Big intrusions = Big bangs? With mafic systems hogging all the attention, as a felsic guy, I feel compelled to represent my magma type. Large felsic systems are a slow burn, they spend plenty of time accumulating magma and give frequent small eruptions before releasing huge amounts of material in one eruption. These systems usually…
We all have our favourite stories. We like reading about volcanoes that erupt frequently, with impressive videos and preferably little damage. Stories of major and destructive eruptions are also liked, as long as they happened a long time ago and not within living memory. My personal favourite is Krakatau (the parent, not the child) –…
Kilauea is back erupting since December 20! The eruption style is typical of Kilauea, yet it’s been decades since it last showed it and many aspects have not been explained properly. The most important unanswered question being the difference between a rootless lava lake (this eruption) and a “true” lava lake. The eruption came as…
The Jurassic Coast and the Exeter traps Our ammonite was dead, to begin with. It hadn’t always been. It was a funny place. In typical English fashion, The Old Vicarage B&B was a mix of comfort and obsolescence. The old manor house had large rooms, and was beautifully decorated. It felt like stepping centuries back…
This is a strange end to a strange year. Kilauea erupting without even HVO noticing it until the lava was flowing, Etna exploding into life, and even New Zealand trying to get in on the action. And we were complaining that nothing was happening and we had to live off the glories of Christmas past…
As we speak, an eruption has started within Kilaueau. HVO reported: “Shortly after approximately 9:30 p.m. HST (7:30 am GMT, 2 hours ago) , the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) detected glow within Halemaʻumaʻu crater at the summit of Kīlauea Volcano. An eruption has commenced within Kīlauea’s summit caldera. The situation is rapidly evolving and…
Here comes the conclusion to the series, the 3 volcanoes that I considered the likeliest to produce a VEI-8 eruption. 3. Calabozos and neighbours (Chile) This volcano is located in Chile. It forms part of a little known, little studied, silicic flare-up of the Southern Andes Volcanic Zone. Steepening of the subducting Payenia Slab gave…
We continue with a list of volcanoes capable of producing a VEI-8 eruption from least to most likely and taking into account the factors that I explained in the previous post, here. Next volcano capable of a VEI-8 is… 6. Long Valley-Mono (USA) The volcanism of the western United States can give you a headache…
Where will the next VEI 8 supereruption (>1000 km3 of erupted volume) of the planet take place? This is the question that these articles are here to answer. To put it another way, this list will evaluate and rank the supereruption potential of several volcanic systems. I didn’t use any objective parameter to calculate which…
An eruption that ejects more than 1000 km3 of material (ash, pumice, rock…) is considered a super-eruption, a VEI-8. These represent the greatest volcanic events that have taken place during human existence. Such apocalyptic phenomena attract a lot of attention, from scientists, volcanoholics and doomsayers. The term supervolcano has become increasingly popular but also increasingly…