Today is the 10 year anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake. The M9 off the coast at Sendai, Japan, was impressive enough by itself, but the main impact came from the huge tsunami that followed. I remember it well. My lecture the previous day had been on the physics of tidal waves and tsunamis. I had…
We are waiting for developments! Volcanoes can’t be rushed, or forced, and they can sit there seemingly quietly while in reality they are raging on the inside waiting for any trigger that will cause an eruption. Be careful with volcanoes: they will sit there innocently and then suddenly explode in your face. Or not. If…
Volcanic tremor pulse started near Keilir at 14.20 local time. Eruption not confirmed yet. Scientific flight underway. The quote is the official Stonetablet by IMO, translation to English by the author. The colour code has been upgraded to Orange, please be advised. The area near Keilir is being evacuated due to the volcanic tremor pulse.…
When a year ago Thorbjorn was inflating and seemed at risk of erupting, we put out a post to describe the volcanics of the Reykjanes peninsula. The front picture of the post was of a small cone no one had ever heard of. And now, a year later, that cone is at the centre of…
The current swarm at Reykjanes Peninsula that has been going on since the M5.7 NW of Krysuvík on Wednesday at 10.05 declined over the last couple of days. Today it became reinvigorated with 10 earthquakes above M4. At the same time the earthquake swarm go reinvigorated signals was detected pointing towards movement of volcanic fluids…
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,…
Some things are so easy to miss and once they are noticed, we either crawl into a fetal position and cry ourselves to sleep or become very excited over the new prospect. I have done both recently and formulated my own hypothesis, concerning silicic systems and their dynamics. After looking at the previously mentioned supercomplexes,…
The expression became famous because of Isaac Newton. Never one to ignore praise, in typical English fashion he expressed his self-assured superiority in a self-effacing way: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants“. This was written in a letter to Robert Hooke, himself both an intellectual giant and…
Complexes and Super complexes This is a world where only the best dominate, where the unskilled are left behind, and where the average scorn. Volcanoes are no different, the best volcanoes last the longest and produce the strongest eruptions. So what makes a volcano strong? Can we find our missing piece to our Wah Wah…
One from the archives (from 2013, with small additions). Karen Z on Snowdonia The British Isles have an extreme diversity of geology. Travel 20 miles from just about anywhere, and you’ll find a region with a very different history. Almost every geological division of time left a mark somewhere here. I live on ice age…