Question: Could England have a volcano tthat errupts?

Natasha Dowey answered on 11 Mar 2019: last edited 12 Mar 2019 8:55 am

oooo good question. Let’s think this through. So- for volcanoes to erupt you need one of a few scenarios.
First, we need to talk about plate tectonics. So- tectonic plates are the massive chunks of crust the planet is divided into. Think of the planet as an egg, the outer crust is like the shell. Imagine cracking that shell so that cracks form all other the egg, forming ‘continents’… this is a bit like the Earth.
-In some places, the plates of the crust are moving apart. They move apart because hot magma is rising from below the crust, and as it rises, it forces the crust apart and forms volcanoes. This is happening right now along the East African Rift, and underwater in the middle of the Atlantic (Icelandic volcanoes).
-But then, because plates are moving apart, somewhere plates will be forced together. And when crust rocks are forced together, they either crumple up, forming mountains, or one plate is forced underneath the other and melts, forming new hot magma that rises up into the crust and creates volcanoes!
-In some places, like Hawaii, there are zones where the crust is a bit weak, and a hot plume of magma lies underneath punching a hole through, forming volcanoes right in the middle of a plate- no boundaries needed.

So, right now, England sits happily in the middle of a plate. It wasn’t always the case- as plate boundaries have shifted through time, over millions of years, there have been times when volcanoes erupted in the UK (for example, Edinburgh sits on an old extinct volcano). But right now we can rule our scenarios 1 and 2. And as for scenario 3, there is no evidence of a big old mantle plume throwing out heat underneath England… so, for now, we’re pretty safe from volcanoes here! We may get the occasional earthquake, as the rocks beneath our feet may be fractured, and may shift about a bit through time (a bit like creaking floorboards in an old house!), but an eruption is unlikely. Although, in a hundred millions years, who knows…