The Indian ocean can be a paradise. It has tropical beaches, smiling people, and blue ocean. But a paradise does not come out of nowhere; these tropical island paradises form in violence. Peace only comes after turmoil, when the forces of destruction finally give up, having created where they sought to destroy. Every tropical island…
The hill rises up from the dry bushland plains, forming a 400 meter tall ridge with gaps. Pass through a gap and a new ridge appears, and another one behind it. In between are dry valleys. It is winter now and there has been no rain since early autumn: the rivers have dried up. After…
Few people would have heard of Mount Nyiragongo before its current eruption. There are some cities that we know live in the shadow of a volcano. Naples and Vesuvius, Catania and Etna, Seattle and Rainier (although the city itself is unlikely be affected by an eruption), Fuji and Tokyo (with the same proviso). But Nyiragongo…
Welcome to the “Rant Edition of Volcanocafé”, tonights special: Carl Erupts. For a decade I have talked about the need for increased monitoring of African volcanoes. It is if nothing else, rather ridiculous that the volcanoes in Antarctica are far better monitored than African volcanoes bordered by large cities. Yesterday this came very close to causing a large disaster with international…
Have you seen the Mountains of the Moon? There are several ways to answer this question. The most common answer will be, yes, and I loved the movie. Less common would be, yes, I just got my new telescope and it was the first thing I looked at. And the least common response would be,…
Big intrusions = Big bangs? With mafic systems hogging all the attention, as a felsic guy, I feel compelled to represent my magma type. Large felsic systems are a slow burn, they spend plenty of time accumulating magma and give frequent small eruptions before releasing huge amounts of material in one eruption. These systems usually…
An eruption that ejects more than 1000 km3 of material (ash, pumice, rock…) is considered a super-eruption, a VEI-8. These represent the greatest volcanic events that have taken place during human existence. Such apocalyptic phenomena attract a lot of attention, from scientists, volcanoholics and doomsayers. The term supervolcano has become increasingly popular but also increasingly…
Unless you are more interested in volcanoes than is technically healthy, it is likely that you have missed out a lot on the classic Monty Python skit ‘The twin peaks of Kilimanjaro’. Most people laugh at it since they believe that there is only one peak, but for us with an un-checked interest in volcanoes,…
Africa in general is a place that is easy to fall in love with, in particular Tanzania is easy to become deeply enamoured with. Sometimes I think that there is a deep DNA-memory remnant in all of us that is telling us that this is our ancestral home. When most people think about Tanzania, they…
As I was flying over Ol Doinyo Lengai I contemplated that it is the largest fertilizer factory on the planet. It is the prime cause of the massive herds of herbivores trekking across the inner parts of Africa. The ash from the volcano super-charges the grass with nutrients and makes it the best animal-feed on…