Hawai`i

Mt. Hood in Oregon, taken August 2008. Image by Erik Klemetti. Click on the image to see a larger version. Quick news! I'm not going to go into too much depth right now about the recent study published in Nature Geoscience on Mt. Hood in Oregon - I plan to talk about it more in a few weeks. Why is that? Well, the lead investigator on the study, Dr. Adam Kent of Oregon State University, is a friend of mine (and occasional Eruptions commenter) so I plan to get the details from him before posting. I was also peripherally associated with some of this work - mostly in the field acting as a pack…

Lots of little pieces of news I've run across ... time to play a little catch up. Stromboli: A volcano after Don Ho's heart. Every once in a while, my RSS feeds will dredge up some articles from years gone by ... and this week there were two New York Times pieces that are a few years old, but interesting nevertheless. The first is about research conducted by Dr. Robert Sohn at WHOI on explosive undersea eruptions. The second is work by Corr and Vaughan about finding subglacial volcanism in Antarctica. Both are interesting reads if you missed them (like I did) the first time around.…

Lava flows from Kilauea in Hawai`i move towards a home in Kalapana. Whenever I think about the hazards posed by most lava flows, I tend to think about the opening scene in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Developers are planning to knock our hero Arthur Dent's house down and as a last ditch effort to stop its destruction, Arthur lies down in front of the bulldozer. The demolition supervisor, a certain Mr. Prosser, at one point asks Arthur if he knows how much damage the bulldozer might suffer if he just lets it roll over poor Mr. Dent. Arthur says he doesn't know and Mr. Prosser replies…

Tourists hiking next to an active lava flow on Pacaya in Guatemala in 2006. I'm flying back to Ohio today after a successful few weeks of fieldwork/paper writing. Apparently I have a pile of tomatoes waiting in our garden in Granville ... ! On to news: To go with the news that lava flows from Kilauea creep ever closer to structures in Kalapana, the NASA Earth Observatory posts its first volcano image in a bit. The shot shows the steam-and-gas plume from the Halema`uma`u Crater in Kilauea's summit caldera. You can also see some video of the lava flows near Kalapana as they move along the…

So, I'm a little late with this thanks to a little hiatus, but I thought I would post the latest GVP Weekly Volcanic Activity Report. Thanks again to the Smithsonian, USGS and especially Sally Kuhn Sennert! Some highlights include: There were more ash explosions spotted at Ebeko in Kamchatka, producing ~1.8 km (5,900 foot) ash columns. This activity prompted KVERT to raise the Alert Status to Yellow. This goes along with news from a pile of other Kamchatka/Kuril Island volcanoes: Gorely, Tiatia, Karymsky, Kliuchevskoi and Shiveluch. More activity at Arenal in Costa Rica - its almost always…

Looking for some volcano news - you've found it. A shot of volcano "tourists" near the erupting Pacaya. Photo by the Associated Press. Eruptions reader Dr. Boris Behncke dropped a note that Kilauea has not one but two active lava lakes right now. The lava lakes can be seen on the webcams for the Halema`uma`u Crater and the Pu`u O`o flank vent. The latest status update from June 6th by the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory talks about both the summit and rift activity (video) on Kilauea as well. Meanwhile, Hawaii 24/7 has a piece in the Volcano Watch series about whether residents of Maui…

The level of news-frenzy on some of the recent volcanic eruptions has died down, but if you're looking to see information on the many rumbling going on worldwide, look no further. Here is this week's Volcanic Activity Report put together by Sally Kuhn Sennert of the Global Volcanism Program. Highlights - not including Pacaya, Yasur, Tungurahua and our friend in Iceland - include: The eruption in the Marianas apparently came from South Sarigan volcano - at least according to the best guess by folks who work in the Marianas. This submarine volcano apparently shows evidence of young lava flows…

Brief news! Lava flows reaching the sea at Kilauea in Hawai`i. Image from November 2009, courtesy of HVO/USGS. The Alert Status at Cleveland in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands was raised to Yellow (Advisory) by the Alaska Volcano Observatory after new signs of activity emerged. The latest report from AVO on the volcano says a thermal anomaly has been spotted at the summit, which typically is one of the first signs that the volcano is entering an eruption period. However, there is no real-time seismic monitoring for Cleveland, so that is the only clue (right now) that AVO has. Cleveland is a…

Grading grading grading! A webcam capture of the eruptive plume from Eyjafjallajökull on the morning of May 6, 2010. News: A quick update on the Eyjafjallajökull eruption: The volcano has been producing an impressive ash plume over the last day (see image above). The current ash plume is reaching 5.8-6 km height (19-20,000 ft) - and causing some trouble over Ireland and Scotland. However, much of airspace closed yesterday has reopened (for now). You can see two new images of the ash plume over at the NASA Earth Observatory. As for the continued fallout from the ash plume from April,…

Lots to do! Tourists flock to the Eyjafjallajökull-Fimmvörduháls in Iceland. The media does love the term "supervolcano", and a number of Eruptions readers sent me a link to the article on the dreaded submarine "supervolcanoes". I would delve into this article from Live Science, but it sadly again does a dreadful job with a lot of this - remember, "supervolcano" is a made-up word by the BBC with no strict definition, so trying to say there are a dozen supervolcanoes worldwide is just silly. And why does it take multiple paragraphs and multiple mentions of "scientists" before they get a…

The eruption at Eyjafjallajökull-Fimmvörduháls continues on - the explosive spatter and bomb eruptions at the new central vent (on the second fissure) were impressive all night, making the hikers/cars/aircraft look like mites in comparison. This eruption has, so far, followed the pattern of Hawaiian-style volcanism quite well, so I thought it could be a good time to talk about what exactly Hawaiian-style volcanism is. There is a sequence of events that leads up to and follows the start of an Hawaiian-style eruption - although this sequence can stop at any point along the way - but it is…

Sunny and 80 here in Ohio today. That could mean only one thing that is likely on everyone's mind. (I suppose there is also this other bit of news that we've been following, too.) The low, broad shield of Hawai`i's Mauna Loa volcano. The USGS announced yesterday that inflation at Hawai`i's Mauna Loa appears to have ceased. This prompted the decision to move the alert status at Mauna Loa from "Advisory" to "Normal". This would signify the end of any current activity on the big island's largest volcano - the inflation that had been slowing since 2006 (since 2003 really) finally stopped in…

Long week, quick news: Tiatia in Russia erupting in an undated photo. The latest USGS/Smithsonian Institution _blank">Weekly Volcano Activity Report is up. One interesting bit in the report is a thermal anomaly at _blank">Tiatia in Russia (just north of Japan in the Kuril Islands) - a volcano for which I am unfamiliar. However, it sounds great according to the _blank">GVP: "Tiatia volcano, one of the most impressive of the Kuril Islands, consists of a beautifully symmetrical cone that rises above the broad rim of an erosionally furrowed, 2.1 x 2.4 km wide caldera. The volcano…

News for the snowy (well, here) midweek: Lava flows from Kilauea surround an old structure at Royal Gardens in Hawai`i. A hearty thanks to all the Eruptions readers who offered advice on where to find a couple of great volcano videos I've been trying to track down. I think I've found copies I can get a hold of at the USGS and discovered that Discover Your Northwest (formerly the NW Interpretative Assoc.) is expecting to get a DVD version of one of the videos this spring. The folks at the Astronomy Picture of the Day put up this great image of strombolian eruptions and lightning at…

First off, I wanted to thank all of the Eruptions readers for making January the most popular month ever on this blog. I suppose I should give an assist to Yellowstone, but really, thanks for coming to the blog, reading the posts and engaging in all the great discussions that go on within its (cyber)walls. KÄ«lauea's east rift zone eruption site. Image courtesy of the USGS/HVO. On to some news! I suppose you've made the big time when you're in the New York Times, and sure enough, the current Yellowstone earthquake swarm is in the Old Grey Lady. Nothing much new to read, but summarizes the…