Volcanoes are the tip of an iceberg. 90% of the volcano is hidden, down to the magma chamber 10 km or more below the surface. What we see is only the cone on top of the conduit. The perfect cone of Fuji, or even St Helens (before it blew up), is like the hat on…
Volcanoes are frightening. They can dramatically alter the local landscape, and change people’s live – normally for the worse. The best place to be is far away. But large eruptions can have wider impacts. The ash can cover regions a continent away, and sulphate aerosols can spread at high altitude around the world. The sulphate…
The last time I wrote an article for Volcanocafe it was a guest post about the Galapagos Islands, but now I’m a new member of the Volcanocafe writing team (a little bit more about me later). Deep in the South Atlantic Ocean lies an archipelago of uninhabited volcanic islands, the South Sandwich Islands. A British…
Volcanoes are often inconveniently located in isolated and unpopulated regions. Of course, some of these regions are unpopulated precisely because of their volcano, or instead of unpopulated are depopulated, but that is a different story. When an area is devoid of people, there tends to be a reason. Modernity looks for and finds cheap and…
In the beginning – Or elderly ladies do not take no for an answer A little bit more than five years ago I had it with the volcano blogs at the time. Either they where unscientific or was terrible to comment in. My exact plans back then were to leave the volcano blogs to go…
It’s well known among volcanology lovers that Kamchatka it’s like a giant geological laboratory, a true jewel of nature. I started to feel curiosity about Kamchatka several years ago, and now, after visiting this amazing place 2 times in the last 3 years, my passion about this territory increases day by day. As part of…
At 07.55.04 Hekla suffered an earthquake of M0.9 at 0.7km depth under the west slope of Hekla proper. After that followed two badly localized small tremors before a second earthquake with a temporary solution of M0.6 at the same place and depth. After that came a final (so far) small tremor. This follows after ten days…
The facts of Eldgja are well established. We know approximately when it happened, where it happened, how much lava, tephra and sulphate was ejected. We have found the tephra in Greenland. We think we know the human impact over much of the northern world, arising from three years of winter. But on other aspects, our…
Iceland is the most volcanic place in the world. Explosive eruptions, from many different volcanoes, are common, unpredictable and, when seen from afar, exciting. But don’t be fooled. These volcanic explosions are small fry, and mostly harmless. Less common but far more devastating are the other type, responsible for 80% of all Icelandic lava and…
The world of volcanism is not about being equal. There are small volcanoes, there are big volcanoes and then there is Mauna Loa. And until someone actually proves that the Tamu Massif is one single volcano and not a Large Igneous Province or a multiple volcano area I will continue to refer to Mauna Loa…