Due to the ongoing Reykjanes activity, I’ve grown interested in subglacial Icelandic lava flows. When lava is erupted under an ice cap, it tends to pile up rather than flow away. It makes a conical or ridge-like mound of pillow lavas known as a tindar. When lava reaches the surface of the glacier, it starts…
Six months of episodic earthquakes and ground swelling along the Southwest Rift Zone of Kilauea have finally culminated in a major event. As I write, the volcano rifts. We have a dike. A blade of magma cuts its way across the rift zone generating earthquakes outside of the SWRZ connector, the usual area of seismic…
We are still learning. There is much we humans don’t know about volcanoes or about how they behave. The past few years have been enlightening. It all started in January 2020, the Svartsengi region started rising, and an elliptical area of inflation appeared that encompassed Mount Thorbjörn, the Svartsengi Power Plant, and the 800 years…
I feel fascinated by volcanoes and I think that’s quite obvious, but there’s also room for other natural phenomena, like weather. In Spain, my home, volcanoes are rare. We do have a ~10,000-year-old monogenetic volcanic fissure in northern Spain, part of the Catalan Volcanic Field, a cluster of weak alkaline volcanic fields that have been…
2023 has been a lively year for Kilauea volcano. While the arguably most active volcano in the world is always doing something, this year has been particularly dynamic. So far it has produced 3 brief but spectacular eruptions at the summit crater: the January 5, June 7, and September 11 outbreaks. Apart from the eruptions,…
The Canary Islands are 7 volcanic islands off the coast of Africa. They are but the peaks of several massive shield volcanoes that have grown from the bottom of the ocean over the past 30 million years. The islands are older in the east, and younger in the west. Six out of seven are still…
Today I’ve noticed that a swarm is taking place near the Grindavik in the Reykjanes Peninsula, this swarm is small but is probably related to the ongoing Reykjanes Fires. I will also use this chance to talk about the recently ended Kilauea eruption, its build-up, and what the future might hold for Kilauea. Earthquakes north…
We, humans, are ingenious at finding smart ways to do the impossible. Regarding volcanic eruptions scientists have found a way of figuring out when large volcanic eruptions occurred with incredible precision, large explosive eruptions from anywhere in the world, by looking at ice none less, who would have guessed that? Combined with high-precision geochemical studies…
Update: An eruption has started already. Visible in the webcams. The initial outbreak is beautiful and is a must watch: There is a very odd magma intrusion happening at Kilauea right now. How do we know it’s an intrusion? There is very rapid deformation in the tiltmeter at the summit of Kilauea, far beyond what…
Some days ago, a video called my attention on Facebook, a video of a beautiful explosion of Popocatepetl volcano in Mexico. I ended up in a YouTube channel called Volcano Time-Lapse. This youtuber had dubbed the explosion as the perfect explosion, and for a good reason. At night-time, with not a cloud in the sky,…