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’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…
Let’s image the simplest, most boring volcano possible. It consists of a magma balloon fed by a straw. The ground is perfectly flat above the balloon. Magma comes up the straw at a constant rate. It would be easy to predict such a volcano. The balloon inflates until it bursts. Eruption happens. Because the supply…
I take it where I left it in my last post. Using volcanic signals (mainly sulfate spikes) in the Greenland and Antarctica ice cores, I listed the most powerful explosive eruptions between the years 1500 and 1900: Largest explosive eruptions, from 1900 to 1500 AD. Many of these eruptions have written records, so it was…
After the recent developments of Iwo-Jima volcano, I’ve grown interested in whether submarine calderas are capable, or not, of producing substantial stratospheric sulfur injections, also in the effects and frequency of these injections, and eventually, as one thing led to another, in the identity of the eruptions behind them. Large volcanic explosions emit vast amounts…
Figuring out the eruption history of Afar volcanoes is taking longer than I expected, so in the meantime, I will have to post about other topics. And lately, one that has been present in my volcano discussions, here and elsewhere, has been about caldera volcanoes. It’s nothing new that calderas generate all sorts of admiration…
On 15 July, a video of an explosive eruption of Erta Ale (Afar Region, Ethiopia) volcano was briefly discussed in the comment section. It was a small ash plume emerging from the summit of the Ethiopian lava lake volcano. It was an unusual development, and some of us had already commented on the possibility that…
The last time I wrote an article here, it was to talk about Afar Region volcanoes, and I promised more to come. This is still a project that I have in mind, but that will have to wait a little longer until I can get an extended period of free time. Today we will go…
After Albert’s explanation of Afar’s volcanic and tectonic past, I will look into this region’s Holocene volcanism, and try to create the first comprehensive volcanic history of this very unstudied volcanic area. I like Afar because the volcanoes are “naked”, what I mean is that due to a desertic environment, the lava is slow to…