After Iceland, there was La Palma. It could have been the Azores, of course. There are more than just two volcanic archipelagos and islands in our youngest ocean, the Atlantic Ocean. But it was La Palma. Could we have seen it coming? Eruptions at La Palma are about ten times less frequent than at Iceland,…
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…
Background Askja is a lesser known major Icelandic volcano. The north volcanic zone (NVZ) where it is located is not as touristy as the east (Bardarbunga, Grimsvotn), the south (Katla) or the southwest (Fagradalsfjall) volcanic zones of Iceland, but it should not be ignored. The Krafla rift eruption here lasted (intermittently) for nine years, from…
Guest post by Tallis Humans have always had some fascination with rankings, some of the most popular videos and articles on the internet have dealt with comparisons and rankings. However, this doesn’t mean that it is just another useless fad, on the contrary, a well thought-out “Top 10 list” can be very informative. For disasters,…
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…
During August 2021, reports came in about an eruption in the ocean south of Japan. The volcano was new to me: Fukuto okanoba. It sounded like something from star wars. It was a friendly explosion, meaning no one was inconvenienced by it. The submarine explosion had produced a tephra raft 60 km long, plus an…
Who doesn’t dream of escape? Perhaps you have a mind-numbing job, a repressive social environment, or a damp and cold house. It may be an escape in (and from) a computer game, trying to reach the exit while being chased by your real-time friends becoming virtual enemies. Sometimes we need to escape from a dream,…
Over the past weeks, the Fagradalsfjall has settled into in almost predictable routine. There are regular cycles of eruptions and interruptions. During the interruption, the tremor goes quiet. Nothing is shaking or moving on the drum plots. Over several hours, there is a slow build-up of the tremor. Lava begins to return to the crater…
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…
Alaska can be a shaky place. Earlier this week, at 10:15pm local time on Wednesday, there was an M8.2 earthquake in the region. It was the largest earthquake on Earth since the M8.3 in Chile in 2015. Let’s award the US the gold olympic medal for earthquaking (after all, the Chilean winner was from the…