eklemetti | January 17, 2009
I made it back from New Zealand yesterday after spending the last two weeks looking at some of the most remarkable volcanic landscapes you could imagine. I'll add more detail soon for those of you interested in the volcanism of the North Island, but I'll leave you with a picture of yours truly in from of Ngauruhoe (a.k.a Mt. Doom) along the Tongariro Crossing. The volcano last erupted in 1977 and it considering the youngest vent of Tongariro. Ngauruhoe has had >60 eruptions over the last 150 years.
eklemetti | January 1, 2009
I just wanted to point folks to an interview in US News & World Report with the USGS scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, Dr. Jacob Lowenstern. He plays down the swarm, noting that things like this happened in the 1980s and that Yellowstone has seen over 80 eruptions in the caldera since the last "supervolcano" eruption 640,000 years ago. I know Dr. Lowenstern pretty well, and even at AGU when I talked to him (before the swarm), he seemed to play down the huffing and puffing the caldera experiences on a yearly basis. It would take much more activity to get the YVO…
eklemetti | January 1, 2009
Right as Yellowstone is getting interesting (or at least had signs of interest), Eruptions is going on a bit of a break again starting January 2. This time it is because I'm off to the North Island of New Zealand to do some field work. I'll be headed to Tarawera (hopefully both the 1305 and 1886 eruption deposits), Taupo, Tongariro, the area around Rotorua and maybe even White Island (amongst other). I won't have my MacBook, but I will have my iPod Touch, so I'll try to keep track and make brief posts if something big comes up, but feel free to use this post as a clearinghouse for any news…
eklemetti | December 31, 2008
Yellowstone looks to be keeping everyone on their toes as we ring in 2009. The earthquake swarm reported earlier this week is continuing, with multiple events between 2-3.5 on the Richter Scale. Again, the folks monitoring the caldera - this time the Univ. of Utah - play down these events as normal for any active caldera system ... and they're very likely right. However, the media love to bring up the "supervolcano" angle and we're even getting expert opinion from (wait for it) Garrison Keillor!. Â The earthquakes are just normal earthquakes so far - none of the dreaded/anticipated harmonic…
eklemetti | December 29, 2008
Some more information is coming out about the activity at Koryak (aka Koryaksky) in Kamchatka. Russian geologist Alexei Ozerov says that the activity at Koryak (note: the image in the article linked here appears to have nothing to do with Koryak) has started with more power than the last known eruption of the volcano in 1956. He also mentions that the volcano is already a danger to aviation in the area (as the closing of the Petropavlosvk-Kamchatsky Airport suggested).
We also have some great images of the volcano, showing the vent on the side of the volcano (see above). It is hard to tell…
eklemetti | December 29, 2008
2008 is almost finished and we've seen one of the few high-silica rhyolite eruptions in the past 100 years at Chaiten in Chile. Chaiten was definitely not high on the list of potential locations for a rhyolite eruption worldwide. However, Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming definitely is high of the list because it has erupted a lot of rhyolite over the last few 100,000 years (even discounting the big so-called "supervolcano" eruptions).
This is why the current news of an earthquake swarm at Yellowstone is, in the very least, really interesting. The earthquakes - over 250 of them - started…
eklemetti | December 28, 2008
News is filtering in that Koryak (aka Koryaksky) Volcano in Kamchatka might be heading towards an explosive eruption. The details are scarce, but it seems that a breach on the northwest slopes of the volcano might cause an explosive eruption, however, it is not clear why this is. All this talk has caused the Petropavlosvk-Kamchatsky Airport (~13 miles northeast) to close in fears of this potential activity.
Koryak is yet another potentially active volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula, along with currently active Bezymianny, Kliuchevskoi, Karymsky and Shiveluch. The last eruption at Koryak…
eklemetti | December 24, 2008
Well, the holidays (and its visitors) have derailed my blogging ability, so in that note, I will officially declare the Eruptions holiday until 12/30. Merry Christmas (or whatever you celebrate) to all the Eruptions readers - and I just hit the 100,000 visit mark, a great Christmas gift for me! - and I'll catch up with some info on Chaiten, St. Helens and whatever volcano news that has happened in the interim.
eklemetti | December 16, 2008Today was a lot of talking and posters. Talking mostly about all things concerning Taupo and Okataina volcanism in New Zealand. Posters ran the spectrum from learning some nifty new tricks to extract zircon crystals from a crushed rock to what happens to clay when you breathe it into your lungs.
I also learned that being head of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory take a level head and focus (so Supervolcano was a lot closer to the truth than many might think - well, minus the whole eruption).
Speaking of which, Chaiten continues to confound me. The first stuff out in the eruption was…
eklemetti | December 15, 2008I was chatting with a fellow from AVO and he called the simultaneous eruptions of Kasatochi, Cleveland and Okmok a "once in a millennia" event. So, enjoy it!
He also mentioned that the Kasatochi eruption released the most sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere since the 1991 Pinatubo eruption ... but we had an idea of that already.
And who knew that there has been uplift at Uturuncu in Bolivia? I sure didn't, but Steve Sparks does.
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More to come later this week when I can go to all the Chaiten posters.
eklemetti | December 14, 2008I don't know if the live-blogging AGU will work out, but we'll see.
However, I did find out today that Chaiten was a compositionally zoned eruption. Good times!
eklemetti | December 11, 2008
When people think about volcanic mitigation, a lot of time is spent worrying about monitoring and science. There is nothing wrong with this as we need to know what the volcano has done in the past and what it is doing now to predict its future activity. However, a very important piece of the mitigation puzzle is education, because without educating the public of the dangers of the volcano, many times they will not listen to officials when time for evacuation comes (see Nevado del Ruiz, Colombia in 1985). That is why this report from Tanzania is great: scientists going out and educating the…
eklemetti | December 11, 2008
Sometimes I wonder if we know more about the fates of people who died in a volcanic eruption over 1800 years ago than we do about most people who died in any given eruption this year. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with that - we're fascinated by both volcanoes and Roman antiquity - but the level of detail done for the victims of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. is stunning.
Considering that this blog got started (to an extent) thanks to our cultural obsession with Pompeii, I thought it fitting to post a bit about a recent report on the last moments of a family in Pompeii. Nothing really…
eklemetti | December 10, 2008
The latest eruption of Sourfriere was captured from space, and NASA has just released the MODIS picture of the volcano in action. The image (above and linked) was taken 2 days after the first explosion of this unanticipated and unexpected eruption - December 4. You definitely get the idea of how much of the island of Montserrat is taken up by the volcano itself (pretty much all of it). Not much else to report on Soufriere Hills beyond the update from MVO (via SI/USGS) for the end of last week:
On 3, 4, and 5 December small, relatively slow moving pyroclastic flows traveled no more than 3.2…
eklemetti | December 9, 2008
My blogging frequency might be a little scattershot for the next few weeks thanks to the American Geophysical Union Winter Meeting in San Francisco (if you're at the meeting, you can always hear me talk about rhyolite genesis in New Zealand) and then the holidays. I will be experimenting with blogging from my new iPod Touch during the meeting if I hear something interest - yes, live-blogging a geology meeting, is this a first? - Â but that might also end up being an abysmal failure. I suppose it is the closest I'll come to live-blogging the other Winter Meeting ...
eklemetti | December 9, 2008
The BBC is reporting today on a study published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters that attempts to establish a connection between large earthquakes and subsequent volcanic eruptions. The study is focussed on large Chilean earthquakes over the last 200 years (Chile has had some of the biggest, hitting M9 on the Richter Scale) and then examining the number of volcanic eruptions that followed. They find that activity increased in the year after the earthquakes. This suggests that many volcanoes might be "primed" to erupt and just need a catalyst like a large seismic event to promote…
eklemetti | December 5, 2008
The blasts and pyroclastic flow from earlier this week at Soufriere Hills in Montserrat were not the only show planned for the week, apparently. The volcano continues to erupt, with reports of continued ash and ballistic glowing bombs being erupted. These eruptions are the first major ones at Soufriere Hills in 6 months, but are apparently unique with no real precursors such as seismicity (well, none identified as of yet).
eklemetti | December 4, 2008
Although this news isn't as threatening as the title of the article implies:Â HAWAII LAVA FLOW NEARS NATIONAL PARK, it is still some news as it could be the first lava flow to cross into the park in over a lava. The flow itself is headed towards what is called the "Waikupanaha ocean entry" on the southeast side of the island. The lava flow has about one mile to go before it reaches the Pacific Ocean, but it has travelled several hundred feet (maybe 100 meters) over the last 10 days according to Park Rangers and USGS geologists monitoring the flow's progress.
Of course, compared to your…
eklemetti | December 3, 2008
Just to keep everyone on their toes, Soufriere Hills on Montserrat in the West Indies erupted today. The eruption produced a number of explosions and a pyroclastic flow that originated from the west side of the lava dome at the summit of the volcano. However, the most interesting bit comes from the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO) report I received this morning:
"The explosion happened without any warning. There was no precursory seismic activity."
Sounds like it could have been a dome collapse caused by a rapid release of gas/steam? The explosion apparently threw blocks as far as a…
eklemetti | December 1, 2008
A quick update from Reunion Island on this fairly slow week, volcanically speaking:
"After permanent unrest with daily 30 to 100 seismic events, Piton de
la Fournaise volcano erupted again on Thursday November 27, 2008 at
11h50. The eruption is situated on the west side within the Dolomieu
crater at the same vent as the September 21 eruption and can probably
be considered as a second phase of the later."
This comes from the Observatoire Volcanologique du Piton de la Fournaise (OVPF - link in French). Piton de la Fournaise is a shield volcano on Reunion Island that sees frequent basaltic…