explosive eruption

Sinabung and Etna updates for 8/30/2010

eklemetti — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 06:20:09 +0000

Sinabung and Etna updates for 8/30/2010

Classes starting today, so I have to be brief:

Unique twin ash plumes from Sinabung in Indonesia, erupting on August 29, 2010.

Sinabung
The Indonesian volcano continues to experience explosions, which one last night (well, last night here in Ohio) that prompted an ash advisory for aircraft up to 6,100 m / 20,000 feet, although most reports I've seen pegged the ash column at closer to 2,000 m / ~6,500 feet. Eruptions readers have found a bevy of links for footage and information about the eruption, including a remarkable image gallery from the BBC that shows the volcano exhibiting two ash plumes - one that is vertical, one that is shooting off to one side (see above). This definitely makes it seem that the vent is partially blocked and these explosions are helping "clear the throat" of the volcano (NOTE: this does NOT mean I think something big is going to happen, rather just that it seems to be the reasonable explanation for the bifurcation of the plume). My hunch is that even now, very little "new" juvenile magma has been erupted from Sinabung, but that is pure speculation until there are any analyses of the ash shard morphology or composition.

There is also some video from Portuguese television Some of the most recent images from the volcano show a strong, single plume with some rock avalanches (possible block and ash flows) on the flanks. Evacuations have increased to over 21,000 people living near the volcano and some flights have been diverted due to the taller ash plume. The biggest threat right now is the ash fall from the explosions and as such, the government is providing face masks and moving people to sturdier shelter. The current death toll appears to be 8 (video), mostly from respiratory-related problems. What comes next might be a guess for everyone at this point as the Surono, head of the Indonesian Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation admitted again "We don't know what set it off, how long it will continue or whether to expect pyroclastic flows or more powerful eruptions."

Etna
Not to be forgotten, Etna continues to show signs that it is entering a new cycle of eruptive activity as well (albeit much less of a surprise than Sinabung). Dr. Boris Behncke points us to some new updates from the INGV (italian - top and english - bottom) that describe the explosions and collapses that have been producing the ash fall on Sicily. Be sure to check out Dr. Behncke's Photostream for the latest and greatest images of the current activity at Etna - currently he has some close ups of the explosions occurring in the Bocca Nuova crater (not to be missed). You can always watch Etna's show on the multitude of webcams as well.

eklemetti Mon, 08/30/2010 - 02:20

Tags

Ash fall

ash plumes

aviation

Etna

Just a little correction - the updates at the INGV web site are now both in Italian AND in English (I am personally taking care of that!), though the titles remain in Italian so far.

For another list of Etna web cams, compiled by my friends of the Hotel Corsaro, look here:
www.hotelcorsaro.it/etna-webcams/?lan=english
I also hope we will soon have the images of the new Montagnola (upper south flank of Etna) web cams, both visible light and thermal, on-line on the public pages of the INGV.

As for Sinabung, unfortunately there seems to be very little instrumental monitoring at this volcano, and thus it is extremely difficult to say what will happen there. Go figure, it's often difficult even to forecast the behavior of a volcano that is extremely well monitored! All depends on the signs that a volcano gives, and how they fit with previous records. At Sinabung there is little of the two, poor instrumental monitoring, and no data for comparison. I hope the volcanologists there will soon have the possibility to install more monitoring equipment - at Pinatubo in 1991, such action helped to save tens of thousands of lives.

Thanks for correction, Boris. I thought you said that but then the page said "There are no translations available" so I was a little confused. Maybe I should have just, you know, read the english (funny how the brain works on no coffee).

@Erik, ah yes the coffee factor ... I am lost without having had my morning coffee, especially under the climatic conditions in Sicily; let's hope Etna will always allow me to have a good Sicilian coffee before getting to work :

The link "The current death toll appears to be 8 (video)" does not work but try this:

http://www.dn.se/webbtv/nyheter/se-bilder-fran-vulkanutbrottet-pa-sumat…

Is Sinabung monitoring data publicly available?

@Boris Behncke, Catania, Italy, I am sorry to ask you here. But did you get my email, or did it get lost in the black hole of the internet known as /dev/null.

As for the Sinabung volcano, the few indicators that I get are no good. This eruption appears to be on the phase of dropping and re-starting again with more power. Given the few and little data that I get. But overall this does not look good at the moment. It is also a big factor that the volcano is awakening from a long period of dormancy, and that might not be a good thing.

I am assuming (given the data) that new magma is pushing out and re-warming older magma that was left in the magma tubes inside the volcano since the current eruption started. When the new material might reached the surface is a good guess, but I think that is going to happen sooner rather then later.

Even if events this far bear an uncanny resemblance to both Tambora and Pinatubo, that's not to say a major eruption is inevitable.

Or? ;)

Here is a new news from BBC News.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11127918

It is interesting to notice that the eruption is bigger the second time then in the beginning.

"Is Sinabung monitoring data publicly available??" (Mr Moho #5)

According to http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/30/mt-sinabung-erupts-after-… PVMBG head (Dr?) Surono is quoted as saying "We never monitored the development of Mt. Sinabung because it was considered extinct".

The same article explains the division of Indonesian volcanoes into A, B and C as follows: "The center classifies type A volcanoes as having erupted at least once since 1600, type B as never having erupted since 1600, but showing signs of volcanic activity, and type C as never having erupted in recorded history."

This makes sense in a country with hundreds of volcanoes to monitor and limited funding to do so. Before we shake our heads, how well is - say - Colli Albani or the EEVF monitored...?

I know that correlation does not imply causation, and history does not always repeat itself. However, Sinabung has a neighbor (Toba) with a very bad reputation, just over 30km to the southwest. I would think that the proximity of the two would warrant a little extra caution in the case of Sinabung. The evidence of what can happen during a worst-case scenario eruption is a 35-100km caldera that is located right next-door.
I know that another Toba, Tambora, Krakatau, or even a Pinatubo is unlikely; however, I'd keep my distance!

Here is a You Tube video of Sinabung erupting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nrTercH_Es

Quake felt on Mount Sinabung. Tuesday, Aug 31, 2010
www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/30/quake-felt-mount-sinabung.html

A five-minute earthquake rattled villages near Mount Sinabung, North Sumatra, on Monday as the volcano continued to spew ash clouds.

Irfin Dian, a Kabanjahe resident, said the temblor was felt for five minutes, before Mount Sinabung spewed thick black clouds.

@Doug C., The problem is that the government of many countries don't think like that.

This same issue is also in place in Iceland. Where a string of volcanoes is not monitored at all. Even if some of those volcanoes did erupt about 1000 to 1500 years ago. Those volcanoes are on SnÃ¦fellsnes peninsula. So this problem is not unique in Indonesia, far from it.

The unmonitored volcanoes of Iceland.

www.volcano.si.edu/world/region.cfm?rnum=1700

Doug C. (and others) - Tread carefully when trying to connect volcanic systems like that. Remember, these are volcanic arcs where volcanoes are close to each other, but horizontal distance doesn't mean much in most cases. I mean, we don't worry about Mt. Adams erupting if Saint Helens is active even though they are quite close together. There are examples where the systems appear to be interconnected (or at least stacked) such as Katmai, Alaska (1912), but linear distance is never a good way to connect volcanoes without other evidence.

Erik:

One reason for the discrepancy between the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center and Indonesian reports of ash plume height may be the elevation of the summit. VAACs give heights above sea level, and the Indonesia authorities appear to be giving heights above the 2,460-meter summit. 2,000 + 2,460 is pretty close to the 6,000 meters reported by the VAAC.

One question: You mention that you suspect there is little new magma in the system, but reports I've read state that there are lava flows on the surface. Is this consistent?

thanks

#12 There's a link for earthquakes from Indonesia Met Service
http://www.bmg.go.id/60gempa.bmkg?Jenis=URL&IDS=9279258135813849788
They had a 5.2 EQ, in Papua and another 4+ in Miamar, but too far from the area of our interest.
@Passerby I believe both an eruption and a strong earthquake are likely at the Great Sumatran Fault. The next strike slip megathrust is expected at the plate boundary, but further to the South (Padang region).
@Lurking, quakes in Indonesia are so large that you can't tell precisely if they are tectonic or volcanic. Hope the link above gives us some more info on the smaller ones.

Another at a local newspaper saying that there were six volcanic quakes yesterday in Sinabug:
"Kabanjahe - In accordance with data obtained by the Online Alert Sinabung from post disaster response in Karo Regency Road Veterans Hall Kabanjahe, volcanic earthquakes have occurred six times in Sinabung between the hours of 00:00 pm - 7:15 pm, today". Nice picture form the volcano.
http://www.waspada.co.id/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1…

According to the "Jacarta Globe"
"A total of 30,052 people have been registered at 21 camps as of Monday afternoon, up from about 19,000 on Sunday, according to the North Sumatra Search and Rescue Agency."
They also mention "numerous cases of diarrhea".
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/as-mount-sinabung-continues-to-rumb…

R Simmons - I've been trying to find a reliable source about the lava sighting, but there is nothing yet. My hunch is that it could be rock being lit from glowing in the crater mistaken as lava, but that is just speculation. However, if lava is confirmed, then that is definitely new material.

The historical eruption record of Sinabung should give a clue about the developement of the ongoing eruption. Volcanoes tend to repeat themselves. For example in the case of Mount Pinatubo the vulcanologist saw the marks of ancient violent explosive events in the terrain at the volcano and could expect the same type of eruption again. And the explosive eruption did happen. The same thing with Sinabung, what does the historical eruption record at the volcano tell the vulcanologists this time?

I found a snippet of video that shows a glow near the end, and a photo. Neither is particularly clear.

http://www.asiaone.com/Multimedia/News/Story/A1Multimedia20100830-10791…
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/29/mount-sinabung-sumatra-er…

>what does the historical eruption record at the volcano tell the vulcanologists this time?

Damn little. The updated wikipedia page reports,

>scientists were unfamiliar with the characteristics of the volcano, due to it having been dormant for so long.

From the Pinatubo wikipage,

>Although there seems to be no local knowledge of the previous large eruptions in the Pinatubo area, several Aeta residents reported in 1991 that their elders recalled small explosions in the past. Pinatubo was a known geothermal area before the 1991 eruption, and small steam explosions are quite common in such areas. It was only after volcanic activity began in 1991 that geologists studied the eruptive history of the region in any detail. Eruptions at the site can be divided into two major eras.

It was only after the eruption that geologists determined 'modern Pinatubo' (differentiating it from ancestral volcano active 1+ MYA) previous eruption history:

'Earlier large eruptions occurred 17,000, 9000, 6000 â 5000, and 3900 â 2300Â± years ago.'

That is the extent of the similarity between Pinatubo and Sinabung: they both were relatively unstudied until they erupted, and they have small eruptions and were geothermally active.

Prehistoric eruptive history of Sinabung is unknown at present.

Villard: that's one of the things about Sinabung that is so worrying; has there ever been a detailed geological survey of it? There is probably something gathering dust in some Dutch academic archive and all-but forgotten, (as the 1930s identification of Lamington as a volcano was forgotten) which might give some clues. In Pinatubo's case PHIVOLCS had to start more or less from scratch, and fortunately the volcano gave them time to do it

Lake Toba, a supervolcano is nearby? Correct?

Just to say Thanks to Boris....your blog is really nice, so I'm totally addict. I've seen your pictures from Etna...and I can recognize one with the lava's flow on the building...I've here when I was 11 years old...
I've no more reason not come on Sicily at the last spring...to see Mr Etna and miss Sea....
Thanks a lot for all your staff on the Net...I have a look on Eric and Boris Blog every night...
Muriel

New eruption at Sinabung in Indonesia

eklemetti — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 08:13:33 +0000

New eruption at Sinabung in Indonesia

Sinabung on Sumatra erupting on August 29, 2010.

Eruptions readers were quick on the news about the new eruption at Sinabung in Indonesia. There isn't much known about the eruptive history of the volcano - checking out the Global Volcanism Program, the last activity at Sinabung might have been an explosive event in 1881 with persistent fumaroles up until 1912. However, most news sources are quoting 400 years as the last known eruption of the volcano, apparently information from the Indonesian government.

The eruption itself appears to be an ash-rich explosion with ash fall reported up to 30 km from the volcano although the ash column from the explosion was only 1.5 km (~5,000 feet) tall. The volcano had been showing signs of activity with smaller explosions and minor steam-and-ash plumes on Friday, but the explosion on Saturday was much larger than expected. From the details I've read, [speculation] I wouldn't be surprised if there is no new magma (juvenile material) in this eruption, but rather just older material that was in the conduit. My hunch is that this explosion might be the start of more and the heat from the magma interacted with groundwater near the summit to cause the explosion - a very common precursor activity at a composite cone like Sinabung (think about the events leading to the eruption at Redoubt).[speculation] However, Surono, head of the Indonesian Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation, warned that "we have little knowledge in terms on its eruptive patterns and general forms."

A closer look at the August 29, 2010 eruption of Sinabung. Image by Binsar Bakkara/AP.

Thousands of people have needed to evacuate their homes around the volcano on Sumatra after this explosion - however, some have stayed behind to prevent the looting of their property. A 6-km exclusion zone has been set up around the volcano by the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation as well.

eklemetti Sun, 08/29/2010 - 04:13

Tags

This could be a very nasty surprise. Like Krakatau or worse.
Composite Volcanoes are not to be complacent about (ask us
in the Pac NW. of the US..)

I think this image from yesterday taken by Terra/MODIS may show the eruption. (Warning: large image.) There's some high level gray clouds that may be ash, and a small grey mark underneath in the vicinity of Sinabung. The volcano is just slightly to the northwest of the Toba caldera.

(My posts seem to be getting caught in the spam filter. Hopefully this one will go through.)

@PeakVT Your posts might get trapped because you use the 'named' link feature.

Here is your Terra/MODIS image juxtaposed with the Google Earth location image. "A" marks Sinabung

http://i37.tinypic.com/atm7bs.jpg

More pre-eruption pictures available at Panoramio. Zoom the map out to locate further images.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/14329723

Thanks for the warning and the image. It looks to me like the small grey puff definitely is Sinabung. There's not much of a plume compared to EyjafjallajÃ¶kull. Hopefully it will stay that way.

http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/static.panoramio.com/photos/ori…

It looks like that the volcano is doing cleaning house, or a small pre-eruption phase to a larger eruption. So there might be more to come. But due to lack of data it is hard for me to know when that might happen, so I am not going to speculate on that.

Only time is going to tell us what happens. But given the fact that his is around the area where several Mw7.0+ earthquakes have happened, I am surprised that this didn't happen sooner that a volcano started erupting in this area.

Hi everyone!
That panoramio pic is quite interesting. Does anyone know the story behind all those words made with rocks?

Here's another shot. Messages to the Gods?

c0278592.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/original/518838.jpg

this erupting vulcano lies only 30 km or so from the supervulcano Toba... i wonder why nobody worries about that...

wikipedia says:

Lake Toba is the site of a supervolcanic eruption that occurred 69,000-77,000 years ago, a massive climate-changing event. The eruption is believed to have had a VEI intensity of 8. It is believed to be the largest explosive eruption anywhere on Earth in the last 25 million years. According to the Toba catastrophe theory to which many anthropologists and archeologists subscribe, it had global consequences, killing most humans then alive and creating a population bottleneck in Central Eastern Africa and India that affected the genetic inheritance of all humans today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Toba

#5 #7 I don't like this... After 400 years of dormancy, how many volcanoes are known to wake up "peacefully"? Any records of other such examples? According to Google Earth and SIV, there is a neighbor volcano (15 km to the NE), Sibayak, that emitted an ashcloud in 1881.
And actually, this is not only an area of 7+ quakes. There were too megathrust EQs in the last 6 ys or so, with epicenters less than 300 km apart, revealing a complex net of faults in the area. Besides, it is less than 35 km away of the deadliest caldera in historical time, Toba, a lake stretching 90 km across. Too bad we lack of data on this because I think there is some reason to get worried.

#11 I meant "two" megathrust EQs. (9.0 - 2004; 8.6, 2005)

@ Princess Frito (#8): I've seen it in other craters as well, one of them being Puy de Pariou in France: http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/static.panoramio.com/photos/ori…

I guess it's kind of the same as those little rock piles that can be found on a lot of mountains.

Anyway, it's way too early to even think about words like 'Krakatau'. I was even somewhat surprised that the eruption made the headlines of Dutch national radio this morning.

@ JÃ³n FrÃmann: after December 26, 2004 an increase in eruptions in northwestern Sumatra wouldn't have surprised me. But then again, so relatively little is known about the effects of major tectonic earthquakes on volcanic systems. Btw, haven't you thought of maybe putting some helicorders in the Eifel ;-) ? I guess the area could use some ^_^ .

#10 #13 #11
@Gijs de Reijke: Even if there aren't such effects (EQs triggering eruptions), we are dealing here with an intricate faulting system relatively close to a triple junction. If you look at the image posted by Princess Frito you can see two of the various dormant volcanoes in the area (my guess).
And here is another dormant volcanic complex 110 km to the NW of Sinabung according to Wikipedia:
"Mount Kembar is a Pleistocene volcano, located in the northern Sumatra island, Indonesia. It contains a fumarole field, named Gayolesten. The volcanic complex is located in the junction of two geological fault systems and it is a shield volcano."
I'm no expert, like JÃ³n, and I think he's absolutely right in his concern.
There's no reason to take for granted that the whole region is out of risk and maybe this small eruption is an alert to Indonesian authorities to be more careful with this particular zone.

Im not a scientist...but this happening now...I dont like...Is it some links, data to observe this vulcano?
pardon for my english...and thanks guys in this forum helping to educate/inform us!
/lena

Thanks Gijs. I've never seen that type of environmentally-friendly graffiti before so I did a double-take. Sadly, in a few other shots of Sinabung, there are rocks with spray paint on them. :(

In the list of Sumatra volcanoes at Wikipedia Mt. Kembar is the only shield type volcano (Lake Toba labeled as a tectonic-volcanic type and Sinabung, a stratovolcano).
My questions here are:
1. How many instances of shield volcanoes, which are generally associated with rifting and hotspots, do we have at subduction zones (really don't know the answer).
2. Could we even think of another type of deeper source of rising magma related to this area between Toba and Kembar?
This is mere speculation of an amateur. @Passerby?

@ Renato Rio (#14): Yeah, I agree that it is a very interesting setting. That's why an eruption any time between now and 2004 wouldn't have surprised me at all. But like I said, the area's complexity probably makes it all the more difficult to understand what's going on there.

@ Peter van Rooij (#10): huge systems like Toba usually require more time (hundreds of thousand of years, if not more) to produce enough eruptable magma for an eruption the size of what produced the 'Young Toba Tuff' around 74.000 years ago. I don't think a big earthquake by itself 'shakes the bottle' enough to produce an enormous eruption at Toba at this point in time.

Looking for entryway to Indonesia Geological Directorate, Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation, Bandung, Indonesia.

None of my old links work, which is a shame because they had a crackerjack website with daily updates on 60 major volcanoes that span the Center's monitoring program; Indonesian government has undergone a de-centralization process. The old eruption volcanic monitoring site is gone. The public portal to the geological directorate isn't helpful - zero direct links. WOVO links are old.

What we want:
http://pvmbg.bgl.esdm.go.id/joomla

Director portal
http://www.bgl.esdm.go.id

@Passerby: Only director portal works for me. Of course, in Indonesian. For some reason Google translator works better in Portuguese(!!!??) Because of East Timor?

@ Renato

There are a lot of known shield volcanoes in subduction zones, for instance the Masaya volcano in Nicaragua (that is close to the Apoyo crater lake which could be a resemblance)and several shield volcanoes in the Kamtschatka Peninsula. I'm also doubting wether the Simbalung is connected to Lake Toba. Such as the proclaimed connection between Eyjafjallajokull and Katla. It is interesting to think about however without any proof.

Off Topic...
i continue to watch the earthquakes in Iceland
and was wondering if anyone else thought
Upptyppingar might erupt?
Anyone who knows more than i got an oppinion?
And that would be everyone ;)

Thanks in advance.
Best!motsfo

#22 @Maik:
Thank you very much for the information. I was just doing my research and found many "andesitic shield volcanoes" in USA (Alaska, Cascades) and elsewhere . Kempar, Indonesia, happens to be of this type. (http://www.volcano.si.edu/education/tpgallery.cfm?category=Shield%20Vol…)
As for the Toba connection, it was pure speculation on my part. I try to be careful about such things as to look for imminent catastrophes, but since we had been discussing earlier about other possible mechanisms involved in intraplate volcanism (which is not the case here), such as crustal thinning due to underlying faults, I thought that, like it has been supposed for Krakatoa (Wikipedia), a thinner underlying crust could also explain the explosive origin of Toba's caldera, and that such thin crust could also be present under the segment of Sumatra Fault from Toba to Kempar, since a similar faulting pattern is present there.
As for Katla and Eyjaf's connection, for what I've been reading, I'm still not 100% convinced there are no connections, but I'm getting there too.
#23 @Motsfo: According to more knowledgeable people at this blog, those quakes are purely tectonic (see earlier threads).

#24 Correction: Kembar, Indonesia.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=060106=A

@Passerby @Maik:
The more I dig in my quest for understanding the more puzzled I get. I thought the question about the existence of shield volcanoes at subduction zones was solved. But I went on, and here I am again, sharing my doubts with you guys. Feel free to ignore it, but I thought that maybe they could heat up the debates over this thread. (OK. After this post I must say good night and go back to my errands).
Shield volcanoes = volcanic edifice formed either by more fluid, mafic magma, poor in SiO2, or pyroclastic surges (???!!!! - which means "very explosive eruption"), providing a wide angle of magma deposit.
Andesitic magma = felsic, high SiO2 content.
Then I stumbled on this article (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7268/full/nature08510.html#B1) - abstract, calling for "A dearth of intermediate melts at subduction zone volcanoes and the petrogenesis of arc andesites"
My question: how come there be "andesitic shield volcanoes" other than formed by SiO2 rich pyroclastic flows of explosive etiology? We are supposed to find conical-shaped "andesitic stratovolcanoes", because of their highly viscous lavas, but not "shield-shaped".
So, I'm kind of back to where I started:
Could Kembar be one of this type of "explosive" andesitic shield volcano, relating it to Toba's explosive genesis?
Thanks for reading this.

RR pointed out: According to Google Earth and SIV, there is a neighbor volcano (15 km to the NE), Sibayak, that emitted an ashcloud in 1881.

If you look at the near neighbor, you're struck by the visual similarity of these two stratovolcanoes.

www.indonesiavolcanoes.com/mount-sibayak-trekking.htm

I think Erik is correct. A push of magma up under the volcano has caused ejection of old material and brought Sinabung to the same state of simmer as it's neighbor.

I would, therefore, look also at Mount Sibayak for clues of increased activity.

Geothermal Setting:
'Thermal manifestations Hot springs and steaming grounds are distributed in the southwestern part of the Singkut caldera. High-temperature fumaroles and solfataras exist on the top and also on the southeastern part of Mt. Sibayak. Temperatures of hot spring water range from 30 to 63Â°C.

'Hot springs are also situated outside the caldera; at Sinabung area about 14 km southwest of Mt. Sibayak, and Negeri Suoh area about 7 km southeast of Mt. Sibayak.

Discharge waters at Sinabung are of low to moderate
temperature and of bicarbonate-sulphate type. Discharge waters at Negeri Suoh have temperatures in the range 40-60Â°C.

Geological setting (excerpt):
There has been a complex volcanic history in the area with a number of eruption centres developing over a considerable period of time within the Quaternary.

The geological structures in the Sibayak area are mainly controlled by volcanic and tectonic processes. The caldera structure, elongated NW-SE, developed after the Mt. Singkut volcanic eruption. Some fault structures within the caldera are oriented NW-SE, and are parallel to the Great Sumatra fault...

Source: Optimization of power production, SIBAYAK GEOTHERMAL FIELD. (Geothermal Training Programme, Report 16 (2004) ReykjavÃk, Iceland.

Righto. We have a roughly triangular area rich in hot springs that parallels the Great Sumatra Fault.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sumatran_fault

'The Indonesian island of Sumatra is located in a highly seismic area of the world. In addition to the subduction zone and the associated Sunda Arc off the west coast of the island, Sumatra also has a large strike-slip fault, the so-called Great Sumatran Fault, running the entire length of the island.

This fault zone accommodates most of the strike-slip motion associated with the oblique convergence between the Indo-Australian and Eurasian plates. The fault ends in the north just below the city of Banda Aceh, which was devastated in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.

>>>>After the December 2004 earthquake, pressure on the Great Sumatran Fault has increased tremendously, especially in the north.

We have the northern end of this island dominated by a constrained and very large and powerful fault, that has increased in activity *markedly* since 2004. The volcanoes of interest lie parallel to this Great Fault.

Now we have a jump in magmetic intrusion below a very quiet volcano considered 'safe' until a few days ago, having a more active neighbor with 2 active vents. We have geothermal field that supported the first power plant in Indonesia, one that is slated for expansion shortly.

I wouldn't be worried about an eruption. I would be very, very worried about another massive earthquake in the area.

Somebody tap on PVMBG's horn and get their attention. They have dozens of able geologists who should be looking for signs of rapidly increasing groundwater pressure, pronto!

Couldn't resist a quick lurking and... bingo!
Hope the guys at PVMBG show your lucidity, Passerby.

Sorry about the lack of posts....well the volcano bussiness is off season
I've been not only frantically prepping for class and my Eyja talk....any news from Pall Einerson?
or from the volcano front
i dont see nothing coming from icelandic univ's
at least some sismic data

Looks like another eruption, this time to at least 20,000 feet.

IDD41300
VA ADVISORY
DTG: 20100830/0038Z
VAAC: Darwin

VOLCANO: Sinabung 0601-08
PSN: N0310 E09823
AREA: Sumatra
SUMMIT ELEV: 2460M

ADVISORY NR: 2010/3
INFO SOURCE: CVGHM
AVIATION COLOUR CODE: RED
ERUPTION DETAILS: CVGHM REPORTED VA TO FL200 AT 30/2330Z.

OBS VA DTG: 30/0030Z
OBS VA CLD:
SFC/FL200 N0315 E09830 - N0305 E09720 - N0205 E09810 -
N0315 E09830 MOV SW 10KT

FCST VA CLD +6HR: 30/0630Z
SFC/FL200 N0315 E09830 - N0255 E09655 - N0130 E09725 - N0315 E09830
FCST VA CLD +12HR: 30/1230Z
SFC/FL200 N0315 E09830 - N0240 E09550 - N0100 E09645 - N0315 E09830
FCST VA CLD +18HR: 30/1830Z
SFC/FL200 N0315 E09830 - N0205 E09500 - S0020 E09625 - N0315 E09830

RMK: VA NOT IDENTIFIABLE ON SAT IMAGERY DUE TO METEOROLOGICAL
CLOUD. FORECAST BASED ON MODEL OUTPUT. NOW AT CVGHM ALERT LEVEL
4 [HIGHEST], SITUATION WILL BE CLOSELY MONITORED. Graphic at
[lower case] http://www.bom.gov.au/info/vaac/advisories.shtml
NXT ADVISORY: NO LATER THAN 20100830/0630Z

Really nice little reference maps of the tectonic setting of Sumatra, the Great Fault and volcanoes of North Sumatra.

www.tectonics.caltech.edu/sumatra/sumatranfault.html

Pay particular attention to the Interceptor FZ, the Central Domain, and the velocity vectors in the top map, before opening the large lower map and locating our two volcanoes of interest.

@motsfo, The Upptyppingar case is interesting and that would be a understatement. According to my ideas, and the ideas that I base that on. The Upptyppingar appears to be a volcano in formation. It has not erupted yet as a volcano with a magma chamber. But it is going to do so at one time in history. When that might happen I do not know.

If we are extremely lucky we might get one off cone volcanoes there in less then 5 to 10 years. But I am expecting big eruption in 30 to 50 years, based on current models and given the number of earthquakes. But only time is going to tell me what is going to happen, and how this is going to evolve at Upptyppingar.

According to an article in the German news magazine 'Der Spiegel' locals reported seeing lava flowing from the Sinabung volcano:

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,714420,00.html

The google translation reads as follows:

"Local media reported, citing witnesses, leaking lava was seen from miles - even in the tourist area of Berastagi to the north of the island. Volcanic ash from the 2451 meter high volcano had reached the provincial capital Medan.

"At midnight there was a severe blow - one suspects a volcanic earthquake," said Irsal. "Soon after we saw lava running down from the top of Sinabung and fire burned the forest at the foot of the mountain."

Here the original:

"Lokale Medien berichteten unter Berufung auf Augenzeugen, auslaufende Lava sei aus mehreren Kilometern Entfernung zu sehen gewesen - auch in der Urlaubsregion Berastagi im Norden der Insel. Vulkanasche aus dem 2451 Meter hohen Feuerberg habe die Provinzhauptstadt Medan erreicht.

"Um Mitternacht gab es einen starken Schlag - man vermutet ein vulkanisches Erdbeben", sagte Irsal. "Kurz darauf sahen wir Lava vom Gipfel des Sinabung herunterlaufen und Feuer verbrannte den Wald am FuÃe des Berges.""

But I don't know, if those observations were confirmed from independent / qualified sources.

Here is a picture series from BBC News on the eruption.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11126417

Not much to look at... I can't find any listings with lower magnitude quakes, so your not gonna get much more than an overview. That is one of the beauties of Iceland and Italy, nice quake lists.

Mag 4.0+ 1973 - 2010, Sinabung location +200km circle. Perspective view. USGS data source. (easier to pull and has depth info, unlike the site in country)

http://i38.tinypic.com/2mmtjpk.png

So, I come back and what we have here? - an eruption with a significant ash plume, wood fires from lava emission, a huge earthquake in perspective and a magnificent plot showing the subducting slab under Eurasian plate!
You guys want me to get "fired" too?

Yep the volcanes are acting up again. This one may be big so I will be sure to keep track of it for the coming weeks.

I'm just passing by and looking for some information related with the recent eruption of sinabung this morning at 6 AM (Local time). I'm indonesian and know too little about volcanism, could u all give a opinions of worst case scenario that might happen here with this mountain?

@Lurking:
Could you show us a N-S and a E-W view? Or maybe just a flat view to get a perspective of the Sumatra Fault.

@Adibrata:
Good morning. Hope you're doing well. From what part of Indonesia are you typing? So far, we are having some news of an ashcloud (post #30) and rumors of some lava pouring out from the summit (#33). Maybe you are more up to date with local information.

Try the Figures

www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7080/fig_tab/nature04522_ft.html

to this paper: Nature 440, 46-51 (2 March 2006)

Plate-boundary deformation associated with the great SumatraâAndaman earthquake.

www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7080/full/nature04522.html

The last figure will help you put Lurkings timely plot into perspective. The first figure is a neat graphic, showing the fault segments and the last dates of rupture.

Although you might not be able to read the paper, in this case the accompanying figures speak for themselves.

@Passerby
On the reference maps of Sumatra tectonic settings, could you please explain what is the red dotted circle across Toba lake?

Short footage on Sinabung by the Portuguese television. They also mention "lava pouring from the summit".
http://tv1.rtp.pt/noticias/index.php?t=Vulcao-Sinabung-entrou-em-erupca…

@Adibrata Could you translate the main story here for us? With more information, we might be able to help you. Thanks.

http://www.metrotvnews.com/

The Sama dengan kejadian hari sabtu story? Also, is the Dua Ruko di Surabaya Hangu Terbakar story related to the eruption? If so, where are the office buildings that caught on fire? Thanks very much.

Thank you @Passerby. Now it is Good Night!

Sibayak, Sinabung and Toba share a common feature. They straddle the Sumatra Fault.
Sinabung sits out on a lava plain by itself. Sibayak is a volcanic cone straddling the side of the Singkut Caldera.
There are domes every where around the surrounding area in between Toba and Berastagi. Sibayak and Sinabung are obviously active as they emit sulfurous fumes.

Local history states that both Sibayak and Sinabung showed some activity in 1881. This may be coincidence but I'm not sure of the two cones share exactly the same magma source.

There are around 500,000 people in the surrounding areas of the eruption area. 60kms to the Northeast sits Indonesia's third largest city - Medan. If a major eruption took place at Sinabung there would be a bit of a problem for all these people.

The fertile plains around this volcano are a major food producing area with a huge export business with Singapore and Malaysia.

@Renato Rio: Well, I'm in Jakarta right now, but still, with a country like Indonesia, we don't expect another natural disaster happen in indonesia soil, because the impact will be huge..
@parclair, NoCal: I believe those two news is not connected, the two Ruko (office building) is located in Surabaya (East Java).

@42, RR Subducted fault zone, in line with the yellow arrow.

@46

>Sibayak, Sinabung and Toba share a common feature. They straddle the Sumatra Fault.

They do not. They *may* straddle a transverse fault system not shown on the Cal-Tech map. The geothermal field-power station engineers will know.

News report on the 2nd eruption that occurred Monday, as reported by Chance, #30, ash to ~2 Km.

news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-08/30/c_13468893.htm

Re: Renato Rio[39]

Okay, but like I said, it's not much to look at. Remember, this is a plot of all quakes since '73 as they appear in the USGS catalog. It was used because the in-country catalog was less than helpful (no depth info). That doesn't mean that there isn't a better catalog that I just haven't found or have access to.

North view, looking through the the fault plane:

i38.tinypic.com/160o7eo.png

East view (looking east), not fully in line with the fault plane:

i35.tinypic.com/24q8glg.png

And a plan view:

i37.tinypic.com/9ql0ew.png

The lack of sub mag 4.0 quakes pretty much rules out being able to plot magma paths, cracks and creaks.

There's a huge discrepancy surrounding the height of the 2nd eruption. Post #30 says 20,000 feet whereas post #49 says 2 kilometers.

Which is it?

Plan view: almost like a back arc volcanic group from subduction melt upwelling. Super interesting to see the fine structure from 3 directions and in 3-D.

Oh Goodie! Deep-focus EQs.

Excellent work; thanks again Lurking!

several pic taken this morning at 6 AM (local time)
http://foto.detik.com/readfoto/2010/08/30/090614/1430742/157/1/gunung-s…

@Adibrata 53. Wow. That eruption looks serious. Thanks for the link.

I'm no epxert in this, but have some interest in volcanoes.

I noticed the new pictures on BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11126417) seem to show a double column of smoke, one at an angle. multiple vents?

@Willem

I'd be interesting in knowing the time relationship of that image verses the the one linked in post 53.

The plume on the left is definitely being shot out almost horizontally, then turning upward from the heat.

If the vent was partially obstructed, did it clear, making the image from 53 possible? Or is this something that fell and obstructed the vent shown by 53, possibly causing the twin plumes?

Very nice photos there Adibrata, thanks for posting that link.

I'm due to get into Medan tomorrow afternoon, around 3pm local time. I'll be there for about 4 or 5 days and will endeavor to post photos and updates on the eruption here...

The situation at Sinabung reminds me of a number of very different volcanic events, some of which culminated with large, destructive eruptions, whereas others calmed down after some time without growing really big and dangerous.

So far the eruption appears to be phreatic, maybe the initial explosions unleashed hot material (you can see incandescence in video posted on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQz8co21wAs) but certainly NO LAVA FLOW. Fluid, Hawaiian-style lava does not come out of this type of volcano, especially not at the start of a new eruption after long repose. Maybe there is a lava dome pushing from the summit, although I would expect this to happen later on, after the path for the rising magma has been cleared.

There are indeed spectacular photos at Daylife, which show that there are several vents at the summit and on the side of the volcano:
www.daylife.com/photo/0e6T0SP25Vbfx?q=volcano
www.daylife.com/photo/037rcQD2gSdXb?q=volcano
www.daylife.com/photo/04bUeSkcd33Px?q=volcano

Three scenarios can be envisaged:

(1) SoufriÃ¨re de la Guadeloupe (1976-1977) - phreatic explosions and probably magma uprise, without culminating in a magmatic eruption; similar events have occurred at Fourpeaked (Alaska) in 2006, Koaryaksky (Kamchatka) in 2008-2009 and numerous other volcanoes. One particular example is Ontake in Japan, which erupted in 1979 after possibly up to 30,000 years, but all that happened was a few phreatic bursts and then the volcano calmed down again.

(2) Unzen (1990-1995) - phreatic explosions followed by lava dome growth without much explosive activity. Much of the disaster caused by the Unzen eruption was due to collapse of the lava dome, which grew on a very steep, unstable flank and thus often crumbled, generating pyroclastic flows. A variation on the theme is SoufriÃ¨re Hills (Montserrat) where initial phreatic explosions were also followed by dome growth and frequent dome collapse, but there was also strong explosive (Vulcanian to sub-Plinian) activity.

(3) Pinatubo (1991) - initial phreatic explosions followed by dome growth and then a massive cataclysmic, caldera-forming eruption, which in turn was followed by lava dome growth.

A Pinatubo-like scenario is possible but less likely than the other two scenarios. If Sinabung behaves like Unzen, i.e. if it builds a lava dome at its summit or on its steep upper flank, there is a high risk of pyroclastic flows generated by dome collapse. Seismic and deformation monitoring is imperative here, to see whether a large volume of magma is making its way to the surface, as at Pinatubo, or whether it is rather modest and will produce a lava dome-building eruption.

Out of topic but certainly of interest, a little Etna update:

Since the strong 25 August phreatomagmatic explosion at the Bocca Nuova at Etna's summit, there have been numerous smaller and 8 medium-intensity explosions, the latter of which generated conspicuous but short-lived ash emissions. Observations made at close range disclose that these events are virtually noiseless, and the ejected ash is altered, lithic (old, not new hot magmatic) material so far.

Access to the summit craters of Etna is now prohibited by decree of the Prefecture of Catania. The situation is considered highly dangerous; during a strong phreatic or phreatomagmatic explosion at the Bocca Nuova on 12 September 1979, nine tourists were killed and more than 20 injured.

It is likely that the current explosive sequence is a vent-clearing activity, as magma is reoccupying the conduits of the summit craters. Evidence for magma uprise is also in the fact that fumarole temperatures on the crater rims and on the outer southwest slope of the central summit cone (which hosts the Bocca Nuova and Voragine craters) are rising, leading to increased sulfur deposition (at temperatures above 120Â° C).

Updates are posted in Italian and English at the INGV web site - www.ct.ingv.it

Thanks so much for that insight Boris, very interesting read!

A short clip from BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11128800

@#60 - Heh. Literally at cockcrow.

@Lurking:
There's an outstanding concentration of EQs under Toba (rather than at Sinabung) and since they aren't from the Great Sumatran fault, what are they? An unknown fault or Toba's own faulting system? - if I understood it right.
@Boris and all:
Thanks for the stunning pictures and posts. We we'll have a busy week from Indonesia and Italy. Keep safe you and Adibrata.

Don't like this. Hope it follows the more innocuous paths proposed by Boris. This could become a Plinian event hugely affecting nearby population (500 000). We need more tremor plots and GPS measurements. Where can you get them, Lurking?

A local newspaper (Google translated) is unsure of what to expect from this:
"Identification Difficult Vulkanolog Sinabung" (...)
"The team from Bandung Volcanology led Surono still can not decide what type Sinabung," says Head of Department of Energy and Mining, North Sumatra, Untungta Kaban." (...)
"Sinabung eruption in the middle of the night when it came to a radius of 10 kilometers. Even the dust up into the sky vulkaniknya Medan, a distance of approximately 150 kilometers from the eruption site."
http://matabangsa.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1997…

Sinabung does not look like your normal (strato)volcano with a regular summit crater. Judging by the photos, it has more of a "flank" crater running from summit to about 2/3 of the way down...

I would be very suspicious of any volcano that suddenly starts erupting after centuries of dormancy.

I would be very suspicious of any volcano that suddenly starts erupting after centuries of dormancy.

Posted by: mike lyvers | August 30, 2010 6:42 AM

Like Chaiten for example?

www.dn.se/webbtv/nyheter/se-bilder-fran-vulkanutbrottet-pa-sumatra-1.11…

More video including aerial ones from the summit. According to this site, eight people have been killed.

@Boris:

There was news-footage of lava earlier today at the same place where you can actually see it at #53 pictures. Nice to see that even experts can be surprised by volcanos now and then.
Thanks for the list of possible things that can happen at Sinabung.

@all:

For those who cannot read swedish the article Henrik cited states that there are now 4 times as many dead from this eruption than the Eyja (8).

@Carl on Lava #69, I did in fact refer to the news footage where you see incandescent material - but that is not fluid lava. It is rather hot blocks falling from a lava dome, or vegetation set on fire by hot material. We should remember that also phreatic explosions can throw out rocks at temperatures of up to 800Â° C, which means they're incandescent, even though they are not derived from new magma!

Tragically (but not surprising), the news media are mixing up the Sinabung news with photos of all sorts of eruptions (including old EyjafjallajÃ¶kull).

New post ... and first day of classes!

http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/08/sinabung_and_etna_updates_for…

@Boris:
I guess that some idiot then had clipped in some nice bubbly burping lava in the news here in Sweden. Unusual that they do things like that here.

@Renato Rio [62]

That has more to do with how the plate is being subducted and in what regions stress and fractures build up.

The Toba caldera forming event was an easy 75 kyr ago.

It's very unlikely that a bag-o-quakes at 150+ kilometers deep on the folding area* of a subducting plate in the 1973 to 2010 timeframe has anything more to do with it than it does any other volcano on the island.

Remember that the plots do not have any quakes under 4.0. Just the larger ones.

Likely, a large quantity of quakes are there but just not available for plotting. If the ratio is anything like Iceland, then that number is HUGE, and is probably why they don't report every creak and pop. They also might nor have the same gear coverage as Iceland.

* I'm going with the folding idea, I think Passerby and others of that camp are dead on accurate.

We know that a prominent fracture zone is being subducted in the area of Toba and Sinabung. I suppose there might be a chance that bending crust that is 'prefractured' in an opposite orientation to bending axis could provide a route for magma flow to the surface. Just enough to provide hydrothermal heat source and fumaroles, but not vigorous eruptions in the recent past.

So one could guess that a build up of stress on the Great Sumatran Fault, perhaps near the segments which haven't been active in several hundred years - note that the old rupture dates roughly correspond to the approximate period of last known large eruption for Sinabung) - are under considerable stress buildup from the 2004 Aceh quake.

This is why I fear that a major EQ is much more likely than any large eruption, and why I concur with Erik that we're seeing old material being expelled under a sharp rise in pressure under Sinabung and perhaps under adjacent volcanic centers, given the anecdotal evidence of paired minor ash eruptions in early 1880s (same period as Krakatoa to the south, and mid-island Dempo and Kaba eruptions - all part of the southern domain subduction region of the GSF).

This is the provenance of the Cal-Tech group who has been chugging away on the tectonics of North Sumatra for a decade. We'll give them a buzz and see what they make of our idea.

planet-wise , the dates to watch out for are :- 5th to 9th
September , there are 6 planets in a 30 deg corner of space
around the sun .

@All: if anyone needs a hand in translating indonesian article from a local news, just let me know, sometimes even google translate not with a right grammar.. :)

little update from several local news today, there's no high activity today at mount sinabung, some analyst said that because the pressure at the magma chamber under the volcano is decrease..

What u guys think about this?

If we register at iranican.com to post blogs does our email get published? I see that your bloggers have their emails published.

[quote] Hi everyone!
That panoramio pic is quite interesting. Does anyone know the story behind all those words made with rocks?

Posted by: Princess Frito [quote]

i just googling about Mt.Sinabung then arrive here ^_^ thanks God cause i get more information unheard before about this Mountain, anyway I'm living here in 'Kabanjahe' [the capital of Tanah Karo] near Mt.Sinabung just about 20km [the Mount looks quite clear from here]
about Princess Frito question i guess the Rocks written was names [perhaps the names of the people who ever came there]
i also hope like Adibrata, maybe u guys who knows about geologic could share information for us, especially for us the people around this mountain...so we know what we have to face here... Thanks a lot ^_^ [i'm sorry if my english bad ^_^]
next time i'll share more pics i get during the eruption...

Is usually blogengine superior to live journal in some manner? Really needs to be because it's starting to be popluar lately.

Just keep posting good stuff.

I can't consider I have ever noticed a site with this particular lots of feedback into it!

Great stuff.. I am going to need a bit of time to entertain your site:D

Friday Flotsam: Galeras settles, Krakatau anniversary, what is under Yellowstone and more.

eklemetti — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:43:41 +0000

Friday Flotsam: Galeras settles, Krakatau anniversary, what is under Yellowstone and more.

Sorry about the lack of posts - I've been not only frantically prepping for class and my Eyja talk, but also I'm somewhat under the weather with an ill-timed sickness, so even though there is stuff to talk about, I haven't really had time/wherewithal to deal with it.

However, expect big things from Eruptions next week!

Drawing of a ship washed inland by the tsunami generated by the August 27, 1883 eruption of Krakatau.

I'll throw a few quick links:

The alert status at Galeras has been dropped back down to "orange" after the non-explosive eruption earlier this week. However, INGEOMINAS warns us the threat is still there (spanish) for an eruption (and more evacuations).
Another volcano anniversary falls this week - this time the 1883 eruption of Krakatau in Indonesia. You can even hear a witness to the actual eruption get interviewed by author Simon Winchester.
Curious about what is going on underneath Yellowstone - check out the great post on Highly Allochthonous that examines the source of the giant North American caldera system.
Dr. Boris Behncke has kept us appraised on the currently activity at Etna on his photostream - not a lot of coverage of this new activity at the Italian volcano in any other media source.
And you can catch up on all the week's volcano news with the Global Volcanism Program's Weekly Volcanic Activity Report!

eklemetti Fri, 08/27/2010 - 07:43

Tags

Global Volcanism Program

volcanoes and society

yellowstone

Eruptions readers who recall our technical chitchat here on deep focal earthquakes,

scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/07/climate_volcanism_and_the_ande.php

you will very much want to go look at Chris Rowan's blog entry for today, mentioned in Erics opener above.

Look closely at Fig 2B. What do we see?

We see what looks very much like a critical folding unit dimension of 200 Km.

The twisting corkscrew shape that Chris mentions is a massive torsional movement that is mirrored in the curving path of the hotspot, seen in the first blog figure.

I am thinking that we are seeing an interesting phenomenon:

The 'unpleating' of the folded subducted crust.

Recent tomography evidence of PNW crust subduction through deep focus EQ modeling (discussed in papers I presented in July, linked above) suggests that diving crust remains intact - stretched and thinned, but with structural integrity in place, as it descends to just below 800 Km.

So, I'm not what happens as it's mashed down into pleated folds, but it sure does look like it's a pleated and unfolding structure that is feeding upwards as the Yellowstone hot spot.

Now, with this picture in mind, look at the last set of modeled tomographic data. See the cold subducting crust plunge downward at the coast, being pleated and stacked at some critical depth (S2), and then an ancient fragment rising by convection, to emerge below and along the path of the Yellowstone hotspot?

Could be coincidence (the apparent pleated geometry), but if this is true, it's quite remarkable!

@Erik
We cannot be too grateful for your relentless endeavor in keeping us updated with all kinds of geological information whatsoever. This your blog is an outstanding example of generosity in sharing knowledge and arousing curiosity as a mean of improving our understanding of the world and the relationships between man, science and Nature.
And I also want to thank Boris, ECho and all the other collaborators, as well as our fellow bloggers who, with their valuable comments and posts contribute to keep this blog "rocking". It's been a thrilling experience to be around.
I must confess I'm still far from grasping the whole picture in which concerns magma and volcanoes, but I'm fascinated and eager to learn more.
I'm specially interested in understanding the mechanisms governing plate tectonics and hotspots. Although my expertise is yet insufficient to go deep into the matter, I daresay that, concerning the mantle plume theory, there must be some kind of gap between what is being explained and what is really taking place underneath. Except for Hawaii, where mantle plume provides a very plausible explanation for volcanism, there must be a link between sinking of old plates and hotspots elsewhere. We've seen that kind of connection in Iceland and Yellowstone and recent EQ activity in ancient subduction zones appear as good examples of weird behaviors of magma formation.
It has been said recently in this blog that the mantleplume.org would be a questionable source, though the article in Highly Allochthonous points to the site.
Maybe you could give us some opinion about this as well as some other reliable sources in the net (or books) where a layman like me could get a good perspective in the actual course of debate.
Many thanks in advance.

@Passerby
As soon as I have sent my last post I saw your comment on Chris Rowan's blog. I must give you a special thank for getting me into this debate and for the whole lot of fascinating homeworking you have been charging me with. I can already feel the good results, so I hope. :)

Renato, meet Dr. Foulger:
foulgerconsulting.com/Bio_GRF.html

I used her consulting cv, as it's more up-to-date than her faculty 'vita. She's certainly legit and so is her website.

Ah, the dreaded late-summer ick. Hope it clears your system soon!

@Passerby
I was thinking of buying the book, but I was afraid it would be too difficult to my present level, but since you recommend it, I'll give it a try. Many thanks.

Renato, I wasn't referring to her book, but to her website, in reply to your post query.

If you are thinking about trying her book, you should write to Dr Foulger and ask if it's appropriate for the general public. At the very least, you should work through the material on her mantle.org website.

#7 @Passerby
Yes, that is exactly what I needed when I addressed to Erik. I didn't notice the contents before I answered to your post. Cool! After going through the site I might as well be able to understand the book.
Oh, dear, and all my daily errands waiting for me...
Look what you've done to me! ;)

@Passerby
Just found what I wanted here: The Mantle Plume Hypothesis Pro and Con: Evidence from Earth's Most Voluminous Large Igneous Provinces.
"A common mechanism for the formation of LIPs is highly desirable, yet, at present, all existing hypotheses appear in some way deficient."
Yes. That's exactly what I meant, but to go deeper in the matter I'll have to wait till I have enough time to grasp the basics on seismology and petrology.
As they say in Italian: Piano, piano, si va lontano.

Start at the simple level and then move into Gillian's website, with a range of factual complexity.

www.rasmussen.edu/student-life/blogs/main/beginners-guide-to-plate-tect… (NASA recommended)

USGS, This Dynamic Earth - The Story of Plate Tectonics (online edition)
pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/

Introduction to Plate Tectonics
www.hartrao.ac.za/geodesy/tectonics.html

Virtual Upper Mantle
www.virtualuppermantle.info/

Geology.com earth internal structure
geology.com/nsta/earth-internal-structure.shtml

As they say in Italian (musical direction): poco a poco.

More recent mantle plume theory and discussion, Episodes, March 2007 (several papers, start with Dr Xu's intro)

www.episodes.co.in/www/backissues/301/301.htm

Since the Episodes volume 30 March issue mentions the OneGeology concept, introduced in 2007, I'll throw in the link to this global geology website.

www.onegeology.org/home.html

#13 Grazie infinite!

@Passerby
What an invaluable material!
All links are bookmarked and I'll take the weekend to start studying them "poco a poco" (actually, I've already started).
Now I'd like to repost a link to this RUV article. Do you have any idea of what could they be? Cracks being found along the Icelandic rift system?
"New cracks in Sprengisandur"
http://www.ruv.is/frettaskyringar/innlendar-frettir/nyjar-sprungur-a-sp… (Icelandic)
Thank you very much.

@1:

If I remember correctly you where the one *snorting* the most about my little brain-fast of the vorticing plumes/hotspots. I find it hilarious that you a few weeks later present the only "proof" of that idea so far. If I remember you even went to the trouble to suggest I should study fluid dynamics before saying anything... Haha!

The world is a small thing after all:)

@Renato: The geophysicist PÃ¡ll Einarsson thinks these cracks, brand new as they are, are somehow related to the eruption in VatnajÃ¶kull glacier in 1996.

Renato, the cranks are in the Highlands between HofsjÃ¶kull and VatnajÃ¶kull icecaps. It's a dry volcanic and gravel flood deposit plain. They're associated with area rift systems, and their appearance in Spring and Summer suggests erosional exposure at the surface from glacier melt floods.

If Pall Einarsson infers that they're related to the Gjalp 1996 eruption, he might be referring to crustal deformation effects of this event.

Crustal deformation associated with the 1996 GjÃ¡lp subglacial eruption, Iceland: InSAR studies in affected areas adjacent to the VatnajÃ¶kull ice cap, Iceland (2007).

homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~earcpa/article.pdf

See Figs 1, area 'T' (the rift system mentioned in the riv article), and 2 (interferograms, deformation maps). It's in the approximate area of the cracks reported a few days ago.

Article in English, I found this while reading the Icelandic news on recently formed melt lake to the West on the Ok glacier remnant, posted by birdseye.

www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=16567&ew_0_a_id=…

/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlands_of_Iceland

#16 @Carl
I enjoyed very much all your talking about magma fluid behavior. Ever since then, I've been noticing that all plots and graphs concerning quakes distribution and lithosphere deformation, as well as rising magmas, exhibit a cork screw / semi helical pattern. Of course, there are many forces at stake here and we don't know exactly how the stuff in the mantle behaves, whether fluid-like or semi-solid, to state precisely if they go "by the book" in either way. But since we are no experts, we're entitled to do some speculation in this non academic forum and get ready for the criticism. I'm too far from giving my own opinion, but trying to gather some information on this.
What I've read so far draws me back from mantle plume and convection currents theories as being the main responsible for plate movement and magma formation and that gravity is still very much to be blamed. But this is a mere intuition on my part and I'm ready to be slapped on my face to be saying such a sacrilege. Passerby is helping us a lot with all the material he has been providing and I hope someday I'll be able to discuss the subject in a less amateur way. So, let him snort at his leisure. He has already showed he's ready to respond to the good discussion, as you can see in the deep EQ debate.
Love you guys!

#17 #18 @Reynir @Passerby
Thanks for your posts and links. When I read about these cracks I thought they would cast some light in our Icelandic debates, and wanted you guys to examine the finding. I'll take a look at the articles.

#20 I read the article. The crevasses provide evidence supporting Einarsson's hypothesis of slip faulting at TungnafellsjÃ¶kull area due to a 5.6 EQ under Bardarbunga and the 96 Gjalp eruption. Wonder if recent EQ activity to the N of Bardarbunga is anyhow related to this and since activity in the area is somewhat "enigmatic", as they say, we don't know exactly what to expect. The ice sheet there is too thick to give us precise GPS measurements and even to surely state if an eruption has occurred.
Fascinating.

The authors do a nice job of presenting possible explanations for deformation and then examining data in light of each case.

You asked for an explanation of the crevasse formation at this location, and since you posted an article quoting Einarsson's comments point to the 1996 eruption, I did the best I could to point to published study connecting cause and effect.

The authors noted deformation to the north as well as the NW. We have already discussed the potential for tectonic faulting absent of intrusions in some locations, and magmetic dike intrusions in others, to explain earthquakes covering a large area to the east of Askja, with many excellent plots provided by Lurking.

so in summary, what goes down must come up?

@Passerby, Renato Rio, Reynir, NK

I have no clue where "Goose Lake" or "New Valley" are at.

Following along, the best I can come up with is the general region between VatnajÃ¶kull and HofsjÃ¶kull.

So, in response to Renato Rio's musing:

"Wonder if recent EQ activity to the N of Bardarbunga is anyhow related to this and since activity in the area is somewhat "enigmatic", as they say, we don't know exactly what to expect."

A plot of this area and recent activity (since 8/1/2010)

I won't be doing many of these plots, I had to layer the quakes in level by level to get them on the background image.

http://i33.tinypic.com/nd6a90.png

Provided that I got the extents of the background image right.

(the lat and lon of the quakes are accurate)

SCRAP THAT

Corrected version.

http://i38.tinypic.com/eugbjc.png

Thank-you, Lurking.

If Renato will go to Fig. 1 of the 2007 paper cited above, he will see a reasonable match between recent seismic activity and that recorded between Sept 29 and Oct 13, 1996, predating the eruption.

That should answer your last question, RR.

For those of you who think I'm an idiot. Well, your partially correct. But lacking a way of editing my hose ups... I am a fully exposed idiot. Can't zip the fly.

@Renato Rio, etal.

Speaking of Gillian Foulger and plumes, this link may be of interest. I site-searched the scienceblogs.com blog and didn't see it anywhere already.

http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/plumesdebate

GÃ¦savÃ¶tn (Goose Lakes): 64Â°46.7'N, 17Â°31'W.

NÃ½idalur (New Valley): The mouth is at ca. 64Â°43'N,18Â°03'W. The valley was first found for certain ca. mid-19th century, hence the name.

Both are popular rest spots after a day of bouncing and jouncing on a fourby trail.

From the www.icelandreview.com link in Passerby's post [18]

"The crevasses are located a stoneâs throw away from the road between the GaesavÃ¶tn lakes and NÃ½idalur valley. "

And thanks to Reynir, NK's coordinate set on GÃ¦savÃ¶tn and NÃ½idalur, a replot (correctly oriented) with those locations and the background image constraints double checked.

http://i37.tinypic.com/hv5ftt.png

@Renato Rio, all

Please read each of the following books before giving an opinion ...

http://www.dgf.uchile.cl/biblio/Libros_nuevos/mostrarioSismologia.htm

Haha, just joking. Saw the list and thought of your quest for deeper understanding. Seems like a lot of work.

Famous Quantum Physicist Gerard 't Hooft says any dedicated person, young or old, can become a good PhD-level Quantum Physicist just from free material on the web. The following is a great read regarding acquiring scientific knowledge and expertise on one's on, and also the value of mentors to give guidance (eg passerby).

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html#list

So it would seem, hopefully, the same would be true of Volcanology.

Here's an animated gif timelapse of yesterday's (Friday) venting from Etna's volcano craters. It is a 4.4 MB file comprised of 95 images taken by CAM 4 8:10 AM to 12:40 PM UTC,

http://i33.tinypic.com/30uajxt.gif

A total of 4 1/2 hrs played back in just a couple of minutes. The images were separated by 2 minutes 40 seonds, which is a limitation given by Cam 3's rate of updating. In this version of the animation, each image is displayed for 200 ms.

The action, like Thursday, started fairly sedated, but built in intensity over time.

Some curious action happens on the edge of the right-most crater .. just barely discernable.

Correction to above: 4 1/2 hours is played back in 20 seconds. So an hour goes by in approximately 4 1/2 seconds!

My dear mentors: I am a mess. I don't think I deserve to be the object of William's experiment on internet learning. Split between sciences and arts, I got stuck on a TV presentation of the last part of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" and missed my errands as well as my geological studies. I'll try to catch up on your recent posts and see what is behind Lurking's plots.
@Passerby: Do you believe we could witness a revival of 1996 around VatnajÃ¶kull any soon? Just caught four more quakes over HerÃ°ubreiÃ° area.
28.08.201023:37:5065.137-16.3965.8 km1.690.014.7 km SSW of HerÃ°ubreiÃ°
28.08.201022:43:2965.090-16.2637.7 km0.535.065.5 km N of Upptyppingar
Saturday
28.08.201021:58:0965.206-16.3005.2 km1.138.273.6 km WNW of HerÃ°ubreiÃ°arlindir
28.08.201020:34:5264.674-16.5081.1 km1.274.46.7 km NE of KverkfjÃ¶ll
28.08.201020:17:1165.082-16.2687.8 km0.644.654.6 km N of Upptyppingar

#29 @William M Boston: Great link. I ask your permission to quote one paragraph:
"Volcanism that appears to be anomalous (...) results from the inhomogeneity imparted to the mantle by plate tectonics and intraplate deformations that occur preferentially along pre-existing lines of weakness. The possibility of such a radical simplification alone is a strong hint that may something important may be going on here."
That is exactly what we have been discussing isn't it Passerby?

Make sure you understand where you're pointing, to, RR.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HerÃ°ubreiÃ°
en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/

We were talking about the clustering under Vatnajokull, NW corner. You're now referring to a fracture zone to the north of the icecap.

If an increase (above interannual average) in geothermal activity under the icecap results in a large lake forming, which is released as a sudden flood, it's possible that volcanic centers (probably Grimsvotn) will be destabilized at either crater or associated fissures and would then erupt. Whether the force of an eruption would be enough to break through 700-900 feet of ice and throw up a large volume of ash, is not known. IES can better address this question.

#37 @Passerby: Yes, I know HerÃ°ubreiÃ° is far to the North of Vatna, but I thought it could be somehow involved in the whole fracture system. But as I see, I am wrong at this.

>That is exactly what we have been discussing isn't it Passerby?

We've discussed interplate EQs, faulting and rifting at sites like Reelfoot Lake/New Madrid fault in the south central US, and to a limited extent, faulting along the Wasatch Front and SW corner of Utah (wrt geothermal activity), but we haven't gone much into intraplate tectonics.

This quote from the same source:
The plume hypothesis as it is applied today requires that Earth dynamics is driven by two independent modes of convection - plate tectonics and plumes. The former is driven by forces at plate boundaries - ridge push and slab pull, and the other is driven by heat from the Earth's core.

is a bit oversimplifed and outdated. That's why I posted a more recent paper written and published a few years ago.

The latter (plumes), especially the mid-depth yellow dots on Courtillot's figure (plumes originating from the depths of the upper mantle) may be a case of intact, less dense folded crust rising with heating from pressure change and mixing chemistry, after passing under thickened continental boundary.

The action of subduction and plume, at least in in the Yellowstone case, does not appear to be 'unrelated'.

What Chris doesn't mention, at Highly Allochthanous, is that there is a physical and very long transverse fault system (with respect to the coast) that roughly parallels (to the south) the A-A' transect shown in Fig 2 of his Yellowstone plume blog post. That's a clue to the curving coastal plate subduction driving the curving torsion, shown in Fig 1.

@38, we have more or less parallel track grouping of EQ activity, but having different mechanisms, as discussed in a couple of nifty papers with referenced figures described here, which Lurking then used to superimpose recent seismic activity for reference, and he also graphed their frequency over time.

#39 When we were discussing the Moro Golf deep focus quakes it was suggested that they have to do with "invisible" subducted plates and related faults, which I understood could be pretty much the same source of meltings under Yellowstone. I apologize for my skipping to conclusions too quickly, and maybe William is right when he tells me to read all those books before I post my opinion (even though he says he was joking). So please feel free to correct me and tell me when I should be quiet. I'm really happy to hear what you guys have to say, but so far I'm convinced that maybe other people could benefit from the wisdom with which you respond to my stupid remarks (yet I could be wrong on this too).

#40 Certainly missed this discussion. My fault.
What intrigues me most is this repeated pattern of swarms (or isolated quakes) occurring almost simultaneously all across Iceland, like over this past 4 hours report from IMO: Reykjanes + Vatna + HerÃ°ubreiÃ° + Askja + TjÃ¶rnes. Difficult to think they are not somehow related (beyond MAR).

Mount Sinabung in Indonesia seems to have had a small eruption today.

If you go to Chris's blog, which started us looking at deep focus earthquakes and possible mechanisms,

all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2010/07/fridayish-focal-mechanisms/

He correctly describes the opening sequence of deep focus EQ, that continued for quite a while, as being related

>All four focal mechanisms indicate NW-SE extension. Like the Halmera earthquake, this sequence appears to be linked to the westward subduction of the Philippine plate beneath the Sunda plate, with the earthquakes taking place in a deeply subducted part of the Philippine slab. The extension is probably the result of down dip tension as the slab sinks into the mantle, with the first shock apparently triggering similar events above and below it.

But that only whetted our appetite to know why they are occurring at such depth. While it could be stretching and elongation, the fact that they tend to cluster at specific depths was shown by Lurking in his graph and more obviously, in USGS and PHIVOLCs EQ data that we picked up from a secondary source and couple of related papers.

That made us wonder about the potential for *structure*, because these same critical depths of clustering were found in other places, like near the Cocos plate.

That led to set of references that have, for me, been exciting to read and ponder. For instance, Dr. Courtillot's plume and tectonics map

http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/webdav/site/GSL/shared/images/ourviews/plumes…

shows two shallow hot spots, to the east of the subducting Cocos plate, off the coast of Southern Mexico. That could be rising heated and unfolding subducted plate (pleated) that doesn't have the overriding thick continental edge to contend with, so buoyancy, heating convective forces drive it up from shallower depths. Maybe.

Your questions and remarks are never stupid.

Alternate theories - And then there was three.

geology.about.com/od/platetectonics/a/nohotspots.htm

What we are talking about here, and technical discussions of a few recent papers seem to be pointing to this conclusion, is a third theory: that thinned and subducted plate material sinks into the depths of the upper mantle, much deeper than 400 Km when it's very cold, water-laden ocean material, and is pushed deeply under continental crust, where it, amazingly, remains intact for some distance underneath the lithosphere.

A volcano on Sumatra, named Mount Sinabung stared erupting today at 19:00 GMT (midnight local time). According to news, this is the first eruption in that volcano for 400 years.

Here is the BBC News on this eruption.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11123169

Here is the volcano information. But that has last eruption listed as unknown.

www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0601-08=

Wiki article.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinabung

Here's a link to the Jakarta Post

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/28/agency-says-mt-sinabung-i…

Solfataric activity with incandescence 1912, no eruption. Last eruption listed by as 1600AD.

www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/29/volcanic-ash-clouds-blanket-meda…

See other related articles, side bar.

Etna popped again

http://i36.tinypic.com/301253n.jpg

#43 Your last flattering remarks will have me popping up again. Thank you for the incentive, Passerby.
And now, lets learn what is going on in Sumatra.
Thank you for the info, JÃ³n.
And thanks for the update on Etna, Raving.

@Passerby

The statement in nohotspots.htm:

"Seismic imaging around some major, classic hotspots has not found clear evidence of magma conduits below the transition zone (400 to 660 km deep). At the Yellowstone hotspot, Humphreys' team found that the transition zone is cool, not hot."

Seems to be contradicted by the "figure 2" image (right hand side) at all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2010/08/yellowstone-what-lies-beneath/

But my real question, if you don't mind:

"...That's a clue to the curving coastal plate subduction driving the curving torsion, shown in Fig 1."

Then what causes the apparent curve? I would think that whatever feature that it cause would trend south ward since the southern edge would be leading the charge. That is unless it separated unevenly.

(Note, I'm not sure where the figure 1 is at, I am assuming it's the image above the labeled "figure 2")

Is it a shearing of the two sides of what once was a spreading center for the Farallon?

You also mention

physical and very long transverse fault system (with respect to the coast) that roughly parallels (to the south) the A-A' transect

Is this a surface feature or a deeper item? If the latter, is it associated with the leftover part of was the spreading center?

According to the 3D model on Wikipedia, the Farallon currently resides deep under the East Coast. You don't happen to think that what is under Yellowstone / Snake River is the left over western part of the Farallon? Sort of the left behind part, all folded up and shoved down into the muck.

Sinabung Simatra erupts after 400 years:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67S06O20100829

Reuters says 'first eruption in 400 years" -I'd guess they mean "First eruption in at least 400 years" since that's about the length of the historical record there. GVP profile says no confirmed dated eruptions (one uncertain in 1881)

Some of the very first pistures of the eruption on an Indonesian News Site: http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://www.detiknews.com/images/cont…

@42 (Renato Rio)):

As you know I once sugested that there is a force running all those formations, and that those separate formations where taking there force from one central source of power.
My theory might be glaringly wrong since I am not a geaologist, but mathematically the theory is sound and corroborates with at least some of the evidence witnessed in the simultaneus events we can all see.
About my theory, the basis for my initial thought was to look for inital causes of that part of the world. Because I think we can all agree that something is lacking in the standard modell, my theory might be entirely wrong, but someone has to come up with a theory in the end to fill up the missing parts sooner or later.
And let me remind you that almost all of todays theoris are just theoris. One should always challenge them now and then, even if it is done from someone who is wildly out of his field of expertise. In my case my knowledge of geology is to low (but I do have some and gaining more every day), but my knowledge in physics in general and fluid dynamics in particular is good. If I ever gain enough knowledge about geology I will probably sumarize it into a paper, mostly out of the math being really neat.

What I really would like, is to see an original thought from Passerby on the subject.

Sinabung in North Sumatra is quite close to Toba. It's located close to the town of Berastagi. There is an adjacent Volcano - Sibayak which overshadows the township itself. The two Volcanos maybe plumbing related. Berastagi is an important vegetable and fruit growing area. Its located on a plateau around 1000 metres above sea level - The temperature there is very pleasant.
Here are some images.

This is Sinabung. Note that there have been sulpheric emissions for hundreds of years.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4137/4936892099_f79266dfc5.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4137/4937478340_2a29d57077.jpg

Here's its sister Sibayak

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4120/4937478424_6ceb00b489_b.jpg

More about Sinabung.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-08/29/c_13467877.htm

Good morning, evening, night. Here's more info on Mt. Sinabung. There are more links at the bottom of the story. If you go to the front page of the post, there's a dawn/dusk pic of the eruption that looks pretty impressive.

www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/29/a-safer-place.html

Video of Mt. Sinabung

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jx_ZQ9848g&feature=player_embedded#!

#52 @Carl on Iceland:
It's not only the swarms recurrence, but also tremor plots and GPS measurements that show parallel fluctuations, even though kept within standard levels. I can't tell what causes these fluctuations, but just speculate if there could be some sort of common source for them all. Looking forward to hear more from you.
@everyone on Sinabung: Another next VE3 candidate? After 400 years you don't know what to expect. According to linked news there have already been two deaths. Worrisome.

Some news on Sinabung:

http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/08/new_eruption_at_sinabung_in_i…

For anyone interested in the 1883 Krakatau eruption the fascinating Royal Society report from 1888 is downloadable (PDF 27.2 Mb):

http://ia311311.us.archive.org/1/items/eruptionkrakato00whipgoog/erupti…

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A busy day for Etna and Galeras

eklemetti — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:18:12 +0000

A busy day for Etna and Galeras

Today was a doubleheader for volcanic eruptions in the news:

Today's explosive eruption from Mt. Etna. Image courtesy of the INGV.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, Galeras in Colombia had an "atypical" eruption - apparently meaning it was non-explosive - that has prompted evacuations and a change in the alert status to "Red" for the volcano. Various news sources don't have a lot of new information yet, but you can check on the report on the INGEOMINAS page (spanish) - and they have links to some of the Galeras news (audio, spanish) from their main page. Some of the latest reports from Colombia (spanish) indicate that the eruption is "ongoing" but "under control" and areas around the volcano are experiencing some ash fall. However, Diego Gomez of the Volcano Observatory in Pasto is calling Galeras a "very unstable volcanic system" right now, so we'll keep an close watch on the volcano - which you can do from the webcam.
Less than a week after Boris Behncke's great series on the volcano, Italy's Etna has decided to keep our attention by having an explosive eruption earlier today. The INGV already has a great post on the event (italian and english) on their website with pictures and thermal images of the ash-rich explosion that produced the 1-km tall plume. This is the largest explosive event this summer from the Bocca Nuova ("New Mouth?") vent. Again, if Etna is heading into a new eruptive cycle, we'll all want to watch the events unfold - and luckily there is a webcam for that as well.

For both of these events, updates as they arrive!

{Special thanks to all the Eruptions readers who have posted links/info.}

eklemetti Wed, 08/25/2010 - 07:18

Tags

Note that the update on the INGV-Catania website is both in Italian AND English! I somehow didn't manage to make an English version of the title; next time I guess I will create two separate files.
By the way, some ash has fallen on our house in Trecastagni, about 15 km southeast of the summit of Etna. First time in 3 years that we've had ash from Etna at home.

Thanks for pointing that out - I just sort of muddled through it and didn't even notice the English on the bottom!

Keep us posted on any new developments!

In other news an interesting news release from USGS:

"An Island's Rebirth: Life emerges After a Catastrophic Volcanic Eruption"
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2574

Boris, it might be prudent to re-engineer the INGV website so that it presents in several languages, including English.

It will do wonders for attracting international interest and support. As it stands now, it's not very user friendly to those who don't read Italian.

@Boris Behncke, Catania, Italy, Do you have any online webcorders that I can take a look at ? I think that there might be more to this explosion at Etna then meets the eye.

I am also considering moving to Sicily in few years time (after few years living in Denmark) to watch and monitor Etna eruptions.

Or better yet, public real-time waveform data, USGS-style.
Ok, that's hoping too much maybe :)

@Passerby #4, I am working on an English version of the site - since I am the one single person in charge of this, it takes a bit of time, but all updates from now on will be in Italian/English (let's hope there will not be too much to update on, for the moment, since I still have to do my summer holidays).
@JÃ³n FrÃmann #5, that would be a fabulous thing to have you here and look at our seismic data ... unfortunately all that can be rendered public is what is actually rendered public (we've got to treat a lot of data confidentially due to Civil Defense issues), but once you're here things will be easier.
What is important to point out is that today's event seems to have been phreatomagmatic, and such events are among our worst nightmares, because very often they have extremely little precursory seismic or other activity. In 1979, nine tourists were killed at the very same crater that made today's explosion by a similar, though more powerful event. What is true is that since a few weeks we've seen a series of smaller explosive events (and collapse) in the Bocca Nuova, especially on 5 July and on 8 August. Normally such explosions occur when magma rises in the conduit and encounters fluids, and my best bet is that sometime within the next few days, or weeks, or maybe months, we will see new magma appear within the Bocca Nuova, as happened also in the summer of 1995 after more than 2 years of quiescence. There are frequent explosions also within the Northeast Crater, which is another of the four summit craters. These explosions are still very deep and you will not see any material being thrown out because it is happening presumably at a few hundred meters of depth. But you do hear these explosions when on the rim of the crater, and they appear to be growing in frequency and strength.
So the signs are that magma is rising within the conduits leading up to the summit craters, and hopefully we will see some spectacular activity there before a new flank eruption will rip open one side of the mountain and stress the hell out of us and everybody else involved.

I have posted some photos on my Flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/etnaboris

Ok. I must go to work now, just passing by to ask if you see some activity on the right slope of the Galeras cam. The ash cloud is getting bigger, hovering over the village, to the left, but the funny dark cloud to the right, looks weird. Regular clouds?

@Boris #7: seismic data is considered 'confidential' due to 'civil defence issues'?!

The mind boggles. The word 'idiots' comes to mind. That sounds positively Soviet...

Care to enlarge?

Sheesh, 2 minutes warning on the Etna seismometers (a posteriori) !

@Boris Behncke, Catania, Italy, As the eruption in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull showed. I can detect a low harmonic tremor from up to ~40 km away (maybe more, but more distance less signal is always the case). Where I go, I take my geophone with me and I do put them online since I am not bound to any contract like you. I do not like the signatures in the plots on the pictures, they indicate a gas-pressure pocket inside the volcano. I do not know where inside the volcano it might be.

If I move there, I will be there sometimes after 2015. I will let you know when the time comes. :)

Ref [9] (Fireman)

I'm guessing it has a lot to do with panic and lawsuits.

With the way that the Icelandic and Cascade volcanos show up in the seismic data, I was thinking that after that awesome plate outline that Galeras would give this beautiful seismic stack.

I was disappointed. I'm guessing that that the volcanic stuff doesn't make it into the database.

http://i36.tinypic.com/30wbldv.png

This Emergency and Disaster information site is not up-to-date with Mt. Etna's activity (last Etna page update was June 1), but the map shows activity. Their earthquake listings include whether or not a quake is located near a volcano. I think that's a new feature. The "Supervolcanoes Monitoring System" has quite a long list of calderas and other massive volcanoes.
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php

Good background material, with some answers for you, Lurking.

THREE-DIMENSIONAL SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF SCATTERERS IN GALERAS Volcano (book chapter).

www.tdr.cesca.es/TESIS_URL/AVAILABLE/TDX-0905106-125920//Carrube6de7.pdf

Scatterers are the signals used to determine magmetic structure placement below the volcano.

This article explains why you have such a busy shallow EQ system (says same thing as chapter, above, but more succinctly).

1989â1995 Earthquake sequences in the Galeras volcano region, SW Colombia, and possible volcanoâearthquake interactions. Tectonophysics 2008

>The area is also affected by the continental faulting represented by the Buesaco, Aranda and Pasto faults belonging to one of the most seismically active structures in Colombia, the Romeral fault system.

and

>The coexistence of an active volcanic complex and an active fault system complicates the study and interpretation of the different processes taking place in the region as well as the identification of any connection or interaction among them.

Conclusions:

1. You may not have access to all of the seismic data for volcanic EQ and

2. The superimposition of tectonic and volcanic seismic activity complicates sorting signal origin/cause.

Might explain the hash of data, rather than a clear signal source below the volcano.

I sort of figured that there was missing data from the catalog. As for the two "platforms" of quakes... I'm thinking that's and instrumental artifact and not part of what is actually going on there.

As for the paper, good read. Any idea how they came up with the idea of "screw" to describe the shallow low frequency events? (tornillo)

Dunno if it implies a shaking or a shape.

The Coda Wave idea is new to me, but I like the idea of the seismo/geo people getting into interferometry to sort of peer into the depths of the volcano's feed system.

Google Tranlate does a good job of translating Boris's website into English. The left side menu is nicely translated also. Just save the link as a favorite.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%…

Or Boris could have the link on the front page within a buttton called "English" - and just letting Google Translate do all the work, lol.

Could use the same trick to have buttons to translate into any languages.

William M Boston

@Passerby
Trying to do my homework on Galeras, just stumbled into this on page 118 in the article you posted (thanks for it):
"Such lava tends to be high in silica (mafic magma)."
I suppose it should be the other way around mafic=low silica felsic=high silica. Or maybe I'm wrong?

@ 16. Yeah, sure you can use Google for a hashed version in English (or French or Spanish or German), but it won't bring in non-natives, and it won't build you a fan club and *lots* of tourism revenues that can be translated to supporting geology and civil defense.

That's why the IES and IMO were clever to be as forthcoming as possible in sharing and explaining technical info in updates and graphics with the rest of us outside of Iceland (in English), and I suspect, to encourage realtime webcam coverage.

It's got them a nice dividend in tourism economy, despite the negative press from passenger air traffic shutdown for several weeks in May.

Etna is, as Lurking put it, a huge mother of a volcano. It's sheer height, longterm activity and explosive power, in a heavily populated region, is rarely matched in terms of potential for impact especially when viewed in terms of combined action it's active neighbors to the north.

@Lurking #12

Why is there a line of quakes at 4.5 km in the plot you made, as shown in link following?
http://i36.tinypic.com/30wbldv.png

I see the same thing at Yellowstone at almost 5 km and sometimes faintly at nearly 10 km, as shown:
http://yellowstonecaldera.net/Yellowstone/quakes.php?from_mo=8&from_dy=…

I'm sure it must be for some well known reason. But I am not sure what that is.

Lurking? Anyone?

At Renato, standard boiler plate

Basaltic magma is made up of mostly mafic minerals. Rhyolitic magma has high levels of felsic minerals. Andesitic magma is composed of intermediate minerals -- not quite mafic, not quite felsic, or a fairly even mixture of mafic and felsic minerals.

Mafic magma (basaltic magma) will have a fairly low viscosity and is associated with shield volcanoes (Mauna Kea for example), and mid ocean spreading centers.

Felsic magma (rhyolitic magma) is much more viscous and is associated with explosive volcanic eruptions found in Composite volcanoes (also called Stratovolcanoes).

Andean volcanoes are predominantly andesic and dacites. See wikipages for Galeras, andesite.

Geochemistry and petrology of the Galeras Volcanic Complex, Colombia . J. Volcanology Geothermal Res. 77 (1-4):21-38 (1997).

>The Galeras Volcanic Complex (GVC) has erupted lavas and pyroclastic flows, ranging from basaltic (mafic) andesites to dacites (more viscous), during the last million years.

Wording is somewhat confusing. More attention should be paid to the volcanic earthquakes, regional faulting, and magma chambers inferred by seismic 'reflection'.

For Lurking, 15: see

seismo.berkeley.edu/annual_report/ar03_04/node20.html

Refers to seismic record (decay events, signal tailing, coda), not physical manifestation of EQs forming an ascending screw-shape.

Off topic, but I didn't know where else to put it.

FYI. This is a new theory on the formation of the Earth;

Evidence supporting Kevin Mansfield's Earth Formation Hypothesis.

The Hypothesis:

Earth, as we now know it, formed from the collision of two similarly sized planets, called Heaven and PreEarth. Heaven had a radius about ninety percent that of PreEarth. These two, initially comprised a binary system (just like the Earth and Moon presently comprise a binary system) orbiting the Sun.

Like a bullet rips through the skin of an apple, leaving most of the skin unscathed, Heaven crashed through the crust of PreEarth, taking most of its energy into the interior, while leaving much of the crust unscathed. Now, imagine that the mass of the apple and bullet are so large (planet sized) that the bullet cannot escape their combined gravity. Then you have the hypothesized situation. Of course, as PreEarth swallowed Heaven, it greatly expanded in size. This expansion, however, did not leave the remaining crust unscathed.

The Evidence:

1) The hole in the Earth where the planet Heaven entered, i.e., the north west Pacific.
2) The impact mountains around the Pacific Ocean, i.e., the ring of fire.
3) Western impact mountains ripped off continental block.
4) The impact caused continental drift.
5) The theory predicts a single circular continent with splits, i.e., Pangaea.
6) The theory predicts oceanic crust very different from continental crust.
7) Warren Carey's evidence, is also evidence for this hypothesis.
8) Apparent sea-floor ages explained as geochemical gradient due to mixing.
9) The theory predicts Earth's core is rotating faster than its mantle.
10) The theory predicts Earth's magnetic field is rapidly decreasing.
11) The theory predicts/explains magnetic reversals.
12) The theory allows the force of gravity to have been smaller in the past.
13) Removes the thermal catastrophe.
14) The theory provides a decent power source for continental drift.
15) Animations of the expansion plus drift can be produced.
16) Provides a new theory regarding the formation of the Moon.

See http://preearth.net/evidence.html where each point above is expanded upon:

A brief history of the ideas.

Many of the ideas above were first presented in a public lecture, on November 2, 2008, at the Alexandra Park Raceway, Auckland, New Zealand. They were subsequently written up and published, on April 20, 2010, in the form of a 26 page paper. The preprint server arxiv.org refused to distribute this paper (clearly, the task of releasing preprints to the scientific community should be taken from those at arxiv.org and given to some responsible party). Consequently, toward the end of May, the website www.preearth.net was established to publicize the paper. This summary of evidence was completed on July 29, 2010.

Kevin Mansfield, has a BSc(Hons) from the University of Auckland (Auckland, New Zealand) and a PhD in mathematics from the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia).

From http://preearth.net

The site http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php claims also Stromboli is erupting?

@William M Boston[19]

Honestly, I don't know. Having worked with instrumentation, my gut feel is resolution error. If the signal from a quake has much ambiguity you will get only as fine a target as can be determined from the gear. You will especially see this in any of my plots that use data that crosses several years of technology improvements. A a rough guide, the most recent 5 to 6 years of data can be (sort of) assumed to have the quality of modern equipment. But you have to be careful with assumptions. (that's based on what I've seen in my plots)

Also remember that I only have access to the data that is publicly available, and cannot do any independent Q&A of what is in the databases. (not a researcher either) I generally count the oddities like that as "instrumentation" or "technology" errors.

@Passerby...

That rocks.

So the tornillo is actually the coda waveform itself and is a separate class of waveform... not a quake, and not a harmonic tremor. Sort of a "ringing" of the subsurface structures as seismic waves pass through or bounce off of them. The "scatterers." As previously mentioned.

From one of the other links I was left with the notion that it was something they were just snagging off of the waveforms for arbitrary quakes around the volcano.

That is very cool.

For those who are asleep I can just say that the daytime imagery from Etna is spectacular with nice strombolian activity and a lavarun downslope (Upper-left) if I am understanding the imagery correct from the webcam.
I think Boris summer vacation got cut short on this one.

http://www.guide-etna.com/webcam/wcsrc/wc3.htm

Anybody with more webcam links out there.
Seems like it is time to sit in the vibrating volcano-chair again and drink beer and watch lava-eruptions.
Good thing = The weather is better for webcaming at Etna.
Bad thing = more people around Etna than Eyja.

Here is a better link with more cams.

It seems like the scineceblogs-goblin had a problem with the last attempt to post it so it is without the http and www...

guide-etna.com/webcam

Hello,
Images of Galeras. Unable to see the official site
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=23797&id=129540827071058

@Boris:

Two small questions, both probably silly.

1. Is it just Bocca Nuovo erupting, or is it Bocca Nuovo and North Crater?
2. What is the likelyhood of Catania being hit by the eruption? Should I fly down and move my boat from Catania?

Totally understand if you don't have time to answer.

Best of luck with your continued work with Etna, and your wonderfull articles where ominious and fortitious for us volcanophiles:)

Carl

I'm surpised that sites with web cams do not have scripts which combine a number of past images, say 10, as an animated gif file, which would of course then be updated at the same interval as the webcam (say about every 60 seconds).

Then on the same otherwise boring web cam page, people could amuse themselves endlessly by clicking on the continuously updated timelapse gif animations (say for last 10 minutes, last 30 minutes, last hour). Gif animations are trival to create from image files, so it should be easy to program for automated creation.

Timelapse animations of oldfathful and all the people movements would be interesting and great amusement. And convenient to click a timelapse animation of the last hour to quickly check for a geyser display.

And right now that Etna action with fire shooting up in the air on CAM 3 would be great as an timelapse animation.

Off-topic: If you have to go on geology excursions into the dry, fire-prone forests, here is a bit of good news:
"Fuel treatments reduce wildfire severity, tree mortality in Washington forests" http://www.physorg.com/news201979329.html
In other words, if the authorities do a minimum of prevention, neither geology students nor others need to get burned to a crisp.

Hi,
Boris postet this link to some real-time seismic data in his Flickr feed: http://193.206.223.22/Etna2007/SegSismici.asp?Staz=ESVO_HHZ_IT&Pos=6

Original entry can be found here: www.flickr.com/photos/etnaboris/4928165941/

Etna on cam 3 is showing increased intensity. The fire is shooting higher on the left side, and recently it has begun to shoot explosively in the air on the right side also.

I believe the left side is the so called side vent, whereas the right side is the location of the three main craters on the summit. But not sure about that. Anyone know?

Correction to earlier comment about fire shooting into the air at Etna ... it is probably just steam ansd smoke but with the appearance of fire due to the intense side lighting of the morning sun, and to its being washed out as a result of the saturation of the cam's sensors.

The display has showed increased intensity. Was originally just on the left side, but is now occuring on the right side now also, as viewed from cam 3 .

I believe the left side is the so called side vent, whereas the right side is the location of the three main craters on the summit. But not sure about that. Anyone know?

Hi,

What is going on at Eyja? The Mila webcams show a imho big plume above her.

and to others who check in on Iceland, news of maybe more reasons for seismic effects that we've been noticing - glacial unloading has already been mentioned, now it's in the Icelandic news...tho' not extrapolated to volcanics.
www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=75139&ew_0_a_id=…

@William:
The left vent is the Southeast crater, on the right Northeast crater and on the saddle between those two, Bocca Nuova (left) and Central crater (right), seen from Cam 3. It looks as if all four craters are steaming violently. And there is a small vent steaming on the slope on the left, which was also steaming when I was there in July.

@35 Peter Which number three? Etnaguide or the INGV one (altho' I've just notice #3 is down-- oh well, another reference--

http://www.ct.ingv.it/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=…

@36 parclair NoCal
Sorry, forgot to mention: webcam 3
http://www.guide-etna.com/webcam/

I do not like the low period earthquakes on the INGV sensors around Etna. Those earthquakes appear clearly on ESVO seismometer that INGV has.

@JÃ³n FrÃmann

Out of curiosity, other than location information, is there anything that can be gathered out of the leading or lagging of the various signals from ESVO vs ESPC? I realize that they are pretty much on opposite sides of Etna and ESPC seems to lag by as much as 3 seconds in some instances.

Stacked plot of the two, ESVO on the top trace.

http://i34.tinypic.com/5mgwzk.png

Sorry been out all day without access to any computers.

There is currently no eruption of incandescent magmatic material under way at Etna. There have been a few more, but smaller, explosions, from the Bocca Nuova last night. No large rocks have been ejected, just ash, and the material appears to be a lot of old, altered rock with maybe a minor fraction of new magmatic material.

@JÃ³n FrÃmann, the signals that you see on the ESVO seismograms are explosion signals, caused by the deep explosions within the Northeast Crater. These have been occurring, though less frequently and less strongly, for many months. It is a very typical sign of Strombolian activity. But certainly the gradual increase indicates that magma may be rising within the conduit of the Northeast Crater. This is, so to say, Etna's most typical business.

@Carl on Etna #28, the latest explosions were from the Bocca Nuova, but the Northeast Crater has continous deep explosions since a while.
Catania has never, not one single time, been destroyed completely by lava flows. It has been threatened on a number of occasions, and its western outskirts were destroyed in 1669, but not its center. Today it would be far more difficult for a lava flow to reach the center of the town and the harbor, because of the multitude of multistorey buildings in reinforced concrete that constitute Catania's suburbs. These would provide a serious obstacle for a lava flow, which cannot be simply overrun or broken down by a lava flow.

In any case there are no signs that at Etna a major destructive eruption is imminent (that would mean, a flank eruption from low elevation). What I consider the most likely scenario is that in the next few weeks to months we will see a gradual reactivation of the summit craters, and then for some time - which may be months to years - summit eruptions, which are the most beautiful thing one can imagine, and they are not a threat to populated areas and human property. They might occasionally disrupt air traffic, because they can release significant quantities of ash.

Then, as more magma usually rises into the volcano's feeder system than exits from its summit craters, the mountain will gradually swell and become more unstable, and this will be recognized by the seismic activity and by the deformation monitoring, as well as gas emissions. In case of a major flank eruption - especially one from low on the flanks - there will possibly many weeks of premonitory deformation and seismicity, as was the case before the last eruption of this kind, in 1669.

The worst scenario we're imagining is a flank eruption that develops extremely fast and emits lava at very high rates, as in 1981, when lava initially travelled at a speed of 3 km per hour - and the nearest population centers were 7 km away. Luckily in that case the lava passed between two villages. That was on the sparsely populated northwest side of Etna, near the town of Randazzo. An eruption of this type on the very densely populated southeast side would be an enormous challenge.

Funny anyway how I just posted that big Etna story one week ago and now the volcano is getting a bit more active.

I will keep you informed ...

EyjafjÃ¶ll has a nice big plume today ..

I guess thats only water from the crater that has made its way inside the crater..

it looks nice tough in the sunlight..

@Boris Behncke, Catania, Italy. I am going to send you a email this weekend with few questions. Since if I am going to move close to Etna volcano in Italy. I have few questions to ask and to be answered if possible.

I am considering skipping Denmark all together and go directly to Sicily, Italy.

I have been trying to read your data. But I don't have a lot to work on. But I do believe that the magma that is pushing up the volcano is moving faster that you currently think. But with the data shortage that I am dealing with, I might be wrong. Only time is going to tell me what happens next.

Here is a capture of a frame from web cam 3 earlier today. http://i38.tinypic.com/vp8fx1.jpg From that angle and with that sunlight angle, the steam can easily be confused with fire shooting up from Etna's craters. But no fire ... yet.

Here is a quickie gif animation I made from of 12 frames from the web cam.

http://i35.tinypic.com/xpps9j.gif

Notice also the venting from the lower ridge on the left.

Curiously, the vid cam (#3) refreshes the screen every 20 seconds, but only refreshes with a new image every 2:40 seconds. I wonder if that is by design or by malfunction. About 3 minutes between images seems unusually long. Due to the long image display interval, there isn't much continuity between the frames.

Anyway, web cams create image frames perfectly matched to frames required for timelapse animations, and, as mentioned above, it would be so useful, interesting and esay to have such timelapse gif files automatically created for viewing directly from the webcam's page. Such a shame not to implement that.

Ha ha .. This awesome song comes to mind when viewing cam 3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flOvM4Z355A&feature=related

All devotees of Etna should play that song for her! A great song, and so fitting for Etna at this time! When you listen carefully, you can hear harmonic tremor! ;)

And soon Enta and her devotees should play this equally great classic song for the molten lava struggling within her. So appropriate for the moment! ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbiPDSxFgd8

Here is a quickie gif animation I made from of 12 frames from the web cam.

http://i35.tinypic.com/xpps9j.gif

Notice also the venting from the lower ridge on the left.

@Peter Tibben re #35

Thanks for the description. Let's see if I can correlate that with the following Google Earth pic:

http://i35.tinypic.com/rad83l.jpg

My favorite view of the summit craters, as in the pic above, is upside down with respect to cam 3's view, but I have it imaged correctly now in my mind for that perspective. :)

@William M Boston:
Thanks for the *gif time lapse. And I agree it would be a good idea to have them at the websites.

AVO raised Cleveland to yellow due to a 'persistent thermal anomaly'

@44 William M Boston
Thanks for the time lapse gif. For comparison, see picture
http://picasaweb.google.com/ptibben/EtnaSicily#5507022110941199874 which I took on July 17. The steaming east vent of Southeast crater on the left and right from the centre, on the slope, is the small vent (yellow sulphur deposit)on your time lapse gif.
Boris has some nice aerial pictures of the topcraters on his flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/etnaboris/page21/

I just came up with a rather perverted idea...

I was leafing through pictures of Etna and suddenly it dawned on me that it would be perfect to build a house inside one of the 300 smaller craters. If I understand it correctly they just blow once. But I guess there is a law or fifteen against doing it. But oh my... wouldn't it be beautiful to live in a crater when the volcano goes:)

You can see what I am talking about in the third picture from the top in this link, I say "dibs" on the one in the middle (imagine a concrete walled in castle with a watch-tower with decking around a cool beer and...)

@Carl, living on a volcano would be fine *except* for the sulfur in the air. Kinda takes away from the pleasure... (sulfurous beer, yech) ;-)

I wonder how high the sulphur concentration in the air is about that spot?
I don't think it is that noticable except when Etna is blowing hard. And to be honest I could stand some sulphur in my bear to watch Etna Bopp from an observation tower. But my original plan was to have the tower glased in and the entire compounds air running on an air-purifier/degasser in a presurrised setting. I don't want to get totally gased if the wind is wrong. But around the plattform there should definitly be som decking so one could sit outside schmoozing a bear when the wind is blowing gasses away:)

@Boris:

Let's rephrase the craterhouse discussion into silly question number three and four for Boris:
3. How high would the concentrations be of Sulphur and other poisonous gasses around those smal 300 craters? Is it still breathable?
4. Is it a ban against building a house there? I could as well just build a house there to go along with the boat I allready have there. (If your around the port someday it is the vintage 50 fot Alden that is currently being repainted thanks to the good crafts-men in Catania.

Carl, Is it really worth the feeling (to be watching Etna go up in a major way) to be telling about it to St. Peter at Heaven's Gate? ;o)

@Jack:
Actually I think I've done something worse...
31 August 2004 I was sailing like a madman to get south of the Virgin Islands to avoid Frances to no great luck. Volcanos might be passably dangerous, but I would take them any day to a category four hurricane. Sitting on 17 ton boat that gets airborne is as close as I ever want to come to St Peter and his merry Wallruses.

@Carl
(LOL) I'd rather have my beer in a pub next door. :)

Some news on the steam rising from EyjafjallajÃ¶kull: http://icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=16539&ew_0_a_…

@53 try riding a aircraft carrier in a hurricane and taking green water over the bow, early 70's

@56

Done it in a Frigate... does that count? I know it's not as but but we buried the gun mount in green water, which then smacked the bridge.

I would not like being on a carrier if green water hit the bridge. it is a rather interesting experience not knowing if the boat is going to auger it's way to the bottom or come back up

@56:
I would prefer to be indoors on a carrier then being tied to the rudder-wheel housing outdoors on a fifty fot sailing yacht any day to be honest.
The sheeting of water from the waves (it is no longer mere spray in a 4) travelling at 125 knots have a tendency to give you a rather nice skin peel, but it hurts like hell.
Plus that it solves the problem of having to go to the mens room, you are generally so scared that you just solve it by pooping in your pants. But I guess I am a wuzz:)
For those wondering what the name is of the sail you use in a hurricane, it is called a storm monkey. Mine was one square-metre and it still sufficed to give me 9 knots of continuous speed.

But... If you do it correctly you can hike the stern on a wave-front and just happily surf for the next twelve hours with your eyes riveted backwards up the 20 metre greybeard behind you, after a couple of hours you will probably be speaking to it since it feels like an old friend, I even named "my" wave Herman after Herman Melville.
Good thing was that nobody even cared about me entering the US. I guess the Coast Guard and US Customs had better things to do.

So please give me a lot of land in a crater adjacent to Etna.

gina ct 56: You know you're in trouble when the Captain comes up and tells you that your transfer to submarines has been successful :o)

@Carl #48 and following - no problem with the gas at Etna except if you're right at the summit on the downwind side. There is no gas emission from any of the craters on the flanks (except those formed in 2001, 2002-2003, and 2008-2009, which will remain hot still for a few years to come). There are areas of diffuse carbon dioxide emission especially in the valleys above the town of Zafferana, but those areas are now well known and are not open to development (construction, agriculture).

Many of the cones and craters on the sides of Etna are already private property - but most of them are on the territory of the Etna Natural Park, where construction is either totally prohibited or allowed only in a very rudimentary way. So I would rather propose some place lying on a ridge or on a hill rather than in a valley - unfortunately in recent years much development has taken place in valleys, and these are at high risk from lava flow invasion during future eruptions. So those areas are no-no for anybody interested in moving to Etna.

I do actually like a lot sitting on my terrace watching Etna with a good beer or a good red wine produced on Etna - and our home village sits on a little old cone and thus is more protected than many other areas.

For the moment there is no visible activity at Etna except for vigorous gas emission, sometimes rhythmic, and numerous small explosion quakes. Things might still take weeks to months to evolve to some more serious summit activity.

@Boris Behncke, Catania, Italy, You have a email from me. I hope it arrives.

In regards to Etna, I think that there is more going on the meets the eye and I am expecting some explosions in two to four weeks time. But my data is limited and I might be wrong because of that.

@Carl the slightly Ahab

Back during an interdiction ops, we ran across a beat to h3ll and back, storm rigged sailboat. The occupant asked for a whiskey, so we gave him the position. He then clarified that he knew the position and actually wanted whiskey if we had any to spare.

Odd things you find at sea.

>I am expecting some explosions in two to four weeks time.

*snort* After Boris patiently explaining that INGV is fully expecting a *continuation* of sporadic deep phreatic explosion with occasional ash emissions, with good potential for increasing activity, I would say your 'call' is a safe bet.

@Peter Tibben #47
Great set of Etna pics, and informative descriptions! Thanks for link.

At 15.08 on wednesday 25 I was arriving to the summit of the Etna central crater. I listened a profound but not loud sound and immediately appeared a brown and white cloud of ash like a mushrom. I didn't see nothing more because I ran down the slope as quick as I could. Three minutes later I turned for the first time and I was very impressed by the enormous dark mushrum that was over me. Luckely the wind was flowing in the opposite direction and I saw a gentil man that was waiting for me at the base and the bus of the funivia that was collecting people. I'm very impressed. The next day I put a candle to Santa Agata for my great luck.

#66 @Maria Congost
Surely you were lucky. That's the reason why I say I prefer watching these wonders of nature from afar. But I must confess I kind of envy your experience. You will have a story to remember for the rest of your life. Boris: keep two eyes open, you and your family.

Etna webcam timelapse 28 August 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRYOIkeISxA

@Passerby #64

Interested in safe bets?
http://i34.tinypic.com/1y0oc3.jpg

** double snort **

*cocking an eyebrow*. Etna at 28 to 1, but Vesuvius at 12 to 1?

Geologically-challenged dolts.

#68 @d9tRotterdam: Good to have you back with your timelapses. We can see quick bursts of ash venting from the main crater.
#69 Yellowstone 50/1 (????). I'd place my bet at Galeras. Recent activity didn't correspond to all the buzz that took place before. And then, Katla? Who knows?

Oh look! The odds have changed ... :-P

http://i54.tinypic.com/4rdi5h.jpg

Umm... Santa Maria/Santiaguito at 33-1 might be worth a punt.

I am new here at the college, I'm just stopping by to see everything. Do you have any recommendations for clubs to join?

Thanks! :)

I definitely like your blog but i highly recommend you look at the punctuation on a number of of your articles. Many of them are packed with spelling errors and I believe it is very frustrating to say the least nonetheless I probably will come back again.

Due to numerous region, territory or country cultural specific reasons, a game that looks perfectly fine in one country may be looked upon as the devil incarnate in another. This is one of the reasons why video game localization - as opposed to translation- is a must for video games.

That said, these facts raise an important questions: when does the "localization" of content stop being "localization" and turn into full-on "censorship"? And is that something one should accept?

As a recent example, Yakuza 3 on PS3 shows well how thin the frontier between censorship and localization can be. A lot of gamers complained because some scenes and important elements of the games where changed when the game made it to US.

Now the question is: do all of these elements actually required to be changed? Isn't that just based on a stereotype that American gamers tend to be more religious and concerned about nudity and violence? Gamers were most likely expecting something different after reading about the game in specialized media

Now if you look at it, most gamers actually are adult and will absolutely not care to find certain elements. In fact, their absence may come as a huge disappointment for them and alter their gaming experience. So should developers think a little more about what public they are targetting, or just assume anyone may buy the game by accident, and thus edit it?.

Video game localization is an important process to bring games to new people, and shouldn't be taken that lightly.

What do I miss about my wife? Her absence.

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Eruptions Word of the Day: Dacite

eklemetti — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 02:25:46 +0000

Eruptions Word of the Day: Dacite

So, I've had requests on the blog to help to do some defining of volcanologic terms on the blog, so I thought I'd try a new column called Eruptions Word of the Day. I'm not sure how often it will run, but let's give it a try.

Eruptions Word of the Day for July 5, 2010: Dacite
Dacite is a magma type defined by silica (SiO₂) content between 63-68 (or 69) weight percent. That is the textbook definition, but some other typical characteristics of dacite lavas (or magmas) is the presence of certain minerals: plagioclase feldspar and hydrous minerals (containing water in their mineral structure) such as amphibole (typically hornblende) or biotite mica. If the dacite is hot and dry (lacking in water), you would expect to find pyroxene in the lava as well, although it is common in almost all dacites that even have hydrous minerals. Typically, dacite erupt anywhere from 800 to 1000 degrees Celsius. The intrusive equivalent for a dacite is granodiorite.

Dacite lava hand sample, with abundant amphibole and plagioclase feldspar.

Dacite is found in a wide variety of tectonic settings but is most common in continental subduction zone/arc settings, such as the Andes or the Cascades. They tend to be products of magma mixing or crustal assimilation (by another magma) to form the dacite. The types of eruptions that dacite magma produces can vary from lava flows and domes (effusive, passive eruptions) to explosive, plinian-style eruptions - but they are most famous for the explosive eruptions like Mount St. Helens, Lassen Peak and Unzen in Japan (see below).

Pyroclastic flows from Mt. Unzen in Japan. A flow like this killed the Kraffts in 1991.

However, there are impressive effusive dacite lavas flows, such as the Chao Dacite and Volcan Aucanquilcha (see below) in Chile and Llao Rock at Crater Lake, where minor explosive deposits preceded the lava flows that stretch upwards of 5-10 km from the vent. These lava flows are usually steep-sided with well-formed levees on the sides and pressure ridges along the flow tops (see below). It is thought that dacite lava flows or domes form when the magma is allowed to degas before erupting, allowing for a passive rather than explosive eruption.

Dacite lava flows on Volcan Aucanquilcha, Chile. Note the steep sides of the flows coming from from the main summit. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image by Erik Klemetti.

Dacite tend to be a "garbage bag" of minerals - they have collected a variety of crystals from different sources. These sources include the active magma of the eruption in question (phenocrysts), crystals from previous magmatism at the volcano (antecrysts) and wholly unrelated crystals (xenocrysts). This mixing creates disequilibrium, where minerals only stable in one condition find themselves in another, creating impressive reaction textures (see below). This variety of crystals supports the ideas that many dacites are the product of magma mixing.

Amphibole crystal breaking down in a mixed dacite from Volcan Aucanquilcha, Chile. The interior is cored with biotite mica, iron-titanium oxide (such as magnetite), and quartz, while the outer roughly hexagonal shape is amphibole. The clear crystals along the edge of the grain are formed from the breakdown of the larger amphibole crystal when it is in disequilibrium. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image by Erik Klemetti.

eklemetti Sun, 07/04/2010 - 22:25

Erik, it might not be a bad idea, when describing a rock like this, to give the names for equivalent composition medium and coarse grained intrusives.

Excellent idea Erik!!
This is exactly what I need!

Very nice post. I would also add that the word "Dacite" comes from Dacia, an ancient land north of the Danube, in an area of what is now Romania. It was first described in Romania (Romanian word is spelled "Dacit") in the Neogene volcanic complex of the Eastern Carpathians.

Oh, good stuff! Thanks.

Gee, this is great. It's just like being an undergrad again. No wonder I was happy then, with the earth divided into reasonable chunks of rock and unreasonable time periods. There's something so comforting about mineralogy and petrology and all matters geologic in a world of idiotic politics, wars, and pop culture. I'm serious! Whenever I feel confused I go out in the field and ponder erosion features, stream gradients, and rubble deposits, and lug home metamorphic cobbles, which are the most mysterious objects I know of. No kidding!

Yes, thank you for the definition, added to my definitions folder. :-)

Good point, Fireman. I've added this to the definition.

Great idea and work to get these main volcanic features together like in an encyclopedia!

Fantastic, Erik! Great idea to have the definitions and pictures of what you are talking about. Although I took geology, that was forty years ago and I have forgotten a lot of it.

@Bo Moore #5, I can't agree with you more! My DH and I like to go to the river early when no one else is there and it is so peaceful. We like to pan for gold and check out the rock in the river. We see a lot of different things in the river such as lava bombs and jasper. A lot of quartz and limestone. Once in a while you will have a really cool find as I did at a confluence of two forks of the river: a fairly large rock of yellow jasper. I intended to take it out and forgot it. I could kick myself for that one.

I have a metamorphic rock I took out of an ignious dike. I showed it to my geology teachers and they told me it was metamorphic and when I told them where I got it, they didn't believe me. The dike was a place they sent all of us to see what it was like and I found that rock in the dike. It was different and I kept telling them it was from the dike. They were puzzled by that one.

Erik, when you talk about "hydrous minerals (containing water in their mineral structure)" I understand that water molecules take part of the chemical structure, am I correct? Different from free water bubbles mixed in explosive viscous magmas? If so, does this chemically-bound water take part on the "explosiveness" of the extruding lava?

2010-07-05 14:50:45.6 (2hr 20min ago) 71.67 N 5.35 W 2km4.3 - JAN MAYEN ISLAND REGION
(http://www.emsc-csem.org/index.php?page=home#2)
This EQ hasn't yet be confirmed by USGS

Be careful about picking up rocks! : 0 ;)

05/07/2010 | 08:00 Iceland Review
Jinxed Lava Nugget Returned
A British tourist has returned a piece of lava which he removed without permission, visir.is reports. He believed the stone to be the source of all his recent calamities. The lava has now been returned, flown by helicopter to the eruption site at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull glacier.

After suffering blows both in his private and professional life, the tourist decided to send the nugget to the University of Icelandâs Institute of Earth Sciences, requesting that it be returned to its proper place.

âHe was not joking,â said Rikke Pedersen, a specialist at the institution. âHe had been traveling around Iceland with his family and since then, all kinds of bad things began happening to him. He was convinced that if he returned the nugget, everything would return to normal.â
Pedersen received the rock along with a letter explaining the situation. This week, she brought it to the Iceland Tourist Assistance. There, the staff got in touch with Nordurflug Flight Company who flew it to the eruption site, which contains Icelandâs freshest lava.

In Iceland, rocks are part of the folklore.

Excellent! like #4 this is a nice escape into the world of an
undergrad, I almost switched my major to Geology, but didn't.
I probably wouldn't have used the Degree anyway like I didn't use my B.S. in Biology...

>I have a metamorphic rock I took out of an igniousigneous dike

Could be evidence of contact metamorphism, where hot igneous intrusion(some 1200 degrees C) heats host rock, transforming it. It occurs at shallow depths.

It's not a new concept (dates to early 20th century), and has been described for small intrusions as well as large plutons.

Maybe your rock was displaced and carried to the location you found it, which caused some confusion over it's origin.

Nice question Renato! As a quick answer: yes and no. I'll start with the "no" - the molecular water in the crystalline structure doesn't directly take part in making an eruption explosive as such as it is bound up in the crystal (not as bubbles in the mineral or magma). However, usually it takes higher water content in the magma (as bubbles when they exsolve/come out of solution) for these minerals to form in the first place, so the "yes" is that hydrous minerals are a marker for water/volatile-rich magma.

Often or not, useful most certainly.

Aside: Up here, 'lÃparÃt' (derived from Lipari) is a term used for silica-rich types like rhyolite, dacite and benmoreite, according to a glossary my sister bought last week.

#15 Thank, you Erik. I've been struggling with this question for a long time. Eagerly waiting for another "word of the day". Thanks again.

Does anyone knew why
http://www.intlvrc.org/news.htm

dosen't work any more?

Walter, I'm guessing it has something to do with this ongoing saga:

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2010/06/arizona_republic_a…

Thanks for the post, Eric, keep them coming.

Let's try a slightly different approach.

You got your basic tool chest volcanology glossary from SI-GVP.

vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/volcano_terminology.html

Oregon State also has one:
volcano.oregonstate.edu/education/glossary.html

The problem with these glossaries is that the definitions are a tad too brief, and the explanation pages (hyperlinked on GVP) are WAAAAY too complex.

Enter Erik, with his explanatory pages.

You ask Lee at GVP, real nicey nicey, if you can collaborate on a little NSF education proposal, to provide an *intermediate* level of technical term definitions in an online format. The individual term def pages are provided piecemeal by you, Erik, through a serial posting on this website and they are permanently hosted by SI-GVP.

I like the idea of your def webpages getting feedback from the professionals via this forum. That way, you got your bases covered with respect to covering the important bits.

It would also be good to see these def pages hosted on a more permanent platform like GVP, rather than on a blog.

I see that as a win-win situation for you and SI.

I've been doing some catching up on the last few days... Thanks to Raving on June 30, I followed your link, and EMF theory and methodology are now much clearer to me and I now know what a nano Tesla is! It will be interesting to see if they can get back to Volcano Island in October for the next planned study.

July 1 comments were fantastic, that one day alone would have hooked me into "Eruptions" even without an ongoing eruption to follow.

I like Carl's idea of vorticity in the mantle. The idea that a vortex could become self generating by pulling in colder mantle material and then warming it by friction makes some sort of sense. Hurricanes can grow by pulling in warm air from the water surface, and firestorms, manmade or natural, by pulling in cold oxygen rich air to fuel the central combustion. Both are vortices but in a different medium and timescale.

Great idea Erik. Petrology was more than 20 years ago for me, so the review is much appreciated.

Dear Eruptions: Have being looking in I.T. for a web site or page in which it appears Volcanology terms abbreviate for example:V.E.I.= Volcan Explosivite Index.
Thank You very much.
Sincerely Yours.
Frojan, J.J.

GVP Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for June 23-29, 2010

eklemetti — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:25:26 +0000

GVP Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for June 23-29, 2010

Just a reminder, if you any questions for Sally Kuhn Sennert of the Smithsonian/USGS Global Volcanism Program - about the Weekly Report, about life at the GVP, about volcanoes - be sure to send them to me soon at .

Now, on to this week's update!

Some highlights (not including Gorely):

Lahars from Tungurahua in Ecuador moved blocks upwards of 2 m in diameter downstream over the last week and ash fall was reported over 20 km from the volcano's vent. For some reason, FoxNews decided to use an image of Tungurahua for an article on stats of natural disasters in 2009 - nice image, but the volcano isn't mentioned anywhere but in the captions.
Small ash-and-steam clouds were spotted at Karymsky in Kamchatka over the last week, reaching upwards of 10 km / 32,000 feet. This goes with the current activity at Kliuchevskoi and Shiveluch, both of which are experiencing explosions produced ash-and-steam columns that reach over 7 km / 22,000 feet. I've been trying to figure out the situation at KVERT now that we've past the date on which they said they would be "closed" due to lack of funding, but no luck. I did notice that the statement about the closure was removed on June 28 from the June 24 update, but that is as far as I've gotten. Anybody have any more insight?
Kirishima in Japan might have has a small eruption on June 28, however the details are scant at best.

eklemetti Thu, 07/01/2010 - 04:25

Would someone like to look at the Porosfelli cam, and the heat cam? I have been checking this for some hours to make sure I am not mistaken (but could be). There seems to torrents of water flowing in front of Lady E and a smoke plume travelling from left to right (that is also the wind direction) that is traversing over the top of the Eyjaf crater.

At first I thought it had to be cloud, but now I am really not so sure. Is there any indication on the tremor measurements that might suggest activity around Katla?

After hours of checking on what looked very much like an ash plume from something to the left of Eujaf, it appears to be settling - but if someone is still recording time lapse at the poro cam, please do take a look. No doubt there will be more if it is an eruption close by.

There are gale warnings for Iceland for today,July 1, so tremor plots may not be very useful. Could be gusts of wind blowing ash/dust up as well. There does seem to be some steam, near the crater lake or at least near that area-its hard to tell with the camera angle.

hey, you are right about the steam from the left side of the old crater rim..
there has been some earthquakes lately, that probably has opened some hot steampockets and small fissures, so steam and hot air can rise up under the ice..
but yes its steaming goood, and Its probably very very hot indeed,.

and here comes the water down GigjÃ¶kull!!!

Can Zombies survive volcanic eruptions?

-If they not are staying near the explotions and near or in the lavaflow or pyroclastic flow..Then Zombies can survive a volcanic eruption..Just as humans does,or animals for that matter..

but why asking about zombies??

Anyways I think, im pulling back the water post,

- It was just steam,I think ,even tough I swear it looked like water flowing down the glacier(GigjÃ¸kull),can anybody confirm or bust me on that one or is it plausible that it actually was some water flowing??..

@#1, #2, #3, #6 - No

Lady E is steaming nicely and every now and then water gets into the lava trench, which appears to be pretty hot and is steaming very well, too.

The hurricane force winds around ThÃ³rÃ³lfsfell (and it's Thorolfsfelli, Jules, if you can't do copy paste; the first letter is what used to be 'thorn' in Old English) have played havoc with good viewing today.

@Thor - I've been following the passage of water down the GigjÃ¶kull lava trench, trying to spot places where the flow gets dammed, trying to estimate the probability of a jÃ¶kullhlaup. One of the best indicators of water passage is, indeed, the steam emitted, and that is the only way to see it, until it bursts out at the end of GigjÃ¶kull.

Hi folks !,

Just found this http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=29314&ew_…

@Adrian -

That article is one way to look at things; the other opposite is the Japanese way: according to their counting, Shakurajima has erupted about 600 times - this year. Apparently, if there is a lull of a few hours, the next spew of ash counts as a different eruption. (IMO, Shakurajima has been erupting for ages)

Umm,thats a very good point Kultsi; so,using Japanese reasoning,Eyja can't be too far behind Shakurajima!(I do like a bit of a contest,hehe).

Thor, re Zombies, check this blog for today:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

Impressive view on MÃºlakot cam!
http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalmulaen.html

If anyone is interested in current Iceland water/floods/water, check out the Skafta River, which flow comes out of Lake Grimsvotn in the middle of the Vatnajokull Glacier. It has been flooding, which is normal in the summer time, but since its partially glacier fed it may indicate one of the several volcanoes under that ice cap are heating up.

Ok, now it's gone, but I got an image of it:
http://picasaweb.google.com/110366256140084081552/Eyjaf#548909439380714…

Hey, random thing not really related to EJ or the post.

I'm currently in Kihei, Maui, HI, and will probably be travelling up to the top of Haleakela Saturday or Sunday morning. Of course, I'll be after sunrise pictures (and some night sky if the moon cooperates), but if there's anything in particular you folks here would like a shot of, I'll do my best. Remember, though, I'm just a guy with a camera, so it's not like I've got a back-stage pass or anything.

Regardless, I'll post whatever pictures I get. I plan on doing at least a little hiking in and around the crater, weather permitting. I just wanted to offer a little something back for all the fun times you guys have given with regards to the Iceland eruption.

Anyway, either post here (I'm day-tripping to Lana'i Friday, but I'll check back before I head up the hill) or email me at dstarfire (at) hotmail (dot) com if you've got anything particular.

The 600 count for Sakurajima is for explosions. The volcano has been in nearly continuous eruption since 1955, and that is counted as one eruption.

Renato, that looks like a huge tornado on top of the volcano. Wait, is that Dorothy? And Toto too? :)

#18 Yeah, Dan, just waiting for her to come from somewhere over the rainbow... ;)

"Alex may continue to spawn isolated tornadoes today over South Texas and northern Mexico." Wunder Blog Weather

@20 And I have relatives in both places, but all is well so far.

#21 That's not to worry, I'm sure the worst is gone for them. But Surges are not helping much for oil spreading, but looks like Florida is being spared for the moment.

https://twitter.com/fitumitradingco

Oh yah eh

Iceland, cumulative quake energy, 15 minute binning window + 48 hour moving average.

http://i49.tinypic.com/10iat7n.png

... so. They gather up about 40 to 50 thousand sea turtle eggs and move them to a part of Florida unaffected by the oil. If, as I have seen mentioned elsewhere, the turtles know what beach to lay their egg on by navigating back to where they hatched... does that mean that some stretch of beach is soon to inherit a large influx of native turtles? Turtles that will return come egg laying time?

And a cross section from Eyj to Grim looking North. Period 06/20/10 01:48:30 to 07/2/10 04:06:21.

http://i48.tinypic.com/n2ykax.png

Last Updated: 07/01/2010 18:50 GMT
Substantial ash storm is now under EyjafjÃ¶llum. Ãlafur Eggertsson farmer in Ãorvaldseyri says that nothing has rained. Very windy is in these areas and has Hvid exceeded 40 meters per second. He says that the ride is dust, ash and sand that blow to the ground and damaging trees and bushes, and leaves of tÃ¦tist eyÃ°ileggist. There is not any way to be outdoors unless it be well-armored in the sand so the wind is full of travel in front of people. Visibility is about 300 meters.
frettir@ruv.is

@Lurking #24 #25 How does it look for you? Seems to me the shaking is somewhat less frequent?

@Lurking:
Thank you for the E to GrimsvÃ¶tn graph, it kind of clarified one thing that I have suspected since I was recuperating from Midsummer-partying. I had mentally maped into my poor (then) hungover brain to ask if you could do a picture like that, and here it is without me asking:) Are you a mind-reader?
I have been working on a fluid-motion/stress-tensor modell for that part of Iceland in particular and Iceland in general based on a modell for how ice behaves when breaking apart. The results was pretty odd, but that picture actually showed that I at least am not that totally off and that you can use the ice-modell for calculating the fluid motion patterns of Iceland out of it. Problem was that I used pen and paper for my calculations (normal for me) so getting that into a nice computer picture for all was beyond me. Thanks!

I will write a short summary on my thoughts after some more coffee. I had originally planned to actually write something more substantial for you all to laugh at, but due to changing conditions I do not have time any longer. My plan to retire at the old age of 38 failed after only four weeks:(
My friends are laughing their pants off right now since they hade a book running on how long I would stand sitting on my buttocks doing nothing...

GrimsvÃ¶tn-Askja Vortex Plume, part 1

The local tectonics of Iceland bear a strong resemblance to ice breaking up in moving low salt ocean water where a large sheat of ice is being pulled apart in two different directions.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Iceland_Mid-Atlantic…
As seen in the image-link above there is a strong motion (2.5cm year) apart of the eastern and western parts. It is also possible to see a large fractured part in the middle that is also modeleable according to ice-fracturing.

Here one should make an exception to the ice-modell, iceland has been around long enough to actually be reshaped by the pent up pressures, ice is not around long enough for that to happen in the modell I am using.
The result of this is that mid-atlantic-rift here is bent strongly. Out of this we can deduce some things.

1. As the bend progresses it becomes to far stretched and the fracture should become detached from the main band and "die out" over time. Which is shown on this image:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Volcanic_system_of_Iceland-Map-en.svg
Look at the ÃraefajÃ¶kull belt, that is probably the original part of the MAR before it started to bend wildly across Iceland.

2. As the ÃraefajÃ¶kull belt moved far enough the Vestmannaeyjar/GrimsvÃ¶tn/GrimsÃ¶y-line opened up and was then the actual part belonging to MAR propper. But as motion of that line went to far a new line was formed from Reykjaness Ridge, but instead of going straight it fractured its way up to GrimsvÃ¶tn, something that will have large implications in the next posting.

3. A new line should soon (geologically speaking) open up from the northern tip of the WVZ to KolbinsÃ¶y-ridge since the pent up east to west-skewing energy is to large in the Reykjaness Peninsula to Hekla area to be contained for long. When and if that happens there will probably be an epoch of rapid tectonic movement as the pent up stresses quickly releases, partnered with very large magmatic release. Something that probably happened back when the Reykjanes Ridge to GrimsvÃ¶tn opened up. Please note that the main bulk of the magma then did not come up for obvious reasons in the RR to GrimsvÃ¶tn line, instead it of course flowed up in the line from GrimsvÃ¶tn to KolbinsÃ¶y line.

After that diversion, back to the GAVP.
(I will post that in a new posting since I do not know how long posts are possible)

GrimsvÃ¶tn-Askja Vortex Plume, part 2

The main part of storing energy in the Icelandic tectonic system is in lines going west to east where the plates rub against each other causing tension stresses, which are released in larger earthquakes now and then. The figures I used for the pent up energy is to be found here:
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/skyrslur/June17and21_2000/index.html

I then recalculated those nombers as a whole for the RR to GrimsvÃ¶tn line.

That pent up energy gives the energy potential for the Vestmannaeyjar to to KolbinsÃ¶y line and the WVZ combined. The pent up tension-stress is of course translated into negative values since we are here talking of something as basic as suction when the parts are pulled apart.
When Ice is torn apart water is pulled up into the crack by this suction-force, here it is magma pulled up, but the principle is the same.

Then we can go into simple fluid dynamics. A rule of thumb is that we will get small vorticii in the water sucked up and that these will be spread out evenly if the fracture is straight-lined. If it is not we will get differently sized Vorticii. The power of the vortex increases with the angle of any corner-structure in the ice, and if the corner is at 90 degrees the vortex will be squared compared to a straight-line vortex. In this case we have 2 (almost) 90 degree corners adding up the power. The vortex thusly created is so powerfull that it can and will controll any other vorticii in the straight-line zone that is ripping apart.
I am not here going to explain why vorticii is always going to start in fluid dynamics, that is really school-book physics and I am pressed for time today.

So what is so wonderfull with a Vortix?
Well it can explain a few things. If a vortex like that exists (remember that this is a theoretical modell based on fluid dynamics using calculations normally used on Ice and water, not magma) it explains a few things and makes one prediction (possible to falsify).
The pent up energy in the RR to GrimsvÃ¶tn line is large enough to sustain a vortex streatching from GrimsvÃ¶tn up to Askja, the spead of outer edge movement would be 10cm a year, and it sucks up an average of five centimetres of magma per year, and the area is large so we are talking about something rather massive here. That sucked up magma then spreads out from the Vortex when it hits the crust. When I did the first calculations I got a number for how much Iceland could be sucked up to be between 25 to 100 metres. Then someone posted a link from BBC that gave the actual number to be 50 metres.

(Next instalment, What does Vorticiis have to do with Volcanos?)

GrimsvÃ¶tn-Askja Vortex Plume, part 3

So what did this all have to do with a Volcano?
Well, a large vortix sucking up water is not so bad when we are talking about fracturing ice. But things change if we add one factor. Let's say that it is really cold and that the water in the fracture almost emediatly freezes over creating a new (thinner) ice-layer. That is what is happening here, almost emediatly the upwelling magma cools of and solidifies into new crust. But the water, sorry magma is still welling up and wants to surface. And it will at the weakest points, and those will be found where the outer edge of the vortix (fastest moving, highest energy) meet the fracture in the ice.
In this case that would be the GrimsvÃ¶tn volcanic system and the volcanic system around Askja.

Sub-vorticii:
Any main vortix will dominate any other vortix that is along the straight-line fracture. There is a mathematical rule that tells us that from a large vortix there will be subvorticiis in a progression outwards and that those are calculable to be the power potential times (in relation) both distance and sub-energy-potential and that is relative to the mathematical irrational constant of approximately 1.6180339887 (I know, but nature really loves that one).
When you calculate it the main southern sub-vortix would be quite a distance away around where one finds Katla. (The same proportionality actually goes for Katlas little slave vortix EyjafjallajÃ¶kull.) The main subvortix is about one quarter in energy potential to the Main-vortex (give or take 25 percent). So that is why E has one quarter of Ks energy-potential, next in line would be HeimÃ¶y then.
Northward we have Krafla and so on.

So what has this to do with a plume?
Well the suction force is so large that it will start a very deep-going vortix. If you want to you can see it as an inverted tornado, sucking up magma from far below (ground) up to the surface (cloud). Albeit here surface is the core boundary and the surface is either crust or actual surface during an eruption.

This gives that we are here talking about a plume that is actually generated at the surface, and not at the bottom as the standard modell plumes generating heatspots. The standard modell plumes move over time so you get timelined volcanos (Hawaii for instance) as the heatspot generated by the plume moves since the plume is "anchored" to the bottom at the core boundary.
Here instead we are talking about a plume that (for now at least) is anchored to the surface, that is why we are not seeing any timelined volcanos on Iceland. Though we are seeing timelined volcano-bands as I talked about in part 1.

Now someone will probably say that GrimsvÃ¶tn and Askja has different magmatic composition, and that is probably true. Does this falsify the theory? No, not really. One has to keap in mind that we are talking about a large slowly turning (in human time-understanding) vortex that is succing magma over a large distance of depth, in that vortix you are bound to have "globs" of different origin. But if someone finds lava that is wildly out of line it probably would put the entire theory in jeopardy (I suspect Eric will shot this theory in the foot about here).

So, what does this help? Well, if one want to one can calculate the tension-break points for the intersections of the fractures and the vorticiis. There is probably a pretty distinct height that those parts of Iceland can stand before breaking. Let's say that Askja can be lifted 10cm before magma is pushed up starting an eruption. That number would have to be calculated from the zero level and not todays plus 50 number, but that is just a small problem mathematically. The real problem is to calculate with any grade of exactitude the point of breaking for Askja.
But, when an area is lifted enough it will erupt, release enough of lava to lower to magma level-pressure untill the vortix has moved and sucked up new magma and it all starts over again.

My guess is that this entire area is allways very close to the breaking point and that is why the period of increasing signs of eruption is in many cases so short on iceland. Just think about it, if all that is neaded is a couple of centimetres over a (comparatively) small area just one little wave can tip the waggon and start an eruption in minutes.

It wass rather fun to think about this, I am probably wrong, and you are all welcome to shot me in the fot now. I am sorry though that I didn't have time to write a proper paper about this presenting the graphs for it, and of course the mathematical formulae, but I guess that most of you can deduce those on your own.

Oh, and thanks Lurking (whomever you might be) for that wonderfull image showing the vorticiis of "GrimsvÃ¶tn-Askja", Katla and the sub-slave EyjafjallajÃ¶kull.
http://i48.tinypic.com/n2ykax.png

Oh, and by the way, if I should do a prediction out of this my little theory, it would be that the likelyhood of the next eruption on Iceland would be either around GrimsvÃ¶tn or Askja, and the statistical likelihood is 42 percent and that the apparant pent up energy is large, so that would probably be a VEI-3 or larger and will release a larger than average amount of lava. The likelihood of this happening within 15 years is 73 percent.
But the margins for error is massive since I haven't been able to calculate the fracture points...

@Carl That makes sense to me, though I'm no expert, and it would explain the strange "mantle plume" behavior ("the plume is "anchored" to the the surface" ).
I have my own inferred suspicions that next eruption was to take place in the region you mentioned, just didn't know why. Now you got me into this. Good job.
@Lurking: Thanks once more to the invaluable contributions.

English version of @32
02/07/2010 | 14:00
Ash Storm under EyjafjallajÃ¶kull
Last night, a severe ash storm raged in the area around EyjafjallajÃ¶kull glacier, ruv.is reports. According to the farmer at Thorvaldseyri Ãlafur Eggertsson, it has not rained.

The area was extremely windy with gusts exceeding 40 meters per second [89 mph and it's still blowing hard this morning by Thoro cam]. Dust, ash and sand were being blown around, causing damage to trees and bushes with leaves shredding and being destroyed.

There is no way to stay outdoors if not well prepared, since in a storm such as this one, the sand hits peopleâs faces with full force, Eggertsson explained.

The visibility last night was approximately 300 meters.

@31 Carl,
You have to understand the situation is not analogous to ice (solid) floating on water (liquid). There is not a vast ocean of magma beneath the crust. The mantle beneath the crust is crystalline rock, but it does flow (as a solid) very slowly at the correct pressures and temperatures.
Where plates pull apart(such as in Iceland), what is pulling apart is the crust with the very top part of the mantle. Deeper mantle will well up into the area and the rock will melt a bit as it rises. That's the source of the magma.
Iceland has more melting and heat flow than the other parts of the Mid-Atlantic ridge, such areas are "hotspots". This hotspot has been attributed to a "mantle plume", which again is not rising hot magma, but solid, crystalline, yet plastic and flowing rock from deep in the Earth.
There is quite a bit of study of mantle flow, geophysics can image it because the mineral crystals deform and align, which affects the behavior of seismic waves passing through.
Also, the plume model for Hawaii assumes the plume is fixed in place, there is a linear chain of islands because the plate moves over it. Imagine holding a pen in one place, pointing up. Then move a paper over it -same idea.

@Carl. I think your theory is intriguing. I'm not by any means an expert, but I'm pretty good at seeing connections. (think Podkayne of Mars ;-D) As I've been reading the papers over the last few months, it appears that there is no certainty over plume vs MAR as the source of magma. This would explain the confusion-- a vortex. (Albeit very slooooowww). My (current) understanding of the mantle is that it's semi-solid (mushy ice). So I guess the question may be: what's the take of someone who understands fluid dyanamic?

I keep thinking that the rotation of the earth has got to be bumping the mantle around so that it circulates like the oceans, and massive earthquakes now and then cause waves through the mantle. Then, these waves hit the equivalent of blow-holes (volcanoes, rifts) and the magma starts rising. Your vortex theory would make the mixing-up of plume magma, MAR magma, and local rock explain the differences between the various lava compositions.

Hmm. More thinking and research.

@Ekoh:

Yes, I am aware of the semi-solid state of the mantle. Thing is that what we in ordinary life concieve as the "solid" part of the word semi-solid is not at all solid. They are just less viscous than pure non-solids like water. But if you go into the geological scale the difference between a semi-solid like the mantle and the non-solid like water is none at all. The mantle behaves exactly as a fluid in longer timespans.

But you are very much correct in me being unclear concerning mantle and magma interaction, I am very much an amateur concerning that. Regarding fluidity in solids, non-solids and semi-solids I am not.
You are also correct in that I knowingly stretched the Ice-water/magma-crust analogy quite a bit, but I tried to explain in things in laymans terms. There are differences, but the fluid dynamic model from ice-water that I used is still quite aplicable for semi-solids interacting with solids. It is as I said, just a question of the timescale, and here we are talking about 100Ks of years...

Concerning Hawaii, I wrote that it is fixed in the coreboundary, which if I have understood plume-theory is where it is suposed to be attached, and I wrote that it is the upper part that progresses. What I was probably unclear about is that the plates glide over the mantle, mea culpa:)

For those who want a more earthly example of what I am talking about, if you remember your school science you will remember that the flow-rate of silicate-glasses are one millimetre per hundred years in supension-state. And that is counted as a solid since it is in a chrystalline lattice.

I am quite certain that the physics is correct, the things I worry about is the geological facts.

hi does anyone have a link/sat/webcam to show above volcano E would be nice to see above on a clear day

Eyjafj webcam shows past eruptions maybe useful if you have not got, http://www.vodafone.is/eldgos/en

@Carl #36 are you talking about how window glass flows and using that as an analogy for the mantle's crystaline state, yet being able to flow as glass?

I am wondering about the vortex idea and how much the rotation of the earth can affect that and also the tilt of the axis. I would expect if there is any affect at all, it would not be dramatic from our perspective, but it may be from a geological perspective. Now what would cause some of the magma to be so fluid it runs like pancake syrup out of a bottle and at other times it is like holding a catcup bottle waiting for something to come out and you end up having to bang on the side or bottom of the bottle to get it to come out? I know it has different chemical make-up. The more silicic it is the more viscous it is. How does your vortex (I think of eddies)theory fit into this senario? Also you have to figure in all the gases that come along with the magma. I would think if there was a lot of gas, it would affect the vorticii. When it boils down to it, we really don't know exactly how things are working below the crust, though we do have some ideas about it based on what we see when there is an eruption and also what we see from studying areas that have had a lot of eruptions.

There is so much we don't know and I know you agree with that. I don't have a very good grasp of physics as I did not take it in high school. I did have some in college, but I don't remember anything about water-ice interactions. What I had was just a basic course and then a course called Electron Optics. And all that was 30 years ago. LOL

I will say I do know something about vorticii, though, of a different kind. I was taking flying lessons and my instructor and I were coming in for a landing behind a Piper Cherokee or Dakota (I think it was the Dakota) and all at once our little Cessna 152 started bouncing around and behaving sort of weird. I asked my instructor what that was all about and he told me it was the vorticii from the wings of the plane ahead of us. I can tell you I did not like that at all. I have been told that a 757's wing vorticii can flip a 737. You really get them when the plane is flying hot, heavy, and slow. They teach you how to avoid the problem by either landing in front of where the plane in front of you landed or waaaay behind it. Otherwise, you may find yourself up-side-down.

Vorticii are powerful whether you are talking about water, air, or maybe even magma. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some very slow eddies in magma, but it is so thick and crystaline that it may not work as I don't think there are any vorticii in window glass. But you never know. What could be going on at the molecular level? I have seen the original glass double doors at Jefferson's home Monticello and you can see the waviness in the glass. BTW, you open one of the doors and the other one opens as they are driven by a figure 8 chain under the floor. Original chain, too. If you have never been to Monticello, do go if you can. It is a really neat place.

Here's a Mulakot webcam time-lapse of yesterday's dust storm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzOmr6u8k5E
You wouldn't want to be out in that!

@dt9Rotterdam -

No, I would not want to be out in that - although at MÃºlakot it was... pretty tame, as inferred from other data.

I appreciate the fact that our storms very, very seldom reach 25 m/s, compared to 40 m/s in gusts in this one.

@dt9Rotterdam -

No, I would not want to be out in that - although at MÃºlakot it was... pretty tame, as inferred from other data.

I appreciate the fact that our storms very, very seldom reach 25 m/s, compared to 40 m/s in gusts in this one.

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/ click on the home page and look for eyjafjall webcam its shows video footage one i like most was Eyjafjallajokull at the crater

OT:

Just plain odd. Using the USGS data, this is a plot of the number of days between quakes mag 6.9 or above, world wide.

http://i49.tinypic.com/15d50mv.png

The odd part is 1988 to 1990. Any Geo specialists around then care to elaborate what was going on? Major shift in technology and/or resources?

Just curious.

Apologies if these have already been posted, but there are some awesome photos taken of Yasur in Vanuatu.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/volcano-bombs-eruption.html

@44: data gaps, 1986-1990, and outlier bias.

So I guess that makes this a lunch bias for Iceland...

11:00 to 12:00, look for 18 to 21 km deep quakes.

http://i50.tinypic.com/ve4zsj.png

Magnitude isn't so weird.... not a real specific cluster at midnight or lunch.

http://i50.tinypic.com/dos7c3.png

(bored s'less)

Sampling temporal duration isn't long enough to establish a trend, because there could be confounding factors, like seasonal (temperature, melting, wind) bias, or sources of electronic (false signal positives) errors*. You also have questionable data quality in negative magnitudes reported.

*Could have bias from ongoing regional geothermal project construction during this period.

Another source of induced analysis bias is the smoothing window selected.

All your data is telling you is that there isn't much of a discernible pattern of distribution about the average.

Is the distribution of values 'normal' (natural phenomena usually post as normal or log normal distributions)?

(on boredom, you too could be writing reports on WNV, be glad)

Nonetheless, I still think there is a trend for lunch. Lunch is always a good thing. It give you a chance to ponder the 200 miles you put down that morning and contemplate what exactly you are gonna do once you get there.

I hate road days, but they pay well.

And... the lunchtime cluster is amusing. As for the smoothing window, that's the line, the raw data are the dots. Dunno if I can wrangle them into a smiley face though...

Hi to you all !

Quite a good steam plume coming from Eyja,now visible on Thoro cam.

POPO is glowing again though not as vigorously as last week.

I think he'll let out a blast or 2 sometime this summer.

Just after I posted I went back, there must have been clouds before because the glow is now quite strong.
It is reflecting off the billowing material(steam?) for probably hundreds of feet.

@Diane:
Yes, in a way I was thinking about windows flowing like in the Monticello (One of the places I must go to one of these days:). But I was more thinking in the way of a glass rod hanging suspended, the flow pattern is more exact there and you do not have to worry about the glass shattering.
Here I do have to make many sad, the waviness seen in old glass is not glass-flow, it is due to the glass panes having been blown, not floated. Pilkingtons floated glass technic was not invented when Monticello was built.
The way to see glass flow is to measure the top and bottom of old glass, if the top is thinner than the bottom, then you have glass-flow. The waviness and stuff in old glass will rather even out over time than oposite.

Back to the vortex (eddy) thingamabit:)
Yes as you say, we do not really have a clue about how the mantle is built up. We have secondary (tertiary really if you think about it) samples from it, but no real samples from the mantle since no one ever has drilled into it. As far as I know the only real tertiary sample is the drill core one from Kraflas magma-chamber. Otherwise only quartiary samples from the top of volcanos. The rest of it is only deduced theories not tested against reallity.
With the risk of angering Erik here, the only thing we know is that there are gasses, and that the viscosity in the mantle can differ in between placces and that when it cools off (as magma) it can become rhyolitic mush (one sample). Otherwise it might only be nice theories, even though I agree with many of them and that the Krafla drill sample made many of the theories much more likely.
But for all we know the actual mantle might consist of snowman dung for all we know. Science is a hard thing.

Know with that off my chest, back to your question.
Yes, gasses and different viscosities would affect a vortex heavilly since it chanes the rate of possible ascent upwards. Highly viscous gassy material would rise much faster and would probably be what tipped the balance and made the volcano go off. But this is speculation on my part since we do not know enough of the composition of the mantle.

Tilt and rotation caused by earth revolvement.
Yes, you are absolutely correct. A magmatic (Yes Ekoh, I know) vortex would revolve in the same direction as the toilett next to it when flushed.
I am though not so sure of earths polar tilt affecting it though.
Normal plumes are tilted due to tectonic plate movement (If I have understood things correctly), but here we do not have real tectonic movement. What! Am I Crazy? Here we have the mother of all tectonics!
The tectonic movement at the MAR is pretty much the lowest on the planet, due to it being the origin of the american and eurasian plate movement. Yes it moves apart with 2,5cm a year on average, but those the MAR in itself move? I do not know. If the MAR in itself is moving, then we have a tilted plum, if not it might be untilted.
The might be untilted comes from me not really being fully shure about if the MAR, the mantle, and the cores relative speeds. If all of them move in the same speed, Straight vortex. If the MAR is standstill and mantle moves, un-straight. And the most fun of them. Let's say that MAR and Core are same-speed and the Mantle is moving at another speed, then we have a strangely curved vortex that would loose some energy. And this was more idle speculation.

Your airplane analogy is nice, the energy in a vortex can be tremendous, if there is a vortex like that between GrimsvÃ¶tn and Askja then it is so powerrfull that it has lifted the entire Iceland and a large portion outside of it 50 metres from just the shear upwelling force of it. Really humbling if you think of it.

@#48 Hi Lurking,

Your last comment,in brackets,sums things up perfectly.

Lurking, what you are seeing in your plot is a cessation of the lowest level seismic signals. You have it again at 7pm. You have a minor opposite in the early hours. For the geotech folk, it is typically interpreted as a change in background level - ie, noise within raw data, bias from human activity.

Rock embedded piping will resonate with major changes in heat flow. We see these in water demand plots. A serious chunk of the population gets it's hot water and heat in Southern Iceland from long, long network runs of geothermal system piping. That would bias a large portion of the seismic detection network, the SIL.

*squint* Get a clue: if I use a statistical term like 'smoothing window', ya think I might know a bit about data plotting??

In this case, you, like Carl, are chasing red herrings with his vortices and flowing glass.

Window glass doesn't flow perceptibly, even over many hundreds of years- it's another of the endless physics myths that is perpetuated by the public.

http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/mirrors/physicsfaq/General/Glass/glass.html

Ed, a geology expert who knows a bit about mantle processes (he's a petrologist), tactfully dispatched Carl's theory'. Carl didn't get the clue. Now he is prattling on about 'How Much We Don't Know', the fallback of the science-naive public when their ignorance is laid bare.

What's happening at Mulakot? Lots of people, cars and truck are there now and were there yesterday. Conference? Science Club? Fishing?
http://www.mulakot.net/myndavelar.html

@#57 Hi Jane,

Mulakot is primarily an airfield so im surmising that the activity is "aircraft orientated".The weather is pretty bad though.

@passerby. I guess the question is (as a beginner): Has anyone applied fluid dynamics to the movement of the mantle and plates? Solids move, albeit slowly. I think pointing Carl in the direction of geophysicists who use fluid dynamics might be more useful than just shutting him down. -)

Hi Carl. Intriguing ideas and thank you. Although my primary degrees are in biochemistry and related sciences, I have spent a lot of time lately studying theories of bioenergetics, which first took me in the direction of particle and theoretical physics, and now I am looking at the earthâs regulatory systems on a macro level, ie considering the earth as a living entity in itself. I am trying to gain a greater understanding of earthquakes and eruptions as part of the earths self correction mechanisms, especially during a period of global warming, but need to gain a greater understanding of the geophysics of earths itself as a starting point. I hope that some of the real experts here will debate your ideas further, and while the model may not be perfect it will be interesting to see why this could not be occurring, if that is the case.

Thanks d9tRotterdam for the Mulakot webcam time-lapse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzOmr6u8k5E. If you look, especially at the early section there is what looks quite like an eruption plume, which at first glance appears to come from Ejaf; the only problem with this is that high winds are blowing from left to right, so it cant be coming from Ejaf. Comments anyone?

The only eruption plume on that video, is the Original plume, wich sits on the top of the main crater.
there is somewhat that looks like steaming from the side, but i recon its only low fog clouds, generated by the mountain and rising air,..

@Jane [57] -

Looks like a party - and like always, the weather participates. :D

@Passerby

"Get a clue"

Nice. You make a blanket statement that dismisses the whole graph and I point out that the raw data is also in there and you take offense?

"...Sampling temporal duration isn't long enough to establish a trend, because there could be confounding factors, like seasonal (temperature, melting, wind) bias, or sources of electronic (false signal positives) errors*. You also have questionable data quality in negative magnitudes reported."

I never claimed to be an expert at seismology and geophysics, I just make plots and ask questions. I don't put forth any ground breaking theories that rattle the framework of human understanding. I just look at data and make plots. The lunch time cluster just looked amusing to me, and since it's at about 18 to 21 km deep.... seemed to be a bit outside of the realm of human activity. I can't hazard a guess as to why... other than possibly being an artifact of someone coming in after lunch and looking at a chart that was spit out while they were absent. It wasn't until I had posted that I noticed that there is a lighter and more diffuse version of the deep lunchtime cluster from midnight to 3 am UTC.

As for Geothermal plant influence, I don't think they drill that deep... 65600 feet would be one very deep well. It would be interesting to read an idea of what mechanism could do that.

The obvious connection is the position of the Sun relative to Iceland.. but as has been pointed out, this is just a fractional slice of time, even though it is over two months long. To incorporate a longer series of observations would require access to data that I don't have. I could disassemble the Icelandic quakes from the Google plugins, but those points seem to have a loss of depth resolution, even for recent data.

In summary, laypeople such as myself rely on people who seem to have a clue to explain the oddities we see. I for one am enjoying the alternative to mantle plume / buried crust block idea as being stated by Carl. And I also enjoy the ideas concerning the extensional movement of Iceland's fault complexes and seismic zones that you have presented.

So... for now I'm just going to go can some pickles.

@62 Kultsi
And they didn't invite us? After all the publicity we have given them? tsk :)

about that vortex theory,.

as I have learned, the MAR(Mid Atlantic Ridge), does not move much, but it moves, it expands and contracts,and shifts directions from time to time, remember that Greenland and North America have colided with Norway(europe) creating the largest mountain range ever created , the caledonian mountain range(it was heven taller than the Himmalayas,the remains are still visible as the SunnmÃ¶rsalps and Langfjella mountain range, and it extends well in to Sweden and Finland, and down to wards the British isles(mountain ranges in Scotland are also a part of that if I dont remember wrong,.

so that means that the MAR, has been contracting, before it started to expand again(why these occur no one really knows)

the MAR, has an arm expanding downwards towards Norway, and outside the Northern Norway lies a gigantic hotspot VÃ¸ring platau)(its not reconed to be hot anymore??) but the caldera there is tremendous 50 Miles wide(Norwegian Mile = 10 Km)
that hotspot caldera(volcano) must have been formed the same way Iceland was formed, maybe by the same hotspot ,and the Hotspot Moved with the MAR, so the Norwegian caldera cooled down, its logic,when the MAR expanded and the continents drifted apart the hotspot plume folowed and later formed Iceland??

and now back to the vortex, deep down there, of course its logic and makes somekind if sence ,the whole mantle and magma moves and rotates, and are effected by the rotation of the planet. as the oceans and Airmass moves,so there must be vortex movement down deep, probably looking much like large hurricanes and lov preassures,and they probaly rotates somewhat the same..
But we must not forget the large tidal wave ,from the moon.. the moon makes a large wave, that move with the moon around the Earth, and it retracts and expands every 6 hours,.
I recon that this is the same deep down under the crust, the pull from the moon and the sun must make a similar wave on the magma??

#63 Gentlemen, please! No grudges. Keep the interesting discussion going. Of course, there are brilliant experts here, to whom we are mostly grateful, but this is not the Academy. After all, what is the purpose of a blog like this? I suppose people are entitled to post their comments freely, and should be glad to be contradicted from those who know more, or at least, who are able to contribute with a different point of view. And in doing so, some light may be cast upon controversial issues concerning the invisible deeds of Mother Nature.
@Lurking's graphs may not be the state of the art, but they help us a lot, computer dummies, to visualize things from a different perspective, and thus, gives room to someone like @Carl to theorize with his own tools, in a brilliant way.
And therefore, thousand thanks to @Passerby whose keen eyes and ears are always attentive to detect whatever slips maybe made regarding scientific procedures.
Could it be any better?
Meanwhile, Lady E still shows signs that she might not be over yet.

btw, could man make a volcano , by drilling? if they drilled deep enough??

@Thor #67 All I can say with my poor Geological knowledge is that they've drilled into magma both in Hawaii and Iceland when exploiting geothermal energy. Well, if you injected water and dug a wider hole, hmmm... I don't think it could lead to anything much different from an eruption. But, to state that would become a real volcano, I don't think I could. I'll try to get the links to these incidents and post them further.

Aircraft... rainbow... horses... steam plume!
EyjafjallajÃ¶kull volcano eruption 3 July 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoM-U0hGORk

http://hvg.heinemann.co.uk/login.aspx youtube How volcanoes form click on this and you will find the page is broken but wait a second or two and scroll down the page

ignore the above link i got it from youtube the above you have to pay just look for it on youtube

god im dumb you can go on the link@ 70 go to the bottom right to his blog

@67 if we drilled in to earth and drilled into hot magma.the hole would cool very rapid and seal almost straight away you would need millions and millions liters of vodka {Topgear} and magma prove drill just to get the tip in it wont happen

ejaf is emitting a nice steam plume best seen on the

EyjafjallajÃ¶kull frÃ¡ Hvolsvelli cam

look at porolf cam mila down to the right that fog thing

so its totaly impossible to make a man made volcano?? im not so sure..

#76 @Thor That's the link to the post I mentioned:
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2009/06/drilling_into_active_magma.php
If they stopped drilling they feared something, didn't they?

oilspill Bp is man made i would class that a volcano.And why would you want to create a man made volcano?looking on the web its already been happening man made volcanoes.
Anyway could this be happening to Eyjafj,One such obstacle is an accumulation of pumice,which can create a massive stoppage in the magma pipes.How ever once the magma finally breaks through its barrier and explosion type eruption will usually takes place. taken from Topbits.com http://www.topbits.com/how-a-volcano-erupts.html

#69 Thanks for the new time-lapse, d9tRotterdam. There are so many details to see in it, I had to replay it a couple of times.

@78

Well... If a volcano is where something fluid/semi-fluid is coming up from the ground. Then yes. But it's more of a man-made Asphalt Volcano. Those occur naturally, but as far as I know, are not as prolific in their activity. In 1906, one probably went off in a violent fashion, but usually they are content to stay in an "ooze" state.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt_volcano

" Using high-resolution sonar equipment, David B. Prior from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and his colleagues identified the crater in 2,176 meters of water southeast of the Mississippi River delta. The elliptical hole measures 280 meters across, 400 meters long and some 58 meters deep, and sits atop a small hill. Downslope lies approximately 2 million cubic meters of ejected sediment.
Because the area is known for its reservoirs of hydrocarbons, Prior surmises these substances caused the explosion that produced the crater. As one possible explanation, he suggests hydrocarbons seeping upward along cracks in the seafloor might have collected under some impermeable barrier until pressure forced the buoyant gas to blow off its cover. Based on the crater's appearance, the researchers think it may be younger than a century old. In 1906, sailors in the area reported seeing bubbling water, which may have been caused by such an eruption."

Science News, Feb 4, 1989

As for the man-made volcano status... it's about as valid a candidate as the Sidoarjo Mud Volcano in Malaysia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidoarjo_mud_volcano

Well... ya got me to reading again.

The Sidoarjo mud volcano, if you can believe data derived from wikipedia, is still at the 100,000 mÂ³/ day flow rate. Over the period o June 06 to Sept 07, about 45,000,000 mÂ³ have come out of the hole. During this time, subsidence is estimated to be between 0.5 to 14.5 m.

Our BP cano... if you use the high FRTG number of 40,000 bbl/day, is at about 457,883 mÂ³ of total flow. 686,825 mÂ³ if you believe the higher flow estimate of 60,000 bbl/day that a University of Georgia scientist stated.

The depth of the fetid fizzling fissure in Sidoarjo was 9,298 feet. The source of BP's boiling pustule is 18,000 feet.

So... BP is over twice the depth, and at 6% to 9% of the flow rate of Sidoarjo. I imagine that things would have to get substantially worse in order for a caldera like depression to start forming at BP's shindig.

@Passerby:
Hm, I think you missed a couple of points in what I wrote.

But that is only good since I obviously was a bit unclear:)

First of all I agree with Ed (I guess that would be Ekoh), he most likely has a good and vallid point. Why? He pointed to something that might actually put my little theory out completely.
What is that then? Simply put (simplified), the internal resistence (friction times pressure) of the semi-solids making up the composition of the mantle might be to large for a vortex to be able to spin up.
But, and this might be a big but that needs a lot of thinking! That would probably make all kinds of plums go out the window. Because if the internal resistance is to big for one type (vortex) than it is likely to be to big for a straight up-welling plume too.
Intriguingly enough Ed pointed out something in what he wrote that is massively interesting and that I did not know. (That is why I love to chat with the real experts when I am out of my own field of expertise.)
The thing he pointed out was that plumes are probably made up out of hotter and more viscous material. What so great with that?
Well, let's say that you had a nice blob of hotter and more viscous material to start with, and that started spinning. Then that would slowly start to suck up the slightly colder and more "un-viscous" material. Whats up with that? Friction! Friction equals energy production, and that energy can only go into one form. Heat. So the un-viscous colder material would than heat up and go into viscous. That process could then probably keap up as the pent up energy just keapt on building up untill you had a vortex-plum reaching far down.

Passerby, I am very much aware that I am fishing a bit in my theory and that I am not in my field here. But, I am a good physicist and the logics is sound in its own way. There is probably something wrong somewhere in my theory and I am looking forward to someone shooting me in the foot.
But thing is that there is a plume there, the only difference with the standard model and my vortex is that I put into a spin since that explains a couple of things more than the standard plume.

Glass! If you re-read what I wrote you will see that I killed of the myth of glass flowing being visible. I was talking about the much slower actual flowing of glass.

Mantle-composition! You know as well as I do that nobody have taken a drill-sample of the material in there, so I do not really get what you are talking about. Theory is one thing, and most of them are probably correct, but without physical proof, they are just theories.

And Passerby, you idea of of hot water piping causing lowered earthquake energy during lunch was the funniest red herring I have ever heard. There quite simply is not enough energy around in the pipes for that. The Icelandic thermal plants are very small, around 20 to 80 megawatts each. And what it had with lunch I do not understand at all, unless you actually had a red herring for lunch. Think about it...
I guess you got it from the alarmist theory that the drilling at Krafla having started the "Krafla-fires". And that was ludicrous to start with since the energy in a drill hole is very small. If your pipes is a fly in the next block over, then a drill hole is like a mosquito in sahara affecting you. Word for the day, power-proportionality.

@thor:
Good points!
It shows how unclear I have been:)
I would like to say that if by chance I would have a point in my speculation of the plume spinning and being caused top down instead of down to top, I have to warn against even trying to use it in other places than this particular spot of Iceland since it is derrived out of the unusual circumstances of that region in Iceland.
I would also like to point out that it is a short lived phenomena (in geological times). This vortex I am talking of would probably not have been around at the times you are talking about, it was started and is powered by that unusual bend in the fracture zones and volcanic zones.
Let's say that the line from Hveragardhi to Kolbinsey ridge became the main point where iceland separated instead of the line GrimsvÃ¶tn to Kolbinsey, then the vortex would start to die off emediatly. But that would still require that a new line of fracturing opened up from LangjÃ¶kull to Kolbinsey (the part from Hveragardhi to LangjÃ¶kull is already fractured.

My point is that if my little model is correct, then it would still only be a local modell for iceland.

KVERT and Ebeko Volcano Lives!

KVERT released an update for Ebeko due to it's increased acticity on the second of july so it seems like they didn't die off.

http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/avoreport.php?view=kaminfo

@Carl, the lunch thing was mine, Passerby just commented on it. I though it was as good a reason as any to explain an odd cluster in my graph of 18 to 21 km deep quakes that tend to occur in Iceland around lunch (1100-1200 UTC). There is also a more temporally diffuse and deeper group (25 km) that occur from midnight to three (0000-0300).

http://i50.tinypic.com/ve4zsj.png

The sample group is limited, only taking in about two and half months, and was more of just a weird plot to see what it looked like. I never was trying to make a point.

Well, for my 2c, Carl, I am very much enjoying the theorizing and debate. I like your style.

re the suction aspect - that reminds me of the push/pull discussion going on: i.e. as to whether continental drift is driven by the MOR pushing the ocean plates apart or, alternatively, the ocean plates are getting ripped apart by the pull exerted on them as they "sink" at destructive plate margins.

One thing that comes to mind about your theory is that if such a vortex is a product of a shear in the MOR it would suggest you would also find anomalous amounts of melt at other "kinks" in the ridge, like the Kane Fracture Zone off the coast of Brazil or the Chile Rise to take two at random. Is this the case? Or is the tectonic setting there "cleaner" in its fractures than Iceland?

ive just watch a movie called Magma,volcanic Disaster The core expanding they used nukes in the North Atlantic Ridge to ease the pressure the film was released in 2006

@Leon #86 Maybe you and Diane N CA should meet for a discussion (or laughter) on the subject. :)
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/07/mystery_volcano_photo_22.php #36

How strange thanks Renato also just watch volcano under new york drilling to make energy, both films gave ideas even the co2 that got mention made me think of the current co2 rise that has made headlines in recent months, Can volcanoes be to blame there no other answer than that surly, you cant see co2

@Leon: I didn't watch the film, but CO2 is an issue concerning volcanoes. I'm not quite sure, but I read there was a number of incidents in California (Yosemite Park?) with dead trees and people getting intoxicated in ponds. CO2 emissions are not felt, but can be pretty hazardous in high concentrations. But there are other volcano gases far more toxic than CO2 and the amount of CO2 produced by burning of fossil fuel (incident in the Gulf) or wood fires is far greater than that from volcanoes, but it will affect the whole climate not individuals as I think is what you meant.

my last question for today. looking at the Supervolcanoes monitoring system what does last activity mean? i do have an idea but iam not sure as some of them are saying current dates,example:Naples-Italy-27/06/10..New-Zealand-Toypo volcanic zone-03/07/10 and New-Zealand North islands again-03/07/10 as these have not erupted for thousands to millions of years. I have done a lot of reading on Yellow stone and there a two way debate 1 says no it will never erupt like has done the three times in history before, and other says yes it will!.i also understand that 2009 was a new record for increase in earthquakes worldwide with 2010 set to beat that with 150per cent increase.It seems to me that its quite possible for at least one super eruption to happen in our life time i say within ten years if the current trend continues,everything is increasing co2,climate shift/change, storms/hurricanes, worldwide cooling,volcanic with the Bp oil spill adding to the problems.maybe all fields of research and data science every piece info should be brought together to the table everythink has a connection or chain link possible or not?.

Renato yeah didnt think to add them its been a long day .what i find strange is that co2 continues to rise while worldwide temps level of.And i didnt say you watch the film i found it strange how i pick the same 2 film as Dianne.i leave you these two links he makes me laugh. http://www.accuweather.com/video/73146...major-cooling.on.way.worldwide…
http://www.accuweather.com/video.asp?search=co2

@Leon: I understand your concern. Maybe one of the problems is that one you mentioned of much information brought together (via Internet) but not in an evidence-supported way. You have to be careful with information you get: there are many websites that say whatever they want, with no scientific basis. And we tend to assume that problems happening now are bigger then they've ever been, but if you look back into historical data you'll see it is not quite so. Yes, we have concerns with a world becoming smaller and growing populations, affecting global climate with industries and all, but we also know that big peaks of CO2 have happened before, so we must take good care of this planet, which so far is the only home we have. But don't get stuck on those apocalyptic stuff , it won't happen as easily as it sounds. Yes, there are big volcanoes that formed calderas, but there's nothing "super" on them, since they've behaved most of the time as gently as other regular volcanoes.

@Leon #91 Funny video, thanks for posting. And take the good advice from it: enjoy the weather!

@Leon / Renato I Silveira

Back before I had this gee wizz graphing program, I did several plots of Yellowstone during a couple of it's swarms. ( it tends to have them ) The plots I did were limited to depth verses time in Excel, they were a hoot. You could see the depth trending up from the magma chamber and then back down again. I still have the Feb 2010 graphics from that.

http://i47.tinypic.com/207q8te.png

And an over view of where in the Caldera it was at.

http://i50.tinypic.com/520yhc.png

The 2008/2009 swarm started under the lake and slowly migrated to the North and eventually petered out northeast of Fishing Bridge. That area is where logically, if you DR out the historical track of the hotspot (15 million year run) is about where it should be at. Most of the sensible people were expecting a hydrothermal explosion at worse along the north shore area. Digging around the net a bit, you would find that there is a ridge with fresh rock that was found in the lake a few years ago. This was where the swarm began. It was quite the show... from a data plotting point of view.

Precious material, Lurking! I'll have to go to bed now, but tomorrow I'll watch them more carefully.
Good night everyone.

@leon 99

Leon, Renato is right. Take what you read with a big grain of salt. For example the info on the Taupo Volcanic Zone is just plain wrong. The TVZ had its last major eruption in 1886 which is just the blink of an eye in geological terms. Taupo itself has erupted at least 27 times in the last 26,000 years, three of which were huge eruptions by todays standards.

More to the point, the Taupo system is described as a chaotic system, meaning its past behavior makes it almost impossible to predict its future eruptive patterns and certainly frustrates any attempt to forecast any exact dates for a future eruption.

re my false alarm about Ngauruhoe. Have a look at this for some serious wind noise (there is a winter storm going through):
http://www.geonet.org.nz/images/volcano/drums/ch/wtvz/10/drum.png

Makes me more confident that Geonet actually did bump up its amplitude gain recently.

@bruce stout [96]

"...the Taupo system is described as a chaotic system, meaning its past behavior makes it almost impossible to predict its future eruptive patterns..."

{snicker}

Now where have I heard that before...

... oh yeah, the Stock Broker caveat:

"past performance is not indicative of future results"

@Bruce Stout:
Thank you for pointing out my obvious flaw:)
Now that I have read up on KFZ it seems like there are no processes like the vortex at all going on there. But, it is an old inactive fracture zone. Though I found some intriguing comments on it in an article. It is there mentioned that the KFZ has a slow rotation xounter-clockwise. That might, or might not, support the vortex idea. Mainly it is a bit interesting.
My take KFZ is that it lacked something that Iceland has, that I haven't taken into account. There is something more playing in Iceland I would guess. What? Help!
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m3276ul60127821p/

I found some other fracture Zones that was equally clean as KFZ that didn't have any volcanic signs, but then I found 2 that actually could have or had a vortex plume. I know waaaay to little about these volcanic islands to say anything really.

At Ascension Fracture Zone you have some features that actually look quite a bit like Iceland with local ridges pushed up, complex rifting and a volcanic island close by that seems to be fairly stable. You also have 2 nice seamounts (Grattan and Stewart) close by. What these might have to do with anything I do not know. If, large if, there is a vortex here it is a small one.

The second is of course the Azores. There you have complex rifting, a nice uplifted bank (hotspot?), fractore zones, volcanix zones, what looks like a local subducton zone. Without having done any calculations or going indepth it looks very intriguing from my point of view and might hold a quite large vortex-plume. And I just love the pictures of the Good Morning volcano:)

Another thing I noticed is that it looks like there was a rather large island around the same spot about a hundred million or more years ago, and that the island cracked apart and that half drifted to the east, and the other half to the west.
If you look at google earth you will find Great Meteor Tablemount and Cruiser Tablemount to the East, and to the West the Rockaway-Yakutat Seamount. Interesting if nothing else. If that once was a large island, then that vortex would have been going, stopping, and starting again. That suggests there is some triggering factor I don't really get.

Nice question Bruce!

@ lurker.. my history on the share market is absolutely abysmal. The only think I have ever half-way prophesized correctly (apart from having my account tax-barred which I am getting pretty good at predicting) is the eruption at Fimmvorduhalsi.

@ Carl, it's interesting you mentioned the Azores as I looked at those in Google Earth while zooming around the planet's MOR's and thought, hmm, they're could be another candidate for your theory. BTW, what is that massive circular feature directly south of Sao Miguel Island and stretches all the way to Sao Pedro? Looks like an impact crater but I am reticent to read too much into Google Earth as there are some artifacts in there (look at the scar crossing the Kermadec Trench for example).

@Bruce:
Are you looking at "the collapsed caldera-mathingy" between Sao Miguel and Sao Maria?
If that is the crater-like thing you are talking about I would guess it is a collapsed caldera. You have 3 small rim islets in the south-east.

I guess you could get vorticii as soon as you have complex rifting. But it would of course never occur close to subduction volcanos.

Thing is that one should really check which of the volcanos are still active. It probably is a Hawaii like moving hotspot since the islands are stringed out like that. But if the volcanos are "active" on most islands in the chain, then it would be a vortex candidate. Off to read up on the azorian volcanos for me.

@Bruce part II
Just looked at the sum of volcanos in the azores. Pretty much all of the main volcanos in the eastern grouping are active like crazy. The 2 islands to the west of MAR seems to be less active, and for obvious reasons I totally disregarded Madeira since the inly reason for their inclusion in the azores seems to be political and not sub-surfaces tectonical;)
I would say the likelihood increased of this being another place with surface static plumes that can be explained with a collection of vortix-plumes.

Carl, yep that's it. If its volcanic its bigger than Toba!
100 km x 70 km.. that's just a wee bit too far on the side of mind-boggling, so for the moment I'll just assume it's another artifact.
I'm at work at the moment but I'm itching to read up more about the Azores now!! All I know is they have some pretty impressive calderas for a MOR setting so there is obviously much more at play here too, just like Iceland in fact!

check out the activity right now, july 5, EDT 9:13 AM, on Bardabunga, Iceland. A 3.0 --if verified.

Hello everyone, I am really enjoying reading your comments about the worldwide volcanic activity.

I have been looking at the sheer number of volcanoes located in Iceland and I am awestruck at how many there are in a relatively small area. I brought Iceland up on Google Earth and zoomed in just enough to see the water surrounding the island, it almost seems that the entire island is just the peak of a large caldera, if you look just south of the island you can almost see where there was a very large lava flow at one time

Not quite the peak of a giant caldera... what exactly is down there is a subject for discussion. Hotspot, Underlying oceanic crust fragment... it gets kicked around a bit. Iceland is about 40km thick in the vicinity of GrÃmsvÃ¶tn and about 20km thick near EyjafjallajÃ¶kull. It has lots of volcanoes, some of them active, sits astride a spreading center (Mid Atlantic Ridge) and to top it off, has all these neat quake stacks poking up through the crust... usually to a pre-existing volcano.

30 Days of Quakes - 5 June to 5 July, perspective view looking North West.

http://i46.tinypic.com/331d287.png

@106 i like your graphs looks easy to read and to my question of above i dont believe in everythink i read thats why i ask you all here you seem to know what your taking about.i got the supervolcanos info from National association of radio Distress and infocommunication [Emergency and Disaster infomation services]EDIS. havaria@rsoe.hu or http://hisz.roes.hu/alertmap/index2.php and lot of them showed recent activity[meaning EQ or Tremor] as you go on to this site you get a map of the world scroll out and you get all this info

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/

@#106 Lurking,Hi,

Do you remember back around a month ago you did a correlation graph showing 'quakes under both Eyja and Katla,looking North ? Any chance of an updated one from 01/06/2010 to 05/07/2010.
Many Thanks in advance,Adrian.

Well, as of right now they don't show any quakes there on the 5th. (19:01:00 on the 4th is the latest)

But here is a rendition from June 1st to July 5th, view North.

http://i49.tinypic.com/fdvrz4.png

Lurking,many thanks thats great.Seems to be more quakes under Godabunga....New fissure that you we're wondering about ? I tend to agree.

Yeah,I know,a lot of speculation ! Who knows etc..

A plan view of that area was placed in "Mystery Volcano Photo #22" at post 46, but it only covers 12 to 13 days of quakes.

i47.tinypic.com/jl15dv.png

Umm, I tried copy/pasting that link but it just took me back here.

Well, many browsers will auto complete for you.

I strip the http bit off to keep from setting off the Spam Filter on the blog.

At three is gets mad.

Try this:

http://i47.tinypic.com/jl15dv.png

hi does anyone have a web cam link for katla, the one i have is switched off

I have two questions to post before I go to bed:
1. I was looking for the âmissing partâ (at least to me, so far) of volcanism over the so called âPacific Ring of Fireâ and I found out on Google Earth that there IS a belt of volcanoes in Antarctica closing the southernmost part of the circle. But no subduction zones showing. What causes these Antarctic volcanoes to be there? Mantle plumes?
2. I read that the rocks of SÃ£o Pedro e SÃ£o Paulo located to the northeast of Brazil are a rare example of exposed mantle. Are they quaternary or tertiary mantle? Was it caused by rifting? They arenât aligned with Ascension and Azores-Madeira archipelagos...
Donât bother to answer, but I would love to understand the processes involved.
Be back tomorrow. Night folks!!!

@Leon #116 I tried this one and works for me
http://www.ruv.is/katla/
Night!

To add to the science debate, The vortex idea is very interesting, one wonders if, to quote Nasa
'NASA scientists using data from the Indonesian earthquake calculated it affected Earth's rotation, decreased the length of day, slightly changed the planet's shape, and shifted the North Pole by centimeters. The earthquake that created the huge tsunami also changed the Earth's rotation.'

This MUST have created currents inside the mantle
Now we know viscous solids move very slowly, and that iceland is pretty much opposite Indonesia on the globe, so perhaps the recent activity in iceland is the 'ripples' from Indonesia travelling around the planet and all kind of meeting at iceland and sloshing up.

Bit like if you had 4 people at each corner of a bath of water who all create a wave at the same moment, when they all meet, you can get a fairly large spike of water forming in the middle of the bath.
Its just a thought, and I'm no scientist, just an artist who has spent many hours observing the motion of things around me.

And reading through this http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050112194812.htm

' Earth's oblateness (flattening on the top and bulging at the equator) decreased by a small amount', which might account for the volacnic activity at the north pole,the earths 'waistline' at the equater got tighter, stands to reason the pressure caused by that has to be released somewhere

@Renato thanks but thats one i got and its blank unless they switched off

@#115 Lurking,Hi,

Thanks very much for that link.That data really is food for thought;got me thinking.
Thanks again,Adrian.

@leon [121] -

You must have the Windows Media Video 9 codec installed to play that one.

at121 arr cheers mate i did have this working at one time somethink must of gone wrong i have had to re install other codec as well a week ago. thanks dude

@Bev Wallace #119 - #120 And if you think in geological time span the EQ in Chile happened when the whole mantle was still sloshing a bit from Indonesia's EQ (since it only happened 6 ys. later), so it would add up to the shifts and moves. Can you imagine?, the whole S. America was displaced by ~3 m in minutes!

Hello everyone,

Speaking of displacements,the IMO have issued another severe gale warning for Southern Iceland;winds up to 40m/s.
Thoro cam is already starting to shake.......

July 8th--look at the Porosfelli webcam for the steam coming out? Beautiful view..not a cloud. Heat cam shows it as well. And from HVO, a good look too. HVO tremor plot does show a few little spikes, and a few tremors near Katla. Gale is passed now.

is pissed off thinking, Why they call it shipment when he send things through Car and Cargo while sending through ship...!!

is posting on Twitter that he is updating his Facebook status update.

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Sakurajima can't keep its top on, sets new record

eklemetti — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:11:52 +0000

Sakurajima can't keep its top on, sets new record

Sakurajima in Japan erupting in 2000.

Sometimes, it is the volcanoes that erupt out of the blue that get all the attention, leaving the ones that are constant producers to be ignored by the fawning media. Sakurajima in Japan is just one of those constant erupting volcanoes that doesn't get its just due. Well, over the weekend, Sakurajima broke its own record as it produced its 549th explosive event this year - in June no less - marking the most explosions (video) in a single year at the volcano on record. The previous record for most explosive eruptions in a single year at Sakurajima was 548 set all of last year (2009). The eruptions of Sakurajima so far in 2010 tend are believe to have released over 3 million tonnes of ash - however, the volcano observatory near Sakurajima doesn't think that this activity is leading to a large explosive eruption - instead they just warn "watch out for large rocky ash falling in surrounding areas." Good advice!

Sakurajima is one of the most active (unsurprisingly) volcanoes in Japan, just off shore from Kagoshima City, and is actually a series of overlapping cones making up an andesitic volcanic complex - all part of the Aira caldera. The current eruptive period at the volcano started in 1955 and have produced the equivalent of a VEI 3 eruption (albeit over half a century), but it has produced VEI 1-2 eruptions frequently over the few hundred years. In 1914 and 1779, Sakurajima did have larger explosive events - VEI 4 eruptions - so the potential for bigger eruptions is there. However, right now you can watch Sakurajima put on its explosive show via its webcam ... so enjoy the record year at the Japanese volcano.

eklemetti Mon, 06/21/2010 - 23:11

Tags

volcanoes in the media

Sakurajima is the safety-valve of the Aira Caldera complex. Just imagine all those eruptions since 1955 pent up, then it let go in one really big explosion...

Spam filter just zapped my first post so will try again without links.

Great post Erik, Sakurajima is one of my favourite volcanoes.

I went to Sakurajima last month to witness the eruptions but was very unlucky to visit during a 3 week break in daily eruptions so saw nothing! Kagoshima on the opposite side of the bay is a great city, and Sakurajima "island" itself is simply stunning.

It seems to have gone back to its daily explosive routine so once the "Mei Yu" rains shift away towards mid July hopefully I'll be back.

Amazingly there's a high school with a direct line of sight to the active crater from only a distance of about 4km. Whenever the kids are outside they're required to wear hard hats. I've got pics and video on my website.

Two webcams for Sakurajima are linked from here: http://www.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/web_e/index_topics.html

One has a view right into one of the (two) active vents. When it's not cloudy, the view is quite impressive.

The most awesome eruption I've seen was at Sakurajima. I think it was July 1991. A mile-high incandescent column and a gigantic ash plume with about 30 lightnings per second. I've been there several times and this is one volcano that has never let me down.

Are you just checking to see if we are 'asleep-at-the-wheel' with respect to the 'out of the blue' link in your opener, Erik?

Passerby - Nope, just like to make the baseball analogy when I can!

NEW EXTINCT VOLCANO DISCOVERED OFF CALABRIA COAST

The number of Italian volcanoes is now up to 29. Sixteen of these are extinct and 9 are active

http://www.ansamed.info/en/top/ME13.XAM18463.html

Would we be surprised at all if we really knew how many volcanoes there are that are either "extinct" or active?

An AUV was used recently to map out parts of the bottom of the Laacher See. Indications of previously unknown subsurface structures were discovered.

Would it make sense to explore the crater lake at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull before it freezes over?

http://www.atlashydro.atlas-elektronik.com/typo3/index.php?id=1897&L=3&…

Could someone wiser than me take a look at the Thoro cam - seems to be one heck of a dust storm, but highly localised and with high speed movement only at low level, with a lot of dust/ ash - just seems odd.

@Diane [8]
They've located some of those extinct - and they really are - volcanoes in Finland and currently they are starting diamond mines in them...

Kultsi, there are lots of extinct Volcanoes here in Norway also.i live in Aalesund btw,.
and we have also Ash deposits from Katla here, last time she erupted she laid down 20 cm of ash over this area, and that is a lot considered the distance,so the eruption must have been something to write home about.

Thor, start making mineral claims on those pipes - some of them might pay up nicely...

Aalesund is about the closest point to Iceland in Norway - but it's still farther out from Katla (and EyjafjallajÃ¶kull) than Scotland, if Google maps are to be believed. 20 cm (8 in) is a LOT of ash from that far off. In that light, this year's eruption was nothing - but they did not have jet planes to choke up on ash, then.

thats true, Kultsi, but I guess everything else choked up pretty nicely,hehe.
Yeah there are some Olivine mines here that are making some goood money of those old fissures..

Kutsi@3, thanks for the Sakurajima links, I had one of the cameras already, but these variously show marine tropical fish, monkeys running around on scaffolding, as well as a clouded out volcano from several angles. I did see a short explosive burst over one cloud layer, but blocked out very quickly by more cloud.

Back to Iceland and Eyjafjall, midnight local time. On the HvolsvÃ¶llur camera, there seems to be some intense steaming going on from the main crater. The Thorolfsfelli cam confirms the steaming. Tremor has also increased but not alarmingly.

agree with Henrick 16

Eyja. has a good-sized pillar going now. Just steam? http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-hvolsvelli/

The third camera down:
http://www.mulakot.net/myndavelar.html

Yes, it looks to me like tremor has increased (but might be stabilizing, as it seems to be no longer increasing) and there is a plume. How much is steam is anyone's guess in this light but considering the crater lake shown recently in photographs, it would seem logical that there would be considerable steam if some magma is working its way up again.

#19 Good evening!
I've been watching the increase in tremor plots, but since it's been so windy I thought this was the reason for the variations. (Not an expert here) But, yes, there's a good bit of a steam plume coming from the crater. Should we follow this closer? If we are going to have magma interacting with this lake we might be getting another few days of fireworks. Missing it!

@Everyone - Hi again! I see Helen (Leggatt's)? arch is still intact. Yay Helen's Arch!

@20 Renato
These past few weeks I've barely had time to read this blog let alone respond, but your enthusiasm is so contagious!

Thanks to everyone else for their informative posts!

Re Eyjafjall - as of 0530 GMT, the steam column is rather voluminous and seems to have intensified over the past three hours. Tremor seems to be very slowly increasing, even if it's only a fraction of what it was during the eruption. That crater lake must be heated rather vigorously to produce so much steam.

http://eldgos.mila.is/english/eyjafjallajokull-fra-hvolsvelli/

Nice steam at our friend in Iceland

@23 What a sight it is! Takes me back to the days of yore :)

@Your Highness! #21: I'm still your truthful vassal, no matter how long it takes for your return. Weaving shrouds to avoid mean suitors and waiting to welcome you back.
BTW Lady E is showing signs of life and I was lucky enough to catch a picture of an Arctic tern!!! They want us all to move to Japan, but I'd rather be here with the mermaids, the whirlwinds and the blue flowers over MÃºlakot. Hail!

I wish the Westman islands would erupt too, they havn't been active since the 60s-70s. Would be nice to see two sets of volcanoes erupting at the same time lol

@Henrik, Swe. Do you believe magma may reach the lake? That would be something!

Renato, who knows my friend? For this much steam to be produced, the source of the heat must be either very large or very close. Possibly both. But since it seems that it rises slowly, the lake might very well have boilt away by the tame any new magma reaces the surface. If it doesn't, who'd bet against a Surtseyan eruption? Another possibility - some time ago there was a reference to an account of/paper on the 1821-3 eruption where it was said that the eruption was along a 2 km fissure running N-S. Could that open up again? Then again, nothing more might happen.

We shall see!

@25 Renato! *Swoon* I could use a truthful vassal right about now. Shrouds are working, thanks muchly!

Lady E looks so beautiful now, doesn't she? Japan? Pfffftt! Those beautiful blue flowers (that I noticed last week but didn't have time to write about) are awesome, aren't they? Who would have known such beautiful flowers could thrive in such hostile territory?

Thank goodness for nature's beautiful little miracles and our ability to witness them from afar.

@Henrik, Swe: I wouldn't mind a Surtseyan neither an effusive one if the lake will be gone by the time lava comes. Let it keep rising!

And now I must go rest in the arms of Morpheus. Nights are longer and days are shorter, and there's work to do.
I'm happy our "family" is back to the fireplace.
Dream of flowers, ladies and gents!
"Sogni d'oro"!

@31 Laurence Fishburne is lucky :)

The images on the HvolsvÃ¶llur cam are reminiscent of the early days. *sigh*

I hope the dude in the house on the hill got his life back.

The recent activity at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull is the most vigorous I've seen in a while. Whatever caused the extra boiling at the crater also sent a big splash of water down the lava trench, and it reached a point about 600 m above Helen's Arch, verified by steaming.

I hope these gushes wear down the north side crater rim. That would release the water sooner; if the lake fills up to 3,000,000 cubic meters and then starts gushing down GigjÃ¶kull... One hell of a jÃ¶kullhlaup with serious consequences.

@Kultsi #33 I agree. That water has to go somewhere and I just hope it trickles out slowly.

I've wondered for a while now about the level of the water in the crater compared to what we have heard about the depth of the initial ice layer/glacier to begin with.

Anyone?

Hello to all,

@34 O Hail Princess Frito,its good to see you back !.With regards to your question try this link http://www.earthice.hi.is/page/ies_Eyjafjallajokull_eruption.The problem of course is that this info is now 8 days old !In theory I would think that the level is now considerably higher !

@Princess Frito [34]

Here's a link to a picture of the lake: en.vedur.is/media/jar/myndsafn/large/SvBr_gig11juni_003.jpg

I'd guesstimate the ice walls to reach 50 meters higher than the lake surface.

Sorry...try this http://www.earthice.hi.is/page/ies_Eyjafjallajokull_eruption

Strange place of the latest EQ? In the valley near the Thoro cam and depth 11.7 km.

Date Time Latitude Longitude Depth Magnitude Quality Location
Wednesday
23.06.2010 08:59:57 63.693 -19.614 11.7 km 1.3 58.65 6.8 km WNW of BÃ¡sar

http://ja.is/kort/#x=464521&y=354297&z=4&services=18%2C16

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/…

Theres a new update just been posted by the Imo.I have a feeling that it may be a few hours old;forgive me if I am wrong but it seems very understated.

well i would like to say i am learning a lot with your post and links and updates from you all.

Good morning from Maine - still on vacation but coming to an end soon - the blue flowers are, I think, Lupine, an alaskan version imported to help fix nitrogen in the soil ( and maybe they are becoming invasive.) They were in full bloom here by the field-full and along roadsides (also in pink and white and purple) when we arrived. They are the first to take over barren areas, and there are also hybrid garden versions in wilder colors.

Ref. the hot lake, yesterday (I think) there was a reference to the fact that ash, from the sides of the glacier around the crater, has been sliding/washing into the lake and insulating the underwater ice from further melt, but at the same time reducing the ice-cooling of the water, hence, water hotter but melting slower...If I got it right -

Many thanks to the cleaning man on the Thoro cam!
The view is excellent now !!

IMO Eyjaf activity updates for June 23rd, including report of an ice tunnel observed in an outlet glacier photo taken on June 11th.

en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/articles/nr/1884

The water level of the small lake in the crater is reported to be falling as the ice-wall melt rate has apparently decreased. Periodic steaming and small ash explosions continues.

@Birdseye #41 you are right. The flowers are lupines. There are so many varieties of lupine. Texas blue bells are a variety of lupine and here where I live, we have what they call arroyo lupine. It is a bush that is perenial and it keeps coming back. It looses its leaaves and then comes back in the spring. I wish I had some on my property. The lupines with all the wild colors are the Russel hybrids. What I love to see is the lupine and CA poppies blooming together. That is so beautiful. In S CA there is an area that is just rife with wild flowers and it is called the Grapevine. You have to go over the Grapevine to get into LA from the north. In winter, they can get some nasty snows up there. In spring it is a carpet of flowers.

>yesterday (I think) there was a reference to the fact that ash, from the sides of the glacier around the crater, has been sliding/washing into the lake and insulating the underwater ice from further melt, but at the same time reducing the ice-cooling of the water, hence, water hotter but melting slower...If I got it right -

Source??

The view of Redoubt is pretty good today. I really don't understand how that blister of a dome stays on the side of the mountain.

http://www.avo.alaska.edu/webcam/Redoubt_-_DFR.php

passerby :) wont black ash on snow boost melting of snow and Ice??
I remeber my parents uses ash from the stove, to melt ice on the road in spring, due to the sun heating the dirty snow and it will melt faster..

-so I guess the ash on the glacier,on eyjafjÃ¤ll will melt faster than the not covered ice??,

- black is heating up faster, as black absorbs more sunlight faster and transform in to heat than white, wich reflects heat out??
also saw a Tv programme on discovery, about the global snowball(earth covered in total ice)and ash from volcanoes helped melting the ice from the planet so sunlight would not be reflected back out again??

am I wrong here??

It seems to me that the outlet pipe from glacier down to the lake cracks and has now been reshaped.
Also the bick rock on the left side between canyons has splittet.

Maybe the crater lake is flowing over?

Correction: The big rock on the right side in other words west side

Hey folks,Good News ! The Flir cam is working again !

@Thor [47]
Helping or hindering melting depends on the thickness of the ash layer: a thin layer passes the heat to snow/ice below; a thick layer is good insulation.

Stove ash works in two ways: by sucking heat and by partially dissolving into the meltwater and lowering its freezing point.

@Timo [48-49]
We have been talking about the 'split rock' for quite a while: the canyon got eroded into it fairly early in the game. It's one of the handy landmarks on GigjÃ¶kull. The mouth of the 'ice tunnel' in the article also has a name: 'Helen's Arch'.

A larger pic of the down end of GigjÃ¶kull: en.vedur.is/media/jar/myndsafn/large/emmanuel_4097bis.jpg

I was surprised to see that the Icelandic word for 'fan' in this context (keila) is exactly the same in Finnish. Goes to tell that we both preserve old, inherited words quite well.

There's a small plane on the ground, 4th Mulakot camera. I've wondered who made all the tire tracks in the grass. Maybe we'll see some photos soon?
http://www.mulakot.net/myndavelar.html

@33 Kultsi, I hope these gushes wear down the north side crater rim. That would release the water sooner; if the lake fills up to 3,000,000 cubic meters and then starts gushing down GigjÃ¶kull... One hell of a jÃ¶kullhlaup with serious consequences.

Is it possible to interfere with a volcano's activity and make a path for the water, to avoid destruction of property and especially the risk of people's death? It would have to be done with more caution that BP used with its Deep Horizon well, or does the idea just have too much hubris and too much potential for worse catastrophe?

@Jane [54 & 53]
Here somebody would suggest nukes. Seriously, it might be possible to blow the rim away, but Iceland has not the delivery capacity, and I don't think they'd like the US planes delivering the (normal chemical) bomb. Besides, it might shake the balance and start the eruption anew. It's better to sit and watch; the lake might just dry up, as it seems the water in it is not rising.

The tracks in the MÃºlakot grass are most likely from the ATV they have there and run around quite a bit with. They usually have the planes at the apron, in front of the cam for pic 3.

@Birdseye #41 @Diane #44
"Lupines" - There's a species of this genus (legume fam. Fabacea) called Lupinus albus (tremoÃ§os) in Portuguese. The yellow seeds are very popular in Portugal and Brazil as appetizers, but they must be cooked before to eliminate some toxic substances within. (Wikipedia). Would never have imagined that they were "my" blue flowers at the fringes of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull...

@Kultsi #52 Thanks for the pic. It gives us a better idea of those tunnels. Funny: Keila is a popular name in Brazil. And spelled with a "K", which is no longer used in our alphabet. Some prefer it with another obsolete letter "y" - Keyla. I don't think our "Keilas" or "Keylas" know the origin of their names. :)

#56 OT. We'll probably be consuming lots of lupine seeds during the WC game on Friday (Brazil x Portugal). Hope nobody gets intoxicated, as it seems to have happened to poor N. Koreans... :)
BTW No news on N. Korean volcano?

Anyone here has felt the 5,0 M EQ that struck near Ottawa? I read it has been felt as far as NY city and Chicago...

Re plants in MÃºlakot: The one in the gravel is dock (Rumex longifolius). The numerous one behind is Alaska lupine (Lupinus nootkatensis).

@Kultsi #51
Yes, I know the game and I have seen IMO's latest picture of it. I have been watchig it a while and also I know what means 'Helen's Arch'

It's only my amateur question: The big rock (ice) is losing the the left top of it - It 's splitted (only abt. 10% by now)
But why? The pressure of ice/melt warter what is coming downfall???
Something is going on...I think the the pressure is going to break down outlet(s)

@Renato

The earthquake (2nd largest in the world today!) happened about 250 miles from where I live in London, Ontario. I didn't feel a thing but supposedly people working a little further downtown and in taller buildings felt it.

The Joke is that it was caused by all the England soccer fans jumping back ON the bandwagon!

59: wind pollinated hermaphrodite, which contains some oxalic acid, giving it a sharp lemon flavour. Fine in small quantities, but too much can cause calcium deficency. Eaten as a vegetable, put in soups and used as a dye (doesn't need a mordant).
Also, very common.

@beedragon: What? England won a match? I'm avoiding HM as if it was H1N1 and H5N1 together.

@stigger: Very common is very understating.

I did not feel it in Connecticut and I am probably closer than NYC.

Hi everyone,

Re the blue flowers on Mulakot cam #1. There was a few lines posted some weeks ago about them.I at first thought that they were Lupins,but,I now believe them to be Foxgloves,Latin Digitalis. The Lupin's flower head is more of a "cone" shape where as the Foxgloves flower is "bell" shaped.
Sorry Renato, but if you ate the seeds from these plants you would become very ill indeed as they are highly poisonous... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitalis

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/9446/

How can Volcanoes only make 1% of all CO2 when there is a ridge of volcanoes that spans from the north to south pole in the mid Atlantic, and that is just one ridge?

@Reynir [59]

Are you sure it's Rumex longifolius? 'cause those do not look like that to me: no long stem with leaves every now and then. I'd rather guess sorrel, Rumex acetosa. The problem with Rumex is the way they easily crossbreed, and the resulting plants may be hard to identify.

@Adrian [65]

The blue flowers are definitely lupines, the placement of flowers at the early phases of blooming is very distinctive, and the first time I saw those I identified them as lupines (US) or lupins.

I do agree that ingesting foxglove/digitalis would be hazardous to one's health, although it's been widely used as medicine for heart problems.

-Greg

1% of all Co2 is also almost as much as humans make,.

-the rest is actually the nature own pollution and that is a lot.

the oceans for one is the biggest co2 contributor, then comes all the gasses from the ground,and soil, and all the co2 that are bound in the icecaps,then comes what the trees and all the green plants emitt,and on top of that comes volcanoes(but they are really not as co2 polutant as the rest, Volcanoes contribute with far more dangerous polutants than C02..

co2 is not the most dangerous gas that is made on this planet,its just more easy to meassure and point fingers at, than the rest.

-Water vapour is actually far more dangerous as a warming gas than Co2.
Co2 is actually a cooling gas in the atmosphere, but combined with water vapour and other climate gasses and pollutions, it contributes in the big picture..

Am i making any sense here?? I really am not sure..

but this is what a scientist tried to explain..

anyways

The planet needs co2,but with all the other polutants c02 just helps driving the climatechanges..
A warmer climate per se, is not what we should fear , that we can adjust and benefit from, but the consequenses that follows after a warming ,are far more dangerous. As history tells us ,after a warmer climate , usually a really scarier colder climate follows,that is something we all should worry about.

In the US, all varieties of dock weed are supposed to be edible and I think there are about 40 species of dock. You have to cook it to death to get rid of the bitterness, but I have not tried it. I read about it in a book on survival.

My first dog was on digitalis for her heart condition. It is in very small amounts and I am not sure how it helps, but it is used a lot.

Lupines are one of my favorite flowers and they can be rather prolific. I suppose if you don't want them taking over, don't plant them. Still, I think they make a beautiful display and they are not weeds. At least I don't think so. :-)

@Timo [60]

I'm not sure what you are pointing at, but the damage done to stonework around the place was done by abrasive stuff mixed in the water gushing down GigjÃ¶kull in the main phase of the eruption: boulders, stones, gravel, sand. All that stuff did cause much erosion in the places where the flow was concentrated - and there was a LOT of stuff: the bottom of the lake that once was there is now 50 meters higher and dry moraine in the dejection fan. I once estimated the split rock to be about 250 meters (~275 yds) in diameter, so that gives one perspective of the size of what's been going on.

@Thor [69]

Plants are actually CO2 binders: they take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, in their phase in sunlight; the nighttime cycle is the other direction, but the net effect is to reduce CO2 from the atmosphere. THAT is the reason why cutting down rain forests is such a bad idea: barren earth does not release oxygen. Algae in oceans are another major oxygen source / CO2 binder.

Plants are actually CO2 binders: they take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, in their phase in sunlight; the nighttime cycle is the other direction, but the net effect is to reduce CO2 from the atmosphere.

That is until the forest matures. Once it is fully mature, it is at equilibrium with about as much CO2 being absorbed by growing biomass as is released by decaying biomass. A young forest is a CO2 sponge. A fully mature "old growth" forest is CO2 neutral.

A little bit offtopic: Mila's Thorolsfell thermal camera is working again and it's showing hot spots on Gigjokull glacier (or what it remains of it).

@Passerby 45 - sorry I didn't get back sooner - we headed out for the day right after I posted - I have been going back thru the past coulpe of days but haven't found my source - it was on the blog I'm pretty sure, tho' possibly FrÃ©ttir - and it was referred to as a translation of the Icelandic; also I think the explanation was given as being from one of the Icelandic volcanologists blogs - wish I could do better, I'll keep looking! I'm sorry I didn't post as soon as I read it. Always harder to reconstruct!

We have an volcanic SO2 eruption signal coming off of the Kamchatka peninsula.

http://sacs.aeronomie.be/alert/?alert=20100624_034501_001

@75 - not to worry. If you come across it again, post it, will you please?

Very interesting about the Kay-becky earthquake today. No aftershocks in the immediate event window afterwards, but one other 5 Mag EQ listed in the area in 2010, from the USGS historical seismicity maps. I found that to be odd, as no mention was made of it in reports today.

Locally, we had yet another series of low energy shocks here in the intermountain area of WA. The EQ map for our area is also looking distinctly odd. I've been watching these maps for a decade (job related stuff).

Good evening/morning everyone!
Guys! You sound like the witches in Macbeth. Now I know where Shakespeare got his inspiration from: digitalis, lupines... Brrr...
Hope the Portuguese anticipate Friday's match with lots of those for snacks! ;)

I'm not sure whether there's a downpour over Taal, or if it's erupting:

http://www.mycam-asia.tv/cams/philippines/luzon/batangas-taallake-yc/di…

@parclair #79 I think I can see raindrops splashing on the lake foreground.

#79 Nothing on PHIVOLCS either. But that dark cloud over the crater does look impressive.

Ah, rainstorm. Sorry for the false alarum, but thought you'd want to see if it was real. ;-)

@parclair #82 Please, keep posting all you see. Puzzling images is what keep this blog going. We like to weave theories, set quizzes and try to solve them . Today I had a highly sophisticated lesson on plants and learned about poisonous from nitrogen fixing Leguminosae out of sheer observation of blue lilies on Eyjaf's slopes. Yesterday I learned about Arctic terns and prenatal clinics on Icelandic glaciers.
Maybe what I called raindrops are, in fact, boiling waters and that the whole caldera, which yet is not defined as a caldera, is bubbling with toxic miasmas and is about to blow the whole Nanny state out of it's Imelda's shoes. Just post what you see and we provide you with the necessary feedback. We have here support from a team of moderators and collaborators that excel in scientific knowledge and they will help us when we go freak in our strangemost opinions. Thank you!

BTW I learned that all species of lupines found in S. America grow on Ecuadorian Andes. A correlation between EyafÃ¶ll and Mama Tungurahua?

Fare thee well, guys. Maybe I'll be back tomorrow...
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
-- Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

@Adrian, #65: These are definitely lupines, and more specially, the Alaska lupine (Lupinus nootkatensis) which was brought to Iceland after the second world war to protect the soils. Today a number of people wishes, that this has never been happened, since the lupines overgrow a number of icelandic plants.

Kultsi [67] - Our sorrel (R. acetosa) is a lot smaller than dock (R. longifolius). Besides, I've eaten enough of the former that I should be getting to know them apart.

Reynir [87] - we have both of those, too, and they are really easy to tell apart, but the pic is not very good. My bad.

In my young days I ate quite a lot of sorrel, too...

http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/06/24/10588177.html

Kamchatka is warming up

Kultsi [88] - Forgot to mention there's loads of dock around the block I live in. Not such a posh place, eh? :-)

@[90] Reynir, that beats concrete and blacktop any time - besides, that is nothing that a scythe can't cure.

I prefer a small pruner. Fortunately the dock isn't in the avens, or bartsia, or fleabane, or buttercup, or dandelion, or ... (ya get my drift). The block is right on edge of town, y'see.

@77 Passerby - have been unsuccessfully ranging far and wide in search of comment source for hot lake - must have been a side-trip into Icelandic need-translating references, but I remember it came as a followup to the reported 300Âº temperature. I'll keep looking as I have time, but I don't have the language for an Icelandic search - must have been a lucky strike at RÃºv, Icelandic Review or FrÃ©ttir. Toss in garbage as unsupported!

Updates on EyjafjÃ¤ll:

GPS measurements show slight movements towards the mountain except at Austmannsbunga in MÃ½rdalsjÃ¶kull, which shows movement towards southwest. No obvious explanation has been found for this movement.

what do you guys mean about this, what is moving ??
magma?? or the ice??

im lost,.

@thor - the GPS meter is moving, but I guess there is no reading yet as to whether it is ice creep (if the meter is placed on the glacier, I don't know its location) or under the ice,or the ground, In any case we'll find out later if it is something important that continues, or just a passing moment. More 'wait and see!" Anyone else??

Looks like sakurajima is huffing and puffing this morning .I caught a glimpse of a quite a large black plume just now.

@95: GPS geolocation is a means of ascertaining point movement of landmass (vertical and horizonal displacement) over time, in response to inflationary and deflationary volcanic activity.

What this particular station appears to indicate is revealed in this quoted material:

'Two continuously recording GPS stations close to the southern edge of the ice cap (at Katla) are used with network measurements, now concentrated on the two GPS points on nunataks in the Myrdalsjokull ice cap, Enta and Austmannsbunga. Four tilt stations are also situated around the ice cap and are measured annually. The horizontal component of the GPS displacement shows an outward radial pattern, originating from the northern part of the sub-glacial caldera.

All the GPS points show uplift between the 2000 and 2003 surveys. The continuous GPS stations show a southward displacement component in addition to background plate movements. Using the displacement vectors in a forward grid search for the best-fitting Mogi point source, suggests a centre of inflation in the northern part of the caldera at 4.9 km depth. The rate of uplift at the Austmannsbunga GPS point increased markedly between the 1993-2000 measurements and the 2000-2003 measurements, from a few mm per year to about 2 cm per year.

Back-tracing the 2000-2003 time series of the vertical uplift of the Austmannsbunga point suggests a start of the inflation in the early spring of 1999. This, together with the July 1999 jokulhlaup at Solheimajokull, may be taken as the first signs that magma started to accumulate beneath Katla. The cumulative uplift of the Austmannsbunga point since 1993 is 7.2 cm. With the location of the Mogi point fixed at 4.9 km depth, this corresponds to an uplift of 12 cm directly above it.

A sub-surface magma volume increase of 0.019 km is implied. Even though the 1999-2003 inflation is only small so far, it indicates increased magma accumulation in the roots of the volcano, and must be taken seriously in light of Katla's history as one of the most productive and dangerous volcanoes in Iceland.

Source: urekamag.com/research/g/113/godabunga.php

@Passerby [97]

IOW, they said the kettle is at least warming, in the last statement of "not knowing what it means"?

They say nothing about kettles warming. The location of this nunatak GPS station should be put in perspective.

See: Surface and bedrock topography of the MÃ½rdalsjÃ¶kull ice cap, Iceland: The Katla caldera, eruption sites and routes of jÃ¶kulhlaups. Magnus T and Company,

www.raunvis.hi.is/~mtg/pdf/Jokull49_HBetal_Myrdalsjokull.pdf

Katla has already shown significant signs of recent inflation interpreted by the gurus as chamber magma accretion. This small uplift is not unexpected.

@ Boris Behncke: There are some papers the Italian government should read, linked on the USGS website such as: Earthquakes cannot be predicted; Geller, Jackson, Kagan, and Mulargia
http://scec.ess.ucla.edu/~ykagan/perspective.html
Another: Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program for the Adriatic area. The hazard map is strikingly different from the seismicity map. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/products/foreign/

I found these and others from links on the left-hand side of the world or US latest earthquakes map at the USGS site, in category "Future", with "Earthquake Scenarios", "Predictions", and "Probabilities", which link to resources on many websites. Eruptions censor ate my previous post with its several links. Maybe 2 links will be allowed.

@Princess Frito - good to see my arch is still going strong! I keep tabs on it every day :))

Monday Musings: Russian activity, tremors at Ngauruhoe and Mayon climbers beware

eklemetti — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:20:18 +0000

Monday Musings: Russian activity, tremors at Ngauruhoe and Mayon climbers beware

News for Monday!

Ngauruhoe in New Zealand, showing the dark lava flows of basaltic andesite on the slopes of the young volcanic cone. Image by Erik Klemetti, taken January 2009.

A couple pieces of news from two Russian volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula: (1) last week's report of activity at Gorely appears to be semi-substantiated with new photos on the KVERT website (Russian). The images from June 6 and 12 (2010) shows steam plumes coming from the volcano - one as tall as 500 meters. Now, this doesn't imply that an eruption occurred, but it might suggest activity on on the upswing. KVERT continues to list the Alert Status at Gorely as "Green". (2) An eruption over the weekend at Shiveluch produced an explosive plume that reached 4.5 km / 15,000 feet. Over the last few days, the volcano has experienced over 150 earthquakes, but the activity is no threat to nearby villages or aviation over the peninsula. The status at Shiveluch remains at "Orange".
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, there are some interesting tremors (Updated 6/21/2010: Nope, likely these "tremors" are just wind in the area of the webicorder - see the comments below) going on near Ngauruhoe in New Zealand. This fairly active volcano is part of the Taupo Volcano Zone and is located next door to Ruapehu near the famous Tongariro Crossing. Now, there is no indication on the New Zealand GeoNet website and the status is still "green", but it could be something to watch. Ngauruhoe last erupted in 1977 and had frequent eruptions in the middle of the 20th century. Ngauruhoe is really the youngest cone of Tongariro volcano - a cone that started forming only 2,500 years ago. The volcano tends to have strombolian explosions with basaltic andesite lava flows (see image above) ... and be sure to check out the Ngauruhoe webcam.
Over in the Philippines, government officials now have the deal with tourists visiting Mayon instead of Taal after they were warned to stay away from the latter volcano. However, dangers still exist at Mayon, where there are frequent rockfalls and small explosions - yet tour guides still bring people into the 6-km exclusion zone. Although the Alert Status at Mayon is at Level 1, the crater still glows red at night, reminding us that magma is still near the surface.
Finally, last year there was a lot of talk about the oil storage tanks near Redoubt in Alaska. This week, the Cook Inlet Regional Citizens Advisory Council heard a report on the storage tanks and whether the CIRCA did an appropriate job in planning for a volcanic eruption from the Alaskan volcano in regards to the potential spill from the tanks. More or less, it appears that the Council may have been complacent in the oversight of the facility - a common problem when it comes to planning for disasters.

{Hat tip to Eruptions readers M. Randolph Kruger and Bruce Stout for information used in this post.}

eklemetti Sun, 06/20/2010 - 20:20

Which tremors for Ngauruhoe do you mean, it looks like it's only had two earthquakes in the last few months, is it the smaller tremours? http://www.geonet.org.nz/images/volcano/drums/ch/otvz/10/drum.png

http://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/activity/ngauruhoe/index.html

This is great news, I've been waiting for this one to erupt for ages. Last year when I climbed it last year it only has steaming out a few fumaroles at the top at the side and inside the main crater nothing was steaming at all. NZ has been pretty boring of late, I wish something would happen there.

Greg: Be careful what you wish for, especially when talking about eruptions!

Thanks for the info about Mt. Ngauruhoe, Erik. I'll check the webcam when I'm not at work :-)
I did the Tongariro Crossing in 2000 and vividly remember the blue and green crater lakes up there.
As there are many tourists up there every day (at least in summer) I would not wish a sudden eruption or bursting crater lake rims...

I wonder if Ngauruhoe isn't just celebrating the "Victory" of the all whites against Italy yesterday. I guess a volcanic victory dance would be a bit tremorsome:)
And let me just say that for a swede Ngauruhoe is definitly on the list of un-pronouncable volcanic names. Give me something easy like EyjafjallajÃ¶kull any day!

Ngauruhoe is a very beautifull volcano, would look stunning with a nice strombolian eruption, especially since it dont have any ice-cap on top. Hope there are a lot of webcams around! One that up-dates every 30 minutes would be a bit disapointing. A live feed from a few angles and a FLIR for night-time would be good, microphones so one could put it on the speakers, and of course live helicorders so I could feed my finally finished actuating chair... Then it would just be to fire up the videoprojector and pop a beer:) Would beat the Football worldcup any day.

A question:
Is there anywhere one could get translations from the Indonesian volcanic centres updates? I've tried to look but haven't found any on their site. http://portal.vsi.esdm.go.id/joomla/

Would be nice to see if something is brewing there since they do have some of the nicer volcanos around.

Thank's in advance for the avalanche of help that I know will be coming from the knowledgeable pros here!

@Carl #5 Try using the Google Chrome web browser. You can get all sites translated to the language of your choice. It automatically detects the language and you may choose to which language you want the article translated. I would advise you to choose English - you know, as for Portuguese you may get very funny results. I tried the link you posted (thank you for that) in English and it worked fair enough. Of course it doesn't work for images.

On HvÃ³lsvÃ¶llur cam steam plume is visible now. Lady E is still giving signs of life.

#2 as long as lake Tapou or Auckland field doesn't erupt it will be ok. That Ngauruhoe climb really makes you fit lol. And the weather coming in and out and crampons at the top made it lots of fun too. Ruapehu's crater lake softly churning actually looked more creepy :P

not sure if intrested or not, but found this site not sure if its fake or not. National Association of radio-distress signalling and infocommunications,Emergency and Disaster information services {EDIS} havaria@rsoe.hu or zsolt.boszormenyi@rsoe.hu this site shows all the current volcanoes and earthquakes ect.

@ Greg (and all) - Ooops! I somehow forgot to add the link for the Ngauruhoe tremor. I've updated the post above and you can see the webicorder for Oturere (Ngauruhoe). Sorry about that.

Hi, what sort of tremors are they, harmonic?

Greg: well, I was thinking more about Taupo et al. Or Taranaki, which is statistically more likely to reawaken soon than either Taupo or Auckland. Re Ngaurohoe; I've got an interesting book ('Hot Water Country' by Ross Annabell) which has some lively anecdotes about it. Published in NZ, I think, so it's on your patch, I'd guess

Here's Thorvaldseyri's new website, the early 'farm under the volcano' - http://www.thorvaldseyri.is/ Wish there were an English version, but hey...

birdseyesUSA.comment13, It can be in english just click on union jack top left side of the page

Anyone else pondering what this cluster of eq's under Lady E might mean?

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/…

Though, admittedly they are very shallow.

@12 Would be nice if White Island fired up, apparently it's thrown rocks 50km to the mainland before lol

Greg 12: Is White Island still privately owned? (It certainly used to be). In which case lawyers would have a field day if it caused damage on the mainland LOL

Sorry, that should have been to Greg 16

@birdseye, #13, There is an english version of this page, and as far as I have seen, it contains all the info of the icelandic page.

@Laura from Canada [15]

Dunno, but here is how they look in profile. Quakes from 6/16 to 6/20.

http://i45.tinypic.com/34g3cow.png

Hi to all,

Birdseye @13,Hi I just checked out the Thorvaldseyri website.On the main page at top left there are Icelandic and English flags.Click on the English flag and it all becomes much clearer !
Laura @15.Curious little swarm that,and no real depth to any of them.Umm,we will see.

@14,19,21 ...and I just got new glasses ...sigh.....lol, thanks! ;

Not sure if it's anything, but a curious darker cloud is rising on the far left of the thoro cam... and someone just walked by snapping pictures.

And by far left, I of course me far right.... lol

Ngauruhoe is still fast asleep. Doesn'nt look like volcanic tremor at all. Climbed it last year, it could use a new eruption though, the slopes ar getting very eroded by all the people climbing it.

Guys,
I'm 99.9% certain that you're observing wind on the Ngauruhoe (...and other NZ volcano seismometers)! Remember it's winter now down there. If Nguaruhoe,..or any other volcano was producing the observed ground motion, bells and wistles would be ringing off their mounts. Seismometers don't just record volcano-genic stuff,...I've seen helicopter passes on the Ruapehu seismograph from time to time.

Rodger

@ Ber - Yeah, I'm not sure what to make of the noise on the webicorder. Any thoughts from the tremor-hounds out there?

Question: The last I looked Redoubt had been removed from the larger Holocene eruptions list, anyone know why? Here is a copy/paste from when it was there.

http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm

Name - Location - Date - Volcano Explosivity Index

CHAITEN Southern Chile 2008Â Â MayÂ 2Â VEI 4 OKMOK Aleutian Islands 2008Â Â JulÂ 12Â 4? KASATOCHI Aleutian Islands 2008Â Â AugÂ 7Â 4
REDOUBT Southwestern Alaska 2009Â Â MarÂ 22Â 4
SARYCHEV PEAK Kuril Islands 2009Â Â JunÂ 11Â 4

Didn't Redoubt erupt 16 times with plumes over 12 miles high, or am I mistaken?

Garry Hayes over at Geotripper has some lovely shots taken of Kiluea from the ocean-- empty lava tubes, pahoehoe and aa lava in unusual formations==

http://geotripper.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-i-wish-i-wasunique-view-of…

Hello Everyone,. :))

just wonderin if "EyafjatlajÃ¸kutl" has a new eruption, it seems like the plume has become a little darker and goes a little bit higher up than It has been the last days(weeks)??

btw a young customer at my store was just uber cute today and asked me if the volcano was still volcanoing on Iceland,. heheh. She was only 7 years.. aww I tought it was cute,.

@Thor,Hi,its a little hard to say at present;too much cloud,but there was quite a large plume earlier re Laura @23&24.

@Thor and Adrian, the recent eq swarms might point to something POTENTIALLY stirring, but alot of them were very shallow. I'm questioning though the lack thereof any real tremor movements. I'm pretty sure I saw a plume, but there was some cloud cover (and some very dark clouds) so it could have been that. Just thought that it was ironic that when I saw it, someone else ran by the camera snapping pictures. ;)

@Thor

I don't think anything is going on in the way of an eruption right now - but a flood might be in the program, and you can never bypass explosions as long as things are as hot as they are now. The greatest hazards now are, in my opinion;
1) renewed eruptive activity in the current crater with extremely violent interaction vith the water there
2) no eruption, but a breach of the crater rim releasing all the water trapped in the crater and the jÃ¶kullhlaup down GigjÃ¶kull following that

A nice approximation of the pronunciation of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull, btw - although the Norwegian/Danish version of 'Ã¶' (Ã¸) might throw some people.

Ed 28: I think the Redoubt eruption plumes reached 12km, rather than 12 miles, which is a big difference! Also the VEI rating is calculated on more than just plume height; it certainly includes the total volume of lava/tephra produced in the eruption, and the 2009 eruption was no bigger than (or maybe slightly smaller than) the 1989 eruption in terms of volume..and that was a VEI 3

Kultsi :))

Hi,..

I was just checking on the Metrolocial pages
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/
and there has been more activity,when it comes to shallow quakes then it has been for days/weeks,.
maybe its because of the ice/water melting and running into the crater and down the plumbings inside the mountain??

If you warm up mountain and then add cold water on it it cracks and breaks so maybe that makes the quakes??

anyways there is something going on up there,
and I agree with you

1) renewed eruptive activity in the current crater with extremely violent interaction vith the water there

2) no eruption, but a breach of the crater rim releasing all the water trapped in the crater and the jÃ¶kullhlaup down GigjÃ¶kull following that

These scenarios will both be diastrous, and extremely dangerous.

Remember that

EyjafjÃ¤ll, has had longtime eruptions that has had on /of breaks in between the eruptions, somtimes longer breaks and other where shorter..
if the water mixes with lava then things will sure become nasty for a while and quite explosive..

and Im sure the eruption on "EyjafjatlajÃ¶kutl" is not over,its just in another fase before starting up again..
and I wont be surpriced if another Volcano will erupt in the meantime, no im not sugesting Katla, that eruption might take some time before starting.. but will sure come with time..

birdseye @ 13, thanks for the link to farm photos. From that, I found a link to more Ejya. photos: http://www.nordicphotos.is/IS/search/Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull The April 14 distance shot of the farm with ash and steam plumes behind it is one I'd be tempted to buy, but I don't see how to find prices. [ http://www.thorvaldseyri.is/skrar/image/Gos_i_Eyjafjallajokli/DSC08496… ]

Oops, this is the purchase site, but it's only in Icelandic, as far as I can tell. http://www.nordicphotos.is/IS/Details/6710791

@ Roger, 26

wind noise was what I thought of first too so I checked nearby seismograms to see if there was anything unusual but they looked normal to me (I check the geonet seismograms out everday) and, knowing the volanic plateau, high winds are more the norm than the exception, so this would mean a really exceptional storm to generate such a localized signal. On top of that, I haven't seen the graph look like this before in over, at a guess, two years of following it. That's why I mentioned it here.

OTOH Geonet haven't mentioned anything at all on their site or bumped up the volcano alert, so I guess you're right. There must be some extraneous source for the signal. Maybe they moved it or some tourists are having a party or something.

@Thor, @Adrian @Laura: Definitely there's a darker plume. Clouds are coming and going, but keep checking on ÃÃ³rÃ³lsfell and MÃºlakot cams. A pity that I must leave now.

http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/06/20/glacial-flood-in-south-icela…

Flood in Iceland.

Where is the seismograph in NZ, since when we climbed Mnt Doom it was Novemberish and there heaps of ice on it, so now there must be a lot of ice on that mountain. The weather really came in and out all the time and we had a few white outs. Yeah it's overdue for an eruption since before the 1970s it erupted pretty regularly. There is an old worn out sign up from NZ Geo about "toxic gas" inside the crater and not to climb in, I think it was stirring a bit in the last 10 years but has been really quiet and boring lately. So hopefully it wakes up, since it's erupts differently to it's giant neighbor.

@17 Yeah I think White Island is still private. Arises from the sulphur mining that used to occur there, until one day all the miners were gone :P

As Rodger says, I don't see any tremor at Ngauruhoe, only the usual mid-winter weather. It often looks like that on windy days. Sorry to disappoint!

@41 nooooooooooooooooo I want NZ to go active, so I don't have to fly across the planet to see active volcanoes :P

@ 41 mfs.. Thanks for the feedback. Just by chance, mfs, it sounds like you and Rodger know what you are talking about. Personally I would love to hear more about NZ's volcanoes if you are, um, closer to the source (perhaps not a very apt thing to say when I think about it) e.g. do you have any info about the small swarm under haroharo ? etc.

BTW, I'd still dispute the claim that it often looks like that on windy days. Raoul often looks like that, but as I mentioned above, just about every other day IS a windy day on Ngauruhoe and I honestly haven't seen it look like that before. I am not saying it is tremor (as otherwise Geonet would have issued a statement) just... well I guess I am just trying to save face by tripping over backwards. ;-)

Hi Bruce,

The gain settings (amplification) on each of the NZ volcanoes appears to be different (perhaps according to their levels of activity and also according to their sensitivity to wind, cultural noise, etc). I've watched them for a while as well. Since Ngauruhoe was showing some seismic activity the past few years, I take the GNS seismologists have that station running alittle "hot" so they don't miss anything. If you watch activity at Tongariro vs Ngauruhoe (which is actually a parasitic vent of Tongariro) you'll see what I mean. A good test of their sensitivity is to find a regional earthquake on all the seismograms, and then find out where it occurred in relation to each station. Typically, the regional event will be well recorded on the Ngauruhoe station and rather weak on the nearby Tongariro station (If the amplification of both stations were identical, a regional event should appear nearly identical in size and with similar waveforms).
If you want to see what tremor looks like at a NZ volcano, keep an eye on White Island. There is usually low level tremor there which ebbs and flows over time, sometimes grading into discrete low-frequency earthquakes,...saw that last month in fact!

Rodger

Thank you to everyone who helped clear up this Ngauruhoe webicorder noise observation - I've updated the post to reflect the consensus that it reflects wind in the area. Good to keep us on our toes, eh?

Bruce @ 43,
I might be closer than you but still pretty far (Tasmania). I spend a couple of weeks working in NZ most years and have been keeping a regular eye on Ngauruhoe since the earthquake swarm that happened a couple of years ago. I remember seeing very thick traces quite often in the past and it's always been attributed to weather. Just like Taranaki seismometers used to be near the North Egmont park entrance and showed road traffic noise regularly during opening hours.
If any new activity occurs, the Geonet website is usually pretty much on the ball and issuing alert bulletins at short notice.

I wouldn't be too concerned about that Gorely volcano. It sounds like a girly volcano to me.

Profile View of Eyj/Kat quakes 19th to 21st.

http://i50.tinypic.com/ncicqu.png

Zoomed in Plan View, same color codes for depth, Eyj only. Shows a good layout of the shallow quakes.

http://i45.tinypic.com/mq2k3.png

Ref my last [48], the 2nd graphic has a "Kat" label, ignore it. I forgot to yank it out when I slewed the graph to the plan view.

@49: Thanks, Bud!
Deep pressure continues from below.

Eyjaf eruption rolls along at low throttle. Surficial EQ from peripheral icecap melting and steam flashing with gas bumping.

And.. since I'm doing a slight hiatus from the Oilcano...

15 Minute Quake energy (all quakes from en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/ site, updated to 22 June.

http://i47.tinypic.com/qoevrc.png

Mike @34 Hi, I'm big into the effect volcano eruptions have on weather intensity and cloud formation.

According to this write-up by Joe D'Aleo of http://icecap.us/ fame...

http://www.intellicast.com/Community/Content.aspx?a=223

Redoubt blew over a dozen times to 60-65,000 ft plus and that calculates to 12+ miles.

I keep seeing other climate related data being altered or even hidden by certain agencies, won't go into that, but I'm just plenty curious. For example, much of the past raw Zurich solar cycle data at NASA now cannot be retrieved. Redoubt is suddenly missing from the Smithsonian Holocene list... like what's going on? I want to know. Thx

Love this blog btw!

@Ed Murphy[52]

Have you tried SIDC as an alternate source of Solar Cycle data? It's the Royal Observatory of Belgium and is sort of responsible for keeping a tally of some of that data.

sidc.be/index.php

Kp and AP indexes can be found here : www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/geomag/kp_ap.html

And, if you want to see something really stupid...

http://i49.tinypic.com/i39wlt.jpg

This is a plot of the end of Cycle 23 and the start of Cycle 24. According to SIDC, the cycle began on 12/13/2007 when the first reversed polarity spot appeared. The red line is the monthly SSN of an average cycle (derived from the previous 23 cycles at that particular month in the cycle) and the yellow traces are 1 standard deviation above and below that value. Theoretically, 64% of the time whatever monthly SSN you happen to have should be between the two yellow curves. (standard deviation was also derived from previous 23 cycles)

Eh.. it's late. Sorry for the OT.

Has Mount Egmont had any tremours over recent time, that one is long overdue. Beautiful shape with the flat plane around it. And that volcano is out of line with all the others in the North island system

Thank you Erik for the kind words.....

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Alert level goes up at Taal in the Philippines

eklemetti — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:54:30 +0000

Alert level goes up at Taal in the Philippines

The steaming vent area at Taal in the Philippines in September 1965, when the volcano produced a VEI 4 eruption.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) has raised the alert status at Taal to Level 2 (of 4) and officials in the Philippines are getting ready if the volcano does come back to life for the first time since 1977. Taal is a mere 48 km (30 miles) from Manila - the capital of the Philippines and home to over 21,000,000 people in the metro area of the city. This location made Taal one of the UN/IAVCEI Decade Volcanoes as a large eruption from the volcano could be devastating.

The volcano has been quiet for almost 33 years now, but last year Taal began to show signs of life including increased steam emissions and bubbles (indicating degassing) in the volcano's crater lakes. Today, however, PHIVOLCS is reporting over 30 high frequency seismic events underneath the volcano and a greater increase in steam emissions, prompting the elevation of the Alert Status from 1 to 2. Now, earthquake swarms have occurred before at Taal over the last decade, and there have even been muddy geysers that have popped up in the crater lakes - these geysers prompted the last Level 2 alert in 2006 (thanks to deformation and increased seismicity that came with the geyser activity). Many of the eruptions over the last 40 years have been VEI 1-2 explosive events that were strongly influenced by the presence of the crater lakes (phreatic or phreatomagmatic eruptions), as the 1976-77 eruption produced copious ash-and-steam clouds. However, in 1965-6, Taal had a series of VEI 3-4 eruptions that killed at least 200 people. This eruption produced a 15-20 km ash plume after starting as basaltic spatter (sound familiar?). Additionally, a 1911 eruption produced a tsunami and killed almost 2,000 people.

You'd think with a volcano with as much of a deadly history as Taal that people would avoid it, however, Taal is actually a popular tourist destination thanks to its proximity to Manila. Volcano Island, in the middle of the largest crater lake, is now off limits due to its constant degassing, but much of the rest of the area can be visited. This tourism, combined with the high population within 100 km of the volcano means that PHIVOLCS will have its hands full if the volcano shows signs that it might have a significant eruption. PHIVOLCS does have hazard maps for Taal showing the zones of highest danger for ballistics, base surges (pyroclastic flows - the #1 hazard according to PHIVOLCS) and lakewater escape (due to seismicity) but one would imagine that ash would be a major problem if the volcano erupts explosively. Luckily, the volcano is closely monitored for seismic changes, lake temperature and chemistry and deformation from the Taal Volcano Observatory. For those intrepid webcam watchers, there are a few Taal webcams out there to check out.

eklemetti Tue, 06/08/2010 - 12:54

Tags

Hopes that United Nations funding might be available for Decade Volcano projects did not come to fruition,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade_Volcanoes#Aims_of_the_program

Bad volcanic site distribution for pork barreling, globalist politics.

Erik-- I answered my own question in the previous link-- thanks, and sorry to bug you.

Info: only the 1st link on the webcam page is of the volcano; I'm still looking for more. Not that I'm addicted, or anything ;-P

Center for Sustainable Destinations.

http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/about_geotouris…

There will be big growth, big money and big development in "sustainable" geotourism. I can see all those naturists chasing after erupting volcanoes now! Zoom zoom zoom. ...

Hahahah.

When I see the lack of seismological monitoring resources in Africa, Vanuatu, S. & C. America and elsewhere, I get annoyed and frustrated.

The reasons are the obvious ones. Limited funds, local responsibility, unknown shortfall, more immediate necessities, a shortage of volcanologists, NIMBY... "Who cares if a volcano should blow up in some far off place killing people who foolishly live there and were unfortunate in not securing an advance warning system."

Here are two profitable reasons to monitor and research volcanoes in far flung corners of the world.

1) There is big money in geotourism.

More significantly tourists who travel to remote destinations are apt to spend time and money at other regional attractions.

Getting the publicity to pull in the geotourist is crucial. Internet access to real time monitoring is a big suspenseful tease.

If the pass-through economic benefit to other regional states had been emphasized, the "decade" project might have gained support for UN funding.

2) There ought to be huge interdisciplinary spin-off benefits from volcanological research. The topic of interest is a complex, heterogeneous, multiphase system that provides prodigious data from a diverse set of examples.

I expect that volcanology is an ideal accessible real environment to develop expertise in very complex, multi-component dynamic interactions.

The insights and experience gained from volcanology stand a good chance of being suitable for other situations else where.

Hey! What's that to the left of the image on MÃºlakot cam? Looks like steam or PC flow coming downslope??? Also seen from the extreme left of HvÃ³lsvÃ¶llur, I think.

There's a cloud of steam moving fast to the left of the crater on HvosvÃ¶llur! Winds are very low.

Well, that could be a cloud or another dust devil, but the speed of the wind, according to JÃ³n's helicorders is null at the time, and the cloud moved so rapidly... Now it's gone. But the steam area on MÃºlakot is still visible.

@ Raving no.3 Geotourism Plans

So: "big growth, big money and big development", eh?!

Sure thing, if you are right and we get all those "naturists (!) chasing after erupting volcanoes". (But of course, they will have nowhere to KEEP their money! Sorry!)

Your vision for geotourism would be a "hot project" indeed.......

;-)

Hi all, I'm an interested bystander, not knowing much at all about volcanos, but as a scientist the discussions on this website make for a great read everyday.

Just thought I'd say, I visited the Philippines in 2001 and on my trip around the islands I visited lake taal including a boat trip over to the central "volcano island". If anyone is interested I could dig out my old photos of the trip. I remember lots of interesting coloured water / crystals on the edge of the (central island) crater lake with some venting gases & a very hot day!

It would be a disaster if there was a large eruption there, as there are many houses surrounding the lake, and most people wouldn't have the resources to do much to help themselves if anything happened. A beautiful part of the country, nonetheless.

@ 9 Ems, Please do upload your photographs,they'd be interesting to look at.I was watching a video on Youtube in which tourists from Manilla were walking around inside the crater just before it was made off limits. I wondered if they realised just where they were walking lol.

Hi Zander, I will try & dig them out - think they were not digital photos so I'll see!
Although it's a while ago, there certainly weren't any indications to make tourists aware that it was in anyway an active volcano, other than what you could see/smell. I think that until you see images from google earth do you realise that the larger lake taal is the actual entire volcano - not just the little tiny volcano island in the middle of the serene lake!

It is (and has to be for many) about the money that can be made from tourism, as incomes are so low out there. I doubt whether any of the governments contigencies will have been communicated to the public in these areas:
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/261295/gov-t-assures-readiness-case-taal-…

There seems to be some ambiguity as to what classifies as Taal volcano.Some websites say Taal is the world's smallest volcano citing the 408 metre tall cinder cone at one corner of the island inside Taal lake. Surely the volcano is the entire island inside Taal lake with the cinder cone being one of a couple of vents?

@ 12. Im pretty sure the lake covers the remains of a caldera collapse, I recall reading that Taal had VEI 6 eruption a few thousand years ago. Im pretty sure the volcano is the whole lake including volcano island.

Good question, what indeed is a "volcano"? Is it the mountain, the vent(-s) or the magma chamber/piping? Since the former are manifestations of the latter, I'd say the latter is the volcano proper. ;)

@14, Simon, I think you're right. See the physical features description in the link:

http://volcano.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/update_VMEPD/Volcano/VolcanoList/ta…

I agree with Henrik. It seems a bit ridiculous naming one little vent in a rather large caldera complex the smallest volcano in the world.

Wikipedia:
"Taal Lake lies within a 25â30 km caldera formed by four explosive eruptions between 500,000 and 100,000 years ago. Each of these eruptions created extensive ignimbrite deposits, reaching as far away as where Manila stands today."

That's small?

@Erik - I agree with Renato. I'd hunt him down, though, and hang him by the unmentionables he/she/it keeps mentioning.

@13, Zander, sorry, posted after two sips coffee. Yikes. 2 days in a row.

@ #12-#16 I think we all agree that the Volcano Island of Taal is not tall. Somehow that reminded me of a saying by Robert A. Heinlein, "Never frighten a small guy. He'll kill you." (From RAH "Notebooks of Lazarus Long", in "Time Enough for Love")

Kutsi#19 - RAH now there's a name that takes me back to my teenage years... Auctioned off a large pile of SF to a local group a long time ago, and I've missed them ever since. I had a girlfriend who used to enigmatically quote RAH "sayings" at me, and I had to go and reread the books to find out what she meant.

@Gordon - I gotta boast here: I have "RAH Grumbles from the Grave" signed by Ginny.

I grok what you're saying---)

@ Parclair, have another go lol.

@23 Zander. I hoped if I just didn't say anything, no one would notice. Sorry Simon. *eyeroll* *Headslap*

Hi to All,

Todays "silly quiz". Has anyone spotted that the Flir cam has had the same image up for about 24 hours now ? lol.

But on a more serious note..

There appears to be a new outbreak of meltwater but quite a way to the right of the old lake. I have a 81cm monitor on my computer and even with the poor definition on the Thoro Cam (set on 400%), I cam just make out what look to be 4 plumes behind the new meltwater just in front of Eyja herself. Am I seeing things or does anyone else see what I am seeing ???

Sorry,"cam" should be "can".

Henrik 14: Very good question. When it comes down to it, precisely defining "volcano" is dam' difficult.

-Is it the vent itself?

-Is it the vent+ accumulated materials ejected from it? (The 'volcanic edifice') This is the popular non-scientific definition

-Or is it the entire plumbing system, going down 100km and possibly underlying several hundred sq,km, which includes the edifice as a (fairly small) part of the whole? ('the volcanic system')

Logically it should be the latter, but that raises problems eg with several closely-spaced volcanic structures. Are they related, and part of the same system? Many volcanoes were named (because they're pretty obvious features) and classed as independent centres long before the days of petrographic study and trace-element analysis. and there is possibly a certain caution about re-classifying them.

Are the Three Sisters separate volcanoes, or progressively younger manifestations of the same system? If the former, why is/are Mexico's 'Three Virgins' classed as one volcano? And so on.

And what about an active cone within a broad caldera? Is Taal defined as Volcano Island, or the whole of the caldera filled by Lake Taal? If the latter, should not Sakurajima be defined formally as including the whole Aira caldera? (to give one example) It gets very confusing.

Kutsi#21, I am jealous, not so much of the signed copy, but that you still have them. I just checked my attic and only "time Enough For Love" remains which I just couldn't get rid of..

I just had a quick look to see if there were any appropriate aphorisms for "Eruptions" and bizarrely on the second page I looked (pg368) I found the following...

"Beware of the "Black Swan" fallacy.Deductive logic is tautological; there is no way to get a new truth out of it, and it manipulates false statements as readily as true ones.
If you fail to remember this, it can trip you - with perfect logic. The designers of the earliest computerscalled this the "GIGO Law" i.e, "Garbage in Garbage Out".
Inductive Logic is much more difficult - but can produce new truths."

Has anyone noticed that the wildflowers have flowered on Mula cam 1?

While searching for information on Italian seamounts today, I came across an interesting little theory on the myth of scylla-and-charybdis.

http://virtualwayfarer.com/a-possible-origin-for-the-scylla-and-charybd…

The author didn't carry the seamount notion as far as I might have, to include a seamount-fissure system that might have caused a temporary whirlpool to develop nearby, perhaps formed by hot gases ejection into anticyclonic flows known to exist in the waters above active shallow seamounts.

There is a seamount found within the Sicilian Straits, The Malta Seamount, but the model could have been any the of many seamounts found in the Mediterranean.

Henrik 14/Don:

Very good question. When it comes down to it, precisely defining "volcano" is dam' difficult.

-Is it the vent itself?

-Is it the vent+ accumulated materials ejected from it? (The 'volcanic edifice') This is the popular non-scientific definition

-Or is it the entire plumbing system, going down 100km and possibly underlying several hundred sq,km, which includes the edifice as a (fairly small) part of the whole? ('the volcanic system')

Are the Three Sisters separate volcanoes, or progressively younger manifestations of the same system? If the former, why is/are Mexico's 'Three Virgins' classed as one volcano? And so on.

How about the volcanoes of Iceland..

the whole island there is actually one big volcano,that has lots of vents and cones and mountains of former active and active "volcanoes"...

to just name a volcano is not always as easy to define, as with the "Taal" volcano wich is a newly formed crater, formed in the old caldera,(the lake)wich is actually a part of a larger volcanic system that made that island..

so the whole island should actually have the name of the Volcano right??

Taal Island??..

Thor: I dug out my copy of 'Volcanoes Of The World' (1994 edition) and found this on Iceland (p152)

"Since our 1981 book, reorganisation by volcanic systems...has resulted in a substantial drop in number of volcanoes (from 71 to 35) but more meaningful grouping of genetically related surface features"

Seems to be relevant

#19, 20 and 21: still have all my Heinlein (non signed) but precious nonetheless. My only signed book is Gaia by James Lovelock, given to me by an ex student who met him on a uni field trip and asked him to sign it for me. It is my most treasured thing.

@Gordon #29 Yes, I've seen the wild flowers! Someone had mentioned before and I went there to check... Like in the Phoenix myth, from the ashes they bloom!
@Passerby #30 Talking about myths... I love the way the ancients found to explain what in many cases remain unexplainable still today . The Scylla-and-charybdis was one of the myths that inspired me most awe when I was a youngster reading the Odyssey - just couldn't figure out what they were exactly - giant whirlpools with a big open mouth? I'm not convinced that lava bombs could "explain" multi-headed monsters. What I think is that they didn't actually want to "explain" anything: they accepted nature the way it is and described what they experienced in a poetic form. And may be they were closer to truth doing so. (?!)
As for volcanoes, I keep the image I've always had from them - the good old conical shape. In fact, until Eyjaf, I didn't care much about Icelandic volcanoes because they didn't match the shape I had in mind since my childhood. Now that I fell in love to them, I have to accept the idea of them being effusive cracks on Earth's crust. What about calderas? Well, they are big volcanoes, with a crater lake and a small volcano within. Can anyone be more scientific than that? :)

Another EQ on Jan Mayen micro-plate:
4.9 2010/06/09 16:54:24 70.351 -15.165 10.0 JAN MAYEN ISLAND REGION (USGS)

Flooding alert on EyjafjallajÃ¶kull (lahars?), heavy rains forecasted between 5 and 9 in the morning - I'll post it in Icelandic, maybe someone could translate it:

Mikilli Ãºrkomu spÃ¡Ã° og hÃ¦tta Ã¡ aurflÃ³Ã°um - skrÃ¡Ã° 09.06.2010 kl. 17:10
Ã nÃ³tt er spÃ¡Ã° allt aÃ° 40 mm Ãºrkomu Ã¡ EyjafjallajÃ¶kli. ReiknaÃ° er meÃ° aÃ° mest rigni Ã¡ tÃmabilinu milli kl. 5 og 9 Ã fyrramÃ¡liÃ°. ViÃ° Ã¾essar aÃ°stÃ¦Ã°ur er hÃ¦tta Ã¡ aÃ° Ã¶skulÃ¶g Ã¡ EyjafjallajÃ¶kli geti skriÃ°iÃ° fram og niÃ°ur farvegi Ã¡a sem renna suÃ°ur af fjÃ¶llunum. Ãetta Ã¡ helst viÃ° SvaÃ°bÃ¦lisÃ¡, LaugaÃ¡ og KaldaklifsÃ¡ en einnig geta slÃk flÃ³Ã° komiÃ° niÃ°ur HoltsÃ¡, MiÃ°skÃ¡laÃ¡ og ÃrÃ¡.

@Renato, #40: In short: They expect heavy rainfalls this night - up to 40mm of rain between 5 and 9 in the morning. This may lead to mudflows from the EyjafjallajÃ¶kull in the area.

#37 @Chris,Reykjavik Thank you! Hope you stay away from the path.

Mud flows are much bigger killers than lava flows! So please, attention!
A 6,0 M EQ in Vanuatu.
6.0 2010/06/09 23:23:19 -18.586 169.471 17.8 km VANUATU (NE of Traitor's Head)
According to Smithsonian Institute: "A submarine vent offshore between the tip of the peninsula and Goat Island, 5 km to the NE, erupted in 1881, the only historical activity of the Erromango volcanoes".

Re: Eyja, A little bit gleaned from the IMO page dated May 24 (under 'ashfall") -"...Volcanologists and Geologists term this quieter spell of volcanic activity as a âpausedâ phase. However, it is typical for a volcano like this to have several âpausesâ as part of its overall eruption phase. Only when the volcano has been âpausedâ for three months will it then be regarded as being dormant."

Does it mean something?
5.0 2010/06/10 02:13:23 7.256 126.840 60.8 MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES

6.0 EQ Vanuato 6 minutes ago

All, for interest, as promised yesterday (#9) I dug out my old taal photos. As I suspected they were poor quality old-school photos, so I scanned them in and the results can be seen here:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/107090910741035698162/Taal?authkey=Gv1sRg…

they at least provide an overview of the whole structure of taal lake and it's size. Volcano island is to the right in photo 1 - behind the blade of grass! & in the centre of photo 5. Photo 3 provides a view from the side of volcano island in low evening light. Photo 4 is the panorama from within volcano island itself. Hope they are of some use!

Hi Ems@43, I think everyone is over on the new page now - thanks for the photos, I'll put a reference over there for you.

Some info. on Taal vocano = about 5000 people live on volcano island, mostly involved in fishing and farming, and tourist guide's, Nobody should be living there of course but this is the Philippines!!. I have lived in Tagaytay for 3 years, we are 2000-2500 above the lake so the weather is cooler. The big fear is steam explosions in the lake which is 30 miles long.

From the Library of Congress: the original report on the 1911 eruption of Taal by Reverend Miguel Sanderro Maso of the Weather Bureau. It's a big file but fantastic read.
http://ia340935.us.archive.org/1/items/eruptionoftaalvo00philrich/erupt…

A boy can lose to hide from rubbish but can motion a blacksmith

Hey I have been following your articles quite a lot & I must say that you come across as a pro in your area of study. You should start blogging more often , it would be really great.

Small explosions at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull: Start of something new or end of something old?

eklemetti — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:48:38 +0000

Small explosions at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull: Start of something new or end of something old?

Image of the EyjafjallajÃ¶kull's ash taken on May 26, 2010, courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory.

Eruptions readers were closely following increasing tremors at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull this afternoon/evening wondering if there was a new eruption starting but with the weather not cooperating, no one was sure. However, this evening the Icelandic Met Office released a statement (Icelandic) saying that a small explosion of gas and ash did occur today. The update is only available (so far) on the Icelandic version of the IMO website - so I had to work through a Google Translate version of the story - but it appears that the combination of increased tremor and these renewed "throat-clearing" events (most likely very little new material in these explosions) might herald a new period of activity at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull - or it could just be a blip during the waning of the system.

You can check out the Mila.is webcam (weather permitting) or the IMO tremor plots to keep an eye on the volcano. As of 11 PM EDT, the volcano is still "restless."

{Hat tip to JÃ³n FrÃmann for keeping us up to date on the activity at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull.}

eklemetti Fri, 06/04/2010 - 16:48

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Puffs coming out of crater - Mula and ThÃ³rol cams.

Aww man! Something exciting happens and I lose power in a thunderstorm for over 2 hours. Renatoooooo!

#3 Calm down, YH, not too much to be excited about. Only some puffs and JÃ³n's Helicorders are steady.
As for the power loss - I thought we only got those down at the tropics. :)

HvÃ³lsvÃ¶llur cam looks interesting, though...

Engir skjÃ¡lftar fylgdu Ã¾essum Ã³rÃ³ahviÃ°um og undanfariÃ° hafa eingÃ¶ngu veriÃ° smÃ¡ir, grunnir skjÃ¡lftar undir fjallinu. No earthquakes follow these disturbances Hvid and recently have only been small, shallow earthquakes under the mountain

Meanwhile take a look at this!
http://www.lahora.com.ec/frontEnd/images/objetos/TUNGURAHUAFP_201006311…

@Renato ~ It's the tropics here in southern Canada this time of year, so every time there's a thunderstorm warning I have to get the candles ready. Cats and candles don't mix well though, so I at least enjoyed a nice bonfire outside.

Until the mosquitoes came ...

@Dan and everyone else affected by the oil spill ~ I got caught up with the news today and just can't imagine how you must feel trying to do your part to help clean up such a massive, growing mess. Words just don't work.

@Renato ~ Whoa!

@Robert B and Things to do ~ #1 & #6 I *think* I understand from reading between the lines ;)

I'm sure there are a lot of people who read this blog who are busy as I am and may have missed the opportunity to give an honourable mention of our beloved Eruptions blog, so if you feel so inclined, please do so at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/jun/03/wanted-best-science-…

Tremor plots are showing a small unrest now and the plume looks sturdier, don't you think?
@YH, how do they dare? (the mosquitoes?)

The plume looks sturdier on the Hvols cam but as puffs on the Thoro cam. Must be the different angles.

Pass the calamine lotion please.

Sorry for the off-topic but just a few hours ago the oil spill cam did not look like it was pumping out half as much as it is now:

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

There should not be any new eruption at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull. The seismic events that occurred during the past days and weeks are all shallow and do not reveal any new magma ascent.However, the eruptive tremor shows there is probably still some hot material coming up in the crater so that the contact with glacier melting water occasionally causes small phreatic eruptions accompanied by ash clouds. In my opinion, the eruption is over

Bed time! Ok, gents ladies, keep us updated. See you tomorrow/today. I'm sure this Lady still has stories to tell us.

WOW! There is a really high spike in the tremor graphs:

hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html

The steam plume is a bright white and at time quite significant in size. Beautiful day for webcam watching.

The tremor plot are once again increasing in strength. I don't think that this is a older material that got on the move because that some blockade inside the EyjafjallajÃ¶kull plumbing did clear a path. Like the IMO did state in news here in Iceland. I think that this is a slow restart of the eruption. They also think at IMO that this might be the last breath of the eruption, I do not agree with that. As this is too repeated and the gain of strength between eruptions is too high.

The tremor that is happening now looks stronger then before. It is going to be interesting to monitor this over the next few hours.

Icelandic news on RÃºv. Translate with Google at your own risk.

http://www.ruv.is/frett/enn-oroi-i-eyjafjallajokli

@Princess Frito & others - I recommend LED lanterns & flashlights for emergencies: they are nowadays quite affordable and the batteries last for ages - and there is no fire hazard.

I'm watching Thoro cam - is that a plume on the glacier again? Been visible since increased activity/plume.

Hello to all,

Im another person who is going to be away but only till tommorrow evening. Good Holidays to Birdseye and also Lavendel,

Catch You All Tommorrow, Adrian.

P.S Not stating the obvious but all 5 Helicorders ramping up again and there is also signs of movement on yours Jon.

Good morning All. The plume on the Hvolsvelli looks almost back to its full height this morning, shimmering through the haze with the sun shining on the white heights of the plume - and 2 plumes steady on the ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli camera just now. It's like seeing an old friend again!

I am wondering if there is a new eruption starting in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull, at new location in the crater. Since the tremor continues to increase, but nothing can be seen on the web cameras.

#22 @JÃ³n: Wondering the same. Just came out of bed to see activity which is just WOW, but plume doesn't show any difference from earlier.

Curiously though, there hasn't been very much earthquake activity at all?

The earthquake activity we saw didn't start until the eruption began to subside, it seems whenever there is earthquake activity the tremor plots are right down, and when the tremors start to go up earthquakes stop.

" Gunnar considers likely that this is a game after the eruption, a kind of death stretches, and it will be possible to continue the next day. However, there is no evidence that the eruption is about to begin again in the glacier. "

Well,at least the translations are getting more poetic....
Mornin' all, just dashing by to check on things - have to pack up the computer soon ...
and later we shall see what we shall see....keep us posted on your opinion, JÃ³n, thanks .

'birdseye, what are you doing birds... eee....y....e,' as the plug is pulled. Hasta maÃ±ana, be well all.

Darn thought it was going to get interesting again. Oh well.
Now to paint the trim on 'ol Bar MC Ranch House.First nice day in what seems weeks here in NE Oregon....

Early morning coffee in the Eastern Sierras (Owens Valley)with cattle lowing to the rising sun, protesting the 100 degree heat soon to arrive. Yes, Princess Frito #10, sending Eruptions (and other science blogs of one's choice to the Guardian is an excellent idea -- done!) Thanks, Jon and Erik, for maintaining this excellent update on Eyjaf. A fine place to visit everyday.

For those of us who can't visit the mountain today in person... here's a short time-lapse of this morning's steam plume, from the Mulakot webcam. EyjafjallajÃ¶kull volcano eruption 5 June 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8OL71zeINs

Yesterday was very pleasant in Central Washington, for a change - as GTMcCoy opines. Today promises to be lovely as well, balmy mid-70s with low humidity. Absolutely atypical weather here the past month, by the standards of the past decade, but. MUCH cooler, cloudy and wetter than normal.

The jetstream map tells the tale, as the JS is normally to the north, riding above us here in the PNW, by now. The unsettled weather is riding to the south of GT and will return by later today, so we'll be seeing another precip event by Sunday.

http://www.intellicast.com/National/Wind/JetStream.aspx

Geotechnical indicators for mildly unsettled conditions today, after an uptick yesterday, June 4, with a rising pattern of basal activity, repeating spot-on, at 30-day intervals.

Interesting. Eyjaf is not finished. IMO should take a chill. We have unsettled geoweather ahead of us.

#30 @d9tRotterdam, thanks for the timelapse. Hot day here in Central TX: 97 yesterday, same today. La Nina forecast means a relapse into drought after a wet El Nino winter.

http://iri.columbia.edu/climate/ENSO/currentinfo/QuickLook.html

We've been out of LaNina conditions for some time, presently back into ENSO-neutral after a period of ElNino conditions that gave us a warmer March-April than typical. There is, however, a reasonable chance that ENSO will drift back into LaNina conditions by the end of Summer 2010, that could persist through the Fall.

Aye, LaNina resumption will bring dry weather to the southwestern US, Mexico and the Yucatan. Fire season.

Good morning and evening where ever you are. :-)

Have been away for a couple of days with stuff not so enjoyable. I won't go there.

Interesting that Eyjaf is still steaming and puffing away a bit. Also I have managed to catch the info on the other volcanoes putting on shows or creating havoc elsewhere. Lot of activity.

@Passerby, the weather here has been really crazy. We had some rain the other night. It is not particulary "usual" this time of year. Not for here. Of course, it can snow here on Memorial Day, but that is very rare.

Today is clear and it will be warmer and DH and I have just been chompin' at the bit to get to the river. Maybe tomorrow or Monday the road will be dry enough.

Randall and Dan, on the gulf situation, they said when they were going to cut the pipe that it would be worse until they can cap it or whatever they are trying to do. This is going to be the worst manmade disaster that has happened yet (with the possible exception of A-bombs). I don't envy you and I feel very bad about what is coming to your coasts if it isn't there already. I wish things were different for you.

Here is something a bit funny. Yesterday, the clouds were really in some strange formations. There were lenticulars, strato-cumulous, cirrus, and whatnot and my chiropractor asked me if we were going to have an earthquake. What? Then she told me her folks said it was earthquake weather. LOL I remember my dad saying that one time. Well, it was warm and humid which is not normal for here, either. Thing is, there were some quakes. The backgound noise. Anyway, I thought you would enjoy a bit of humor regardless of whether you believe in quake weather or not.

Cheers

#34, Diane, I remember reading about this ages ago. https://www.sott.net/articles/show/153433-Curious-cloud-formations-link…

It is not peer reviewed, so I'm not creating a case for it but it is an interesting idea.

Tungurahua: More evacuations taking place.
"The Geophysical Institute (GI) of the National Polytechnic School of Ecuador said yesterday there is a small "lava lake "at the bottom of the crater which, if volume increases, could spill into the northwest flank of the mountain ."
http://www.prensaescrita.com/america/ecuador.php

*squint* Looks suspiciously like new ash deposits on Vulcan Popo.

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

Were not in evidence yesterday.

According to the news, ash plume was seen yesterday somewhere between 18:00 and 20:00 UTC.

thanks Jon, then I was not dreaming,.
I tought I saw ash in the plume yesterday, evening but I was not sure so I didnt post..

shes still moving about, just not as much as she did earlier. Im sure we`ll see more fun from her side..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1284213/Dont-close-No…

mad fools!

Beautiful view on Mulakot cam!!

@ Stigger #135, yeah, I have heard of such things. It has warmed up a lot here in the last couple of days and there are more clouds to come. I think sometimes it is coincidence. I have not studied anything like that, but I have heard that a change in barimetric pressure can have an affect and if the fault was ready to move anyway, then I suppose there could be some connection with the pressure. I don't think it would be quite so predictable, however. In the clouds we had here, there were no holes that stayed with the clouds moving around them.

Who knows?

The following statement is on the IMO web page in Icelandic. This is translated by Google. But I have made some correction to it.

"Increased turmoil in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull afternoon yesterday. Then came a black ash cloud. The night was observed turbulence and since the at. 7 in the morning has been almost continuous turmoil, but most nine o'clock. Since then it has declined. The ash cloud was light in the night and morning, and looked like a steam cloud.
Written by geologist on duty at 05th June 17:33"

Original text.

"Aukinn Ã³rÃ³i var Ã EyjafjallajÃ¶kli seinnipartinn Ã gÃ¦r. ÃÃ¡ kom upp svartur Ã¶skumÃ¶kkur. Ã nÃ³tt komu fram Ã³rÃ³ahviÃ°ur og frÃ¡ Ã¾vÃ um kl. 7 Ã morgun hefur Ã³rÃ³inn veriÃ° nÃ¦r samfelldur en Ã¾Ã³ mestur um nÃuleytiÃ°. FrÃ¡ Ã¾eim tÃma hefur dregiÃ° Ãºr honum. MÃ¶kkurinn var ljÃ³s Ã nÃ³tt og morgun og lÃktist gufumekki.
SkrifaÃ° af vakthafandi jarÃ°vÃsindamanni 05. jÃºn. 17:33"

The tremor continues to be higher then the background noise, but it drops a lot for some period of time. I am yet to understand why that is at the moment. So are the scientists that are monitoring EyjafjallajÃ¶kull today.

#41 @ Diane: Who knows indeed? It probably is nothing more than coincidence and wishful thinking but there are more things in heaven and earth ...

Who knows? Most geologists know that it's nonsensical - it lacks an acceptable physics basis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_weather

But .. but .. it must be true because I read it on the internet! ;)

http://www.earthquakesignals.com/zhonghao296/A991003.html

Freaky coincidence reminds me of http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/1/f_noise

Flimsy physics argument and slightly better than random guessing odds, at ~60% success rate.

If that much heat is generated by rock friction, satellite thermography could be employed. I haven't seen anybody trot this EQ detection method out yet.

Have seen thermographic sensing used to detect monument and concrete structural damage from earthquakes. Also used to detect soil loading and deformation by EQs:

Introducing infrared thermography in soil dynamics (2007)
Infrared Physics & Technology
Volume 49, Issue 3, January 2007, Pages 306-311
he paper introduces infrared thermography as a non-contact and non-destructive technique that conveniently offers the possibility of evaluating the energy-dissipating ability of soil, generally difficult to be determined using traditional techniques. It allows records and observations in real time of heat patterns produced by the dissipation of energy caused by friction between grains. Such dissipative heat occurs when soil is subjected to vibratory loading exceeding the characteristic threshold, and it evidences the distortion mechanism. This energy dissipation mechanism influences the wave propagation, intergranular attenuation, and dispersion through particles contacts. The infrared thermographic technique, which couples mechanical and thermal energy, offers the potential of directly monitoring the stress state of particle rearrangement and predicting the macroscopic mechanical response of soils subjected to cyclic, dynamic or vibratory loading. In addition, infrared thermography evidences the fuse effect of soil, capable to mitigate significantly the earthquake loading on engineering structures.

2 EQs over the Mid-Atlantic ridge:
2010-06-05 06:42:07.150.42 N /29.22 W /10 mb4.7/ NORTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE
2010-06-05 22:24:05.870.82 N /14.61 W 30 mb / 4.3/ JAN MAYEN ISLAND REGION
http://www.emsc-csem.org/index.php?page=home

@49: EQs on the MAR bracket Iceland. Not surprising.

Diane in Northern Ca.-I lived for 25 years on the South Coast of Oregon. That southern end of the Juan De Fuca plate has me
worried. My wife's cousin lives in Brookings, Or. She lived many years in the Hemet Valley Ca.area.Anecdotal,but ever time there is a nearby quake she gets a headache.-Just before
it hit-like the recent one in Eureka...
Stay safe, I'm gong out to hug my Basalt Column....

On the subject of "earthquake clouds" - in general I don't believe in these and I think some who talk about them all the time on various forums (fora?) can be a bit silly, but - here is my own silly "was that an earthquake cloud?" story.

Two days ago, I was driving in the Puget Sound region when I looked up and saw a rather massive rainbow cloud. It was definitely not just a rainbow, but a large part of the sky striped in a vivid prism. The colors were more solid and the stripes were thick and not bent as they would be in a rainbow. This breathtaking site was obscured by more (ordinary) clouds before I could snap a photo.

Anyway, I don't know what it was. A noctilucent cloud? (I thought those happened at dusk, this was mid afternoon) Half of an incredibly vivid and big sundog? A hallucination? A sign that I needed to wash my windshield? No major earthquakes yet so I suppose that wasn't the cause.

This is the only reference I can find, but it was considerably more vivid than is evident in the photo:

http://www.king5.com/your-news/95571319.html

@ 52: I saw a similar phenomenon while driving on I-90 on a cross-country drive en route to Ohio, to work for NASA some time ago. It occurred at about this time of year, under clear skies with a few very high clouds.

If I remember correctly, it's caused by high altitude ice crystals that are charge aligned with the Earth Circuit and have a specific refracting geometry.

EQs on the MAR in Iceland:
Sunday
06.06.2010/02:26:38/66.646/-18.028/11.7 km/2.8/90.02/11.6 km N of GrÃmsey
06.06.2010/02:26:38/66.669/-18.028/7.6 km/2.6/55.14/14.2 km N of GrÃmsey
06.06.2010/02:24:11/66.636/-18.001/11.2 km/1.681.79/10.5 km N of GrÃmsey
05.06.2010/20:12:07/66.492/-17.535/5.9 km/2.8/90.02/21.7 km ESE of GrÃmsey
05.06.2010/20:03:42/66.652/-17.895/6.4 km/1.7/32.68/13.3 km NNE of GrÃmsey
05.06.2010/18:49:20/66.628/-17.908/9.9 km/1.5/60.4/10.6 km NNE of GrÃmsey
Saturday
05.06.201017:54:2166.631-17.91910.6 km1.499.010.7 km NNE of GrÃmsey
05.06.2010/17:51:31/66.455/-17.837/11.7 km/0.5/99.0/12.3 km SE of GrÃmsey
05.06.2010/10:43:44/66.498/-17.508/9.7 km/0.6/99.0/22.7 km ESE of GrÃmsey
05.06.2010/10:31:53/66.296/-18.703/10.9 km/0.3/99.0/20.1 km NNE of SiglufjÃ¶rÃ°ur
05.06.2010/10:12:02/66.510/-17.509/12.3 km/1.1/99.0/22.5 km E of GrÃmsey

Good evening /good morning everyone :O)!! Lady E is steaming nicely at the moment on the THORO web-cam at the moment:

http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/

Tremor at the volcano are very low at all sites at the moment, but I still believe Lady E has an encore presentation.

TjÃ¶rnes zone swarm:
03:41:01 /66.482/-17.562/9.5 km/3.4/90.02/20.9 km ESE of GrÃmsey

Plume now visible on MÃºlakot cam.
Be back later to follow developments on this.

FLIR pointer going crazy between two "hotspots". The one to the left of the picture is totally new to me.

Dear folks here, if you want to see a REAL GOOD volcano show going on in this very moment, check out Kilauea on Hawaii. That volcano in these days is presenting the unique situation of having TWO vigorously active lava lakes at the same time. One is within its summit vent Halema'uma'u
volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/HMcam/
the other within Pu'u 'O'o
volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/POcam/
By the way, there are some more photos of Pacaya's latest activity here:
www.daylife.com/search/photos?q=volcano
From these you can see that apparently there is Strombolian activity from a new vent quite low down on its flank (not far from a village it seems), which is also emitting multiple lava flows. These photos are not of the big eruption of last week but of relatively modest activity going on right now.

i47.tinypic.com/2ziog1c.jpg :-o
The lighting and clouds fascinate as always. :-D

Meanwhile from somewhere in the South Pacific ...
tannatranslation.blogspot.com/2010/06/ash-from-mt-yasur.html

P.S.
Hi Boris. Off to view your suggestions.

From the internet archives

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=volcano%20AND%20mediatype%3Atex…

Looks like Iceland has had some quake activity ... this is the 15 minute quake energy plot.. I forgot to set the label. Vertical axis is power in Joules.

http://i49.tinypic.com/dy1zio.png

And... while I have the file open... Quakes of SW Iceland top down view, depths color coded.

http://i46.tinypic.com/2emcxnn.png

@ Jen (52) and Passerby (53): perhaps you saw one of these non-rainbows?
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/rainbows/notabow.htm

This was the only quake in the last 4 hours. Tremor plots didn't show but two small ticks, after yesterday's burst. Are we expecting more to it? Weather not favoring observation.
Depth:7.8 kmMg: 0.99.8 km SW of BÃ¡sar

#59 Lava flows on Pacaya are amazing. And we should expect lava from Tungurahua, where a lava lake like the two in Kilauea is forming. But no live cams. :(

Thanks Boris. During the day, I switch to PuÊ»u Ê»ÅÊ»Å cam with the lava field, complete with multiple steaming vents and the ocean.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/TEcam/

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

Ahh, not ash. Snow-fall. Cold front moved through the region.

@ Raving (thanks, as always, for the informative plots)

i46.tinypic.com/2emcxnn.png - continued surficial tectonic activity within fissures and geothermal fields on the western end of the SISZ, at the southern terminus of the WVZ. No surprises here, continued lithospheric pore pressure fluctuations.

The cumulative EQ plot tells the story.

Slightly off topic, but of interest. The Four Craters Lava Field, in Oregon has a

"Crack-in-the-Ground" a volcanic fissure over two miles long and up to 70 feet deep, marks the western edge of this small, volcano-tectonic depression.

Links:

http://atlasobscura.com/place/crack-in-the-ground

www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=1202-14-

The unusual weather patterns of the UK/Northern Europe continues, suggesting that blocking anticyclonic air flows will persist. If there are further eruptions of ash, it may continue to present problems to European and trans-Atlantic air traffic.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/10238296.stm

'Skiing could take place at the CairnGorm Mountain resort (Scots Highlands) at midsummer for the first time in living memory.'

Highly Allochthonous is hosting the Accretionary Wedge #25.

This one is particularly interesting, in that they asked for "your favourite geological imagery" which they've arranged in alphabetical order. In addition, there're a wide variety of links to other geological blogs. I've bookmarked in my "to explore" list. ;-)

http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/2010/06/accretionary_wedge_…

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/#v…

More quakes at Bardarbunga.

Here is another strip of tremor plots. Looks as if a bit of activity may be re-emerging.

http://i49.tinypic.com/1j1xy.png

Passerby@69 - Today's paper has further skiing info as we've had a some good weather over the last few days...

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/skiing-in-june-is-flipping…

Popacatapetl looking good, Turrialba, clouded in, Lady E clouded over as usual. Nice orange Mustang on Mulakot!

The last time the Scottish Highlands had a bonkers snow season was 1992.

1992: VEI 5+ and 6 at Hudson and Pinatubo respectively; VEI 3 at Mt St Helens and Hekla. Lots of eruption activity at high latitudes (Aleutians and Kamchatka, Japan, Iceland), both poles (New Zealand, South Pacific, southern South America).

@ Jen and Passerby #52&53 Ursula at #64 is correct. I was going to say something about it, but she beat me to it. I have seen a lot of pictures of clouds like the one you posted, Jen, on EPOD, Earth Picture of the Day which is like APOD, Astronomy Picture of the Day. Both are interesting to see. EPOD shows a lot of cloud formations and describes how they form. It has to do with the hexagonal ice crystals and they have to be in specific positions to get the color. On the post Ursula sent, the first one is representative of what you saw, Jen. They are beautiful.

Check out both EPOD and APOD. Good stuff there.

How about a professional astronomer's explanation? Also has a great photo, taken last week in Ohio. Matches what I wrote earlier, as explained to me by NASA physicists I was working with at the time (I wrote, above: it's caused by high altitude ice crystals that are charge aligned with the Earth Circuit and have a specific refracting geometry).

The photos of circum-horizontal arcs are nearly identical to what I observed, but I didn't realize how rare an occurrence this is, at the time. I even pulled over at a rest stop to take a good look, as it was safer than trying to gawk while driving at 70 mph. :-)

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090512.html

'The reason here is that ice crystals in distant cirrus clouds are acting like little floating prisms. Sometimes known as a fire rainbow for its flame-like appearance, a circumhorizon arc lies parallel to the horizon. For a circumhorizontal arc to be visible, the Sun must be at least 58 degrees high in a sky where cirrus clouds are present. Furthermore, the numerous, flat, hexagonal ice-crystals that compose the cirrus cloud must be aligned horizontally to properly refract sunlight in a collectively similar manner.'

My word correction didn't take: photo taken in May 2009...not last week.

This is the start of the season for viewing noctilucent clouds (early summer through fall), although I could swear that there has been an unusual number of them reported late last winter and this spring as well.

Hi all!

I,m looking in to see how things are going. I really like that this a real time commentary chat, that way I can pick up on past events. I looked at Boris Hawaii-cams but nothing interesting right now, and no Mustangs at Mulakot either.

http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html
Looks like itÂ´s moving up a bit again, I gonna follow for a while to see where it goes.

According to the news there are now steam plume rising about 15,000 to 20,000 feet up in the air. Some small explosion have been reported and little ash following those explosions.

http://www.ruv.is/frett/hair-gufubolstrar-stiga-upp

According to the half-assed Google translation, magma is rising and surges from time to time.

Next surge will occur within approx 36-48 hours.

Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't it Eyjaf's steam coming downslope viewed from Katla cam?
http://www.ruv.is/katla/

This eruption is over.

@Jon Frimann (17) You weren't kidding abouut "Google translate Icelandic at your own risk". I tried it and what I got looked more like an algebra equasion than prose. Glad you can make sense of these Icelandic words with the pretty letters I have no idea how to pronounce. Maybe you could play the professor and teach us an Icelandic word-a-day, so we can muddle through the IMO reports. What's "volcano", "tremor", "magma", etc.....???

@Diane (34) Regarding your "earthquake weather" theories: I don't think there is really such a thing as a bad theory. It means that at least someone is making observations and asking questions. How many scientists can you think of that were drummed out of town for "ridiculous theories" which later turned out to be at least partially correct? Lots, right? We liberal arts types who are sitting here trying not to look too conspicuous amongst this gathering of scientists and enthusiasts prabaly stand a good chance of making comments that are sublimely ridiculous, because we are not immersed in the conventional body of knowledge. But that may turn out to be a strength as well. Some of what we think we know is bound to be wrong. So, a great "Huzzah!" to all those who watch, think and ask, regardless of the depth of their knowlege.

@Passerby #76, I am familiar with what you have said. I have read that when I was checking out the phemomenae on EPOD as they give the same explaination just about every time they show a photo. I just couldn't remember all of it. LOL

The colors are just beautiful when it happens and I have seen some of the phenoms in the clouds, just not the straight across ones. I have seen the arcs. I have yet to see the noctilucent clouds.

I have seen the Aurora down here in N CA once. I saw the pinkish-red color in the sky and I had to pull over to see what was going on. It was quite a show. It is very rare to see the Aurora down this far and several people besides me had pulled over on the turn-out to watch. It was awesome.

The PuÊ»u Ê»ÅÊ»Å Cone cam is interesting now (dusk to night)

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/POcam/

Thank you everyone for the links and explanations. It was definitely a circumhorizontal arc, red was on top and not on the bottom as it would have been were it a circumzenithal arc. Another reason why I should always have my camera with me! We've been having a cold, wet, fairly dismal late spring here in the Pacific Northwest, there ought to be some silver (or rainbow) lining.

Plume now visible on MÃºlakot cam.
http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalmulaen.html

According to this news report (in Icelandic) there is a small eruption happening at the moment. With small ash fall following it. This is what currently is happening now. But this eruption is quite small compared to what did happen before.

http://www.visir.is/smagos-i-gangi-med-nyju-oskufalli/article/201032579…

Anyone else see this earthquake from Katla?

There are new update on the activity in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull on Icelandic Met Office website. This information is in english.

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/articles/nr/1884

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