explosive eruption

A pile of news for the new week! The glow of new lava flows from Nyamuragira in the Congo, taken from the Virunga Park Headquarters, January 2, 2010. MayonPHIVOLCS may lower the alert status at Mayon to Level 2 after almost a week of lower seismicity and no ash explosions since December 29th. Schools that were being used as evacuation centers were also returned to teachers and students for the start of classes after the Christmas holiday. However, the Albay provincial government is now considering a plan to permanently move everyone who lives within the 6-km danger zone around Mayon, even if…
Here it is, my attempt to recap a year's worth of volcanic events. By no means is this supposed to capture every event, but rather the highlight/lowlights and what most captivated me during 2009. I'll be announcing the winner of the 2009 Pliny for Volcanic Event of the Year tomorrow. Waimangu Geothermal Valley in New Zealand, taken in January 2009 by Erik Klemetti. January The year started out with a trip to New Zealand (well, for me at least) and vistas of the Waimangu Valley, formed in the 1886 eruption of Tarawera on the North Island. We were also still thinking about the late 2008…
Lava on Mayon, December 2009, with Legazpi City in the foreground. The mainstream media has picked up on the activity at Mayon - I've seen it splashed across CNN, FoxNews, ABC, BBC and others. Most of the coverage has been decent, however, I do worry when I see that people have found Eruptions using search terms like "Mayon supervolcano". I think that is when we worry that the made-for-TV word like "supervolcano" has gotten a little overused, when people worry every volcanic eruption might be a "supervolcano." On to the update! Explosions have continued unabated at Mayon, with the explosive…
It's the last week of classes and it's also AGU (which I will be missing for the first time in 5 years). If you happen to be at the big meeting in SF and hear something you think we'd like to hear, feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment so we can live vicariously through you. Pyroclastic flows at Sourfriere Hills, December 2009. Image courtesy of MVO. Some news: UPDATE 12:40PM 12/14/2009: Just to update the Mayon news from earlier today, PHIVOLC is reporting that lava has been spotting flowing from the main crater on Mayon. Sounds like the eruption we've been waiting for is beginning…
A new Weekly Volcano Report from the Smithsonian GVP/USGS ... enjoy! Highlights include: There has been a number of reports of new activity at Llaima in Chile (hat tip to Eruptions reader Manuel Humeres for bringing them to us). Most of the current activity is steam-and-gas plumes along with long-period seismicity, suggesting we could be headed towards a new eruption. Lava flows continue to erupt from Kliuchevskoi in Kamchatka, along with strombolian activity throwing ejecta up to 300 m / ~1000 feet above the crater. Rabaul is busy shaking windows 20 km / 12 miles from the Tavurvur crater,…
Karkar volcano as seen from space. Eruptions reader The Bobs left a note mentioning that there may have been a 'significant' eruption at Karkar in Papua New Guinea. The only place I can find information is John Seach's Volcano Live: An eruption occurred at Karkar volcano at 6:39 pm on 25th November 2009. The eruption plume reached a height of 45,000 ft. A magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit 90 km SSE of Karkar volcano 7.5 hours before the eruption. I don't know too much about Karkar, but the GVP says that it is a volcanic island made of a pair of calderas, with the inner caldera formed in the last 1…
There have been a number of articles floating around the popular press for the last week that I thought I would touch on briefly ... always fun to decipher the real news from the hype. Active fumaroles on Datun Mountain in Taipei. An article out of the Taipei Times suggests that the city of Taipei in Taiwan is in great peril from Datun Mountain/volcano. The volcano, which was previously thought to have erupted ~200,000 years ago is now thought to have erupted only 5,000 years ago. That 195,000 years really does make a difference in terms of worrying about potential future eruptions, but there…
A few weeks ago I asked you to submit questions on the 2008-present Chaiten eruption in Chile to pose to Dr. Jonathan Castro. Dr. Castro recently had a paper on the ascent rates of Chaiten rhyolite published in Nature and he kindly volunteered to answer your questions. Here are the answers to selected questions ... enjoy! Chaiten in Chile erupting in 2009. Image by Dr. Jonathan Castro. Dr. Jonathan CastroBiography: B.S. from Humboldt State University Ph.D. from University of Oregon* Currently a Research Geologist at CNRS-Institut for Sciences de la Terre, Oreans, France Soon moving on to…
I finally remembered to bring my GSA notes with me to the office, so I can finally post a wrap up of what I saw/heard at the big 2009 meeting in Portland. I'll have a specific post on Kasatochi - too much to say here. However, a great time was had by all! The crater of Collier Cone in Oregon. The scoria cone likely experienced years of explosive strombolian eruptions when it formed. Some interesting volcano-related notes: Clive Oppenheimer pointed out that the Toba eruption 74,000 years ago covered >1% of the Earth's surface with >10 cm (~4 in) ash. To put that in perspective, the Earth…
I did an excellent job of forgetting my notes from GSA 2009, so no wrap up on the meeting until tomorrow, but we do have some new volcano news to digest: The crater of El Reventador in Ecuador in an undated photo. Ecuadorian officials have called for evacuations around El Reventador. The Ecuadorian Geophysics Institute says that the volcano's "activities were measured at a level considered high, with permanent seismic signals indicating explosions while the southern side of the volcano crater could be seen as incandescent.". Three provinces near the volcano were put on alert evacuated as a…
A 1995 photo of Gaua volcano in Vanuatu. A few weeks ago I mentioned that there were signs that Mt. Garet, part of the larger Gaua volcano in Vanuatu was potentially showing signs of a eruption - the first since 1982. It turns out that the rumbling and sulfur odors reported by local residents were correct and it appears that Gaua did indeed erupt. The latest report from the Geo-Hazard section of the Department of Geology, Mines and Water Resources in Vanuatu: After the assessment of the Geohazards team on Gaua volcano from 3-7 October 2009, it is confirmed that Mont Garet volcano is going…
Chaiten has made it back into the news in the past couple days, both with new events at the caldera and with findings from the initial blast in May 2008. Here goes: Chaiten erupting in 2008. Third Dome Spotted The latest USGS/SI Weekly Volcanic Activity Report mentions that over the last week, Chaiten experienced what was likely a significant dome collapse of one of the two domes growing in the caldera. People living close enough to the volcano to see the ash plume noticed it became larger and darker on September 29th. Afterwards, visual observations of the caldera by air confirmed that a…
Two volcanoes that have been rumbling and rocking for a while now made some noise today: Kliuchevskoi Volcano in Russia. Soufriere Hills on Montserrat had a relatively impressive explosive event, producing a ~3 km / ~11,000 foot ash plume - its first eruption in 10 months. This was after a sharp increase in seismicity at the West Indies volcanoes since Sunday. This is a bit of a surprise as the eruptive period at Soufriere Hills was seen to be coming to an end - however, this eruption isn't really anything out of the ordinary according to James White Jr., the acting director of the Disaster…
And not because the Indians' season is finally (mercifully) over (zing!) Cleveland steaming away in a 2008 AVO image. Cleveland (the volcano) erupted on Friday, producing an ash column that reached 4.5-6 km / 15,000-20,000 feet. The full report from AVO: Satellite data indicate that Cleveland volcano erupted briefly this morning at ~0730 UTC (2330 AKDT) 02 October 2009, producing a small, detached ash cloud that drifted northeast of the volcano at maximum altitudes of 15,000' to 20,000' (4.5 - 6.1 km) . AVO has no real data seismic data right now for Cleveland, so only satellite imagery is…
As fall descends on the northern hemisphere, spring starts in the southern. Luckily for us, it means that we get better views of the southern Andes in Chile ... which means the NASA EO could train one of the many "eyes in the sky" (specifically the EO-1) on Chaiten. The volcano is still erupting, going on 16 months, since it caught everyone off guard in May of 2008. As you can tell from the image (linked and below), Chaiten is slowly filling in the pre-2008 caldera with new rhyolite dome growth - you can see that the pre-2008 dome within the caldera (see the picture taken from the ISS in 2003…
Monday is here again already ... A pyroclastic flow from Soufriere Hills heading towards the ocean. Note the large volcaniclastic debris fan being formed by repeated flows. Dated March 2006. The "Science Advisory Committee" at Montserrat in the West Indies suggests that the current eruption of Soufriere Hills on the small island could be drawing to a close. This is mostly based on the ever-decreasing seismicity under the volcano and that the volcano has not experienced any new dome growth or explosions over the last 6 months. Gas emissions have remained relatively constant over the last 18…
Undated photo of Shiveluch volcano in Russia. In case you haven't seen the report yet, Shiveluch in Kamchatka has gone, as they say, "non-linear". KVERT has raised the alert level at the volcano to "Red" with reports of many strong explosions and an ash plume of >32,800 feet / >10 km. This all suggests that the volcano might have experienced [WARNING SPECULATION] a massive dome collapse followed by rapid decompression of the magma under the dome - causing the plinian eruption that seems to be underway. The size of this eruption plume will definitely have some effect on air travel over…
Some more volcano news for the day ... UPDATE 10:40AM Eastern: It has been pointed out to me that both of these articles are old. They apparently made it into my Google News feed thanks to a glitch in the magic interweb tubes somewhere. Just goes to show that blogging before coffee on a Monday after traveling across the country = bad idea. Sorry for any confusion. A summit dome at Kelud during the 2007 eruption. OLD NEWS ABOUT SARYCHEV PEAK IN JUNE 2009. An unnamed Russian volcano in Kamchatka is disrupting flights from Canada to Asia. No ID in the article on which volcano, and I couldn't…
Does anyone else feel like this has been a rather quiet summer, volcano-wise? Maybe I've been too preoccupied by my move to Ohio, but I feel like beyond a few relatively minor events (Shiveluch comes to mind), the volcano news has been pretty slow compared to the spring of this year. Go figure. The sulfur dioxide plume from the 2008 eruption of Kasatochi spreading over the northern Pacific Ocean. Anyway, a few tidbits to tide us over: Over eighteen years after the eruption, Mt. Pinatubo is still causing fatalities from the copious amounts of tephra deposited during the 1991 event. Five people…
Again, sorry about the paucity of posts. Getting prepared to move 3/4 of the way across a continent will do that. Look for the next Volcano Profile, this time for Erebus in Antarctica, to be posted sometime in the next week or so. We did get some news over the weekend of a large eruption at Shiveluch. The volcano in Kamchatka has been active all summer, but on Saturday it produced a 5,000 meter / ~23,000 foot ash plume. This was accompanied by 170 earthquakes and multiple avalanches, likely produced by the collapsing dome on the summit of the volcano. There is a little more information about…