Kamchatka

GVP Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for July 28-August 3, 2010

eklemetti — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:54:33 +0000

GVP Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for July 28-August 3, 2010

A new Weekly Volcanic Activity Report from the Smithsonian and USGS Global Volcanism Program!

Highlights from this week's report include:

Things are getting a little noisy in Colombia. I mentioned a few weeks ago about a possible explosion at Nevado del Ruiz. Now we have reports of increased seismicity under nearby Cerro MachÃn and ash plumes from Nevado del Huila. After a few centuries of relative quiet, it looks like the volcanoes of the Colombian Andes are looking more lively.
Also in South America, a gas plume was spotted at Chile's Planchon-Peteroa. This is the second time this year that increased gas emissions have been noted at the volcano that hasn't erupted since 1998.
Shiveluch on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia continues to rumble - ash plumes were produced from pyroclastic flows and steam-and-gas plumes reaching 4 km / ~13,100 feet were spotted as well.

eklemetti Thu, 08/05/2010 - 05:54

More activity in Wyoming just south of Yellowstone this morning, bringing the current EQ list to:
4.22010/08/05 14:59:28 43.646-110.416 5.0 34 km ( 21 mi) ENE of Teton Village, WY
4.82010/08/05 00:04:17 43.585-110.440 5.0 29 km ( 18 mi) ENE of Jackson, WY
3.02010/08/05 00:04:03 43.585-110.438 5.0 29 km ( 18 mi) ENE of Jackson, WY

though I can plainly see many aftershocks on this webicorder:
http://quake.utah.edu/helicorder/moow_webi_1d.htm
(for yesterday)

and this one for today:
http://quake.utah.edu/helicorder/moow_webi.htm

But there are still no updates to the earthquake map aside from the three larger earthquakes. What's up, USGS?

Hi Jen,

There may be no official statements from the USGS yet, but there is a bit of chatter on a local blog at:

http://www.jhunderground.com/2010/08/05/quake-watch-along-teton-fault/

I visited the place last summer, really interesting geology.

You can add another 3.2 at Wyoming @ 17:45 UTC. I can expect we'll see another swarm this winter.

The rumblings in Columbia, I'm wondering, if they're the effects of all the recent quakes in Chile.

Just came across the photo collection of Owen K. N. (as it seems he's a geologist) on Flickr, which has some outrageously spectacular aerial views of Bezymianny and Kliuchevskoi (or Klyuchevskoy) taken late July:
www.flickr.com/search/?q=klyuchevskoy&w=35670622%40N06&ss=1&s=rec
What strikes me most is the large cone that has grown within, and is now practically completely filling, the summit crater of Kliuchevskoi as seen in particular here:
www.flickr.com/photos/oneill244/4864468767/
The outline of the old crater rim is still marked by small knobs on both sides of the new cone.
Owen had the privilege to witness, from a safe distance, pyroclastic flows descending the southern or southwestern flank of Kliuchevskoi:
www.flickr.com/photos/oneill244/4864932936/
There are also spectacular views of a lava flow extruded from Bezymianny after its latest explosive eruption in May this year, like this:
www.flickr.com/photos/oneill244/4865084090/

Boris, just saw you on tv! Th Etna flank collapse program. Nice to put a face to a name!

Amazing pics, Boris, thanks a lot!

What Renato said - wish I'd been there; not only the volcanism, but also the fauna seems to be fascinating.

When I saw the equipment pics, I thought, "That must be KVERT stuff." ;)

Thanks Boris. I never thought a volcano could rebuild itself so quickly. What would be the mechanism? Super thick rhyolite? (ie so thick that it can't move?

Yesterday, I wondered if the August 4-5 strong solar storm might have any effect on magma flow on earth and therefore on earthquake activity. Or perhaps there may be more simple interactions between strong electro-magnetic (E-M) disturbances and the Earth's crust - which might result in tectonic movements and earthquakes.

I found that there were five magnitude 6.0 or greater (M6+) earthquakes during the solar storm's strong E-M disturbances of Earth's atmosphere and space environment. During the eight days from July 30 to August 6, there were only two other magnitude 6.0 or greater earthquakes, so there was a clear anomalously sharp increase in occurrence during the strong solar storm.

Note: Sometimes multiple numbers of M6+ earthquakes will be recorded within minutes or hours because they are at the same approximate location and part of the same tectonic event. But the five M6+ earthquakes recorded during the solar storm were not at the same location, but rather widely dispersed in locations around the pacific ocean.

This is only one correlation of a solar storm's E-M disturbances to the Earth's seismic activity, so no firm conclusions can be drawn. But the fact of the anomalously sharp jump in M6+ earthquake occurrences during the 33 hours of the solar storm's E-M disturbances upon Earth is very intriguing and should prompt for further study.

Here is the data:

----------------------------------------
E-M Anomaly In Earth's Space Environment:
----------------------------------------
Proton flux unusually high: Aug 3, 18:00 UTC to Aug 4, 06:00 UTC = 12 hours duration
E-M disturbance very high: Aug 3: 18:00 UTC to Aug 5, 03:00 UTC = 33 hours duration

Source: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/plots/satenv.html

----------------------------------------
Quakes >= Mag 6.0
Eight Days: Jul 30, 2010 to Aug 6, 2010
----------------------------------------
* 2010/08/05 03:00:00 SPACE E-M ANOMOLY ENDS

6.0 2010/08/04 23:48:03 45.964 153.216 33.6 EAST OF THE KURIL ISLANDS
7.0 2010/08/04 22:01:44 -5.768 150.776 44.0 NEW BRITAIN REGION, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
6.4 2010/08/04 12:58:25 51.426 -178.607 27.0 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
6.4 2010/08/04 07:15:33 -5.521 146.793 213.6 EASTERN NEW GUINEA REG, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
6.0 2010/08/04 04:46:22 -26.953 -177.148 23.7 SOUTH OF THE FIJI ISLANDS

* 2010/08/03 18:00:00 SPACE E-M ANOMOLY BEGINS

6.3 2010/08/03 12:08:27 1.243 126.277 42.8 MOLUCCA SEA
6.3 2010/07/30 03:56:13 52.461 159.902 18.6 OFF THE EAST COAST OF KAMCHATKA, RUSSIA

Source: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php

William Boston

@ Chris - I would doubt there is any connection between volcanic activity in Colombia and the seismicity earlier this year in Chile.

If Cerro Machin does erupt it could produce some very impressive and dangerous pyroclastic flows. The quote below is from
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=1501-04=

"Voluminous pyroclastic flows traveled up to 40 km from the volcano during eruptions in the mid-to-late Holocene perhaps associated with formation of the caldera."

We are in the Holocene now correct? So the pyroclastic flows may not have happened in the extreme distant past. Maybe they haven't been able to study this volcano as well as they have studied many volcanoes in the US and that is why the dating of the pyroclastic flows isn't as precise as some of us would like.

Now what are the odds that this increased seismic activity under Cerro Machin does not indicate that there will be an eruption there in the next few decades? This is where the experience of volcanologists is helpful in reading the physical signals given off by a long dormant volcano.

so informative, thanks to tell us.

GVP Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for June 30-July 6, 2010

eklemetti — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 01:35:13 +0000

GVP Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for June 30-July 6, 2010

So, I'm a little late with this thanks to a little hiatus, but I thought I would post the latest GVP Weekly Volcanic Activity Report. Thanks again to the Smithsonian, USGS and especially Sally Kuhn Sennert!

Some highlights include:

There were more ash explosions spotted at Ebeko in Kamchatka, producing ~1.8 km (5,900 foot) ash columns. This activity prompted KVERT to raise the Alert Status to Yellow. This goes along with news from a pile of other Kamchatka/Kuril Island volcanoes: Gorely, Tiatia, Karymsky, Kliuchevskoi and Shiveluch.
More activity at Arenal in Costa Rica - its almost always busy - including strombolian activity shaking windows up to 4 km from the vent.
Over in Hawai`i, activity at Kilauea continues, with the lava lake in the summit Halema`uma`u Crater and the growth of several rootless shield vents on the East Rift Zone.
Finally, light ash fall was observed around Soufriere Hills on Montserrat for the first time since February of this year - coincident with some seismicity underneath the volcano. Alert Status remains at 3 for the volcano.

eklemetti Thu, 07/08/2010 - 21:35

Rootless shield vents?

What is that? Would that be small shield volcanos never connecting to the magma-chamber or?
Feeling more stupid than ever. Could this be a topic for "Word of the Day"?

hi all can someone tell if katla ruv webcam is on live or switch off i tried codec9 windows and still not getting no images tried different codec but nothing just the web page with a blank webcam, using vista any help

look at lady E PLUME BIG

Thanks for keeping us updated!

Has a new fissure opened at Eyja? There's been a large plume for a while now...

Something has happened at E... What is up for grabs, but a 3km steam plume is a bit to large.

Could be shadow but looks like plume has got darker over last half hour, too.

Probably just shadow, the cloud is imense by now. It is a bit easier to see at the Hekla-cam. You can see the plume right above the barn.
http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalen.html

For those of you who where sleeping when it started.
In just a few minutes the plume grew 10 times in height and about 100 times in volume, and it has now been going on for 3 hours without slowing, it is not a big burst of steam, it is an ongoing process. If I didn't know better I would say that E just decided to become Kilauea without even making a farting quake and foregoing any large tremors. I would guess that the tremors have been hidden behind all the storming during the last few days.

I think one can see it both on JÃ³ns helicorders now that one knows what to look for and here at HVO and ESK

http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html

I have started to see things that is impossible.
I think I just saw a couple of lava-bombs and a side vent opening up on the Thoro cam... which is impossible and probably an illusion, but what is clear is that the steam is not pure any more, definite smoke.
http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/

http://www.weatherline.co.uk/cgi-app/volcanic?lang=en&am=1
web cam for lady E i have katla cam back on re installed windows media 9

Could someone take a look at this picture who is online.
EyjafjallajÃ¶kull is right above the red barn in the foreground. What is that thing to the left. Is that another plume? It couldn't be?

http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalen.html

@Carl [10] -
Yes, you've started to see things. ;) For something to be visible at that distance (about 7 km from the cam to the shoulder, I think) it would need to be colossal. OTOH, not quite impossible: the hardened lava cracks open enough to let water in - remember the glowing insides of the FimmvÃ¶rduhals lava - and a relatively big bang might follow. There was, indeed, grayish steam for a while, but the sun is just on the opposite side, so anything, especially in the shadow of the other clouds, looks gray.

I just saw a helo up GigjÃ¶kull - now they are doing the check we just talked about. Did they read us?

the link above has 2 letters missing sorry
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-app/volcanic?LANG=en&cam=1
maybe this will help

Or I could be seeing things, too. Anyway, something white up there, moving pretty fast horizontally.

@Carl [12] -
I think that nuke cloud is a nasty weather system - at least I hope it is, 'cause otherwise it's deep s*t.

I guess that a 3 kilometre steam-plume had them racing to have a look. You missed it Kultsi, it was rather spectacular seeing it develop. The Heklubyggd camera is very good for some lazy trigonometry in the morning:)

I would hazard a guess, we will have an update later today from Vedhurstofa Islands.

You can still see it, it is the thing right behind the red barn (swedish "lada"), the thing to the left that looks like a huge plume is probably just a cloud.
http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalen.html

i can see white dots down moving to the bottom left of porol cam

@leon [15] -

What ARE you trying to accomplish? How would that map link help in anything? It's ages old, and there is no web cam in the location of the pointer in the map, not for two months, at least. I repeat: there is no web cam in that location.

Try eldgos.mila.is or www.ruv.is/katla and you'll get some pics of volcanoes in Iceland.

leons delivery-trucks, or whatever it was have driven away now. I guess that was a gang of party-goers, or take-away pizza. Â¨
Looked like thos coolish icelandic mega-trucks. Nice catch leon.

@Carl - an inside joke; I beg the others for pardon

Q "Var har Ryssen sin hÃ¶?"
A "I Lada."

@Kultsi:
Muahahaha! Had completely forgotten that one! (Sorry all, it would take half a day to explain that joke)

Something good came out of leons link, this movie really put the original Eyja eruption into proportion. Best photage I've seen sofar of the eruption.
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-app/video?LANG=en&ID=54

Useles math excercise warning (Public health)

I just calculated that during Laki-eruption the average sinkage of Iceland was 2 decimtres. If we then take into acount that Iceland is 60 metres above average earth height and then imagine what would happen if all of that was released in a volcanic eruption, then that would release 5250 kubic kilometres of lava.
Why I should never have a friday off and no bear at home.

Mag 5.2 Quake adjacent to KrakaTau in Indonesia in the last hour. Now, there will be an interesting subject if some activity sparks up there.

@Carl, nice job! Good final product, an Eyja-main-eruption tutorial....

@Kultsi #22: Heh. Good'yin. For the Nordically-challenged, Lada is not only the Swedish word for 'barn', but also a Russian car make. Thus, "Where does a Russian keep his hay?" "In the Lada." gets a Swede grinning.

Aside: HeklubyggÃ° is a summerhouse village.

Waving at thorolfsfell camera. Guess some volcanologist up there, or tourists that are in luck.

@20 yes its old new but click onto it and click web cam then you get what i mean

Shame the clouds are closing in :( not stopping the party at Thoro cam tho!

Two interesting links for people who are interested in old earthquakes:
Graphical view: hraun.vedur.is/ja/viku/2010/vika_26/index.html#mark
table view: hraun.vedur.is/ja/viku/2010/vika_26/listi
You can change year and week in the URL and go back to 1996 this way.

@leon #29: No worries. It's the apron cam in MÃºlakot. I usually go to this page to check it: www.mulakot.net/myndavelar.html

Did they just steal the camera???
Must be german souvenir-hunters... My bad...

Back on and something is coming over the top of the glacier...

@32 lol its ok yeah my link is link to your link which i only just realized carl was asking some of us on line to check if there was a new plume eariler and thought this link could help but you got it with the main server mulakot cam

It has gone behind the white cloud now, but something was definitely flowing down over top of crest of glacier... v. strange.

Screen shots of the earlier plume in view here (scroll down through page): http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread561305/pg84#pid9180382

http://www.mulakot.net/images/myndavelar/14flugv.jpg
seems to have 2 plume's going on one at the regular location the other above the circular light spot on the side of the hill
but having been fooled by the dragon before i am a bit cautious to say for sure

Hi to all !,
Just got back from getting some provisions in and whats been going on !!! Carl,reading your posts from the last two hours,I was just on Mulakot and it definately looks as if another vent has opened to the right of the main plume,big brute too ! Of course,I could be completely wrong and it may be .....just cloud.
Keep this frequency clear.
Birdseye,im glad that you did,nt throw the towel in !
Hi Helen,long time no hear !

Been concentrating on left of crater via Thoro and I wonder if there has been a "leak" down that side as seems to be steam generation there (different formation and movement to the clouds).

Now I can see the white thing Helen saw earlier just below the rim.
Looks like a rather oddly placed fumarole.

G'day Adrian :)

2am here but I'm loathed to leave the screen - shame hubby won't allow the lappy in bed LOL

Not sure about the other vent, but something's going on - although no tremors or quakes to suggest movement of magma etc. Hopefully by the time I awake there will be more info.

@41 Carl - I'm certain it's steam now... it's constant and unmoving in location. I thought it might have been cloud hanging / rising from the crevice there but now I'm sure it's steam

It appears to be descending? Or do I need sleep?

its is a 2nd steam plume i think

@Helen:
It is definitly steam, not cloud. And I think it is descending slowly. And there looks like another fumarolic thingamabit quite far down.
There was two like that up on the right side earlier today.

Has already anyone mentioned, that there seems to bee a shift in earthquake activity towards Katla in the recent days? i'm just wondering what others think about this "develoment" or is it just some "nomal" activity?

Are we looking at same thing? I don't think it's a fumerole, too big? I am looking at the steam rising from behind the slope of the "peaked" part of the lip of the crater - to the right of centre of horizon.

@47 maybe the magma is going toward that area i dont no for sure i just a bystander who has intrests in this stuff and learning from the above

My take on what's up!

I think that a crack opened up directly under the lake.
The cracking was probably so small that it didn't really register, but I think one can see when the water hit whatever is under and hot, both on JÃ³ns helicorder and at the spike on GOD (link below). Remember that even if the crack is just one square metre 9,82+ cubic metres of water would fall down into the hot crack, and I guess the crack is larger than that. The spike at GOD would then be the initial steam explosion when the water hit.

Something like that would make steam gush forth out of every nook and cranny in the mountain I think. I wouldn't even be surprised if it started to gush steam from one of the other two open craters when the water fell down from Eyjalake.

http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html

@various people wondering about steam down GigjÃ¶kull -
The way the water gets splashed from the crater (or crumbling of the lava channel walls) sends periodical steaming down the lava channel in GigjÃ¶kull. Often that stops before it reaches the shoulder of the glacier (I suspect there's an obstruction that stops the flow) but every now and then some of the water flows as far as approximately about 600 meters from the split rock.

It appears that the lava (solidified on the outside) is still plenty hot enough to steam away most of the water escaping the crater lake.

I don't know what's going on at the moment; the steaming, however, is very vigorous in the crater area and the uppermost part of the lava channel. Steaming downslope, however, is fairly recent and has been going on for about two hours at the time of writing this - that kind of steaming is not a new phenomenon, so don't get your britches in a twist because of it.

@Kultsi:
I guess it would take the bravery of a Finn to actually wear britches:)
I agree with you, I guess this is not enough excitement to put on a bungy-rope and shout cawabungah at;)

EyjafjallajÃ¶kull frÃ¡ Hvolsvelli far right side has huge white cloud or steam rising really fast

No twisted britches here :) - as I thought, steam, off to bed, hope she behaves overnight!

Hello, perhaps you wanted to see 'E' steaming quietly this morning? Click here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvNtBxLQP8g
But if you want to see yesterday's storm clouds, click here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1J9aoLDbCo

It would seem that Taal remains at Level 2

My appologies for Google Translate's (Tagalog?) unintended humor :-|

Taal Volcano, is still alert level 2
Posted: 11:52 AM 07/09/2010 Posted: 07/09/2010 11:52 AM

Defined by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) in alert level 2 still Taal Volcano in Batangas even naitatalang shaking down around it.

PHIVOLCS Director Renato said Solidum continue to expand the bubbling activity on the lake with a recorded temperature of 34 degrees Centigrade.

Still heating the main crater and tumitindi more swelling of the volcano so that means you still aalburuto Taal Volcano.

In the past night, five volcanic quake recorded compared to yesterday but only two can mean a lower level of warning for them not only pinagbabasehan.

PHIVOLCS reminded of taboo still go to the main crater of Taal Volcano. Despite this, said Jing Segismundo, Public Information Officer of Batangas, the most evacuee, who going home to their home but also allegedly prepared the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council (PDCC) in case required

Google translation of http://www.dzmm.com.ph/tabid/82/Article/10101/Taal-Volcano-nasa-alert-l…

@#56 Hi Raving,
Two points,(1)So Taal remains classified as Level Two and
(2)Im going to write a programme to translate
Google Translator......
Meanwhile,there are far too many clouds cunningly disguised as Volcanic plumes at Eyja.Hopefully,sigh,the cloud will clear.
Kultsi;I love your words of calm and objectivity in the face of,albeit,intelligent speculation.Thank you.
As for "twisted britches",I hope that the IMO have'nt been caught with their britches round there ankles....

On the live Katla website there is steam rising far off just left of the center of the screen. Here is the link,
http://www.ruv.is/katla/

Why is it I wonder..that every time I log on and see reports of new dramatic plumes from Eyja, I check the webcams and see only weather clouds (and maybe a wispy steam plume just above the crater lip)?

For those who didn't see it, a nice Hvol view of plume at http://www.ruv.is/frett/gufustrokur-ur-eyjafjallajokli along with Icelandic text available in english at Iceland Review, where I found the link. Also a Thorocam pic around 22:30 last night (cam time) showing steam picking up, a 'bump' in the cloud. http://yfrog.com/5dpicture12eyxp

@Mike don, it is probably the same reason it happens to me. I live in CA and I am late getting to the computer because I am still asleep! LOL

@Carl, #1, a rootless shield is caused by lava breaking out of a tube and flowing on top. If it keeps flowing on the top, it will form a shield and sometimes the lave will pool and form a lava lake on top of the shield. It will over-flow and that helps build up the shield. The reason it is called a rootless shield is because it does not come from a vent, but rather from a break in the tube system.

I hope this helps. I know Erik can provide a more in-depth explaination and he probaby will evenutally. Lots of things to discover here.

@Birdseye, glad you stayed around. I would have missed you!

Thanks for posting the pictures. It helped me to see what everybody was talking about earlier. I have to rememeber what time the posts were made about seeing what is happening because it is usually gone by the time I get online. Oh well...

Umm, I must be tired.Thanks birdseye for the "heads-up" re the ruv.is link.It got me thinking and I found this http://grapevine.is/Home/ReadArticle/Steam-rises-from-Eyjafjallajokull
Looks as if you were spot-on Kultsi.May'be they do read what we say lol.

@Birdseye [60] -

Heh. I like it better the way I got it from the Icelandic text, "...a lot of water in the kettle and the heat under..."

Of course, the words could be what are called "false friends", i.e. apparent cognates when they are not.

Ditto Mike Don

Too much weather to see anything conclusive.

Been watching these cams for months...look too long and stuff moves and mirages happen. We could watch these Icelandic cams for many years before the next VEI 4 eruption happens.

@Renato, #13 on the last thread, nooooo I have not been to Venice, LOL. I have this brain that sometimes goes against me when I am trying to remember a name, LOL. Sorry about that. :-}

@Birdseye [60] -

I looked at the pic at your link, http://yfrog.com/5dpicture12eyxp - and I got pissed off: why don't we get the same quality of feed? Look at that pic, sharp as a razor; not the pixel mush we are forced to look at!

Eruptions blog Volcano Word of the Day:

Rootless Shield
USGS definition
Rootless Shields are not a Gang of Nomadic Warriors
volcanoes.usgs.gov/images/pglossary/rootless.php
hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2008/08_01_24.html

@Kultsi 67 - that was my screenshot - I don't look at the cams full-screen - and some times of day are definitely better than others,(once the sun comes around around and goes low in the sky, for instance) plus for once there wasn't any cloud or dust or fog!
@Adrian, DianeNCa, thanks. Couldn't not keep checking on the family, at least.

@Birdsyey [69] -

Well, the time of the screen capture is one of those when I prefer sleeping - midnight in Iceland is 3 am here.

I agree that the pic quality is very much a function of the available light - but I'd wish for more Kodak moments for me.

@#69 Hi birdseye,
Your more than welcome.Im glad your still here and Thank You for your comment.Friendship,even like this,means a helluva lot !
@#70 Kultsi,
Reminds me of a song.I want my,I want my,I want my Vodacam.
It's ok,im going back under my rock now...

@Adrian [71] -
lol! And how many of us have not been seeing things on the Vodacam? (The original was banned 'cause it was thought to promote hallucinogens.)

@#72 Kultsi,
Woops,I did'nt know that.Well,now that I have recovered my sensibility (sanity)I will see you on the new thread,'Bye.

@#55 Hi d9trotterdam,
Fascinating time-lapse as per usual.Thanks for those two,especially the one from today,Cheers !

Well, I've been so blasted busy I seem to miss all the fun. And of course as I am now getting ready to fly to England I come in here and find EyjafjallajÃ¶kull causing a little fuss. Guess as long as I only see white on the cams I'll be fine. At the very least, if things start kicking up and I get detoured, it can wait until my flight and I get stuck in Iceland so I could see things first hand. Wife kind of likes the idea. :)

@Adrian #71: That's the way to do it!

Screenshots for nothing and those pix for free!

Too right Reynir,there has to be a little humour at times !

Good points. I will require a bit of time to toy with this job.

love your blog, however it is obvious to me that to eliminate the

Mystery Volcano Photo #22

eklemetti — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:42:56 +0000

Mystery Volcano Photo #22

Maybe I should be pleased that in the last Mystery Volcano Photo took a whole five guesses rather than one or two, so I count it as success! The correct guess was made by Dr. Boris Behncke, so that elevates him into a tie for first.

Current Standings:
The Bobs - 3
Don Crain - 3
Boris Behncke - 3
gijs - 2
volcanista - 1
Lockwood - 1
Elizabeth - 1
Ralph - 1
Anne - 1
Cam - 1
gg - 1
Damon Hynes - 1
Marco - 1
Doug C. - 1
Diane - 1
Stephen - 1

The 21st MVP was submitted by Eruptions reader David Tucker, who snapped it while flying over the Kamchatka Peninsula on his way to Japan. The volcano in question is Krasheninnikov, a fascinating looking system where two stratocones sit inside a larger caldera of Pleistocene age. The last known eruption was potentially as recently as 1550 AD.

So, with that, we'll move onto the next MVP, lined up for the holiday weekend (here in the U.S.), here it is MVP #22, submitted by another Eruptions reader:

Mystery Volcano Photo #22. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Take your best guess!

eklemetti Fri, 07/02/2010 - 05:42

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.

I've read through several of the reviews in your blog at this point. I like your style of blogging. I had it to one of my bookmarks and definitely will be coming back soon. Take a look at my personal site as well and tell me what you think.

Genuinely informative entry to study on.! I am actually intrigued with this posting. Looking forward for additional data.

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You are obviously extremely passionate about your position. I commend you on your passion and urge you to keep it up. Thanks. - I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead. Woody Allen Born 1935

Monday Musings: KVERT in trouble again, the volcano takes on a general (and Top Gear) ... and more!

eklemetti — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:51:32 +0000

Monday Musings: KVERT in trouble again, the volcano takes on a general (and Top Gear) ... and more!

News!

The summit crater lake at Gorely in Russia, taken on June 21, 2010. Image courtesy of KVERT.

Eruptions readers have been abuzz about how KVERT will be closing shop (yet again) at the end of June. This would, of course, leave no local monitoring and expertise in the very active Kamchatka Peninsula and Kuril Islands in Russia. Right now Shiveluch and Gorely are both showing signs of increased eruption (along with other volcanoes in the arc). In fact, Gorely, which hasn't erupted since 1986, looks primed to have an eruption, with increased tremors, steam-and-gas emissions and a new summit vent (discovered on June 17). That being said, we can hope that someone/country smartens up again and helps fund the vital activities of KVERT.
I brought this up subtly last week, but there has been a lot of print (pixels?) used on the idea that General Stanley McChrystal - who recently lost his position as the head of the Central Command in charge of Afghanistan - can blame it on the EyjafjallajÃ¶kull eruption and the ensuing air travel disruptions. Sure, it is no "Iceland turning Christian", but it is always interesting to see the unpredictable results of a volcanic eruption.
Speaking of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull, Eruptions reader Chris brought us a link to the segment from the BBC's hit show Top Gear (video) shot on the erupting Icelandic volcano (during the fissure vent stage). Amusing stuff, mostly for the audacity of it all.
I found this short piece of volcano tourism at Miyakejima in Japan. Much like Sakurajima, this volcano is relatively active, with small eruptions every year since a VEI 3 eruption (and caldera collapse) in 2000.
Photovolcanica has posted a couple new collections of recent eruptive activity - a set from Yasur in Vanuatu, showing the impressive strombolian activity this spring and (of course) more from EyjafjallajÃ¶kull.

eklemetti Mon, 06/28/2010 - 03:51

http://roflrazzi.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/386eab57-4ffa-4d1a-802d-99…

Gee it's quiet out here! : ) Thanks for the news and Eyja summary, Erik, and for the cartoon, parclair.

Did anyone see Fireman on Thorocam on Sunday? Looks like a renewal of activity on the Tjornes Fracture zone.

Guess all eyes are on the Gulf and tropical storm/hurricane. Heavy thunderstorms and tornado warnings in Upstate (southern tier) NY, very hot & humid.

Right, we had another good rattle, just shy of mag 3, about 25mi due W, in the wee hours this morning.

However, I've been experiencing definite L-waves, just barely perceptible as local gravity is perturbed by the passing of these slow waves. They passed through twice today, lasting about 20-min each time.

The last time I felt these waves for an extended period of time was 2004.

I think Lurking was right, they are deep slow waves, and we're getting a lot of them. I did some plotting of EQ locations for the last decade for the PNW, with a subgrouping for years that were particularly 'busy': 2004, 2007-8, and it looks like 2010 will be another active year. Interestingly, there are distinctive patterns that suggest terrane block interaction in the northern cascades, with a centroid close to Chelan, Entiat and the Methow Valley.

What is interesting is that this area (Cascades fault arc) is said to have produced the largest inland shake in the PNW (estimated between 7.8 and 8.6) in 1872.

It makes me wonder if we are due up for a larger rattle, ~ mag 5-6 in the Lake Chelan area. We've already had 3 quakes in the immediate location of the 1872 quake this year.

There is quite a bit of recent home development activity in these deeply incised valleys in the foot hills of the Cascades, mostly the Microsoft execs and various well-to-do, feeling very-owed early retired baby boomers from NoCal and Oregon, who have very large, plush homes perched in *very* precarious locations on the steep valley hillsides.

I hope they have earthquake insurance.

Passerby, I tried to find information on that quake zone, but have had no luck (I've relatives in Colville). Is there another name for the fault(s) in the area? Would a quake the size of 1872 affect the Grand Coulee Dam? Thnx

@parclair

Not sure if this is what you are after, but:

earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Maps/US10/42.52.-125.-115.php

covers the Pacific Northwest, and includes the Cascadia Subduction Zone and Mt Ranier area.

I still have no idea if there is an instrumented slow quake sensor available on the Inet thing-a-ma-bob

@Lurking. I was wondering if there's a name other than 'Cascades fault arc" The closest I could get is puget sound faults (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound_faults), but nothing to the east of there where the towns and lake you named are located.

Hmm... If you use Google Earth, the USGS has a really nice plug-in that gives you a graphic of the Quantenary Fault Maps.

Example, 51 miles east of Seattle is the Straight Creek fault running N/S (roughly)Under Seattle propper is the Seattle fault zone, several of those E/W faults cross under Puget sound. South of the Strait Creek set are the Frenchman Hills complex... all sorts of stuff. I'd post a graphic but I fiddled with my plug-in so that all the faults are black so I can make out other features... such as the Quake dots. (things got busy with all the yellows and reds)

If a quake set from the RSS feed gets my interest, or you guys start jumping up and down about an event (not a slam, I jump up and down too), I look at the realtime quake plug in in Google Earth: earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/eqs7day-age.kmz

And then look at the faults:

The USGS plug-ins:

earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/qfaults/google.php

Historic - Most recent, known movement less than about 150 years

Holocene to Latest Pleistocene - Younger than 15,000 years

Late Quaternary - Younger than 130,000 years

Mid to Late Quaternary - Younger than 750,000 years

Quaternary - Younger than 1,600,000 years

And if I find a fault complex that might be responsible or related to it, I poke around over at www.data.scec.org/index.html too see what I can learn.. mainly the sub-page: www.data.scec.org/fault_index/alphadex.html where the faults are listed by name and have a nice description of it.

The downside is that a lot of seismic networks have data that don't make it into the USGS list... such as Iceland. But at least Iceland has a decent web interface that I can scrape data off of for plot generation. Other countries seem have have made it as onerous as possible to pull data like that. (lots and lots of markup and no neat table layout).

Hope this helps.

I can't get at the set of technical papers I had at one time that defined and described the northern arc of faults, used to map geological risks for the Grand Coulee dam and Columbia Basin Federal Irrigation Project.

North Cascades region geology

www.dnr.wa.gov/ResearchScience/Topics/GeologyofWashington/Pages/ncascad…

No, Grand Coulee isn't at risk. Unfortunately, the long-wave seismograph instrument, located in the base of the dam was pulled around 2003 due to program funding cuts. The USGS folks were not happy campers, as it was part of a sparsely populated array for detection of deep movements. The dampening isolation in the base of the dam was exceptionally good.

After 2001, tasked with identifying all types of outstanding risk to agency physical infrastructure, we were particularly interested in the faults that run through the area where the flood basalts uncomfortably overlie the ancient granites, north of Grand Coulee and with surficial faults and erosional features within the flood basalts of the Columbia Basin south of Grand Coulee to the base of the project (near the Tri-cities). Accordingly much time was spent in discussion with the USGS Portland and Tacoma Offices, Seattle USACE and USBRs two area geologists before they retired.

My apologies, www.data.scec.org only covers SoCal.

I mis-spokenated...

@ Passerby... since you appear to be a denizen of the great Pacific Northwest...

You wouldn't happen to know the whereabouts of a recent INSAR/ISAR image covering the Washington/Oregon area would you? (you know, the funky rainbow graphics showing ground movement between two satellite passes) I think it might be handy to see where the potential event areas are at.. or to see the end result of silent quakes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8767763.stm

Looks like the magnetic field/gravity and maybe the sun has some effect on volcanoes after all? Check out indonesia and iceland!

OT but still about INSAR; Imagery of the end result of the Mex Shaker.

www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/UAVSARimage20100623.html

Some news on the FimmvÃ¶rduhÃ¡ls eruption (the first in Iceland this year):
I don't remember if anyone mentioned it already here, but the new craters have now names: They are called Magni and MÃ³di after the sons of Thor (the volcanoes are located close to ThÃ³rsmÃ¶rk, hence the names). The new lavafield is called Godahraun, since the area, where its flowing over is called Godaland.

In this lavafield a woman suffered severe burns, when she picked up some rocks yesterday and the turned to be glowing hot inside. There are as well some reports on people, who managed to melt their aluminium walking sticks, when the put them in cracks.
There was a photo in morgunbladid, which shows still red glowing cracks: http://mbl.is/mm/frettir/popup/mynd.html?imgid=535107

Two articles in English, about the burned hand http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=29314&ew_… and about the SkaftÃ¡ flood http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=16567&ew_…

No, sorry, don't know of specific INSAR projects to measure seismic wave propagation on a broadly regional scale. One barrier would be allocating project time on a satellite for conducting such a study. Has been used on a much smaller scale to observe uplift, along with GPS for various Cascade volcanoes.

hello too all :))

Im wondering on a little something,.

the hotspots on GigjÃ¶kull,what are they?? are they hot melt water, or are they cracks with still molten rock inside, as shown on the pictures from fimmvÃ¶rdurhals??
Its amazing that lava can be still molten and hot so long after the eruption..
How can it still be in its flowing state when its so long ago??

@Kultsi (#13)

Two articles in English, about the burned hand ...

And roasting chestnuts. www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/142115/Top-Gear-clown-James-May-burns-pri…

More pictures here!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1290776/Northern-Lights-…

@8 Passerby:much reference to Columbia arc in a free, downloadable pdf book entitled Continental Tectonics published by Geophysics Study Committee, Geophysics Research Board, Assembly of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, National Research Council available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/25047453/Education-Geology-and-Geophysics-E-B…

Fireman was up there briefly, but not at the webcam site - turns out that's 500M / 1500ft up a hill and there's no road access. Schedule was too tight for me to make the climb. Did get some very high-res shots; watch this space!

#15 I just checked the melting point for aluminum: 660.32 Â°C,â1220.58 Â°F . Think of more than sixty days have gone, and it's still that hot!

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

âELECTRONIC GEOPHYSICAL YEAR:
STATE OF THE ART AND RESULTSâ

http://egy-russia.gcras.ru/index_new_e.html

=====================================

Result: Funding for KVERT?

????

Hey that's an amazing insight on the subject, thanks so much! never heard it more clear.

Look, if the toaster's broken, then it's fair game for stickin' your penis in. That's just the laws of common sense.

Bedbug dog appears strange to many people. A dog has been manâs best friend for ages. Dogs happen to have been used for a long time by military and law enforcement agencies to detect bombs, drugs and other things. You might have heard of bomb dogs, drug dogs, and arson dogs. But now the manâs best friend has launched an attack against bed bugs and is the new weapon in mans fight against these bugs. A bedbug dog is trained to detect the location of bed bugs in infested areas. Dogs can be handy for detecting or sniffing objects wherein they use their senses (usually nose) to locate the object for which they have been ?trained?. These congenial but accurate doggies know their work very well.

This is a good approach to what, for some, may be a controversial topic. Very well though out post. - There's always one more bug. Attributed to Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology

Generating income on the web always is troublesome at the begining however Its those that stick to it that succeed. - Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. Mark Twain 1835 1910

A issue close to my heart cheers, i've been thinking about about this subject for some time.

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.....

Thank you for this webpage. Thats all I can say. You most definitely have made this blog into something speciel. You clearly know what you are doing, youve covered so many corners.thanks

Beautiful photos. Thank you for this writeup, I am a law assistant professor in Iowa and I found this to become really helpful.

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Possible eruption at Gorely in Russia?

eklemetti — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:38:26 +0000

Possible eruption at Gorely in Russia?

The crater lakes at the summit of Gorely volcano in Russia.

Possibly lost in the vuvuzela noise, but Eruptions readers over the weekend noted that Gorely on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia had its first eruption in over 20 years. The Russian media has a brief report mentioning that the volcano produced an ash plume that "stretched over a hundred kilometers" (horizontally). The plume was causing some disruptions of local air travel and threatening a geothermal plant, but no real other details beyond that were offered. So far, there has been no update about the possible eruption on the KVERT status page.

Gorely is really a set of five overlapping stratovolcanoes within a caldera system. They have been fairly active, producing relatively frequent VEI 2-3 eruptions over the last century, but the volcanic cluster hasn't had an known eruption since 1986. I stress "known" because the volcano is fairly remote (as a lot of things are in far eastern Russia) and only one seismometer monitoring the area. There have been suggestions that Gorely erupted or came close to erupting a number of times over the last decade, but nothing has been substantiated. Gorely isn't small-fry either - the eruption that formed the caldera ~38-40,000 years ago ejected over 100 km³ of volcanic tephra and although another eruption of this magnitude is not a likely event, it is in the volcano's history. Most recent eruptions have been relatively small volume vulcanian and phreatic events erupting basaltic andesite.

eklemetti Mon, 06/14/2010 - 05:38

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Windows Media format)

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

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

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

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

I think Eyja is erupting again (seismic tremor!)

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

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

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Bezymianny, Cleveland and Tungurahua updates for 6/1/2010

eklemetti — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:29:26 +0000

Bezymianny, Cleveland and Tungurahua updates for 6/1/2010

Tungurahua in Ecuador erupting on May 31, 2010.

Two volcanoes along the edge of the north Pacific had explosive eruptions over the weekend. We have some more details on both of the eruptions, so I'll pass them on:

Bezymianny
KVERT is excited because they claim to have predicted the explosive eruption of Bezymianny almost to the day. They had been closely monitoring the volcano and issued this statement on May 20:

According to satellite data by AVO and KVERT staff, a temperature of
the thermal anomaly over the lava dome of Bezymianny volcano began
increasing from May 19 (from -1 (9:49 UTC) to +18 (15:52 UTC) degrees of C).
Possibly a new lava block extrudes at the lava dome of Bezymianny.
And this stand for a preparation of new strong explosive eruption of Bezymianny volcano.
Possibly this explosive eruption of Bezymianny volcano can occurs during May 21 - May 30 or May 21 - June 10.

Four days later, they upgraded the volcano's status to Orange:

Kamchatkan and Northern Kuriles Volcanic Activity
KVERT INFORMATION RELEASE 23-10
Monday, May 24, 2010, 02:20 UTC (14:20 KDT)
BEZYMIANNY VOLCANO: 55Â°58'N, 160Â°36'E; Elevation 2,882 m
CURRENT AVIATION COLOR CODE IS ORANGE
PREVIOUS AVIATION COLOR CODE WAS YELLOW
Activity of the volcano gradually increased. Possibly a new explosive eruption of the
volcano is preparing. According to satellite data, a temperature of thermal
anomaly over the lava dome continues to increasing from 18 degrees of Celsius on May
19, to 48.8 degrees of Celsius on May 23.

Sure enough, the volcano erupted, producing a 10 km (32,000 foot) ash column on May 31.

Kamchatkan and Northern Kuriles Volcanic Activity
KVERT INFORMATION RELEASE 25-10
Monday, May 31, 2010, 20:45 UTC (June 01, 08:30 KDT)
BEZYMIANNY VOLCANO: 55Â°58'N, 160Â°36'E; Elevation 2,882 m
CURRENT AVIATION COLOR CODE IS RED
PREVIOUS AVIATION COLOR CODE WAS ORANGE
Strong explosive eruption of Bezymianny volcano occurred from 12:34 till 12:50 UTC on
May 31, according to seismic data. Ash fall in Kozyrevsk village is continuing. The
volcano obscured by clouds.

Not bad for an operation that almost lost all of its funding and only operates 8:30 AM until 6:00 PM.

Cleveland
Meanwhile, Cleveland in the Alaska Aleutians did end up having an explosive eruption over the weekend as well. AVO issued a warning last week that the volcano was likely to erupt and upgraded the alert status to Yellow. On May 31, the volcano did end up erupting, producing a 4.8 km (16,000 foot) ash column. However, the volcano has gone quiet since this small event. (Of course, don't believe all the news you read, like this article that starts with "A volcano in Cleveland, Ohio emitted on Monday night a small ash cloud." Now, that would be news!)

Tungurahua
Halfway around the planet, Tungurahua in Ecuador is still erupting (spanish) after prompting evacuations earlier last week. The latest reports talk about the volcano producing over 400 explosions an day, with incandescent blocks being thrown from the vent - helping to produce the 10 km (32,000 foot) ash plume. Seismicity is still increasing under the volcano, so there could be more explosive events on the way. You can see some video of the eruption over on Benjamin Bernard's blog (french).

eklemetti Tue, 06/01/2010 - 07:29

Great. Another Russian Volcano burps-and another late to no tomato summer in NE Oregon-just watch...
Haven't had much of a spring either...

Dr. Olga A. Girina makes her case eloquently for extended funding for KVERT. The period of 2007-2009 was quite active for ash and volcanic gas release in the Kamchatka/Kurile/Aleutian volcanic zones.

We're politely asking our friends to the North to put up Canookie-Bucks to help KVERT continue it's exceptionally important mission and reminding them that Canada tends to suffer the brunt of volcanic post-eruption detrimental environmental/weather and health effects.

We'll play nicey-nice if you do. We'll share some of our findings with you *quietly*, through appropriate channels in the months ahead, so that your agencies can take appropriate action when needed for risk reduction, with a little advanced warning and knowledge in hand.

ehh,. have anyone seen on Thorolfscam lately??

are there more lava coming down gigjÃ¸kull now?? it seems like there is something going on there, and quite a lot of steaming too,.

What I find ridiculous is the tunnel vision of USGS Volcano Dept. Not a single peep about the eruption across the straits from Alaska (http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/), while on the EQ side they announce and map every significant event on the globe (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/). Still, the volcanoes might prove much more hazardous to U.S. citizens than EQs ever could.

Kultsi, I believe media report what they feel is the current public interest. Before 1980, it was earthquakes - people were "waiting for the big one" on the West Coast. Then it was volcanoes - as evidenced by those two mid-nineties movies "Volano" & "Dante's Peak", "coincidentally" both set in the Western States. After Christmas Day 2004, the good people on the West Coast's favourite fear is a giant tsunami that will wipe them out, generated by? Yes, earthquakes. So what does get funding, because if it doesn't some politicians look bad for "not listening to public concern". 55 million Californians...

AVO did carry a short report of the Kamchatka eruption via KVERT weblink
http://www.kscnet.ru/ivs/kvert/updates.shtml

The link can be found under the KVERT/recent activity section, right-side of the webpage.
http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/

AVO works in careful coordination with their Russian counterparts at KVERT/SVERT. AVO isn't ignoring what goes on in Kamchatka and the Kuriles - on the contrary, the Observatory staff* play an important but low key role in supporting Russian volcano observation and eruption/emissions reporting activities.

* I am commenting as an interested professional party and not in the capacity as spokesperson for USGS staff/UA faculty/research affiliates.

Erik, thanks for the Tung. eruption reference great photos and interesting 'in the moment ' commentary.

Hi Thor, maybe a little lava?,or just he usual hot spots, and there was a 2+ earthquake a while ago, only one, I think the rest is just clouds.

@Passerby #6: I know that AVO does a good job with their Russian counterparts, as well as within their sphere on responsibility, but USGS is the top organization, right? So, why don't they show the hazards on their map? (which ONLY shows the Pacific ring of fire)

Wouldn't it be easier to go to the purse-holders and say, "Look, we even showed this threat, but we don't really have the money to keep this up..."

thanks birdseyeUSA, then its not my eyes,..

it looks like its a little bit hotter on EyjaflÃ¶ll, tonight than it has been,. but it just might be those hotspots, but they seem a little bit hotter than before..

could lava just flow out silently without any eruption on the top? or does she just burp up some now and then.. cause the eruption doesnt quite seem like its totaly over..

Kultsi - the USGS page shows those volcanoes which lie in US political union areas. That's their responsibility; the Kamchatkan volcanoes are Russia's responsibility. AVO and KVERT have an operational agreement. Comparing earthquake monitoring to volcano monitoring and eruption response is apples and oranges, in terms of activities required, funding levels, and program scope. The US observatories could use funding, also - see http://www.hazardscaucus.org/briefings/volcano_briefing0410.html

Underwater volcano blows just north of Saipan.

http://www.pacificnewscenter.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti…

@#8: the website you cite is the USGS National Volcanic Hazard map. It covers *officially* covers US continental and extra-continental (Alaskan, Hawaiian, and US Possession /Territorial waters) volcanic hazards, per US Congressional order (P.L. 93-288) that the agency issue 'timely warnings of potential volcanic hazards to responsible emergency-management authorities and to the (US) populace affected'.

The USGS is networked through VAAC, including the Washington Office, to communicate risk observations of overseas volcanic hazards to interacting global community of volcanic monitoring entities.

The US and other national geological hazard programs interact within layers of direct and indirect legal, political and economic influence:

regional centers > national agencies > international centers > international authorities (brokered by special accords/agreements)

@9 Thor, the hot spots seem hotter or colder depending on how hot or cold everything around them is, as far as I understand FLIR, so one never quite knows ; ) I go by the plume if I can see it, because I know that is definitely somewhat warm - then I can compare.
Wonder if there will be FLIR on any other volcanoes??? Rocks and lava going up 1km (So. Am. ,) that's amazing.

EYJAFJALLAJÃKULL report
Status Report: 15:00 GMT, 1 June 2010
Icelandic Meteorological Office and Institute of Earth Sciences, University
of Iceland
Compiled by: Gunnar B. GuÃ°mundsson, Helga ÃvarsdÃ³ttir, Sibylle von LÃ¶wis and SigrÃºn
HreinsdÃ³ttir
Based on: IMO seismic monitoring; IES-IMO GPS monitoring; IMO hydrological data;
web cameras, ATDnet â UK Met. Offices lightning detection system, web-
based ash reports from the public and scientists that went to the volcano.
Eruption plume:
Height (a.s.l.): Clouds and mist have covered the summit of the volcano both
yesterday and today. At 08:00 GMT today a white cloud was seen at 2
km a.s.l. on web-cameras. Winds of up to 10 m/s are blowing from the
east.
Heading: N/A
Colour: N/A
Tephra fallout: Widespread drifting of existing ash in southwest Iceland, both
yesterday and today. High concentration of airborne dust in ReykjavÃk
yesterday at noon and again at midnight.
Lightning: No lightning strikes have been detected.
Noises: No reports.
Meltwater: Low discharge from GÃgjÃ¶kull.
Conditions at eruption site: N/A
Seismic tremor: Volcanic tremor is still more than before the eruption and has been
rather steady since 22nd May, but small pulses, mostly on the lowest
frequency are being detected on the seismic stations around the
volcano.

Earthquakes: Daily, there are several small and shallow earthquakes under the
volcano.
GPS deformation: No significant deformation at sites around EyjafjallajÃ¶kull.
Overall assessment: There is still a considerable amount of steam coming from the
crater. The tremor is still higher than before the onset of the eruption,
and small tremor pulses have been detected on the lowest frequency.
We continue to monitor the volcano closely.

thanks again birdseyeUSA,..

I just read the update, and saw the earthquake.. then looked on the cam, and it seems like something is going on,. but really hard to tell,.

the flir cam shows that there is somewhat more glow on the plume than yesterday,and daybefore.
and she has her dayly burps of ash and smaller gravel.. but since there are more quakes and movements under there there still are an eruption, yet without the big booms and ash,.

In the previous thread, Daniel (swe) asked about the recent eq swarm at Reykjanes peninsula. I've been curious about that area, too. I've read about the lava tubes (and about the 2001 draining of Lake Kleifarvatn further to the west) but don't know much more. Can anyone shed light about the seismic and volcanic characteristics of this area?

@ thor #15 & @birdseyeUSA #14

What ever it is, there is a remarkably strong steam plume visible in the HvolsvÃ¶llur webcam. I guess it's still worthwhile to keep an eye on EyjafjallajÃ¶kull, even though the 'competition' from around the world has been very busy as of late....

Not bad for an operation that almost lost all of its funding and only operates 8:30 AM until 6:00 PM.

If you want some money then it's easy. The opportunity is there for the exploiting. Go set up a pork barreling NGO under the auspices of the UN.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_System

HVO plot had a small spike around 2-3 hours ago. (HVO is the one just east of Katla, away from Eyjafjallajokull). Also, keep an eye on the Kistufell-Bardarbunga area (Vatnajokull). There have been a few earthquake swarms there, most recently at Kistufell.

That's a pretty impressive steam plume on the Hvollsvelli cam....I guess she got a little jealous over all the attention the other volcanoes were getting;)

@ Randall Nix #20 - And getting better by the minute as the morning sun illuminates the steam plume

I wonder what can be making such a large white plume. It's only been a month, but I cannot remember what the early eruption of the last two vents looked like-- was it steam? heh. Gettin old and tired and in the way--- I think it was steam first.

@Randall #20 & @Kathryn #21

Impressive steam plume indeed, but the FLIR camera still shows the moon to be hotter than the steam plume (see: EyjafjallajÃ¶kull seen from ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell)...

I guess it's still only the remaining heat from the earlier eruption and no new lava (yet?).

Kathryn, Australia it's just steam but it still makes a nice picture;)

Holger, N California Give it time;)

Only one post for me, been sick. But wanted to let you know don't get hooked on the ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli cam or you're going to miss the nice view on Hvolsvelli. :)

@Dan #25 - Got both open!:-)Then I won't miss anything.... hope you're better soon.......

There appears to be some short of tremor pulse going on SIL station hvo (LÃ¡gu Hvolar). I am not sure why this is happening. This might just be a simple glacier water flood or something from Katla internal systems changing and creating this pulse on the sensor.

http://data.emsd.iks.ru/videokzy/videokzy.htm

Nice eruption underway of some order at Bezymianny again...

@MRK 28 Thanks for the heads-up. Busy admiring eyjaf and kiluea.

Hahaha - a volcano in Cleveland - I'm sure that would come as surprise to everyone in the flat flat midwest plains. Presumably whoever wrote the story had never been to Ohio much less Cleveland?

That's an awesome photo of Tungurahua; I wish I had a giant sized poster for my wall.

The Wikipedia entry on Cleveland (the volcano) is not bad; it even has a map of the Aleutian chain (of which several of the volcanoes are pretty active). Cleveland is one of the more inaccessible and difficult to monitor volcanoes on the planet and it's caused trouble before. If I'm not too senile some remote monitoring equipment was put up on Cleveland a few years ago. One of the great challenges for unattended instrumentation there is the extremes of temperature through the year - well, more so the extreme cold.

Have you ever noticed that a watched webcam never refreshes?

A look at the plume from Hekla.
We needed this beautiful weather while the big activity was going. But it's not as it go for volcanoes, it was said...

#32 The link is:
http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalen.html

Nyharongo? Nope. Kilauea!
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/POcam/

Can anyone explain the strange activity at HVO station?

Looks like a similar pattern as EF had during the eruption just on a smaller scale.

@Renato I Silveira, Hekla is plume free. EyjafjallajÃ¶kull however isn't. There is a good steam coming from him at the moment.

I hadn't time to check up on Kilauea recently. Took a quick look the other day (Saturday), nothing seemed changed much from end of April 2010.

Tonight, I was startled to see the Halema'uma'u webcam showing a very large incandescence signal.

Normal image is a plume in the distance, sometimes with numerous midfield geothermal field emissions, taken from the webcam located at the volcano observatory visitor center.

I have been watching the HVO webcams for quite some time (couple years) and don't recall seeing this night-time glow on the KIcam.

@ Renato, #33: That camera is in MÃºlakot, which sits about halfway between HvolsvÃ¶llur and Thorolfsfell, on the north side of MarkarfljÃ³t, about 30 km SSE from Hekla.

Which cam are you watching? The two Halema'uma'u cams have shown activity. The view from the observatory has had a fine red glow for months (weather permitting)

Tonight is the first time I've seen Pu'u 'O'o glow red in the night. For the last couple of years, it's been too gassy to see anything. I think I read that the old camera at this site fell into the magma when a cliff gave way. Perhaps this is the new camera. I like it. Also, during the day, the TEB wide-image camera now has a wonderful panorama of the outbreak.

Cam page: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/

Ooops! SSW of Hekla, of course. My bad.

EYJ
http://eldgos.mila.is/english/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/

Clear view - all the black ash covers the glacier with a background of blue sky and small white steam. Quiet a different look!

EYJ
http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-valahnjuk/

This camera view was shut down when they couldn't access the unit to re-charge batteries due to safety issues of its location. Do you think now they will be able to get this camera view back in operation during the current lull?

I forget where I read that 7 week eruption at EYJ was to be expected and that is what we got.

@28 MRK It appears that the Bezymianny cam has died. Do you supposed that the eruption may have affected it?

#36 #38 I meant Eyjaf view from Hekla, from where you can clearly see a neat plume. :)

@Passerby [37]

I've been meaning to do a historical quake plot along "The Great Crack" but have never gotten around to it. Over the last two days I've been digging over benzene toxicity and saturations levels in seawater coupled with the USGS flow data... it ain't pretty.

My main interest is the Hilina scarp. In '75 the lower part of it suddenly dropped by about 11 feet. This was concurrent with a Mag 7.2 quake.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilina_Slump

The concept takes on a rather ominous tone when you consider the Tuscaloosa seamount... a 25km x 12km x 2km chunk that was formerly part of Oahu. (Nuuanu slide, â2.1 mybp) No, I don't think Hilina is close to failing, but is is something I want to look at.

nthmp-history.pmel.noaa.gov/its2001/Separate_Papers/6-04_Satake.pdf

To the left of the main lava flow in GigjÃ¶kull there's another small plume of steam to the left of the little ice capped summit. I just can't understand how a flow can originate from a site higher then the main crater. I've noticed that some days ago, but all the area was so covered that I couldn't tell for sure. Now it seems pretty clear. Any comments on this?

#46 Those are clouds forming out of thin air - happens all the time in mountains; saturated air needs just a tiny nudge to start condensation. On the lee side of a ridge the pressure is lower and often that is enough to start the process.

Hi everyone,
@Boris Behncke:
I just wanted to tell you, I saw you on TV last night! There was a volcano special (3 related documentaries) on German TV. I didn't get to see all of it (due to other things) and I'm hoping for a repeat, but anyway, you were there, climbing the flanks of your beloved Etna - I was amazed at the massive lava flow approaching that village. Scary stuff, lave that flows in tunnels for long distances before it cools down. The documentary to look out for was called "Vulkane - Die Uhr tickt", Germany, 2006. Given the amount of repeats on various TV stations, I'm sure there will be a rerun some day soon.

Parclair @39, I've been watching Pu'u 'O'o for several years now and this is the first time I've seen a glow like that, in fact I've tabbed back and there appears to be lava/spattering above the pit.

It's also nice to see blue skies over Iceland. It's the first time I've seen the steam plume as clearly as that for ages.

Just to cap it all, I'm looking out over my garden to a beautiful June morning in Aberdeen (Scotland). Summer must be a comin'!

For those not around to see the pretty view from Hvolsvellur early this morning, Iceland time, I've put some screenshots up....
http://picasaweb.google.com/114420151580577086982

#49 I have now worked what I was looking at at Pu'u 'O'o. Later viewing gave more info and the activity is lava pooling on the crater floor,with occasional flaring from gas vents - confirmed by status update page.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/activity/kilaueastatus.php

#50: Thank you, Kathryn, for the screenshots!

@Anita in Austria #48, thanks for notifying me - it looks like there is a lot of video with me in circulation, and I don't recall this one specifically!

Guatemala has had a tough time with the volcanic eruption
and now storm Agatha which caused major flooding and this rather terrifying natural occurence http://www.mixxbuzzers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/guatemala-sinkhol…

Same as above with better photographs and news.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/huge+guatemala…

The sinkhole in Guatemala City is not a "natural" occurrence since it's (almost certainly) due to a leaky sewer. In any case, though it looks dramatic, it's not nearly as much of a disaster for Guatemala as the mudslides, flooding, volcanic ash, and crop failures elsewhere.

Good morning all - well, sorry, no question of the day from me -this is my first volcano, and I just don't know enough to think of a passable question - to which I have answer! I'm on information overload, no synthesis yet.

@Kathryn 50, thanks for the screenshots. As I get up, so does the wind, and all goes to dust, so it's really nice to see clear air photos. RE: Valahnjuk cam, wasn't that in the heavily ashed area? And on top of snow at the time - so, probably too dangerous up there even w/o an active eruption? I'd be surprised to see it back any time soon.

So many webcams, so little time.....

RE: Guatemala, how does one live day to day knowing that the ground may swallow you at any moment? There used to be little occasional sinkholes in farm fields near where I Iived in Iowa, but not like this!

#56 - There must be an underlying waterway/cave system to carry away the massive amount of sand, it does not just disappear, and the cavity forming must start from the bottom to appear as a huge surprise. A leaky rainwater sewage system is a good candidate for providing the primary erosion.

This is about an unrelated volcano but I figured people here might be interested. The Pu'u O'o crater on Kilauea is filling with lava right now, I think: webcam http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/POcam/

Wow!

Guatemala Sinkhole. I'm pretty sure what we're seeing is the first step in the formation of a cenote. I'll leave it to wikipedia to describe them and their formation (I'm not good enough). Cenotes are a common feature in that area-- really wonderful nature, not so good when in an urban setting.

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

From today's Iceland Review...

02/06/2010 | 09:30
Volcanic Eruption in Iceland Still Not Formally Over
Geophysicist MagnÃºs Tumi Gudmundsson said it is not yet possible to declare that the volcano in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull glacier has officially stopped erupting. There are still tremors and seismic activity down below.

Sveinn RunÃ³lfsson, director of the Soil Conservation Service of Iceland, told Morgunbladid that soil reclamation in a 4,000-hectare area is necessary.

âIt is clear that the area that was subject to extensive ash fall is very large. It is estimated to be at least 3,500 square kilometers,â he said. That is approximately 3.4 percent of Icelandâs overall area.

The Soil Conservation Service has worked on a plan since the eruption in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull began on strengthening vegetation in the area by sowing and spreading fertilizers, to bind the ash where there is risk of it being carried away with the wind.

It is most important to take such measures in settled areas. Otherwise, ash drift could continue for months or even years.

However, the project costs up to ISK 100 million (USD 781,000, EUR 637,000) and funding hasnât been secured. The matter has yet to be discussed with Environment Minister SvandÃs SvavarsdÃ³ttir.

RunÃ³lfsson said the idea is to employ people in the area with spreading fertilizers and seed using their tractors and spreaders.

The wind has been blowing in from the southeast in the past days, carrying ash from the eruption site to the capital region. Car owners have noticed how dirty their cars have become.

Not exactly volcanology but cenotes really interest me, especially the underwater linkages eventually leading to the sea in Mexico.
The link below details relationship between cenotes and Chicxlub crater formed from meteorite impact
http://miac.uqac.ca/MIAC/chicxulub.htm

Hi Gordon nice post, great graphics - but you know that Chix wasn't the crater that really laid down the K/Tboundary, no? : ) Here's the other approach...

http://geoweb.princeton.edu/people/keller/chicxulub.html

Hi - just checking to see the activity of LadyE and noticed that there is a lot of seismicity around Hengill - Is this normal for this area?

twin plumes on the ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli visible light cam one at the long standing place, and one far to the right out of the flir view

just wait the clouds clear and give a good view

(next VEI â¥ 3) Paddypower predicts:

Katla 7/4 ... up from 9/4 on May 27th
Eyjafjallajokull 10/1
Etna 28/1

Meanwhile Nature suggests the likelihood of a magnitude 8 or greater earthquake in the Pacific Northwest in the next 50 years at 37% and up from the previous estimate of a 10-15% risk.

The latest news on Tungurahua, from within the last hour

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/326917,hundreds-flee-volcanic-e…

"Quito - Hundreds of people sought to escape the eruption of the Tungurahua volcano Wednesday in Ecuador, days after the evacuation of around 2,500 locals.

Volcanic activity in the Tungurahua, 5,010 metres high and located around 130 kilometres away from Quito, intensified Wednesday, with explosions and other sounds that scared locals.

Residents further sought to move some 420 head of cattle away from the volcano, because pastures have become covered with ash."

Taking a 'cooling off' break from mowing - it's about 30Âº out there...but rain coming, and rain last night so, no choice...

Just looked at the link Erik posted for Tunguraua video/shock waves,it's up now and pretty impressive ...
http://bigbenber.over-blog.com/

a $250,000 grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will put two solar-powered digital seismometers on Anatahan and Sarigan, two active volcanoes in the island chain near Guam. The systems should be fully operational by November, ... To date, there is no money for maintaining the systems.

Stars and Stripes (May 14, 2010)

#68 birdseyeUSA and Erik, good link, good shockwave. Delay in sound puts camera about 6 miles from the crater.

BirdseyeUSA @63 - Just when I thought I knew something... at least the Deccan Traps are still implicated in the KT extinction. Question is, where's the crater that did cause the KT boundary? The thot plickens.

#68 birdseyeUSA and Erik, good link, good shockwave. Delay in sound puts camera about 6 miles from the crater.

#68 Something's wrong with the video "Explosions et ondes de choc au Tungurahua" at that link - all I get is some sound - no picture. The other video "Explosion strombolienne du volcan Tungurahua" on the page works fine.

Hvolsvelli cam makes Lady E look as though she's sending steam signals or having a good huff.

I spotted a car registration plate today that read EYA 20F. Would be nice if the owner was a follower of "Eruptions"

#68 re mowing, do what I do and cut paths to where you want to go. Let the rest grow up. Makes the garden look bigger and helps biodiversity. You can always weed any real nasties that arrive.

Re #68/72 never mind - after 3 or 4 tries with no video, it worked fine on a later attempt to view it. I don't know what changed.....

71: The crater is Chicxulub, in the ocean next to the Yucatan Peninsula.
Despite the work of Alverez Snr and Jnr to identify it, it is not now thought to be the main cause of the KT extinction.
The cause of (KT extinction) is a contentious subject but the crater is real.

New Earthquake...
Magnitude 5.6
Date-Time Wednesday, June 02, 2010 at 18:51:08 UTC
Thursday, June 03, 2010 at 05:51:08 AM at epicenter
Location 13.682Â°S, 166.422Â°E
Depth 35 km (21.7 miles) set by location program
Region VANUATU

http://www.geohazards.gov.vu/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpag…

No question that Chicx. is real, lots of work done on it, as Gordon's #62 post showed. (Amazing that we can do that sort of thing when you come to think of it. )
@73 ( OT ) Good exercise. Keeps the bugs down and the deer nervous. The rest of the land is rougher, they're welcome to it.

@Gordon [73]

"...cut paths to where you want to go. Let the rest grow up. Makes the garden look bigger and helps biodiversity..."

Around here if I tried that I would get water moccasins. The mowed grass tends to keep them away since the hawks can see them if they come out. I'm not particularly fond of moccasins.

@Raving #69: Thanks. Sounds like business as usual then - never any money to monitor the volcanoes in the CNMI. I wonder what telemetry equipment they'll use, or if the system is meant to be visited every month or so. I think Saipan (the closest island with anything resembling modern technology) is about 80NM from Anatahan (too lazy to check a map and get a definite figure).

@Dan Florida, - hear that the oil is approaching Pensacola, we're thinking of you.

@80 birdseye. It sucks. Going to head out there tomorrow evening.

Created a page that has links to web cams in the area (well, after the sun comes back up). :)
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/dashboardcowman/show.html

Yeah I live in Pensacola too:( I did get one more good sail in last week....We rafted up several sailboats off Fort McRee, everyone ate fresh shrimp, drank, listened to Buffett and talked about how much we all loved the area. I went for a long swim. While floating on my back in the warm pristine water I looked over at the booms and wondered just what the area would look like in a few weeks? Now it looks like I am about to find out:( I am going to the beach tomorrow and try to enjoy the water just one more time....and say one more goodbye to an old friend.

http://www.diariollanquihue.cl/prontus4_nots/site/artic/20100602/pags/2…

M 5.4 2010/06/03 04:32:44 70.777 -14.535 10.9 JAN MAYEN ISLAND REGION

#83 Hola Guillermo! They downgraded alert level, but it still looks angry, doesn't it?

Evacuations ordered from growing activity on Tungurahua:
According to the Instituto Geofisico, the type of activity is characterized by the generation of explosions that ejected blocks about a thousand meters below the crater and columns of steam with low to medium content of ash usually not surpassing 3 km high.
"There was also an explosion at 03:00, which led to the descent of a small pyroclastic flow down to 1.5 km"
www.lahora.com.ec

Sakurajima just cleared her throat quite loudly in the last half an hour. Ash up to 11,000 15nm south of Kagoshima airport reported. Check out this webcam image taken about 30 mins ago:

http://tweetphoto.com/25313747

@randall nix[82]

Fear for the Rainbow Trout and related saltwater residents. Based on the average concentration (all I could find was data for North Sea and Bay of Campeche) the concentration of benzene in raw crude runs about 0.1 to 1.2% by mass. Max solubility in water is 0.8 g/L, or 800 mg/L.

The LC50 (median lethal dose) for Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is 5.3 mg/L or 5.2 ppm. IDLH (Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health) for people is 500 ppm. At max concentration it sits at about 779.6 ppm. That's likely why you hear stories of the spill workers getting sick. And that's just the benzene.

Okay, enough rant about the Gulf of Mexico Oil Volcano...

Sorry for the OT.

Lurking thanks for the info....I fear for all the little critters. My girlfriend has really bad asthma so I also worry about her breathing this stuff:(

Goooooood Mooooorning Japan!

Anybody out there who has a link to a Sakurajima web-cam?
Just found the research center, but that was not up to Icelandic standards... (pouting) I guess I have been spoiled by the coverage of E.

Here's links to Saku research center and DPRI.

http://www.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~kazan/research_e.html

http://www.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/web_e/index_topics.html

Here's the link for the Sakurajima cam:

http://kagoshima-live.com/sakurajima.html

I should have said ash reported to 11,000ft south of Kagoshima airport in my earlier post.

Just a quick question to the more knowledgeable - is it normal that we have so many volcanoes around the world active?

Normal? whats Normal the planet does what it has done for million of years,the volcanic activity on the planet has been far more active than it is today. So I guess this is "normal"
but yeah there is many volcanoes active now, and I guess more volcanoes will shake and stirr in the future.
We are living on a living planet,we must not forget that,and the landmasses around us, has not just come here by it self ..

Good morning all -
@94, I like your last sentence in particular, Thor.

#77,78 I think I would cut all my grass too if there was a likelihood of poisonous snakes in suburban Scotland. Deer can be a problem here, but not in my garden to date...

Just stumbled on this...our Icelandic friends are looking for visitors.No, world, Iceland is not entirely covered in ash....
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128503987169140&ref=mf

ummm- maybe I should have previewed the video first....

Caught some bug this week and haven't been up to looking at that inspiredbyiceland thing yet meself. Typical tourist bait, right?

Yet another Sakura-jima camera link: http://373news.com/_sakucap/index.php

Fixed angle and view, lots of pretty blinkenlichter on the frame, no auto-refresh.

Short article in New Scientist today:
The volcanic ash cloud that had a positive electrical charge.

On 19th April, Giles Harrison at University of Reading and colleagues used detectors aboard a weather balloon to measure the charge in the ash cloud over Scotland.
It reached 0.5 picocoulombs per m3 where there were 50 particles of ash per cm3 of air. (Environmental Research Letter, DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024004)

That's around 1/20th of the danger level set by te UK CAA.
A similar detector on aircraft could alert pilots to dangerous ash levels, Harrison says.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18966-icelandic-volcanos-ash-blan…

@Reynir: You are not dancing through the country and taking nude baths in natural hot pots? Then you are not an Icelander :-))
The video is funny, but its a commercial.

@97 Birdseye-- NOW I've got an earworm that won't stop=="I'm dancing thru the jungle, yeah" Yikes. ;-)

Hah-- The hole in Guatemala City isn't a cenote, it's a Piping Structure. It's because of the volcanic tuff under the city and bad engineering--

http://geotripper.blogspot.com/2010/06/piping-structure-at-guatemala-ci…

geology.about.com/b/2010/06/03/the-hole-in-guatemala.htm

NS also has fabulous article on Deccan Traps too.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627631.300-deeper-impact-did-me…
I love half term - catch up on reading.

@104 parclair - sorry about the earworm. ; ) Learn something new every day, I didn't know about 'piping structures' at all....good find!

Hmmm...
03-JUN-2010 07:43:42 13.58 -44.84 Mag 5.0 10.0 km NORTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE

#107 arggh I meant to post the two just north of Iceland
03-JUN-2010 10:16:15 70.75 -14.43 4.8 10.0 JAN MAYEN ISLAND REGION
03-JUN-2010 04:32:43 70.78 -14.53 5.4 10.9 JAN MAYEN ISLAND REGION

Turrialba is looking puffy today:

http://www.ovsicori.una.ac.cr/videoturri.html

#109 @parclair I've been keeping a close look on Turrialba. Today it's all BW with the exception of the steam plume at the base. What is it - lava reflected?

Re: Jan Mayen
http://eng.efnahagsraduneyti.is/media/Acrobat/Geology.pdf

Also this, which might be the earthquake related bit -Â Beerenberg Volcano..

sorry, forgot the link - site is run on Jan Mayen. http://www.jan-mayen.no/geology.htm

That's Beerenberg on Jan Mayen Island?
http://geo.hmg.inpg.fr/caplain/janmayen/
photo 7 wander how deep that man sized hole is?

Postings have been great today, piping structures, Deccan Traps, impact craters and K/T origin (or not); keep them coming.

#111 #112 #113 Yes, keep them coming, but I'll have to store them, because I'm still trying to cope with the old crust formation underneath Iceland (posted last week). After going through all this I'll claim a degree in Geology... :)
Thank you guys!

@111 and 113 Thanks birdseyeUSA and Gordon. Interesting stuff!

I meant to add a link before - looks like it hasn't been updated,but shows a '70's eruption at Beerenberg. A link to a Norwegian seismic center showed several big earthquakes not at Beerenberg but near a smaller island, this May.
http://www.jan-mayen.no/geology.htm and http://jordskjelv.no/

@ 105 Stigger - finally had a moment to look at that, thanks.

I'm still trying to read a paper from a couple of weeks ago-- I must have 50 bookmarks in my "to read" folder. Yikes! But, keep them coming.

Um, re Turiallba, I see a pinkish tinge too (or did until the clouds rolled in). I'm not sure what it is, the rocks appear reddish on my monitor, so it could be a reflection of them, or an optical illusion. *sideways question mark*

#102 @Chris: I barely feel up to digesting supper while sitting in front of the monitor.

Aside: Got shouted off the loo to watch fresh pictures from Lady E. on KastljÃ³s ("Highlight") on the telly. It was gummiey and a team from RUV-TV. If those that cancelled their hols up here were to see the footage, there'd be such wailing and gnashing of teeth that it'd make Rama look sunny and quiet.

@birdeyeUSA 116 thanks again for the extra links. Now I can diligently watch the seismos at JMIC :)

Iceland Met N-Atlantic tab shows 6 quakes today from 2.7 up to 4.0. All around 300km NE of Kolbeiney. Kolbeiney 100km north of Iceland. Are these the same events as the 4.8 and 5.0 at Jan Mayen? Seem about 200km too far south, but only guessing really.

#118 @Parclair: Turrialba is putting nice daily shows. Still think it could be glowing lava reflected... not sure... can't see "red rocks" - everything around looks black and white, but for the orange-brownish tint on the plume.
#105 @Stigger: Interesting impact theory on Deccan traps. What if Yucatan's meteor split in two? No matching samples of Iridium in both locations?
Anyway, quite plausible deduction, seems to my amateur approach - impacts causing mantle to destabilize and thus generating hotspots elsewhere (which could also explain Siberian traps, 250 mil. y ago).
As for the non-avian dinosaur extinction, I saw on TV a paleontologist claiming there was no fossil evidence to it: no big amounts of dinosaur bones being found at a same layer corresponding to the extinction period. Where did they go? (Big question mark)

#121 @Mike: According to what I read, if I quite understood from earlier links posted, yes, there's a correlation between Jan Mayen and Kolbeiny. There's old crust material from Jan Mayen under Iceland. But maybe I'm wrong...
If you allow me, @birdseye:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/g.r.foulger/Offprints/OlderCrust.pdf
I wonder if there's any relation to the Greenland's sea EQs on early May too, further NE.

#122 @ Renato, either giant object which had split in two and hit separately (improbable but not impossible)

or (leaning towards)it hit at Chicxulub and the force (pressure waves) resonated through the Earth causing massive internal damage (like a bullet) and basalt eruption at exit point. Given the different layout of the continents then, Shiva could have been located over a hot spot then enabling basalt lava flow for many thousands of years.

Fragments with similar composition (possibly meteorite) have been found in Antarctica and in Siberian lava dated to 250 Mya.

It is a puzzle as below Shiva, 7km down the neat layers stop. There is a layer of shattered rock, then 1km of solidified volcanic lava, interrupted by intermediate layers of sedimentary rocks, but rooted in the lava are 12km high, 25km across spires of lava that are highly alkaline and rich in iridium. I need to find out if the iridium is chemically similar in Chix and Shiva. That amount of iridium is rare on Earth, apart from impact craters.

As for the non-avian dinosaur extiction, I believe it was very slow,(on a life span scale - rapidly geologically) hence the claim that there is a lack of fossil evidence. Impact, dust, climate change would bring about a slow death; grass and plants for the herbivores and herbivores being food for carnivores. Isn't that why big, fierce creatures find it so hard to survive? My query on his point is that absence of proof is not the same as proof of absence; many, many species have evolved and vanished with little or no fossil evidence. We surmise their existence though gaps in evolutionary structure.

Seems plausible to me too; any experts wish to comment?

@Mike 121 You're correct. They're not the same earthquakes. The ones I posted are farther north and of greater magnitude.

http://www.norsardata.no/NDC/bulletins/gbf/lastweek.jpg

Renato: Crater glow at Turrialba MAY result from high temperature fumaroles, heating rock around the vent red-hot; glow is often reported at Momotombo (Nicaragua) for example even though Momotombo hasn't actually erupted since 1905

@Reynir, glad you're on the mend - hang in there.
@Renato 123 - thanks for your additional info from the earlier post, which I missed - I'm not familiar with any of this, just taking it all in and trying to find useful links (and make sense of it all!- my 'vacation reading' is going to be lots of white paper stapled together, printouts. My pile just from Eyja is huge.) My brain is stuffed, but only with fragments of information... ;)) Now to try to put the pieces together while still keeping up with all of you!! Love it.

@Mike 121 Here's a pretty map showing the relationship between Kolbeinsey Ridge and Jan Mayen

http://www.mantleplumes.org/images3/JanMayenFig1_1000.jpg

Back to Eyja, some farmers are starting a first mowing hoping that the second crop will be OK - but concerned about fluorine content. http://mbl.is/mm/frettir/innlent/2010/06/03/fyrsti_slattur_i_oskufjuki/

#122 http://starmon.com/KT_craters.html and http://www.newgeology.us/Shiva.pdf very interesting stuff.

I seem to have hit a bit of a "hot spot" with Chicxulub, I hadn't come across Shiva before and the links provided are great, seems to me that most researchers are agreed that something hit the Earth very hard ~65 ma, but not where or whether single or multiple hits.
I had come across Silverpits off English coast before before, but at that time it was being put over as salt dome rather than impact crater.
Link below gives a summary of simulation model for initial impact energy propagating through the mantle and popping up antipodally off Australia. Would be nice to see an animation of that?
http://www.newgeology.us/presentation35.html

I started this post about an hour ago, but cat sat on key board and wiped out progress then my better half completed the process.

@ stigger, Gordon check google for 'creationism.'

Do with this as you please, folks:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/jun/03/wanted-best-science-…

#133, BirdseyeUSA, oops you beat me to it. I've just been reading the rest of the site, with increasingly raised eyebrows, (Hawaii not a plume site?). Got to the end and realised I'd hit a dose of Creationism. Sorry.

#132 Gordon: so ... we have a new name for a volcano then?

@134 go 'Miss Frito' : ) ( P.S. see below...)

ref. various 'new geology' source posts, I wondered, and then looked for the home page. A visit to www.newgeology.us will also list several other links to be aware of including mantleplumes.org.

@Erik Klemetti (#134) Lol Huh?

The charm of this place is in the way that it gently diffuses controversy. Maybe that quality of calming down and dealing with the inevitable is normal for Volcanology.

Hello all. Haven't disappeared, just glued to the attempt to stop the oil leak. Which leads to a question that someone here may have an answer to. With so much oil coming out of the ground, there must be a void, or at least a lack of pressure, from the source. Could this possibly result in in an earthquake, or in the very least, a collapse of the sea floor above the oil deposit. FYI, earthquakes have happened in the Gulf of Mexico before.
(my name now directs you to where I have posted links to cams along the coast here, during daylight hours of course)

Good question, Dan - hope you get some answers.
Lady E is bidding good morning/evening with a small plume and a pretty pink & blue sky on Thoro cam. so, g'nite/morning...

#134 Erik: You don't have to be a geologist for this: if you dig through layers of daily threads in this blog you won't find a single day where there isn't at least one post with compliments to its contents and (#138) charm.
#137 Just passing by to say good night and didn't quite understand: so, these are links not to be trusted? Please, keep us informed whenever this happens!
Thanks a lot.

@Dan: we're all hoping for answers. Fare thee well, my friend!

@birdseyeUSA [137]

Be careful at mantleplumes.org, it's very easy to lose track of time while reading.

@Dan, Florida [139]

Yah.. I've been glued to the Oil-Cam-Bots too.

The last time I ran the numbers on flow estimates done by the USGS, it was day 35. At that time, the potential void was 4.6 million cubic feet. (using the 1 million gallon a day estimate) That's actually sort of small... only 0.000032 cubic miles. ( 0.00013 cubic km )

124 miles southwest of there, a Mag 5.3 occurred on the continental shelf. I can't remember the year but it was also the same year that a Mag 6.0 (later downgraded to a 5.9) occurred out in the middle of nowhere 200 miles south by southeast in the abyssal plain.

So, in a nutshell, I haven't got a clue... but it seems a bit early to expect related seismic events. I did spend the better part of an evening this week desperately searching for a live helicorder site just to see if there was some sort of harmonic like tremor that could be seen from it.

I've also managed to get a of concern while looking for data on fluid hammers. With a combination of drilling mud, crude oil and water to lift over a distance of 23000+ feet (5000 feet of water, 18,000 feet of well) you need somewhere between 7500 to 11,000 psi. As reported from a ship that cast off from the rig, they reported seeing the mud/crude/water shoot up like a volcano prior to the explosion and fire. This sort of means that it had quite a bit of momentum behind it. When the rig sank, it bent the riser and probably generated a sizable fluid hammer... which is a dynamic overpressure that is dependent on the flow rate and specific gravity. I'm not very good at fluid dynamics, but from what I have pieced together, the dynamic overpressure could have been as high as 600 to 1000 psi.

And this is where I grow concerned...

At the time of the incident, they were working on pouring the casing for the well (cement). In other words it probably had yet to set or achieve full strength, and along comes this blow-out with whatever radical pressure shift occurred... so, what are the chances that the casing was ruptured somewhere near the surface and is flowing into the shallow strata or will soon be flowing once they get a cap on this thing?

D*** what I wouldn't give for good helicorder link...

Short but coherent report on Tungurahua eruption

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthvideo/7802711/Ecuador-volcano-eru…

for a fabulous exhibit of Eyja eruption(s) photos, see http://myndlist.is/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=119

#132, 133, 135 and Birdseye. Apologies, I was following the piece from New Scientist and didn't realise it had been published on a creationist site as well. I had never seen NewGeology before and never deliberately dip my toe into creationism.

Where things on the web are published is often beyond the control of the author; NewGeology may not be a reputable source of scientific data but should we condemn the article wholesale because it is also posted there?

New Scientist judged it to be of sufficient merit to publish and I would agree, 'The significance of the contemporaneous Shiva Impact Structure and Deccan Volcanism at the KT boundary CHATTERJEE, Sankar, Geosciences, Texas Tech Univ, MS Box 41053, Lubbock TX 79409-3191,etc' still stands alone as interesting (to me as a confirmed non-creationist).

@stigger147 New Scientist, wiki's comment - so, as with everything else, taken in consideration...
"As well as covering current events and news from the scientific community, the magazine often features speculative articles, ranging from the technical to the philosophical.
It is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal,[2]"

I should explain that I have come from a professional field which teaches that every belief is valuable to the person who believes it, but I also had a father who was world-known in his scientific field and scrupulous about stating anything as fact that he could not prove himself or be satisfied that others had proved. The joke was that the most you could expect from him was 'a definite maybe.' And that is how I tend to look at things also.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/06/04/easyjet-unveils-ash-detection-syste…

this may be of interest! let's hope it works.

@144 Lurking Thanks for that.

Reports of oil on our beaches so I'm headed out there.

beach cams - http://www.wunderground.com/blog/dashboardcowman/show.html another of my blog names :)

see newest thread for latest on Eyja activity...maybe something coming???

Im just interest in the facts of the bigger picture. Has the sun of our solar system really flipped its polarity in our solar system?, and if so, how does this event, affect whats going on here on earth. Is our sun emitting a higher ammount of nutrinos that could affect weather conditions and cause events such as earthquakes, and sunamies, and increased hurricane actvities. (superstorms). What's the cause? and can it be remedied? and if not, can the people of this planet be better prepared for such evets. ONE THING IS FOR SURE, what ever is going on, THESE EVENTS ARE GLOBAL, and they are increasing. I'd rather be better prepared than caught with my undies around my ankles. The scientific community owes this to the human populis. If these increasing events are random then just say so, DONT just let the average person assume so (THATS DANGEROUS). And if they they are not random then you guies aught to be advising and notifying everyone.

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Large eruption at Bezymianny

eklemetti — Mon, 31 May 2010 20:31:23 +0000

Large eruption at Bezymianny

Undated image of Bezymianny in Kamchatka.

Eruptions reader M. Randolph Kruger just let us in on a significant eruption at Bezymianny in Kamchatka. The AVO/KVERT alert for the volcano suggests a fairly significant explosive eruption that might cause some snarls in the international air travel over the Kamchatka Peninsula. The KVERT statement:

A strong explosive eruption of Bezymianny volcano occurred from 12:34 till 12:50 UTC on May 31, according to seismic data. Ash fall in Kozyrevsk village is continuing. The volcano obscured by clouds. A big ash cloud remains over Kamchatka at present (NOAA-15, 17:52 UTC on May 31, last satellite): coordinates on the south - 56.04 N; the north - 56.94 N; the east - 161.05 E; and all Kamchatka to the west. The activity of the volcano could affect international and low-flying aircraft.

You can check out the Bezymianny webcam and maybe catch a glimpse of the action when the seeing is good - just last year many of the main Kamchatka volcanoes were outfitted with webcams. Bezymianny is no stranger to explosive eruptions. The volcano has experienced VEI 2-3 eruptions almost every year for the last 20 years, so this type of event would fit in with that pattern. More details as they arrive ...

eklemetti Mon, 05/31/2010 - 16:31