volcano

It is like finding a leak in your roof. I remember once up at the cabin, noticing that my waders were full of water and pointing this out to my wife. "You're supposed to hang the waders upside down. Keeps dead mice from falling in there." Well, I thought, if any mice fell in these waders and weren't dead, they'd drown for sure. Anyway, I traced the leak to a part of the ceiling in the closet. Eventually I was able to find the place in the attic where the water was probably going down into the closet, but by this time the torrential rain storms that had preceded the discovery of Lake…

Calbuco is a volcano in southern Chile. This one erupts fairly frequently averaging about every 20 years, sometimes quite impresively. The largest eruption during historic times in Chile occurred at Calbuco in 1894. It is erupting now. Evacuations have been ordered. Here is some amazing footage:

Bárðarbunga is arguably the scariest of the 30 or so active volcanoes in Iceland. Extreme volcanoes don't always have extreme eruptions, but they are scary because they have the capability for extreme events, uniquely so. Bárðarbunga - under the ice cap at the top left - from Google maps It is not the most active, it is not the tallest, it may possibly be the biggest in some sense, but it is the volcano which gave us the largest eruption on Earth since modern humans started trying to get organized: the Þjórsárhraun eruption about 8,500 years ago. [caption id="attachment_3871" align="…

Mark Your Cosmic Calendar: 774/775 One wonders if anyone felt it. Did Charlemagne feel it as he led his forces across Pagan Saxon Westphalia, knocking down Irminsuls and making everyone pretend to be Christian or else? Did the people of Bagdad, just becoming the world’s largest city, notice anything aside from their own metro-bigness? Did the Abbasid Caliph Muhammad ibn Mansur al-Mahdi have the impression something cosmic was going on that year, other than his own ascendancy to power? Or was it mainly some of the Nitrogen molecules in the upper atmosphere that were changed, not forever but…

(image info and credits) Fake skeptics of anthropogenic global warming love to set up the straw man that mainstream climate science believes that CO2 is the one and only driver of climate change.  They can then use it in many different attacks, such as gee whiz isn't it stupid that they haven't even thought of the sun's influence.  This is of course patently false as even the most cursory survey of actual scientific content will quickly reveal.  This straw man is also an implicit part of the argument that the "16 year pause" in global warming proves that CO2 is not a climate driver.  If CO2…

I'm reading Disaster!: A History of Earthquakes, Floods, Plagues, and Other Catastrophes by John Withington, who also wrote about other disastrous things such as disasters specific to London. It is a couple of years old (and thus does not include the recent Japan earthquake and tsunami). This is more of a reference book than a sit-down-and-read-it book, and it lacks detailed presentation or critical analysis of sources, but if you want to know about a particular past major disaster or category of major disasters (volcanoes, floods, tsunamis, etc.) this is a good starting point. Reading…

"Some prophecies are self-fulfilling But I've had to work for all of mine Better times will come to me, God willing Cause I can't leave this world behind" -Josh Ritter You sure can't leave this world behind. At least, not very easily. The reason for it, of course, is gravity. Image Credit: Physclips, via the University of New South Wales' School of Physics. Here on the surface of the Earth, the gravitational potential well is pretty large; large enough that there's no easy way off. Sure, you can pour a huge amount of energy into a rocket to try and overcome this gravitational potential…

There are thirteen canary islands. But there are about to be fourteen. Well, actually, there's probably more than 13 as these island chains usually have a few extra rocks sticking up that people aren't sure about including in the final count. The point is, there is a volcano erupting under the sea in the Canary Island chain and the top of the volcano is about 70 meters from the surface of the sea according to some reports. There has been concern about the volcanic activity, and the associated earthquakes in the region, and there is even a threat of tsunami. A small volcanic disaster…

Not long after Yellowstone Park was officially created, a small group of campers were killed by Nez Perce Indians on the run from US troops1. More recently, the last time I was in the area, a ranger was killed by a Grizzly Bear (so was his horse) on the edge of the park. A quick glance at my sister's newspaper archives (Lightning Fingers Liz a.k.a. Caldera Girl has been running newspapers in the region for nearly forty years) shows a distinctive pattern of danger in the Caldera, mainly in relation to the lack of turning lanes on highways with poor visibility and other traffic related…

NASA may have spotted evidence of ice volcanoes on Saturn's moon. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found possible ice volcanoes on Saturn's moon Titan that are similar in shape to those on Earth that spew molten rock. Topography and surface composition data have enabled scientists to make the best case yet in the outer solar system for an Earth-like volcano landform that erupts in ice. The results were presented today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. "When we look at our new 3-D map of Sotra Facula on Titan, we are struck by its resemblance to volcanoes like Mt. Etna…

Even at the most extreme edges of the flow of stuff out of the volcano Pompeii, at the far edge of the mud and ash that came from the volcano's explosion, the heat was sufficient to instantly kill everyone, even those inside their homes. And that is how the people at Pompeii, who's remains were found trapped and partly preserved within ghostly body-shaped tombs within that pyroclastic flow, died. They did not suffocate. They did not get blown apart by force. They did not die of gas poisoning. They simply cooked. Instantly. That is the conclusion of a study just published in PLoS ONE by…

tags: What do You Remember About Mt St Helens' Violent Eruption?, volcano, Mt St Helens, earth science, earth science Mt St Helens eruption, as photographed by NOAA GOES-3 satellite. Image: NOAA, US Government (public domain) [larger view]. These videos provide a glimpse of what I (and other people in the area) experienced in the aftermath of the Mt St Helens explosion: Ash that I collected off the hood of the neighbor's car: A jar of Mt St Helens Ash from the 0832 eruption on 18 May 1980. This explosive eruption sent ash 24,400 meters (80,000 feet) into the sky, generated an…

Don't miss April 19th's APOD, a truly awsome sight! And while on the subject of Eyjafjallajokull and my recent post about it, readers should be aware of a correction on the source site. The best estimate of CO2 is in fact 150,000 tons per day, not 7400, with a possible maximum of 300,000 tons per day. So the graphic is much less compelling, but the story of Joe vs the Volcano is not affected.

This seems to have become unofficial volcano week, here at ScienceBlogs. If you haven't been following the coverage of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption at Erik Klemetti's Eruptions blog, you should consider doing so. Also, Dr. Isis has a post on how the eruption has fouled up all nuclear imaging plans at her place of research, and Ethan explains how volcanic lightening works. Our benevolent overlords have further commented: "Eyjafjallajökull's ill temper has been an unexpected object lesson in the complexity and interconnectedness of our environment, technology, and social networks." To that I…

Whitney Houston took a car ferry from Britain to Ireland to attend her concert, rather than flying. Barack Obama has canceled his trip to a state funeral in Poland. A very large magical snake protects a canyon in south Africa. These things are connected a lot more closely than you might think. Eyjafjallajoekull1 is the volcano in Iceland that is making all the mess in Europe, shutting down most Western European airports. Iceland as a whole is a volcanic feature that sits atop the Mid Atlantic Ridge. The Atlantic Ocean is a huge rift valley, in some ways similar to the famous rift…

Apparently we're all going to die because The Spooky Face means all that healthy foreign-grown lettuce and fine green beans can't be flown in. Or so said the radio this morning; I wasn't paying too close attention because I was sleepy, they may have phrased it slightly differently. However, when I got to Waitrose I was disappointed to find no panic-stricken queues - indeed it was quite quiet - and plenty of vegetables. Still nothing at all to see in the sky - well, other than the moon and so on, which remain perfectly clear. While I'm on the misc stuff, I warn you I'm going to blog about our…

[UPDATE: readers should be aware of a correction on the source site. The best estimate of CO2 is in fact 150,000 tons per day, not 7400, with a possible maximum of 300,000 tons per day. So the graphic is much less compelling, but the story of Joe vs the Volcano is not affected.] Even if I can't say it, the volcano Eyjafjallajokull is great to illustrate just how ludicrous the "Volcanoes emit more CO2" argument is. Courtesy of Information Is Beautiful, here is a very telling graphic. Is there really a need to say more?

Yes, I ripped it off Steinn. Nothing to see here, beyond people who shouldn't be here because their flights have been cancelled. Clear sunny skies, nice sunset, no hint of anything in front of the moon.

Eyjafjallajökull erupted tonight. Small so far, we'll see how it develops, first eruption in 187 years. Eruptions tracked the microquaking leading up to the eruption - fascinating and very long comment conversation and liveblogging of the precursors to the eruption. Tremendous use of blogging. Farms south of the mountain are being evacuated, they'll see what it is like in the morning. Should be a jökulhlaup underway (glacial flash flood). Ashplume is headed north, airports are closed. EUMETSAT images here PS: according to ruv.is early sunday morning, the geoscientists driving up to the…

Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone National Park. A few thoughts about faulting, earthquakes and eruptions: The earthquakes at Yellowstone have been universally attributed to fault movement rather than magmatic activity by the USGS and the researchers at the University of Utah. This is likely based on the moment solutions for the earthquakes (i.e., the sense of motion on the earthquake - side to side, dilation, etc.) and the fact that there are no directly correlative volcanic/magmatic symptoms to go with them (such as pronounced, short-term bulging, excessive hydrothermal venting, etc.) Now…