The volcano Cumbre Vieja in the island of La Palma has been showing signs of unrest. The question on everyone’s mind is, will there be an eruption? Maybe, or maybe not. This is always hard to know. The Spanish National Geographic Institute reports inflation, a total of 10 cm of deformation. As such it is…
Looking back to when Fagradalsfjall eruption started, I wrote a post about the Reykjanes Fires, where I speculated about how the eruption could end up being like. I mentioned two main possibilities. One was that it would turn out similar to the eruptions of the Brennisteinsfjöll volcanic system that took place 1000 years ago. The…
Lately Taal volcano has been showing unsettling signs of a possible imminent eruption, including high sulphur dioxide emissions, small steam-driven explosions, tremor, and somewhat surprisingly, deflation. I think that this is no conventional magma intrusion but rather a very rare type. First of all I should briefly review what happened in 2020. The events…
In my previous article, here, I discussed how Kilauea and Mauna Loa volcanoes are connected to each other through the Pahala Swarm. Now I have to deal with a confrontation of theories that is inevitable. There is a classical model of how Hawaii works. It is all about the mantle plume. The classical view establishes…
Each volcano is an expression of a magma architectural construction, a great sculpture of chambers, pipes and sills, as intricate as an ant colony, or rather like the roots of a plant. This is all hidden away from our view, under kilometres or tens of kilometres of rock that makes it impossible for us to…
There is one question that has been bugging me lately. Why are there two types of eruptions in the Reykjanes Peninsula? Slow and fast. I have talked about this before, in here. Basically eruptions can be classified into two broad categories depending on how fast the maximum eruption rate is, which clusters into two end-members,…
The recent eruption of La Soufriere volcano in Saint Vincent island reminded me of the events of 1902, of the tragedy that was unleashed by the two Caribbean volcanoes, La Soufriere and Pelée. Our current method of ranking explosivity, the VEI, doesn’t capture at all the violence of these two eruptions nor any of their…
Since the eruption in Iceland started, some of us have been wondering about other past volcanic events that we could compare it to, in such a search I came up with an Icelandic eruption that I believe might by a good analogue, and no, it’s not the Krafla Fires. Currently some of the characteristics of…
Now that Fagradallsfjall has finally erupted it is clear that a new eruptive period has initiated in the Reykjanes Peninsula, we can expect many more eruptions to come in the following few centuries, but what should we expect? and what about the eruption that has already started? The last time the Reykjanes Peninsula was active…
Kilauea is back erupting since December 20! The eruption style is typical of Kilauea, yet it’s been decades since it last showed it and many aspects have not been explained properly. The most important unanswered question being the difference between a rootless lava lake (this eruption) and a “true” lava lake. The eruption came as…