seismicity
eklemetti | November 6, 2009Piton de la Fournaise erupting on November 5, 2009. Image by Julian Balboni in Clicanoo.
Eruptions reader Richard Oliver pointed out to me that Piton de la Fournaise on Reunion Island erupted (in french) on Thursday night. The volcano produced at least two lava flows that reached the ocean flowed downslope to ~1970 m above sea level, but by Friday morning, the seismicity and eruptive activity had waned considerably. Local residents of the island went out at night to see (in french) the lava flows, with the typical words of warning from local officials. The timeline for the eruption (in french…
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 there…
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 the…
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 week…
eklemetti | October 29, 2009The SI/USGS GVP site is back up and running - and they've posted a new weekly volcano activity report. Enjoy!
Highlights include:
Nevado del Huila in Colombia has been showing signs that a new eruption might be starting. Seismicity has increased and minor ash fall has been reported, leading to an increase in the alert level at the volcano to "orange" (high).
Ebeko in the Kuril Islands off Russia and Japan produced a ~8.8 km / 29,000 foot ash plume.
Thermal images of the crater at El Reventador in Ecuador show that hot material is filling in the dome complex - this followed ash-and-steam…
eklemetti | October 15, 2009Before we get to the latest SI/USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report (WVAR), I wanted to draw your attention to some nifty NASA Earth Observatory images from the current activity at Soufriere Hills in Montserrat. After a few puffs last week, the volcano is now releasing a relatively constant stream of ash and steam, this after ~10 months of quiescence. The two images, one on October 12 and one on the 13th, suggest there is a lot of a variability, day to day, in the plume. See the latest WVAR for more info on Soufriere Hills.
On to the Report!
Highlights this week (not including Soufriere Hills…
eklemetti | October 8, 2009Chaiten 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…
eklemetti | September 30, 2009The big geology news right now is the M8 earthquake in American Samoa that generated a killer tsunami (which made it all the way to the Bay Area in California).
Mammoth Mountain in California's Long Valley region.
In more benign, volcano-related news:
The aviation alert level at Redoubt in the Alaska has been returned to Green/Normal, which means that for all intents-and-purposes, the eruption that started earlier this year is over. The new dome totals ~91 million cubic yards of lava, slowly adding back to the north side of the volcano.
Eruptions reader Doug C. pointed out to me that there…
eklemetti | September 21, 2009Eruptions reader Doug pointed out in a recent comment that the seismicity at Mt. Rainier in Washington has increased over the last month or so. Take a look for yourself:
Mt. Rainier seismicity over the last year (8/2008 to 9/2009). Image courtesy of PNSN
Taking a closer look, over the last week there has been 7 earthquakes over the last 5 days - all between M1-3 - near Rainier, most calculated to be between 1.5 to 5.8 km depth.
Any thoughts? I see a lot more noise (earthquakes) between 3-6 km depth. It could as benign as seismicity due to fluid in the extensive hydrothermal system at Rainier…
eklemetti | September 14, 2009Monday 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…
eklemetti | September 4, 2009Lets get right to it!
"Manmade volcanoes": can they solve global warming?
It does indeed seem that something is happening beneath Kanlaon in the Philippines. PHIVOLCS reports that the volcano experienced 257 volcanic earthquakes from August 23 to September 1, well above the usually "background" level of ~20-30 a week. Most of this seismicity is centered on the northwest slope of the volcano, suggesting that if magma is moving, it is moving up under this side of the system. However, the seismicity doesn't necessarily have to be magma moving up to erupt. It could very easily be moving up in the…
eklemetti | August 28, 2009Not much in volcano news, however a lot of earthquake news this morning.
Did anyone else notice that two M6+ earthquakes occurred last night within one minute of each other last night (eastern daylight time)? The first was in the Banda Sea near Indonesia at 01:51:19 UTC (M6.8), the next was in northern Qinhai in China at 01:52:06 UTC (M6.2). I'm guessing that is just the sort of coincidences that occur when you have thousands of earthquakes globally a week, but still an interesting coincidence. There was also a series of earthquakes, all less than M3.7, last night in Oklahoma of all places.…
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 10, 2009Some 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…
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 16, 2009Shishaldin volcano in Alaska.
Yesterday I mentioned in the SI/USGS Weekly Report update that things appear to be afoot at Shishaldin in the Aleutians. Well, I checked the Shishaldin webicorder today and indeed, [SPECULATION] something seems suspect. Now, the increasing signal might be wholly unrelated to any magmatic activity, but it is interesting to see an increase in the seismicity after the increase in the intensity of thermal anomaly at the summit crater.
AVO's latest statement (from yesterday) seems to think that nothing too much is up:
Cloudy conditions prevented views of Shishaldin…
eklemetti | July 13, 2009Mayon erupting in August 2004.
The increasing unrest at Mayon in the Philippines has prompted National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) to recommend the evacuation of over 75,000 people from around the volcano. This, however, will only happen if the activity at the volcano continues to increase. The volcano currently sits at Alert Level 2 (increasing unrest) and if it were to increase to Level 3 (increased tendency towards eruption), then the evacuations of the first ~1,800 families closest to the volcano would begin. Only if the volcano reached Alert Level 4 (hazardous eruption imminent…
eklemetti | July 10, 2009Another fun weekend for me analyzing zircon on the SHRIMP-RG at Stanford University! I really know how to live it up during the summer.
Some news bits:
The 2009 dome at Redoubt in Alaska steaming on July 2, 2009. Image taken by Cyrus Read, courtesy of USGS/AVO
In another sign that Redoubt's 2009 eruption might be at an end, AVO has ceased 24 hour staffing of their operations center. They still warn that Redoubt might still have more activity up its sleeve, but as of now, things are pretty quite. The latest update on Redoubt reports that the new dome continues to steam away and seismicity…
eklemetti | July 8, 2009All 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…
eklemetti | July 2, 2009
The Halema'uma'u Crater at Kilauea on June 29, 2009, prior to a rockfall on June 30th that has blocked the vent. Image courtesy of HVO.
There is a bit of a buzz today about significant rockfalls that occurred in Halema'uma'u Crater at Kilauea on June 30th. Some articles have suggested that the rockfall has "snuffed out" glowing vent in the Crater. Well, this is partially true. HVO is reporting that the glow that has been seen at Halema`uma`uma has been, in fact, gone since the rockfall. Here is the report of the event:
A sequence of rockfalls, some quite large, within the Halema'uma'u vent…