News!
Toba caldera in Indonesia.
- We're all still talking about the Chilean earthquake and the coverage of the event. If you happen to live in the Columbus area, you might have heard me on WTVN talking about the earthquake as well.
- The Toba (Indonesia) eruption 74,000 years ago has been used by some researchers to be the cause of a "genetic bottleneck" for humans - however, that is still much debated. Currently, excavations are under away near Toba to look for evidence of human habitation that was buried by the eruption. The evidence of stone tools that appear to be made by the same human populations before and after the eruption suggest that the eruption didn't have as profound an impact on human populations as previously suggested.
- If we didn't know it already, the recent Yellowstone earthquake swarm is now officially the second-largest on record. YVO says that the swarm had no noticeable effect on the caldera's geysers or surface uplift. In total, the swarm released the equivalent energy of a single M4.4 earthquake.
- And if you're looking for a couple volcano-related vacation spots, there are a couple of articles on tours of Hawai`i and the Oregon High Lava Plains. You know, summer is around the corner, right?
Physical Science
Environment
Comments (86)
First and most important bit of news, the folks I know in Chile - who live actually in the area strongly stricken by the 27 February M 8.8 earthquake - lived through it unscathed but described their apartment as "looking like having gone through an air attack" and the earthquake itself "hell". Luckily these people were prepared, having a vast amount of spare water in a container, spare foof, flashlights and other useful items.
About the recent Yellowstone earthquake swarm it would be correct to say it was the second-largest since the start of instrumental monitoring, whereas the press report cited above describes it as the "second-largest ever". One more time, some slight (intended?) lack of precision in a news headline makes things appear more dramatic than they actually are.
And here's a link to the "Toba Project" by University of Oxford scientists that the second paragraph is about: http://toba.arch.ox.ac.uk/ (unfortunately they also use this misleading term "supervolcano")
As for the summer around the corner, the weather in Sicily very much confirms this. Maybe the US have had an unusually cold and/or snow-rich winter this year, but in Sicily this has been the mildest winter since I moved to this island roughly 15 years ago.
Posted by: Boris Behncke | March 1, 2010 9:45 AM