The 2023 Turkey–Syria Earthquake

A guest post by our very own media master, Nick Small: A historic earthquake in Anatolia As you will all know, an M7.8 earthquake caused massive devastation across Southern Turkiye and Northern Syria on Monday 6/2/23. It ruptured about 100km of the East Anatolian fault at a critically shallow depth of 17.9 km. It was…

The drop dead gorgeous Lake Taupo inside the Oruanui Caldera of Taupo Volcano. Photograph by Bo-deh.

Taupo Tapping Away

Taupo is one of those volcanoes I do not like to write about in Volcanocafé. It is one thing to write a historical retrospect of what it has done in yon olden days, and something completely different when it is doing something interesting. The reason is simple, Taupo is one of those volcanoes that have…

Why is my favourite volcano broken?

Volcanology is filled with moments when you look at your favourite volcano doing something interesting, and you hope that it will erupt. There is no shame to admit it, we are secretly cheering our favourites on towards the inevitable eruption. Time and time again we are though let down by our volcanoes, and if you…

Iceland: Plumbing the Plume

In the last decade, science has been under increasing attacks and have lost in status among the general population. Where famous scientists a century ago could rake in some serious dosh by going on lecture tours explaining their findings, today’s scientists are increasingly unknown and scorned by the general population. Instead, we see the rise…

The Current Volcanic State of Affairs

I am taking this opportunity to look at 5 volcanoes that at least I find interesting. I am doing this out of the perspective of the life-curve of an eruption. I find this perspective to be interesting, and I think that it is something that would be both entertaining and informative for our dear readers.…

The Great Alaska earthquake of 2021

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…

The Happy Dyke of Fagradalsfjall

Background The good part about volcanology is that nature will sooner or later test both your theories and your scientific models. In this case what was tested was the original model of the available pent up seismic strain in the currently active area of Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland. It turned out that the amount of…

Fukushima in two volcanoes

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…

Possible runup phase at Fagradalsfjall

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…

Future calderas

Volcanoes erupt all the time. It may seem a quiet time to us but that is because most eruptions are small and low impact, and stay below the radar. An excellent daily overview can be found on http://lechaudrondevulcain.com/blog-spotlight-two-column/ As I write this, it lists on-going eruptions at Sinabung, Etna, Stromboli, and Sabancaya. Volcanodiscovery also lists…