The signs in the region very clearly express a possible linkage with early geothermal energy drilling. I want to be gentle with my wording- because I don't recall it exactly, but the writers had little doubt that there was a link between some of boring that was happening the week the eruptions started.
It's been interesting to return home & do google searching on the topic. I can't seem to find any references that authoritatively link the eruptions with the geothermal activity- but it seems like an anecdote worth looking into.
The BBC article linked in an earlier comment has this:
“The most important thing with this is to do no harm,” Wilcox says. “If you drill into the top of the magma chamber and try and cool it from there, this would be very risky. This could make the cap over the magma chamber more brittle and prone to fracture. And you might trigger the release of harmful volatile gases in the magma at the top of the chamber which would otherwise not be released.”
Instead, the idea is to drill in from the supervolcano from the lower sides, starting outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park, and extracting the heat from the underside of the magma chamber. “This way you’re preventing the heat coming up from below from ever reaching the top of the chamber which is where the real threat arises,” Wilcox says.
There were numerous signs about the "Krafla fires" in the late 70's & early 80's. http://earthice.hi.is/krafla_fires
The signs in the region very clearly express a possible linkage with early geothermal energy drilling. I want to be gentle with my wording- because I don't recall it exactly, but the writers had little doubt that there was a link between some of boring that was happening the week the eruptions started.
It's been interesting to return home & do google searching on the topic. I can't seem to find any references that authoritatively link the eruptions with the geothermal activity- but it seems like an anecdote worth looking into.