If there ever was a patron saint of Volcanocafé it would be the author Jules Verne. When he was not inventing cadres of literary genres, he was quite obsessed with volcanoes. When he was not writing he spent his time reading about volcanoes (and other things scientific). And quite often he combined his interests of…
In this article I will pick up with the questions regarding age, GPS-tracks and the general setting. Knowing me it is quite likely that I will meander out into wild tangents as I go. Time to Greíp my pen. The age of Greíp For a volcano that has not erupted (we will get back…
This is just a short piece about mounting unrest along the extension of the Veidivötn Fissure Swarm as it is running through the Torfajökull volcano. Torfajökull has two known magma reservoirs, one on the south east side that is mainly andesite-basalt, and a rhyolite chamber towards the south-west. The current lineament is having the…
This is both an informal start of our series about a promising central proto-volcano, and a story about the problems of sifting through the bewildering number of signals that the instruments yield for us to peruse. Let me start out in the stars. A friend of mine work with SETI, the search for extra-terrestrial signals.…
We got a letter from one of our readers this week pointing out a seismic series near Agua volcano and Ciudad de Antigua in Guatemala. “I’ve been living in Guatemala for a while, staying in Antigua. On April 27, the area around, and on, Agua volcano started to shake. We felt at least 8 quakes…
Back in early 2011 I was sitting down for a late light evening read of “Lower-crustal earthquakes caused by magma movement beneath Askja volcano on the north Icelandic rift” by Soosalu et al. As I read angels started to sing a glorious hymn as I had an epiphany and my view on how volcanoes operate…
Have you ever wondered about which is the tallest active volcano on the planet? It sounds like a fairly straightforward question. But, as with all simple questions it quickly turns into a quagmire of definitions. The first of the definitions starts out in linguistics, and that is what is the definition of “active”. It turns…
Our modern world is one of scepticism. Trust is scarce. In the UK, politicians tell the voters not to believe experts, at least those experts that the politicians do not agree with. Of course they assume a certain level of trust in politicians. Facts are disputed, and the contradictory era of false facts has arrived.…
[Guest article by Gijs de Reijke.] Well, the big word is out. The results of a study (‘Deep low-frequency earthquakes reveal ongoing magmatic recharge beneath Laacher See Volcano (Eifel, Germany)’, Hensch et al.) have been published on the 7th of January, pointing out the presence of magmatic movement beneath the East Eifel Volcanic Field, Germany.…
It was the largest volcanic eruption since the start of the world-wide web. The invention of telegraphy in the 1850’s had made long distance connections instantaneous. It changed the world. Newspapers were the most obvious beneficiaries, being able to bring gossip news from far away places. And in this landscape, Krakatau exploded. 36,000 people died…