The Norwegian island of Jan Mayen is situated north of Iceland. It might be the only place on earth where no one yet has bothered to find anything valuable. Except for a short stint in the early twentieth century when Norwegian trappers hunted polar bears and blue fox. Jan Mayen services as a combined polar…
Sometimes our readers send in questions to us that literally sends the writers into a frenzy of volcanic exploration. This week’s question was about if the area between Fort Rock and Chemult in Oregon is indeed a large caldera. The area is situated south of the eastward Cascade volcanic range south of Newberry (Paulina Peak),…
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…
It is sometimes hard to understand the size of the Icelandic volcanic systems. We often read statistical things like “Half of all the ash in Europe” and “One third of all basalt produced in the world” and we still do not really get it because we lack a point of reference. Instead we time after…
Imagine that you are Gunung Merapi and that nobody cares about you since there is much more famous volcano named Gunung Merapi. And to make things worse it is also located in Java, Indonesia. So, you think long and hard and through a few well placed eruptions you create a side vent with a very…
Welcome to another Friday Update. I will start with the easiest of the reports regions to write about. Europe, North America and Africa are continuing their quiet period with no reports of any activity from these regions. ASIA This week saw a strong eruption from Zhupansovsky on the 12th of February, with Volcano Discovery reporting…
Statistics and volcanism does not exactly go hand in hand, especially since it tends to end up with idiots claiming that volcanoes are “overdue”. A volcano is never overdue, they may shift patterns of their eruptions, go into extended periods of dormancy, or pretty much do anything that they jolly well pleases. It is…
In this part of the series I will take a look at the risks of harvesting geothermal energy. Let me begin with stating that so far there has been no large accident caused by harvesting geothermal energy. On the other hand, there is no such thing as totally safe ways to harvest energy. We all…
I used the term “fracking” to provoke reactions out of anyone who read this article. What I am really talking about is drilling into a volcanic system to inject water so that you get steam to drive a power plant. Or in other terms, your garden variety geothermal plant, such as those Iceland is filled…
Lately there have been a few earthquakes with a magnitude larger than M3 at the ring fault around the Bárdarbunga caldera. This has led to a lot of question about that particular volcano, and that is to be expected after a medium sized Icelandic eruption. They do tend to attract attention. This has been coupled…