The Ethiopian volcanic situation keeps escalating. A viral video is circulating of an eruption from the Dofen volcano:
https://x.com/volcaholic1/status/1875137887160672670
To me, it’s an eruption because it’s throwing rocks and it’s on a volcano. It could be phreatic or magmatic. It’s phreatic if it’s driven by heated groundwater, or magmatic gasses from an intrusion, without fresh magma. It’s magmatic if those rocks come from fresh magma, and if so it is probably from the gas-rich tip of a dike intrusion.
*Edit: Later closer videos show the event to be phreatic, steam-driven, and throwing up mud and rocks.
Dofen volcano
Before looking into the general unrest of the region, which is to me the most intriguing part, let’s look at Dofen volcano. We are dealing with a tiny volcano, made mostly of very old lavas. It forms a series of rugged hills rising a measly 400 meters above the rift valley. Very unimpressive compared to most of the other volcanoes in the area. The hills are oriented perpendicular to the rift valley, which is quite common. The bulk of the volcano is made of viscous lava flows, likely rhyolite, but they are eroded, dissected by huge fault scarps, and covered in soil. I don’t think any of the rhyolites are Holocene. The youngest flows are a series of fissures on the north side of the volcano with tiny flows. There is one fissure where strombolian activity formed a row of cones, and basalt lava spanned 2 km2, which is dark and not covered in soil (Holocene, but hard to tell how old). This lava flow must have had a volume of around 0.02 km3. Another fissure flooded a valley with 0.1 km2 of young soil-free basaltic lava. A few other not much older fissures are located there, very closely clustered, even overlapping themselves. I’m guessing the new eruption must be from this same spot and is likely to be small and basaltic.
Young basaltic lava on the north side of Dofen volcano, 9°21’44″N, 40° 6’43″E
Another Holocene eruption happened on the valley floor, 20 km to the south of Dofen, more or less where the current dike is happening. A dike rose under the sediments filling the rift, but it wasn’t able to intrude through the low-density sediments, so must have formed a cryptodome under the sediment and then erupted from over 10 vents widely scattered over a circular area a kilometer across. The ground must have started to rise and form fractures, with steam and gasses exploding from random spots. Then powerful phreatomagmatic explosions formed tuff rings due to groundwater in the sediments being boiled to steam, followed by strombolian eruption of basalt lavas. Now let’s have a journey back to 2004 when something very interesting happened to the north in the Afar Triangle.
Phreatomagmatic and strombolian eruption on the valley floor south of Dofen. 9°13’6″N, 40° 2’1″E
The Afar-Red Sea Fires of 2004-2013
The Afar Triangle, at the junction between the Great African Rift, the Red Sea spreading ridge, and the Gulf of Aden ridge had been quiet for decades. Except for some overflows around 1974, the lavas of Erta Ale had remained concealed to its summit pits where a semi-permanent lava lake peacefully smoked into the scorching air of the Danakili. The only relevant event in the area after the Manda Inakir rifting of 1928 was the Ardoukova rifting and eruption in 1978. The Red Sea had likewise been completely quiet for over a century, at least the part above the water. But in 2004 everything changed starting with a Dallol (Afar) dike intrusion. Next year, 2005, Dabbahu had a very small rhyolite eruption. The Manda Hararo volcano, immediately south of Dabbahu, entered a series of 14 dike intrusions and 2 small eruptions in 2005-2010 in one of the largest magmatic events of the 21st century, that involved over 2 cubic kilometers of basalt magma. The unrest was spreading and two more volcanoes of the Afar depression were to erupt during these fires. Dalafilla of the Erta Ale Range produced a powerful basaltic fissure eruption from its flank in 2008, which would have been an impressive sight had there been anyone around to see it. Even more impressive was the VEI 4 explosion and lava flow of Nabro volcano in 2011 which collapsed air traffic in the region. But it was not just Afar. In Arabia, Harrat Lunayyir nearly erupted in 2009 due to a large dike intrusion, and the Red Sea volcano of Jebel at Tair spent almost a year continuously effusing lava from its summit in 2007-2008, while nearby Zubair volcanic field birthed two new islands in 2011 and 2013, ending a decade of hectic activity across the whole region.
The 2004-2013 activity in the Afar and Red Sea areas is a great example of a regional episode of volcanic eruptions that affected a vast region, and in truth, the area may not have fully calmed down from this event, since Erta Ale has been more active that usual starting 2010, with frequent overflows and the sustained flank effusion in 2017-2019. Now we may be looking at another complex series of volcanic unrest from the Ethiopian Rift, or a renewal of the same pulse. Why?
Present unrest in the Ethiopian Rift
There has already been a published scientific article that covers past year’s events on Fentale volcano, linked at the end of this post. Starting in early 2021, a very large area around Fentale started to slowly uplift, which continued to May 2024 and amounted to 6 cm of total inflation. On mid-September, a dike intrusion started 10 km NE of Fentale and gradually propagated north until late October when the intrusion ended, from the article cited at the end:
“The dike strikes N15°E, is ~11-km-long, ~6-km high, reaching ~3-km below the surface with up to ~1.8 m of opening, giving a total volume of intruded magma of ~0.08 km3”
The dike was sizable but not super-large, yet it was only the start. On December 26 a new intrusion, and a much larger one, started, that has kept intensifying and produced nearly 40 earthquakes of magnitude 4.3 or larger, the largest is a 5.1. The news are reporting 30 collapsed houses and people fleeing the area. It’s not comfortable to be on top of a growing dike intrusion, Grindavik residents learned that on November 2023. Shaking must be near nonstop and cracks must be showing all over the place. The interferogram below was shared on social media by Carolina Pagli, one of the authors of the 2024 Fentale article. It shows a massive dike some 30-40 km long, likely one of the largest such intrusions ever recorded. The central volcano of Fentale is deflating, therefore it’s Fentale volcano that’s feeding the dike (at least partly). It reached nearly all the way to Dofen, but there was no magma movement at Dofen itself at the time of the interferogram.
https://x.com/SorcerInSAR/status/1873644455263428785
But surprise, surprise… Dofen has erupted instead, at least that’s what everyone is saying, I want the exact coordinates. So assuming this is correct, and it probably is, then it seems that Fentale’s intrusion has opened up the next rift segment to the north, Dofen. Like a domino effect, one volcano has activated the next. Or it could also just be heat from the Fentale dike heating water in Dofen, but I think it’s a little too far from that, and that more likely magma is also intrusing now under Dofen itself. Not only that, but we have two Fentale dike intrusions so far, and one is HUGE. I’m getting a déjà vu, but it’s not really a déjâ vu cause the Sundhnukur Fires are still ongoing. This is the process of ocean crust generation, it’s in the middle of a continent but this is a true rift that through voluminous intrusion of basalt builds new oceanic crust, which is mostly gabbro (intrusive basalt). Now if the Salton Sea area of California goes off we would have all subaerial ocean ridges going off.
What to expect
I doubt this is the end. Almost anything can happen, this is a very long rift with a lot of volcanoes. Some are basaltic, others rhyolitic, and others are bimodal. One thing I think is likely to happen is that the area will be hit by further basaltic dike intrusions. Otherwise, let’s see how it evolves.
Fentale article:
Derek Keir, Alessandro La Rosa, Carolina Pagli, Hua Wang, Atalay Ayele, Elias Lewi, Fernando Monterroso, Martina Raggiunti. The 2024 Fentale Diking Episode in a Slow Extending Continental Rift: https://essopenarchive.org/users/847293/articles/1235148/master/file/data/fentale_grl_format_manuscript_essoa/fentale_grl_format_manuscript_essoa.pdf
As some people over there have found out this fire is nearly a replica of the 1938 Santa Monica Mountain Fires that burnt down the same row close to the ocean in Pacific Palisades. Main suspect chaparral which hasn’t burnt for that many years. The natives burnt it down periodically.
First perceptible earthquake (Magnitude 2.9) at Ljosufjöll: https://www.mbl.is/frettir/innlent/2025/01/12/skjalftinn_fannst_i_byggd/
Residents of Myrar close to Grjótárvatn recognized it and reported to IMO.
Maybe not a 2025 eruption, but before 2030 seems likely. I expect though that the ascent to the surface will be fast, and probably not much different to right now up until then. But quake counts might slowly increase up to then.
Something interesting is if the eruption breaks out as a single vent or short fissure above the swarm, or if the area actually does turn out to be a rift zone and a long dike can open and spawn vents away from the swarm or possibly multiple vents. The last eruption looks like the former but a few older cones seem to be aligned while still separated.
If it develops like La Palma, Hualalai or Etna, it may go faster. I’m not sure how far we can compare Ljosufjöll with these volcanoes. But it seems possible.
Maybe every ~1000 years the west of Iceland behaves like the traditional/usual EVZ of Iceland. During the Reykjanes Fires, the whole west of Iceland does volcanism as frequently as the EVZ does it on average.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-12/altadena-palisades-fires-federal-aid-biden-trump
A former leader of the “Federal Emergency Management Agency” has compared the Los Angeles Fires with Hurricane Katrina concerning the level of destruction and disaster.
““With wildfires, there’s nothing left but ash. It’s almost like a total erasure of their history. So for a lot of people, that’s going to be the compounding trauma,” Fugate said.”
But they still own the (still pricey?) plots, unless they were leased from the county/city/etc?
Consider how many Japanese and German cities looked after the fire bombings of WWII, and how quickly they were rebuilt after that. It’s fascinating how such abstract information as the city plan and land title registers stored in cadastres facilitate such a quick resurgence of cities after almost their complete leveling.
As long as income/wage/profits are running, people can rebuild cities again. It is more difficult if a disaster hits a poor region like Haiti or Bangladesh. Natural disasters cause high absolute costs in rich countries, but high relative costs (related to the people’s pockets) in poor countries.
Jökulhlaup from Grímsvötn has started. Peak outflow is expected to be reached at the end of this week and the peak flow at the ring road bridge in 1-2 days after that.
Seems to be doing them yearly now and fairly small. Expect seismicity to increase in a few days from now.
https://www.vedur.is/um-vi/frettir/grimsvatnahlaup-liklega-hafid
Since 2004 Grimsvötn did 13 Jökulhlaup without eruption. The eruption 2011 wasn’t linked to any Jökulhlaup. 1922, 1934 and 2004 a sudden fall of waterpressure preceded eruptions. (cited from the Icelandic update)
Yes, the idea that a jökulhlaup will trigger an eruption is a bit exaggerated. There have been more eruptions that started without a preceding hlaup and there have been a lot of jökulhlaups without eruptions.
The number of quakes, however, always goes up during and after a jökulhlaup. Last year we even got an M4.3 earthquake as a response to the jökulhlaup, so expect quakes in the coming days.
Swarn started at Bardarbunga out of all places
With the recent activity I’m not surprised. Could be a cone sheet intrusion. Let’s see where this goes.
It might just stop. It might erupt from the rim. It might initiate a lateral dyke. Interesting to say the least.
How much has Bardarbunga recovered after Holurauhn?
The quakes are along the north of the caldera, close to the edge of Vatnajokull. Seems likely to be an intrusion, but an eruption is uncertain. Theres lots of vents on the rift zone northeast of here but im not sure that the caldera itself actually sees any significant activity. But that might be tested in the next few hours.
May not need a full recovery if the system is pressurizing at the same time it rises the caldera floor. The first post-collapse eruptions of Kilauea were cone sheet intrusions, and there were also a few probably similar intrusions that did not erupt. The difference is that Bardarbunga seems to prefer rising the whole caldera like a piston rather than erupting, but this development may show not all pressure gets relieved that way and that it’s ready to erupt.
The M5.4 in April last year changed something. It clearly reduced the pressure and caused the KISA station to take a jump towards the caldera, but afterwards, the rapid inflation started, while the small quakes stopped. Maybe the quake caused the plug to get stuck and more difficult to move, making large quakes and cone sheet intrusions more probable.
IMO have now said the strongest quake was 5.1. I thought earlier they had said there had been an intrusion, but I think I misremembered and they are just saying increaed magma accumulation. There may be a hint of tremor on the Dyngjuhals and Vonarskard drum plots.
https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/strong-earthquake-swarm-in-bardarbunga-largest-earthquake-magnitude-51
RÚV has updated the text in the article I linked. Earlier it said “kvikuinnskot” which means magma intrusion, but now they have changed to magma accumulation and increased strain, which is what Kristín talked about in the video interview later in the day.
Kilauea SDH Gas shows both the past eruption episodes and a recently increased emission:
UWE GPS one week shows clearly positive tendency, contrary to stations on eastern summit:
Not really reliable, it depends too much on wind direction. And visibility of the plume depends on local humidity. SO2 levels now are still very elevated against true background (under 100 tons/day) my guess is average of 3000.
There is a switch to deflation according to tilt, that might be more meaningful, but also (probably) just a DI event or similar. Pu’u O’o survived weeks even over a month several times between eruption episodes and often had no visibly open vent st the surface. So I dont expect this to close any more easily. If it does then there are bigger problems out east…
While waiting for Fentale, Kilauea, Fragadalsfjall and others, I propose to have a look at this article of a mud volcano. After the events at Dofen, they suddenly seem to be ‘everywhere’ 😀
https://scitechdaily.com/satellites-capture-the-mysterious-rise-and-fall-of-a-ghost-island-in-the-caspian-sea/
They tend to pop up often in convergent plate settings. Some are huge in size and output.
Sidoarjo in Java, Balochestan worth checking out
Yes, Sidoarjo is amazing. I remember when it appeared in 2006.
I wonder whether there is a clear distinction between some geothermal features and mud volcanoes. Do the latter simply exist because of pressure due to plate movements without any need of heating? And where does the methane come from? From sediments of a s in subducted plate?
too smelly
You sure Andy? This is a divergent tectonic setting.
Caterpillars are very busy in Iceland.
Defences being raised by nine metres before next eruption (RÚV, 13 Jan)
I love the Icelandic heavy equipment guys. The footage of what they were doing frantically during the previous eruptions was surreal and more than a little bit heroic.
Bardarbunga has a lot of tremor this morning.
Largest tremor was a 4.9 at 0.1 km depth according to the Icelandic Met Office (5.2 according to USGS).
It will be interesting to see if this is just an intrusion, or that it will result in an eruption.
It’s a bit early to say, but it looks like it’s slowing down, so most probably nothing will happen this time.
Now what in the world caused this swarm? Hydrothermal or just some more caldera adjustments?
My guess is a cone sheet intrusion. Fits well in the framework of an uplifting plug.
Kristín Jónsdóttir, head of department at the IMO says in interviews in Icelandic media that there has been a magma intrusion. The aviation code has been raised to yellow and a Civil Protection uncertainty level has been declared.
https://www.ruv.is/frettir/innlent/2025-01-14-oflugasta-hrina-i-tiu-ar-432959
For now the swarm is stopped, but they believe it may resume within hours or days. As usual, the moment tensors for the two largest quakes have CLVD mechanisms with vertical T-axis.
https://geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/old/eqinfo/list.php?mode=mt
Last eruption of the summit was 1910. Small eruptions like this have “tephra fallout <0.1 km3. Intense tephra fall for short periods (hours) outside Vatnajökull is possible. Total maximum fallout thickness 25-30 km from volcano unlikely to exceed 5 cm. Likelihood of tephra being transported to Europe very small. Eruption plume height expected to be <10 km. No lava flows."
87.5% of Bardarbunga's eruptions have the known Grimsvötn Phreatomagmatic style like 1983 or 2004.
https://icelandicvolcanos.is/?volcano=BAR
RÚV, the Icelandic broadcaster is on to it. For a fairly sleepy place like Reykjavik I suppose they love having some real news to report!
Level of uncertainty declared at Bárðarbunga; activity decreases (14 Jan)
Eruption at Bárðarbunga would ‘likely cause glacial flood’ (14 Jan)
Earthquakes in Bárðarbunga resemble lead-up to Holuhraun eruption (14 Jan)
Another nice tourist volcano like Holuhraun would be fun!
IMO also has an update:
Strong earthquake swarm in Bárðarbunga. Largest earthquake magnitude 5.1 (14 Dec)
Some nice graphics included in their report.
The 1996 eruption of Gjálp was preceded by seismic activity in Bárðarbunga. Just a thought.
It might not be a movie for everybody, but there is one of the houses on the beach that just burnt down, then in construction in Pacific Palisades:
Elia Kazan’s “The last Tycoon”, loosely based on Scott Fitzgerald’s novel with the same name and on the life of MGM’s ingenious Irving Thalberg who died to early due to a chronic heart problem.
Erta Ale (Afar Region) is doing some sizable overflows:
https://x.com/Arab_Storms/status/1879234614297837729
Checking the MODVOLC page, the current lava flows and those that happened a month ago are the most intense at Erta Ale since the 2017-2018 eruption.
Nyamuragira is also having strong intracaldera activity.
https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/?zoom=14&lat=-1.4116&lng=29.20415&themeId=DEFAULT-THEME&visualizationUrl=U2FsdGVkX18Enu8zBXLOpm%2BAUE3dKgSrRGDpShfyfia3iOKqA0%2B5lFim5sQRHoPiXH67m21bmA3IGYZXt%2Big3tklR0Rx8QKvVuHsdC8TwKK%2FakvFumgxUx92JuTjP2qp&datasetId=S2_L2A_CDAS&fromTime=2024-07-14T00%3A00%3A00.000Z&toTime=2025-01-14T23%3A59%3A59.999Z&layerId=6-SWIR&demSource3D=%22MAPZEN%22&cloudCoverage=30&dateMode=MOSAIC
Yes it haves for soure pahoehoe filling.. will be mirror image of halemaumau in the near future
Tim Katron (GeologyHub) believes he has located the submarine volcano in the Tonga Region (Volcano 1) which caused the mysterious 1808 volcano caused temporary global cooling. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwRe3iaMQ7E for Tim’s hypotheses. I did some reading, the two references on https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=243011 page are useful.
See Hekinian R, Muhe R, Worthington T J, Stoffers P, 2008. Geology of a submarine volcanic caldera in the Tonga Arc: dive results. J. Volcanol. Geotherm. Res., 176: 571-582.
Stoffers P, Worthington T J, Schwarz-Schampera U, Hannington M D, Massoth G J, Hekinian R, Schmidt M, Lundsten L J, Evans L J, Vaiomo’unga R, Kerby T, 2006. Submarine volcanoes and high-temperature hydrothermal venting on the Tonga arc, southwest Pacific. Geology, 34: 453-456.
I wish that there was someway to bring the Greenland and Antartic ice core shards analysis to compare with the underwater tuff from the most recent explosion of this submarine volcano located at approximately 21.141990 S, 175.1741640 W and see if a chemical match occurs, just as the recent 1831 analysis did which pinned the Kuril volcano Zavaritskii on Simushir Island to the 1831 event.
The Iceland Meteorlogical Office has admitted that there is recent magmatic activity occuring in the Grjótárvatn location. See https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/seismic-activity-in-grjotarvatn-has-increased-in-the-last-months. I have been carefully watching the HIT highpass seismograms, see
for example. Are the recent thick traces magmatic tremor? I did email the IMO, and am hoping for a response, but they might not respond to a non-Iceland person.
Can some Volcano Cafe Administrator please restore the image reference? Thank you.
http (not https!) followed by ://hraun.vedur.is/ja/drumplot/drumplot/hit_highpass_2.0.png
The image shows up for me in all three posts. It’s probably browser security settings that’s causing problems. Those images are not https and some browsers don’t allow including http content in an https page.
To answer your question that looks like typical wind/weather noise. On this page there’s an example of what the magmatic pulses look like:
https://www.vedur.is/um-vi/frettir/jardskjalftavirkni-vid-grjotarvatn-aukist-undanfarna-manudi
Sorry, that was just the same link as you originally posted but in Icelandic.
You do get sustained thick lines in that plot from volcanic tremor during eruptions, but if that was the case it would already be all over the news. These Icelandic drumplots provide too low resolution to be really useful. One would really like to have raw data from a couple of nearby stations to be able to look at things like spectrum and cross correlation. The drumplots only give us the amplitude of the signals. As a rule of thumb, if you see something on the drumplots that’s not obviously from quakes, it’s either weather, human activity or volcanic. With volcanic being orders of magnitude less probable.
They said that “A deep magma intrusion is likely the cause of the earthquakes”
It looks as if the volcanic system builds the base for future intrusions and eruptions.
I think Starship 7 blasts off today
And New Glenn in a days time. Blue Origin finally joining the orbit club 🙂
Only thing is if NG will actually make sense in future. It is bigger and more capable than Falcon but much more expensive and its impossible to compare reliability until a couple hundred are launched (will take years, at least). And of course Starship is much bigger again, and will probably be fully functional within 2 years is my guess.
Starship booster has 700 tons of CH4 on board and burns about 90% of it in about 3 minutes. CH4 has an energy density of 55 MJ/Kg reacted with O2, so Starship has 35.8 terajoules of energy on board, and uses 34.6 TJ to get to separation. Or about 12 TJ a minute, 0.2 TJ a second. So Starship has an output total of 200 GW.
MT St Helens in 1980 was 24 megatons of TNT equivalent, and 1 kg of TNT has 4.2 MJ So that times 24 billion. So StHelens had 24000 TJ of energy stored, or about 625 starships. But it also lasted 9 hours, so on average was outputting 0.74 TJ/s, or 740 GW. Which is an enormous number but also only a bit under 4 starships.
So, unless I have made a mistake, Starship is probably as powerful as a borderline VEI 5 for the first few minutes. Even if not, 200 gigawatts is probably the most powerful single object we have ever created that survived doing it. Each engine is 6 gigawatts, or for Americans 8 million horsepower… And over 60% of the potential energy of the fuel goes into thrust not heat, which is insane efficiency for a heat ebgine. Ironic that Elon Musks other company technically made the worlds best internal combustion engine… Maybe the Roadster should have been made with a 1000x scaled down Raptor in the back, first plug in hybrid Tesla 🙂
I hope this era of rockets in the 2010s-2030 gets remembered in 60 years the way we remember Apollo and Sputnik now, just with actual long term benefits.
Unfortunately, you have. 24 billion times 4.2MJ is roughly 100PJ. Do not underestimate a VEI5! 🙂
Maybe, but then, as any serious car aficionado could tell you, it technically wouldn’t be a Roaster anymore, it would be a Batmobile.
Yes I thought I miscounted some zeros. Still the fact a reusable vehicle exists with a power output of 200 GW, is crazy. I guess, technically, no starships have been reused yet, but I think every raptor is tested to full duration multiple times before going on the booster.
“Maybe, but then, as any serious car aficionado could tell you, it technically wouldn’t be a Roaster anymore, it would be a Batmobile.”
No any self proclaimed car guy would call you gay for driving something with a Tesla badge on it, needs a V8 and manual transmission or it ‘has no soul’ kind of BS. That community is apparently full of very fragile masculinity.
Also there are a lot of parallels between Bruce Wayne and Elon Musk so it might be approptiate to make a real batmobile 🙂 especially now that BYD and Xiaomi have basically already made what the Roadster was claimed, needs to go one up.
Remember when they tried to launch Superheavy the first time directly off a reinforced concrete launch pad?
The launch pad, like, went away…
One large chunk of it took out a car in the car park at over a kilometre distance. 😀
The stand thingie, diversion tunnel and the water sprays they’ve now put in seem to’ve fixed that tiny issue!
New Glenn successful launch to orbit, but booster didnt land safely so was lost. I feel like NG would have been more epic if Starship and Artemis 1 hadnt already launched, but Blue Origin do have the record of first payload into orbit with a methane fueled rocket, and successful launch on the first go too.
Looked like a colossal welding torch as it lifted off, blinding blue white then a pinkish red at higher altitude. Launches at night really look different.
Will be interesting to see why the booster failed to land on the boat. Falcon 9 has been landing reliably for a decade so the concept should be easily followed, the hard bit of testing the concept was done years ago. But I guess this is a much bigger rocket, so could be harder to control, or the engines might have trouble relighting in a vacuum that wasnt easy to test before. Maybe the Musk/Bezos rivalry is so strong that BO are doing it all themselves so are starting from scratch. Maybe they mixed up altitude in metric and imperial 🙂
I was watching live. Massive achievement! They made orbit on their first ever attempt. That is not easy.
Did get as far as a relight of the launcher engines for re-entry.
They had audio and some video from the Blue Origin employee people, hundreds of them, who were all there at like 3 am. Every time the next milestone was reached they were jumping about and wetting themselves with excitement. It was joyous to see the enthusiasm.
Because its very much like a mega butane / welders torch perhaps analougus to like a giant well mixed pure oxygen – acetylene flame, the gas comming out are mostly small hot molecules that glow in their own wavelenght rather than glowing soot that yeilds orange, yellow, reds due to blackbody radiation. Liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen yeilds an almost invisble blue flame with intense white in combustion chamber thats basicaly just superheated water vapour molecules thats comming out of space shuttles main engines so yes an alluring blue glow
Starship is very hot cO2 plasma thats comming out thats more pink than the nearly invisible blue at (SSME) – RS-25 shuttle water vapour
Most of the plume from Starship and New Glenn is H2O too, burning methane makes 1 molecule of CO2 and 2 molecules of H2O. But I imagine the combustion chamber is slightly fuel rich to protect the combustion chamber, so there will be other less oxidised carbon compounds too.
In saying that, both Raptor and BE4 engines are oxygen rich cycles (well, Raptor is both cycles) so at least part of both engines has to withstand oxygen at probably close to 1000 C without damage. So the engines probably do run as close to stoichiometric as is possible without too much heat. There was a great shot of New Glenn just after liftoff with the engines looking polished clean while a blue jet of hellfire was blasting from them, no orange anywhere.
Temperature of a CH4+O2 flame is 2800C at standard pressure, but inside a rocket combustion chamber pressure is much higher so I would think temperatures are too. The SN10 test flight of Starship had a view directly into the engines at one point and it was a blinding white almost blue light.
If Raptor is 60% efficient, then that 2800 C outside in the air is only 40% of what it would have been in the combustion chamber, so the hottest part inside night have been as much as 7000 C. Probably not the whole thing, just the center but still. In any case, the light colour puts it between 4200 and 6200 C.
Hopes Starship 7 lands in a tropical cumulunimbus cloud in the Indian Ocean 🙂 woud be fun with some unusual weather on the way down .. what latitude will Starship 7!splash into? If the ocean is too cold there wont be any deeply convective weather more than shallow ocean cumulus
The number of space-x launches is becoming a real problem for Australia. They dump the rockets over the Indian Ocean along the flight path from Australia to southern Africa. Flight cancellations are becoming a nuisance. We are also getting more and more space debris reaching the ground. Space is the new wild west: there is no law above the Pecos.
Wait until its reusable in the near future, but where will this one splash down?
Postponed by a day because of weather
The moved it to 4 p.m. Jan 16 so is it still this night in Europe time?
Good for me. I get Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch at 5 pm my time (UTC 0600), and SpaceX coverage starts tomorrow at 8.15 am. (SpaceX does a neat thing: if you click on “watch” on the mission page it gives your local time when coverage starts. Better that mentally juggling timezones!)
I just checked Blue Origin’s X feed though: they say the weather is getting iffy. If they get scrubbed again they say next opportunity is quote “Friday, January 17, in the same 1-4 a.m. EST (0600-0900 UTC) window”.
Svartsengi should be ready for next eruption at the end of January:
Maybe an eruption together with Bardarbunga …
http://brunnur.vedur.is/gps/reykjanes.html
Or Valentine’s Day :;
Icelandic geophysical people certainly think a Bárðarbunga eruption is on the cards.
Bárðarbunga quieter – for now? (RÚV, 15 Jan)
No sign yet of a dike extending like we saw over several weeks leading up to the Holuhraun eruption though, although that’s only my untutored eye.
Tutu Pele is sneezing again, on a scale of 1-11, I’d give it a 2 at the moment.
I think I can….I think I can
The Little Engine That Could !!!
You win!
Mac
We now have a new lava flow at Kilauea.
https://i.imgur.com/3ar3LoD.jpeg
There’s also been a major increase in tremor.
?fileTS=1736974154
South vent is waking up as well
Wow, guess it was a rapid startup. Might take a while but this is exactly the setup to get some really huge lava fountains. Pretty sure every vent with an open conduit and episodic fountaining like this managed to exceed 500 meters at one point 🙂
Even already, the south fountain must be going well over 100 meters easily.
Looking like the north vent might end up being dominant long term. It was consistently open since before Christmas, while the south vent would have bigger fountains but go completely dark in pauses most of the time. And both vents were north of the main vent of the very start which died back then. Interesting.
In any case I dont really expect this to last more than a few days then another pause of 2 weeks or so. Eruptions might get shorter and more intense, or longer pauses between bigger volumes. Or it just becomes a permanent lake overflowing. All possibilities 🙂
The daylight photo also shows the lava flood and the steaming vent to the right hand of the lava fountains:
https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/styles/full_width/public/media/images/IMG_0984.jpeg?itok=Sz4gHXww
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/photo-and-video-chronology-january-15-2025-kilauea-summit-eruption-episode-4
There is also a steaming vent in the foreground of the (live-)webcam view. So three vents?
Lots of a’a lava in the caldera, must still be pretty degassed lava erupting so fountains might get even bigger soon.
Was another mag 3+ quake at Ljosufjoll. And a flurry associated with it.
New post is up! Going far
https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-afar-triangle/