papua new guinea

volcanoes and the economy

volcanoes and the economy

www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2008/2007GC001710.shtml

Never heard of the
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER
http://www.psc.edu/research/graphics/gallery/earthquake.php

maybe some of you find some interesting animations.

How about that:
"RVO reported an eruption from Rabaul caldera's Tavurvur cone on 23 July, after increased seismicity likely beneath Tavurvur cone was detected the previous day."
New Britain's sequence of EQs started after a 7.3 Sunday, July 18, 2010 at 13:34:59 UTC
and then, on July 23rd the sequence of deep Mindanao EQs.
No correlation?
BTW: Another 6.6 aftershock today in Mindanao.
(Data from USGS)

Renato: It's a bit difficult to correlate a specific Tavurvur explosion with the New Britain quakes, since Tavurvur has been banging and thumping away on a pretty regular basis for most of the last fifteen years. (check previous GVP weekly reports) But maybe it's not impossible that the quake could have given magma in the conduit a good shaking up and encouraged gas bubble formation

Rio, you read this: Tectonic Setting and Volcanoes
of Papua New Guinea, New Britain, and the Solomon Islands

volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/southeast_asia/papua_new_guinea/tectonics.html

Think about Ekohs informative posts, my elaboration on the Mindanao deep focus EQs, the Russkie Model and the proof presented in the marvelous Cocos plate subduction and deep folding.

The map of volcanoes active from 1900-1999 is interesting. From what we know of this area, most of the recent volcanic activity makes sense, although it's a tectonically complex region.

And then there are the out-of-the-blue sleepers, like Lamington, with it's sole recent eruption occurring mid-20th century. It was a VEI 4, lasting several years with unfortunate pyroclastic flow deaths over a very large area.

volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/southeast_asia/lamington.html

From John Seach: Lamington is a major andesite volcano located in an area without a Benioff-Wadati zone. The magmas erupted from the volcano have unusually high levels of Nickel and Chromium.

That observation came from a 1983 publication, 'Ophiolite-contaminated andesites, trachybasalts, and cognate inclusions of Mount Lamington, Papua New Guinea: anhydrite-amphibole-bearing lavas and the 1951 cumulodome.', which mentions,

'Mount Lamington, together with three other major andesitic centers â Mount Victory, Mount Trafalgar and Hydrographers Range â rest on a northeast-dipping ophiolite sheet, the Papuan Ultramafic Belt (PUB); there is no evidence for a Benioff-Wadati zone beneath this part of Papua.'

That caused a bit of difficulty for subduction zone modelers, but a new regional model,

New SW Pacific tectonic model: Cyclical intraoceanic magmatic arc construction and near-coeval emplacement along the Australia-Pacific margin in the Cenozoic. (AGU 2008 Wattman et al)

was published recently.

'A new model is presented whereby the PUB, New Caledonia, and Northland ophiolites formed and were emplaced in a cyclical fashion above an extensive NE dipping Cenozoic intraoceanic arc system which diachronously propagated (N-S) along the entire eastern margin of the Australian Plate.'

Chris, at Highly Allochonthous, has a great descriptive tectonic map of the region.
all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2010/07/fridayish-focal-mechanisms/

And that's what set us off exploring deep focus EQ mechanics. After reading our posts here, it should be a nobrainer to see the depth of these quakes and understand that stretching/thinning and folding quakes will be ongoing, once the Big Crackers released the potential energy of what must be a major fold forming.

An aside: for those who were met with the inevitable NYTimes login webpage after clicking his hyperlinks to the articles on Antarctic subglacial volcanism, see

www.science20.com/news_releases/first_evidence_of_sub_glacial_volcano_i…

and the original letter-article abstract by Corr and Vaughn, Nature Geoscience 1, 122 - 125 (2008), 'A recent volcanic eruption beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet'.

www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n2/full/ngeo106.html

@mike don #3: this was a speculation we were arguing about on that day of New Britain's quake. Just wanted to post this as a reminder. Thank you.
@Passerby: I haven't yet finished all my homework and you're already providing us with ever more precious information. I must confess it's a bit confusing to understand all mechanisms involved in plates/subduction over that specific area, but I'm getting closer. I'ts a big honor to have you here to help us. Many thanks.

Not to worry - the mention of Lamington was to point to the evolving understanding of the mishmash of plates and mechanisms at play in the New Britain-PNG area; SE Asia-South Pacific region IS tectonically busy - and confusing, if you don't tease it apart.

To pick up on the links above, to the research conducted by Dr. Robert Sohn at WHOI on explosive undersea eruptions, and the work by Corr and Vaughan about finding subglacial volcanism in Antarctica, I was interested to see the links between volcanism and global warming being explored. It is not yet accepted that volcanoes might release the heat currently warming the globe, before the earth will cool back down again. The 60 meter rise of the polar region could possibly be a linked factor, and the melting of methane hydrates might well contribute to the explosivity of undersea volcanoes. There are interesting articles on hydrates on pages 64-67 in Google Popular Science.
Interesting times we live in! Thanks Passerby for the explanation of the deep quakes under Papua New Guinea and the Phillipines. There are so many different parts of the world working in different ways. The deep hammer action of the inverse Himalayas is not going to be anywhere near that sort of depth but do you think it has influence on the weaker gravitational field over India?

Interesting that Nevado del Ruiz was removed from the new Smithsonian/USGS Volcanic Activity Report. And we just had a 69km deep 5.0 EQ about 90 km SE of Ruiz. Let us see if it will give a "kick" and trigger volcanic activity.

I don't like to insist on the subject, but steam activity in EyjafÃ¶ll is quite vigorous. There are too many clouds, but you can see how fast it's pushed up from the rim, from ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell cam. You can also compare it with other cams, weather permitting.

You mean, do magnetic anomalies map to subduction zones?

Yes. Also to isotactic (glacial) rebound.

But you can verify this for yourself by mapping the geoid against global tectonic maps.

First Complete Image Created Of Himalayan Fault, Subduction Zone. Science Daily September 2009.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090911164435.htm

Underplating in the Himalaya-Tibet Collision Zone Revealed by the Hi-CLIMB Experiment. (2009) Science 325:1371-1374. DOI: 10.1126/science.1167719

Fig 2D. Interpretative cross section of the India-Eurasia collision zone. The graphic shows cross-sectional depth to 200Km, but you know it goes MUCH deeper, from the intense blue (the gravity is pushed down) over India as seen in the colored graphic of the new June 2010 ESA GOCE Satellite Geoid Map (see links below)

Click on the righthand panel, Figures Only link to see the Tibet-India plate interaction graphic.

GOCE Map
www.esa.int/esaLP/SEMY0FOZVAG_LPgoce_0.html

Tectonic map showing India Plate extent
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plates_tect2_en.svg

Thanks Passerby. I have learned a lot from these last 2 threads and you have confirmed what I suspected re India and conversely the Icelandic rifting. The layers within the Earth are very uneven...

@Renato: You missed the numerous other earthquakes and eruptions. No correlation, just numerous coincidences because these things really do happen all the time.

@Passerby

The part that had me curious, is that there was an article a few months ago that indicated that a mid depth segment of the Himalaya range was flowing northward. The basement is moving south, and the surface is moving south.

From the links you provided, this flow would seem to be associated with the Lhasa and Qiantang blocks. The flow evidently turns off towards SE Asia.

This appeared in an article that equated the massive height of the Himalayas with the high rate of erosion on the southern face of the range.

http://www.pgi.gov.pl/pdf/sad0806Hodg2p.pdf

Region: Mindoro, Philippines
Time: 2010-07-30 00:22:17.3 UTC
Magnitude: 4.8
Epicenter: 120.74Â°E 13.29Â°N
Depth: 115 km

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/read/index.php?pageid=seism_read&rid=184017

(pffffft. pops opens a tall boy)

*squinting at EQ Map, USGS, Mindano/Moro Gulf*

Couldn't find any quakes, regardless of magnitude, at shallow depth in this cluster of 22 events. They are all deep.

earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/10/120_5.php

The mapped 2010 quakes appear to be associated with the deep focus seismic events.

USGS Map, historical seismicity, maps 1990-2010 and 2010, Moro Gulf, Mindano, Philippines.

neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_zhbe_h.html

http://geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/db/eqpage.php?id=gfz2010otlz

Night Passerby and everyone. The tall boy has spoken to me.

|-o

----------------------------------
For followers of the night life there is sex, drugs or rocking with rolling off the Kamchatka peninsula to entertain you.

geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/db/eqinfo.php

Unusually high steam plume on Eyjaf!

Oh - as for a few tens of millions of euro lost for each operator? Hah - peanuts! They could easily have been spending over 30M euro per plane that flew through the volcanic debris. My suppressed evil ego is wishing they had flown after all - looking at available data after the fact, there is a good chance there would be no crashes and the operators could have discovered for themselves how their profits are affected by choosing to fly or to ground their fleet. Ultimately the market would have "rewarded" the operators who made the correct decision - those who didn't fly would have made much smaller losses than those who flew. Unfortunately there are no existing tools that would allow pilots to make appropriate decisions while flying in space with volcanic debris and, contrary to popular belief, what you don't know *can* hurt you.

Garry Hayes at Geotripper referenced this blog today. It covers, in detail, the current Kiluea lava flows, as well as a comparison to past flows:

http://hawaiianlavadaily.blogspot.com/

OT for Erik Klemetti, Boris Behncke or anyone of comparable knowledge.

I have run across several mentionings of different crust blocks "now welded to" another crust block. For example the Jan Mayen continental fragment now being welded to the Eurasian plate or the Yucatan Basin being welded to North America.

Is this just a cessation of fault activity or is there an actual process involved in making these welds? Or is it more of a case where the jagged edges become so snagged on each other that effectively no more movement is possible?

Again removed from the list:
Code Red the (still) ongoing eruption of ChaitÃ©n Volcano:
http://www.aipchile.cl/camara/show/id/14

According to icelandic news yesterday, there is a good chance that EyjafjallajÃ¶kull has gone dormant already and is now just cooling off.

Here is the news, www.ruv.is/frett/eyjafjallajokull-i-dvala

Translate at own risk with Google translate.

Re. Airline losses, to paraphrase a comment once attributed to the founder of the New York Herald, "if you're running an airline at a profit, you need a new accountant"

Is China's Riskiest Volcano Stirring Or Merely Biding Its Time?

Author: Richard Stone
Science 30 July 2010:
Vol. 329. no. 5991, pp. 498 - 499

AAAS ... Advancing 'science' by hiding behind a paywall

Raving: What's the odds this is a rehash of an article that has been mentioned (and linked to) several times already on this blog?

From the article:

Science 30 July 2010, 329:498-499
DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5991.498-a

'Chinese volcanologists keep a close eye on Changbai; they say an eruption does not seem imminent. From 2002 to 2005, the volcano's magma chamber evidently was filling, says Xu. In quiet periods, seismometers register about 100 small tremors a year around the mountain, he says. In 2003, Changbaishan Tianchi Volcano Observatory recorded 1293 tremors. By 2006, the frequency had receded to background rate, and in the first 6 months of 2010 the station recorded 58 tremors.

The mountain rose about 6.8 centimeters in 2003 and 2004, and the ratio of helium-3 to helium-4â"a good indication of magma activity because the source is the mantle," Xu saysânearly doubled during that time. Changbai has been largely quiet since 2005, says Xu, who expects it to kick into another "active phase" again in the next few years. "But that doesn't mean it will erupt," he says. Miyamoto agrees and notes that it is extremely unlikely that the next eruption would rival the millennium eruption.'

There will be a 3-way meeting of scientists to 'get to the bottom' of the North Korean's assertions of eminent eruption. The North Korean scientists have limited, non realtime, access to seismic data. That's one of the problems. The other is China's secretive nature over volcano observatory upgrades and operations close to the border. Their specific desire is to limit data access to science use only - a charge that North Korea may not be willing to adhere to.

China has magnanimously offered to build a seismic station and integrate observations in North Korea. That offer was declined.

First, we need background on this volcano. Fortunately, the Chinese have published a useful background study on-line.

www.mantleplumes.org/Changbai.html

The paper has a couple of familiar themes, eh?

A related paper, cited in the Changbai article above, that answers questions of recent seismicity off the coast of China.

So you see, my Droogie-Droogs, there won't be any of the old volcanic ultraviolence at Baekdu anytime soon. An elevated rate of tremors? Assuredly.

Why? The aesthenosphere is in an active deep upwelling period, as our good friends at IMO/IES have quietly opined.

Summer rainfall is very high at Baekdu; winter regional precipitation has been near or above historical records (despite the area being typically xeric in winter).

Pore-pressure, gravity flux and major mountain-side erosion on the North Korean side. These should be points of discussion when China and the Koreas meet to discuss Baekdu concerns.

The ESA 2009 GOCE Gradient Gravity Map is a useful thing to study to for a regional context of the Changbai tomography graphic.

www.esa.int/images/gradient_picture.jpg

So you see, my Droogie-Droogs, there won't be any of the old volcanic ultraviolence at Baekdu anytime soon. An elevated rate of tremors? Assuredly.

Why? The aesthenosphere is in an active deep upwelling period, as our good friends at IMO/IES have quietly opined.

Posted by: Passerby | July 31, 2010 5:37 PM

Surely not a subterranean DEW line. Get bent hoser why don't you eh. beauty

Interesting that the science is on a sufficiently firm footing now as to be confidently obvious? It might be so. ...

Subterranean DEW line?

I'm having a hard enough time equating "..there won't be any of the old volcanic ultraviolence at Baekdu anytime soon. An elevated rate of tremors? Assuredly..."

with "...The aesthenosphere is in an active deep upwelling period, as our good friends at IMO/IES have quietly opined."

With the other observations, I can agree with the increased seismic activity, but can not see how it rules out potential activity at Baekdu.

I think the parked slab is a pretty wild event though.

The Chinese, with their sophisticated monitoring program at Baekdu, know 'typical' from 'atypical'. 100 shakes per year is typical. We're just a hair over that for the year. Nothing like 2004-05, when the inflation and shakes, and chemistry, showed clear evidence of magma chamber filling.

Since then, it's gone back to being quiet.

The Aethenosphere plays a role in tectonic seismicity, near surface. Also in geothermal activity.

Mass slumping and erosion, and unusual precipitation, lend pressure stress to susceptible stress-strain loaded faulting.

Changbai has deep focus quakes and shall quakes. In order to suss out the cause, you need several layers of data.

Well, if your getting at there being a lack of inflation or a lack of a copious amount of quakes moving in a direction, then I follow that.

I can also see the mass wasting as being contributory to the seismic noise.

I just couldn't make out increased aesthenosphere activity as being indicative of a non volcanic threat.

Probably a brain fart on my part for not picking up on that.

hi all, i was having problem with pc.i was watching a film last night called 'scorcher' were china were doing a nuclear test in there ocean,which sent the Earth of its Axis towards the sun,then had to to use 2 nukes underneath LA to correct the earth could this actually happen when North Korea were testing i think 2008/9 or 10 not sure

@Leon, not a possibility. The quake on Dec. 26, 2004 was of such magnitude that we cannot build a bomb of the equivilent power. That quake was strong enough to affect the rotation of the earth a tiny bit as in microradians (I could be wrong on that term so Passerby correct me if I am wrong :-)) So the posibility of a bomb large enough to tilt the earth's axis is total nonsense. Movies are just that---movies. Most are just for entertainment and what you saw was for entertainment. As far as I know, there has not been a movie from Hollywood or anyone else that has been accurate about volcanoes. Documentaries are much better, especially when they talk to the people who are in the field of geology. Even then, sometimes there can be a bit of overkill. The best on volcanoes are the videoes and pictures of the real thing. Each eruption has a story to tell about the volcano itself and we learn from them. So don't worry about the earth's axis being thrown off by a bomb.

BTW, the earth actually does have a wobble in its axis that takes thousands of years to make a full revolution on that wobble. It is just a natural part of the movement of the earth in rotation and orbit around the sun. The magnetic north pole also changes position. The earth doesn't need us to affect anything it does. We do sometimes out of ignorance such as when we cut too many trees as the clearing in South America and our industry, but the earth moves and quakes on its own.

I hope you don't worry about what you saw in that movie. It was just a movie.

No.

For the sake of argument, lets say that Earth was whacked by another object... much larger than a standard Mk1 mod-0 asteroid... say, the size of a dwarf planet. A 2410km object moving at 45km/s and striking at 45Â° will generate a seismic event of about Magnitude 15.1.

According to the Earth Impact Effects Program,

http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/

"Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the tilt of Earth's axis (< 5 hundreths of a degree).
Depending on the direction and location of impact, the collision may cause a change in the length of the day of up to 15.3 hours.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably."

So.. I would say that the movie is stretching it a bit.

You are most likely to see a perturbation to Earth's orbit if you add to or take away mass or momentum, and as the simulation notes, even a 2410km diameter rock doesn't make much of an effect. (other than killing all life with the possible exception of few extemophiles that can ride out the melt period on debris slung into space)

Earthquakes don't add or subtract to the momentum of Earth in it's orbit. They can affect the compactness of Earth and change the rotation speed... making days longer or shorter.

That was in response to leon. Diane N CA hit the button before I did.

Subterranean DEW line

I interpreted the 400-600km deep quakes as breaking/flexing of the subducted plate. .. which is fine because the source of signal has been identified.

Given that energetic activity is taking place at 400 km depth, it takes time for the convection to carry it to the surface.

@32: earth rotational axis wobble has a period of 433 days. See Chandler Wobble page, Wikipedia.

@35 Not sure I'm following you on convective transfer of energy from deep quake upwards.

A sort of Subterranean DEW line does exist: a deep ocean boreholes seismic and geomagnetic monitoring network

(Japan) Ocean Hemispheric Network Project (OHP),
eri-ndc.eri.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ohp/index.html

Article abstract describing use of OHP borehole seismometers to model subduction beneath the Pacific and Philippine Plates.

Seismic Evidence for Sharp Lithosphere-Asthenosphere Boundaries of Oceanic Plates. Science, April 2009
Vol.324, pp.499-502.
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/324/5926/499

Good graphics, via Figs Only hyperlink, right panel.

Graphic of the Lithosphere-Aesthenospere at divergent (spreading) ridges and volcanic/tectonic activity.
www.windows2universe.org/earth/images/earths_crust_gif_image.html&edu=h…

Hypothetically, thermal/geomagnetic pulses migrate upward through near-surface aesthenosphere upwellings, spreading forces propagate through the crust with tectonic release at fissures and also under adjacent volcanic centers.

Sorry to throw a spanner Passerby, but Diane referred to the phenomenon of *precession* - http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Sprecess.htm The - discovered by Hipparchos some 2000 years ago. According to this site, the period is 26,000 years but in older Astronomy textbooks, I've seen a figure of 27,000 years.

Leon 31: Just curious, here; the plot of that film sounds very like the corny disaster-movie classic "The Day The Earth Caught Fire" (except that there the nukes were American and Russian, and the detonation to put things right was under Siberia). Just shows that you can't keep a scary-but-ridiculous idea down.

Dunno if it's real, dunno if it's photoshoped, but this screen cap of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull coming up on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" is priceless.

http://i28.tinypic.com/4rakao.jpg

@ Lurking #38. Magic! I would love to have heard the host/questionmaster actually ask the question..... and the given alternatives!

@Passerby #36 and Henrik #37. I was referring to the procession (though I didn't know what to call it), and I didn't know about the wobble that takes 433 days. Thank you, gentlemen for letting me know what I was talking about. LOL

Passerby, what is the 433 day wobble all about? Will you go into a bit more detail on that? Thanks.

37: In her *exact words*
'BTW, the earth actually does have a wobble in its axis'

She didn't type the word 'precession'. I suppose she was referring to the Chile EQ that changed the LOD, but as Lurking pointed out, it's not a change in the rotational axis.

So I deliberately named one of a couple known free nutations. The decadeal-variation is called Markovitz Wobble. The primary excitation component appears to be atomospheric.

The Excitation of the Chandler Wobble (JPL, 2000)
trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/18398/1/99-1877.pdf

In 2006, the Wobble paused briefly for several weeks. Stopped all movement, and caused quite a bit of consternation.

Indeed, there appears to be a connection between the change in amplitude of the Wobble cycle and excess LOD over time. USDOD-Navy data webpage.

maia.usno.navy.mil/plot-eop.html

Unfortunately, doomsday prophesy idiots have decided that the wobble has arcane significance. *sigh* You have to wade through their drivel when searching for papers on the wobble trends over time.

Not surprisingly, several papers published in the past decade have related Chandler Wobble variation to significant earthquakes events at subduction zones.

Iceland under "attack":
"After EyjafÃ¶l goes dormant, giant mosquitoes threaten webcams!"
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/MdAiNiSdzXQIIY_KlJaHzA?feat=direct…
(from: http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalen.html)

Diane, see the JPL paper and the Wikipage.

The mechanics of the Wobble are...complex. More so than the JPL paper suggests. This webpage supplies a reasonable laymans synopsis of Atmospheric Angular Momentum.

Atmospheric Angular Momentum
http://www.examiner.com/x-17371-Raleigh-Climate-Examiner~y2009m8d30-Atm…

It describes the piling up of air masses at mid-latitudes and effect on LOD. We are emerging from a low-AAM pattern that spanned the last 3 years.

Your original choice of wording was apt, as it does appear to pertain to variation in Wobble, rotation rate/LOD and plausibly, to earthquakes at subduction zones located under the air mass anomalies.

Others have posited Wobble causative components in glacial isotactic rebound and polar ice-cap melting.

I suspect that glacial rebound has more to do with intraplate fault earthquakes (New Madrid fault and St Laurence Seaway quakes) than with the Wobble.

Earthquakes: Climate and intraplate shocks. Nature July 29, 2010.

www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/full/466568a.html

Triggering of New Madrid seismicity by late-Pleistocene erosion. Nature 466: 608â611 (2010).
DOI:10.1038/nature09258
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/full/nature09258.html

I'm a bit skeptical of writing off the NMZ to a purely erosion activated feature. Granted, it probably played a large role in it, but there is a measurable slow wave zone underneath it.

From "Fossil flat-slab subduction beneath the Illinois basin, USA" Heather Bedle, Suzan van der Lee; Tectonophysics 424 (2006) 53â68

"b) a northeastâsouthwest transect that roughly aligns with the Mississippi River. All four cross-sections show the low velocity region beneath the Illinois basin in the uppermost mantle, and b) shows the slow upper mantle structure attributed to the Reelfoot Rift."

Part of Figure 6 from that document (the "b" part):

http://i32.tinypic.com/904tjt.png

lol films are films and Documentaries are facts i just never heard of nukes moving the Axis.in fact i watch two documentaries on the Haiti earthquake 2010 and 2004 boxing day Tsunami on sunday morning which i found very sad for both.thanks for all your info though intresting read and yeah this film was cheesy but good.

@45:
passingstrangeness.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/reelfootrift/

Interesting, a Mag 3 shake in Southern Louisiana, at 5 Km depth. Zero historical activity going back to 1900, hence an ultra low seismic hazard rating.

Manmade?

Leon was a bit off on the plot of the 2002 Sci-Fi dud, 'Scorcher'. The Chinese bomb tests supposedly cause a rupture at the lower mantle-core interface, shifted the mass of large plates, and the resulting 'immense pressure' is thus endangering Earth by catalyzing a 'global eruption'. *eyes rolling upward*

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorcher_%28film%29

Nothing about axial precession, the Sun, etc.

Axial precession is at one of the scale of polar motions, having a very long period and being associated with the Milankovitch_cycles that affect large shifts in climate, and nutation is at the other end that is thought to be caused by short quasi-periodic climate patterns.

I thought that it might be a 'teachable moment' to segue chitchat towards recent publications on the causes of polar nutation and possible relation to seismic and volcanic activity.

Polar Motion (Wikipedia): The slow drift, about 20 m since 1900, is partly due to motions in the Earth's core and mantle, and partly to the redistribution of water mass as the Greenland ice sheet melts, and to isostatic rebound, i.e. the slow rise of land that was formerly burdened with ice sheets or glaciers. The drift is roughly along the 80th meridian west.

strong Earthquake in Northern Norway today :

3,5 scale

http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/nordland/1.7233555

@#49 Thor,
Perhaps in the Norwegian scale of things is was big, otherwise, no. In the article, they even gave it a big M 5 splat on the map, and clearly, the article was about the feelings of exited people, "Wow! I was in an earthquake!"

The good point is that in the comments the people blame the gummint for the quake... ;)

Shop Holiday soon past, and the first geologists have begun opining that Lady E has not only hit the snooze button, but also turned the clock off as well.

@Kultsi - [50] Those that aren't blaming Statoil, that is. Waddya think... privatising EQs in .no is surely gunna make'em more expensive overall for the average Norwegian?

Rana Region EQ activity > post-glacial uplift, with local factors (last time this happened, I noted heavy precip preceded the event).

See abstract: Seismic activity, inferred crustal stresses and seismo-tectonics in the Rana region, Northern Norway. Quaternary Science Reviews (2000) 19(14-15):1423-1436.

Related paper you can read; The 31st of August 1819 LurÃ¸y earthquake revisited. Norwegian J Geol. (2004) 85:245-25.

www.geologi.no/data/f/0/07/60/7_22301_0/Bungum_et_al.pdf

@Passerby [47]

It wouldn't be the first time. Natural Gas production is all through that area.

The Wiggins Uplift is to the east of there, and from what I've read may be a fragment/shard from Gondwana.

According to "Alleghenian Reconstruction and Subsequent Evolution of the Gulf Of Mexico, Bahamas, and Proto-Caribbean" by Pindell in Tectonica, vol. 4, no. 1, January 1985:

"The probable suture zone, from east to west, lies between the Appalachians and the Mauritanides of western Africa; crosses Georgia between the Suwannee Basin and the Southern Appalachians; continues north of the Wiggins Arch and Sabine Uplift, following approximately the trend of the Gilber town-South Arkansas-Mexia graben system" (Pg 17)

http://i25.tinypic.com/2yudovb.png

Figure 1 from pg 2.

In the figure,
SU = Sabine Uplift
WA = Wiggins Arch
JD = Jackson Dome (old core of a volcano)
MU = Monroe Uplift

But, the basement there is anywhere from 8 to 10 km deep, so this event was up in the sedimentary layers above that at 5km depth.

Hmm...

Now ya made me ponder that a bit.

Roughly 81 myr ago, there was an impactor just North of Montgomery AL near a town now known as Wetumpka. The scar is still manifest on the landscape. Most opinion is that it hit in a shallow sea since most of the Mississippi embayment was... pretty much under water at the time.

I grew up in Jackson, and had always heard about there being an extinct volcano down there. Jackson was originally LeFluer's Bluff and was a trading post on the Pearl River. The whole area is hilly, something that was attributed to the old volcano by my peer group. (drunk teenagers) Most likely it was in part due to the really nasty "Yazoo Clay", which has a HUGE volume change as it absorbs water or dries out. Building foundations usually suffer quite a bit from that. In later years, I figured that this clay was from altered rock... but it turns out that it has more to do with whatever critters were living in that ancient sea.

So.. while digging around for info in that last post, I ran across this:

...Monroe and Toler (1937) described both extrusive and intrusive igneous rocks from the Jackson Dome. Harrelson and Bicker (1979), Harrelson (1981) and Saunders and Harrelson (1992) subsequently studied these igneous rocks. Harrelson (1981) interpreted that doming of the Jackson structure was initiated in the Jurassic, based ostensibly on stratigraphic relations. The doming, which was due to plutonism, continued through Early and mid-Cretaceous time until several volcanic vents opened to the surface, causing explosive volcanism. The volcanism continued almost to the end of the Cretaceous (Saunders and Harrelson, 1992). The volcano is capped by the Jackson âGas Rock,â a reef consisting of bryozoans, foraminifera, and corals (Harrelson, 1981). K-Ar geochronology indicates that the igneous rocks of the Jackson Dome range from 79.0 Â± 2.9 Ma to 69.2Â±2.9 Ma, although dates as young as 65.8 Â± 2.7 Ma (Cook, 1975) and as old as 91.3 Â± 3.4 Ma (Sundeen and Cook, 1977) are reported from other areas of Mississippi. These data indicate that the northern margin of the MISB was an area of intense tectonic activity throughout much of the latter part of the Mesozoic Era...

"Basin Analysis of the Mississippi Interior Salt Basin and Petroleum System Modeling of the Jurassic Smackover Formation, Eastern Gulf Coastal Plain", Ernest A. Mancini, University of Alabama, 1998.

So evidently, when Wetumpka got whacked by the meteor, there were already a lot of things going on with volcanoes and other seismic events.

As if we didn't have enough to worry about.

"Spacequakes" Discovered in Earth's Upper Atmosphere

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/07/100730-science-space-sp…

So, who is going to plot these? ;)

Yazoo clays = Pachuta Marls. Laid down in a marine environment.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marl
a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Paper48317.html

Good general gab on Alabama Geology. I spent quite a bit of time at the Alabama Museum of Natural History (Smith Hall), back when it housed the Geological Survey, on the Univ. Alabama campus.

Tuscaloosa was a handy place to be, for geological diversity.

vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/LivingWith/VolcanicPast/Places/volcanic_past_alabama.html

I know the Black Warrior Basin and geology and soils of the Gulf Coast tolerably well.

Gawd I hate that "Volcanic Past" site. It has that "lets toss up a boilerplate to at least have something for them to look at" sort of appeal.

*shrug*

The State Geologic Survey has a decent geologic map. I didn't post another link that was dumbed down.

www.gsa.state.al.us/gsa/geo_mapping.html

UA Geological Sciences Dept has a better rendering:
http://www.geo.ua.edu/algeomap.php

The wiki page on geology of Alabama is too brief to be useful, but they do mention the Wetumpka impact. Confirmation of it's existence was published well after I had left 'Bama for the PNW.

Looks like 'Bama is going to be the next phase of a national rolling detailed seismological survey, for the next two years.

www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20100723/NEWS/100729880/1007?Title=State…

Smart idea, and not so far removed from the ocean crustal borehole program (OHP) that the Japanese are conducting throughout the western Pacific Plate and coastal Asia region.

@48 i think it was the actors in the film who said it. your site lead me to this site The national Academies press,Effects of nuclear-earth-penetrator weapons,and other weapons[2005] http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?records_id=11282

"...rolling detailed seismological..."

Very cool. Being in the armpit of Alabama we can't help but be included in the survey.... by proxy.

(P'cola)

You might consider contacting the PIs to help them scope out sites in southern AL. Might get you inside the project with respect to cranking through data (eg, paid position). You're obviously experienced at working up data.

The grad students are newbies. I've been locating/siting and planting remote environmental sensor systems for many years. They need pointers for safe sites that won't be molested - not an easy thing where the locals like to get drunk and shoot at new and interesting targets, like gubermint equipment housing, or solar panels to power them.

Just ask any of the HIGHLY UNDERPAID and UNDERVALUED USGS state water quality hydrology techs.

*Clint Eastwood squint*

Mobile is the armpit; the sugar sands of Pensacola Bay (Redneck Riviera) is heaven by comparison.

Nope... Pensacola spends all it's time trying to be Destin.

Well suited geologically for commerce (natural deep water bay), they do everything they can to drive it out so that they can put in condos and try to attract a tourist industry. Pensacola is truly wedged in the armpit, though it may not be the armpit.

Ref [62]

I'm probably ill suited for that position. My back road knowledge of Alabama is how to get across it when the roads are clogged with evacuees. MS back roads I had good working knowledge of, but that was 30 years ago. NW Florida I could do, I roam these roads on an almost daily basis... but I rarely get below 40 mph (have to make sure the traffic is clear on the other side of the combines and tractors that you occasionally run across) He##, I even found a Darlington Florida once. A few houses, some barns and a stop sign.

As for the shooting... I'd be more concerned about being related to any one there. Recently just North of Graceville FL up in AL, a recently laid off worker went on a spree taking out anyone who he had a grudge with ... including family. That went on for about 15 miles before they figured out how to track him down.

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Friday Flotsam: Plume images and a restless (?) North Korean volcano

eklemetti — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 06:08:35 +0000

Friday Flotsam: Plume images and a restless (?) North Korean volcano

This week went fast, didn't it?

The Baekdu caldera along the North Korean/Chinese border.

The NASA Earth Observatory have been giving us a steady diet of volcanic plumes over the last week, including PNG's Ulawun, Russia's Sarychev Peak (a very faint plume), both an ASTER and Terra image of the summit region at Kliuchevskoi and finally a mix of plume and clouds over PNG's Manam volcano.
I wanted to also mention a brief article I ran into on the Changbaishan/Baekdu caldera along the Chinese and North Korean border. Although short on specifics, this article mentions a number of interesting (and potentially odd/wrong) things: (1) Baekdu is showing signs of "becoming active" - this is the first I've heard of that, but the article does mention increased seismicity, inflation of 10 cm since 2002 and an increase in surface temperature; (2) the North Korean government is creating "comprehensive countermeasures" in case of an eruption - I have no idea what this means, it almost suggests they want to come up with ways to stop the eruption, which is ridiculous; (3) that the recent North Korean underground nuclear test might have had an effect on the magmatic system at Baekdu - and this strikes me as 100% pure speculation. The volcano has a caldera lake at the top, known to the Chinese as the "Lake of Heaven" and a Korean-speaking population living around the edifice. If Baekdu were to erupt, it would be a very large problem for North Korea's already teetering economy and government - the eruptions tends to be explosive with the last coming in 1903. However, Baekdu/Changbaishan did likely produce a VEI 7 eruption ~1000 A.D., meaning any activity at the volcano should be closely monitored (which could be difficult with its location on the Chinese-North Korean border).

eklemetti Fri, 06/18/2010 - 02:08

Off-topic: "Seventh Graders Find a Cave on Mars" http://www.physorg.com/news196003436.html
It appears to be a lava tube "skylight" of really big dimensions.

Hi Erik,

i just took a look on Google Earth at the Changbaishan/ Baekdu caldera.Its a monster,thats for sure. Could be another case for media speculation though?.

Wow,

Big smoke vent alongside the old lake on Thoro cam !

And there is at least one more "plume" to the right of that one !

Umm,im not so sure now,sorry(Gets back under his rock...)

Could Baekdu produce another minor eruption? Yeah, no question. Will it produce another monster eruption?

Not very likely.

'Comprehensive countermeasures' probably refers to evacuating the affected population, presuming there actually *are* emergency plans in place for an eruption response.

The North Koreans, true to form, have heavily deforested their side of the mountain, which has caused erosion and probably affords a more significant risk to the locals than danger from a large and aggressive eruption.

@Birgit, last thread, cool micrographs. I like the one with "7" on it, too. Another one I like a lot is the one that has all the holes in it filled with tiny "boulders".

I have a quick question for you. Did you have time to answer my questions on the thread where you posted your first pics? If you did, I missed it.

When I took EM, I liked the scanning EM the best. I had some fun with that one.

On the Thoro cam, I think I see a water fall to the right of Gig glacier. Can anyone confirm? It is a bit of a distance from it , but it sure looks like one. It could be just a ribbon of ice, but I think it is a water fall.

I have also noticed a different area of water coming into the river to the right also. Not much right now, but here is a channel there. Has it always been there and I just didn't see it, or is it a new feature?

OOPS! I was referring to the small ribbon to the right of Gig almost level with the spot of ice in the crevice, not the larger obvious water fall further to the right.

Hi Diane,

Yes,I concur with you there.The water flow (stream or larger) from the right has been there for about two weeks.The waterfall I first spotted two or three days ago.

Baekdu is in an odd location for a volcano..what's the explanation?

What does anyone make of the light at the back of the lake area on Thoro cam ? Just to the left of the main cleft/split.

an amateur here loving the blog.

completely OT as it's not a volcano but wouldn't it be cool :)

--
peel.

Great time for the Flir cam to still be down !

@ #12 I see it too, it's really weird? If it was lava would it not be more black and smouldering, rather than bright and fire like? Probably some simple explanation though? The picture quality doesnt help though, the constant refocusing of the camera really plays tricks with the eyes!
I'm no expert here, just an Eruptions blog addict watching/waiting for some new developments!

@15 Marginata,

Its been there pretty well all day.At first I thought that it was sunlight reflected off of a section of ice.Now im not so sure.The light is very poor now but the thing is that that area is pretty big in real life.

@#8-#10, #12, #15: Sorry, folks, I think you are seeing things that just aren't there.

The two white spots in the ThÃ³rÃ³lfsfell picture of the glacier are, as far as I can fathom, freshly-revealed, clean ice: a bit of the ice has collapsed there. I don't see any waterfalls, they would move, and there is no movement visible. (not counting steam, clouds, birds, cars and planes.)

@ Adrian
I havent been watching all day, but know exactly what you mean about the sunlight, it can really play tricks with the eye. The bright light is still visible though, even through the gloom and it must be quite big, given that cliff face is maybe a couple hundred feet high (maybe?). I also thought that there was a lot more water at the bottom of the glacier, but maybe that could be a trick of the light.
I'm totally intrigued does no one have any suggestions?

Gawd I hate getting distracted by wandering thoughts.

Baekdu is â75 miles from Nuke Test #2. Reportedly, this was stronger than test #1 about 3 years earlier... though no radionuclides were detected. This has led some (including me) to the possibility that it was a faked nuke. North Korea produces quite a bit of Ammonium Nitrate for use in farming. If you remember, there was a train disaster there a few years ago was most likely a batch of this stuff going up. In mining, explosive shots (ANFO) are fired in a sequence in order to direct the shock wave and get a better fracture of the rock. A side benefit is that this keeps the mining blasts from being mistaken as nuclear tests on the seismographs. Boring a hole and dumping one massive charge of ANFO down there it not something that I would count out... though there is no evidence that that happened. It's pure conjecture on my part.

Either way, the USGS measured whatever it was at about Mag 4.7

This leads me to the distraction.

On April 05, 2010, a mine disaster/explosion occurred in West Virginia. News debris from that event still pops up now and then. The high levels of noxious and explosive gases hampered rescue and recovery operations, and most recently the news spit out the hairball about there being a "crack" in the mine that was the likely source of gas. Okay... if they say so. One thing the "news" never elaborated on, or even mentioned was that on the day before the explosion, 09:19:14 UTC on April 04, there was a Mag 3.4 quake (38.599Â°N, 80.916Â°W) This is 58 miles from the mine incident.. and the (poorly constrained) depth was above the level that the miners were operating at.

I'm not saying that the quake caused the disaster, just that the equiv energy was about 125.9 tons of TNT, or 7,943 mJ. This is about 1/10th of Hiroshima blast. That was the amount of stress those coal seams and rocks were under... squeezing out the gas.

But.. that was not the distraction.

I did a Joule/mile comparison between the W VA mine and Quake, and the NK blast to Volcano distance. I'm not real sure about the energy dissipation of rock, but if you use a linear relationship, the volcano felt 68 times the energy that the mine felt from the VA Quake. If you use an R square relationship, it's 58 times the energy... pick whichever one you think is the best fit.

Either way, not a whole lot of energy got to the piping of the volcano.

Just found this at Physorg.com "Like fireflies, earthquakes may fire in synchrony" http://www.physorg.com/news196090397.html

Uhh, I commented on this here briefly. I also contacted and suggested to the Mine Owners that there may be more to the failure than meets the eye, in that the surficial quake (at near ground level) that occurred the day before had the potential to cause a fault rupture and discharge/vent gas into the mine at a much faster rate than could be removed, especially give the faulty ventilation system (for which the firm had been found in violation, several times).

I believe the cause of the quake (in a relatively low EQ probability setting) to be climate related, specifically, rainfall related. Of course, the company never responded.

Their loss, not mine.

Did the 'nuclear test' set off the volcano? I concur with your back-of-the-envelope estimates.

No.

What is probable, is that climate is playing a role in disturbance in the northern latitudes.

For a potential answer, we need to look at a trends that has been evaluated quite a few times by many reputable research groups.

A paper that addresses some of the result variability appeared in the journal Nature on May 20.

Robust warming of the global upper ocean. There is a figure in that paper that we want for purposes of our discussion here.

Figure 2: OHCA curves (upper ocean-heat content anomalies), 1993-2010.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/fig_tab/nature09043_F2…

Study this one carefully. Think about the patterns of activity in Iceland in the same time period.

I believe you have been party to our technical discussions on cause. I've discussed at length upper ocean heating and current transfer of that heat to air in the temperate coastal maritime environment of South Iceland, and its effect on glacier recession.

Our Eyjaf's glacier has been the most affected by glacier recession.

Now, the idea here is that this glacier thinning and outlet recession (very vivid photos have been posted here by others) has displaced many thouands of millions of tons of water from the icecap to the surrounding environment in the flood plains over a very short time period. It can and does exert a large force potential on a very dynamical force-couple and moment (horizontal plane pivot from the coastal land mass being sqeeeezed between expanding MAR relict limb and Reykjanes peninsula/WVZ interface) system that Eyjaf sits on, with respect to the SISZ and southern terminus of the EVZ/interplate region.

Thinning of the icecaps and rebound is one of several complex mechanisms in action here in the eruption of Eyjaf, and they have a common source.

Brought forward from earlier thread in the hopes that someone might be able to answer:

On the charts at

http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/gps/predorb/theypred.html

will the upper-limit on the chart (specifically the North chart) be adjusted if inflation increases beyond +20? After staring at it for so long, this is the first time I've noticed the reading this high.

Thanks in advance.

Also, FWIW I too thought the white on the right of the Thoro cam was a waterfall for the past few days.

There have been two deep earthquakes in this are over the past few months. Both of them where at the depth of +500km or more (I don't remember).

It might well be that this volcano is becoming active. But don't count on North Korea telling you that it is.

@Princess Frito

Yes, the scale will be adjusted when needed; on the same page there's the vertical movement plot that's +/-60 millimeters, which, I'm sure, started with a smaller scale.

I found one large deep EQ back in February at the NK-China border, nearly 7.0 at 350 miles deep.

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2010/eq_100218_swaf/neic_swaf_h.html

From the look of the historical seismicity maps, this isn't an uncommon occurrence in Jilin province (couple of ripsnorter mag 8s on the 1990-present map).

Thank you kindly Kultsi.

I did notice the different scale of +/-60 for the "Up" but (and my memory might be failing me) I don't ever remember seeing the upper limit of +20 for the North and East scales adjusted higher when readings got close to it but then I've never seen the top of the little black bars go beyond +20 until last night.

Thanks again for your response. I'll keep an eye on it :)

@Diane #8
"On the Thoro cam, I think I see a water fall to the right of Gig glacier. Can anyone confirm?"
I have noticed that too, earlier today, and now it's still quite visible.

Any comments on EQs and tremor plots under Eyjaf today?
Weel, guys, I must hit the bed now. Be back tomorrow!

A last look at ThÃ³ro cam and I notice a tiny eruption at the crater ...

Sorry. Looking better I can see these are cliffs behind the regular steaming that looked like lumps of tephra. Good night everyone!

Boy, you know you've hit the big time when the NYT's travel section recommends buying insurance against volcanic clouds.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/travel/20prac.html?src=me&ref=travel

Wow, just back from a trip to southern Calif and there is so much catch-up to do here. Juicy material, thanks all! Incidentally, my host there felt the two recent desert quakes as gentle swaying but felt none of the aftershocks. Having grown up on the west coast, I experienced many smaller quakes and several big ones, including the Northridge quake in CA (as a kid) and Nisqually in WA. I also rode out the 1996 quake in the Kingdome, right after Edgar's home run. All this quake talk has me checking my earthquake insurance policy (I do have one). Calling my agent Monday to update my insured value. It's too low. Back to catching up...

Here is an oddity - Giant sinkholes appearing across china.

http://itn.co.uk/b7a2345bae65fa99ada8d962eec50f25.html

@Diane#7
Sorry Diane, i must have missed your question on the earlier thread. Could you ask again, please?

@ JulesP[33]

Odd. Any connection to massive aquifer usage? I know that they have an issue with water availability in some areas.

Shift the water table in the right geological settings and you get sinkholes.

Lurking
I know that some areas of China have had prolonged and severe drought conidtions over the last couple of years, especially mongolia, so your suggestion makes sense. They must have been tapping deep water reserves to keep irrigation and water supply going.

http://modernsurvivalblog.com/natural-disasters/katla-volcano-10x-100x-…

Katla could it be 100 times as big as the last one?

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/h…

Now there is a live link to watch the Oil Volcano in the gulf

hi me again just looking at Greg on the Bp oil spill on the live link that not good.Been looking through North Altantic logbook live journal by Michaelix,Can Jonkulhlaup debris cause undersea landslipes if Katla erupted.What are the odds on this? and if so do the governments know bout this?As media only pointed out ash risks fallout and Tempature fall on the climate for a year or so,But no mention this.

Off topic, but would be very interested in people's thoughts:

"L'Aquila, June 3 - Experts who told L'Aquila city officials there was no risk of an earthquake six days before last year's catastrophic quake are under investigation for gross negligent manslaughter, prosecutors said Tuesday."

http://www.lifeinitaly.com/content/prosecutors-probe-experts-who-said-l…

The gist of it seems to be that because the experts said that a series of small quakes didn't necessarily mean that a large one was on the way, that they are culpable for the fact that many people did not leave their houses six days later when the big quake struck, and are thus responsible for the death of 300 people.

That seems like a stretch to me. I've read a little bit about how it's possible to map stress shifting through well understood fault systems, as in Turkey, but not that it's possible to predict the timing of a quake. For less well understood systems (and I don't know how well understood this faultline was) it must be pretty hard to be able to say what's coming.

Reminds me of volcano prediction, where some people seem to expect scientists to magically produce a date and time of eruption.

What I worry about - in addition to the future that these scientists face - is the chilling effect it might well have on research in EQ/volcano prediction in Italy.

@40 Hi Suw! It strikes me that that sort of 'it's their fault' thinking also goes along with the idea that someone could 'do something' about Eyja's ashfall...serious lack of general public basic scientific knowledge about their own surroundings. Some people ready to capitalize on the 'opportunity' provided. Schools should teach not only science 'mechanisms' but realistic views of our only-too-human ability to predict anything. We are able gain inklings but not necessarily hard-and-fast truths.

RE (#37): The last two eruptions in Katla following eruptions in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull was rather small as far as I know. ;)

"Probabilistic model for eruptions and associated flood events in the Katla caldera, Iceland"
http://www2.verk.hi.is/vhi/vatnaverkfrstofa/greinar/Probabilistic_model…

"Postglacial lava production in Iceland"
http://www-old.isor.is/~ah/dr/AH6_eruptions.pdf

"Volcanic hazards in Iceland"
http://www.almannavarnir.is/upload/files/Volcanic%20hazards%20in%20Icel…

i dont agree with any1 being charge for any natural event anywere in the world were human life has died we can not prevent or stop every think that can happen.If anythink maybe up scale the square radius to the earthquake area so includes a larger area maybe.im going to have to go with the experts on this one and Suw comment prosecutors should drop this all together

Whats going on with the tremor plots? Increased activity overnite....

RE (#37): The last two eruptions in Katla following eruptions in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull was rather small. ;)

"Probabilistic model for eruptions and associated flood events in the Katla caldera, Iceland"
www2.verk.hi.is/vhi/vatnaverkfrstofa/greinar/Probabilistic_model.pdf

"Postglacial lava production in Iceland"
www-old.isor.is/~ah/dr/AH6_eruptions.pdf

"Volcanic hazards in Iceland"
www.almannavarnir.is/upload/files/Volcanic%20hazards%20in%20Iceland.pdf

Hello to all,

@43 Renee.Hi,I think that the I.M.O. have lowered the tremor amplitued on some of the Helicorders.Try this link,http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/eyja_trem_eruption.png.It really puts the recent activity (or lack of) into perspective.

@43 Renee.Profuse apologies,just checked the link I gave you to find that it is old.Try this one.http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/gosplott.html

@ Adrian Thankx for the link I did compare and I realize that the activity we are seeing now is way down compared to before. I tend to watch the smaller daily changes right now and they are increasing almost a sine wave until todays activity which is the highest of late on the graph

@47 Renee,

Hi,yes,todays activity has been high and there has been a small rise in the number of Quakes in the vicinity.

@suw: local officials are seeking a legal scapegoat for blame. The hazard map is the tool they should have used, not simply checking views of geologists.

But more importantly, the level of damage sustained and loss of life reflect the degree of earthquake preparedness, especially in enforcement of building codes.

Historical seismicity 10-year map, USGS, for the quake.
neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2009/eq_090406_fcaf/neic_fcaf_h.html

Italy is one of the most earthquake prone nations in the world. The investigation is assinine and officials are making fools of themselves.

There is no shortage of geotechnical and civil engineering specialists who would back a counter-investigation, of civil authority culpability for failure to anticipate the eventuality of a damaging quake and lack of code enforcement to prevent loss of life and property damage, with aggravating factors in the underlying geology of the city that magnified risk disproportionately to the surrounding area.

From the wikipedia page:

'Earthquakes mark the history of L'Aquila, a city built on the bed of an ancient lake, providing a soil structure that *amplifies seismic waves*.

Second aggravating factor: \'According to firefighters and other rescuers, some concrete elements of the fallen buildings "seemed to have been made poorly, possibly with sand"'

Historical evidence of exceptional susceptibility:
The city was struck by earthquakes in 1315, 1349, 1452, 1501, 1646, 1703, and 1706. The earthquake of February 1703, which caused devastation across much of central Italy, largely destroyed the city and killed around 5,000 people.'

'The main earthquake was preceded by two smaller earthquakes the previous day.'

The crux of the issue is that small slip movements were hinting at accumulated stress that had not been relieved for hundreds of years in the complex fault system in this region.

It would be next to impossible to accurately forecast the date and time of fault rupture. Even if an accurate forecast were made, the nature of the sediment base is such that, even when people are out-of-doors, they may be subject to serious injury or death from falling debris, ground ruptures or landslides.

The geophysical community would be HAPPY to explain principles of liquifation physics and risk to local officials and prosecutors in terms even simpletons can comprehend.

The Italian experts under scrutiny need only reach out to their colleagues in Seattle for supportive testimony.

Birgit #34 I don't remember all of it, but here goes.

I was wondering what you coated the ash with to prevent charging. When I took EM, we were mostly using carbon arcs in the vacuum evaporator. I know things are way more advanced now than when I took the course to be a tech. We also used germanium and one other metal that I don't remember what it was. I also want to know if you were using secondary or another of the ways you can use to get the micrographs. When takeing EM we uses secondary and backscatter and we did some x-ray anaysis also. A friend of mine gave me a piece of metal for my rock & mineral collection and when I put it in the scope, it turned out to be strontium. That blew me away.

It has been a long time since I took EM and I never did get a job as a tech. I came close, but now I am glad in a way I didn't get one. The chemicals in the lab were not exactly what I needed to be around.

I have a funny story about what someone did at UC Berkely. There was a PhD person that wanted to look at a frog. He stuck the entire frog into the scanner and, well, you can imagine what happened then. What a mess that must have been!

The Cenapred webcam for Popo is showing steady steaming activity this morning.

http://www.cenapred.unam.mx/popo/UltimaImagenVolcanI.html

@35, 36 - On the Chinese sinkholes: not drought, but heavy rains, in karst areas with a notable history of mining activity.

Refereence: The formation of sinkholes in karst mining areas in China and some methods of prevention. Zhou Wanfang Environmental Geology May 1997. Second paper in March 1999, same title, with Li Gongyu, Engineering Geology vol 52.

The three factors identified by the author(s) in the formation of China sinkholes in these metals and coal mining areas are: the presence of caves in karst formations, thin overlying soil strata (highly permeable substrate), and recent water activity (flooding, suction).

Passerby #50. They ARE reaching out for support. Just look at some of the 4500 (and counting) signatories ( http://www.mi.ingv.it/open_letter/archive.php ) to INGV's open letter/petition to the President of Italy ( http://www.mi.ingv.it/open_letter/ ).

In the meantime, why aren't we hearing more about this travesty from the rest of the world media?

@MJKBK, we are probably not hearing about it because it isn't important enough yet to the media. It isn't a disaster, you see. And right now most of the media stuff is either on the gulf oil disaster or the World Cup. I think it is so stupid to charge people for something they had no hand in. Some people are just not thinking here. It is the blame game again and I doubt they will listen to anybody. I hope I am wrong about that, but Italy is what it is: Burlisconiland.

@ Greg[38]

A wider link that gets you access to all of the bot video feeds is:

www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&contentId=7062605

My Fav are the Skandi Neptune ROVs. They provide a N: and E: coordinate set. It took a while to figure it out, but a friend and I puzzled over it and came to the conclusion that it reads in feet. The equator (according to Google Earth) is ROUGHLY 10419719.52 feet from the site. The site position was derived from a planning chart overlaid on Google Earth and the actual position is only as good as my eye/hand coordination. However, it was good enough to show that the N: value is probably reference to the Equator. The E: coordinate was more tricky. Underwater navigation is usually accomplished by setting up an acoustic array that is geo-referenced by the controlling unit. Best I could figure, this was somewhere around 92Â° West Longitude. This makes sense, since that cuts roughly though the middle of active oil field region of the GOM. It still adds a lot of ambiguity for the casual observer when trying to figure out where the Bots are at on the seafloor.

With patience comes rewards. I caught one of Skandi Neptune's ROV's in the handling bay on the ship being hosed down and looked at. At that moment in time, MarineTraffic.com showed Skandi Neptune at 28.738770Â° -88.368900Â°. Bingo. A second fix that logically fit with a previous ROV/Skandi Neptune observation. The coordinates from Marinetraffic are the ones that come in via an automatic system that the ship's nav system broadcasts.

So.. with that, and working out the coordinates using an Earth Radius of 20855487.84 feet... (converted from Wikipedia) I was able to put this chart together:

Enjoy.

http://i47.tinypic.com/2i76ydd.png

Indeed, we're thinking of a more direct approach: frontal assault.

Additional perspective of the issues is warranted here.

Excellent seismic perspective, in a recent article with risk evaluation: 2009 L'Aquila Earthquake (Central Italy): an InSAR source mechanism and implications for seismic hazard.
www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039337.shtml
www.earth.ox.ac.uk/~richardw/laquila/

A tiny fraction of the existing structures in Italy meet Eurozone requirements for earthquake proofing. Italy does not require retrofitting of existing structures to code, even when modification permits for structural upgrades are made. There are issues of substantial cost and legal requirements to meet 'code' in new versus updating existing structures.

Low-cost, innovative partial-retrofit measures that afford baseline protection from seismic shock are needed, in Italy and elsewhere.

'After a reassessment of this complex geology three years ago, LâAquilaâs seismic danger was upgraded from moderate to severe'.

Not quite enough time to upgrade building code and make structural modifications to newer buildings, but more than enough evidence that *ample* expert warming* was given of heightened seismic risk to LâAquila before the earthquake.

www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/23a-7d9-7-e

There is also recent evidence that the risk of another moderate rupture in historic building settings (very old cities) in adjacent fault systems remains significant and is therefore of substantial concern.

It is more than possible to turn the accusatory tables on prosecutors and serve the public at the same time, by highlighting these results and emphasizing 'geotechnical lessons learned' with 'further risk-reduction needed, now, now, now!'.

L'Aquila anniversary highlights need for better buildings. May 6, 2010.
www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1005/10050602

INGV has not been sitting on their backsides, but working hard on better risk communication tools. Touche!

Are short-term evacuations warranted? Case of the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. (2010) Geophysical Res Lett 37: L06306, doi:10.1029/2009GL042352

'Earthquakes cluster strongly in space and time, leading to periods of increased seismic hazard. During such seismic crises, seismologists typically convey their knowledge of earthquake clustering based on past experience, basic statistics and âgut feeling.â However, this information is often not quantitative nor reproducible and difficult for decision-makers to digest. We define a novel interdisciplinary approach that combines probabilistic seismic hazard and risk assessment with cost-benefit analysis to allow objective risk-based decision-making.'

www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009GL042352.shtml

Strong foreshock signal preceding the L'Aquila (Italy) earthquake of April 6, 2009. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 10, 19â24, 2010
www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/10/19/2010

Foreshock seismic signal series from October 2008 to the time of rupture may be useful as a risk diagnostic tool.

Another:

A group of collaborators (Russian-Austrian-Italian) have investigated VLF precusors to this rupture and demonstrated a diagnostic tool for forecasting earthquakes. This is not exactly new science with approximately a decade of previous publications in print (and we introduced the concept here by showing HAARP Rio signal match against Icelandic miniquake swarm energy intensity), but maybe useful to INGV in the future if it can be used, with the foreshock series and advanced communication tools, to refine elevated occurrence risk windows.

europlanet-jra3.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/presentations/11_VLF_signal_precursor_Molchanov.pdf

http://en.rian.ru/Environment/20100619/159491100.html

Russian volcano no threat to planes

The problem is that quake prognostication is difficult if you have a bunch of lawyers standing around ready to whack you with a lawsuit if you even try to hazard a guess. I'd much rather hear that something is up with a fault line from a Geologist rather than a tarot card reader.

If the Geologist is wrong, he looses reputation. If the tarot card reader is wrong, they make an excuse and another prediction.

#51 Diane
Nothing. I used a FEI Phenom http://www.fei.com/products/scanning-electron-microscopes/phenom.aspx
and fortunately the samples did not really get charged too much which is probably due to the chemistry of the ash itself. When you look at the ash under a normal mikroscope you can easily see that there are very different particles. They look like what Erik showed us in an earlier thread. In some of the samples i would say, 50% is volcanic glass but the ash seems to be magnetic and it is not easy to spread it out thin enough to get good pictures. WHen i do SEM images on pollen or insects, i often have a problem with the charging of the samples.
The SEM, i used, belongs to a Museum, the Ars Electronica Center in Linz Austria We have different Labs there ( RoboLab robots etc FabLab fabrication lab with a lasercutter and a 3D printer, BrainLab with a visucam where you can have a photo of your retina taken and email it home and a BioLab where we are cloning plants or do gene sequencing in workshops with our visitors. ) When i did the SEMs i did them with the vistors watching me and deciding onto which particle we should take a closer look. I did study pharmacy, so i have been working in chemical labratories but i am no tech but an Infotrainer, a person who does guided tours. The museum is trying, what we call an open lab situation, so visitors can get to see things which are normally not accessible to them or shown in tv shows like CSI.
Sorry that was completely OT

Oh and something else. In case someone here has ash from other volcanoes and would like scanning electron images done on it. Just send a sample ( very little is necesary for a SEM) We could compare it with the ash from Eyjafjalla.

@ Birgit [60]

I went back digging though the posts in the other thread to try and find the link to the images, could you please repost them?

---
OT: Rigzone posted a somewhat glitzy article about a heavy vessel (27,270 metric tonnes) that will be joining the spill effort. "the sheer mass of this unique vessel means it is perfectly suited to handle this type of large clean up."

It sounded impressive, I just had to get look at a picture of this vessel, the "Mighty Servant 3." The first one I found did not instill confidence.

http://i50.tinypic.com/2ni2kvt.gif

It seems the thing sank itself about 4 years ago and has since been recovered and repaired.

Sorry for the OT... this thing keeps nagging at me.

@Lurking [61]
You mean these http://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronicacenter/

Erik, I ran across the Korea Times article when it was six hours old and posted the salient information here plus a link to the (then) only publicly available paper on it, concerning inflation prior to c2002. Since you were preoccupied with end-of-term work at the time, you are forgiven for not paying due attention. ;) ;)

Looks like the obstruction higher up on GigjÃ¶kull has given up and the warm water is now flowing much farther - and is apparently dammed again.

@Kultsi 64 Good morning - I think that the dark area is vegetation - it never reflects, and in the afternoon you can see little silver streams cutting through it- but the lowest part of the glacier has had its face washed of a lot of ash, yesterday afternoon it looked almost shiny.

@Kultsi - on re-reading, I think you must have been able to see the glacier higher up this morning - It has been cloudy since I have seen it, so I don't know what you were looking at earlier- sorry - but I think if there had been a break in the ice wall, the force of the water would have carried all the way down?

@Birdseye (#65-66) - I was looking at steam emissions at the upper slope of the glacier. I haven't seen any increased water flow from the glacier and that's why I think it's dammed up there somewhere.

The rain has, indeed, washed the glacier face and the collapses here and there show almost pristine ice faces shining in white.

A glacier flood has started in the glacier river SkaftÃ¡r, they flood is called SkaftÃ¡rhaup and they happen regularly. Last flood there was in the year 2008. Follow this type of flooding there are usually a large spikes of harmonic tremor coming from the volcano area where flood comes from. This year won't be any different. In rare cases there might even be a eruption there.

Icelandic news on this flood.

http://www.ruv.is/frett/skaftarhlaup-er-hafid (Translate with Google at your own risk!)

On SEM, clearing up more misconceptions.

This Eyjaf ash is clearly HIGHLY conductive and carries quite a surface charge. We had several discussions on this interesting aspect, from the perspective of chemical composition but also a proposed charging mechanism and observation of retention of charge/recharging at distance.

Our sample is also known to be enriched in higher atomic number atoms, so the two conditions necessary to run the sample as is rather than coated, are met. Hence, no need to coat the ash sample. The ash samples could be mixed with epoxy and thin-sectioned to yield additional information on particle size and composition. This technique was demonstrated and used for analysis of Mt Redoubt ash from the 1989 eruption.

www.ees1.lanl.gov/Wohletz/MethodAshCharacter.pdf

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_electron_microscope#Sample_preparation

On to Lurking's comment.

Mighty Servant 3 was completely rebuilt after salvage recovery. Very common operation, although the ship type is unique. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mighty_Servant_3

Q: Why are they using one of the largest semi-submersible heavy-lift vessels in the world at the Deepwater Horizons oil recovery site?

A: They have to lift something very, very heavy. Like maybe the 450-ton blowout-preventer.

Q: Why might they be lifting the BOP? We thought it was there to put pressure on the wellhead to slow down the leak rate?

A: Conditions down below are a little more complex than we thought.

If you want to worry about what is happening in the Mexican Gulf, read this.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967

In the US Congressional hearings with BP corporate heads earlier this week, a question was asked about the integrity of the casing below the seabed floor. The response was frank but foggy: they didn't know the condition of the wellhead casing because they weren't able to test it and can't see into the well to examine it.

What we do know is that BP has given up trying to plug the flow of oil and appears to have reversed course, possibly to relieve pressure on the thin and poorly consolidated seabed floor around the wellhead.

If this layer caves in and BOP falls over, the rupture will be...a worst case scenario. Since the BOP doesn't rest on the seabed, it's being held up by the pipe and casing. The pipe is thin and apparently, the BOP is starting to list.

So, you would want to bring in heavy lifting gear, I suppose, to support it while you figure out what you're going to do next.

scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2010/06/worst_case_scenario_on_gulf_sp.php

www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967

Remember, all of the facts aren't known and The Drum Beat reader report is 'knowledgeable conjecture'.

As bad as the Gulf spill is, the situation in Nigeria is now and has been dreadful.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-de…

@Birgit #59 thanks for the info. I had not idea there was even such a scope out there. Things have progressed so far from when I took EM. It was not an easy course. It took me four years to do a supposedly two year course of study. I have a two year degree and certificate as an EM/SEM tech. Used both scanning and transmission scopes. Ancient ones at that. The college now has an entire building dedicated to EM study instead of just a lab. I want to get in there and see what they have some day. I know they now have a microprobe which does a better job of xray analysis. One of the things I had to do was a quantitative analysis of Hexel hip joint material. Now that was 30 years ago so I know hip replacement parts are far different now.

BTW, I also had to be able to describe what the electron beam was doing when it was going down the column of the scopes. The ones we were using make the one you are using look like a simple OLM. :-)

Sounds like you work in a neat enviornment. I do know where I can get some ash from areas in CA so I will be sending you a sample when I can get to the area. Right now it is most likely under snow and the road is closed.

Sorry for the OT for the rest of you, but when it comes to microscopes, I get going. LOL One of my dreams was to be able to use an electron microscope and I was able to do it so I am happy. I would love to have one of those things you use, Birgit. I used to say I would like to have a trailer with "Have scope, will travel" on the side. LOL

@stigger[70]

The article seems to want to piggyback on the hype of the GOM event. Let's compare the two.

From the article:

'The government's national oil spill detection and response agency (Nosdra) says that between 1976 and 1996 alone, more than 2.4m barrels contaminated the environment.'

At 60,000 bbl/day the GOM event far outpaces that. 2.4 million barrels over a 20 year period (7305 days) is about 274 barrels/day. The GOM event passed 2.4 million barrels back around the 1st of June... and that took about 40 days.

On a lighter side... Crude oil averages a carbon content of about 85%. Living tissue averages a carbon content of about 18.5%.

At a flow rate of 60,000 bbl/day (2.5 million gallons/day) and at an average mass of 25 tons (short) for a Sauropod (Brontosaurus)... that's about 72 Sauropods per minute coming out of that hole... 4321 dinosaurs/day.

Sort of adds weight to that abiotic oil idea.

@Passerby[69]

Thanks for that link. Lengthy read but worth the trouble. It also explains this screen cap from 3 June 2010... it's an inclinometer affixed to the BOP:

http://i45.tinypic.com/2exy9za.png

Lunatic press seems to be of the opinion that the "sinkhole" will expose millions of gallons of water to "400Â°," flash to steam and cause a tsunami wiping out the Gulf Coast. All I can say is "so?" At 1000 psi the boiling point of water is 285Â°C (545Â°F) and the hydrostatic pressure at the BOP is what? 2226 psi? Good luck with that scenario.

No, the more plausible horror story is the opening up of the borehole to the ocean. I can find nothing factually wrong with the information in that article. I think that scenario is what's been eating at me. The stressful part of it is that there isn't a [expletive deleted] thing that I can do about it... let alone any body else.

*sigh...

@ lurking. Way back when I was in college, one of my professors was a founder of the zero population growth group. I remember asking him how he could keep working given what we knew then about the not-so-great-future. He said "You grieve, and then you fight on". My condolences.

@Kultsi, Askola, FI

Thank you for the SEM link.

Any one know how they (the 'not us' people) determine what the clasts are composed of?

Good evening everyone!
Someone look at HvÃ³lsvÃ³llÃ¼r cam. I think there's a plume rising above the clouds... (Toggle full screen mode)

#72: Thank you for the comparison. My point is that whilst the GOM is bad, people are taking action. Nigeria has lived with oil pollution since 1976 caused by Exxon and Shell (amongst others) but it is still happening and little action has been taken against them. That is wrong.

BP and the unmitigated disaster
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/06/bp-and-unmitigated-disaster…

@stigger [76]

I agree that it's wrong, but technically... what their corrupt government arranges with the oil companies is between them and their government. The Great Lakes Brewing Company of Cleveland, Ohio reportedly named their Burning River Pale Ale after the Cuyahoga River. It seems to have a habit of catching on fire... some estimates place it at 13 different fires since 1868. I don't expect the people of Nigeria to come over here and fix it for us or to do anything about it. When I was growing up in Central MS, there were areas of marsh that bubbled up ... "stuff" with the consistency of rubber. Again, I didn't expect some other country to come rescue me.

Bad? Yes, I do agree with that. But again, a corrupt government allows it to happen unfettered.

Back to Passerby. Later in that thread there is a set of two images that show what appear to be puffs of oil from the seafloor. Based on that Bot coord transformation thing I figured out (which could be wrong), it maps to a position 40 feet from the LMRP.

http://i47.tinypic.com/20fovbp.png

Lurking, I suppose my primary concern at the moment would be the consequences of applying dispersant directly into the spill flow at depth.

This is A Very Bad Idea for several reasons, the foremost being that the nonsolubilized plume components ('heavy ends', large polycyclic compounds) are will hover at low oxygen, low light levels and eventually sink.

This would explain the formation of the odd, murky subsurface plumes. The solubilized stuff is forming thin-film 'oil-sheen' surface plumes that will continue to thin fully disperse and biodegrade with wave-mixing action in the weeks-to-months ahead.

No such luck for the heavy residuals. The oil plage will slowly sink to the bottom, covering vast areas of the cold anoxic depths with a stiffly amorphous sludgy mass.

Out of sight, out of mind is the game being played here.

I went back to The Oil Drum website to look for telltale comments from BP that may indicate the corporate engineers knew they were facing bad news.

May 29th summary post:

'He (Suttles) noted that their inability to stop the well âscares everybodyâ but is reasonably confident (no success percentage estimates) that this (Lower Marine Riser Package) will collect the majority of the oil and gas.

Because they do not know the flow path of the oil below the seabed, it is difficult to estimate what is actually going on in terms of oil path below the BOP. Thus they are, again, trying something that has never been done before, but expect, based on the RIT, that it will work.'

'On being asked about the cleanup of the dispersed oil â he pointed out that the reason that the dispersant was used was to break the oil into small droplets. These are small enough to be consumed by the microbes in the sea, and thus there is no plan to do other than let nature take its course. For the oil on the surface, they are getting better at spotting oil pools and sending skimmers to deal with them. '

Huh? The BBC News website has a map graphic series showing the progression of the oil plume. Last two frames look they are reversed - bit confusing, since the LMRP would be gaining in recovery efficiency with 'tune-up' over time.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10309001.stm

@Passerby[80]

Humor is where you find it.

While doing my best to dig up data on the amount of spume that is lofted at various wind speeds, all I could find (so far) is information on the enthalpy issues... heat transfer to and from the low lying strata of hurricanes. In these papers, the idea of surface tension came up, having a heavy influence on spume formation. With that thought, I began following lines of info on surface tension modifiers... surfactants came up. Surfactants are commonly used in dispersive agents. How this will affect storm formation/efficiency is beyond me. I'm just a data monkey rooting around in what I can find, playing with the dots.

But I also revisited the Wiki page on Corexit, the dispersion agent being used by BP. Both varieties have unspecified sulfonic acid salts, but now the Wiki page has been updated to state:

"An organic sulfonic acid salt is a synthetic chemical detergent, that acts as a surfactant to emulsify oil and allow its dispersion into water. The identity of the sulfonic acid salt used in both forms of Corexit was disclosed to the EPA in June 2010, as dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate."

And looking that up I find:

"...an anionic surfactant and a common ingredient in consumer products, especially laxatives of the stool softener type."

Um... how appropriate.

There appears to be some pretty sustained tremor going on at Ngauruhoe in NZ (probably just got excited about the world cup):

http://www.geonet.org.nz/images/volcano/drums/ch/otvz/10/drum.png

AOT structure:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioctyl_sodium_sulfosuccinate

Too big to fit in enzyme binding sites (fortunately), because it has 'steric inhibition' written all over it, from a structure-activity standpoint. Sure enough, early biochemical studies show protein degradation (trypsin degradation of casein milk fats, for example) is blocked by AOT irreversibly.

Toxicity chitchat
www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v28je16.htm

We want section 2.2.5 Special Studies, and 2.2.6 Laxative Effects.

The section on pulmonary edema indicates that the surfactant altered the air-water cell membrane at aveolar-vascular interface (probably affecting ion channel and porin water channel function).

May explain the respiratory distress reported by cleanup workers, although it could have arisen from hydrocarbon fumes, too. Do not think it was the ethyl glycol monomer, because the AOT surfactant concentration was much higher than the stabilizer (predominantly nephrotoxic effects for the former) in the Corexit formulation.

*Real* interesting to find it reported in bile, as AOT was reportedly efficiently metabolized in rat liver.

I know you meant your entry to be humorous, but the toxic info turned out to be kinda interesting. Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I studied surfactant-enhanced bioremediation of oil components.

Anionic surfactants, at the concentrations needed to efficiently disperse and solublize waxy alkanes and highlyh insoluble polycyclic hydrocarbons, were not kind to naturally occurring oil degraders in fresh- and saltwater treatment systems.

#69 Passersby, I have deliberately been trying to avoid the goings on in the Gulf of Mexico because the environmental, social and financial disaster that this has turned into is causing pain that I don't want to expose myself to unless I can do something about it; which I can't. I decided to read your link to the oildrum.com however as the grandstanding politicians, and the apparently less than open oil companies are becoming unavoidable on the news here.

I think that there is a need to explore these hydrocarbon bearing areas,as I see no sign that the move to a post oil world is going to be a quick one. It can also be expected that activities which are really pushing the envelope are going to run into difficulties from time to time. However to find that these operations were being subject to "cost savings" on a well which was apparently in serious difficulties is just ludicrous and negates any sympathy I had for BP at the hands of the US politicians.

The local press in Aberdeen "Oil capital of Europe" is staying very quiet on the subject, and while the US, Brazil, and Norway have all halted progress on deep drilling meantime, the UK government is still gung-ho about prospective deepwater drilling in the Shetland Basin.

I could go on, but this is more than enough for a rant.

@Passerby

"I know you meant your entry to be humorous, but the toxic info turned out to be kinda interesting."

Agreed. The humor is a dry one. It's a sort of "laugh or else cry" ifelse statement.

@Gordon

I'm not too happy with Oildrum. Lots of load this load that stuff going on in the browser. That or it's the four simultaneous Oil-Cam-Bots I have running.

I think I'm going nuts.

Mt Hood creaking again....worth keeping a note of

Beautiful view on the thoro cam now.
(22.25 Icelandis time)

If you perused The Oil Drum, you must have come across two 'must read' posts:

Waiting for the Millennium, Parts I and II.

Read them if you want to be *really, really* depressed.

@ Steve
Yes it is isn't it.
There is a long way to go before we see an eruption, if there is one.... but you never know.

Questions for Hekla

Hekla over recent time has erupted every 10 years or so. Are there any signs that it will erupt soon again, or did it not give much seimic warnings last time?

Last time there was a small pyroclastic flow. What is the significance of this.

@90: See Eruption history, on the wiki-webpage on Hekla regarding the most recent reports of magma chamber pressure. Hekla is said not to give much notice of an impending eruption. On the meaning of finding evidence of a pyroclastic flow in the last eruption, see

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hekla#2000

I now what a pyroclastic flow is, question is is it changing?

You didn't read the text, did you?

'Up until this eruption, it had always been assumed *that Hekla was incapable of producing the most dangerous of volcanic phenomena, the pyroclastic flow*.

----> This will call for a reappraisal of volcanic eruptions of the basic rock type, which up to now were generally thought not to produce large pyroclastic flows.

----> It will also require that the public and curious spectators who always rush to the scene at the start of a new outbreak, be kept much further away from the volcanic activity than was thought necessary during previous outbreaks.

How can you tell if anything is changing if it has only occurred once?

Ok, I don't usually read wikipedia anyone can write that :P

Well if it's occured once, maybe the system is changing?

Aww, come on Wikipedia is fine as long at you verify the info. It's good as a quick reference, especially if the sources are cited.

If you move to the political info, caveat emptor applies.

@Nick #90 and following. The pyroclastic flow at Hekla in 2000 was probably not the only one ever recorded at this volcano - there was nearly certainly one at the start of the 1947 eruption and again, during the first few minutes of the 1980 eruption. My bet is that these pyroclastic flows are generated by explosive interaction of magma (or rapidly flowing lava) and thick snow and ice, because such things have been observed at a number of other volcanoes such as Etna, Llaima, Kliuchevskoi and Pavlof. Possibly some small pyroclastic flows were generated earlier this year at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull during its first basaltic eruptive phase, when lava cascaded over snow-covered cliffs.

By the way, I am convinced that pretty much every volcano is capable of producing pyroclastic flows. At Etna we know of eight or nine cases in the past 30 years where small pyroclastic flows were produced, some by the collapse of an eruptive column, some by interaction of lava with snow or wet rocks, and one by the collapse of a sort of a lava dome. Kilauea is known to have produced dilute pyroclastic flows (base surges) most recently during an explosive eruption in about 1790. So I would refrain from saying that a volcano is incapable of producing pyroclastic flows ... maybe we should rather speak in terms of a volcano being unlikely to produce major pyroclastic flows unless there are significant changes in its plumbing system (as at Etna, where large pyroclastic flows occurred about 15,000 years ago when its magma was more evolved and gas-rich).

he he I was just kidding about Wikipedia. Thanks for the info guys :)

Yes Boris, GVP Hekla webpage list of eruptions does indeed list pyroclastic flows for the 1980 and 1947 eruptions.

www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=1702-07=&volpage=erupt

Nice little article on the 2000 Hekla eruption that explains the mechanics of the initial phase that resulted in pyroclastic flows: column collapse following early explosive eruption, a function of magma water and silicic acid content, and probably tightly related to repose duration (result of previous publications evaluating older, plinian eruptions at Hekla - a familiar theme of theolitic primordial crust reworking and mixing, but with a twist - feedforward strain from the SISZ).

If one wants to know the hints of pending eruption at Hekla, look for:

sudden jump in thermal and SO2 emissions in air and groundwater are useful for fine-tuning eruption probability to a 1-2 day window; larger eruption window probability can be deduced from a drop in geothermal and hot springs elevation and in the nearby lake level and correlations with warm, dry seasons during the same time period (1-2 years in advance of a central fissure eruption).

SISZ activity is, as on the Tjornes Transform Fault system, associated with a sudden jump in deep fissure pore pressure from liquid injection at depth. Look for a similarity in general timing in the pressurization of the magma reservoir under Hekla.

Hekla dances to a different piper than the EVZ.

Lovely and insightful paper, crafted by a talented group of Iceland's finest, on the subject of the Hekla eruption of 1980-81, open access on the 'Net. Read it.

The millennium eruption of Hekla in February 2000. (2007, Karl Gronvold and friends)
www.springerlink.com/content/p25157781v031261/

The Hekla Eruption of 1980-81.
www.lsndocuments.info/Documents/wp0056.pdf

Hybrid magma generation preceding Plinian silicic eruptions at Hekla, Iceland. (2007)
geolmag.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/144/4/643

Seismic activity related to the 2000 eruption of the Hekla volcano, Iceland. (2005, Pall Einarsson and friends)
www.springerlink.com/content/j58611614567716u/

I would love to visit this volcano at least one in my lifetime. I have heard a lot about it and I wanna see it live from my eyes.
http://healthproductadvice.com/acai-max-cleanse/

KVERT has posted some more images of Klyuchevskoy(Kliuchevskoi, Ð²ÑÐ»ÐºÐ°Ð½Ð° ÐÐ»ÑÑÐµÐ²ÑÐºÐ¾Ð¹ ) at http://www.kscnet.ru/ivs/kvert/current/klch/index.html

Steam plume visible on MÃºla and Thoro cams.
Another EQ near EyjafÃ¶ll:
Saturday 26.06.201018:51:4663.741-19.5511.1 km2.790.017.9 km NNW of BÃ¡sar

@103Renato,Hi,

Not as much activity as last night.Btw,you're on the wrong thread.Everybody else seems to be on the Mystery Volcano Thread.

Definately the best blog post I've read today. Just an FYI, my Motorola Cliq shows this page great in it's browser.

Pitty i discovered your site too late!

Excellent read, I added your feed to my RSS Reader http://www.acaimaxcleansereview.com

What youre saying is totally true. I know that everybody should say the same factor, but I just believe that you place it inside a way that everyone can comprehend. I also adore the images you put in here. They match so well with what youre attempting to say.

I know you meant your entry to be humorous, but the toxic info turned out to be kinda interesting. Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I studied surfactant-enhanced bioremediation of oil component http://acaimaxcleansecanada.org/

Hello.This post was extremely motivating, particularly since I was investigating for thoughts on this issue last week.

It will also require that the public and curious spectators who always rush to the scene at the start of a new outbreak, be kept much further away from the volcanic activity than was thought necessary during previous outbreaks

Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for 5/26-6/1/2010

eklemetti — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:22:47 +0000

Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for 5/26-6/1/2010

The level of news-frenzy on some of the recent volcanic eruptions has died down, but if you're looking to see information on the many rumbling going on worldwide, look no further. Here is this week's Volcanic Activity Report put together by Sally Kuhn Sennert of the Global Volcanism Program.

Highlights - not including Pacaya, Yasur, Tungurahua and our friend in Iceland - include:

The eruption in the Marianas apparently came from South Sarigan volcano - at least according to the best guess by folks who work in the Marianas. This submarine volcano apparently shows evidence of young lava flows, so this explosive event might have been part of that same system. The activity has waned considerably since the plume was spotted on May 31.
Kirishima in Japan has a small eruption that produced a ~100 m / 330 foot plume. However, ash was noted as far as 6 km from the vent.
Ulawun in Papau New Guinea was put on Stage 1 alert (the first level from the bottom) after the volcano began to show signs of restlessness, including "jetting noises", incandescence and white vapor plumes.
Non-eruption-related lahars were spotted at Guatemala's two other highly active volcanoes - Fuego and Santa Maria. These lahars were triggered by the heavy rain from TS Agatha and are common occurrences when you mix loosely consolidated volcanic sediment with heavy precipitation.
Lastly, back in the Kuril Islands, a thermal anomaly was spotted by satellite on Sarychev Peak. Unfortunately, there is no realtime monitoring of the volcano, so satellite images are all we have.

eklemetti Thu, 06/03/2010 - 04:22

Thanks for keeping us posted, Erik. We know how much work this blog takes: hope you get some recognition from your department for this public educational effort! (Would it be appropriate if some of us wrote to your chairman?)

Susan - No need to do anything on my behalf. The folks here are aware of the blog and its modest impact, so it is all good. One of the perks of being in a small department - we all know what we're doing.

@Erik Klemetti, A new shipment of ash is coming your way from today. I don't know how long it takes until you get it.

This time the ash is more interesting then before, as it is three different types of ash that I am sending you now. At least I think so. The biggest amount of the ash is quite fine dust. I did send you a email about it.

Hey, it's the level of news-frenzy which has died down, not the eruptions! At least in the grammatical sense, and possibly literally as well. You wrote:

The level of news-frenzy on some of the recent volcanic eruptions have died down

but it should be
The level of news-frenzy on some of the recent volcanic eruptions has died down

So sorry to be a pedant on such a great blog, but it's a pet hate!

Having got that off my chest, two questions:
What is going on with those level 4 EQs north of Iceland, and, why has the south-eastern Australian hotspot gone cold? Not so much as a hot spring, but eruptions as recently as 5000 years ago according to some.

It's good to hear that your efforts are noticed: hope they get the appropriate credit, too. I know what the academic system is like.

Erik posted a short note on Arenal volcanic activity on May 24th. The Volcano listserv posted additional information on that event today:

New pyroclastic cone on top of Arenal volcano, Costa Rica
From: Eliecer Duarte

On Monday 24, noon a series of PFs took place at Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica. An upper south section of the new volcano collapsed due to gravity and sudden shacking of a nearby pyroclastic cone under construction.

Since early January a new lava flow was detected moving towards southwest. (see previous report at:
http://www.ovsicori.una.ac.cr/vulcanologia/estadovolcanes/2010/febrero2… )

The new cone, located east of the summit (towards the old Arenal crater) is producing loud explosions accompanied by bombs and other pyroclasts that cover 360 degrees around the summit. Due to the narrow area where the new cone is being built new collapses will ocurr in the near future. In the past, similar cones have produced lava flows that move where gravity take them.

Detailed info is available at: (Spanish field report).
http://www.ovsicori.una.ac.cr/vulcanologia/informeDeCampo/2010/InfcampA…

Iceland's RUV has a report from the crater rim of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull - it's in Icelandic only, but the images are striking:

http://dagskra.ruv.is/sjonvarpid/4472205/2010/06/03/0/

(Windows Media format)

Erik I have a New Zealand question.....is there a Mancow New Zealand (not sure about spelling)? I have a friend who needs to find a flight to there or as close to there as they can. I couldn't find it on the map so maybe I am spelling it wrong. Anyone else from around that area?

@Thanks for posting, Mike, strikingly beautiful, indeed. If someone from Iceland could just be so kind as to give us a brief explanation on what it says, we would be mostly grateful...

@ Randall #8 - could you mean Manukau? (sounds like Man-uh-cow when spoken)
If so, your friend can fly right there - it's where Auckland airport is situated.
http://www.welcome2manukau.com/

Kathryn, Australia thanks I think that is what we were looking for.

I think Eyja is erupting again (seismic tremor!)

@Randall #11 - My pleasure!
Actually, I lived in Auckland for a year back in 1999 - that's what sparked an interest in volcanoes.
I got into genealogy at the same time, that's another hard bug to shake off! And the rest, as they say, is history!

Another volcano, is located in Santorini island, Greece. You can find out more about it in my blog @ http://santorini-hotels.blogspot.com/

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Thursday Throwdown: More volcano news than I can list here

eklemetti — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:04:27 +0000

Thursday Throwdown: More volcano news than I can list here

I'm still playing catch-up after my week in the desert, so I've seen a lot of articles I've wanted to mention ... but a certain other volcano has taken up a lot of my time. However, I will attempt to make amends for that now.

By the way, would you believe Ubehebe Crater was closed? How do they close a volcano, anyway? However, I did get a great snap of a welded tuff on the road outside of Shoshone, CA.

A strongly welded tuff near Shoshone, CA. The dark interior is remelted volcanic ash/tephra surrounded by less welded pink tuff with abundant pumice clasts. Denison student David Sisak is on the left for scale.

First off, congratulations to Henrik for getting the Mystery Volcano Photo #19 on the second guess. It is indeed Emi Koussi in Chad, nice job. It also looks like the next Volcano Profile will be on Tristan de Cunha, so look for that at some point in the future.
I've seen a lot of articles on the connection between the rise of the dinosaurs and volcanism. The research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by Dr. Jessica Whitehead and others suggest that the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) that erupted 9-11 million km³ of basalt might have created a rampant greenhouse effect (thanks to all the CO₂ emitted) on the planet. This caused mass extinctions ~200 million years ago and paved the way for the dinosaurs. Now the details are a little fuzzy, but hey, as us mammals can say, nothing clears the way to dominance like a good mass extinction (unless you're the one going extinct). Now, the implication that somehow the dinosaurs took advantage of this rather than it being complete chance, well, I'd leave that up to you.
I ran across some impressive holiday snaps taken of one of the recent large eruptions at Soufriere Hills on Montserrat. On one hand, all I could think was "I wish I was on that flight" but on the other hand I was wondering how frightening that might be. I think the first hand might win that argument.
Need a gift for the volcanophile who has everything? How about the new deck of cards being offered by the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Survey? It features all 52 of Alaska's potentially active volcanoes. Yes, indeed, I'll see your Okmok.
Potentially lost in the hub-bub surrounding Iceland is the fact that things appear to be ramping up at Turrialba in Costa Rica. Last week, obvious incandescence was noted at the summit, along with strong, persistent fumarolic activity. Definitely something to watch over the coming months.
Lest we forget the human aspect of volcanism, the government of Papau New Guinea is still struggling with what to do with refugees from the evacuations of Manam. This is a problem that we will likely see repeated as population continues to encroach on volcanoes.
Melimoyu in Chile continues to show signs that it might be rumbling back to life as well. The seismicity in the area has been determined to be coming from Melimoyu according to the SERNAGEOMIN of Chile, all between 3 and 22 km depth (which is quite a range). The earthquakes were coming in at 7-8/hr on March 17 and 18, but since then have returned to only 2/hr. That being said, the volcano will be under 24-hour surveillance starting immediately.
A couple of new images from the NASA Earth Observatory: (1) A view of the current activity at Kilauea - now there is a basaltic volcano that Eyjafjallajokull has to look up to; (2) A view of the "quiescent" Etna that I'm sure Boris will appreciate - the craters definitely stand out in the snow cover.
We are fast approaching the 30th anniversary of the dramatic eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in Washington. If you want to learn more about the events that lead up to the eruption, you can follow the Mt. Saint Helens Institute's 30th Anniversary Twitter feed (if Twitter is your thing). More anniversary info can be found on the MSHI website.

eklemetti Wed, 03/24/2010 - 22:04

Tags

Central Atlantic Magmatic Province

Mystery Volcano Photo

volcanoes and society

http://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/road-conditions.htm

Those SoufriÃ¨re Hills pictures are now both nominated for the 'Best Volcano Picture' of 2010 ^_^ . I hope someone on that plane made a video of the eruption. I looked for it on youtube, but couldn't find it (yet). Did find this however: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T1VH-rN8mI

Just wondering - is that scale metric or Imperial Sisaks?

Fuji made a bit of a run towards the end, but Tristan de Cunha had too much of a lead :)

Erik, this is the "left coast" after all, and they probably closed the crater to keep people out of there and also to keep anyone from leaving trash and defacing it. If someone got hurt there and they had to rescue them, that is another reason they may have closed it. Then there is the fact that they have designated a bunch of land in S CA a wilderness area so that could be the reason. I could say a lot more, but I will refrain. It just burns me that they close so much land to "save it for our children." Enough said.

I heard there were new developements on Eyjaf. Do you know anything about that? In the mean time, I will check the thread.

@Diane, there seems to have been a new lobe of lava moving more or less parallel to the first one, and obviously it encountered snow, generating a large vapor plume. If this flow continues it might also reach the deep gorge that has captured the first flow and we might again see some of those secondary phreatomagmatic explosions when lava drops over the cliff and mixes with snow.
Apart from that the eruption appears very much at the same levels as yesterday.
An updated map of the lava flow has been posted at Nordvulk: http://www2.norvol.hi.is/solofile/1015741

Sorry Erik but I don't buy the theory behind the extinction that opened the door for the Dinosaurs.

Ten times the amount of CO2 as today does not cause a hot house.
You can read here why that is the case.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-…

So the extinction that took place must have had other causes than CO2.

Claim defied, case closed?
Or is this another piece of AGW propaganda!

Ubehebe Crater, road-access closures due to inclement weather, road damage and ongoing repairs.

Triassic-Jurassic extinction, CAMP flood basalts, and the CO2 concept defuzzing:

Elevated CO2 and temperatures changed climate, but more importantly, temperature increases reduced dissolved gases in the oceans, while cloud and sulfate aerosol cover reduced ambient light levels. Marine chemistry shifted abruptly (marine biocalcification crisis), and these factors probably contributed to the significant die-off of marine organisms during the extinction event.

In the terrestrial environment, abrupt shift (<10 KY) in temperature and precipitation created hot, dry climate conditions, as O2 levels declined. Most flowering plants died out.

Triassic megafauna with inefficient lungs and without access to sufficient water and food eventually perished, while smaller reptiles that could burrow and subsist on subsurface vegetation (water storing roots) had the advantage of reduced metabolic demand. Moreover, evolutionarily efficient lung design coupled with advantageous gas perfusion-vascular resistance and acidity buffering tipped survival odds to favor dinosaur ancestors.

Diapsid Archosaurs out competed Synapsid Ancestor of Mammals Evidence in Alligator Breath.
http://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk/blog/Palaeontologicalarticles/_arc…

So when i go to the cameras on Icelands volcanoes i see
some pretty good glow over Helka.......
Is Helka now erupting?

Thanks,
Best!motsfo

Posted by: Passerby | March 25, 2010 4:37 PM
"Elevated CO2 and temperatures changed climate"

Empty claim!
Elevated CO2 promotes plant growth and makes plant more resistant to drought.

Submarine crews work long periods of time in environments containing + 3000 ppm with no physical effects.

Make your claim but leave CO2 out of it.
CO2 is in no way a climate driver.

@Boris, thanks for that update. I figured it was probably another lobe or something like that. In one of the videos, I saw people standing near the edge of that canyon and I sure wouldn't want to be there if a phreatomagmatic blast took place. Are those simular to litoral explosions?

@Mots, no, Hekla is not erupting or we would have heard about it. My guess as to what you are seeing is glow from the fissure.

@Mots. The Hekla webcam is trained south and what you see is (mostly) the glow of the EyjafjÃ¶llajÃ¶kull fissure, above and way beyond Hekla, reflected in its own smoke/steam. The reason it looks so bright is because the webcam uses a light-amplification device.

I asked this in another post but did not get a response. Is there a site that gives the So2 out put for this eruption ?
Or this may be a better question Is there typically a lot of SO2 in a Basalt eruption as compared to other types? Is it just a roll of the dice for the SO2 output or is there something to look for ?

Thanks

@Boris, on the other thread, you mentioned that volcanic tremor was due to degassing. I have wondered what caused volcanic tremor and I thought it was the magma pushing up in the conduit. I am beginning to see the difference between the quakes from rock breaks and tremor. I wish I knew how to read seizmic signals. Thanks for your contributions, again. I have been having so much fun on this blog.

@Dasnowskier, I don't know where you can get info about the SO2 levels. I would like to know also and the CO2 levels as well. I am sure someone will know soon what is being released.

@Dasnowskier, here is a link to a SO2 monitoring service, but I donÂ´t know if the site is very good.

@R. de Haan, increased atmospheric CO2 levels can actually increase acidity in oceans. There are measurements that show that the pH levels in oceans is decresing. This could make life difficult for marine organism using shells and for corals. Here is a article you can read http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/Zeebe_SciPers_08.pdf
You can find more info if you google on the subject. There are some youtube videos to but I havenÂ´t checked them http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqCvcX7buo

Sorry Dasnowskier I forgot to post the link http://sacs.aeronomie.be/

I also found a NASA site but I havnÂ´t examined it yet http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Aura/data-holdings/OMI/omso2g_v003.shtml

Heh - everyone knows why the dinosaurs *really* went extinct. Anyone remember that cartoon by Gary Larsen?

@Dasnowskier: Try http://satepsanone.nesdis.noaa.gov/pub/OMI/OMISO2/index.html to see if it is added at some stage; otherwise you would have to wait for a long time for someone to publish a paper. OMI is the best instrument currently in orbit to detect SO2; however it only works on the daylit side and the orbital geometry also affects coverage. The MODIS and AIRS instruments can see SO2 in the thermal infrared so they work on the night side - but due to the physics, SO2 estimates from the infrared data are typically ~30% lower than estimates from a UV instrument like OMI. (Orbital geometry is still an issue though.) Some eruptions don't throw SO2 high enough to be detected by some satellite instruments or simply don't produce enough SO2, in which case you won't get any SO2 estimates unless there were people doing measurements on the ground. However, current techniques employed for ground-based SO2 measurement do not produce very good estimates for the volume released or the rate of release. The amount of SO2 would depend on what's going into the melt - but you'd have to ask a volcanologist who does work on composition of the melt and the gases they release. If you have access to publications, there are numerous papers about minerals and gases involved in various volcanoes and types of eruptions.

@R. de Haan: "Ten times the amount of CO2 as today does not cause a hot house."

Really? What evidence do you have for that claim? I'd also like to know how you know what temperatures dinosaurs are comfortable in.

USA Today still waits for Katla's BIG bang and subsequent global cooling.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/03/global…

Erik Klemetti, Eruptions is an excellent volcanology blog. Imagine you are drawing many new readers. I enjoy the commenters you have attracted who also offer excellent ideas and some of the latest research with links. Yes, it is a feeling of joy to experience real science done according to the scientific method with necessary skepticism. Can't say that I find much of that feeling/experience with mainstream media or journals/mags like Science and Nature.

Glad to see Ron de Haan here, an "old" WUWT friend. Run-away heat with lots of CO2 seems much too simple anymore -- and likely wrong. Maybe scientists will finally take global warming and cooling seriously enough to much more closely examine the conditions that shift Earth in either direction.

Have been reading a lot of earth sciences stuff the past year. Found this blog just prior to the eq spikes on Eyjaf, so it's been a really interesting ride. Thanks! Was taken aback at a recent post concerning the "plastic solid" state of the planet's interior - I'm perhaps one of duller tacks among your readers & moving into my dottage, but have always pictured the plates riding on that sea of molten magma. Can anyone take the time to educate me or throw me a site to read? My grandkids love watching "The Core" (argh), but apparently the scene where the magma is dripping down into the geode is quite impossible? Sorry if eyes are rolling - just trying to expand my grey matter before it becomes a useless soggy mass.

@ Boris: you think we're going to get to ask Doyle Rice some questions, too? Maybe he can even find us some information on Katla erupting coal.

@ Kathy: try to compare the Earth's mantle to a cube of ice. The cube looks very solid, but it's more liquid than many people would think. Take it out of its mold, put it in the freezer for three weeks (without the mold) and watch how it slowly deforms because of gravity. The materials in the mantle are even less liquid, but because of the enormous pressure down there it can slowly deform, so it kind of acts like a liquid.

Mantle plumes are a little bit more liquid (couple of percents) than most of the Earth's mantle and magma is a little bit more liquid than that. Then we have the difference between eruptible magma and magma that stays behind in magma chambers. Most of what can be found in magma chambers is more like a big mush that can't really go anywhere unless new melt enters the chamber and partially melts it to the point where it's liquid enough to erupt. The part of a magma chamber that is eruptible is usually not a lot more than 10%, which is a very broad estimate.

And then there's the difference between felsic ('explosive') and mafic ('effusive') volcanism. Eruptible magma in explosive volcanoes is actually more like liquid gas that's liquid because it's under extremely high pressure. When it erupts it immediately turns into ash, pumice and other gasses that form because of the interaction between the atmosphere and the gasses that were trapped in the magma. Volcanoes that produce red hot lava flows are usually more of the effusive kind. Basically that's the only place where you'll actually see that phenomenon.

The Earth's core is very solid. No movement there, not even like in the Earth's mantle.

@Kathy B, I look at the mantle as layers of mush, much like oatmeal. If you cook oatmeal to the point that it just sits in the bowl, you can get an idea of what the lower area of the mantle is like. Add a bit of water and it begins to get a bit more fluid, but still like a glob in the bowl. Add more water to it and eventually it will flow out of the bowl rather than just a blob dropping out of it. The mantle, as Gijs has explained, has layers of solidity and only the very core of earth is really what you could say is "solid". It is thought to be made of iron.

The difference between mafic and felicic is the amount of silica it has in it, as I understand it. Take obsidian for instance. It is very glassy and has a lot of silica in it. Pumice, as in a kitchen pumice stone, and obsidian are basically the same thing. The difference is the pumice had a lot of gasses in it with a lot of bubbles. That is one reason it floats. I have a piece of obsidian that also has pumice on it and both have the same chemical composition.

Mafic lava flows are very fluid compared to the explosive stuff. It is much lower in silica content. Some of it can flow several miles/hour and cannot be outrun. It is amazing how fast it can flow and I think that usually produces pahoehoe flows. Aa flows are slower. (correct me, those of you who know more if I am wrong) I saw a film of an Etna eruption that took place in the '30s and this wall of slow moving aa type flow was about a block away from a lady's home and the police were trying to get her to leave. The lava was pretty high. It looked like a wall of about 20'! It was creeping along, but it wasn't so fast that people couldn't get away from it. It was an impressive film. The lava had a lot of blocky stuff in it and when it gets that aa type in there, the blocks slow it down.

Silica is the most common substance on earth. Its chemical formula is SiO2. A lot of other minerals get into it and that is what make studying magma, lava, rocks, and minerals interesting. You can tell what volcano some rocks come from just by the chemical composition.

Another bit if info that I am sure most people don't know is that a glass window pane is not solid. It is a fluid. When you look at an old original pane in an old house, you will see ripples in it. If you measure the thickness at the top and bottom of the pane, you will find the bottom is thicker because of the natural very slow flow of the glass. It is much like the icecube illustration Gijs gave you.

I hope this has helped you to better understand what is going on. Gijs did a great job of explaining it and I thought I would throw my two cents in.

Keep reading here and asking questions. You will learn a lot and there seems to be something different to learn every day because all of us, pros and amatures alike are learning because we just don't know what is happening sometimes. I don't even remember how I found this blog, but I am sure glad I did because there are some very great minds here with intriging ideas about what is going on.

>The Earth's core is very solid. No movement there, not even like in the Earth's mantle.

Really? Might want to do some fact checking, boyo.

"@R. de Haan: "Ten times the amount of CO2 as today does not cause a hot house."

Really? What evidence do you have for that claim? I'd also like to know how you know what temperatures dinosaurs are comfortable in."

Posted by: MadScientist | March 26, 2010 1:24 AM

Look at the graph in this article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-…

How the hell do you expect me to now with what temperatures Dinosaurs are happy? It's an extinct species, don't you know that!

As for CO2, are you afraid the are not going to close down our economies by cutting the use of fossil fuels!

@ Passerbaby: I stand corrected ;-) . I meant the Earth's inner core... although I guess any material in any state can behave more or less as a liquid when it's put under high enough pressure.

Gentlemen!

May I direct your attention to Dr Robert T. "Bob" Bakker, the renowned paleontologist who based on the prevalence of carnivore fossile remains in comparison to that of herbivore remains in a very particular location, the name of which currently escapes me, has supplied compelling evidence in addition to several items of equally compelling circumstantial evidence that dinosaurs were indeed warm-blooded. Therefore, it is safe to assume that dinosaurs would have "been happy" throughout a similar temperature range to that of other warm-blooded animals. Will this answer satisfy both gentlemen concerned? ;)

I am just wondering something here. Since Etna puts out 20,000 tons of CO2/24hr, and Kilauea puts out about 1600-2000 tons/24hr depending, and since there are a lot of other volcanoes steaming out CO2, what percentage do we think the volcanoes are producing vs. what industry is producing? Does anyone know the amount/day industry is producing vs the amount volcanoes are producing? Or has anyone taken the readings from industrial plants to see just what is being produced?

I think what industry is producing in miniscule compared with what the volcanoes are doing. And another thing that is happening is the methane releases in places in the ocean. So what is that doing to the atmosphere? It may not be much, but none the less, there are gasses being released and more than one type. I would think there is some effect on the atmosphere, but maybe some is only in the immediate vacinity.

I think the question is something on the order of just what is really contributing to the so-called global warming. I think it is more of the volcanic releases than what industry could be doing. Industry contributing to it? Yes, but not as much as some would have the rest of us think.

Any input on this arglebargle?

As someone who has degrees in geology (including a Ph D. from the same program during the time as our esteemed host was aalso a student there), I would be remiss if I didn't jump into the discussion about the mantle and core and clear up some misconceptions.

The mantle is solid and is made of silicate rocks we refer to as peridotites. It behaves ductilely at some depths and flows, but it is still a solid. An inexact but very useful analog is Silly Putty. It is not glass or semi-molten and like all rocks it is made of crystalline minerals. The flow occurs as the minerals undergo various types of deformations and "creeps" at elevated pressures and temperatures. This includes the proposed mantle plumes. It is a bit difficult to envision flowing solids moving through other solids because we don't readily witness it our everyday experiences.

Magma on the other hand is liquid formed by partial melting of rock, including mantle close to the surface under the right conditions. A mantle plume may rise from 1000s of km down, but would only begin to partially melt to form magma (by pressure release) close to the surface.

The core is an iron/nickel mix. The outer part of the core is liquid because that is the stable phase at those depths and temperatures, the inner part is solid because under the conditions deeper down the solid phase is the stable one.

@ EKoh, I have been wondering about this since the discussion began. How shallow is shallow? I realize in subduction zones volatiles rise from a considerable depth to play a role in magma genesis at much shallower levels. But what is happening here at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull? At what depth can we expect melt to be able to form? The crust thickens here from about 20 km at Eyjafjalla to 40 km or more at Vatna and there is obviously a lot of volcanism going on despite this thick crust.

Do you think it is possible for a layer of underplate melt to form at this depth or should we be thinking in terms of isolated pockets?

Secondly, what is driving the ascent of the magma? I take it mafic magma is more dense than the crust above it, so why is it rising up through 40 km of crust? Is it simply top pressure acting on a fluid?

Thirdly, do you have any explanation for the oscillations we saw in both the EQ swarms and the GPS readings? Is this a common occurence?

@30 Bruce,
I'm bit rushed for any detailed answer at the moment, but didn't want to leave you hanging.
The depth were melting begins depends on how hot the rising mantle is. If it's 1200 C it could begin to melt when it 90 km, if 1100 C it would start around 30-40 km. There is model called polybaric melting where the mantle melts progressively as it rises, starting with few % down deep and increasing as it goes. Now if you have a lot of mantle upwelling from, then even melting 10% of it could make a nice size volume of bsaltic magma. If it is hotter mantle it would start to melt at deeper depths and by the time you hit the base of the crust a higher % of the mantle would have melted. Underplating would occur at the base of the crust, where the magma could stagnate for bit.
Partial mantle melt is basaltic. With basalt, unlike water, the liquid is lense dense than the solid so the magma is less dense than soldified basaltic crust (or grabbro since it cooled below ground)and will try to find it way to the surface, plus pressure increases with depth so there may be a bit of a squeeze from below. Boris may know off hand the thickness off the crust and estimates for melt volumes in Iceland.

I'm not a seismologist, so I can only speculate on oscillations and if they have any significance. It may be there is point at some depth in the crust where the bouancy force of small melt batches is not sufficient to open up fractures and accumulates until it has enough pressure to do so. Just arm-waving on my part.

@EKoh,

Finally!!! Thanks a lot for your response. You wouldn't believe how long I puzzled over "dense" basalt rising through Si rich crust. I never came across that in my reading at all. It explains a lot.

I've got a ton of other questions for you btw.. :-)

EKoh I asked this question in the other thread but didn't get an answer from an expert maybe you can help me.

I am asking about MÃ½rdalsjÃ¶kull Caldera, I know the glacier on top of Katla is called MÃ½rdalsjÃ¶kull, I am wondering about the MÃ½rdalsjÃ¶kull Caldera:

"Monitoring of ice cauldrons
Overview

MÃ½rdalsjÃ¶kull is the southernmost glacier in Iceland and is almost 600 km2. It covers the upper part of a large volcano. The mountain is about 30 km in diameter and the highest peaks reach 1500 m a.s.l. In the center of the ice cap is the MÃ½rdalsjÃ¶kull caldera. It is oval in shape with the longest axis NW-SE and covers an area 110 km2. The highest points of the ice cap lie on the caldera rim and include GoÃ°abunga, HÃ¡abunga, Austmannsbunga, Enta, Entukollar (see maps and pictures 1 and 2). Within the caldera the ice is hundreds of meters thick."
earthice.hi.is/page/ies_katlamonitoring

My question is whether Katla is just part of a larger caldera or is the MÃ½rdalsjÃ¶kull caldera and Katla caldera one and the same. 30 km in diameter with an area 110 km2, that is pretty darn big and would seem to be much bigger than the Katla Caldera.

Posted by: Randall Nix | March 26, 2010 8:14 PM

"@R. de Haan, increased atmospheric CO2 levels can actually increase acidity in oceans. There are measurements that show that the pH levels in oceans is decresing. This could make life difficult for marine organism using shells and for corals. Here is a article you can read http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/Zeebe_SciPers_08.pdf
You can find more info if you google on the subject. There are some youtube videos to but I havenÂ´t checked them http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqCvcX7buo"

Posted by: Mattias Larsson | March 25, 2010 8:35 PM

Mattias larsson,

Just like the CO2 scare is a proven "lame duck, so is the ocean acidification scare.
Our marine life is doing very well!

Please visit some serious sites like Anthony Watts's http://wattsupwithtthat.com www.icecap.us or http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/
Do a search for "Ocean Acidification" and find some serious scientific reports that debunk the scare entirely.

I visited Ubehebe crater just about one year ago. The road was in pretty bad shape. It was a moderately rainy winter, so it's possible there were some washouts as well. I don't think you can blame this closure on eco-hippie-liberals.

Neat crater, though. To my untrained eye, very similar to meteor crater in Arizona. Is there a rule of thumb for distinguishing between impact and explosive craters?

@EKoh, I hope you didn't think I was saying the mantle was glass. I wasn't. I was using glass as an example of a solid that flows over time and I figured it might be a good analogy to use to describe the mantle. From what I was understanding was that the mantle was a "solid" mush type of stuff. I did not know it is really solid and I thank you for setting that straight. I did know that the crust doesn't float on a liquid mantle like lava crusts in a lava lake such as Erta Ale. I think a lot of people see it that way because it has been presented that way by those who don't understand the mantle/crust convergence.

One of the things I have a hard time getting my head around is having mantle upwelling if it is solid. And how does a mantle plume develop? Or is that something we don't know? I didn't see Silly Putty as a solid exactly, either. It seems funny to me that I can understand glass flowing, but I am having a hard time getting around the mantle being solid and yet it can flow. Arg! Maybe it will come to me if I just reread your posts a couple more times. You know, a blob of cooked oatmeal or cornmeal can be real solid if it has been put into the fridge. LOL

You said partially melted mantle is basaltic. I see from the current eruption the basaltic fountaining. What about rhyolitic lava? Does it flow at all like basalt only much slower?

I know. A lot of questions for a busy geologist. Are you a volcanologist, too? Sounds like it.

Thanks for your input. It is very helpful to get a handle on what is happening.

@YetanotherKevin, bad weather and washout is probably the culprit. However, one thing I have heard is that they (the department of Interior) will not replace or fix a road that gets washed out or eroded to the point of being impassible. It has happened up where I live and there are a lot of green gates all over the place where you used to be able to get to the river. There are three of the roads that they do keep open because they have to. They are fire escape routes if we need them. They actually paved one of them, but I doubt they will be paving the other two as the state has other things in mind and it probably would take an act of Congress (or an ammendment to a bill) to get anything like that done. One other road that goes to the river has not been graded in years and it is getting to the point of becoming impassible except for 4WD. I think when it goes, they will not repair it.

@R. de Haan: The problem with the link you provide is that there are so many things wrong with it; why do you even believe the claims? First of all, even the graphs are not sensibly labeled; there is no "Modtrans" but there is a radiative transfer model "Modtran". If you know what you're doing you can set up that model to give you some idea of the change in radiation trapped in the atmosphere due to CO2. Without details on how those figures were derived, I can't even trust those graphs. Modtran is not like a computer game where anyone who can push buttons can operate it, and doing the types of radiative transfer calculations needed to substantiate the claims being made, you're looking for someone with an appropriate PhD to run that model because the information we're looking at is not a typical output from Modtran - you have to run an awful lot more calculations than the basic model provides. Now on top of that, the figures posted claim to be a "forcing" - not a temperature change. What corresponding temperature change might be expected is conveniently ignored. The plot on "heating effect of CO2 per 20ppm increment" is irrelevant and misleading, not to mention once again, where do their numbers come from? 10 times the CO2 in our atmosphere will make a much warmer planet, despite the ridiculous claims of that website. If those people wanted to make an honest argument, they'd state a published claimed temperature increase for the x10 CO2 and show their own detailed calculations of why that is wrong. That website does not give any relevant information, it only pretends to be science.

@madscientist:
There is nothing wrong with the data in the link besides the notion that you want the data to be wrong because you are a warmist, an alarmist and a "Believer". Sorry to say this but this is the truth

The role of CO2 in the IPCC models is overstated by a factor 6 to 7.

That's why the models and the real world observations don't match.

Do you get this!

@R.de Haan and MadScientist, how about presenting more articles as evidence of the theories of CO2 effect on the atmosphere and possible warming and maybe that could cool the discussion a bit.

I would like to see more than just one article on either side of the issue because just one article sometimes isn't enough to "prove" a theory. How about the ability to reproduce a study? How many studies have actually been done to get an idea of CO2 effects? What do the ice cores show? What has the plant life shown since the Holocene?

Anyway, I think what can really help here is more info presented on this whole issue. I do believe there is possibly some warming going on because we have been coming out of what they called the Little Ice Age. Glaciers are retreating. The snow in the Sierras used to stay all summer long in the '50s and now it doesn't. I am not going to say with the alarmists it is because of human indutrial output. I think most of the CO2 comes from seepage and volcanoes. I am sure there are other sources. Even our breathing produces it. (Now I am not saying our exhalations are a cause of warming. LOL

So what else can you two present on this issue?

@YetAnotherKevin #34 "Is there a rule of thumb for distinguishing between impact and explosive craters?"

Shocked quartz. http://www.google.se/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=shocked+quartz Its presence is considered to be a definitive indicator of an impact event.

@Henrik:
I was thinking more of... not sure how to say it. Features of the crater itself, I guess. Like maybe impact craters have a characteristic shape that differs from the typical volcanic crater? Probably the best rule of thumb for me is, "It's volcanic." because I'm statistically likely to be right. :-)

@Diane:
Back-of-the-napkin calculation for total human CO2 emissions: Get an estimate for the annual production of coal and oil, which shouldn't be too hard. Assume it's 100% carbon and that 100% of it is burned (*). Add the weight of two oxygen atoms for each carbon atom. (multiply by 3.7) (**)

(*) Obviously this is an overestimate, but we're not counting natural gas, so it should be close enough. Might be within the error bars for the annual production, anyway. Go ahead and re-run the calculations assuming 90% is carbon and 90% is burned.

(**) The third link below provides much better conversion factors, which I've used (hopefully correctly) in my calculations.

Aw, heck. I'm curious now.

Sources:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/coalproduction.html

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_home#tab2

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/convert.html

In 2006, 6,807 million short tons of coal annually. .907 metric tons per short ton.

C02 from coal: 6,807 * .907 * .982 * .746 = 4522 million tons per year, or 12.4 million tons per day, or 620 Mt. Etnas.

In 2008, 85.5 million barrels of oil per day. This is approximately 12 million metric tons.

CO2 from oil: 12 * .98 * .85 = 10 million tons per day, or about 500 Mt. Etnas.

Hope this thread isn't completely dead.

@36 Diane, I hope you didn't think I was singling out tyour comment. I was just trying to clear things up for everyone. You are right that many people think that crust floats on a liquid mantle. I did so myself before studying geology, I think it is a common misconception fueled by some poorly doen popular science explanations.
Rhyolite is much more viscous than basalt and really flow very well at all. Think heavy cream vs. wall putty. Basalt also does not degass as easily as basalt and often holds onto any gas until it breaches the surface, releasing it all at once and explosively. This results in ash instead of lava flows. If rhyolitic magma does erupt without explosively fragmenting it does not flow very far and makes a dome of solidified rhyolite right at the vent. Rhyolitic lava would behave very similarly to the dacite that erupted at St. Helens from 2004-2008. Sometimes it will quench to glass and make an obsidian dome. Much rhyolitic magma never makes it to the surface and crystallizes into plutons of granite.

Technically speaking I am an igneous petrologist, meaning I specialize in the origins and development of magma and igneous rocks. The field obviously overlaps into volcanology. In fact, I attended grad school with Erik and also Anne Jefferson, who blogs over at Highly Allocthanous.

@EKoh #42, I'm afraid I did think you were referring to me. Sometimes I get the wrong idea and I appologize for that. Thank you so much for your explainations. I did not know that ryolitic magmas will become granites. I didn't know exactly how granite formed, but I knew it was igneous. I have been a rockhound since I was about 3 and I have been interested in volcanoes since I was about 9, and I wish someone had steered me into geology about 30 years ago! Well, I can study it now and I am so glad, (maybe I have said it too much lol) I found this blog. I feel priviliged to be able to communicate with geologists and volcanologists and learn from them.

Thank you again.

Dang! Looks like my comment got eaten by the system.

@Diane: Regarding industrial C02 output, there are sources (DOE among others) that provide the annual production of coal and oil, and others that provide the conversion to C02. I'm not going to do it again, but it didn't take very long, and what I came up with was C02 from burning coal = 630 x Mt Etna and C02 from burning oil = 500 x Mt Etna. Plus or minus 11 percent or so. I didn't check natural gas.

Thank you, YetAnotherKevin. I appreciate the work you did to find that for me. Hmmm. Looks like industry does put out a lot more CO2 than I thought. Something to think about.

@R de Haan: That link you provided is as scientific as astrologist claims that volcanoes erupt due to planetary alignments. The web site does not pass even the most superficial examination. But since this blog is about volcanoes, I'll say no more of that.

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2009: The Volcanic Year in Review

eklemetti — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:45:45 +0000

2009: The Volcanic Year in Review

Here it is, my attempt to recap a year's worth of volcanic events. By no means is this supposed to capture every event, but rather the highlight/lowlights and what most captivated me during 2009. I'll be announcing the winner of the 2009 Pliny for Volcanic Event of the Year tomorrow.

Waimangu Geothermal Valley in New Zealand, taken in January 2009 by Erik Klemetti.

January
The year started out with a trip to New Zealand (well, for me at least) and vistas of the Waimangu Valley, formed in the 1886 eruption of Tarawera on the North Island. We were also still thinking about the late 2008 earthquake swarm at Yellowstone, which didn't lead to anything in 2009. British scientists suggested that Antarctica has been experiencing subglacial eruption, which might account for some of the melting of the ice on the southern continent. However, what really got our attention in January was the Mt. Redoubt in Alaska, with the volcano being put on alert by AVO on January 26th - leading to months of speculation about what might happen. By the end of the month (4 days later), the volcano was all over the news and concern about the Drift River Oil Terminal was high.

February
It was the Redoubt wait that dominated the volcano news during February. Earthquakes, steam and speculation were the order of the day. We also got news of recent eruptions at NW-Rota 1 from Dr. Ed Kohut off on a research cruise in the Pacific. Chaiten was still going strong, but the social fallout from the relocation of the town of Chaiten was proving to be a major problem was well. Finally, volcano monitoring made a surprise splash at the end of the month when Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal suggested that monitoring volcanoes was "wasteful" - he learned quickly that badmouthing volcanologists is not a good idea.

March
We had to wait most of the month, but right after AVO thought things were winding down at Redoubt, the volcano goes and erupts anyway on March 23rd. It wasn't a little eruption either, throwing ash to over 50,000 ft / 15 km and eventually closing the international airport in Anchorage. March ended up being a double feature, with the surprise - and very impressive - eruption of Hunga Tonga - Hunga Ha'apai in the island nation of Tonga. This eruption started as an undersea eruption noticed by commercial pilots in the area and quickly became a classic island-building event. We also had a lot of noise about the earthquake swarms in the Bombay Beach area long the San Andreas fault in southern California. March also marked my move from Wordpress to ScienceBlogs - so I send a special thanks to all the readers who came with me and all my new readers - if you can believe it, Eruptions will be just short of half a million visits in the 10 months since coming to ScienceBlogs!

Llaima in Chile erupting in April 2009.

April
April ended up being my busiest month - with over 50 posts in the month alone. A lot of that was, again, dominated by Redoubt's activity that continued throughout the month. We also saw impressive eruptions of Llaima in Chile and new fissure eruptions at Fernandina in the Galapagos Islands. I addressed some concerns people have on the dangers of geothermal drilling causing an eruption (short answer: probably not). We also got an inside look at the USGS Volcano Hazards Program and I got all worked up about some questionable volcano journalism (what a surprise).

May
May marked two anniversaries: one was for Eruptions, the other, more important one marked one year of eruptions at Chaiten in Chile. The eruption that got me on this blogging track was still going strong after a year, with at least three domes growing inside the Chaiten caldera. Of course, we were also still waiting for the big dome collapse at Redoubt as well, but little came of that. We also got the first glimpse of West Mata erupting in the Lau Basin of the Pacific - the media would really get fired up about this in December when video was released. However, the most exciting event of the month was the earthquake swarm and potential threat of volcanic eruption in the Harrat Lunayyir region of Saudi Arabia. At times, I felt like I was the only person covering the event, getting reports from people on the ground in Saudi Arabia - but when all was said-and-done, no eruption came.

June
We had two volcanoes headed in opposite directions in June. First, Redoubt settled down for the summer. Second, Sarychev Peak in Russia blew its top in a spectacular fashion - disrupting air traffic all across the Pacific. The eruption was a major sulfur dioxide event and provided one of the most stunning volcano images - well, ever. The eruption did a number to the small island of Matau. Sarychev Peak wasn't the only volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula making noise: Shiveluch also had a major eruption. In June, we also got the first taste of the "Mt. Saint Helens: Supervolcano" controversy and media disaster that would come back later in the year. Finally, my colleagues at UC Davis, Naomi Marks, Peter Schiffman and Robert Zeirenberg, made the news by drilling into an active rhyolite magma in Iceland - nice way to end the month!

Sarychev Peak erupting in June 2009.

July
Volcanically speaking, things quieted down during summer after a very busy spring. The biggest news for July was likely eruption at Mando Hararo in Ethiopia - adding more fissure volcanism in the East African Rift. Of course, it might have been most fascinating to Eruptions readers because one of your own might have been the first to notice the eruption actually occurred. Over in Hawai`i, a rockfall captured on camera temporarily "snuffed out" the Halema`uma`u vent, but it didn't take long for lava to retake the crater. Mayon offered foreshadowing of things to come with evacuations prompted by the beginning of the current eruption.

August
August was especially quite around these parts - thanks partially to my move from California to Ohio, but also to the fact that, well, not much happened (so much for 2009 being an "anomalously volcanic" year). We started the month with some news that there might have been a volcanic eruption on Venus. I've since lost track of the research on this event - anybody have any new theories in what happened on our sister planet? Kamchatka was in the news, mostly because it was such a volcanically active area in 2009 - 5 volcanoes were erupting at once during August - and a new geyser was found as well. And if you need something to read in the long winter months, check out my favorite volcano books.

September
Things picked back up once the fall began. I dabbled in the world of "manmade volcanoes" (short answer: bad idea unless they erupt a dinosaur). In what now seems premature, the eruption at Soufriere Hills on Montserrat was declared "over" after 6 months of quiet at the volcano. We all know what came two weeks later. The international media was all over the proclamation that Australia was "overdue" for a volcanic eruption - a notion that most people think is fear-mongering at its best. There was some suggestion of something happening at Mt. Rainier - but what exactly is still a mystery. Finally, after 6 months of eruptions and noise, AVO lowered the warning level at Redoubt to green (normal). The eruption was over ... or is it?

Nevado del Huila in Colombia steaming from the summit in 2009.

October
With Redoubt out of the picture (for now), a couple of new volcanoes took to the streets. Gaua in Vanuatu erupted, prompting evacuations of people living near the island volcano. We also saw more activity at Huila in Colombia - it was a busy year for volcanic eruptions in Colombia, with eruptions at Huila and Galeras, along with signs of life from the slumbering volcano of Machin (enough to prompt the Colombian government to ponder diverting a major highway to avoid it getting cut by a Machin eruption). A study in Nature was published showing that the magma erupted during 2008-09 at Chaiten shot through the crust - and then you got to ask Dr. Jonathan Castro, coauthor of the study - all about Chaiten. I also attended the GSA Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon, where I found out some fun information on Toba, New York kimberlites and Mackenzie Pass.

November
Two non-events dominated a lot of the discussion during November. First was the attention paid to the idea that geologists could "destroy Naples" through exploratory drilling into the Campei Flegrei. Second was the non-eruption of Karkar in Papau New Guinea - we all thought a major eruption occurred, but now it looks like the satellites might have been a bit confused, thanks to reports from the ground. Dr. Boris Behncke answered your questions about Italian volcanoes. Both Gaua and Soufriere Hills were full-steam-ahead when it came to their respective eruptions.

Mayon erupting in December 2009.

December
As 2009 closed out, all eyes turned to the Philippines and the eruption of Mayon. The volcano produced some impressive lava flows and avalanches, but as of December 30, the big explosive event that PHIVOLCS is thinking is in the cards has yet to arrive. Large-scale evacuations have occurred, but keeping people out of the danger zone has been problematic. Piton de la Fournaise on Reunion Island actually erupted first in November, but the December eruption was captured in time-lapse video, showing the growth of the fissure vent eruption on the basaltic shield volcano. Soufriere Hills stayed in the news, causing power problems on Montserrat and ash from the volcano cancelled flights as far away as Puerto Rico. And in a bit of a surprise, as 2009 closed out, Redoubt was put back on Yellow Alert status after new signs of potential activity.

So there is 2009 in a nutshell ... any predictions for 2010 (volcanically speaking)?

eklemetti Thu, 12/31/2009 - 04:45

Tags

Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai

Piton de la Fournaise

Pliny

Politics of volcanoes

Volcano Hazards Program

volcano monitoring

Volcano Research

volcano scientist

Newer Volcanic Province

No mention of Anak Krakatau?

I gather it's died down for now, but it was quite spectacular early in the year. I've been wondering what its recent eruptions have done to its height, but I find it difficult to find much about it.

David - Yeah, not everything made "the list", but Anak did its usual - some spectacular Strombolian eruptions.

If its not too late in the year, I'd like to formally propose a theory. I believe that renewed volcanic activity is directly caused by volcanologists declaring the prior eruptive phase to be "over".

I'll propose a test for this theory as soon as I find a recently dormant volcano where nobody lives, since nearby residents would likely come after me if I used them as guinea pigs.

This follows my previous theory: that lightning actually never struck twice, until people made the phrase popular.

@Fritz: good thinking Ollie!

Personally, I don't believe any volcano or crater is actually extinct. Dormant, yes. But extinct? I could be wrong, of course. But when a volcano comes up in a corn field in Mexico, wouldn't you think one could come up just about anywhere? It would be pretty difficult for magma to come up in the Sierras, but it could happen.

Anyway, I look for Redoubt to wake up again and I also look for the crater at Kilauea to begin fountaining sometime. It may not because it fills and drains, but you never know. It was really roiling the other day. And then Kamchatka. Somebody there will erupt and it just remains as to who.

I notice that there are repeated small quakes at Mammoth Mt. and I suspect they are techtonic. For it to start getting restless is a long shot.

And what about the Sisters in Oregon? Has the inflation there deflated? It sure made the news when they discovered it with GPS.

That's enough for now.

Happy New year Erik and all who post and come to this site. Love it.

My prediction is that one or two volcano surprises in 2010 will help bring the eruptions log up to a cummulative count of 2M visitors for all of 2010. In fact, the New York Times included a link to to the Eruptions blog (re. the carribean flight cancelations due to Soufrier activity) yesterday. Also, that human caused climate change deniers will increasingly look to volcano science,(rather, psuedo science), to support their assertions that it isn't happening.

Y'all might be interested in Alaska's new volcano playing cards: http://www.dggs.dnr.state.ak.us/pubs/pubs?reqtype=citation&ID=20401 . 52 historically active volcanoes = playing with a full deck. :)

I am pretty certain that Etna will be back in the news in 2010 ... tonight it's displaying its usual glow from a vent near the summit, and the full moon is shining on Sicily, where we have an unusually mild (not to say, warm) winter.

And then, thanks Erik for all the effort put into this blog, and the occasional fun you let us have. I wish you and everybody else here a wonderful, spectacular, splendid, volcanic 2010.

@Boris, I forgot about Etna. I think it will do a good show sometime in 2010. I wish the SE Crater would go back to the Stomboli eruptions like it did in the mid '90s. It was so cool. And before Etna Treking took down their cams, my DH and I watched the eruption in 2006 (not sure of the year LOL) for six hours! That was so neat to watch blocks come down over the rim. We just couldn't take our eyes off of it. Then all at once they shut down the cams. Now they are back, and not as good as they were, but at least they are there.

As long as Etna doesn't do a lot of damage, let'er rip.

Thanks for answering all our questions, too, Boris.

Guessing the future is very chancy. While anything can happen from Rabaul to Redoubt to Ranier or Mayon to Machin to Mammoth Mountain and the Philipines, Indonesia, Kamchatka, Alaskan Islands, South and Central America all have the ability to unleash large eruptions --- I'll just make a guess/prediction that Africa will have some exciting activity because the continent is slowly rifting apart.

I suppose the finding of the extra hot magma in the area may have caught my imagination and just led me to think that the volcanic activity in the area has some legs to it and there may be a long-term upswing in geological activity in the area and so we may continue witnessing the start of what will be a large lava field that will cover a vast area.

I will guess that Machin might hold off for a few years in erupting.

I'll keep watching Lazufre, but I guess any volcanic activity there will be more than two years away - or maybe even hundreds of years provided it keeps growing.

An American science TV show had an episode on Vesuvius. They pointed out that eruptions at Vesuvius have historically trailed big earthquakes by a number of years. Now, the eruption that destroyed Pompeii was also proceeded by a strong quake about 15 or 17 years earlier (can't exactly remember). This was something I viewed on yet another American TV show. Some scientists wonder if last years deadly earthquake in Italy could already have pulled the trigger on the next Vesuvius eruption. (My hunch is that Vesuvius will probably stay dormant for at least the next three years - even if the trigger was pulled.)

Ranier will probably make it into the news - even if it doesn't erupt. Some scientist will make some statement about how dangerous it is. It can easily send a lot of material into a nearby town - and the healthy might be able to flee by foot when the automated alarm goes off.

So my only guess is activity at the rift valley in Africa.

The Galapagos Islands are the most incredible living museum of evolutionary changes, with a huge variety of endemic species (birds, land and sea animals, plants) and especially active volcanoes.

First of my volcanic related predictions would have to be the threat of lahars in relation to the current eruption of mayon. Think it woul be wise to relocate people whilst they are out of the danger zone so to speak....

Wild guess predictions would be a eruption of Mauna Loa. Think that one is due. Maybe one of the New Zealand volcanoes could spring into life...White Island perhaps..
Vesuvius remains ever present in my mind but I'm saying nothing regarding that one.

I think I would like to see some spectacular eruption in some unpopulated area...Erebus maybe

Unfortunately my pin for a disasster falls on the Eastern seaboard area of America not gonna say unless prompted but thats the general area.

Happy New Year and keep up the good work Erik!!!!

Vesuvius may well stay silent for many centuries - consider that before it erupted in AD 79 to destroy Pompeii and other Roman towns, it probably was quiescent for 800 years, and the second worst of its eruptions in history, in 1631, was preceded by nearly 500 years of inactivity. Now we're at 66 years, so that's not very much in comparison.
I'd rather be worried about those Italian volcanoes that there is much less talk about, especially abroad - like Campi Flegrei, on the other (western) side of Naples (last eruption was in 1538) and Vulcano on the southernmost of the Aeolian islands (last eruption 1888-1890). Both have shown significant unrest in the past few decades, and my guts tell me at least one of them will erupt before Vesuvius will come back to life.
Mauna Loa? It seemed to be building up to an eruption a few years ago, but presently there seems to be very little going on there, so I don't really expect it to do something very soon.
Somebody named Unzen as a candidate for an eruption in the near future. My guess is it will not erupt for several centuries - the previous eruption (prior to 1990-1995) was in 1792, so that one seems to erupt quite infrequently.
I'd imagine some other Japanese volcano to do something major this year - it's been quite a while since there's been a significant eruption in Japan (10 years, since Miyakejima's caldera collapse and Usu's phreatic eruption/uplift in 2000). Back in the 1970s and 1980s there would be one major eruption in Japan roughly every 3 years.

Let's hope that one in the Canary Islands doesn't slide into the ocean! The eastern sea board would be history. As for Mammoth Mt., I don't think that one is going to do anything. I would be more concerned about the resurgent dome in Long Valley. But the tiny quakes are coming and they seem to be on the fault.

Just about anything can happen. Even Lassen could do something, though it is very remote that it will do anything except just sit there and be a nice climb for somebody who wants to climb a volcano. Been there and done that---twice. Nice climb. 15% grade at most, 5 mile round trip, 2000' gain in altitude. I wish I could do it again.

Yellowstone. That beautiful place that has geysers that put on shows and seems safe enough. Well, it is at the moment even if it is putting out a lot of C02.

And this global warming thing...why is it that they forget how much S02 and C02 is being released into the atmosphere from all the volcanoes that are fuming and spewing and erupting? What was it Boris said about Etna releasing 800 tonnes of C02/day? Or was it more? Anyway, that is only ONE volcano! How about Kilauea?

Oh well, we will have a good time watching to see where the next eruption will be and I just hope it doesn't cause a lot of havoc.

Take care when any of you are on any of these volatile mountains. But if you have a chance, climb Mt. Lassen. You won't be sorry you did.

For parochial reasons more than anything, I think something might happen in NZ/Kermadec Trench. There is a lot of rifting in the TVZ (18 mm) a year, currently there are about 5 active earthquake swarms in the TVZ (one of them under the major vent of the last Taupo eruption (Horomatangi reef in the middle of the lake) and one right under Mt Edgecumbe north of Mt. Tarawera. Four of the swarms are on precisely the same fault lines as the most recent eruptions in the zone. An intriguing one is just south of Taupo in a geothermal area also in a graben setting (Roto Aira). And there have been a couple of small earthquakes in the Auckland volcanic field recently (not a seismically active region at all). The AVC intrigues me a lot - a young mafic field erupting through lithic crust in a region without any obvious seismic activity. Most strange. BTW it is also said to erupt about once every six hundred years.

.. and to extend my insular thinking a little further north. The rates of subduction up around Tonga are huge and there is major earthquake activity up there too. I think we could easily see more island building or submarine activity from that region too, not to forgot the entire Bismarck Island/New Guinea/Indonesia chain where the same applies.

oh bugger...lol of course I meant the western sea board in my above comment, thanks dianne for bringing that to my attention. East lol that would be unbelievable!!!

Living in Chile, the LLaima and Chaiten eruptions were high point over the past several months. I'm in the process of finishing a book on the Valdivia Earthquake of 1960 (Mw 9.5) and am including a chapter on volcanism which resulted from the events at that time and have been searching for photos of the Cordon Caulle eruption that began May 24, 1960. If anyone has anything appropriate I'd be very grateful and will include all appropriate citations.

We've had our guesses for the eruptions of 2010. Now they're starting: today (2 January 2010), both Piton de la Fournaise (RÃ©union island, Indian Ocean) and Nyamuragira (Congo) went into eruption.
http://www.jir.fr/index.php?id_article=232698&page=article
http://www.ipgp.fr/pages/03030807.php
http://www.fournaise.info
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100102/ap_on_re_af/af_congo_volcano_1

Well, Stephen, They have been talking about that volcano in the Canarys (or is it the Azores)that if the part of it that is very precarious slid into the ocean, there would be a tsunami that would probably wipe out the eastern coast.

I agree with you about the west coast. We get a lot of quakes here and there was a swarm just at the foot of Mt. Lassen that had about 90 small quakes. There was a new one on Mammoth Mountain this morning and I check to see how deep they are and they are shallow---about three miles down. I think there are about 20 of them right now. Since there is a fault right there, I think they are techtonic rather than magmatic.

Anyway, I think there will be a lot more activity near Tonga, also. They do get a lot of quakes there. That entire area is so active because of the trenches and subductions that there could be a lot of volcanic activity with just the right amount of shaking and how the waves interact with the volcanoes.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens and where. I just wish I could go see some of the eruptions---at a safe distance, though. :-)

Speaking of quakes, there was a 6.2 in the Mariannas region this morning at 12:45am my time. And Tonga area had a 5. It seems that Tonga has one almost every other day in the 5 range.

We will definitely see more of that.

I know that volcanos and earthquakes are around for centuries, but I can not help thinking of these words "earthquakes in one place after another, when you see all these things occuring, know the end is near" All these things being things which humans can not control and an intensity in activity not previously witnessed.Can it be we are witnessing a time in history which will be catastrophic and affect every nation on the planet? Whether a person is spiritual or not will not alter the facts.Can it be said that both earthquake and volcano activity has increased alarmingly in the past few years? I dont know, I'm no expert but keen to know what the experts do think, honestly.

I know that volcanos and earthquakes are around for centuries, but I can not help thinking of these words "earthquakes in one place after another, when you see all these things, know the end is near" All these things being things which humans can not control and an intensity in activity not previously witnessed.Can it be we are witnessing a time in history which will be catastrophic and affect every nation on the planet? Whether a person is spiritual or not will not alter the facts.Can it be said that both earthquake and volcano activity has increased alarmingly in the past few years? I dont know, I'm no expert but keen to know what the experts do think, honestly.

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report for 12/9-12/16/2009

eklemetti — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:28:16 +0000

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report for 12/9-12/16/2009

Before it gets lost in the mists of time/finals, here is the weekly volcano report brought to us by the USGS and the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program.

Highlights (not including Mayon, Soufriere Hills or Piton de La Fournaise):

Fuego in Guatemala produced ash plumes that reached 4.1-4.7 km / 13,500-15,400 ft along with avalanches of volcaniclastic debris.
Also in Guatemala, lava flows erupted from Pacaya, traveling hundreds of meters from the main vent area.
Manam in PNG produced an 3 km / 10,000 foot ash plume as part of its renewed activity this year.
The lava dome on Nevado del Huila in Colombia continues to glow - and produce significant ash, one with a plume that reached 7 km / 23,000 feet.

eklemetti Thu, 12/17/2009 - 08:28

Tags

Piton de la Fournaise

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091216203436.htm

Manam is still active... that's interesting, I wonder if that eruption that wasn't at Karkar was actually from Manam. They are not too far apart but I have no idea how the VAA reports are created.. visual observation by pilots might result in that kind of error I guess.

Here is a recent article where scientists are trying to sort through precursors to eruptions.

West Mata volcano, an active seamount whose summit lies approximately 1100 m below sea-level, was explored during a Vents Program cruise in May 2009, and I think two photos and two little video clips were released at the time. The volcano was seen in vigorous eruptive (effusive and explosive) activity. Now more, and extremely high-resolution video and photographic material has been released, which you can download at the Vents Program web site (movie files up to 1 GB ... !!!)

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/laubasin/laubasin-multimedia.html

Great Post! Itâs very nice to read this info from someone that actually knows what they are talking about.

I know I'm a little late in adding my comments but this particular blog post made me think. It was an engrossing piece. I have become a returning reader of your site since I came across your site a while back. I can't say that I agree with everything you stated but it was emphatically fascinating! I will be back again soon.

Interesting article. Well done, i hope to read more like this

Insightful writing! I will take a bit of time to entertain this writing.

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report for 12/2-12/8/2009

eklemetti — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:15:16 +0000

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report for 12/2-12/8/2009

A new Weekly Volcano Report from the Smithsonian GVP/USGS ... enjoy!

Highlights include:

There has been a number of reports of new activity at Llaima in Chile (hat tip to Eruptions reader Manuel Humeres for bringing them to us). Most of the current activity is steam-and-gas plumes along with long-period seismicity, suggesting we could be headed towards a new eruption.
Lava flows continue to erupt from Kliuchevskoi in Kamchatka, along with strombolian activity throwing ejecta up to 300 m / ~1000 feet above the crater.
Rabaul is busy shaking windows 20 km / 12 miles from the Tavurvur crater, with accompanying ash fall in the town of Rabaul, ~3-5 km / 3 miles away.

eklemetti Thu, 12/10/2009 - 03:15

Tags

http://www.gns.cri.nz/what/earthact/volcanoes/nzvolcanoes/kermprint.htm

USGS

volcanic hazards

volcano monitoring

JT said on the man-made lava comment that he's worried about Anak Krakatoa. That one doesnt concern me nearly as much as Rabaul. I figure Krakatoa would need to re-build its cone to approx the same size as the complex that exploded last time in order to get a similar level of destruction, and thats going to take awhile.

Rabaul otoh seems to just blow up and collapse into the harbor, and theres a lot of activity in the SW Pacific lately.

Maybe we should have a pool on where the next VEI 8 will occur? The winner could get one of those Dinosaur Volcano things.

Fitz,

The idea of a contest to predict the next eruption occurred to me too.

Now, I would set the bar at VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) at maybe 6 (or lower).

The Mt. Pinatubo eruption just tipped the scale at VEI 6.
Krakatua was 6.5
Tambora was 7.3
The only 8 on my list Tambora 8.8 was thought to have wiped out most humans then alive. If we get anything that big ... a toy dinosaur isn't going to mean much too much to me. LOL

Great idea though. You probably saved your money and didn't buy the hundreds of dollars in Volcano books that I just got.

My source for those eruption magnitudes was Encyclopedia of Volcanoes p 265

When will I learn to be frugal?

Fitz,

Occasionally I see an earthquake magnitude 5 that is fairly close to Rabaul. I almost commented here about one that happened about two weeks ago.

I haven't been watching volcanic activity for too long - and even if there was a gradual uptick in activity - I am not sure that I would detect the gradual change.

Now, there has also been some big earthquakes far South of Rabaul maybe ( to my uneducated eye ) closer to New Zealand. There has been at least one 7 magnitude quake in the past year or so. But these to me seem just out in the water away from everything else.

Now, if we get a 7 magnitude quake within 50 miles of Rabaul I'd expect something newsworthy to happen there very quickly. :(

Come to think of it - we should probably not have a prize for predicting a volcanic eruption. While to us the challenge is merely an intellectual exercise - others might see volcanic activity as merely bring death and destruction and we wouldn't want to be misunderstood as celebrating that.

Perhaps instead we could start our own danger index - or something like that. Something that will be seen as more reflective of the true concern that volcanologists have for preserving lives. It is certainly for this reason that I am interested in volcanoes - the power of them is certainly astonishing too - and too often people forget that our lives our very fragile.

Correction: I meant that I haven't been observing earthquake activity too long - and I don't know whether or not the South Pacific is getting more quakes. If anyone has any studies confirming what Fitz says I'll be delighted to read about it.

Thomas, there is a reason for all those quakes in the South Pacific. Look at the relative plate motions. You'd be hard pressed to find a faster rate of subduction than that around Tonga (remember the large Samoan quake recently) and I wouldn't write off the Kermadecs too quickly. There have been some big eruptions there in the past. Take a look at Macauley Island.

If theres a VEI 8 and all of humanity is wiped out, I'm DEFINitely gonna spend some of my final time getting one of those dinosaur things. In 65 million years when some smart dinosaur digs me up, it'll freak em out.

When they tested the first atom bomb, all the scientists had a pool on the size of the blast. Our pool wouldnt be quite that morbid. I do see some merit in having a "DANGER INDEX" that Erik could post as a peer prediction, sort of the way the Bullitin of Atomic Scientists do their Doomsday clock. Theres a scientific term for it which I dont know, but the more people you get to make an educated guess on something, the closer to a good answer you generally get.
Have a list of potential next eruptions and what size we guess they'll achieve.

Ok, let's start with MachÃn then ;-) .

After that, we can do Campi Flegrei, Long Valley, and Taal. Not that there's something about to happen at those places, but just to have some fun if the press gets hold of our predictions and starts writing about it ^_^ . However, I don't really know if Erik would be happy if someone would refer to this blog when all kind of doomsday stories get out into the open ;-) . Maybe something for an April Fools' joke ^_^ ? Let's see if we can p*ss some people off at Mammoth Lakes again XD .

Nah, but for real: trying to predict some eruptions would be very interesting. Recently I posted the idea of a messageboard connected to the blog in the 'Eruptions suggestions thread', and I think that this subject would fit well on a forum.

http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2009/11/eruptions_suggestion_thread.p…

Bruce Stout,

I think I'll get some dinner and maybe a glass of wine and start nibbling at that article you provided the link for which (when pasted into Microsoft Word) is 25 pages or 11,000+ words long and very, very informative looking.

Looks like Soufiere Hills is getting ready to get more dangerous and explosive.

Thursday, 10 December 2009 16:54

Hazard level raised to 4
At 6:40 am on 10 December, 2009 a large pyroclastic flow travelled down Tyers Ghaut. This pyroclastic flow reached to below the west end of Lees village in the Dyers river, some 3.5 kilometers from the lava dome. This point has been stated by the MVO as the âTrigger point' for raising the hazard level from 3 to 4.

Ha! Thomas, I see we share a couple of interests! The Geonet article is a bit dated unfortunately but still quite interesting. There are quite a few large submarine calderas between NZ and Tonga, whether any of them would result in a large subaerial eruption remains to be seen. The 100 km3 estimate for the Sandy Bay ignimbrite on Macauley looks like it might be a bit excessive. the GVP puts that eruption at VEI 6 but I don't know of any recent research on it.

Setting up a betting pool would be fun, but considering the geologic time of events, the value of the pool diminishes quite a bit over time, both monetarily and also psycically as interest fades during the long wait. Another approach would be for the participants to invest in some consumable that increases in value (cask of scotch for example) and pays out to either the winner or his/her heirs. And if the event turns out to be of a civilization ending nature, those that can get to where the scotch is stored can go out in style, kind of like the scientists at the remote station in the Day After Tomorrow.

I personally am not worried about Rabaul too much - that volcano is venting continuously since 15 years, so it seems to be more in equilibrium than before the eruption started in 1994. Neither am I too worried about the absolutely cataclysmic scenarios because the odds are none will happen during our lifetime (maybe none even while humanity is still there), but I am very worried about all the s**t going down in everyday life, starting from car accidents and slipping in the bathtub and so on. I am worried about the chance that climate will change so rapidly (with or without human influence) as it has apparently done in the past, as new geological studies reveal, and I would recommend that humans avoid whatever possible negative influence they MAY have on climate.
And yes, I am worried about some bad volcanic catastrophe to happen one of these days, but I fear it will be from a volcano that nobody is thinking about these days ... none of those clichÃ© places like Yellowstone, but some unconspicuous volcano like ChaitÃ©n was, or Cerro MachÃn is.

We're probably very "fortunate" to have experienced both Mt St Helens AND Pinatubo in our trivial little 100 year lifespans. And we just missed Novarupta and Krakatoa, on a geologic scale.

My money for the next big one (VEI 6+) would likely be some big hole in the ground that almost nobody has ever heard of, or just next to one. Somewhere in the S Pacific, Kamchatka or possibly Japan. Economic disruption is what will most likely affect us, and a caldera event in Japan would surely do that.

And Boris, remember the TV comedy skit about the 2 depressed Airline Pilots? They're positive they'll die any second in a plane crash. Then one reminds the other that flying is statistically no more dangerous than crossing the street. So the other says "Yes, but after we land, we have to do that too."

I'd put pins in yellowstone, the German Eiffel region and that Volcanic complex outside rome, All just sitting like silent assasins waiting till nobody looking....

Among the Usual Suspects, I'd also add Taupo...long history of major eruptions. But I'd agree, it will likely be some long-quiet centre with no historic activity (and probably, Sod's Law being invoked, one which has never been studied in detail) My guess for likely areas would be the SW Pacific region, Alaska Peninsula end of the Aleutian arc, or the high Andes

Because...?

The Eifel would be 'nice' however ;-) . VEI 5-6 just South of Laacher See... If it happens, I think the old Drachenfels lava dome near Bonn would be a very nice place to use as an observatory. Who's joining me ;-) ?

Note: the 'Because...?' in my previous comment was meant for Stephen Tierney ;-) .

Because ? Wow..didn't expect to be put on the spot Gijs.
Ok I not as clued up as you guys (or gals) and I learn from you all everyday. So I respect you all...

My humble gut feelings is that we know a little less on caldera eruptions but we know they reocur over thousands or tens of thousand of years. Some just show enough activity to keep us interested some possibly lie undescovered.

I wonder if we might witness a volcanic collapse into its own magma chamber?? Which volcano could be a possible ne crater lake? Etna? Mauna loa?, Maybe mt Fuji Presume it would be one of the bigger one's.Just guessing all input welcome.. (go on tell me off lol)

jeepers, I'd say anywhere on the pacific rim, add Indonesia and the Rift Valley (think flood basalt), Iceland, possibly Italy or Greece, so in other words it's probably going to be Antarctica.. ;-) crikey I don't know. .. the Eifel, why not?

I watched a recorded TV program a couple days ago. It is part of the NAKED SCIENCE series that was titled something like Vesuvious: Ticking Time Bomb.

I learned a few interesting things about the 79 AD eruption and the eruption that took place about 2,000 years earlier than that one.

They noted that a strong quake hit Pompei in 62AD - 17 years prior to the big eruption. They also noted that the locations where people were building buildings gave evidence of a fluctuating coastline -- evidence of a lot of inflation and subsidence in the Vesuvious area prior to the 69AD eruption. Sometimes buildings weren't near the coastline. Othertimes the sea came in much closer and they needed much higher sea defenses. They didn't have real clear dates - I don't know if this subsidence and inflation took place over hundreds of years, decades or just years - but the sea level in relationship to the coastline seemed to me to easily vary several meters. Waterlines were evident on buildings - and yet these buildings were on top of other earlier buildings that were once built above sea level.

It is just evidence that sometimes a volcano can be very active (swelling and subsiding) for many years and not erupt. So perhaps Machin could be on a long ramp-up and erupt in another decade - or more? I'd like to keep an eye on the Lazufre area (in the Central Andes) too - and try to figure out if there has been unusual earthquakes in that area that is accompanying its' slow inflation.

Perhaps more interesting (or dangerous) about Vesuvius is that the eruption that took place 4,000 year before present ( about 2,000 years before Vesuvius buried Pompeii ) sent a Pyroclastic flow over the area that is now Naples. A strong eruption like that one was isn't the basis for current emergency planning around Naples. It is much easier to plan for the smaller and midsize eruptions. The TV showed experts pointing out that the arbitrarily selected zoning of what is a dangerous area near Naples now has a hospital being built outside the danger area - but the hospital is still being built on top of a Pyroclastic flow from about 4,000 years ago. So is the area really safe for a hospital? But, then again would building the hospital a few meters beyond the Pyroclastic deposit be guaranteed safe either?

Another thought is that it will be very frustrating for residents, volcanoligists, and public officials, if Vesuvious does undergo a long ramp up of activity that takes decades to culminate in a big eruption. (This though is still much preferable to an eruption that gives insufficient notice.)

Anyway, I just thought I would share what I learned from a TV program. Now, I don't think there was any mention on the TV program about Camp Flegrei - which also needs to be monitored.

I am still totally ignorant about Eiffel(sp?) in Germany.
I kind of agree with Boris Behnke about Rabaul. However, the whole tectonic plate is so seismically active and I think there is probably a big magma chamber there - I'd worry something big could happen if there was a strong quake right in the area.
And I am still trying to wrap my mind around another big magma region (The Taupo ....) I haven't researched it yet either.

I also got the feeling that Erik has wanted us to select Ruapehu for a volcanic profile. I think Erik may have visited there - he may know a lot about it and I'd be much delighted if he would share with us his knowledge of a volcano that he has extra familiarity with.

Best to everyone!

The Eifel volcanic field in Western Germany is an intraplate volcanic area with a long, long history of intermittent eruptions. Most of these are basaltic, cinder-cone and small lava flow-forming events, similar to the San Francisco volcanic field in Arizona and the Michoacan volcanic field in Mexico (the one that last erupted forming Paricutin in 1943-1952). The interesting thing about the Eifel is that every now and then it also produces larger, silicic, and thus highly explosive eruptions that today would cause significant devastation. The latest such eruption was that of the Laacher See (Lake of Laach) eruptive center about 12,800 years before present. The magnitude of that event was similar to that of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, as was also the chemical composition of the emitted magma (phonolite). Pyroclastic flows filled nearby valleys down to the Rhine river valley, blocking the Rhine and causing the formation of a temporary lake. When the dam broke and the lake drained, flooding occurred downriver in areas now occupied by towns like former Western Germany capital Bonn and Cologne further downstream. We wouldn't like to see something similar happen today. In any case, as always, the probability of a relatively small, cinder-cone forming, Strombolian eruption with lava flows of limited extent and impact is much, much higher. Yet, German television RTL has recently aired a two-episode fiction about a new Laacher-See-type eruption in the Eifel ... a pyrotechnic spectacle packed with the crÃ¨me de la crÃ¨me of contemporary German actors, and with special effects Ã la Supervolcano or Dante's Peak including tomato sauce basaltic lava that wouldn't happen at all during that sort of eruption - worth looking at for some of the special effects but forget about the human part of the story. Some info is here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1266601/

@ Stephen: no offence meant ;-) . I'm just very interested in what makes people here think that there's maybe something going on at those volcanoes (among others) that's worth looking at a little bit closer. For the Eifel and Colli Albani it's obvious: both areas don't get enough attention at this moment (especially the Eifel). Yellowstone on the other hand is being monitored very well, and 'the world' knows about it's potential. And if I'm correct, the nature of gas emissons from yellowstone are currently not very alarming. I read somewhere a couple of years back we 'should' be ok for at least the next 10.000 years or so. But what does that mean at a volcanic system we've never seen in real action before... New surprises pop up every once in a while, like the speed of the rhyolite under ChaitÃ©n... Yellowstone is rhyolitic as well... Can we apply what we learned from ChaitÃ©n to Yellowstone?

@ Thomas Donlon: The Eifel has two quartenary volcanic fields: the West Eifel and the East Eifel. Most of the volcanoes there are scoria cones and maars, but in the East Eifel a group of small calderas can be found. The most recent eruption in the East Eifel occurred around 13.000 years ago, which also happened to be biggest eruption of all eruptions in the Eifel so far. It happened at what is now known as Laacher See, and ejected an estimated 6.3 cubic kilometers of phonolitic to trachyphonolitic materials. A devastating eruption at that time, but there are hunderds of thousands of people living and working in the area nowadays. An event of that size would probably also do a lot of damage to the economies of Germany and the surrounding countries. Although we think the area is relatively quiet right now (some 'mofettes' can be found there, and small, shallow earthquakes occur regularly just South of Laacher See), the problem is that there's almost no monitoring of what's going on in the East Eifel. There are currently three permanent seismometers keeping an eye on things, and for as far as I know no permanent equipment to measure gas emissions.

Hans Ulrich Schmincke has a very nice chapter on the Laacher See eruption in his book 'Volcanism', which is by the way a must have for anyone who's really interested in the subject.

Here's another bit of info: the KVERT web site (which is about the monitoring of volcanoes in Kamchatka and the northern Kuriles) has new photos of Kliuchevskoi (or Klyuchevskoy), a huge and extremely active stratovolcano that is again erupting since a few months: http://www.kscnet.ru/ivs/kvert/current/klch/index.html
These latest photos show a new cone growing at the summit of the volcano, which to me appears larger than those formed during the previous eruptions in 2007 and 2008.

@ Herr Behncke: you beat me to it ^_^ . Didn't see it till I posted my comment.

to Gijs: the Laacher See eruption was not the most recent volcanic episode in the Eifel volcanic field, but there have been two maar-forming events at the Ulmener Maar (about 8740 years ago) and at the Pulvermaar (about 8300 years ago), that means they're Holocene age.
The Eifel volcanic field is not very well known internationally but in Germany there is now quite some awareness that it's potentially active (not only since that RTL fiction a few months ago), and it is actually monitored, so any precursors (if there are) should be well recognized. This awareness is due to the work (including a massive public outreach effort) of Hans Ulrich Schmincke and many collaborators since the 1970s.

to Gijs once more ... it is true that the monitoring equipment in the Eifel is nothing like the instrumentarium that we have all over Etna and Vesuvius and even the Colli Albani.
And I wonder what would happen if ever there would be a clear increase in signs of unrest, what response it would cause in Germany. That country has experience with disasters such as flooding and heavy gales, and occasional landslides, but certainly not with volcano emergencies.

Last bit concerning Laacher See - for those capable of reading German, you can download an interesting article by Conny Park and Hans-Ulrich Schmincke about the Laacher See eruption and subsequent flooding of the Rhine valley here:
http://www.wissenschaft-online.de/artikel/979373

To Boris: Yeah, I meant the East Eifel. The West Eifel has indeed seen some more activity after the Laacher See eruption. Even the Dauner Maare formed after that (Schalkenmehrener Maar around 11.000 years ago, GemÃ¼ndener Maar around 10.750 years ago, and the Weinfelder Maar around 10.500 years ago). With the RTL-movie came a documentary, which is now online at youtube. Ulrich C. Schreiber describes the lack of monitoring in the Eifel, so that's where I got my information from (although the documentary is meant more for those who don't really know a lot about volcanism). Documentary on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=70E792B55330AE5E&search_query=A…

Another very interesting area is the Massif Central in France. Comparable to the Eifel (young volcanic fields), only more complex. I wouldn't want to live in Clermont-Ferrand...

Just a frivolous thought (apologies in advance)..but if there is an eruption in the Eifel field with a high Plinian column, could Germany claim that, for a few hours at least, it had its own Eifel Tower?

Sorry, it already exists ;-)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eifelturm

Bruce Stout:

The link you provided in comment 5 was very interesting. It appears that it is one booklet (put online) out of a collection of booklets. Do you know if the other booklets are online too? And if so where?
And why I am too lazy to Google it myself? Actually I've run out of time at the moment. A few more posts I have to make.

Boris Behncke: The KVERT website (linked from comment 23) has some great volcano pictures. The most intriguing one for me is the one taken on 17 August 2007 and the cloud hanging on the top of the volcano.

I was just pondering that many volcanoes that will have the most powerful eruptions aren't always going to be the very tall ones. They would blow themselves apart with a very powerful eruption!
Calderas of course are often powerful. But some types of little volcanoes (Chaiten) - and even Mt Pinatubo wasn't that tall yet they packed a big punch. I guess I am going to have expand my thinking of what a powerful volcano is.

You did help enlighten me about the Eifel volcanic field - and you have helped enlighten me about other things too here at this blog and at Dr. Harrington's blog.

Gijs de Reijke:
You were also helpful in helping me understand the Eifel volcanic field. The link you provided to the Youtube video (in German) was worth watching (at least part 1 was) for me who doesn't speak German. The video was so well done that I watched the rest of the approximately 10 minute segments too. (I think only the first one though - jumped across the language barrier.) I am left wondering if there has been active quake activity in the area - they were showing seismograph recordings. They also showed some maps of areas that might be in danger if they had a big eruption.

I appreciate you reminding me about the book 'Volcanism' which I actually just bought about a month ago - along with several similar books. The graphics in the book are very good and the topics presented in it do interest me. Unless I find a more exceptionally well-written volcano book in my tiny collection - it might be the first geology or volcano textbook that I complete reading.

I am just curious: Your name isn't typical American fare and you have knowledge of German. Do you live in Europe?

Bruce Stout: You have a good knowledge of the dynamics of the East Pacific plate. Do you live in that area - Australia, New Zealand? I have a vague memory that some contributor to this website was from that there.

To Non-US residents: I like that people bring to this blog a knowledge of the geology of their parts of the world. A while back there was some earthquake activity in Saudi Arabia and some people from that region helped bring us up to speed on the volcanic and geological history of the area. I assume that the earthquakes in Saudi Arabia have gradually become less frequent and there is no immediate threat of one the many little volcanoes there erupting.

To all the readers and contributors from around the world - I (and I think many others) appreciate your perspectives and insights.

I wish to state that I am Officially Appalled at the coverage that Calderas receive in general, and Wikipedia in particular. Wiki only lists 7 or so in America, And I've found 6 just in Nevada.
If I was the sort of person that did such things, I would put some effort into updating Wiki, at least the America section, which is pathetic. Or maybe I'd do it if I had a clue how. I've never submitted to Wiki.
Or maybe we could all pick a region and research it thouroghly (sp?) and someone with some free time could do the submitting part.

Fitz,

I wholeheartedly agree with you on the lack of an easily accessible, visually friendly database of Caldera eruptions. The Smithsonian (I recall) has a few databases (one is in EXCEl format) of the most powerful eruptions that have taken place in the world.

If no one else does a better job categorizing all these volcanoes, and putting them on the web by area - it just might spur me to categorize them and put them online. Wading through technological options to do this is rather time-consuming. Better get my new computer set up so at least I can run Google Earth!

I was wondering if Rabaul is spitting out sand every few minutes as it did from 1996-2003 - but Boris Behncke's comment has me wondering if Rabaul ever stopped that pattern of eruption since 1996. It's extremely unpleasant living near a mountain that spits sand every few minutes and corrodes just about anything with sulfuric acid, and yet people still live there. Imagine what a nuisance Stromboli would be if it threw up sand rather than molten rock.

@ Thomas: yeah, I'm Dutch actually. In fact, I live only 2Â½ hours of driving from the Eifel.

Just to add some nice calderas to the topic:

- The 'Monts Dore caldera' (also called 'Haute Dordogne caldera' and 'La Grande Nappe' (The Big Napkin)) that formed around 2.5 million years ago in the 'Massif Central' in France. It ejected an estimated 8 cubic kilometers of rhyolitic ash and pumice
- The Sancy caldera. I don't know the dimensions of the caldera forming eruption(-s), but it happened between 250.000 and 1 million years ago. Most of the materials that can be found there are trachyandesitic.

A nice picture to go with the French volcanoes I just mentioned: http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/3724/montsdorepuydesancy.jpg

I have good lists so far for some of the Western US and E Africa.
Italy has several, theres at least one in Bulgaria. I have 1 caldera in Virginia. Theres supposed to be a volcanic belt from Ohio to Texas but I've only found mention of Taum Sauk in Missouri. There are several old caldera in SW Texas.

W Europe, Russia, Kamchatka, Japan, China/Koreas, the Philipines/N Pacific, W Africa, Central America, Alaska and Canada would all deserve a good days research each. The Andes and S Pac/New Zealand would be tough regions to look at.

The Holocene volcanos are pretty well covered on the net, but once you go past 10,000 yrs you mostly see the standard areas. If you find one, get the name, age, location, size in km or miles, and possibly how much ash/lava it ejected, or the thickness of its tuff, and where you found the info.

Anybody got a site which will show current detail of the flank eruption of etna? Ta

Boris,

thanks for that link to the Schminke and Park article. Very, very interesting. Taupo also had a similar effect on the Waikato River after its last big eruption. The lake level is estimated to have been something like 20 m higher (quoting from a shaky memory) after the eruption until a tephra dam broke and actually changed the course of the river. What is interesting is how fast the Rhine managed to create a lake of that size. It was just a matter of days!!! That doesn't leave a lot of time for disaster mitigation. Also fascinated to see quite how high the tephra fallout was so far from the vent. That looks larger than a VEI 6 to me (judging by Taupo and Pinatubo) but I'll accept the experts' assessment: 5 - 10 cm ash fall all the way to the Swiss border? Wow.

PS here's a link to the paper on the ephemeral lake following the Taupo eruption:
http://books.google.de/books?id=JF8kUBhLvFoC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=taup…

Fitz,

You can open up this page
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/list_allnames.htm

With a PC just hit CTRL F
and then type in Caldera and you will certainly get more than a hundred hits - I am guessing 300 hundred ... but I stopped counting just a little way through the page when I reached 50.

Also on the side of the page if you want a summary document in Excel format and are proficient with the program there is a link for an Excel summary. I am not fluent with the program and am not sure that I could search through it. There may even be somewhere on the site a different Excel sheet of volcanoes that is not a summary.

There is a book called Caldera Volcanism. It is about a hundred bucks. I just got it, haven't yet read it, so I am not in a position to suggest that you buy it.

Also, I noticed at the same site (above link) there are now placemarks for volcanoes on Google Earth. Until I get my new computer set-up I can't comment on that either.

Best to you Fitz.

Gijs de Reijke: My mother came over to the US from the Netherlands in her early 20's. I visited Holland many years ago as a kid with my family. We saw the windmills, dikes, cheese markets, tulips, barges, Rotterdam, turning restaurant on the tower, miniature city and so many people spoke great English as they at that time watched many American TV programs with dutch subtitles and also took English in school from a young age.

At the time when my family was visting my parents were commenting there were no fat people in the Netherlands. Maybe now that we've exported a bunch of American fast food restaurants that has changed.

Oh well, I am half dutch too.

TTYL

Thanks TD, I've been in the Smithsonian site a hundred times and didnt know you could do that.

Unfortunately, as good as it is, I have found a bunch of calderas missing from that list. Taum Sauk, Mt Rogers and Questa arent in it.

I fear a lot of research is in my future.

@ Thomas: we got used to having subtitles. The Germans and French for example use voice-overs for nearly everthing that's not spoken in their native language. The Germans can compensate for that somewhat because English and German are Germanic languages (as are Dutch and some Scandinavian languages), but the French speak a Romance language. That's why they usually have more trouble learning English.

Windmills, clogs, tulips, cheese... I guess every country has some things to keep the tourists happy ;-) . Nowadays it's more the Amsterdam red light district and some 'smokable herbs' ^_^ .

The Rotterdam harbour is by the way one of the places that would get really affected by a Laacher See like event in the Eifel. Most of the ships that go into Germany from Rotterdam use the Rhine to get there. Apart from that, the harbour itself would probably get a lot of ash and pumice through the Rhine to deal with.

@ Fitz: are you 'just' looking for Holocene calderas? 'Cause I happen to know some older ones, starting with some nice Devonian calderas located in Scotland, like Glencoe and Ben Nevis ^_^ .

oh far out, I just checked out the Alban Hills in Google Earth. It's not just Naples that's sitting on an active caldera system, Rome is too!!! I had no idea. Once again, hat tip to Boris! Enter these coordinates into Google Earth:

41Â°44'0"N 12Â°42'0"E

you'll get the idea. Even a small phreatomagmatic eruption from one of those maars could have huge consequences.

I know a good website on Italian volcanoes, which I've been using a couple of years now. It happens to be the site of someone called 'Boris Behncke' ;-) . Coincidence ;-) ?

http://boris.vulcanoetna.it/ALBANI.html

Great stuff! The geological map gives a good idea on how big Rome's problems could be if there would be a big eruption.

Italy has some very 'nice' calderas, but one of the geomorphologically youngest looking volcanoes doesn't appear on the GVP-site because of it's age: Roccamonfina volcano, which was apparently active between 630.000 and 50.000 years ago. Isn't there any activity left there that might suggest the thing's dormant? Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei are just around the corner, and Colli Albani isn't that far away as well.

Yes, all the way back. Most caldera are long extinct, and of little concern, but its still fascinating to find out how close you might be to one.
I'd say send all the info to my disaster website, but frankly, its a lousy website and I dont want to pilfer any of Eriks audience.

Gijs: I cant find anything on a caldera under the Netherlands, but some quick surfing found you're on top of the Lower Rotliegend (Layer) from 300 Million yrs ago, which is flood basalt and tuff. And the Silverpit Crater is near you to the west I think. Possible meteor origin.

In the Netherlands we have one caldera (for as far as I know): The 'Zuidwalvulkaan' (literally translated: 'South Wall volcano'). It's around 152 million years old, and was active for about 12 million years (Kimmeric orogenesis). It's summit is now buried under 2 kilometers of sediments. It's base can be found at a depth of 3 kilometers, and measures 20 by 35 kilometers. A caldera has been found near the summit, and is probably around 8 kilometers wide. Volcanic ash has been found on the flanks of the volcano, which suggests the eruptions were explosive. The Zuidwalvulkaan is located under what is now the 'Waddenzee' (Wadden Sea). The volcano was discovered after a company called ELF Petroland was searching the area for oil in 1970.

Location and a magnetic anomaly map of the Zuidwalvulkaan: http://www.natuurinformatie.nl/sites/ndb.mcp/contents/i000311/ovn-fig16…

Calderas in Scotland: Glencoe (rhyolitic) and Ben Nevis (both Devonian), Isle of Arran, Ardnamurchan and Isle of Rum (Tertiairy). I'm not aware of any other calderas in Scotland, but there are so many old volcanoes there that I could be wrong. Glencoe was the first caldera ever described as a piecemeal caldera. In Wales lies the rhyolitic Snowdon Caldera (Ordovician).

Gijs: What is the status on the 'caldera list' of those where no visible trace now remains thanks to erosion, but one very probably existed at one time? I'm thinking of the Tertiary volcanics of Western Scotland. The islands of Mull and Skye are both mostly basal wrecks of massive basalt shields, which quite probably had summit calderas during their active life but have been deeply excavated -on Skye to the level of a gabbroic former magma body (the 'black' Cuillin Hills)

Ah yes, Skye and Mull. I forgot about those ^_^' . Mull definitely has a caldera, but I'm not really sure on what happened at what is now Skye. There are remains of concentric intrusions (dikes in the form of 'cone -sheets') above what was once the magma chamber, so it wouldn't surprise me if there ever was a caldera.

Plumes a-poppin'!

eklemetti — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:57:56 +0000

Plumes a-poppin'!

Maybe I should just apologize right here and now for that title, but dang, I liked it.

Anyway, I've seen a lot of plume images cross my browser/inbox over the last day, so I thought I'd post a few of them.

Soufriere Hills, Montserrat
The renewed activity at Soufriere Hills has produced a bounty of plume images over the last week. The NASA Earth Observatory posted an image of the plume, which sometimes reached as high as 3.7 km / 12,000 feet (if not higher). Eruptions reader Alex Waning sent me some images of the top of the plume at ~3.7 km / 12,000 feet taken from a flight near Montserrat on December 1 (see below) - they seem to suggest that the plume is very steam-rich and almost gets lost within the typical clouds for the region.

Plume from Soufriere Hills in Montserrat. Image by Alex Waning.

Tavurvur (Rabaul), Papua New Guinea
Another nice and recent plume image posted by the NASA EO folks is from the Tavurvur crater at Rabaul. The two craters at Rabaul are very clearly visible in this image, with the active, northern crater producing the white/grey plume on November 30, 2009. The plume is relatively small (1.5 km / ~5,000 feet) and part of the explosive, strombolian activity at the Tavurvur crater.

Ambrym, Vanuatu
Finally, Ambyrm volcano in Vanuatu has been producing a diffuse plume of steam and sulfur dioxide. The volcano is one of the most active in Vanuatu - in fact, this basaltic volcano with a caldera has been erupting since May 2008. Ambyrm was joined by Gaua as erupting volcanoes in the Pacific island nation.

eklemetti Tue, 12/08/2009 - 02:57

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Ambrym

ash plumes

Montserrat

Don't forget the continually erupting Yasur as one of the currently erupting Vanuatu volcanoes. Yasur has been erupting for centuries without a break.

What is the purpose of this post if you don't mind me asking?

Very well written story. It will be valuable to anybody who utilizes it, including myself. Keep doing what you are doing - looking forward to more posts.

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report for 11/25-12/1/2009

eklemetti — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:27:36 +0000

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report for 11/25-12/1/2009

We get a new update from the Smithsonian/USGS Global Volcanism Program ...

Highlights (not counting Soufriere Hills or Gaua) include:

The Weekly Report mentions the mystery eruption/noneruption of Karkar in PNG. Specifically, they report:

The report also stated that ash had merged with a thunderstorm cloud and had become unidentifiable.

Two ash plumes (11/25, 26) that reached at least 9.1 km / 30,000 feet were reported by the Darwin VAAC ... but as we know, it is far from clear that anything actually happened at Karkar last week.
Activity has quieted significantly at Chaiten in Chile, with only a "diffuse plume" from the dome complex that started forming in May 2008.
Karymsky, a recent MVP, produced a ~3.8 km / 12,000 foot ash column as its eruptive activity continued.
Ecuador's Sangay produced two ash plumes over the last week, one reaching as high as 7.9 km / 26,000 feet according to reports from pilots in the area.
Rabaul in PNG was busy shaking windows 20 km from the volcano as the Tavurvur cone produced a number of explosions, along with ash and an incandescent glow at the crater.

eklemetti Wed, 12/02/2009 - 09:27

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