Here is the famous Steppe, the dry grass-land, the never-ending plain stretching across Eurasia from China to Hungary. Rainfall is too limited for trees to grow. The climate is harsh, with hot summers and cold winters. But this hostile land can make a good living for those who know where to find water. It was once a highway into Europe, used by the many invaders. Genghis Khan came this way. So did invaders of other types: the language, the apples and the horses. There are other steppes in the world. The American prairie is one; the South African veld is another. But none are as large or as famous as the Steppe. It is also known as the Great Steppe, but that distinction is not really needed. A single capital suffices.
The part of the Steppe between the Ural and China is known as the Kazakh Steppe. The historic trade cities of Tashkent and Samarkand are found here. Horses were first domesticated on the Kazakh Steppe, although precisely where and when is disputed: genetic evidence puts it as recent as 2000 BC. The climate here is dry, and the land in places verges on desert. It is kept alive by rivers coming from famous mountains to the south, the Pamir and the Tian Shan. These are among the tallest mountain chains in the world; their rivers provide corridors of water in a hostile land.
The Steppe and the Sea
Steppes of all kinds are found deep in the interior of continents. They are children of continental climates, far from the moderation and moisture from the seas. But water finds its way. Rivers in flat plains can reach dead ends, and form lakes. These lakes can grow to large sizes and attract life. The Kazakh Steppe contains many such lakes, from Lake Balkash in the east to Sarygamish Lake in the west and that ultimate of lakes, the Caspian Sea. A lack of outflow has left them brackish. And among them lies what is perhaps the most famous of the Steppe lakes: the Aral Sea. 400 by 300 km in size, it was once known as the jewel of Asia.
(When is a lake a sea? Size matters, of course. The Aral Sea is 300 km across. But Lake Balkash is 600 km long and did not get the upgrade. Both Aral and Balkash are saline, so that is not the difference. Lake Balkash is narrower, and in most places it is possible to see the opposite shore. The Aral Sea is also four times larger than Lake Balkash in surface area. But if those are the ultimate distinctions between a lake and an in-land sea, why is the Dead Sea a sea? It is only 15 km wide, after all, with a surface area 25 times smaller than Lake Balkash. The Dutch, with their love-hate relation with the sea, managed to turn one of their seas into a lake, twice as wide and twice as large as the Dead Sea, complete with the change of designation.)
(For those interested in trivia, there is one sea without any shore (the Saragasso Sea), and there are 22 seas (and one ocean) entirely devoid of water: look up and see the mares of the Moon.)
But in just the past 50 years, the jewel has lost its sparkle. The Aral Sea went from the third largest lake to a puddle and now to a desert. Only a few slivers survived in the largest ecological catastrophe of the 20th century.
The region
Image from www.worldatlas.com
Geography can be complicated. All this used to be part of the Soviet Union. When the Union collapsed, the area re-emerged as a collection of ‘stans’. The largest of these by far is the nation of Kazakhstan. It is the 9th largest country in the world and has become the buffer between Europe and China. To the south are Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Together, these five nations share the Kazakh Steppe. The Aral Sea is on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It is also midway between Russia and Iran, and between the Caspian Sea and China.
Source: Plotnikov et al Zool Stud. 2023; 62: e19. 10.6620/ZS.2023.62-19
The Kazakh Steppe is bordered to the south by large mountain chains: the Tian Shan (’Heavenly mountains’) in Kyrgyzstan and China, and the Pamir mountains in Tajikistan. The Kopek-Dag mountains in Iran and the mountains of northern Afghanistan complete the southern boundary. The Kazakh Steppe forms a lowland against these mountains. To the north the land rises again to become the Kazakh Uplands.
(There are no volcanoes in this post. If you want one, the nearest major volcano is Mount Damavand in the Iranian mountains south of the Caspian Sea.)
The lowlands are not a continuous band but are divided into several depressions. The area north of the Caspian Sea is called (of course) the Caspian depression. The Aral Sea is located in the ‘Turan Lowland’ or ‘Aral Sea Basin’ which stretches from close to the Caspian Sea to the Tian Shan mountains. Lake Balkash lies in a separate depression. Tectonically, the Caspian depression and Aral Sea basin are part of the same structure but with an internal watershed.
Source: The Aral Sea: A Story of Devastation and The Aral Basin. Source: Partial Recovery of a Large Lake. Philip Micklin et al., 2020
The local climate is dry. Annual rainfall amounts to only around 100 mm, making the region of the basin a semi-desert. Winters are cold, summers hot, and rain mainly comes from showers in between these seasons. There are only two major rivers in the region: the Persian names are Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. (As you may guess; ‘Darya’ means river; the names are sometimes written as one word.) The names are recent: the Amu Dary was originally known as the Oxus and the Syr Darya as the Jaxartes. These are the two largest rivers in western Asia. The Amu Darya comes from the Pamir mountains, with two sources on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It flows over 2,500 km in length and is the longest river here. The Syr Darya comes from the Tian Shan mountains, with a source in Kyrgyzstan. Alexander the Great complained about this uncrossable river: it became the border of his conquests. The rivers benefit from the high snow-rich mountains, but the water flow is dependent on the amount of snow and varies from year to year.
Both rivers flow into the Turan lowland and into Aral Sea. No river flows out from this basin: it is the rivers’ final destination. This imbalance is the main reason for the existence of the Aral Sea.
A Sea Oasis
Fishing on the Aral Sea, 1952. Source: https://m.cdn.blog.hu/ri/ritkanlathatotortenelem/image/aral_to/muynak1952_kicsi.jpg
The rivers feed the same large body of water at their terminus, though with different entry points. The original Aral Sea is (or was, around 1960) a brackish-water lake covering an area of 67,499 km2 with a water volume of 985 km3. 75% of this water came from the rivers: they brought around 56 km3 of water per year. The spring and autumn rains into the lake (130 mm per year) added 9 km3. Evaporation of 66 km3 balanced the water level. The high evaporation (in summer) and lack of outflow made the water brackish; the salt levels are about a third of that of sea water. The sea is not particularly deep: typically 10-20 meters only. The name ‘Aral’ refers to the multitude of islands which stuck out from the shallow sea: ‘Aral’ means island.
The Aral Sea, 1960
The Aral Sea contains four separate basins. The main area of the Sea forms a shallow basin. On the western and northern edge are the deeper west basin, a small northwestern Tsebasch basin and the northern basin. The western basin is 60 meters deep. As the region is only around 50 meters above sea level, this puts the bottom here below sea level. The Amu Darya enters from the south into the main basin, and the Syr Darya flows into the northern basin from the east.
The semi-desert around the Aral Sea is inhospitable and sparsely populated. The novelist Andrei Platonov describes it as ‘a land that is pale and salty, as if its tears have dried but its grief has not run its course’; he also calls it ‘the hell of the whole earth’. Obviously, he did not like it! This is the Kara-Kum, the red desert. But the Aral Sea was different. It teemed with life. There was a vibrant fishing industry in towns such as Moynaq, on the southern shore, where some 30,000 people lived, and Aralsk on the north side of the sea. Fishermen would go out for days to collect their catch: sturgeons, trout and beams, among some 20 different species. A 6th of the fish eaten in the Soviet Union came from here. In the 19th century, the Russian navy had a base on the Aral Sea, although they found it difficult to get their ships on location. Maybe that is what really differentiates a sea from a lake: a navy.
Ships on the Aral Sea. Taras Shevchenko, 1948 (source: wikipedia)
Where the rivers flowed into the Aral Sea, fertile deltas build up. These acted as oases in the semi-desert, with lush growth and an abundance of wildlife. Caspian tigers occurred here, living off the wild boar and bactrian deer. This subspecies of the Siberian tiger lived along rivers and lakes, and ranged from China to Turkey, the widest distribution of any of the tiger subspecies. One specimen, not fully grown, was shot in 1949 near the Aral Sea. It was probably among the last sightings of tigers there. Its stuffed remains were for a while on display in a museum in the city of Nukus. Tigers remained present further south along the Amu Darya until the 1960’s. They may even have survived in eastern Turkey until the 1990’s. The Caspian tiger was declared extinct in 2003.
The Aral Sea was an oasis in the Steppe. But it was a fragile one. And the Kara-Kum was waiting.
The vanishing sea
Going – going – gone
The Soviet Union had other priorities than the environment. This started early: already in the 1930’s, Vozrozhdenya island (the largest island in the Aral Sea) was used for secret bioweapon development. This started with open-air experiments, before building a contained facility. The idea was that if containment was broken, only the island would be affected.
Then came the white gold of cotton. The Soviet Union decided that cotton was the future. For a while, Uzbekistan was to produce more cotton than any other country in the world. But cotton is a thirsty plant and the Steppe is dry, not well suited to such a crop. In the 1950’s, plans were made to use water from the two major rivers for this purpose. A canal was build to divert the water of the Amu Darya, with predictable (and predicted) consequences: after 1960, water flow in the Amu Darya suffered. Water from the Syr Darya also ended up in large irrigation lakes. Inflow into the Aral Sea decreased, but evaporation continued and now the water level the Aral Sea was beginning to drop. Because the sea was not deep, small changes in water level quickly lead to large changes in area. The port cities saw the sea withdraw from them.
This had been expected: cotton was seen as more important than fish. But to the locals, it was bad news. Already in the 1950’s, it was known that the Aral Sea would change and at the least become more saline. New fish species were introduced in the mid 1950’s – whether to safeguard against the coming changes or just to diversify the fishery is not clear to me. The introductions even included baltic herring, but that was a change too many. The herring was too prolific, eating all the plankton and then dying from lack of food. Other fish species, such as the black carp, were more successful and in the 1960’s displaced most of the native fauna. Eventually, this preparation would be in vain as the sea’s decline continued unabated.
At first, the falling water level was managed by mooring the ships further from the original shoreline. There were still fish, and catches were fine. The harbour at Aralsk fell dry but the jetty could be made longer. This all changed in 1976. In the mid 1970’s, fresh and brackish water species disappeared. A few years earlier the water had become too saline for the young fish, and now the lack of reproduction reached the mature fish population. A local fisherman recalled how the catch suddenly collapsed in 1976 and 1977. And by 1979, a new problem arose. The fish was taken by transport ship from Aralsk to the factory in Moynaq but the sea had become too shallow and the ships could no longer get across. Five years later, the level in the Aral Sea had dropped 12 meters. Large areas were becoming dry and the fishing industry was dead. By the end of the 1990’s, there were no fish of any kind left in the Large Aral Sea.
The falling levels had another unwanted consequence. People were getting too close to Vozrozhdenya island. In August 1971, a marine biologist from Aralsk was studying the plankton. She suddenly became ill with high fever and a rash, and later bleeding sores. Her young brother too fell ill and so did his school teacher. The marine biologist died. Only now was the disease diagnosed as smallpox – a variant that had been tested at Vozrozhdenya island. The entire town of 40,000 people was cordoned off and everyone was vaccinated. This instant response worked: only a few more people contracted the disease, though two more died of it.
The water levels kept falling and more and more of the sea fell dry. Only now did the Soviet Union report on the situation. Earlier it had been kept secret, in a country were internal disasters, such as airline crashes, were never reported. When perestroika came in the mid-1980’s, this changed. But the new openness did not change the lack of water: in some years the Amu Darya dried up before reaching the Aral Sea. In 1987, the northern part became separated from the main basin. By 1989, the Aral Sea had halved in size, mainly by contraction of the southern and eastern shore. By now the sea had fallen so low that the islands became peninsulas. By 2010, the water level had dropped 30 meters; the Aral Sea had become divided into several separate lakes. The main Aral Sea became reduced to a small central area which in 2014 dried up completely. Only the deeper basins along the western and northern edge still held water.
Source: The Aral Sea: A Story of Devastation and Partial Recovery of a Large Lake. Philip Micklin et al., 2020
The decline is nicely illustrated in this NASA article. In wet years the main basin contains shallow lakes. In dry years, it dries up completely. The rest of the sea consists of several isolated bodies of water, one for each of the other three basins. The western basin has become saltier than the sea and little life is left in it.
The climate in the area changed, not surprisingly. The summer is now hotter but winter frost lasts longer and the growing season has shortened. The dry sea bed has left salt deposits, which are blown by the wind. This is badly affecting the health of the local people, not helped by the pesticides that also ended up in the lake.
Recovery
For a while, a plan was consider to divert water from central Siberia to here, but this was abandoned in the mid 1980’s. In the 1990’s, as the Soviet Union collapsed, new plans were made to save the sea. This coincided with a time of reduced irrigation (due to the economic collapse) which for some years stabilized the water levels – but they started falling again when the economy recovered. In the year 2000, only 2.5 km3 of river water entered the Aral Sea, almost all from the Syr Darya. Although evaporation had also decreased (due to the much smaller surface area of the sea), saving the entire Aral Sea was not possible. Instead, efforts focussed on the northern part, the Small Aral Sea.
In 1992, a dike was build across the outflow channel that connected the higher Small Aral Sea with the remnants of the Large Aral Sea (the main basin). The Syr Darya now fed into the northern part only. This failed dramatically in April 1999 when the Small Aral Sea overtopped the dike during a wind storm, and the dike was swept away. Two people who had been trying to repair the dike were killed in the flood. A larger and better dike was built, called the Kok-Aral dam, which was ready in 2005. It has kept the water level in the Small Aral Sea at 42 meters, which is 10 meters below the 1960 level. In good water years, excess water is fed into the Large Aral Sea.
The Kok-Aral dam
The Small Aral Sea settled at a salinity similar to that of the old sea. Fishes returned, having apparently survived in the Syr Darya or in some cases, were re-introduced. The Aral salmon was lost for good, sadly. Total catches are now 5-10 times lower than those of the old Ara Sea, but it provides a living. Kazakhstan has considered building a second dam within the Small Aral Sea, to raise the water level further in the bay at Aralsk and allow use of its old harbour.
The highly salty western Aral Sea (the Shevchenko Gulf) is now used for brine shrimps. This species was introduced because it could deal with the very high salt content, and brine shrimp eggs are used as fry food in fish farms. The processing company remains located in Moynaq, 200 km away, which means long treks in four wheel drives across the salt plains. The fish processing plant here now imports its fish from Russia in a dubious feat of economic planning. (Aralsk now has its own processing plant.) There is a little tourism. Moynaq is known for its ship cemetery where some of the rusted hulks are left to decay: many of the photographs of dying ships are taken here. But the ships did not get stranded here: they died elsewhere and were taken back.
Moynaq’s ship cemetery
There are no plans for full restoration of the Aral Sea. The recovery will instead remain focussed on the Small Aral Sea which falls fully within Kazahkstan.
The Large Aral Sea and its surroundings have become the newest desert on Earth. It has become known as the Aral-Kum. Instead of recreating the Aral Sea, Uzbekistan has created a development plan for the region, aided by the World Bank. Food production remains its priority, in conflict with the needs of the Aral Sea. An attempt is made to plant saxaul bushed in the dry sea bed, to stabilize the soil, but as yet this is limited to a 500-hectare demonstration site. And since 2022 Afghanistan is building a canal to divert 20% of the Amu Darya, making it even less likely that the Large Aral Sea will ever return.
And there may be problems coming for the Small Aral Sea as well. Flow in the Syr Darya is decreasing, as more and more of its water is used along the course of the river. There is no guarantee that even the Syr Darya will continue to reach the Sea.
Some life has returned to Aralsk on the Small Aral Sea, but elsewhere the signs are not good. The Sea will not dry out completely: at the very least the rains will still fall. But this will only be a hyper-saline remnant.
The flat, dry sea bottom is covered in sea shells, with sparse bushes in the dessicated landscape. Salt is everywhere. Even the camels die from eating the salt-covered vegetation. Young people show stunted growth, caused by the pesticide-laden sand storms. Global warming is now adding to the pressures in the region. Sand dunes are approaching from the south and are covering the old, abandoned towns.
Condemned to repeat
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. It turned out that the Aral Sea had always been an unstable entity. Its water armageddon has happened before.
The water flow in the rivers is very sensitive to climate – even when both rivers feed into the Aral Sea, the amount of water is not guaranteed. Fluctuations in water level of the Aral Sea by a few meters were not uncommon, and much larger variations have occurred. The decades before 1960 were, in hindsight, more stable than usual. When the Aral Sea dried up, old river beds of the Syr Darya appeared on the sea floor, a sign that the water once had been much lower than in 1960. This has in fact happened more than once, even in the fairly recent past.
In the northern part of the Large Aral Sea, ruins of old settlements appeared, some 20 meters below 1960 water levels. There are three, called the Kerderi cluster, dated to around the 14th or 15th century, and having lasted around 200 years. Although there is little left, the remains include two mausolea with ceramics and mosaics: this was a significant settlement, perhaps involved with the silk road. A document from around this time (1417) comments that the Amu Darya flowed into the Caspian Sea and that the Aral Sea had ceased to exist. That overstated things: the presence of settlements suggests water remained, but at a much reduced level. The Amu Darya was said to have returned to the Aral Sea around 1573. By 1700 the Aral Sea is depicted on maps at its current (i.e. 1960) size. The low level would have lasted from around 1200 to 1600.
And this had happened before. Before the 6th century AD, the Amu Darya also ran towards the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea was much lower. This lasted perhaps 500 years.
The cause was in the high mountains. Both rivers carry sediment from the mountains, and this becomes deposited on the flat plains of the Aral Sea Basin. It silts up the river bed, forcing the river to change course. Especially the Amu Darya is affected by this. Just a small change in its pathway can cause it to miss the Aral Sea entirely and instead flow into the Caspian Sea.
The Aral Sea was always precarious: its level varied dramatically with the course of the Amu Darya. The Syr Darya was more reliable, as shown by the fact that it produced river beds at these times while the Amu Darya did not.
In fact, before around 2000 BC the Amu Darya may not have reached the Aral Sea at all. Without the Amy Darya, the Aral Sea would have been much smaller or dry. This had lasted for many thousands of years. There was only one reliable river (Syr Darya) flowing into the Aral Sea. The Amu Darya was always a much more fickle entity. And the Syr Darya only came some time after the ice age: before that, it went into a different direction.
The ‘modern’ Aral Sea seems to have been a relative recent development. The Aral Sea was perhaps the world’s youngest sea, dating only to the middle holocene.
Before time
The Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea are separated by a watershed which is only a few meters higher than the 1960 water level. Water levels in the Caspian Sea were particularly high at the end of the ice age, high enough to overflow the watershed. At this time a huge body of water connected the two seas. This overflow may be the reason that the fauna of the two seas were quite similar.
And this had not been not an isolated occurrence. During the late pliocene (from some three million years ago), the Aral Sea was mostly an extension to the Caspian Sea although it did dry out at several times when the connection was lost. The ice age was dry, until the melt temporarily re-established the large sea. Once that ended, the Aral Sea had to wait for the rivers to establish themselves.
The Tethistan
We mentioned how the Caspian depression and the Aral Sea Basin form a huge low-lying area. But why is this basin here? To the south are the enormous mountain ranges, in places 7 km tall. To the north is the Siberian plateau, typically 500 meters high (and covered by the Siberian traps, but that is a different story). In between is this low-lying land, close to sea level at Aral and as low as 200 meters below sea level in the Caspian Sea.
Looking at a map of the continent, a series of water-filled depressions show, from the Black Sea to Lake Balkash. It is much shorter and not quite as recognizable as the line of mountains from Spain to Thailand, but it shadows this line. If these mountains are the scar of the Tethys ocean, the line of lakes and seas are the accompanying itch. We are in the shadow of the Tethys.
Once, the Tethys divided the world between north and south. It was home to a progression of continental cast-offs from Gondwana in the south which crossed the sea towards the north. When they arrived, each would dock at far too high a speed (have you ever tried to stop a continent moving at 10cm/year?) and would raise a crumple zone. Hence the mountains – each of the chains which make the line come from a separate collision, all part of the complex closing of the Tethys ocean. The Tian Shan formed from an old suture (from the merging of the Tarim plate of China with Siberia, 300 million years ago), re-activated by stress from India, 40 million years ago. Mountains further west come from other additions to Eurasia. Each of these contributed to the slow demise of the Tethys ocean until it finally ceased to exist 5 million years ago.
Source: wikipedia
In the process, the various collisions divided the Tethys ocean. One part is called the Paratethys: it sat north of Turkey around 30 million years ago. The past existence of the Paratethys was recognized already in the 19th century, as the remains of an ancient Mediterranean stretching from Crimea to the Aral Sea. Nowadays we make it even larger. The Paratethys became isolated from the main Tethys ocean some 15 million years ago and slowly disappeared.
The disappearance left the deep salt deposits of eastern Europe, as far west as the appropriately named Salzburg. The lively salt trade of medieval Europe is based on the inheritance from this dying ocean. But as for its water, the only seaworthy survivors were the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea.
Don’t expect oceanic crust here: this was mostly a shallow ocean from submerged continental margins. Only the Black Sea and the southern Caspian Sea contain some true oceanic crust – among the last remnants of the original Tethys Ocean. Elsewhere are a number of separate continental blocks which underly the basins, each with their own origin. What they have in common is the Paratethys.
After the isolation, the Paratethys ocean became brackish. Sea life adapted to this. These adaptations still survive in the Caspian Sea. During the pliocene the Aral Sea became a gulf attached to Caspian Sea, which at times would completely dry out. In the early holocene, its connection to the Caspian was severed and it became reliant on rivers for its waters. But its fauna still dated to that time when it was a Caspian Gulf, and from there to the era of the Paratethys.
Tethys, daughter of Gaia and wife of Oceanus, was the goddess mother of the water nymphs of the lakes and the seas. Asia too was one of her daughters. The Aral Sea, this temperamental child-sea, is her offspring.
The Tethys ocean has left us much of the geology of the modern world. Its rocks and mountains are everywhere. But here is another memory. The Aral Sea is part of a line in the sand saying ‘I was here’. It is tectonic graffiti. Long might it have lasted.
Albert, September 2024
A few references
The Aral Sea Environment, 2010, Editors: Andrey Kostianoy and Aleksey N. Kosarev. Published by Springer
Paleogeographical History of the Aral Sea. Alexander Svitoch. In: The Aral Sea Environment.
The Aral Sea: A Story of Devastation and Partial Recovery of a Large Lake. Philip Micklin et al., 2020 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-42254-7_4
Past, Present and Future of the Aral Sea -A Review of its Fauna and Flora before and during the Regression Crisis. Igor Plotnikov et al, 2023, Zoological Studies 62, e19
The last Caspian Tiger. Robert Chandler, 2005. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220512331339571
https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/aralsk-kazakh-town-lived-through-smallpox-epidemic
Banksy
Sorry, no volcanoes .. couldn’t find one anywhere
Cant find much of anything out there! Must be tough living.
Thanks
Macusn
The whole area, if you go back really far, is the remnants of the old Para-Tethys. Well, probably, theres one thing I read somewhere that the Black Sea is a part of the much older Paleo-Tethys, because Anatolia is part of the old Cimmeria continent that was out in the ocean at the start of the Mesozoic. If so then the south shore of the Black Sea has been a shoreline basically where it is now since before the Great Dying, which is crazy if true but I doubt it.
A lot of maps show that the Para-Tethys, unlike its namesake, was pretty much unaffected by subduction and uplift until the late Miocene, pretty much all the Steppe used to be seafloor. It might also be why there are seals in Baikal, although dont hold me to that 🙂
Its actually one of the things I find most interesting about the change of Cenozoic geography. The Cretaceous geography of North America is well known for all the marine stuff in the interior, but most of that ocean was already gone by the time of Tyrannosaurus. Cretaceous North America was a place you could live in today with no pre-adaptations, just an acceptance that a kaiju chickengator seige is a possibility… 🙂
But the whole of middle Eurasia from the Alps to western China was a similar shallow sea until within the timeframe that apes evolved bipedalism, most animals looked modern, and many extant genera already existed. I
ts really quite underappreciated just HOW MUCH the earth has changed in only the last 3 million years. There were lots of surprisingly archaic and weird animals living for the entire Cenozoic quite happily to as recently as 2 million years ago – pelagornithids, terror birds, Megalodon, chalicotheridae. All things that were alive so recently they coexisted with Australopithecus (well, in time only the last one in place too) but are gone now and for the most part with no modern analogue, yet are often pretty directly analogous to a Mesozoic animal, the Earth was stable for that long only with a big rock as a major hiccup. The Ice Age really was a gigantic change. Maybe its no wonder some of those apes started thinking outside the box.
Seems it didnt go as far east as I thought, about to the modern Aral area. But it was way more extensive than it has been more recently, even at the losest Miocene level the Caspian was still connected to the Black Sea, and much of the general area had big lakes that are now small or gone
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSHyoI6PYwtPgSwrv_q_Uy9mzTFQN4BIX5XjMPdmqt-MZomAhY3VTulSHI&s=10
Interesting though that if Antarctica does melt and the sea level goes up 60+ meters, then the seaway does kind of reform, at least in theory.
https://i.imgur.com/YkvQnvQ.jpeg
I won’t hold you to the seals in Lake Baikal…they arrived much more recently via the rivers. Lake Baikal is very different from the other lakes, a deep and narrow break in a tough crust.
https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-old-man-or-the-sea/
In fact this is the southern shore of “old Asia”. The old https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstania continent lies to the north of the Aral Sea Basin. The greater Iranian mountains are part of the relatively young Alpes to Himalaya orogency belt. There are the next volcanoes to be found: https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/iran.html
Both Asia and Europe were smaller, before the recent orogency began. The Indian Ocean and Mediterannean Sea were together (with many more extensional parts) the big Thetys Ocean. The lakes north of the Alpes (f.e. Lake Geneva or Lake Constance) and north of the Iranian mountains remind to this great common oceanic history.
A fascinating article about a region few of us are very familiar with, and perhaps some interesting lessons as well. Thanks Albert! Really hope to visit the Stans in the future but it doesn’t seem to be a very accessible region.
This was a fascinating article ( even without volcanoes) and I just learned a whole bunch of things about this region – thanks! The modern history is a good illustration of just how fast and how permanently climate change can affect an ecosystem that was already fragile.
All kinds of geological dynamics are interesting, thanks Albert!
Geological history knows many events when a lake became a salt lake and sooner or later disappeared to sediments. Sometimes this happened to cut-off sea bays or lagunes. The Mediterannean Sea is said to have repeatedly undergone the complete drought until its submarine base. The North African desert hosts some salt lakes and salty swamps, and Jordan’s Death Sea is a famous example.
The Aral Sea is different that humans have responsibility for this disaster. This time it’s not “evil capitalism” as we had examples with Oil ship disasters (f.e. Exxon Valdez 1989), but communism. Maybe something what all materialistic economies have in common that favor “maximizing profit” over ethical values. Communism in the end is nothing else than state capitalism with the government as entrepreneur and the ability to use violent police force (f.e. forced labor) for economic ends.
Permian Salt Deposits create their own geological dynamic: Salt Domes. They are ductile and can move below the weight of sediments. When they move up, they push the sedimentary rocks above them upwards and create hills/mountains where otherwise is flat landscape. Salt Domes need massive salt deposits, usually created by evaporation of cut-off sea.
During complete evaporation of Mediterannean Sea submarine volcanism happened subaerial. F.e. the Campi Flegrei del Mar di Sicilia would be well visible. Also Black Smokers if there are some in the Med. Sea.
Interesting, since the last little intrusion at Kilauea, the tilt at SDH has shown alternation of inflation and tilting going between the south caldera/upper SWRZ connector like magma has been flowing between them, but just now it seems like they are both tilting up in sync again.
Kilauea looks boring and sleepy dormant now (but can change anytime). Iceland is going to sleep for months again. Piton is probably going to sleep for years. Strombolian subduction zone volcanoes continue to erupt, but nothing big.
I did just read something about there being significant uplift at Ol Doinyo Lengai detected recently but no.elaboration in the paper and no mention of it elsewhere either. But if it is now it could be interesting, carbonatite paroxysm eruption, that fluid lava could flow a long way. Or it might erupt its silicate source magma for the first time in apparently millennia.
I wonder actually, is natrocarbonatite lava an ionic liquid? Its composition is mostly made of alkali metal carbonates, which are ionic compounds. I wonder actually if really fluid completely melted basalt is conductive too. Maybe you can do electrolysis on lava and get a weird metal alloy. I guess that is basically what an aluminium foundary is… 🙂
Yes. Liquid Na2CO3 is a pretty good electrolyte.
I loved that the volcano featured in the second Lara Croft movie. The visuals were shot before Ol Doinyo erupted big time and blew all the weird sodium carbonate edifices out of his throat.
(Lead recycling plants use sodium carbonate melts for recovering the metal from old lead-acid batteries.)
That is for pure NaHCO3 or Na2CO3, but I dont know if natrocarbonatite as a mineral would be polymerized in some way.
Its actually interesting why CO2 and SiO2 are so different. Why a carbon oxygen crystal lattice isnt a thing, I think dry ice is still CO2 as individual molecules. Only thing I can guess is C=O bonds are too strong. Carbon monoxide is supposed to be one of the strongest bonds between two atoms that is possible, even burning it in fluorine mostly makes COF2 not CF4 and O2. It only burns readily in air because you just add another oxygen, not destroying the existing bond, and because carbon with 2 bonds is less stable than with 4. At least that is how I understand it.
In answer to Chad :
As a chemist , I should stress that the difference between CO2 (a gas, two carbon/oxygen double bonds) and SiO2 (a kind of tridimensional polymer) is the big differences in strength (= bond energy) among the second component of the oxygen bond to central element, being far stronger in C to O than Si to O, being Si a third-series element. So, is energetically fare more convenient to adopt a four single Si to O bond situation than a two double bond one. As a consequence, CO2 formula represents a distinct molecular unit, and SiO2 is in reality only a “minimum formula”, representing only the combination ratio of Si and O in a tridimensional lattice. Quartz is maybe the commonest name for the natural occurrence of it.
Post Scriptum :
Sure a melt of pure Na2CO3 or Na(HCO3) should behave as an ionic liquid. The trouble is in the instability to the loss of CO2 reaching the melting point.
I don’t recall now the melting temperatures for the two salts, but I suspect the loss of CO2 should be substantial. I think you could melt sodium carbonate, but I am dubious you could recovery it after cooling and solidifying …
As I mentioned lead acid battery recyclers use molten sodium carbonate. As a chemist myself I’ve only played with molten NaOH and KOH, so I can’t say much about the properties of molten Na2CO3. However it is a thing used in industrial practice.
It’s quiet…too quiet…and don’t call me Shirley!
Yes, it’s quiet at many volcanoes now. But earthquakes don’t sleep. Yesterday Malibu in LA got one. No damage, but worrying many people: https://abcnews.go.com/US/earthquake-shakes-los-angeles-area/story?id=113621411
I haven’t read your article yet Albert, but I intend to do so when I get time. The Aral Sea is a fascinating situation.
Meanwhile here is a new truly gigantic volcano.
JunoCam spots new volcano on active Io (Phys.org, 11 Sep)
Enormous seemingly basaltic lava flows erupting out of nowhere within the last 25 years. I wonder if the Deccan Traps was like this?
It has similarities to Craters of the Moon, ironically
At the opposite end of the VEI spectrum…GeoNet have just posted a new update on White Island. And as always their photography is awesome.
Low level eruption continues with variable gas and ash emissions at Whakaari/White Island. Volcanic Alert Level remains at Level 3 and Aviation Colour Code at Orange. (12 Sep)
Here I am, a little volcano, smoking to myself in the middle of an azure sea…
Now have read your article Albert! I can add not much, except perhaps the importance of the Amu Darya, or Oxus, to the campaigns of Alexander. He was on the literal edge of the world, at least as far as the Greeks understood it.
I suspect the Aral Sea will be back in a while. As with the Sahara, which was a pleasant land about 8000 years ago. Then it dried out and the people inhabiting it moved into the Nile Valley. History was started!
As for Russia that country hosts another fascinating slowly evolving geological event: Lake Baikal. Perhaps only the little sister of the Great Rift Valley, but the Baikal rift is over 2,000 km long, and is slowly tearing off the entire eastern part of Russia. At only 5 cm/yr at the moment though. But the geology of that rift zone is entertaining to read about.
I was doing some research on all this and apparently the Amu Darya has only flowed to the Aral for a few hundred years, it flowed into the Caspian for a few millennia before 900 AD and from 1220 to the 1500s. I dont know if the Aral was dry back then too but it was probably at a high in modern time relatively and maybe looked similar to how it does now at least a few times naturally.
Its quite a fascinating part of the world really. Usually when rapid geological change is talked about it is from volcanoes but there is no volcano anywhere on the planet that can change an area as big as the Aral and Caspian basins and by how much each has in historical time. Tbe Amu Darya has a flow rate that is higher than the ebtire planets magma generation annually, and it isnt even a big river. And big rivers probably dwarf even that Ionian flood basalt event you describe above and they do it easily for millions of years, some of the extant rivers have probably been flowing in more or less their present location since Pangea, perhaps a refuge from the great interior desert.
The changes in the Amu Darya over the past millennia are described in the post, so see there for information. As it affected only one of the two rivers, the Aral Sea would not have been dry, just much lower
Magnitude 2.6 that happened south of Hekla, not on the mountain itself though. After the video by GeologyHub though its interesting and if Hekla really gives little warning then a few more of these could be significant.
It was quite far from Hekla. More associated with the south iceland seismic zone – the transform fault.
I think Hekla activity could still be related to movement on that fault. And the SISZ is the east end of the Reykjanes fault, I have for a while now thought about that interaction, it seems a lot more directly obvious than the indistinct interactions of the Vatnajokull volcanoes, or Kilauea and Mauna Loa. Obviously, its not a cause an effect, because Hekla has erupted lots of times since, but it did always seem notable that the first historical eruption of Hekla was during the last Reykjanes Fires.
I guess though, the more likely reason Hekla changed to more frequent eruptions after that was probably because of Eldgja and Vatnaoldur rifting so much of the nearby area. But that was still 200 years earlier and Laki had no such impact. And none of that at all explains why it changed again after 1948 or maybe again after 2000.
Speaking of the SISZ. The quakes in 2000 and 2008 only released something like half the accumulated strain since the last sequence of large quakes. Historically, the SISZ does series of large quakes, followed by a longer period of silence. In other words, there’s a large probability that another M6+ will happen in a relatively near future. The eastern end of the zone is a good candidate for the next one. My guess is somewhere around longitude -20 to -19.8. This guess is based on nothing else but the location of events in 2000 and 2008 compared with the locations of faults in other historical quake series.
That seems to fit with this reference.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191814102001682?via%3Dihub
There were a pair of quakes in 1896, estimated at M6-6.9, followed by a M7 in 1912.
Incidentally, the quakes in 2000 also reactivated Geysir, albeit temporarily, which shows the wider effects in southern Iceland.
Vienna is going to get severe rain weather that reminds to subtropical depressions: https://www.accuweather.com/en/at/vienna/31868/weather-warnings/31868?alertId=1562565&areaId=innere-stadt
A low-pressure area takes a dangerous route over Genua and mixes cold arctic air with warm humid Mediteranean air. All of Austria and Czech Republic are going to get a lot of precipitation, at local places over 300mm. A cyclone like this on Aral Sea/Lake would be helpful. But there is a lack of humid air to make rain amounts like this.
It is reminding me of this post. https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-1342-st-mary-magdalene-flood/
This blocking pattern can do real mess, as it did in 1997 and 2002. Third time in 30 years we talk about once-a-millenium rain? I guess having Mediterranean running 5deg warmer is not best of ideas.
That said, preparations are fully underway before the rain started so fingers crossed the outcome is not as terrible.
The rare path of this depression is repeated every few years. Often it happens during colder seasons when much precipitation falls as snow in the mountains. The worst case is if it happens during summer. 1997 and 2002 it was during late summer (August). This time we are in September. It helps a bit that it is already cold enough for snow in the Alpes (up to two meters).
An increasingly subtropical Mediterannean Sea will probably lead to more disasters like this. Past years noticed sometimes the development of “Medicanes” that are subtropical hurricanes.
1997 was early July. but yea, definitely going to occur more frequently with weakening jet stream as well.
This time it’s going to hit mainly Austria and Czech Republic. One center will be between Linz and Vienna with up to 355mm rain until end of Sonday. A second center on the Polish/Czech border with up to 362mm in the mountains.
All the precipitation – except of what is bound as snow – will pass through few rivers: Danube, Elbe, Oder. The flood will endanger areas that don’t get much rain now.
For Tallis in particular; here’s a paper I just ran across detailing a landslide-induced tsunami in Greenland (2023) that seismically rang the Earth for 9 full days. Some amazing details as to how standing waves can be sustained.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm9247
And secondly, SoCal near Malibu was just hit with an M4.7 shock with lots’ of aftershocks.The offshore Malibu fault seems to be the foci. The fault is generally rather aseismic, generating around 4 quakes per yr.
So far, within 30 miles there’s been 14 so far this year..including a couple just west of Rancho Palos Verde where the landslide we were just discussing continues.
If you asked me a year ago on whether a regional megatsunami could ring the earth for more than a week, I’d be skeptical but here we are! For the SoCal swarm it is my personal opinion that the slide will have more intense seismic activity than we are seeing now in the weeks or months leading up to it. The current quakes could be the result of a tectonic swarm rather than be related to the slide but it does raise my brow.
Fer sure the swarm(s) are tectonic..but they’re reflecting an uptick in activity on a regional scale more than a single fault coming alive.
SoCal is a jumble of faults, with the San Jacinto being (as usual) being the most active. But now, we’re seeing an unusual number of jolts on lesser faults. Oddly, the San Andreas itself has been pretty “normal” so far…but that’s just the main fault…the SAFZ with all it’s splays and blind thrust faults is currently quite active. Somewhat of concern is the continuing swarm SW of Bakersfield (and NNE of the Fort Tejon bend) where widespread aftershocks continue following an M5.2 in early August. Given these recent foci are possibly within the coulomb stress field after the Ridgecrest quake along Walker Lane let loose near the Garlock Fault, the current Bakersfield swarm could be another sign the long-quiet Garlock Fault could be loading up. The mostly WSW-ENE trending Garlock is one of the longest faults in SoCal, and is capable of an M8 if it let loose along it’s entirety.
Another sign of area-wide stress increase is that for a moderate M5.2 mainshock, it’s not often we see aftershocks last this long…plus the spatial distribution of the aftershock zone is much larger than usual.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been stronger earthquakes than the M5.2 in SoCal in the last couple of decades…with major quakes hitting Ridgecrest, Hector Mine and Landers…all ~M7.1, the devastating M6.7 that hit Northridge plus the Salton Sea swarms in 2008 and 2020 also being notable…but for all intents and purposes, the Ridgecrest M7.1 was the first major quake since Hector Mine over 2 decades ago which came after the “companion” Landers quake 30 years ago. Just a matter of time till the “big one” hits…but where…that’s open for debate. What the current spate of swarms is telling us is there is ample opportunity for a major quake other than the “big one” on the San Andreas that’s always getting hyped.
I suggest retiring using the term “big one” for future West Coast quakes since it could be referencing 6 different future quakes.
white island
With a (rather lovely) coastline only 50km away, is there any evidence of caldera-forming or other large eruptions on white island? Also, any evidence of traces of large tsunami damage along the coast?
None that I am aware of. There are (reported) deposits on the north New Zealand coasts from large tsunamis with 30m+ run-up heights, but they are attributed to Pacific faults or Kuwae. Pick your choice.. Our resident New Zealand expert may know more about the current state of thoughts.
There are indications of large tsunami in Northland, but the source is uncertain.
I do personally think the Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides) trench may be at least as much a threat as the more commonly supposed Tonga-Kermadec; a look at the geometry will suggest why,
Kuwae is very much an open question; it’s suggested it was a large eruption but its equivocal at best as to whether it could have been tsunamigenic on the scale required, at least from my last readings.
GVP reports several above-average explosive eruptions that might have enlarged the crater, but I wouldn’t label it a “caldera”. F.e. 1976-1982 (VEI3) was a period with extended explosive activity incl. Pyroclastic flows, ejection of bombs and blocks.
No enlargement of the *crater*. Possible enlargement of the *active vent* but that’s on a scale of a few tens of meters at most. I’ll have a look at the images from a flight a couple of days ago tomorrow.
Whakaari is a more normal arc volcano, like Ruapehu and Tongariro, although even those two share a little more in common with the calderas.
Maybe in a million years there will be a rhyolitic supervolcano in the Bay of Plenty at or near this sppt, and same with Tongariro, and maybe a million years is an overestimation, but otherwise its pretty safe right now. Its like Merapi or Shevluch, a scary volcano that you dont turn your back to and can be very unpredictable but you also have to actually be close to it for it to be dangerous too.
Maybe the biggest hazard outside the island is a future dome growth that collapses or blasts south and sends a wave that way. Same as Nevado del Ruiz, a harmless eruption that created another disaster that wasnt taken seriously until too late. The breached crater does imply maybe such collapses are characteristic.
Good points from all. Chad’s comment perhaps the most ‘predictive’ but luckily that suggests a nice new cone, and that’s far in the future.
The Aral Sea Basin is in fact the basin between the very old Russian cratons (Siberia, Baltica) and the geologically young Persian orogency. The Volga river (Europe’s Nile) runs the way from Baltica in Western Russia to the Caspian Sea. Ural river runs from Ural to Caspian Sea. Are there no rivers from the north to the Aral Sea Basin?
No! The Turgay river flows in the right direction but it dries up before it gets to Aral. It ends in a few small salt lakes.
There is also the Tarim plate to the southeast. The Aral Sea Basin lies in a complex region.
Central Asia and East Africa will be the first countries to have water wars mainly due to leadership incompetence. Not to mention groundwater reserves becoming depleted.
The Ignobel peace prize has been awarded to “B.F. Skinner, for experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide the flight paths of the missiles”
I guess it was the peace prize because it was never used?
I think that was in second world war, so not exactly cuttent.
So even more like the real ones
Phys.org now has an article up!
Backside breathing and pigeon bombers studies win Ig Nobel prizes (14 Sep)
I think I especially like the Anatomy Prize, which found that hair whorls generally are clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and anticlockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
I don’t know which way my hair whorl whirls, but this Southern Hemisphere resident knows.
A check back on the Ruang Volcano shows that its ash almost completely sterilized the island. See the Sept 9th photo from the Copernicus Sentinel L2A satellite
I’ve no doubt people will go back to live there within a few months, somewhere on the coast.
The previous map prior to eruption shows a slow looking flow on the east side , and a few older flows dotted around the island surrounded by vegetation, so it was quite unexpectedly serious for the locals.
https://flic.kr/p/2qgeeRg
https://flic.kr/p/2qgfRv3
A truly lovely article, thank you so much for the excellent exposition and delightful prose — well done!
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the Agulhas slide yet. 20000km3 of material in a manner similar to the Storegga slide i.e. the edge of the continental shelf.
The slide was so large it has affected ocean currents.
https://flic.kr/p/2qgehJL
Geologyhub seems to think Kanlaon is heading for an eruption, in excess of 10,000 tons a day SO2 emissions and earthquakes creeping up into the hundreds per day, alongside strong gas emissions.
GVP’s weekly report talks about Kanlaon: https://volcano.si.edu/reports_weekly.cfm#vn_272020
“Eruptions recorded since 1866 have typically consisted of phreatic explosions of small-to-moderate size that produce minor local ashfall.”
So a Phreato-Strombolian volcano with up to VEI2. 2017 was the last VEI2 eruption with a “plume of voluminous steam and dark ash rose 3-4 km above the summit vent.”
Yes, historically it doesn’t look like it has done much, mostly just ash-venting. It does have some large relatively young lava flows though, and even though it’s not the most obvious plinian structure for a stratovolcano, I wouldn’t rule out it’s capable of going plinian, its eruption history may not be well studied.
It has quite a large edifice and the majority of strong earthquakes have been coming from the east side, I wouldn’t rule out a St.Helens-style lateral blast.
More likely a VEI2-3 though.
Of the currently active volcanoes, the probably most dangerous volcano is Aira in Japan with two VEI4 1914 and 1779. Since 1955 the Minamidake sub-crater is persistently active. 2023 they reported about the volcano: “The current eruption period began during late March 2017 and has more recently consisted of explosions, ash plumes, and ashfall (BGVN 48:01). This report covers activity during January through June 2023, characterized by intermittent explosions, eruption events, eruption plumes, and ashfall from both summit craters”
Kilauea having more quake swarms and a shallow mag 3 along its south caldera fault near the Koae fault zone. Might get another intrusion soon, the 3rd in 2 months.
Wow and now a 4.3 quake very close by and only about 1 km below the surface.
Big offset of the summit tiltmeter
At Pauahi crater now. There isnt anything showing elsewhere, so seems to be local. I think an intrusion has either started or will very soon
https://i.imgur.com/A08n1fU.jpeg
There is definitely something going on 🙂
Oh yeah, something is definitely going on. Look at the tremor.
https://imgur.com/a/0lQXcas
Yes its still going. Most of the quakes are about 1-2 km deep but some are much less, and at least one was basically at the surface. The dike seems to be in about the same place as the eruption of February 1969, and much more recently in 2007.
The strong 4.3 earthquake has disturbed deformation measurement, so we have to wait a bit to see more clearly. The recent HVO statues report indicates that the volcano is somewhere between code yellow and orange. Kilauea still has alert color yellow, but moments of unrest like this deserve (in my opinion) color orange, because eruptions can happen very fast that way and we can’t exclude this.
Intrusion seems to have started, and further east than last time. It might be the eastern end of the intrusions of July and August, ot it is new, but most activity is east of Mauna Ulu. The summit and upper SWRZ have only weak tremor showing but all of the stations from PAUD at Pauahi to Pu’u O’o and even going east to near highway 130 all show powerful shaking and even far east it is stronger than at the summit. Most of that is probably because of crack orientation, but the location of quakes tells where the magma is.
Give it 6 hours max most likely within 3 to get an eruption, if nothing happens it probably wont until next time.
HVO is onboard with the idea of a new intrusion starting.
https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hans-public/notice/DOI-USGS-HVO-2024-09-15T04:42:09+00:00
Kilauea has stopped erupting boredom and to wake up everyone:
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/kilauea-status-report-middle-east-rift-zone-unrest
“Starting around 6 p.m. HST this evening, ground deformation patterns west (uprift) of Puʻuʻōʻō began to show changes indicative of crack growth, suggesting that another intrusive event could be occurring in this region”
Added to this a Magnitude 4.3 earthquake probably related to magmatic pressure: https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/volcano-updates
Last two hours there were 18 earthquakes. Last days already had higher level of earthquake activity:
Wow! Yes, looks like a dike intrusion in the Alae swarm, we will see if it erupts. The summit is already deflating.
Excellent article, Albert! I have had an interest in the Aral Sea for a good deal of my life. When I got my very own Gateway 2000 computer with AOL dial-up access (back in the Nineties), the first search that I did was “Aral Sea”. From all that I learned then, before then and since then, your post is spot on–and, I learned a few things from your post (and from some of the comments) that I had not known before!
Regarding why some inland bodies of water are called seas while others are called lakes, that probably comes down to the culture of the local inhabitants. The Jordan River empties into the Dead Sea, while the smaller, freshwater body on the north end of the river that was called Lake Tiberias by the Romans and is called Lake Gennesaret by the locals today, is called the Sea of Galilee in the New Testament.
The locals don’t always get to decide. Lake Baikal is called ‘the sea’ by the locals.
There is a lake which is more healthy than Aral but less healthy than Baikal Lake: Lake Balkhash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Balkhash
It still has the chance to be saved against the fate of Lake Aral.
It is mentioned in the post but not discussed. Its level too is dropping. But so is the Caspian Sea. Many inland bodies of water are nowadays under threat, from global warming and other changes such as agricultural runoff. (In the UK, it seems an even battle between chicken farms and water companies’ waster water in who can do most damage. Not sure who will be the winner but it is clear who are the losers.)
Our western world is a lot healthier than it was 50 years ago, because governments of different flavours were willing to work for this. I do wonder what things will be like 50 years from now.
Agricultural pollution is entirely preventable in the UK as there are laws and bankruptcy-making fines available. “Diffuse” pollution can also be controlled by regulation. One major problem in agriculture is the wish to make blanket rules forcing a single method on all farms, all soil types, all waste products, all topology and all rainfall area. At best this is only optimal on average and at worst forces significantly sub-optimal methodology.
As an example before I retired I had a large dairy herd close to an (expensive) village. Fresh cow manure is nearly odour-free (particularly in winter) so we applied it at a rate of 10kg/N/Ha as it was produced onto our grassland. This was actually less than grass required so there was no leaching on our dead-level fields (which had low permeability when wet anyway). Result was zero pollution, full utilisation of nutrients and no smell affecting the village, EC rules changed so we had to store a winter’s slurry (say 200 days) in a vast tank which was energy-expensive to install and manage. The only time it could be applied was the following autumn after cereal harvest which meant:
1) High application of nutrients with no crop to use it, which would have resulted in nitrates to water table.
2) A truly spectacular odour problem, at the store and field (even in ploughed in immediately).
3) Huge increased fuel usage due to ploughing instead or direct drilling.
4) Inappropriate yield-reducing nitrate levels in autmn, winter and early spring.
We gave up cows and went arable, losing our bats, owls, house martins and probably many invertebtayes and small mammals.
These things are not trivial but can be handled with some knowledge and thought.
As for sewage, few people realise that almost all the incoming liquid is basically filtered and put back in the river via crude oxidation stages. There is no fermentation (other than for ‘solids’) and so all your drugs (eg oestrogens etc) go right back in the river. This is a really serious problem that nobody wants to face up to.
Rant over….
I was hoping you would comment. Where I grew up, we had the days in spring when the farmers would spread the winter manure over the fields, with accompanying smell. It was a dairy farming region so we were used to it and it was not a problem to us. It still is dairy – but the birds and insects have disappeared there too. It s attributed in part to much better drainage. No farmer wants to work wet fields, and so given the chance they get rid of water. A rain drop seems to be in the North Sea so fast it doesn’t know what hit it. The water table is something like a meter lower than it used to be. There is a part where a dike has been build around what I think was an old farm, and the water table there is kept much higher. There are a few cows but mostly it is kept as a reserve. That is where all the birds go. Lovely walk, but expect to get bitten by insects you had forgotten about. There is more to the problem: as you say, various pollutants get everywhere now. Even the fish have become addicted to drugs.
Chickens are not cows though. In for instance the river Wye, those farms are a major part of of the problem.
Yes, spring application is possible but has problems of its own. Firstly the subsoil (that is the soil at plough depth say 150-200mm) will be very wet without a crop on so most soils will suffer significant soil damage/plough pans. Further, cereals are not ideal and really you need maize (ideal for cow/beef silage) or a brassicaceous crop (rather few good choices here unless you grow vegetables). So what you do is halve (or more) your grassland and have much of your dairy feed from maize. Grazed grassland is GREAT for wildllife, maize is not. That’s very likely what you are seeing. Drainage in itself is not really a problem, its whats on top that counts and to be honest there is very little new farm drainage going on these days, since about 1980 in fact. The cost is ruinous without grant aid, and the payoff is in decades.
Its certainly true that if you want maximal wildlife, with as much diversity as possible, then farm wildlife (NOT FOOD). However do it properly not the way its usually done and even your wetland area needs management or it will become woodlan (boggy, but woodland) with little diversity.
The Wye valley problem (as I understand it) is many chicken farms (dairy being hugely unprofitable chickens took over) on sloping ground with high rainfall and streams at the bottom of every valley combined with a restricted (and in this situation environmentally bad) slurry application time window. I could go on but won’t (unless anyone is interested).
For most rivers, most places, agriculture is almost entirely arable, which causes negligible water pollution if done half decently (or even very badly). People pollution is dreadful, not helped by planning preventing expansion of sewage farms yet increased housing overloading the ones we have. Easily fixed, actually, but to do so would be locally unpopular.
Just like incinerators …..
The Lake Balkhash suffers by a political conflict between Kazakhstan and China that prevents cooperation on protection of the lake.
Some lakes of the world will be affected by changes in weather patterns because of climate change. Small changes in temperature can lead to huge changes in weather dynamics. Recently northern Italy was an example with f.e. Lake Garda with low water level. One consequence of climate change is that depressions and anticyclones move slower. They stay longer on the same place and cause dry or wet weather to last for longer time than we experienced during the 20th century.
If you follow the Baikal Rift Zone it sort of heads in the direction of Balkhash, which is a peculair shape. It may be unrelated though
Picture might be too big, direct from HVO.
https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/styles/full_width/public/media/images/20240903_20240915 1.png?itok=D28-p0Ai
Shows the ongoing intrusion and also the strong quake that actually moved the outer ring fault, like it was lifted up. Thatvis very interesting actually, showing there is magma under pressure this far south.
I dont think this intrusion will erupt, if it does it will be minor now like in June, but I think in a few weeks to months time another could happen in the same place.
It is curious that the summit tiltmeter is still dropping strongly though, the dike seems to have stopped growing but there is magma still flowing in, which eventually only has one outcome.
The fact that there have been 4 intrusions in 3 different fissure swarms in only about 3 months is very interesting, as well as the big intrusion back in January. Even though only a tiny amount of lava has surfaced this year there is clearly a lot going on. The middle ERZ seems to be filling up the same way as the south caldera area did up to July, but the GPS hasnt been updating now to confirm this.
There isnt anything on the webcams and it looks like it is raining so this is speculative. But this does look like possible harmonic tremor, I wouldnt be surprised if there might be some spatter cones and tiny flows. That was the case in 2007 and 1980 in the same area, the latter being missed because of rain.
Father days flow was fun in 2007 cute blue small pahoehoe flows encasing tree ferns uprift of Puu Oo
HVO has put out an update actually that they think an eruption could have happened just like that, althpugh there isnt an outright confirmation. It is raining still but the tremor I talked about seems to have been just that.
I wouldnt be surprised if steaming cracks with some tiny flows are discovered near Kanenuiohamo and Mauna Ulu in the coming days. I also wouldnt be surprised if more such eruptions like that do happen in the coming day or two, while magma is still draining out it is always a possibility and a likely one now.
The movement of GPS stations indicate that the west wing of Pu’u O’o shield is getting peak of magmatic inflow. Maybe next eruption is somewhere between Napau and Pu’u O’o.
Today is one year after the last significant eruption (summit eruption). Between Mauna Ulu and Pu’u O’o there were three years without an eruption: 1976,1978 and 1981. Added to this the eruptions 1979 and 1980 were minor, only 1 resp. 2 days.
Its soon winter and my brain is not looking foreward to this crap, it really does not matter if the Nordic winters are typicaly very mild compared to the colder Canadian and Russian winters, because since we are further north than most other cold cities, winters and poor weather lasts longer here than in Toronto. Our Atlantic humidity also means cloudy weather for months, while siberia is dry and sunny
I woud like to have Scandinavia over the Equator .. the new Scandiapore : )
The next Iceland eruption should be perhaps in late october, early november
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMrK4_3aoU0
Fun video the worlds most northen and sourthen tropical freezes and snowfalls in the tropics at sealevel, its really stunning how far south a Canadian arctic continental polar air mass can flow, Mexico have had snowfall on ground at sealevel in Tamaulipas at latitude 22 so similar latitude as Oahu Hawaii. Souch canadian freezes are leathal to many tropical lifeforms and is defenetivly why they have not spread further up. I myself woud not really want to visit a tropical locale in winter and wake up with a snowfalll on the ground in morning, thats saied this is only with theit uique geolographic locale with Canada above them and woud be a very rare event
https://www.severe-weather.eu/long-range-2/new-polar-vortex-emerging-forecast-winter-2024-2025-cooling-weather-impact-united-states-canada-europe-fa/
A weak wavy polar vortex is forecasted this winter that coud allow arctic air to flow again into tropical mexico and we gets some coconut palms covered in in white flurries 🙂
A Magnitude 6.5 strong earthquake W of Canada: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/magnitude-65-quake-strikes-off-british-columbia-canada-usgs-says-2024-09-15/
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000ne51/executive
Kilauea is now at warning level orange because of increased gas emissions. HVO states:
“Starting around 9 p.m. and continuing until 10 p.m. HST this evening, infrasound instruments detected a strong signal typical of gas or steam venting and seismometers in the middle East Rift Zone are recording weak, sustained low frequency tremor. However, HVO’s webcam network has not shown any evidence of eruptive activity and GOES satellite data do not show any thermal anomalies at this time. Currently, strong rainfall in the area is complicating interpretation. In 2007, an intrusion in this area erupted a very small pad of lava approximately the size of half a football field, so it is possible a similarly small eruption could take place without detection in these conditions. “
Its meant to rain for the next two days so the eruption might be missed. I think it actually did erupt already but very small and not enough to glow through the rain. Only the webcam on the west side of Pu’u O’o has a good view of the likely eruption location and from about 8 km away, its still pretty far away.
The summit tilt is still dropping with no sign of letting up, while quakes have died down. That might mean the dike is very close to the surface, theres a good chance it erupts before dawn. I thought it would be very fast to start or never happen but maybe that procedure only applies to summit eruptions and rift eruptions can have longer buildup.
Are you sure? The KO cam (east flank of Manaulu) is unusually bright for 3 am…
They have also released this InSar thing…
The M4.3 quake seems to have been from approximately 10 cm subsidence along the southern part of the (old and buried) Powers Caldera rim.
Is it subsidence or uplift?
Subsidence. Start outside the fringes and move towards the center. Colors go through the gradient from red to blue, which is away from the satellite.
Now there is less glow but still bright. Eruption, maybe?
Here’s the time-lapse (one image per hour): https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/kocam-live-image-upper-east-rift-zone-maunaulu
I’m at a loss, if there’s an eruption ongoing, it has to be right below the camera.
I initially thought it was pointed along the rift zone (it’s not), so either this might still be an eruption or someone flashing lights towards the camera.
Either way, we’ll have to wait for daylight see the results…
Okay, now I’ve realized something… the KO cam (showing incredible brightness) is pointing NW towards the upper east Rift, while MU cam is pointing towards the NE. So, if there is indeed an eruption happening at the moment, it is on the upper east Rift zone, or at least close to Mauna Ulu…
Could the brightness be the moon? Not sure where the camera is pointing.
KO cam points northwest, both it and MU cam are on the northeast flank of Mauna Ulu.
Pu’u O’o tilt: First earthquake, then intrusion?
Last 24 hours images on Pu’u O’o west flank: https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/last-24-hours-live-panorama-pu-u-west-flank-pwcam
https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2024-09-earth-million-years.amp
Guess the Earth might’ve had a ring system about 466 million years ago, due to an asteroid broken apart by Earth’s Roche limit. They went as far as to say it might’ve caused an icehouse event.
https://www.usgs.gov/media/webcams/mucam-mauna-ulu-cam
Mauna Ulu looking east towards Kanenuiohamo (the obvious hill) and Makaopuhi crater next to it. This is the area of importance. It is probably hard for lava to erupt this high up because Mauna Ulu is so tall, and Halemaumau is much lower than it was 50 years ago still.
https://www.usgs.gov/media/webcams/pwcam-puu-oo-west-flank-puu-oo
From Pu’u O’o looking west. The obvious hill is Kanenuiohamo but from the other side. Well obvious when it isnt in clouds. The quakes were strongest near here and it is lower down, and this is also where the tremor was. There also actually is an obvious new fumarolic source, something happened last night, but until HVO go there to look, or it erupts without doubt, its still a bit of a mystery.
The summit tilt is still dropping unabated though, this event isnt over yet at all. March 2011 eruption east of Napau was 4 days, the February 1969 eruption exactly where the ongoing intrusion is, lasted 5 days. Its only been 1 day yet.
They havent put up pictures yet but HVO seems to have confirmed a fissure did open, they added it to their live update map. Its just west of Napau crater and probably where that fumarole I pointed out on tbe west Pu’u O’o cam is. Will be interesting if it is an actual lava vent or just a gas vent.
Eruption confirmed
HVO posted a few pictures as well. Really small eruption…
https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/lava-flow-erupted-west-napau-crater-middle-east-rift-zone-kilauea-observed-september
Yes, it looks like the fumarole is a new eruption. It has jumped into the Napau swarm, it can potentially extend way downrift from there, although it doesn’t look like it’s growing sideways anymore.
Yes its similar to the eruption in 1969, which also kind of moved south towards Napau near the end.
I think it could erupt again, the summit is still deflating just as fast as before, the eruption now could have just been mostly gas with some lava and the rest will surface soon. Although that would be pretty strange as a sequence for a small eruption.
The eruption has resumed, still seems small unless I happened to catch it at the very start.
It is ectremely bright though, I thought it was the moon first but then glow was visible behind the hill at MU cam too. Even if it is still small the fountains seem to be intense, probably very gas rich.
There’s no confirmation from USGS of a resumed eruption. The bright spot appeared when the camera switched to night mode. Could it be that it’s just overexposed infrared from the hot gasses? In the next update the glow is gone, but that could be due to poor visibility.
There is actually
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/kilauea-volcanic-activity-notice-middle-east-rift-zone-eruption-resumes
It is bad weather, the first eruption wasnt ever visible at all through it.
Ah, sorry about that! How odd. I refreshed all updates and bulletins to check for confirmation. Well, well… It will be interesting to see how this develops.
Its not on their updates log, I missed it at first too. It is in the newsfeed on the main page.
I have seen some stuff about it ending again at about 8 local but that was just anecdotal on Hawaii Tracker, I dont think HVO or USGS has said anything and the webcams have been in clouds since about when I posted them in the below comment… 🙂
Tomorrow is meant to be less cloudy after about 8am, in about 9 hours. I dont really expect it to still be going from before, but its also not unlikely that more vents have opened unobserved too, and maybe not all in the same area. Really, until the tiltmeter at the summit stops showing deflation eruptions will be ongoing, and could get bigger.
I am wondering about the eruption mechanism. It was more of an overflow than an eruption! There are still a few earthquakes in the region. Perhaps what we saw was magma breaking open a new path through the low-stress rift zone.
The magma inflow is accommodated by the longer path. But if the rock breaking fails, the magma inflow has nowhere to go, and the backlash pushes the magma level to the surface – just about. When the rock breaks and the path lengthens again, the pressure lessens and the magma levels goes down a bit. Perhaps something like that happened twice.
Did the eruption erupt an old/cold/viscious magma? The eruption site predominantly releases steam and shows only small fresh black lava deposits:
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/photo-and-video-chronology-september-16-2024-brief-kilauea-eruption-middle
I doubt it, not this high up on the ERZ. The dike started in either the magma chamber at Makaopuhi, same as Pu’u O’o, or it started in the Alae fissure swarm, like Mauna Ulu. Both of these areas have recorded numbers suggeating temperatures of close to or even over 1200 C at eruption. That doesnt mean this was but I would be surprised if this is anything other than primitive magma of similar composition and temperature to the summit stuff from recent years. The 2007 lava erupted not far away from this vent had higher MgO and was a bit hotter than lava at Pu’u O’o, and this was before the summit lake formed and MgO became homogeneous through the magma system.
Based on historical data you need eruptions to be east of Pu’u O’o typically for magma to be noticeably evolved to the point it behaves differently. Or going southwest, at Kamakaia, which is equally far from the summit as Pu’u O’o.
From Pu’u O’o west flank looking west uprift. Kanenuiohamo at skyline. Very bright with the infrared cam.
And from Mauna Ulu east flank looking east downrift. Kanenuiohamo at skyline, with eruption glow behind it.
Better watch the Big Island News Helicopter Video than wait for a good shot of the webcam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgGr34vhIPk
HVO update on the dwarf eruption, I hope the photos aren’t too big for this post:
I took the photos from: https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/photo-and-video-chronology-september-16-2024-brief-kilauea-eruption-middle
All in all the location is between Makaopuhi and Napau Craters. March 1965 was a 10 days eruption in this area.
With less than 20000 cubic meters this looks more like a small leak than a proper eruption. I think Albert may be on to something regarding the eruption mechanism. It will be interesting to see how the resumed eruption did. Maybe something similar is to expect.
Big Island News has published on Youtube this helicopter video:
?fileTS=1726435224
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgGr34vhIPk
It is predominantly a hydrothermal/Fumaroles foggy eruption with minor participation of magma. Maybe it’s old magma of older events that’s too lazy to run and do much, as we saw during the first LERZ fissures 2018.
But the general area is the “hotspot” of inflation on KERZ GPS station.
Interesting that neither Makaopahi nor Napau Crater are involved, although there is lower altitude. Do eruptions in this intermediate part belong to an own type of eruptions?
I think fissures only cut through pit craters if they start from that source. Only eruption I know of that was a single dike cutting both craters was in 1965, which focussed on a vent in Makaopuhi. That was a massive lava flood curtain of fire eruption though, not a tiny vent on a big intrusion. I think that probably all of the middle ERZ dikes probably both Makaopuhi and Napau though, including Pu’u O’o.
This dike erupted between Makaopuhi and Napau but it started up near Mauna Ulu, not going under Makaopuhi exactly. It also looks like it stopped not much more east than the vents, not going east of Napau.
Maybe this is kind of an “introductory” eruption like the early 1960s MERZ eruptions that often were minor, short or purely fissure eruptions. The blue March 1965 lava flow in the map above shows a historical example in the region of the current fissure eruption.
1965 the eruption lasted for ten days. That was more than during the four years before. 1961-1965 most eruptions on MERZ only lasted for 1-2 days. The current eruption looks more like 1965. Maybe the onset of this MERZ series is different to the 1960s. But the “introductary” eruptions probably last a while before more severe/serious eruptions follow.
The ERZ is about a mile wide, the location of a particular dike/fissure is somewhat less than random but this time it missed both pit craters. August 1968 was notable in that it was the farthest north intrusion that had been recorded (but didn’t erupt much).
If the 2018 fissures had followed the 1955 path–about 200 meters to the south–there would have been a massive lava flow field on the south coast and Leilani and Kapoho would have been spared.
I think that we now are in an early / introductary stage of MERZ activity. 1968 was seven years after the first eruption 1961. The first eruptions since 1961 were fissure eruptions that lastes 1-2 days. March 1965 was in the same area as now, but with a bit more extensive activity (lava lake eruption in Makaopuhi): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248784781_March_1965_Eruption_of_Kilauea_Volcano_and_the_Formation_of_Makaopuhi_Lava_Lake
Maybe, but after the big quake if 1975 there wasnt really a build up, there was the 1977 eruption that was evolved rift magma, then some intrusions in the upper ERZ and the SWRZ, with an eruption in 1979. But there was no big rifting in the middle ERZ like in the 1960s, Pu’u O’o was pretty well full power from the start. This isnt quite that but it has more in common with Pu’u O’o than most of the 1960s eruptions, namely the fact it is persistent and hasnt stopped after a day. I still think it will stop before it gets to any impressive size but the fact it is still going when the summit has stopped deflating rapidly is not an insignificant detail, definitely worth watching if the vent stays open and glowing after it stops erupting.
At least if this is Pu’u O’o 2 then it wont be dangerous, it is too far from the lower ERZ. I guess Napau might be about to graduate from a crater to a hill. But its only day 4, Pu’u O’o took 6 months to stabilize 🙂
The latest image on the PW cam shows an active eruption at 5 AM Hawaii time.
Either I am seeing the moon or an eruption, the KO camera has a bright spot there…
(STCD; live; 12-hour; Between Pu’uo’o and Napau craters)
(NPOC; live; 12-hour; At NW summit of Pu’uo’o)
(KNHD; live; 12-hour; North of old shield of Kanenuiohamo)
A harmonic tremor appeared and is increasing…
Finally and fortunately PW webcam shows the eruption:
It looks like the fissure went into Napau, and has resurfaced some of it, maybe all of it.
The eruption is too weak to be visible at night. Too much steam and too little lava. Maybe more Strombolian than typical Hawaiian eruptions.
HVO: Kīlauea volcano is erupting near Makaopuhi Crater in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. Eruptive activity increased this morning between 4:00 and 5:00 AM HST based on monitoring data from seismicity, infrasound, webcam imagery, and GOES satellite thermal imagery. There is no immediate threat to life or infrastructure. The Volcano Alert Level/Aviation Color Code remains at WATCH/ORANGE. All current and recent activity is within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. No changes have been detected in the lower East Rift Zone or Southwest Rift Zone.
Based on the cameras, there seems to a new fissure a bit east of the older fissures.
Seeing these fumes from the east flank of Maunaulu… related to the fissures currently erupting?
To compare the onset of the first MERZ eruption 1961 with yesterday/today:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/0474d/report.pdf (Beginning page D19 is the description of the eruption)
“At 121136m on September 21 a swarm of large, shallow
earthquakes accompanied by strong harmonic tremor
began to emanate from the vicinity of N apau Crater on
the east rift zone of Kilauea Volcano 7 miles from
the summit. The earthquakes and tremor continued
through the afternoon; about 30 quakes were reported
felt by residents of the National Park and of the small
community of Volcano, 2 miles east of the park.
…
The permanent short-base tiltmeter at Uweka
huna indicated that in the 24 hours from 09hQQm on
September 21 to 09hQQm on September 22 the summit lost
more than one-half the inflation it had undergone dur
ing the previous 14 months. … It was evident that magma was moving rapidly
from its reservoir beneath the summit of Kilauea, but
the time or location of ·a possible outbreak could not be
determined.”
UWE has like this had a lot of deflation last two days. But the eruption – so far – is minor compared to 1961. What both eruptions have in common, is the “Fissure with more steam than lava”. Maybe we currently have a very short (480m long) version of the 1961 21km long fissure eruption. But the location may indicate the area, where future severe/big eruption are going to appear. 1961 the 21km long fissure cut through later Pu’u O’o area. It was like a first sign that more eruptions were going to follow there later.
Eruption in Napau a bit ago
https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/styles/medium/public/media/images/20240917_Ellis_ERZ_2.jpeg
https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/styles/full_width/public/media/images/20240917_Ellis_ERZ_2.jpeg
Strange. Tried to post it as image… did not work.
WordPress likes .jpg but not .jpeg
Go figure.
A tip: if you see a Twitter/X graphic you can edit the url to strip off the back bit and add “.jpg”, and it will post successfully.
Nice, other than Halema’uma’u, Napau has probably seen more fissure eruptions than anywhere else in the volcano historically.
Is the eruption going to increase and to move totally to Napau if it has begun to erupt there?
I think it will totally move to Napau, but the increase depends whether the pressure is high enough. The ERZ near Napau is as deflated as it was after the 2018 eruption, deflation, likely due to deep rift spreading taking up magma, has undone the 2019-2021 inflation. So I have doubts this will be a big eruption. The summit has recovered entirely, but the Mauna Ulu area-MERZ is just starting to do so.
I hope the GPS update soon, they haven’t seen any new data for over a month.
Okay, here is an updated plot from Makaopuhi:
http://geodesy.unr.edu/NGLStationPages/stations/MMAU.sta
The Napau-Makaopuhi area clearly remains the focus of magma supply and is rapidly inflating but has a long way to go.
The KERZ GPS stations was the epicenter of inflation on MERZ. It is very close to Napau.
They added some of the newer lava flows to the maps, but based on the images, I feel like they’ll be adding more…
We now have a static camera view of the Kilauea eruption.
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/s2cam-view-napau-crater-east-rift-zone-kilauea-view-southwest
Oh, it indeed looks like a Napau crater eruption (if the perspective doesn’t confuse me).
Indeed:
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/photo-and-video-chronology-september-17-2024-kilauea-middle-east-rift-zone
The tilt at UWE has stopped going down, so the eruption might end soon. But it might also just keep going at a couple m3/s.
But if it starts getting paroxysmal or it stops and starts reinflating but the vent doesnt shut off, things could get very interesting.
It looks like it did actually stop, but has restarted again. Really weird sequence, I think this actually might prove to be more important after all.
That’s also what the tremor looks like. It went down to background levels but is now picking up again.
The eruption has migrated to Napau. It has finally become a Napau eruption.
“Rift Zone Observations: This morning, several lava fountains approximately ten meters (yards) high are generating lava flows on the floor of Nāpau Crater. This fissure system opened between 4:00 and 5:00 AM HST this morning as detected by NOAA GOES satellite thermal data and USGS Hawaiian Volcano Obseratory (HVO) infrasound, seismic, and camera instruments. Currently, the fissure system in Nāpau is about 0.5 km long (.3 mi) and cuts east-west across the northern crater floor. The fissure appears to have opened just west of Nāpau early this morning and propagated eastward as the eruption progressed. As of 8:30 AM, approximately 25-30% of Nāpau Crater floor has been covered by lava, which is confined to the crater.”
https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/volcano-updates
https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/styles/full_width/public/media/images/20240917_Ellis_ERZ_2.jpeg?itok=Sc8ihI7L
The eruption has indeed become a Napau eruption … perhaps later with a lava lake?
The eruption at Napau is already larger than the January 1983 short eruption: https://volcano.si.edu/showreport.cfm?doi=10.5479/si.GVP.SEAN198301-332010
The last eruption in Napau was 1997 as a side event of Pu’u O’o: https://volcano.si.edu/showreport.cfm?doi=10.5479/si.GVP.BGVN199701-332010
The present eruption is probably already larger than 1997:
New Big Island News Video: https://youtu.be/Pg8p8-sm5fI
From the HVO daily update:
“This pattern suggests that only the deeper southern summit magma body is now supplying magma to the middle East Rift Zone.”
The eruption is slowing down a bit but it also could be coming down from a high, the supply rate now is probably about 0.2 km3/year or a bit over 6 m3/s, but not all of that is going to the eruption.
I think this eruption will probably stop soon but the fact even though the ERZ is deflated compared to before 2018 and has erupted already, and the speed of uplift, I dont think larger eruptions can be ruled out, although it could still be a few years to get something that can be sustained indefinitely.
It also seems unlikely now that Halemaumau will erupt significantly for a long time, Napau is 150 meters lower than the floor of Halemaumau, and clearly magma can now get at least this far east pretty easily.
As I say this I think it has stopped again. But SDH is still falling fast, so it will probably restart again at some point while that is still the case.
Either that or the deep source of Makaopuhi and Napau is being refilled instead of erupting.
The Canaries appear to be singing.
Scientists closely monitor a volcano in Spain after recording 39 mini earthquakes in a week (17 Sep)
Yes, the Canaries had above-average activity last weeks. Is it anything significant or is the location going to sleep again soon? Can the Canaries do a submarine eruption on this location between Tenerife and Gran Canaria?
Looks like the vents west of Napau crater have reactivated. There’s lava cascading into Napau crater.
Yes its going really strong now, its feeding from the major magma chamber of Kilauea which is filled to pre-2018 level now.
Its really starting to look like this might turn into something a lot more significant than it looked before, maybe not another Pu’u O’o but if it was only a brief event it would have died off when UWE stopped, yet here we are.
https://i.imgur.com/0hp7k8a.jpeg
Yeah, looks like some of the vents reactivated…
And on some of the seismograph, tremor has increased.
Looks like some fountains are becoming visible on the webcam.
There might’ve been some new, albeit small, fissures west of the ones active…
Only if there was a non-static live feed there like we had in Iceland…
Definitely visible now.
Theres glowing at the far left of the image, I wonder if the lava in the crater started a fire.
Yes, looks like liquid iron at night!
If this eruption does become long lived then we will be getting a lot of lava falls 🙂 Napau will be filled in obviously but a long eruption could also flow into Makaopuhi.
The fact this has gotten so strong way after the eruption started, and that a new tiny vent opened west of the existing vents last night, it tells me this is really far from over. Even if not a Pu’u O’o type eruption I think that more vents just like the ongoing fountain could open. This one flowed into Napau but if the westernmost fissure does the same increase it will go south down the pali, possibly quite rapidly although there are unfortunately no direct views that way.
The eruption has (in my view) not decided yet what it is going to become. Will it be a mainly fissure eruption or will it do a stationary lava lake anywhere? The eruption looks as stable as if it’s going to last longer than a few days … but I don’t expect more than one month.
HVO shows on its first page the current map with new lava fissures and flows: https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo
The first initial fissure has reopened, and we have to wait to see, if it stays there or moves entirely to Napau.
Before a lava lake can form here an open conduit needs to form first, which will likely begin with a fireworks show of tall fountains 🙂
I think there needs to be a proper distinction of a lava lake from a ponded lava flow or rootless lake. The latter can be formed in any random depression, and Halemaumau is a perfect example. A true lava lake is an actual vent and has circulation. I think Halemaumau might have also been that too in 2022, so they arent really mutually exclusive. But getting a true lava lake at an ERZ vent would be basically a sign that says this will last for years, like its neighbor a few km east.
I dont think this will last for years, but probably long enough to evolve into a significant structure. maybe the 1955 or 1977 eruptions are good comparisons, both were fissure eruptions but were not really curtains of fire type and lasted for a while. Most notably, both ended up making long flows that extended far beyond the ERZ down the south flank, and both of them were fed ultimately by the deeper magma system, even if most of the erupted lava of both eruptions was evolved rift magma there was clearly a connection, and that seems to be true right now too and maybe wasnt in the 1960s.
The eruption in March 2011 also is maybe a good comparison, and it did make one longer flow too, although the eruption now is already longer and probably more voluminous than that was. But the 2011 eruption did share the characteristic that it had several stages of fissures opening and closing.
There also is that big cone that is just south of the active fissure, its crater visible pretty clearly in the map. I dont know if it has a name but the Napau trail goes right next to it so it could. But it is clearly from an eruption that was neither short lived or small, fountains would need to be sustained over 100 meters for at least a few days or a lower fountain for much longer.
I dont know how old it is, the only map from about 30 years ago considers it very old predating the lava of Kanenuiohamo, but it looks visually pretty young both in the topo map and in it being pretty treeless compared to the surroundings and with thermal ground around it. On my map I included it with the eruption of the extensive flood lava pahoehoe that is under where Pu’u O’o is now, maybe erupted in 1778 or 1779. The lava underneath the 2011 flow on the east side of Napau is late 18th century age, so presumably Napau was filled to overflowin in that eruption and then drained at some point, probably during that eruption. But that is only on the basis that the vents of that eruption in old photos trend into that cone, and that isnt necessarily very reliable. But it is basically all buried now so all we have to go on is photos from 1954 and a map made in 1996…
In any case, however old that cone is, it is some proof that not all eruptions here are fissure eruptions. I think this eruption now could create something similar, although it isnt there yet.
The current fissure lies around 500m NW of the 1983 and 1997 fissure. It is on a different line. How far can it expand towards east and west? 1840 the fissures opened even further towards the NW.
1840 was a high summit lake level, so probably not. And the quakes stopped basically at the end of the existing fissure so it probably wont go further east without us noticing.
I think this dike is mature and finished, but if the area is inflating then the next eruption could be from a more easterly fissure.
Very interesting reflection on the possibilities. All I can say this eruption is leading to something bigger(not huge)..
It might be worth keeping an eye on the Reykjanes ridge beyond Eldey. Possibly tge start of a swarm, but low quality on.lost quakes at the moment.
Chad a very interesting reflection on the possibilities. All I can say this eruption is leading to something bigger(not huge)..
Eruption has paused again, but SDH is still falling fast, it will probably fire up again in a few hours. Will be interesting where though, if it is in this same spot again or further west, or eastwards into Napau again.
Well, it restarted already 🙂 and seems to be in the same spot but the webcam hasnt updated to show the cascade yet.
It would be nice if HVO could set up a webcam with live video but the area is probably too remote. Maybe with Starlink it could be done though.