volcano monitoring
eklemetti | November 18, 2009The latest news from the USGS/Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcano Report ...
Highlights (not including Mayon) include:
Strombolian eruptions and small pyroclastic falls at Arenal in Costa Rica.
3 km / 10 000 foot ash plume from Bagana on Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea.
Rumbling noises, ~4.5 km / 14 000 foot ash plumes and incandescence were all reported coming from Fuego in Guatemala.
Steam-and-ash from Popocatepetl near Mexico City reached 7.4 km / 24 300 feet.
Satellite images of Shiveluch revealed a large thermal anomaly - the new lava dome - along with multiple…
eklemetti | November 13, 2009We've arrived at Friday. The local time is 8:45 A.M. Set your watches accordingly.
Batur, Indonesia
Some news!
More evacuations have been authorized near Mayon as the volcano continues to show signs of significant eruption. Activity has quieted some since Tuesday's explosion, but PHIVOLC still expresses concern that an eruption in impending within weeks. I'll also add a link to this story on Mayon, not because it has new news, but because it has quiet possibly the worst accompanying photo for this story I've seen so far. I mean, really, couldn't you have found some stock picture of Mayon…
eklemetti | November 11, 2009Mayon volcano in Albay province, Philippines.
Yesterday, Mayon in the Philippines, which has been showing signs that it might be headed towards a significant eruption, produced an ash plume that reached as high as 3.5 km / 12,000 feet according to some reports. Evacuations of villages near the volcano have begun, while many other towns have been supplied with wireless announcement systems to help with evacuating if the volcano continues to show signs that it will experience a significant eruption.
Last week, there were reports that a new dome was forming at the summit of Mayon and if this new…
eklemetti | November 11, 2009The volcanoes of Italy must have known that Dr. Boris Behncke would be in the Q&A spotlight here at Eruptions because three have shown signs of new activity over the last week. Here is a quick summary based on information from Dr. Behncke and Sonia Calvari of IGVN.
Etna erupting in 1989. Image by Dr. Boris Behncke.
Etna
On November 6, Etna in Italy appears to have entered a new phase of activity. The volcano had not produced any explosive events since July 4, 2009, but since 11/6, Etna has experienced a series of deep-seated explosive events - some of which suggest there is a lava lake…
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 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 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 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 16, 2009A 1995 photo of Gaua volcano in Vanuatu.
A few weeks ago I mentioned that there were signs that Mt. Garet, part of the larger Gaua volcano in Vanuatu was potentially showing signs of a eruption - the first since 1982. It turns out that the rumbling and sulfur odors reported by local residents were correct and it appears that Gaua did indeed erupt. The latest report from the Geo-Hazard section of the Department of Geology, Mines and Water Resources in Vanuatu:
After the assessment of the Geohazards team on Gaua
volcano from 3-7 October 2009, it is confirmed that Mont Garet volcano is
going…
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 14, 2009Happy Earth Science Week!
Mt. Baker in Washington, USA.
The Mount Baker Volcano Research Center (MBVCC) run out of Western Washington University has posted a series of new pictures and movies of the summit region of Mt. Baker (taken from 2006 to 2009). They also sent out links to some great images of the recently-exposed edge of the old crater rim on Mt. Baker. The crater had been buried by the ice/snow cap on the volcano until this year, but John Scurlock was able to capture a photo of the rim of the crater from an airplane this summer. The grey layer is ash/tephra likely from activity at…
eklemetti | October 9, 2009Somehow I missed a week of the SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Reports and almost missed another. Here is this week's update!
Highlights (not including Chaiten, Soufriere Hills or Cleveland) include:
The alert level at Galeras in Colombia was raised to Red after an explosion on September 30 and returned to orange ... and then yellow ... after activity tapered.
Sakurajima in Japan produced 1.8-4.3 km / 6,000-14,000-tall ash-and-steam plumes, along with incandescent tephra that was thrown almost two kilometers from the vent.
Multiple steam-and-ash plumes reached 4.3 km / 14,000 feet at Langila…
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 | 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 | October 5, 2009Two volcanoes that have been rumbling and rocking for a while now made some noise today:
Kliuchevskoi Volcano in Russia.
Soufriere Hills on Montserrat had a relatively impressive explosive event, producing a ~3 km / ~11,000 foot ash plume - its first eruption in 10 months. This was after a sharp increase in seismicity at the West Indies volcanoes since Sunday. This is a bit of a surprise as the eruptive period at Soufriere Hills was seen to be coming to an end - however, this eruption isn't really anything out of the ordinary according to James White Jr., the acting director of the Disaster…
eklemetti | October 4, 2009And not because the Indians' season is finally (mercifully) over (zing!)
Cleveland steaming away in a 2008 AVO image.
Cleveland (the volcano) erupted on Friday, producing an ash column that reached 4.5-6 km / 15,000-20,000 feet. The full report from AVO:
Satellite data indicate that Cleveland volcano erupted briefly this morning at ~0730 UTC (2330 AKDT) 02 October 2009, producing a small, detached ash cloud that drifted northeast of the volcano at maximum altitudes of 15,000' to 20,000' (4.5 - 6.1 km) .
AVO has no real data seismic data right now for Cleveland, so only satellite imagery is…
eklemetti | October 2, 2009News 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…