russia

News to finish up your week: Summit area of Hualalai in Hawai'i Another day, another "threat" of volcanic eruption in Australia. I'm impressed with the abject fear Aussies seem to have for this perceived increased threat of an eruption - or at least what the press wants you to believe. This time, watch out near Bundaberg, Townsville and Cooktown in southeast Queensland! In more press-related exaggeration, the Siberian Traps - a flood basalt eruption from, well, thousands of rift/vents in Siberia - is boiled down to being one Siberian volcano by the Telegraph. Dr. Mark Sephton of the Imperial…
I missed the weekly report last week (sorry), but here is the new USGS/SI volcano activity report. Highlights include: Shiveluch in Kamchatka is still erupting away, producing ~7 km / 20,000 foot ash columns as the lava dome grows. There has also been pyroclastic flows spotted emanating from the new lava dome. There was a report of a ~7.5 km / 25,000 foot ash-and-steam plume from El Reventador in Ecuador. More small plumes and incandescent lava bombs were spotted at the Tavurvur Crater at Rabaul in Papau New Guinea
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…
First day of class! As you might imagine, I'm a little scattered (well, with classes and the fact that we bought a house over the weekend. You know, just that). The Tavurvur Crater at Rabaul erupting in 1994. News! The Examiner.com (SF) has a slideshow and brief article on the current excavations of ruins buried by the Santorini/Minoan eruption that occurred ~3950 years ago. The eruption wiped out much of the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea, but whether there was anyone actually still living on the island when it happened is still a mystery. It seems that most of the Minoans left the…
Koryaksky (Koryak) in Russia Yesterday in the USGS/SI update, I mentioned the current eruption going on at Koryaksky (a.k.a. Koryak). Today, the NASA Earth Observatory has some images of the plume from the Russian volcano heading out to the east over the Peninsula. The plume itself looks fairly diffuse and mostly whitish steam rather than laden with grey/brown ash. The last significant eruption from Koryaksky was a VEI 3 eruption in 1956-57 that produced ash fall and pyroclastic flows from the volcano. One thing that is noted on the EO page is this snippet: MODIS captured this plume days…
The slow summer for volcanic eruptions continue. Only 11 updates in this week's USGS/SI report. Thanks again to SI's Sally Kuhn Sennert for compiling the news! Highlights this week include (not including Kilauea) include: Tungurahua in Ecuador produced some minor lahars on August 21 to go with steam-and-gas emissions. Popocatépetl in Mexico produced an ash plume that reached ~8.2 km / 27,000 feet on August 20 and continued to produce steam-and-ash plumes throughout the week following. Over on the Kamchatka Peninsula, both Koryaksky and Shiveluch produced significant ash plumes (reaching 3-5…
Busy today with scouting out some field location for the class I'll be teaching this fall. Here's this week's USGS/SI Weekly Volcano Report. The report is a little more eventful than last week's, so enjoy! Kliuchevskoi Volcano in Kamchatka, taken summer of 2009 by Theresa Kayzar. Highlights include: Three volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula are currently producing ash plumes: Kliuchevskoi, Koryaksky and Shiveluch. Shiveluch has been having the most intense eruptions, but the former two are both producing ash-and-steam plumes that reach over 3 km / 10,000 feet. Talang in Indonesia saws its…
I recently came across the Russian nesting doll art of Irina Troitskaya and thought I would share. Also called matryoshka, matreshka, or "those things are freaking awesome" in Russian, nesting dolls are a traditional artform from the town of Semyonov, where the land was terrible for farming, but the trees were great for nesting dolls. Irina creates her matryoshka on a per order basis only, so get in line! "Queer Fellows" Animals from Russian fairy tales Set of five animals Set of white animals The backs of aforementioned white animals See all her work here or her animal nesting dolls…
Even the SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report seems a little light -- welcome to the dog days of summer! Highlights from this week's report include: "Thunderous sounds", incandescence and small plumes (hundreds of meters) with more frequent seismicity at Ibu in Indonesia. A sharp increase in sulfur dioxide output was noted at Mayon in the Philippines on August 4 - from ~700-900 tonnes/day to almost 2,000 tonnes/day. ~3,000 meter/10,000 foot gas-and-ash plume from Bagana in Papua New Guinea - you can see it on this recent NASA Earth Observatory image. Ash/gas plumes from Sakurajima in Japan rose to ~…
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…
In case you don't frequent the NASA Earth Observatory, I thought I'd call your attention to some images they recently posted that are, again, excellent shots of volcanism captured from space. The current plume from Tavurvur Crater at Rabaul was shot by the MODIS imager on Terra in early August. The plume is mostly made of volcanic gases and steam, but minor amounts of ash are also found - and remember, even small concentrations of ash in the air can be hazardous to aircraft. Shiveluch has been having a busy summer, with moderate-to-large plinian eruptions produced by the emplacement (and…
Japanese artists' depiction of the horrors at Hiroshima.Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped "Little Boy," the first of only two nuclear bombs ever used in warfare, on the Japanese civilians at Hiroshima. In an instant flash of light an estimated 140,000 people were either incinerated or suffered an agonizing death that lasted several days. The standard mythology is that President Truman dropped the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (three days later on August 9) in order to avoid having to send half a million American soliders to their deaths in a…
We've made it to Ohio! Tomorrow I'll hopefully be returning to regularly scheduled updates, but until then, enjoy this week's SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report. Highlights include: KVERT mentions that seismicity has increased recently at both Kizimen and Kliuchevskoi on the Kamchatka Peninsula. ~4 km / ~13,500 foot steam-and-ash plumes spotted at Colima in Mexico. Rumbling noises, incandescent ejecta and ~4.3 km / 14,000 foot ash plumes at Fuego in Guatemala. Explosions were increasing as the August began. It was a busy week in Guatemala, as ash/gas plumes were spotted at Santiaguito and Pacaya…
This is likely my last update until the end of next week sometime, so feel free to use it for any new volcano news you might see. Look for the Erebus Volcano Profile to be posted on Friday sometime, followed by the vote for the next Profile. Next time I post I'll be (back) in the eastern time zone! With that, I leave you with the latest USGS/SI Weekly Volcano Report. Highlights (not counting Shiveluch) include: Small ash plumes were spotted several times from Batu Tara in Indonesia. Explosions, ashfall and earthquakes were reported at Nevado del Huila in Colombia. There were reports of…
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…
Your volcano news! Thanks, as always, to the USGS/SI Global Volcanism Program. Highlights include: The alert level at Sakurajima was raised from 2 to 3 by the Japanese Meteorological Agency. This was due to the increasing frequency of explosions at the volcano, some of which produced ash plumes up to 1.8-2.7 km / 6-9,000 feet. Ash was reported up to 3 km away from Ibu in Indonesia. However, officials in Indonesia lowered the alert from 3 to 2, but tourists are still restricted from going with 2 km of the volcano. Lots of activity at Shiveluch in Kamchatka. You can see some of the activity in…
Your weekly dose of volcanism from the USGS/Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program. Highlights (not counting Mayon), include: The activity at Mando Hararo in Ethiopia appears to be a fissure eruption. Ground observations saw a 4-5 kilometers / ~2.5-3 mile fissure with new predominantly 'a'a lava flows that were 2-3 m thick ... the fissure was lined with scoria ramparts 30-50 m high. They did not see any active lava, though. As some Eruptions readers have pointed out from the OMI SO2 maps, Sarychev Peak (Russia) is still producing gas-and-steam (with some ash) plumes, mostly drifting off to the…
Hydrothermal fields are tricky beasts. They can wax and wane as the magmatic system heats and cools, as the water table rises and falls and as other events such as earthquakes or explosions might change the conduit systems. Changes are relatively common, as we've seen in recent events in the Yellowstone Basin and with the changes within the Waimangu Valley in New Zealand. Understanding the cause-and-effect relationships in these fields can be a challenge even to the most seasoned volcanologist. Prikolny Geyser near Uzon Caldera in Kamchatka. Image taken in July 2009. Case in point is the new…
All the volcano news that is fit to print, all thanks to the USGS/Smithsonian GVP! Highlights (not include Manda Hararo, Kilauea and Mayon) include San Miguel in El Salvador has been experiencing increased seismicity. The last time the volcano erupted was in 2002. A pilot spotted a ~10,000 foot / 3 km ash plume emanating from Anak Krakatau in Indonesia. Another ash plume, this time at Ubinas, Peru, was spotted by pilots rising to ~6.7-9.1 km / 20-30,000 feet. Explosions were heard from Suwanose-jima in Japan, but no associated ash plumes were spotted. It sounds like a lava dome has been…