly accumulated pressure.

ellowstone, in Wyoming, is the world's most powerful supervolcano. It is 40,000 years late in its hitherto regular 600,000-year cycle. Yellowstone is due to wake up with a cataclysmic eruptive yawn. Millions live in the firing line. Films such as the BBC's 2005 Supervolcano have attempted to show what the impact of such a blast could be – with ash, rock and debris devastating vast swathes of North America, an ash cloud triggering catastrophic climatic-cooling, which in turn leads to crop failure and starvation around the world – but for many people, volcanoes have remained in the realm of the fantastical. O'Meara says: "A volcano to most human beings anywhere on the planet is something we see in a movie. It's not something we're living next door to."

Much research is done on the subject. The International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior publishes a list of "Decade Volcanoes" which are due to erupt within the next 10 years, for example. But the list does not always pick out those in areas of dense population, where an explosion might have a real and significant impact on human life and activity. Another major problem is the political inexpedience of planning for a deathly eruption. Politicians in Naples have been accused of shying away from the question of how to evacuate the three million people who live in the shadow of Vesuvius, says O'Meara, and the situation is similar worldwide. "Everywhere I've been, it comes down to politics, and usually those politics endanger people." She remembers the 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia, in which a local official, up for re-election, ignored warning signs for fear an evacuation would damage his campaign – 21,000 people died.

Volcano monitoring does allow for warning systems, although the unpredictability of volcanoes and relative newness of the science means hours, not days, of notice might be given, to evacuate potentially millions of people. O'Meara is researching the correlation between lunar activity and volcanoes, in the hope of developing more advanced prediction systems.

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