Tambora: making history

In between Lombok (the location of infamous Rinjani) and Flores (with the magic lakes of Kelimutu) is the island of Sumbawa. It lies in the heart of the most volcanic region of the most volcanic nation on Earth. The two largest eruptions of the last 1500 years both came from this region. Lombok has never…

The mystery eruption of 1 Rabbit

Volcanoes can erupt invisibly. A sudden, swift explosion in an isolated location may be unobserved and still have worldwide impacts. The source of the large eruption of 1809 remains unknown. We still don’t know the culprits of the volcanic climate catastrophe of 536 and 540. The link between the year without summer of 1816 and…

The green, green lands of Australia

When a nanny descends from the sky hanging from an umbrella, you know Mary Poppins has arrived. It may be the second best movie to watch at Christmas. (The most popular one remains the Muppet Christmas Carol.) Mary Poppins comes to take care of the children but ends up changing the grown-ups more. Even the…

Vesuvius in retrospect

A few days ago, in the VC back-channel, I made mention of something I had seen on a SciChan program. That October is the anniversary of the 79AD eruption. Albert then chimed in with a link to a BBC article detailing the same. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45874858 Okay, that’s the second thing about October that is interesting. 25…

The legacy of Lanzarote

Lanzarote ranks as one of the most obviously volcanic places on the planet. The island is covered with craters, cones and lava fields. The dry and frost-free climate means that volcanic features weather only slowly, and vegetation has had a hard time gaining any meaningful foothold on the land. The cones and lava go back…

Volcanoes of the North: the fire in the ice

A freezer provides storage. And a deep freezer gives deep storage. You can’t go deeper than an original ice-age glacier. In Greenland, those glaciers are still there, being so tall that the top has remained in deep freeze even though the ice age is a distant memory. In this cryogenic environment, that frozen memory is…

Volcano on the rocks

People need mementoes. They are small things (normally) with little intrinsic value (often), but which carries a memory which is far more valuable to the owner than the item is in itself. It can be a bit of jewelry, a cup, or a chair, or even a pebble. Or it can be one of many…

The 3 x 4½ km summit caldera of Mount Katmai, Alaska, that formed after the 1912 VEI 6 Novarupta eruption (Wiki)

Calderas

This is a re-post that has been re-posted before. But we attract new readers and sometimes it is worth republishing something. Especially since this is about Icelandic (and other) calderas, something that has been raised in the comments recently. This post was originally written during the Holuhraun eruption and associated Bardarbunga collapse, and you will…

Typing eruptions

Guest post from Tallis Various types of explosive eruptions have been prevalent across history, after all not all volcanoes are the same. However some volcanoes have something in common with another whether it be a magma type, location, setup, age, or size. Allow to define what I mean by “Model”. My strongest science is not…