Silent world

/ 30/10/2020

And now, volcanoes have gone quiet
biding for a better time
magmatic heat remains reliant
but waits before its final climb

Pele sits and stops the passage
-magma, not now, just hold, delay
the world outside has lost its vantage
there are no crowds. wait until another day

A world retreats in trepidation
planes are grounded. people stay
A plague has brought its visitation
In angst the watchers hide away

Volcanoes watch in fascination
at a world gone still in silent fear
no one to see their dedication
their wish to rule and domineer

Volcanoes are our fascination
whose fire power rules with rage
but we have lost our transportation
locked up inside a guarded cage

We want to go, expand our borders
from sea to sea, and peak to plain
but stymied in our quiet quarters
our flight a paper aeroplane

To yearn for freedom, long for drama
to see what no one else has seen
to watch in awe the scouring lava
not be at home in quarantine

And the volcanoes have gone quiet
are biding for a better time
when the plague is gone they will resurface
the magma will resume its climb

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54 thoughts on “Silent world”

    • An ideal place to dump the sourrounding towns sewage in
      Mineral pressure cooker to transform nasty blackwater into safe things. At over 70 C most of the bacteria will die. Just kidding

      It will probaly not going to rise much more, Keller well groundwater equlibrium

      • Actually its got 30 meters to go before reaching the level of the well before 2018.

  2. Great poem Albert. Normally plague would be accompanied by fire and brimstone, starvation, and war. Looks like one of the four horses of the Apocalypse has stayed in the stable. For now…

    • More apocalyptic news: James Bond has died today. This must be the final end of the empire.

  4. I like poetry, Good poem.
    With the election, pandemic, and a certain someone’s trial; I am more than satisfied on my conspiracy side but volcanoes seem to be all under a sleeping spell. I need volcanic action and I’ll get it, we’ll all get it. I just need some patience.

    • Jim Beam is your friend…

      (not really… but it can disinfect a cut.)

    • Cross caldera GPS at Mauna Loa showed a downward movement since the swarm near Kilauea, only 1 cm but very sharp. It does look like magma drained out but probably not a lot, not a new intrusion anyway. Kilauea showed a slight increase as though magma was pressurised, its even smaller but noticeable, I wonder if there was slippage of that flank of Mauna Loa, pushing into Kilauea and allowing its own magma to settle out a bit?

      The weird thing is the vertical graph shows no change, the stations moved towards each other but didnt actually sink.

      • It looks like a bit of slippage or deflation under the caldera or the southern slope. Can’t really tell from a single tilt measurement. Note that it is located on the north rim of the crater, and the effect is seen towards the south but not the east.

  6. Beautiful Poem! Let us hope the volcanoes are respecting the lock downs. Humanity do not need additional problems like climate changing eruptions right now.
    On that line: How frequent have large climate changing eruptions been during the history of humanity? Reading posts at VC and other similar sites, it is easy to get the impression they were very frequent. From that viewpoint it seems we had a long silent period. Are we realy inside a long relatively silent period? And worse, are there a number of huge eruptions overdue and waiting around next corner?

  7. While Earth is sleepy, tidaly heated IO is erupting lava on the surface like crazy everyday. IO may erupt 600 km3 of lava basalt lava flows every year!

    This is the Amirani basalt pahoehoe flow on IO ( the largest active lava flow on IO in year 1999 ) this lava flow is almost 400 kilometers long and is supplyed by lava tubes glowing skylights can be spotted from orbit. Lava breaks out on the surface very much like hawaiian flows. IO erupts high temperature basaltic magmas 1300 C, thats rich in sulfur gas, the sulfur escapes the lava lakes and snows out as sulfur snow. Tube feed flows like Amirani can last for many decades.
    The largest pahoehoe field on IO is called Lei Kung Fluctus

    Another style of IO basalt flows are the Pillanian style, that involves huge lava fountains and fast flood basalts ( Pillian Patera 1997 erupted 56 km3 of basaltic lava in a week and filling a 70 km wide pit crater with a lava lake.

    • Pahoehoe flows from another Ionian volcano

      ”1999 during its 24th orbit. The lava flow is 100 kilometers (60 miles) long. The dark flows have intricate margins that are characteristic of a type of lava flow seen seen on Earth called pahoehoe. The source of the lava flows is a 25-kilometer (16-mile) long fissure that extends to the east of the central vent off the mosaic to the upper left = Nasa”

    • The size and shape of features on the active lava flows on IO can be used to estimate properties of the lava that will provide vital clues about the eruption rates and styles..on that moon.

      Amirani is a rather slow compund lava flow not similar to the Pillan and Twasthar flood basalts. Amirani is tube feed and perhaps similar to Puu Oo lava flows and to
      Erta Ale 2017 – 2019

    • Lei Kung Fluctus is the most extensive basalt flow field in Io, it covers an area of 1.25*10^5 km² thats larger as Nicaragua, in terms of volume it may fall short of some terrestial flood basalt flows but one has to remeber that it is a recently emplaced flow.
      It have not yet been totaly snowed over by sulfur. Lei Kung Fluctus is probaly result of many decades lava long tube feed eruptions. Its a much larger lava flow than Amirani as example.
      This moon is amazing 🙂

    • Vaccum of space conducts heat very poorly, so things are not chilled very much despite its – 160 C on IO. So the lava flowing out on the surface does not loose heat as fast as many likley imagine. This may explain why IO s lava flows can reach souch huge lenghts.
      The lava flowing out on the surface does not chill very much, as there is no atmosphere to conduct heat.

      Many Ionian flows seems tube feed pahoehoe too, lava tubes are great insulators of course.
      Lei Kung Fluctus is indeed a massive flow and so long that lava flowed too! But the hot lava flowing out on the surface does loose heat by radiation of course, as well as conduction with the cold ground.

      Flood basalts on IO seems capable of flowing great distances without fast cooling.

      • It is probably very flat where the lava flowed, that seems to be a key factor for long flows. Most study on these flows is from Pu’u O’o but flows from there usually went south which is a steep slope, the pali is over 45 degrees in places, even where it wasnt it was still very steep. This causes flow instability in the tubes which is why it was rare for the tubes to last even a single year. The 2014 flow was more stable and made it to 23 km from the vent which is a lot longer than south flowing stable tubes made it, the place it broke frequently was on the flank of Pu’u O’o which was steep… Mauna Loa is more uniform with no historical pahoehoe going down a steep slope and it has made flows tens of km long which took many months to flow so far. Undara and Toomba flows are over 100 km long and on slopes of 1 degree. Theres also the Columbia River basalts of which flowed over very gentle slopes, as tube fed flows and seem very analogous to the former examples but rather a lot larger.

    • https://www.flickr.com/photos/lunarandplanetaryinstitute/4078050635/in/photostream

      And the infamous volcano Pele Patera on IO compared to Carlifonia. Ionian volcanoes are simply enormous! compared to terestrial counterparts. The action in Pele Patera itself is confined to a 60 km long lava lake pit thats IO s strongest constant thermal emission. Pele Patera hosts a large very active lava lake thats haves constant lava fountains and overturns. But all Ionian volcanic systems are pretty large compared to Earths.

      The Gish Bar Times is a great source of IO information, the blog is runned by Jason Perry

    • Albert lava does flow free over IO s surface, as you can clearly see in these photos.
      How does it do that in a vaccum? is it because the lava forms a crust on it, and flows under that and breaks out?

      • Likley because that, and lava is not water either. IO s lava lakes also haves crusts on them.
        Lava is not affected as strongly like water in a vaccum. These are big IO lava flows indeed.
        Cheers – brother.

    • These photos clearely shows that lava can flow free over IO s surface, amazing.
      I wish I was there to watch the lava flows

  8. This is a thermal photo of Pele volcano on IO. This is IO s most active open lava lake with the most constant thermal emissions. Ionian lava lakes are huge compared to earths counterparts. Halemaumau was 300 m wide, but Pele lava lake on IO coud be 60 kilometers long and 25 kilometers wide. The bright spots are lava fountains where sulfur gases escaped and the black crust breaks up. 1500 C been estimated for Pele lava fountains on IO. Galileo probe spotted many fountains and crust founderings in Pele lava lake. This lava lake must be a spectacular sight, sitting in a massive ”canyon” with fountains and waves roiling over the black crust.
    There is a constant tephra plume from Pele too suggesting tall fountains.
    Smaller emissions are spattering.
    Splashing are common among the pits walls of this lava lake

  9. This is a GIF of the 1997 Pillan Patera eruption of IO: notice how the 70 km wide caldera turns black. Thats because 56 km3 of basaltic lava cascaded into that pit. An amazing sight with 2 kilometers tall glowing lava falls crashing over the pit walls. The vent is in the Mountains just north of the Patera. The lava flows are rough high rate Aa flows and was photographed by Galileo soon after the eruption.

    • Are the product erupted on Io basalt? I thought they were more like molten Sulphur (brimstone)?

    • IO erupts high temperature basalts, the basalt magmas on IO are rich in sulfur gas.
      Sulfur bubbles out the sillicate lava lakes and lava fountains on IO and freezes out as sulfur frost snow in the vaccum.
      Older Ionian sillicate lava flows are often buried beneath sulfur.

      IO erupts sillicate magmas thats rich in sulfur gas

    • The melting and erupting of sillicate lavas constantly sepparate sulfur from sillicates on IO and all the sulfur is ending up on the outside.

      Many older lava flows from Ionian volcanoes are covered by sulfur ”snow frost”
      IO s crust consists of basalt lava flows and sulfur deposits thats constantly building on themselves and recycle themselves in the inner magma ocean.

      In Prometheous lava field on IO free flowing sillicate pahoehoe lava flows are overflowing an old sulfur field.
      Seen in this image: Prometheous lava flows resemble the pahoehoe flows in Hawaii. Here are examples of Ionian basaltic pahoehoe flows.

      https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02568
      https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02585

    • Pillan Patera 1997 on IO must have been a completely crazy sight! Look how the pit turns black, because lava is cascades over the kilometers high walls in massive lava falls.
      Turning the Patera black.
      Almost 60 km3 of basaltic lavas erupted from fissures in the Mountains and cascaded into the pit as lava falls.

    • IO is the true episode 3 Mustafar=This Jupiter moon was probaly the inspiration for George Lucas

      The duel at IO Twasthar Patera = It’s over Anakin!
      I have the high ground!!

      At the same time elsewhere
      ”I sense Lord Vader is in danger…

  10. An article has been published on the Taal eruption and intrusion of January this year. The eruption was a VEI 3 with a tephra volume of 0.03 kmÂł. A large dyke intrusion occurred below River Pansipit with a volume of 0.64 kmÂł, a situation that I described correctly back in January. It is one of the largest dyke intrusions of the last several years, very similar in volume to the dyke that fed Holuhraun in 2014 and the intrusion at Ambrym in 2018.

    Taal has deflated and lost 0.53 kmÂł an amount that will take long to be replaced, PHIVOLCS interpreted wrong the situation in January by considering the volcano was receiving magma, when it actually was losing it.

    https://www.essoar.org/doi/abs/10.1002/essoar.10504404.2

  11. A category 4/5 hurricane is making landfall in Nicaragua. This is very bad news. Climate change hits again.

  12. Using anthropogenic climate change to explain this storms intensity is flawed. Storms could get this intense quickly with natural variability, ACC would be better used for patterns and trends.

    • That is true for one storm. How many storms have there been this year? And how common is a category-4 hurricane in November? Before 1990, there had only been 4 atlantic november hurricanes of category 3 or stronger over 140 years. Since 1990, we have had 5. This is the 3rd one in the last decade. If you put heat into the ocean, you will get more favourable conditions for such storms. And that is exactly what we are seeing. But not in the US where the science director of NOAA was just fired for asking for the science to be respected. Scientists in the US no longer have freedom of speech.

      • I was speaking on the storm not the trend. The 2020 Hurricane Season has been numerous but overall lacking in energy relatively speaking. This years ACE has been lower then 2017, a far less active season numerically. 5 out of the 10 most intense hurricane season happened all pre-1970.
        Relating current storms to ACC is something I find annoying because I’ve been jaded by the annoying media and wanting associate EVERY major storm with ACC. You seem passionate about this topic. I am going to make a website confronting the issues I have with this world. If you want to science to come first and not politics, business, or down-playing and fearmongering to take control maybe you can join me.
        Genghis Khan wasn’t born with his title and Einstein was born with general relativity in his head.

        • 2017 was not a minor storm season. It is tied in 2nd pace for the number of major hurricanes over the past 20 years (6). This season has had 5 (so far but hopefully it will not increase further). Rapid intensification was common this year, often quite close to landfall. That is the other peculiarity this year: the number of landfall. Landfall of course is bad for ACE as it terminates the storm. It is also bad for damage. Sure, 2020 could have been a lot worse. It was still pretty bad, and even with all the landfalls the ACE is well above average.

  13. Truly a sign that the earth is taking a (volcanological) nap, even Nishinoshima is resting now:

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