Satellite images
eklemetti | November 5, 2009The latest of volcano news from around the world, brought to you by the USGS and Smithsonian Institute Global Volcanism Program (and especially Sally Kuhn Sennert!)
Highlights this week include:
Karangetang in Indonesia produced a couple 3 km/10,000 foot steam-and-ash plumes according to reports from pilots.
Soufriere Hills on the island on Montserrat has had quite a few pyroclastic flows over the last few weeks since the volcano started erupting again. Mix that with some heavy rainfall and lahars were produced as well.
The alert level is still at Orange at Karymsky in Kamchatka, which…
eklemetti | November 3, 2009There 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…
eklemetti | November 1, 2009All the news to start the week:
Galeras with a grey ash-and-steam plume behind Pasto, Colombia.
Well, after my article on Friday about Colombian volcanoes, Galeras must have decided it was left out. The volcano has been placed back at alert level Orange/II (eruption in days to weeks). An increase in seismicity and sulfur dioxide emissions (in spanish) prompted INGEOMINAS to put Galeras back on higher alert, but now the country has two volcanoes (Galeras and Huila) that could be erupting in the near future.
Back in the Philippines, there is new evidence that Mayon has a new dome forming at…
eklemetti | October 30, 2009There has been news over the last few days of a number of volcanoes in Colombia, so I thought I'd try to gather it up here:
The steaming summit of Nevado del Huila in Colombia
Nevado del Huila has been ramping up its ash emissions, potentially pointing towards new eruptions from the crater dome. The NASA Earth Observatory posted a new image of the grey ash plume from the volcano poking its way up through the clouds. This plume made it all the way to ~11 km / 36,000 feet, so it definitely isn't insignificant. This comes after an increase in seismicity (up to 1,000 earthquakes in the last…
eklemetti | October 28, 2009I'll be giving a talk this afternoon here at Denison on rhyolite generation, so I might be a little brief this morning.
Undated image of Mayon in the Philippines.
The province of Albay in the Philippines is on alert for both a typhoon and a volcano (that country seems to be hit with that 300,000 may need to be ready to evacuate if the volcano continues to show signs that it might erupt - in fact, Mayon is producing ash as of this morning, albeit only one minor ash explosion.
Lava flows from Kilauea are drawing crowds as they inundate a road in Kalapana. There is a nice video link to the…
eklemetti | October 22, 2009I 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…
eklemetti | October 7, 2009Sometimes it is hard to keep up with the mountain of remote sensing (or not so remote) images that get released on the internet. Over the last few days, the NASA Earth Observatory has released a bunch of images/videos of current eruptions, so I thought I'd round them all up here for you to peruse.
Soufriere Hills releasing puffs of ash-and-steam on October 6, 2009. Image courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory.
Four new images in the recent past:
A nice, clear picture of an ash-and-steam plume from Rabaul in PNG was captured by the Terra satellite's MODIS imager on September 30, 2009. The…
eklemetti | September 29, 2009As 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…
eklemetti | September 11, 2009To the updates!
Batu Tara volcano in Indonesia. The volcano is currently producing small ash plumes.
I was distracted enough by trying to figure out a way to teach about Miller Indices that I plum forgot to post this week's USGS/SI Weekly Volcanic Activity Report. It was a fairly quiet week so you didn't miss much. Enjoy it at your leisure.
Rabaul must be positioned on the globe in such a way that NASA's Aqua satellite always gets a good shot at it. The Earth Observatory posted a new image of the plume from Rabaul and it looks thicker and more ash-laden than the image posted a few weeks ago…
eklemetti | August 31, 2009First 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…
eklemetti | August 27, 2009
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…
eklemetti | August 21, 2009The summit crater at Kilauea in Hawai'i has had a busy summer and now that fall is around the corner (yikes!), there is a bit of new info on activity in the crater.
Halema`uma`u Crater emitting a steam plume in January, 2009.
First off, the NASA Earth Observatory released an image of the steaming crater area of Halema`uma`u. The image captures the new plume of steam and volcanic gases that have been coming from the crater. The latest news reports that the glow (albeit faint) from the underlying magma has returned to the crater after the rockfall earlier this summer. Also, sulfur dioxide…
eklemetti | August 12, 2009Even 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…
eklemetti | August 6, 2009In 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…
eklemetti | July 30, 2009The next up in my Volcano Profiles Series, is one of the most remote volcanoes on the planet, yet also one of the more closely studied and monitored (albeit from afar). Joining Vesuvius, Hood and Rabaul is Mt. Erebus, an active volcano on Ross Island in Antarctica and it definitely has some unique features.
VOLCANO PROFILE: MT. EREBUS
Mt. Erebus in Antarctica with a local resident in the foreground.
Location: Antarctica* (technically, it is on the part of Antarctica claimed by New Zealand, but the Antarctic Treaty System more or less makes the continent an international zone.)
Height: 3,794…
eklemetti | July 27, 2009Again, 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…
eklemetti | July 22, 2009Your 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…
eklemetti | July 20, 2009Starting today and going until early August, you might see fewer posts on Eruptions than you're accustomed. This is because I'm in the process of moving to Ohio to get set up to start my new job as an assistant professor at Denison University. I'm excited about the move, but as you can imagine, trying to pull up stakes in California and trek two-thirds of the way across the continent will take up a lot of my time. I will miss the easy access to volcanoes here on the Left Coast, but I am excited to get (mostly) permanent employment, set up my own lab and to be able to teach geology again!…
eklemetti | July 17, 2009Some of the articles you might have missed this week ...
A lava flow from Kilauea breaks local traffic laws in the Royal Gardens subdivision, Hawai'i
The Mayon Watch continues in the Philippines. No eruption yet, but some of the local newspapers are printing stories talking about "odd animal behavior" and other local "myths" about predicting the volcano, such as the wells drying up. Now, this is not to say that these things might have some predictive value (especially changes in the water table near the volcano as it inflates/deflates), but so far there are no robust scientific studies that…
eklemetti | July 8, 2009Two papers submitted, one to go. Keeps you quite busy, let me tell you.
Lava flow from a 2006 eruption on Mayon in the Philippines.
A few bits of news today:
A few more details about the ongoing watch of Mayon in the Philippines . There have been apparently no changes in the shape of the floor of the crater as you might expect if magma was rising underneath. However, there has been an overall inflation of Mayon since the unrest began a few weeks ago. PHIVOLCS will be checking the sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide output of the volcano soon as well.
Lots of articles this week about the "…