Kilauea is a basaltic volcano, driven by magma from a deep hot spot. Over time it has build a summit on top of the older Mauna Loa lava pile, and a one-sided eastern ridge extending far into the Pacific Ocean. There is a rift on the west side as well, but it is short, has…
The legend of the horsemen of the apocalypse goes back to the first century AD. It is a gripping image which has transcended cultures. The best-known of the horsemen is Death, riding an ashen-coloured horse. This is the only one given a name in the original. One horseman, riding a black horse, brings famine, making…
As promised in my last post, I’m here to talk about the 1790 Keonehelelei eruption of Kilauea. “The falling sands.” This is an article that has been developing for quite some time now. The 1790 eruption is, after all, a lot of things at the same time. The most obvious and no less important is…
It’s amazing the scale of what has happened at Kilauea volcano over a little more than a year and a half. Since the current eruption started in December 2024, the caldera has been filled with 0.31 km3 of new lava. A very respectable amount. In a series of 54 fountain episodes, the eruption has raised…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that any Icelandic volcano in possession of magma must be in want of an eruption. However little known the feelings and innards of such a volcano may be, any volcano in the neighbourhood, no matter how inactive looking, is considered the rightful property of VC. What a fine thing…
There is a hidden continent on Earth. We have known about it for centuries, first as a ‘Terra Australis’, a large landmass required to balance the world (thank Aristotle for that idea), and later as a land underneath the ice, much smaller than had been assumed and leaving the world severely unbalanced with the southern…
The terrible disaster in the Nepal and (probably) Tibet has happened, when a debris flow came down one of the river valleys. The toll is still unclear. The images show a wall of mud, tens of meters high, coming at extreme speed, giving no warning. The cause was 5 km up in the mountains, where…
It was June 1893, and the Fram expedition had just set off. On board the Fram were Otto Sverdrupp as captain, Fridtjof Nansen as science lead, and 11 other crew members. The goal was to reach the North Pole with the least amount of effort and the largest amount of risk. They would sail east…
Volcanology involves a lot of watching. It has that in common with another science: astronomy. Both are sciences where it is not really possible to do experiments. Instead we have to wait until nature decides to do something, and study events as and when they happen. In volcanology, the event itself may last hours to…
It’s been a while since my last post in VolcanoCafe. I have been working on multiple ideas and gathering data, but not been able to finish anything. Today, I bring something exciting. I’m using GIS data (Geographic Information Systems) to explore in depth a volcanic arc, specifically the Aleutian Arc. There’s a lot of potential…
Imagine. You are being put in charge of planning for a future major volcanic eruption. All you have is an incomplete list of volcanoes in the world, some experience of past eruptions, and a few volcanologists as consultants. The politician who gave you the task has little idea of what might be involved and although…
Japan’s largest volcano lies hidden. It can be found, if you know where to look, by starting from the southern island of Kyushu. Find the active volcano Sakurajima. (We will come back to it later. But this is not that volcano.) Sakurajima lies in-between two bays, the twin calderas Aira and Ata: follow the bay…
Some fault systems in the world are well known for their destructive potential. Examples are Turkey’s North Anatolian fault and California’s San Andreas. In both cases, large events in the not-too-distant future are widely predicted. In Turkey, the march of magnitude-7 earthquakes towards Istanbul has drawn attention. The fault is both locked and stressed close…
Whirlwinds come in variations. The weaker category is known as dust devils, and the range extends to full-blown tornadoes – and even hurricanes can in some ways be seen as an outsized members. What they have in common is whirls, winds and heat. You can find them anywhere, from the deserts of Mars to the…
It was perhaps the most destructive event in Hawai’i in memory. And it was raised again in the blog comments recently. It turns out we have published a post on it in the past, written by Hector: https://www.volcanocafe.org/mauna-loa-from-1852-to-1868-part-2-the-1868-eruption-and-disaster/ Still, I had some bits together for a post on it so wrote it up anyway. Not…
