It is intriguing how differently two writers can interpret data. Both Albert and I have written about Jan Mayen, and out of basically the same available data we seem to interpret things quite differently. I expect that Albert and I are going to have quite some fun debating this article in the comment field, please…
Its career as a planet last for less than half its year. Pluto was discovered late, in 1930, as our final planet, completing the Sun’s brood of nine. (In hindsight it had been seen, but not recognized, as early as 1909.) But it was always an odd one, the runt of the litter, banished to…
I have lately read a lot of comments about Iceland being boring and calm. In reality nothing could be more wrong, Iceland is brimming with activity. So, let us take a quick look at some interesting volcanoes before we go to the namesake of this article. Volcanic activity in general If we start in the…
It must be the only volcano named after a British ambassador to Spain. Mount St Helens was also known as the Mount Fuji of America: a perfect cone standing above the country side. The 1980 eruption destroyed much and had a significant human cost. It also damaged the mountain badly: the perfect cone gone, and…
After writing the Woolly Mammoth Guide to Icelandic Volcanism I vowed to not write about Iceland for a while. That comment bit me in the posterior rather quickly. Since the cessation of the Holuhraun eruption the central volcano Bárðarbunga has been highly seismically active. Many people have fervently believed that this has been due to…
It is a bit surprising that I have never gotten around to writing a complete guide of Icelandic volcanoes in view of how much I have written about them. Obviously this can’t be a complete write up for all of the volcanoes; instead it will be a list of the volcanoes with a short part…
In the previous part we learned that Grimsvötn indeed is able to produce large scale eruptions as we looked closer into the Saksunarvatn tephras. The first part can be found by following the link below. http://www.volcanocafe.org/grimsvotn-the-saksunarvatn-tephras/ This time we will look into what this new information might mean for the future eruptions of Grimsvötn. But…
Few of our readers have missed the anomalous M6.2 earthquake that occured 20 km WNW of the Aniakchak Caldera. In this article we will go through the details of the earthquake and the possible effects of the main-shock and the series of after-shocks. According to the Alaska Earthquake Center the waveform of the initial 6.2…
This is a repost of an article from October 28, 2013. The Caribou was standing on the plains 30 kilometers away from the mountain; it had not fled the roaring mountain more than that. After all, the ash was driven by the fierce wind to the north, and where it stood to the west in…
Hekla is famous for its short run-ups prior to eruption, typically the run-up involves a smattering of small earthquakes for an hour or so and then it goes boom. Pavlof has the same nasty habit of not announcing upcoming eruptions. At beast you get a few harmonic tremor episodes in the hours prior to an…