eklemetti | September 3, 2009Starting sometime later this fall, readers on ScienceBlogs will be able to register with SB to create user profiles, keep track of stories and all that good stuff that social networking has created. In an effort to make it something useful to the readers, the head honchos at SB have set up a poll for readers concerning the new features. Why not wander over there and take the poll to make sure Eruptions readers get their voices heard.
eklemetti | September 2, 2009The move is complete (finally) ... so maybe I can settle down a bit, right? Right?
The world's deadliest volcano?
Anyway, a few things I stumbled across this week:
Forbes Traveler.com has a list boldly titled "World's Deadliest Volcanoes", which more or less is a slideshow of nice volcano pictures and some dubious ranking - mostly based on death toll (and cribbing a bit from IAVCEI's "Decade Volcanoes"). Of course, I find it amusing that they made a list of "deadliest volcanoes" and then proceed to tell people (read "tourists") what to do near the so-called "deadly" volcanoes. I suppose it is…
eklemetti | August 31, 2009First day of class! As you might imagine, I'm a little scattered (well, with classes and the fact that we bought a house over the weekend. You know, just that).
The Tavurvur Crater at Rabaul erupting in 1994.
News!
The Examiner.com (SF) has a slideshow and brief article on the current excavations of ruins buried by the Santorini/Minoan eruption that occurred ~3950 years ago. The eruption wiped out much of the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea, but whether there was anyone actually still living on the island when it happened is still a mystery. It seems that most of the Minoans left the…
eklemetti | August 28, 2009Not much in volcano news, however a lot of earthquake news this morning.
Did anyone else notice that two M6+ earthquakes occurred last night within one minute of each other last night (eastern daylight time)? The first was in the Banda Sea near Indonesia at 01:51:19 UTC (M6.8), the next was in northern Qinhai in China at 01:52:06 UTC (M6.2). I'm guessing that is just the sort of coincidences that occur when you have thousands of earthquakes globally a week, but still an interesting coincidence. There was also a series of earthquakes, all less than M3.7, last night in Oklahoma of all places.…
eklemetti | August 27, 2009Koryaksky (Koryak) in Russia
Yesterday in the USGS/SI update, I mentioned the current eruption going on at Koryaksky (a.k.a. Koryak). Today, the NASA Earth Observatory has some images of the plume from the Russian volcano heading out to the east over the Peninsula. The plume itself looks fairly diffuse and mostly whitish steam rather than laden with grey/brown ash. The last significant eruption from Koryaksky was a VEI 3 eruption in 1956-57 that produced ash fall and pyroclastic flows from the volcano.
One thing that is noted on the EO page is this snippet:
MODIS captured this plume days…
eklemetti | August 26, 2009The slow summer for volcanic eruptions continue. Only 11 updates in this week's USGS/SI report. Thanks again to SI's Sally Kuhn Sennert for compiling the news!
Highlights this week include (not including Kilauea) include:
Tungurahua in Ecuador produced some minor lahars on August 21 to go with steam-and-gas emissions.
Popocatépetl in Mexico produced an ash plume that reached ~8.2 km / 27,000 feet on August 20 and continued to produce steam-and-ash plumes throughout the week following.
Over on the Kamchatka Peninsula, both Koryaksky and Shiveluch produced significant ash plumes (reaching 3-5…
eklemetti | August 23, 2009Some brief notes before I dive headlong into the exciting world of faculty orientation!
A small steam plume coming from Turrialba in Costa Rica. Photo taken in August 2007.
There are some preliminary reports of the state of wildlife (and everything) around Kasatochi Island in the Aleutians from the US F&W and USGS team that headed to check out how the island has recovered since last year's eruption. The shoreline has been radically transformed by the ash and although some seabirds have made attempts to nest in the loose ash, it doesn't seem to have been very successful. However, not…
eklemetti | August 21, 2009The summit crater at Kilauea in Hawai'i has had a busy summer and now that fall is around the corner (yikes!), there is a bit of new info on activity in the crater.
Halema`uma`u Crater emitting a steam plume in January, 2009.
First off, the NASA Earth Observatory released an image of the steaming crater area of Halema`uma`u. The image captures the new plume of steam and volcanic gases that have been coming from the crater. The latest news reports that the glow (albeit faint) from the underlying magma has returned to the crater after the rockfall earlier this summer. Also, sulfur dioxide…
eklemetti | August 20, 2009I've gotten a number of questions about volcano books as of late, so I thought I'd write a little post detailing my favorite volcano-related tomes, mostly pitched towards people without a geology-background, but some technical books for those of you who want the gory details (and be sure, they can be very, very gory).
Pumice from the Newberry Flow of the Devil's Hills scattered on the soil near South Sister, Oregon. Image by Erik Klemetti, September 2008.
Anyway, here we go!
General volcanology:
- Teach Yourself Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis by David Rothery (Teach Yourself Series,…
eklemetti | August 19, 2009Busy today with scouting out some field location for the class I'll be teaching this fall. Here's this week's USGS/SI Weekly Volcano Report. The report is a little more eventful than last week's, so enjoy!
Kliuchevskoi Volcano in Kamchatka, taken summer of 2009 by Theresa Kayzar.
Highlights include:
Three volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula are currently producing ash plumes: Kliuchevskoi, Koryaksky and Shiveluch. Shiveluch has been having the most intense eruptions, but the former two are both producing ash-and-steam plumes that reach over 3 km / 10,000 feet.
Talang in Indonesia saws its…
eklemetti | August 17, 2009I knew that the minute I said I'd be back to a "regular" posting schedule that I would fail miserably, so maybe the less said, the better.
Cerro Galan caldera in Argentina (taken from space).
Thanks to all the readers who have been avidly discussing a number of fascinating topics over the weekend.
I have seen/read a little bit about the tectonic-forcing mechanism idea for some caldera-style eruptions. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that the caldera-forming event - that is to say the collapse of the roof into the chamber - isn't usually the "trigger" as much as a result of a large…
eklemetti | August 12, 2009Even the SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report seems a little light -- welcome to the dog days of summer!
Highlights from this week's report include:
"Thunderous sounds", incandescence and small plumes (hundreds of meters) with more frequent seismicity at Ibu in Indonesia.
A sharp increase in sulfur dioxide output was noted at Mayon in the Philippines on August 4 - from ~700-900 tonnes/day to almost 2,000 tonnes/day.
~3,000 meter/10,000 foot gas-and-ash plume from Bagana in Papua New Guinea - you can see it on this recent NASA Earth Observatory image.
Ash/gas plumes from Sakurajima in Japan rose to ~…
eklemetti | August 12, 2009The Royal Gardens subdivision in Hawai'i being inundated with lava flows during a 1983 eruption of Kilauea. Image courtesy of the USGS.
The game of insurance is everywhere in the news these days so it isn't too surprising to run across this brief article about the perils of getting insured if you live on an active volcano. Many people who live on the big island of Hawai'i face this challenge because a large swaths of the island fall into what is called a "Lava Zone 1", which more or less means that you live someplace that lava is likely to visit in the foreseeable future. Considering that the…
eklemetti | August 10, 2009Some more volcano news for the day ...
UPDATE 10:40AM Eastern: It has been pointed out to me that both of these articles are old. They apparently made it into my Google News feed thanks to a glitch in the magic interweb tubes somewhere. Just goes to show that blogging before coffee on a Monday after traveling across the country = bad idea. Sorry for any confusion.
A summit dome at Kelud during the 2007 eruption.
OLD NEWS ABOUT SARYCHEV PEAK IN JUNE 2009. An unnamed Russian volcano in Kamchatka is disrupting flights from Canada to Asia. No ID in the article on which volcano, and I couldn't…
eklemetti | August 9, 2009Does anyone else feel like this has been a rather quiet summer, volcano-wise? Maybe I've been too preoccupied by my move to Ohio, but I feel like beyond a few relatively minor events (Shiveluch comes to mind), the volcano news has been pretty slow compared to the spring of this year. Go figure.
The sulfur dioxide plume from the 2008 eruption of Kasatochi spreading over the northern Pacific Ocean.
Anyway, a few tidbits to tide us over:
Over eighteen years after the eruption, Mt. Pinatubo is still causing fatalities from the copious amounts of tephra deposited during the 1991 event. Five people…
eklemetti | August 6, 2009In case you don't frequent the NASA Earth Observatory, I thought I'd call your attention to some images they recently posted that are, again, excellent shots of volcanism captured from space.
The current plume from Tavurvur Crater at Rabaul was shot by the MODIS imager on Terra in early August. The plume is mostly made of volcanic gases and steam, but minor amounts of ash are also found - and remember, even small concentrations of ash in the air can be hazardous to aircraft.
Shiveluch has been having a busy summer, with moderate-to-large plinian eruptions produced by the emplacement (and…
eklemetti | August 5, 2009We've made it to Ohio! Tomorrow I'll hopefully be returning to regularly scheduled updates, but until then, enjoy this week's SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report.
Highlights include:
KVERT mentions that seismicity has increased recently at both Kizimen and Kliuchevskoi on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
~4 km / ~13,500 foot steam-and-ash plumes spotted at Colima in Mexico.
Rumbling noises, incandescent ejecta and ~4.3 km / 14,000 foot ash plumes at Fuego in Guatemala. Explosions were increasing as the August began.
It was a busy week in Guatemala, as ash/gas plumes were spotted at Santiaguito and Pacaya…
eklemetti | August 2, 2009Time to vote for the next Volcano Profile. Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions after answering the poll!
What should be the next volcano for the "Volcano Profile" series?(surveys)
eklemetti | August 2, 2009Quick hit post from beautiful Walnut, Iowa, but this was too interesting to pass up...
Bright plume spotted on Venus, image taken by the ESA Venus Express.
Did a volcanic eruption recently occur on Venus? No one really knows, but a bright plume of unknown material was spotted by an amateur astronomer. One possible source for this plume might be a volcanic eruption. In the first articles, it was dismissed by "experts" because it is believed that Venus mostly has effusive (lava flow) eruptions not explosive eruptions that form big ash-laden plumes. However, basaltic eruptions on Earth (as it is…
eklemetti | August 1, 2009If you have any questions about volcanoes, pictures of erupting (or not) volcanoes you'd like to share with me for Eruptions or have any general comments, please email me at
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Broken Top, near Three Sisters, in…