WHAT,S THERE BEHIND THE MOST DANGEROUS LAKE IN THE WORLD:

 

A vacation is the perfect time where people think to visit places like lakes, ponds ,etc. Dangers can come from any side like the hungry lion comes in your way or if you eat the poisonous mushrooms in food , do you expect the danger from air literally nobody expects ,a small breathe is just enough for you to die quickly.Its about the lake Nyos  which has co2 content in mixture with magma. The lake nyos  is located in Cameroon’s Northwest Region . It is a crater lake that lies along the Cameroon line of volcanic activity. It is highly acidic because of the co2 leaked from the bottom layers of magma.

Although the volcano present in the lake nyos is an extinct one magma flows though which leaks out the carbon dioxide which first goes to the natural springs around it and then dissolves in the water making the lake an acidic one. Nearly 90 million tons of CO2 is charged into the waters of the lake from the magma layer. A natural dam made of volcanic rocks holds the waters of the lake in place. The wall is 130 feet high and 148 feet wide .Issac nijah from the university of yaounde  suggested that the breaking of the natural dam of volcanic rock that holds back the water may break which leads to lowering of pressure of co2 and it may lead to the spilling of 50mln^3 of water which  may lead to flooding of the 2 states benue and Taraba along with the release of the deadliest gas which is one of the worst natural calamities ever seen .

Lake Nyos is a thermally stratified lake, meaning a layer of warm water of low-density floats on the denser, colder water layer near the bottom of the lake. Usually, the CO2 remains in solution in the colder layers below and the lake remains stable. On certain occasions, if the lake water becomes supersaturated with CO2 or when a landslide or earthquake happens in the region, the CO2 might suddenly come out of solution, triggering an explosion

A limnic eruption the leakage of  carbon dioxide from an open reservoir is the  incident which lake nyos has experienced with. In recent history this phenomenon has been observed only twice,the first one occurred in Cameroon in lake monoon in 1984 .At about 10 30 pm in the night, a cloud of carbon dioxide spread out to the valleys and reached the road .when people from near by village  reached the road to work, went to the cloud and instantly died.About 37 of them have died due to this eruption.2 years later on August 21 1986 a similar eruption occurred in the lake nyos which took away nearly 3500 cattle and 1746 people. This was a completely unpredicted event which even the locals didn’t expect. Most geologists and scientists from Cameroon thought that the occurrence of a landslide or an occurrence of an earthquake might have led to this eruption while even some say that the occurrence of a small volcanic eruption might have also caused the leakage of the deadliest gas .however the trigger can also be rain and the strong heavy wind, so it's impossible for us to predict the reason behind it. The phenomenon of the eruption could just be shaking off a soda bottle and opening the bottle immediately. Imagine opening a bottle of carbonized water under 300m depth and the water is five times more carbonized than soda water it would lead to raising of water of a height of 300ft or 100m height which would lead to formation of huge waves of 25m height which would easily break the trees on the shore. Due to the release of gases in water, it leads to oxidation of iron present and turns the color of the lake red. It leads to the release of more than 3 lakh tonnes of carbon dioxide is released and some even say that 1.5 a billion tones of carbon dioxide is released in just 20 seconds. Since the the density of carbon dioxide is 1.5 times more than air it leads to the flow of around 100 km per hour causing damages and killing the life in its pathway, people  and life with around 25 km around the lake simply suffocated and died. Some sources claim that even birds and the insects around it were the victims of the dangerous gas

Could this incident ever happen? Unfortunately, it's Yes .people are still living near the lake with the risk of an explosion of carbon dioxide. After that incident that lake was under surveillance, in 1995 one of the scientists proposed that Degassing columns to be installed in the lake could be a solution but that’s not possible. After that scientists began to search  to find out that if there are any other lakes that are as dangerous as this and is there any solution to it. As the result lake Kivu which   lies on the border between the Democratic, The Republic of the Congo and Rwanda is found to be dangerous . Its area is approximately 2700 km^2 making it one of the largest lakes in Africa .Its water contains a mixture of methane combined with carbon dioxide with the result in the geologists have found an  evidence for the mass extinction of the species due to the release of the deadly combo. Its size is around 2000 times larger than the lake nyos and scientists say that it could lead to a disaster anytime  and could lead to the killing of around 2 million people on spot. But anyway enjoying boating on a lake is not a bad option at all.

CREDITS:

CONTENT WRITTEN BY:  uday.

RESEARCH DONE BY:  Vageeshram

FINAL TOUCH BY :   Christy Samuel.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER:   WAR  MUDASIR.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER:   HIRDIYANSH  SHARMA.