Update May 8 No major changes. The lava pond in Kilauea is now reported as 220 meters down, and may still be dropping. The most recent images suggest it is still going down. Below 400 meters there would be a risk of ground water getting into the hole with phreatic consequences, but so far there…
A year ago there were frequent eruptions of Bogoslof volcano. But over the months, it dropped out of the news, as the eruption quieted down and finally ceased. This brief post is a recoup of what came before, and what the state of the island is now. Bogoslof is one (and sometimes two or three)…
Each century its own. The 19th century was owned by Krakatoa and Tambora. (The mystery volcano of 1808/09 should probably be added to make it a list of three, but it is hard to credit the unknown.) The 20th century was the century of Pinatubo (1991) and Mount St Helens (1980). There were other…
I got the honour and privilege to be the author of the first blog post of 2018. So let me take this opportunity to wish all our readers, visitors and the managing team a very happy and healthy new year. The Bardarbunga eruption in 2014 was impressive in many ways. It was a rifting event,…
Reykjanes Ridge and Eldey-Geirfuglasker Volcanic Belt A year and a half ago I wrote what I thought would be the end of writing about Icelandic volcanoes for quite some time. Reality obviously caught up with me, and I had to write quite a few more articles. The Woolly Mammoth was not intended to be left…
This week there are three volcanoes worthy of attention. So, I thought I would write a brief update on them since we have covered them either recently, or in detail. Without further ramblings let us go on to Gunung Agung. And as I came to my final and third volcano life coughed up a fourth…
Most people have by now noticed that Gunung Agung has stopped erupting. And to understand why that has happened, and what will happen soon, we need to look at what happened during the eruption. We also need to look at what is currently happening. When a volcano is showing no visible signs of activity, we…
There was a lot going in the 1960’s. This was the time of the generation battle, where the children who had grown up in a time of austerity and a cold war, rebelled and looked for something different – exploring, ignoring the boundaries but never quite finding what they were looking for. Martin Luther King…
Iceland has ice. Glaciers cover 10% of its landscape, including its highest volcanoes. Of its frequent eruptors, only Hekla is (almost) ice free. Katla, Bardarbunga, and Grimsvötn, which together account for the large majority of eruptions, are all hidden underneath ice sheets, which gives problems studying the volcanoes themselves. But a more serious issue is…
A couple of years ago I was asked on a radio show which volcano in Iceland I wanted least to erupt. I quickly answered Öraefajökull. It confused everyone, and I got bogged down in explaining why an unknown (to the layman) volcano would be that bad. It is though true, if there is a single…