Stunning photograph of two fisherman on Taal Lake inside Taal Crater inside Bulkang Taal. Photograph taken by Michael Angelo Luna, Wikimedia Commons.
I am taking this opportunity to look at 5 volcanoes that at least I find interesting. I am doing this out of the perspective of the life-curve of an eruption. I find this perspective to be interesting, and I think that it is something that would be both entertaining and informative for our dear readers.
I have noticed that there are a few misconceptions constantly going around about volcanic eruptions that I would like to clear up, and these five volcanoes gives an ample opportunity to do so. Each of these volcanoes gives an opportunity each to clear up one of these misconceptions.
There is though a general point I would like to make. For most volcanoes it is possible to, with a fair degree of accuracy, forecast an upcoming eruption. Mind you, I am not talking about predicting an eruption. Predictions are made in teacups filled with fish-entrails, or by hysteric YouTubers filled with the Dutch Incense.
A forecast is made upon verifiable data, scientific theory-building, historic data of previous eruptions, modelling of data, and so on. It is in other words the volcanic equivalent of weather forecasts and is nowadays done with a fair degree of accuracy. For those who are familiar with my writing, they know that this is something that I love to do for volcanoes I know well, and with a fair degree of accuracy.
The reason behind my interest is that back in 2010 when I said that it was possible the dogma was that it was not possible. So, I got a fair bit of slack for me stating that it was possible. The interesting part was that Professor Páll Einarsson had already stumped the world with his insanely accurate forecast of the 2000 eruption of Hekla where he missed the time of the eruption with a single minute.
What I have been interested in lately is the possibility of forecasting the end of an eruption. To my surprise I found that I got even more slack for that assertion then I got back in 2010.
So, there will be a bit about forecasting in this article, it will though not be a complete article about it. I will get around to doing that one of these days, I hope.
Just a few final words about my interest in eruption forecasting. Well, if you plan to build billions worth of geothermal plants it is incredibly wise to know where and when a future eruption will occur. Simple as that, and admittedly a tad of professional pride also.
Now, time for me to stop being an incredible windbag and get into the volcanoes at hand.
Death of Fagradalsfjall
How we remember Fagradalsfjall. Image captured from the live feed.
As an eruption begin it heralds the end of itself. Well, at least for normal and sensible volcanoes that are not Stromboli.
I like to look at eruptions like the profile of a volcano. At the left side you have the intruding magma and the steady increase of earthquakes, onset of degassing, inflation evident on GPS-stations, possibly a few phreatic blasts, and so on. I used to find this part of the eruptive curve to be the most interesting.
At the peak you have the onset of the eruption. After that you look at how much magma is incoming, and how much is moving out, normally there is a deficit in the incoming magma versus the outgoing magma.
If there is a net deficit of incoming magma you will see deflation on the GPS-station, and if this is the case the earthquakes are associated with shrinkage of the magma reservoir, and not a sign of new magma arriving. Many people make the mistake of believing that renewed earthquake activity is a sign of magma arrival and believe that the eruption will continue for a long time, or even increase.
If incoming magma was the case for the earthquakes, it would quickly show up on the GPS-station(s). If it does not and deflation continues the earthquakes are the sad gong-blows of the impending end of the eruption.
During the first 30 something days of the eruption at Fagradalsfjall the GPS-signal kept surprisingly stable and did not show any deflation. The roughly 10 cubic meters per second that was incoming from the mantle was ejected at the top of the vent(s).
Station just south of Fagradalsfjall, it is the one showing best what is happening at the previously erupting vents. Image from Icelandic Met Office.
This led to a forecast from the Icelandic authorities that the eruption would last for years. I did not have any large opinion against this assumption of a steady state eruption more than that it might be a bit premature to state that. But, at that point the forecast was underpinned by available data.
In all honesty, at that point I agreed with them. I might argue with other volcanologists, but I never argue with data. Data always win those arguments.
Later as the rate of the eruption increased the data started to show a slow deflationary trend. This perked my interest, and I followed this slow decline for a while. To my surprise the “years of eruption”-meme took on a life of its own, despite what the data was evidencing.
And since I get an almost perverse joy out of being an iconoclast against the powers that be when I find that they are disregarding the available data, I sat down and went through oodles of data and made a forecast based on what was evident from the data at hand.
I published this forecast over on our Facebook group during the summer. In it I stated that the eruption would end within 90 days, with the most likely time for cessation would be at the end of the time period.
This exploded out over the internet and took on a life of its own. Even Páll declared that I was ejecting lactose out of my nostrils, well he used different words, but the sentiment was there. I just reiterated the facts, stated that he would owe me a beer soon, and sat down to follow the data as it came into being before our eyes.
So, what will happen at Fagradalsfjall in the future? It seems like a good question, after all there are still a lot of earthquakes there.
The possible future of Fagradalsfjall
Snowdusted Keilir in the distance. Photograph by Soffía Snaeland, Wikimedia Commons.
Caveat: Currently the data available is unclear and any changes are minor, so this is based on less data than I would like to have at hand.
The question here is if there will be a new eruption at a different location, if there will be a new eruption at the old vents, or if this was it for the foreseeable future.
This is a tricky question. Yes, the eruption has ended, we can all agree on that. But the data is not completely excluding the possibility for a new eruption in the future.
Often after an eruption the GPS-trajectories will after a while start to show a slow deflation-curve. This is in turn caused by cooling of the residual magma. In this case so far, the trajectories are remarkably steady, or even showing that a very small inflation is occurring.
Here it is good to remember that what set off the eruption was magma pooling below Reykjanes, that in turn set off pent up tectonic strain. First the magma caused a fault to break open under Thorbjörn, but the pent-up strain was not great enough to form a dyke all the way up to a surface vent.
As the strain there was spent the magma instead released the pent-up strain at Fagradalsfjall, and a rapidly dilating dyke formed as magma rushed into the voids created by the earthquake activity. The magma entered from below just south of Keilir and travelled laterally over to Fagradalsfjall where it erupted.
By now that strain is well and truly spent, and a new rifting fissure eruption there is about 800 years away, which seems to be the time needed for that much strain to accumulate.
The station that is showing Keilir best. Image from Icelandic Met Office.
The strain is fully released at the site of the eruption, but there might be a bit of strain remaining over at Keilir.
That just leaves magmatic influx as a potential driver for a new eruption. And there seems to a be a small amount of that occurring. There is though far less magma entering into the system, and the system had a magma deficit as the eruption stopped.
So, a new eruption is right now a bit away if it will happen (unless inflation picks up again). Right now, the data is hanging in the balance. Over at Keilir there are earthquakes slowly moving upwards, this might indicate a formative new conduit there.
Over at the original vents the earthquakes more seems to substantiate conduits failing as magma is withdrawn. The GPS trajectories is simultaneously indicating minor dyke dilation just SSW of Keilir, and at the same there is slow compression of the dyke over at Fagradalsfjall itself.
Currently I see a very low probability of a new eruption near the previous vents, and a low but existing risk of a new eruption 1km SSW of Keilir.
Most likely though the next eruption from this volcanic system will be at least 800 years into the future.
Regardless, I am going to Iceland late spring or early summer to collect my beer from Páll, and it would be nice if there was a volcanic bonfire there to celebrate the occasion. It is though unlikely that the bonfire will be from this volcano.
The Dying of La Palma
Image of the ash covered cemetary of La Palma. Photograph borrowed from Daily Sabah under fair usage.
The Canaries and La Palma is thankfully less complicated since there are no pesky effects of the Mid Atlantic Rift to contend with. Here it is a simple case of magma going up into the island, forming a new dyke, and then erupting.
And as the lava rushes out it is happily deflating spelling out the upcoming end of the eruption. The eruption has come with some unexpected turns and twists that are well worth mentioning.
First surprising thing is the size of the eruption. If this had been in Iceland it would have been a small eruption and would most likely have ended up as a footnote eruption. But, for an eruption at La Palma it is quite sizeable, in fact it is by now the largest eruption there witnessed by humans. Turns out that size is relative after all, at least if the receiving end is comparatively small.
It is a part of the human psyche to have a good thing last for a very long time, and it is also a part of the human psyche to have our good things ever getting “better” and larger. This is especially true for volcano afficionados, both for laymen and professionals. Deep down in our grubby little hearts we wish for our favourite eruption to increase over time until the point of Greenland flying towards the moon. Yes, I am indeed implying a fair bit of addiction here, I have dubbed us “volcanoholics” for a good reason.
Problem is just that nature seems to disagree with our wishes. I am equally affected, so this is not me pointing any fingers. But I am well aware that what the data tells, is what will happen.
The amazingly colourful impending death of an eruption. Image from IGN.
I am mentioning this since many people tend to misinterpret the data at hand, or disregard at least parts of the data, in the hope of a bigger upcoming volcanic fix. Instead, remember that as one eruption wanes, nature is busy preparing the next eruption some place else. Then the fun begins anew and fresh, something that I find pleasing.
So, what is the data telling us? Simple, the larger than average eruption at La Palma will end soon. There is clear deflation visible, the northern end is rebounding upwards again after having been pushed down by the initial inflation, the dyke is narrowing. Death is nigh to the delight of the residents of La Palma.
Another unusual thing is that this eruption have been unusually explosive for being a basalt eruption. We have all seen the pictures of houses totally enveloped in ash and lapilli. There is still an ongoing discussion about what has brought this about.
Some state that it is due to large amounts of volcanic gas. Yes, there has been quite a bit of gas, but less than what comes out during an Icelandic eruption. Others have put forth that there is a high content of water in the magma, either from deep down or from aquifers in the conduits. I have so far not seen any data substantiating this.
The third option is that the eruption is partially drawing on remobilized magma from older dykes, that in turn is containing volatiles like water and volcanic gases. This idea would imply that there would a part of the lava that is more evolved than the basalt from depth.
Until we have data from samples taken, we will not know with any certainty what is going on, but if I was pinched, I would favour the volcanic dregs out of dyke’s theory. After all, that is happening quite often at other basalt volcanoes when they are unusually explosive.
So, the big question. When will the fun end? It is already showing signs of sputtering, so I would say anything from today and 90 days forward. Currently I favour a shorter option judging by the data from the GPS-stations. A few days to a few weeks are most likely.
Return to Sleep
It is hard to grasp the size of Askja. Photograph by Wolfgang Beyer, Wikimedia Commons.
A while ago the collective eyebrows of every volcanologist moved in the direction of Venus as we followed the onset of rapid inflation at Askja. The reason for this is that new eruption cycles of Askja comes about 150-230 years apart and can be quite a handful.
Askja unlike the previous volcanoes is one of those big ones that can wake up and do a number of different styles of eruptions, some styles come with a definite flair for the dramatic.
Since the last ice age, it has done everything from small eruptions that are best described as cute and cuddly, via multi-cubic kilometre rifting fissure eruption, and large caldera-forming VEI-5 eruptions.
What we do know is that the first eruption of a new cycle tends to be bigger than the following eruptions. This is due to the initial one being driven by fresh and hot magma arriving up from the mantleplume, and the subsequent ones are driven by leftovers from the big show.
There is also quite a bit of old evolved magma in a fairly sizeable magma reservoir, and if that is remobilized by the hot magma this can cause a powerful explosive eruption. This last happened in 1875 when hot basalt remobilized rhyolite in a way that is not conducive to the life expectancy of volcano tourists.
Unlike during the runup to Fagradalsfjall I started to pack my things, about 200kg worth of equipment, but as I sat down and waited for the signs that would indicate that an eruption was a week away or so, things became boring as the uplift started to tail off.
OLAC-station at Askja. Image by the Icelandic Met Office.
Wondering what had happened I took a deeper look at the GPS-trajectories and discovered that we all had been fooled a bit. Yes, the trajectory at the Ólafsgígar GPS (OLAC) had been substantial with 12mm south, 20mm west and a whopping 160 millimetres upwards in 2.5 months, there was not much happening at other nearby stations.
Yes, the other stations showed a bit of movement, but not nearly as much as at OLAC. This means that the intrusion was localized and small for such a large volcano.
There was also the problem that the rate of inflation rather unceremoniously declined and reverted into deflation. So, for the time being there will be no pictures of a swearing Carl carrying 200 kg of equipment up the side of a volcano.
In the end I know that this was the first sign of the beginning of an eruptive cycle at Askja, there will be more intrusions, more inflation events, and one of those will be the real deal. We also known that we are nearing the peak of the mantleplume cycle, and that will set off Askja in the end. So, I am keeping the gear at the ready. I give it a decade or so at most.
The snails trace of Grimsvötn
The Cumulative Seismic Moment Chart. Icelandic Met Office.
If you wish for something large in Iceland Grimsvötn is by far the best bet currently. Hekla seems to be sleepy right now, and Katla seems to be saving its energy for something a tad larger down the line.
All the way since the larger than average 2011 eruption Grimsvötn has had a slow but steady increase in average numbers of monthly earthquakes and also the average size of the earthquakes as they occur.
The open waters of Grimsvötn. Photograph borrowed from Morgunbladid.
The eruption of Holuhraun in 2014 slowed down the proceedings a bit due to decrease of external pressure from Bardarbunga, but from 2017 and onwards the increase has been slow and steady.
The same goes for the GPS-trajectory, it is showing slow and steady inflation and dilation of the magma reservoir as magma is entering at a steady pace from down below. There is also an increase in thermal energy output into the lake, so much so that it is showing open water during the summer near the last eruptive went over at the caldera wall.
By now both me and Albert have technically lost the bet on who could best forecast the upcoming eruption, but since Albert had a later date than me, I will still buy him a right nice pint when I can nail him to the chair in a pub again.
Even though it is moving along nicely towards the upcoming eruption it is starting to feel like it is doing so at a snail’s pace. But there is a clear snail’s trace left in the data, so I am happy to wait a little longer. Currently I would say April, but that could be wrong once again.
The Swansong of an Island
The phreatic detonation in the boiling lake at Crater Island in Taal Lake in Taal Caldera inside Bulkang Taal. Image from Phivolcs.
This part is something that I have hoped that I would never have to write, and I hope with all of my heart that I am wrong in this case.
The 234 square kilometre caldera of Bulkang Taal (Taal=Pure or True) would to most people not look like a volcano at all, instead it looks like a beautiful and peaceful lake with an island in the middle. If you look at the island you will find another lake, and that lake would definitely give things away since it is merrily boiling all the time.
Nobody who is reading this will have missed that Bulkang Taal, The True Volcano, have been active since 2020. The local authorities have at least twice raised the alert level to 3 on a 5-degree scale, and with good reasons.
There have been minor phreatic blasts in the lake as water have come into contact with fresh intruding magma, the gas flow has increased at times to levels where the capital of Manilla was inundated with hazardous vog, there have been widespread and substantial uplift and caldera extension.
And there have been numerous earthquake swarms, both of volcanic type earthquakes, and tectonic rock breaking types.
What is giving me reasons to be less than happy here is that the activity has been going on since March of 2019 and since then the activity and the data at hand has slowly increased in severity.
For a lack of better words, it has been like seeing a giant slowly wake up, put on the clothes, having coffee, and then going out in the garden starting to build up a mountain of gunpowder. The longer it is building up that metaphorical mountain of gunpowder, the worse it could be when the fuse is finally lit.
Long runups like this is generally not a good thing around volcanoes of this size and type. If it erupts fairly fast after onset the eruption will most often be manageable, but years of building to an eruption? Rarely a good sign.
Currently I would not be surprised if the eruption when it finally occurs will be in the range of the eruptions during the 18th century, or even as big as the 1754 eruption. As such they would be a disaster for the area in and around Bulkang Taal.
What could we expect from such an eruption? At least 1 meter of ash covering the downwind shores of Lake Taal and quite a bit of disruption to the economy of the Philippines.
A more unlikely scenario, but that is well within the capacity of Bulkang Taal, is a larger eruption. It is here prudent to remember that the entirety of the scenic lake has been created by a number of eruptions ranging from VEI-6 to VEI-7. The sad part is that the longer the runup-phase last, the greater the risk increases of something like this happening.
Currently the risk of something horrendous happening is perhaps 1 percent, but even that is an uncomfortable number indeed.
I do not like being restless volcano calderas like The Pure Volcano. Not at all.
CARL REHNBERG
Very good as usual and interesting reading.
There are two active volcanoes now in Kamtschtka, more or less empty concerning population, and there are a few in Middle and South America which as you might have pointed out might not have collected as much gunpowder as a giant in his backyard.
Would you say that Taal is the most dangerous volcano in the world right now, considering the lake in the lake, the proximity to the ocean, and the population around?
For La Palma I hope for an end this month so they can have a better Christmas.
I left out a fair few erupting, or nearly erupting volcanoes since I did not want to write a book, this one became insanely long as it is.
Also, some of the volcanoes would have taken a lot of time for me to read up on, and also, almost nobody in here seems to be talking about them.
And I left out Kilauea since it is not really doing anything interesting right now, and it will continue doing the lake for the foreseeable future (not that newsworthy), and Etna is doing Etna and there are literally millions of people writing about Etna.
I would not state that Bulkang Taal is the most dangerous volcano in the world. I have another candidate for that title. But, it is the volcano that is worrying me the most right now.
Taal coud become a nightmare of the ring – fault breaks .. you gets kilometers tall Etnean looking lava fountains .. and the whole arera haves To be evacuated
Althrough I finds Kilaūea the most intresting volcano on the planet 🙂
Etna may do a big drainout soon of its pent up magma chamber, something will be very bad IF the draining sends the dyke up under Catania : D .. a 1669 will happen one day again .. No doubt.. but hopefuly not now
I think Etna is getting a bit left out really, its most intense series of eruptions in decades maybe even centuries, and no one cares 🙁
Oh, I am inundated by Etna watchers… Etna photographers, Etna-everything. I guess that is why I have sort of lost the Etna taste.
A problem. Picture inflation.
Carl,
really. Everybody here is extremely interested in volcanoes and precisely all the volcanoes of the world. I have read what you wrote about Latin American volcanoes and the Maya and also the Maya article by Albert, very interesting. Lake Atitlàn, extremely interesting. Dangerous area too. The Nicaragua setting, thrilling.
You shouldn’t think that nobody is interested when there is just some “festive mood”. I myself am interested into the whole thing, volcanoes and what’s underneath and around them, archeology, history, tectonics, risks, and I think that all the aspects are brillantly served by VC which was the intention of VC said Prunelle (Henrik I believe).
You have the best crowd you can have here as interested broadly. All small Leonardos you know. Feel honoured for the work you are all doing. I’ve learned a whole lot here.
Sometimes there’s a concentration gap. Back then, in the hospital when we had done s.th. really difficult and demanding and there was no patient we talked about Alf. Honestly. About Alf.
I do not mind writing about out of the way volcanoes, I think there are a couple of hundred articles that I have written about those.
But here I had to make some sort of limitation on what to write about, this is after all an article that is 7 A4 pages long…
So, I limited myself to volcanoes that A: are interesting, and B: I felt that I had something to say about that has not been covered by everyone else lately. 🙂
I will though be happy to later cover Mount Offtrack and Volcán de Obvious 😉
Hello Carl,
Thank you for writing about Taal. I have the live cam as a background when I’m working. It has been nearly continuously steaming for at least a month, and the gas levels are ridiculous. 11,000 or 19,000 tons per day, ranging from about 5000 t0 25000.
Sometimes on the live cam you can see the volcano visibly degas: the air turns brown.
What does so much degassing mean, other than “my magma chamber is absolutely enormous”? Also Phivolcs now says the island is inflating since Aug 2021, whereas it was deflating before.
I guess the question I have is, how far below the surface is the magma?
Also, we would be very happy to receive an article upon a volcano that you feel need attention. 🙂
Thx. I’m realistic though. Too early, maybe in a year or too. Concerning learning I’m a sprinter, but realistic. I would like to repeat some physics and should probably start with high school books. Or can you recommand s.th. more interesting?
I think that Albert is the one to ask for tips on books to study in physics.
But, here are 3 books that is thought-provoking, and that gives the basics of the fundamenta of physics.
Feynman: QED
Greene: The elegant Universe
Einstein: Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
These are surprisingly easy to understand, and I much prefer to read original sources compared to water down misconceptions of what is portrayed.
Thank you.
Denali
I do not know what level you are at or how good your maths is.
There are popular books, and Carl has nailed a few good ones, many others are really oversimplified and make incorrect statements ‘for simplicity’. If you are very new then I recommend Cambridge international GCSE with many textbooks cheaply available on ebay second hand.
Next up would be the same at “A” level.
Note indian textbooks for these are excellent and cheap.
Then its impossible to beat Feynman Lectures, an absolute tour de force of well written and well crafted and very complete lectures on physics. These undergraduate level, and if you know all of them its a great basic knowledge.
The other problem you will eventually face is adequate maths, which is actually a delight in its own right, particularly when you know what you need and why. Calculus, though, is an odd thing that some people just get it and others never do, IQ unrelated. Personally I think the division is between people who learn by remembering, and those that learn by understanding (and probably have bad memories).
PS Yes, I know textbooks can be boring, but if you want to understand then they are the easiest and quickest way.
PPS My apologies if you are above these levels already.
Oh, the Feynman Lecture’s…
Yes, they are supposedly under-graduate. In reality they are brain-wreckers even for Ph.D.-students and above. Definitely something to save for last in the list. 🙂
I am among the learn from fundamental principles. My memory is perfect, but limited.
I am like a state of the art super-computer with the memory of an early PC… I have to deduce everything from fundamental principles, every single time. Thankfully I can most often do it in fractions of a second.
Carl, I wonder if you are dyslexic. I have to do the same. Has its benefits, but not great for speed or tickbox exam questions, wy wife would have been brilliant at those.
The feynman lectures are indeed undergraduate, the reason why they are so daunting is their completeness of handling the whole swathe of physics at that level. Somewhat relentlessly. Many undergraduates only bother with half, or even a quarter, but it comes to bite them one day. Electric graduates are often exceedingly vague about thermodynamics, for example, and nearly everyone gets even special relativity wrong in their heads. Quantum mechanics is another area where many ‘shut up and calculate’ by rote and few really try to grok what its about. This is not helped by a menagerie of add-on theories which are on the whole not helpful.
I am definitely not dyslexic, but my brain is definitely wired in a slightly different way compared to a standard brain. I more think that my memory problem is more on the lines that I only have one set of memory, but constantly think about more than one thing at the same time (typically 4, but I can do several more for short bursts of time).
The Undergraduate thing… Feynman was roped into doing it, and he definitely did not want to do them. So, instead he did a series of lectures on what he found problematic.
My thesis handler attended the course as a post-doc, and he struggled with the lectures, so did everyone else. On the surface they cover standard issues, but hidden in them where problems in contemporary physics, many of which are still unsolved.
So yes, the title is Undergraduate, the content not so much. For an undergraduate there are far better books around, at least to begin with.
I would recommend these:
1. Basic Concepts in Physics: From the Cosmos to Quarks (Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics) by Masud Chaichian
2. University Physics with Modern Physics by Hugh D. Young and Roger A. Freedman
3. Physics Parts I and II by Halliday and Resnick
4. An Introduction to Mechanics by Kleppner and Kolencow, dry as fuck, but classical mechanics is not fun to begin with, but necessary.
5. Digital Mechanics, Edward Fredkin. If you ever wish to do work on cellular automata and digital physics, this is a bloody must read.
Bloody heck, forgot another favourite:
Quarks and the structure of Matter, Andrei Sakharov. One of my favourite books.
@farmeroz – It’s interesting what you say about some learning from memory, while others learn from understanding. From personal experiencve, if I don’t understand something, I dont remember it. I remember years ago in my undergraduate studies, we were revising for an upcoming exam, a friend was questioning us and another friend answered. She said he was wrong and gave the answer. Because she learnt by memory, she had failed to understadn that both answers were the same, just formulated in a different way. I found that course encouraged that sort of learning and was really a failure to prepare people to critically evaluate data and information. For me, any undergraduuate course (degree or similar) that promotes learning is a waste of time, but I did use it as a stepping stone for my Master’s and subsequent research, so it had its uses.
It’s been a few decades since I did any physics (I ended up failing Biology, Chemistry and Physics A levels and only retook Biology and Chemistry; I partially blame the course structure for the failure in Physics, the others were entirely my doing though, as I didn’t try very hard), but I was one of the few at school who was taught calculus at quite a high level (for 14-16 year olds). I remember struggling with some of the 1-1.5 A4 page calculations, only to wake up in the middle of the night with the answer. My brain is also wired differently to most people and I thrive on learning and trying to work out mysteries and unknowns (either scientific or actual mysteries), although it isn’t as easy as I have got older and more stressed and I don’t really have the time. If I ever win the lottery, I would like to give up work and start investigating all sorts of different subjects, but that is probably highly unlikely :P.
That should have said, any course that promotes rote learning is a waste of time, not learning in general.
Maths, at least in my experience coming up in the ‘States’ from school age in 1946 and forward were taught mechanistically and operationally rather than conceptually. The ‘how’ of moving an expression across the = and inverting it as opposed to the ‘why’ was the rule rather than the exception. I didn’t find that much had changed when I reached Organic Chemistry decades later. Reviewing dozens of past exams stored in fraternity file cabinets was the rule, in the hopes that more that one of those chemical reactions might find their way back to daylight. In the present day, I find that in conversations with my peers in age, and common experience, no one seems to remember the reaction mechanism for the synthesis of an alkyl halide but. me. With this Carl, comes the fervent hope that, on Iceland 800 years hence, someone will have the memory of what you have written here and raise a glass.
I have a hunch that Taal could have grown a ring dike, because I see certain characteristics that the current situation has in common with the eruption of Miyakejima in 2000, an event which probably involved a ring dike. This is a very rare type of intrusion that is related to calderas and ignimbrites, and possibly the most dangerous type of intrusion. I expect that a VEI 4-5 eruption of very high intensity is likely on Taal within the next several years if there really is a ring dike. But sadly there is not much known information on ring dikes, how they behave or how can they be detected. All we know comes mostly from volcanoes where their plumbings have been exposed by erosion.
You do not need a ring dyke to achieve a VEI-4 or VEI-5.
I do though suspect that there might be one, at least partially. There is though a well known ring-fault.
My point about volcanoes like Bulkang Taal is that they do not play on the regular scale, even at the best of times.
Historically (last 1000 years), the most common size of eruptions have been VEI-4s, it has even done a series of them and then finished off the series with a VEI-5.
So, let us say that the average is a VEI-4. This gives us the following bell-curve (sort of):
VEI-0, 0.0001
VEI-1, 0.001
VEI-2, 0.01
VEI-3, 0.1
VEI-4, 1
VEI-5, 0.1
VEI-6. 0.01
VEI-7, 0.001
If we then attenuate these numbers in regards of the record-breaking SO2, duration of apparent runup, phreatic detonation, and so on, and then compare that to other known large eruptions in the last century, that would leave us inclined to see the VEI-4 as a bare bones minimum.
This is why I hate large caldera volcanoes as they get restless, they do not necessarily play on the nice scale.
Currently I see a VEI-4 as a good result.
We’re not “overdue” for a VEI 6 (as it’s of course very wrong to use that term in respect of volcanoes), but it’s now been over 30 years since the last one, so we are well into the territory where the law of averages suggests it’s a distinct possibility. Two or three occur a century, and ex-Pinatubo it’s now well over a century since the last one (Novarupta). I really hope that we don’t get such a big bang from Taal, but as you say it’s certainly not outside of the realms of possibility given the history of the system and the ridiculous amount of SO2 being emitted by it at the moment.
VEI 4 is probably just the size at which it is really obvious or dangerous and people will remember. Common eruptions are low VEI, and effusive eruptions are really only low VEI, the scale doesnt work for them. We are not in a volcanic drought we just notice more of the small ones now.
Especially, this past decade there have been two fast effusive eruptions over 1 km3 that would be sizable VEI 5s if explosive. Ignoring Pu’u O’o the last effusive eruption on land to get over 1 km3 fast was in 1975. Kilauea in 2018 also increased in effusion rate as it went on and the vent became more open, surges got rates in the thousands of m3/s, it was getting close to Laki levels by the end but ran out of available magma like turning off a tap. I wouldnt call that a small eruption 🙂
Really I think the E in VEI needs to be a different metric, maybe VII for Volcanic Intensity Index.
Is a bell curve the right way to think about a volcano? I’d think smaller eruptions are more likely and frequent than large eruptions.
Overall eruptions follow a power law. However for an individual volcano at a particular time it may well not be appropriate to use a power law.
In this case it’s looking at a system that is behaving in a way which suggests a bigger bang is more likely at the moment. So there’s a peak probability at the most likely size of eruption.
David hit the nail here.
Bell curves are useful for any volcano in this instance. But, the bell-curve of one volcano is useless for the next volcano.
Using the bell-curve of Taal for Cumbre Vieja would not be even remotely possible. And this is where the beauty of the exercise comes in.
At Cumbre Vieja the peak of the bell-curve would be at a VEI-2, with the current eruption being at the right end of what is remotely possible from a volcano of that size. And, then we ponder that the current eruption at Cumbre Vieja is about as small as is possible at Taal.
Size is indeed relative, it is all depending on the size of the receiving end…
Hi Carl
Do you haves any figure of the tons a day of sulfur that Grimsvötn gives off now? IMO measured huge ammounts in spring 2020.
But coud just be that hydrothermal circulation with the magma system is very active now.
I share chads and your opinions.. Grimsvötn works like a trapdoor caldera, like Galapagos only fast ring fault eruptions, No shield building.
Still in 1784 and 1785 there where acually reports of a glow seen over Grimsvötn: that means a caldera eruption lasted long enough to go effusive and leave the pheratic stage.
Grimsvötn caldera erupted after Laki.
1784 / 1785 coud have been the largest Grimsvötn caldera event since Sakursunarvatn: If it happened.
The active caldera of Grimsvotn probably formed in the 1780s. When Oraefajokull erupted and stole the life from the southern coastal plain, there were evidently no big floods going that way, or the area would probably have been left well alone. Now all the floods from Grimsvotn go that way. So something in the last 700 years has happened at Grimsvotn to give it a lake that can drain out that way. The only thing even worth considering is the Skaftareldar eruptions. The lava needs not be exactly the same composition, just have a hydraulic connection. Askja in 1875 erupted different lava at the central volcano than out on the rift. Laki was that but bigger, and no rhyolite.
Actually it did not form during the 1783 eruption, all 3 of the calderas formed during the Saksunarvatn Tephras series of eruptions.
It may, or may not, have deepened during the 1783 eruption.
Is that actually known for sure? Every bit of information on Saksunarvatn tephra only says that it came from Grimsvotn, and that no ash of that age and composition is actually found in Iceland. Nothing about eruption characteristics or size, nothing about Grimsvotn itself. Finding Icelandic ash overseas is not unusual even in small eruptions either.
Quite a bit is known about it.
There would be no residual ash in Iceland from those eruptions. It would be in the ocean, either by wind, or carried into the water by the then much larger glacier.
If you wish to go into depth, here is my condensed laymans article of a very detailed and hard to read paper (that is referenced).
https://www.volcanocafe.org/grimsvotn-the-saksunarvatn-tephras/
It is not possible to know with certainty when the caldera formed. You would need to date the youngest material that was deposited before the caldera formed, a lava flow maybe, but being sub-glacial that is not possible, and even if it was done that would only be the maximum age. The Skaftar Fires is a good candidate to have formed the caldera, although this is speculative.
When there is a lake (either water or lava), a lot of SO2 can be released just by a change in circulation. The lake acts as an SO2 reservoir. In such cases it does not directly measure the sulphur supply from the magma. It makes it much harder to predict such volcanoes.
Let me clear up a bit of confusion here.
They are measuring both ground release gas, and lake emitted gas.
It is the ground emitted gas that has gone up.
Carl Rhenberg
Volcanoes can always change their behaviour.
The increase of gas and thermal emissions on Grimsvötn is extremely Intresting: Have that been the norm before the previous eruptions 1998, 2004 and 2011?
The next eruption coud be much longer lived, perhaps lasting long enough to form a surtsey Island and go effusive. Souch a thing woud become Grimsvötns version of the ”wizard Island” like in the US Crater Lake.
The next eruption coud also become like Wolf 2015 big lava fountains bursting out from the caldera cliffs.
I still agree that Grimsvötn is the typical trapdoor lid caldera .. meaning short and fast eruptions in general
No such gas measurments where taken previously since the volcano was covered in Ice.
It is hard to imagine the scale of the thermal output of Grimsvötn pre-2011, and post-2011.
Grimsvötn proper tends to do hard and fast eruptions. If it would ever do an effusive eruption it would be spectacular indeed with initial fountains ranging above the 1km mark.
Currently it is though unlikely.
To get a Surtsey Island in Grimsvötn You needs an eruption that last at least a few weeks. In 2004 it formed a nice tephra hill in the meltwater lake, but stopped before becomming effusive.
Grimsvötn sits on one of the worlds most powerful oceanic mantle melting areras: But almost nothing of that input seems to be feed into it. Most of the magma is lost in passive rifting
Concerning Fagradalsfjall, I think the fact that fissure swarm had been inactive for millennia, and skipped over by nearly ever Holocene cycle, I think that might need to be considered.
It does look unlikely the existing vent will wake up but it is more likely an eruption will happen closer to the conduit, and could be longer lasting. It is hard to kill an open conduit, and eruptive/rifting episodes at other Reykjanes volcanoes lasted years back during the middle ages, with multiple eruptions a piece. Take Krysuvik, eruption in 1151, 1152 and 1188. Svartsengi erupted nearly 10 times between 1200 and 1230. Brennisteinsfjoll erupted many times in the early historical period, and it has slow eruptions a lot like Fagradalsfjall. So it looks pretty likely there will be more eruptions but we might need to be patient.
I think we will know in about a years time.
If we see continued slow inflation or a steady state of affairs on the GPS, then it is likely that there will be another eruption.
But, if we instead see slow deflation caused by magma shrinkage as it cools down, and we see shrinkage earthquakes, then we will not see an eruption for another 800 years or so.
Thank you for a fascinating article Carl!
Personally, I consider Fagradalir an innings opener on the re-appearance of Reykjanes activity. There is an approximate cycle of activity that I discussed in my post of 28 April 16:26pm (refs below). Fagradalir’s magma chemistry was a bit of a surprise to everyone, and I like to think it was like the first gout of tinned milk coming out when the tin lid is ripped off. Future eruptions may (or may not) settle down to match historical evidence.
Therefore I believe Keilir will be swifter in producing a small eruption, possibly as early as Christmas, rather than 800 years. The Krysuvik rifts have shown general seismic activity over a wider area and I would not be surprised if other rifting eruptions arrive in that zone from now to the end of activity in @200 years. That said, there will be long intervals of inactivity where nothing happens. 200 years is a long time for us, so silence over 30-60 years may mean folks will forget.
In summary, I believe some interesting years lie ahead for the Reykjanes peninsula. Fortunately, at my age, I am very unlikely to be around long enough to suffer the indignity of being proved totally wrong on this. 🙂
Refs:
Gee, M.A.M. et al, (1998) Crustal Processes: Major Controls on Reykjanes Peninsula Lava Chemistry, SW Iceland. Journal of Petrology, 39(5), https://academic.oup.com/petrology/article/39/5/819/1446829
Schipper, I.C. (2015) The Surtsey Magma Series. Scientific Reports, 5. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep11498
(I’m sure there are other papers but I’m a tad busy…)
Great. We tend to forget that a day in our life might be 1.000 – 10.000 years for a volcano. Sometimes when I read about the K-Pg time I think that was yesterday after heaving read so much of it.
Iceland might split in two parts travelling with the plates one day in the far future, away from the MAR, but we won’t see it. I was sitting on a wall next to a lake with my daughter recently while a bunch of leaves swam by, neatly arranged in the form of a gecko, and I said: I really hope there is eternal life. I’d love to see how this will go on in the far future.
We are still a few decades away from eternal life, a fact that is making me quite sad.
I would enjoy watching as the deep future happens.
I agree that we will see more activity on the Reykjanes in the not so distant future.
I am still sitting on the bench on Keilir. 🙂
Albert,
just in case you happen to have some time to answer a half OT Q:
That article in Nature that I linked yesterday was proof of them doing very detailed and thorough work in Jordan. In case there was an airburst, responsable for the destruction of Tel Al-Hamman, Jericho, Tall-Nimrin and some smaller towns between 1620 and 1680 BC, is it possible (Q) that that airburst also shattered the crust and tectonics in a way that the Thera eruption was a follow-up?
Allow me to chip in with my 5 cents: not possible. With a 12MT airburst at 25km you will not even make a crater and trees directly below will remain standing (but leaves and most branches will be gone), see Tunguska event.
Although the precise altitude of the burst is unknown 20-30km is a reasonable guess.
Correction, the Tunguska event did move down trees in a concentric circle near the blast site.
Directly below though remained standing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event#Blast_pattern
and you also know why!
I definitely know why they stood straight up below.
Same with aerial nuclear detonations done at high altitude.
A long time ago, I read that the explosion occurred at an altitude of 8,000m, comparison with the atomic tests and the few testimonies collected
Britannica seems to agree with my memory
https://www.britannica.com/event/Tunguska-event
It is an interesting article, with some gaps. They have done a lot of analysis. The bottom line is evidence for temperatures above those expected for fires. Could it be an airburst? They would have to come up with numbers: what kind of airbust (energy, altitude, comet or chondrite)? The temperatures comes from radiation, unless the burst is so low that the fireball itself touches the ground. (That also gives supersonic wind speeds.) They are rare. Tunguska (probably 2-3 MT) may happened every 100-500 years. But it is too small for this purpose. To get 10MT, you might get one every five thousand years. It is an energy equivalent to Meteor Crater. That makes the chance of one destroying the largest city in the world rather slim. The destruction is said to have come from the southwest. That is exactly the direction of the Dead Sea, and one wonders about an overturn in the Sea creating a fuel/air sulphur/oxygen mix…
Have a look at the Libyan desert glass. That was a low altitude airburst, expected to have resulted into a crater. It was a bigger event than proposed here and reached higher surface temperatures. And rare enough that this is the largest event known for the past 30 million years.
Or an explosive eruption in the Red Sea?
A Krakatoa event there is not entirely out of the question.
Or upon second thought, why not a Lake Nyos event in the Dead Sea?
That would explain The Saltiness of the event.
Thank you to all. Very interesting idea with the Dead Sea.. What fascinated me about the paper was that 1. they went thorougly through every point, 2. that they decided indepedantly from each other after eleven years that a cosmic event is possible and got specialists in, 3. that at the end they suggested more excavation in the surroundings.
It is a nice paper because they are so thorough. I only missed the probabilities and the airburst modeling: they stayed within archaeology
Bulkang Taal, daily summary, last 30 days:
Date # Num_Quake # Avg_Depth # Avg_Magnitude # KiloTonsTNT
2021-11-02 # 1 # 202.0 # 3.00 # 0.0316
2021-10-31 # 2 # 132.5 # 3.65 # 2.8500
2021-10-20 # 1 # 112.0 # 3.60 # 0.2512
2021-10-16 # 1 # 6.0 # 3.10 # 0.0447
2021-10-14 # 1 # 61.0 # 3.10 # 0.0447
2021-10-08 # 2 # 86.0 # 3.05 # 0.0763
2021-10-07 # 1 # 157.0 # 5.20 # 63.0957
2021-10-03 # 5 # 95.6 # 3.84 # 8.9025
2021-10-02 # 1 # 67.0 # 3.10 # 0.0447
2021-10-01 # 1 # 127.0 # 3.10 # 0.0447
2021-09-30 # 1 # 98.0 # 3.00 # 0.0316
2021-09-27 # 1 # 70.0 # 3.20 # 0.0631
2021-09-26 # 4 # 88.2 # 4.38 # 361.1158
2021-09-24 # 2 # 4.5 # 3.65 # 0.6790
2021-09-23 # 2 # 26.5 # 4.10 # 2.8251
2021-09-22 # 3 # 79.3 # 3.70 # 11.3777
2021-09-21 # 2 # 35.0 # 4.35 # 31.9776
2021-09-16 # 1 # 104.0 # 3.10 # 0.0447
2021-09-14 # 2 # 45.5 # 3.10 # 0.0947
2021-09-12 # 1 # 1.0 # 3.20 # 0.0631
2021-09-08 # 1 # 104.0 # 3.80 # 0.5012
2021-09-07 # 1 # 5.0 # 3.50 # 0.1778
2021-09-06 # 1 # 106.0 # 3.30 # 0.0891
2021-09-05 # 1 # 10.0 # 4.50 # 5.6234
2021-08-31 # 1 # 14.0 # 3.70 # 0.3548
2021-08-24 # 1 # 105.0 # 3.20 # 0.0631
2021-08-20 # 1 # 10.0 # 3.40 # 0.1259
2021-08-15 # 1 # 122.0 # 3.30 # 0.0891
2021-08-13 # 1 # 118.0 # 5.80 # 501.1872
2021-08-10 # 3 # 3.0 # 3.30 # 0.5775
Don’t we want to see many more quakes a day for some eruptive buildup?
In LaPalma we saw days with 100+ quakes.
Those numbers aren’t accurate, Taal has produced a significant amount of LF and tremor quakes so far, with widespread deformation, and strong gas emissions. Currently the hydrothermal chamber is pressurizing and with more open pathways so far, VT earthquakes have been low so far.
Tallis summed it up quite well, and also it is important to remember that the activity waxes and wanes over time. But the general trend is steadily going upwards.
Forgot, La Palma was a dyke formation as magma entered fairly juvenile ground. There is no readymade hot magma reservoir at Cumbre Vieja.
At Bulkang Taal we have a massive magma reservoir that the magma is entering into, and since it is hot and thusly plastic it will not be as prone to massive earthquake numbers.
Just compare the difference between Fagradalsfjall and Grimsvötn as a point in question.
I did wonder if the Cumbre Vieja line was a dyke formation off the side of the original volcano. That long row of vents sort of gives the game away (forgive me. I am not swift on noticing the blindingly obvious).
I suppose that’s why the island was lifting up and down so much as magma moved around the dyke looking for a handy way up?
Ding!
I forgot to mention: the data are from EMSC, maybe they only report quakes above a certain magnitude, I did not include any restrictive filters, geographical area was
13 < latitude < 15, 120 < longitude < 122 (pretty big).
Both USGS and EMSC is depending on data from the local agencies for anything below M4… And both of them tend to filter things outside of their remit.
EMSC is limiting to M3 for Iceland as an example.
I woud like to see the Early Hadean, Albert needs to start building a time machine for me.
It is Impressive stuff planetary accreation. Earths Violent Past
Earth one week after the Theia event woud be an Impressive sight. As brigth like a star, enveloped sourrounded by vaporized rock and molten debries. Bright enough to damage your eyes If you looked at it very bright. Alot of the hot rock vapour debries condensed into glass sand around the infant earth and the glowing disk formed where the Moon condensed from hot magma droplets. The moon formed in a hot disk of vaporized materials, the infant Earth and the Moon sitting in space glowing like beacons.
The whole planet was a glowing ball of lava and rock vapour.
The Hot Infant Earth woud look perhaps like a protostar in a glowing cloud .. for a while after theia. Really energetic protoplanet mergers coud have vaporized most of the Earth, leaving a ”magma nebula” that was held togther by gravity and condensed and droplets falls back on a larger molten magma earth.
The kinetic energy of a protoplanet merger at high speeds is so immense. Earth is about 100 moon masses .. so we merged many times with huge objects during the Hadean Eon. The whole planet enveloped by vaporized rock hotter than the suns surface.
The Earth cooled supprisingly fast even after souch events and reforming its oceans when it cools below steam boiling points.. earths ancient oceans was vaporized many times by impacting protoplanets in the Late Hadean
Hadean Eon is really my stuff … and so Impressive so kind of difficult to visualise it
The Young moon was also cooked by the Thermal radiation from the infant Earth..the side of the infant moon facing Earth woud burn and vaporize and that may explain the moons thin crust on the side that faces Earth.
Both woud be molten hellscapes
The Infant Earth woud be an Impressive as hell sight …
Im a lava addict .. But Carl already knows that 🙂
Surely this is a bit early in the moons life to assume it will have a side permanently facing earth.
Other way around: because of the deformation of the moon caused by earth shine, gravity had a lever to grab hold off and this caused the synchronization of the orbit and rotation
Theia merger must have been a fantastic sight
It woud all go in slow motion despite 20 to 30 km a second, because of the huge size of theia: as They close in on eachother, theia is deformed by Earths gravity like an egg.
When they toutch There is a blinding light.. that grows brigther and brigther and brigther until the distant astronaut observer gets blind, it woud seem to plow into Earth slowly because of its size.
The Entire Earth gets covered by vaporized rock plasma, and huge ammounts of superhot vapour maybe 18 000 C are spewed into space forming an envelope thats hotter than the suns surface.. Earth itself becomes a hot almost nebula like thing with No Clear surface, just increasing density towards the Earth.
Its bright enough to make you blind.
The superhot cloud of magma vapour and magma droplets woud spin togther with the toasted Earth. The rock vapour envelope will cover the Earth for 1000 s of years and the whole upper mantle was melted likley forming Earths last magma ocean.
The hot disk around the Earth woud quickly start cooling, condensing and magma droplets condense into magma balls, these then woud start to merge togther to form the Infant Moon
The Hadean Earth had magma oceans and rock vapour atmosphere
With sillicates and metals condensing into rains .. the whole planet was a glowing hellscape .. with stormclouds of sillicates and metals Thats how hot is was
And during major protoplanet mergers Earth got so hot that you probaly haves sillicate plasma enveloping the whole planet, shining as bright as the sun. Perhaps tens of thousands of degrees C during souch kinetic merger
Impressive sight it was
Taal had it’s second highest emissions ever recorded in October, despite not being in active eruption. It’s concerning that it’s had several sizeable eruptions including last year’s and still not cleared it’s throat. It’s them pesky graben volcanoes you’ve got to watch out for, I swear! Definitely feel another 2020-sized eruption is on the horizon, with the amount of magma accumulating in the area.
The 2020 one was a minor phreatic event. See it as an initial clearing before the throat-clearing that will later on cause the real eruption.
The scale of a volcano like this is completely different, their pre-work is akin to normal eruptions for more modest volcanoes.
If another 2020 is all we get I am quite happy, but what I am talking about is the full on baby Jesus with Choir attached.
I suppose it was fairly localized, with little volcanic debris/flows. Not sure how much strain it relieved. Hector may be right about it being a ring dyke, which isn’t good news.
Batangas Bay may be of interest to you, this is in the direction in which the macolod corridor is extending, high geothermal potential and a sunken caldera: https://www.geothermal-energy.org/pdf/IGAstandard/WGC/2010/1311.pdf
PNOC have a geothermal plant on the east side of the Mabina peninsula to provide energy for Luzon.
If the the 2020 phreatic eruption wasn’t enough to “spend” the volcano’s energy wouldn’t another 2020 sized event just be bad news? It would simply achieve the same result would it not? Relieving a bit of pressure allowing the volcano to continue building up, postponing the “big one” further down in time with potentially worse impacts?
Or is it simply a case of the morning fart before getting out of bed, then the real build up to the real eruption beings?
Couple of thoughts…
Vulcano’s activity seems to ‘sorta’ match water table, suggesting it is semi-phreatic. IIRC, this Summer’s outburst followed a very wet Spring. As this late-Summer and Autumn have seen a succession of exceptional storms dump on that area, water table is going to be very high for several months. Should we expect stirrings around the turn of year ?
Is another worry for such steep, wet volcanoes, a flank phreatic event causing severe slumping, un-capping a dozing dyke for a full-on flank eruption ??
That air-burst over the ancient city: IMHO, despite being ‘stuff of legend’, effects were purely local. Santorini / Thera is several major geological zones away. IIRC, there isn’t even evidence that air-burst kicked the nearby ‘Red Sea Fault’ into action…
Forgot to mention: I love maths, the way my dear wife did music and art. But, I hit a glass ceiling in calculus beyond which I could *not* juggle its abstracts. Seems I was too tied to the ‘real’. Which fitted with my ‘does well’ stuff…
Totally thwarted my plans to study electronics, also industrial chemistry. Weakness in Physical Chem’s math put paid to my hopes of doing Oceanography. I ended up doing ‘Organic’, segued into ‘Analytical…
Irony it was my hobby electronics, and general interest in science, astronomy, robotics, physical geology etc etc that proved most useful…
Calculus is a highly nontrivial subject with an enormous (!) amount of substance in embryonic form. Physics and the applied sciences need a lot immediately and cannot treat anything properly. This turns off all those that are intellectually honest. It would be best to inform students that they cannot properly understand it at first encounter and must get used to it and develop some sort of intuition in the hopefully narrow field of application which is relevant for them.
It is a safe assumption that you did not get to the real abstractions but were turned off by the nonrigorous presentation.
There is more to physics than that
It is all fun and game-theory until you find a Riemann sheet in your Minkowski room.
(I will grab my coat)
Just need to string it along
Café Calabi-Yau, when you want a canonical bundle of donuts. It’s trivial.
And in the end there’s a question mark, it seems, and then God:
„The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.“ — Werner Heisenberg
Source: https://quotepark.com/authors/werner-heisenberg/
I thought it was from Max Planck, but he might have only quoted it.
No, there isn’t. But: “There has been virtually no academic marine geological or geophysical fieldwork in the Red Sea since the late 1980s, and almost all of the available geophysical data from the Red Sea date from prior to 1990. As a result, the bathymetry data consist almost entirely of single-beam echo sounder data or narrow 24-beam “classic” SeaBeam swath data. The only wide swath-bathymetry data available is a single north-south transit line run by L’Atalante in 1992 utilizing a Simrad swath-mapping system.”
Was looking around a bit.
From: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2004GC000826
There’s next to no research. When there is no research there is also no knowledge about earthquakes or alternatively crater rims on the bottom.
The Lot story is mentioned so many times in both books that there must have been some truth in it, some big shock. Subtract the “sinners” and take the rest for orally transferred and altered knowledge like the Exodus which may have been caused by Thera or two events in one century.
Lava keeps flowing into the Halema’uma’u Crater, real torrent of lava is flowing into the rootless lava lake.
The eruption this night
https://twitter.com/RTVCes/status/1457058264563306499
La palma. Notice worsens air quality.
https://twitter.com/VolcansCanarias/status/1457058051547176964
HVO has updated the volume of the on-going eruption. It is higher than I had it down for: “The total erupted volume since the beginning of the eruption was estimated to be about 28.2 million cubic meters (7.5 billion gallons) on November 3.”
Looks like the islands floating in the rootless lava lake are rising togther with the whole crust
https://twitter.com/involcan/status/1457079461443219461
Impressive strombolian activity shown tonight by the eruption at 19:30 (Canarian time) from Tacande
Thx for the posting. Regarding the virulent meme-like statement Fagradalsfjall would last for years, which was also distributed here, it is amazing how the internet lost interest at all in checking claims (we saw this lately on several occasions with pics and videos from La Palma). Naive question regarding the quakes: I wonder if inflation and deflation “sound” different? Obviously not, since the experts seem to have difficult to distinguish.
There is a small and not overly obvious difference that is indeed hard to spot.
It is that the earthquake signals tend to move towards a more tectonic sharp snappish looking waveform due to the lower amount of fluid attenuating the waveform.
It does require a crack seismologist though to spot it, and also you would basically need to know when to start looking for it. Hard, but not impossible.
When we ran a poll on what people expected, the two largest numbers were for several years, and for 6 months. I recall that our Icelandic voters had a preference for 6 months. I congratulate those who got it right
4.5 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL
2021/11/06 20:40:24IV
36
Strombolian explosions moments ago
https://twitter.com/VolcansCanarias/status/1457088225118412802
If the next Grimsvötn lasts long enough, then We are going to get a caldera surtsey Island
But most eruptions in Grimsvötn proper stops even before a tephra hill have formed.
Only 1996, 2004 and 2011 formed tuff cones
With 2004 being the largest tephra Island in Grimsvötn. 1998 formed No cone If I remebers correct
Some Islands in Grimsvötn eruptions:
http://www.vulkaner.no/v/volcan/grimsvot-e.html
Althrough I wants CAMP to jump out from Grimsvötn, yes Im mad .. madest guy on VC
Im soo insanely bad with my volcanoes and what I wants… the Earth to do. I gotten even more mad over the years and disslusional over my volcanoes
At least Kilaūea always does something 🙂
1. With that CAMP you described before everybody would die. I’m sure you don’t want that. Those dinos probably also went down because of the Deccan Traps. So, careful what you wish for.
2. Logic tells me that in 50-100 M Iceland, split into two parts and having travelled will be part of the active continental margins of Europe and North America east, the Canary Islands will be part of the active continental margin of West-Africa, and the Atlantic, becoming a silver-back, will start to subduct.
3. Geologic settings don’t seem to be repetitive.
4. Think about who might suddenly stumble in here. Think of a woman from Kenya reading about toasted lions. Think about a geologist from elsewhere who doesn’t know you and stumbles upon a man wishing for an LIP. Not so good, is it? 😉
I will comment on your 2 and Iceland.
Technically it is already splitting in half at a rate of 2.8 centimeter per year. The only thing leaving it as one island is the influx of magma from the mantleplume.
In the long run the splitting apart is decided by the duration of the mantleplume. Currently it is 14-16 million years old, and it is still burrowing downwards and growing in strength as it goes. That being said, it will probably be around for a while.
Next part that decides the split depends on how long the MAR will be operational. In the end the MAR will stop functioning.
Lastly we have the fun possibility that Iceland will become a continent. Or, at least half of it. I do think that the part towards America is to hard welded to Greenland. The other side though is not glued that well to the Eurasian continent and could very well sail off in a distant future, or at least become a part of the future Scandian Continent.
Anyway, for the next 10-20 million years Iceland will stick around as one ever growing island.
I did always imagine the way continents form is something like what Iceland is doing. There is quite a lot of rhyolite in Iceland, so likely at depth there is substantial granite in a lot of places, even though it is mostly basalt and will probably stay that way for the near geologic future.
I’m on the safe side, Carl with 50 -100 million years, thank God. It’s a generous guess, anyway. With Europe I meant Scandinavia, of course. With Greenland you are completely right.
New Zealand is also interesting as it seems to have continental crust in a submarine area in the North.
Allow me to answer to the MAR being functional. Just a guess: For a very long time in the North. Reasons: Heir of Tethys, an ocean that was there for an eternity and was finally subducted with the Indian and the African plate coming in. With the Pacific plate subducting and the Pacific Ocean becoming smaller there is enough room for the American plate to move NW and the European plate to move NE. That’s the north.
The south is different though. In the South we have two-three competitors, one in the Pacific Ocean west of South America and two I think in the Indian Ocean east of Africa. And then we have another one around Antarctica, so an inflation of spreading centers there, sort of.
The East Pacific Rise is the fastest oceanic spreading centre. So looking at this romantically I wonder whether they have longings for each other – the split apart couple Africa and South America 🙂 And if they will sleep in one bed again one day with a sword in the middle though: Former MAR. Just kidding.
This is more complex. The whole South is complex, also the area east of New Zealand.
The spreading ridge that closed quite fast and built an orogeny was the one of the Midwestern Seaway. But that was a shallow ocean, so possibly continental crust – I have to look this up. Same: Hudson Seaway.
Let me add to this a wild guess: The Pacific Ocean might have born a heir already: Lake Baikal. And it is very tempting for me to draw a straight line between Lake Baikal and the Afar Triangle. Just saying. Ideas gently fed by inspiring pieces on VC. That would be 200-300 million years from now though. No need to move. And no need to bet.
Iceland is not a continent in any way: its a mafic oceanic LIP basicaly a heap of basalt and gabbro above a big mantle plume. Iceland is much denser and heavier than the typical continent, still oceanic mafic crust.
Iceland is an mantle plume LIP oceanic plateau
The continents formed by hyperactive subduction zones in Archean Era granite magmatism and orogeny and assembling
But its true that first continents maybe formed in places like Iceland too in the Eoarchean. But the current Iceland needs to granitize / feslic – fy much much more before You haves a real continetal crust there ..
I didn’t say it is, Jesper. Thinking of the Bunbury Basalt, Western Australia, India with the Deccan Traps and Kerguelen, esp. the Elan Bank. They were all sitting in one place once.
Denaliwatch
Iceland is not a continent
Its an oceanic lava plateau
Very very very difftent geology compared to a real ancient continent
And I dont think Iceland will become one either, most continental crust are formed by felsic plutonism at subduction zones.
Althrough oceanic hotspots coud played a role too
Most of the continetal crust today where formed in the Archean Era, with only 18% since cambrian emplaced.
I also wonders When Kilimanjaro will go a large VEI 7 and collapse into a Ngorongoro Crater
The Original Ngorongoro volcano was perhaps as tall as 6000 meters and was competely destroyed in the catastrophic eruption.
Thats alot of toasted lions and elephants turned to steaks.. when that eruption happened..
And Kilimanjaro is still alive Sulfur activity is heavy at the summit crater
The pyroclastic flows during the Ngorongoro Collapse must have been stuff of insanity .. really
Great picture. But Jesper, when the tsunami in the Indian Ocean happened there were no or few fatalities on the Nicobar and Andaman Islands as the (First) people there followed the animals uphill. So, who knows how many lions and other animals might have fled on time. That’s s.th. they are better in than humans, better smell, better hearing and also better balance. We paid for thinking.
6000 people are assumed dead from the tsunami on these islands. Just because noone was allowed on shore to investigate does not mean these peoples were unaffected. It just means their casualties are unconfirmed.
So I was sitting on a legend that I liked. Too sad. Bye, legend.
Just a curious side note.
It seems like the population on North Sentinel Island was fairly unaffected if judged by aerial photography. (spotty evidence at best)
At least they seemed to be around in numbers to get rid of the pesky missionary a while back.
It is currently quite unlikely Jesper, it is not active enough to collapse like that.
The demise of Kilimanjaro will be from the padding feet of tens of thousands of tourists eroding it down.
A few years ago You where certain it was stone dead 🙂
But its Reusch crater looks like an extraodinary Young feature, perhaps only a few 100 years old, No erosion, There is also sulfurious fumaroles there, some are really hot.
A few years ago you even refused the Idea that there even was geothermal heat in Kilimanjaros crater : D
Slopply laugthing at me
But I shown you the hot sulfurious fumaroles there and Carl changed his mind
Today you know its plenty of heat in the summit and magma maybe close under
It also looks like a very Young feature
Carl, what are your thoughts on Nisyros at the moment? Since Fagrad went up in February, there has been a huge amount of activity to the SW of Nisyros. Obviously it is the the other end of the European plate on a small subduction zone… could it be volcanic?
I have not checked Nisyros for a long time, but it is definitely a volcano.
If I remember correctly it had a series of phreativ events from the early 1870s to late 1880s.
No real eruption is known in historic sources. It is though highly active with fumaroles and suffers from earthquake swarms.
Nisyros is unusually large, so it may very well be that the activity you are talking about is Nisyros volcano proper. It does though depend on the distance we are talking about.
There is also a regional fault running from Nisyros to SW past Kandelioussa Nisyros (15km to SW). I suspect this might be the culprit, and if so the answer is no. It is only associated with tectonic activity.
There’s a graben-horst-graben structure there, so it’s tectonically active. Also a batholith.
Have written half of a reasonably long article on it (not as long as this post mind Carl!)
It’ll be ready by December.
Nice!
Looking forward to it 🙂
That seems like the place… cheers Carl.
Another question… Could the long run-up at Grimsvotn lead to a bigger bang as you describe at Taal?
Even though it is theoretically possible that Grimsvötn could do something bigger than 2011, I do not think so.
Bigger in the case of Grimsvötn would either entail an M5 or above, and that has only happened during the Saksunarvatn Tephras from the caldera. And that was caused by isostatic rebound releasing large amounts of pent up magma.
Secondly, I do not think there is enough pent up strain on the fissure swarm after Skaftáreldar (Laki 1783) to cause another big rifting event. It would probably take quite some time for that.
Third, the reason for the delay is more that 2011 was big, so more magma influx is needed to refill and build up the pressure.
That being said, it could very well push the boundary and do another very big VEI-4.
I might add that subduction makes no sense here as the oceanic crust so close to the MAR is young.
Looking like the lava lake at Kilauea might disappear soon, the area of active lava is declining. This doesnt mean the actual flow rate is lower just that most of the lava cant bubble up onto the crust, but SO2 was a bit lower than earlier measurements too, so maybe… 🙁
The active cone on the side apparently is on the rising crust too just like everything else, the actual vent is deeply submerged now 40 meters under the surface, the cone is just a hole in the crust that spatters a lot and has been able to lift enough lava to flow. It is a bit like a pipe bursting underwater in a way, where there is bubbling on the surface but the source is deeper. I guess maybe the lake rising is just getting too much for it now, and it is slowing. The lake crust also is rising unevenly, so maybe parts are tipping the active lava off as they rise, it is very dynamic.
I guess maybe in a week or so the only lava visible will be the cone and lava breaking out of the edges of the lake. If Hectors hypothesis about the deep magma system plays out though there could be some interesting stuff this month.
The lava is very heavy .. and puts extra pressure thats perhaps why it usualy stops when the vent drowns itself. Pressure will build soon again If it shuts down
Yes, if the eruption does stop it will not be long before another, probably a few months like before if all things equal.
But earlier this year the vent was able to erupt for months above the lake and slowly decline as it did so, so when the lake did reach it there was pretty much no pressure. Now the vent has been submerged since the 3rd day, over a month now, so there must be some pressure. I would expect if the eruption does stop it will drain back this time, but the eruption could well become episodic, re-erupting at the same vent some days or even weeks later. It will be interesting to see, maybe enough for a mention by Carl 🙂
I got wrong the timing of third deflation event of Mauna Loa though, I predicted around August 11 and it as of now it hasn’t arrived. Mauna Loa has started to inflate slowly recently which could be the prelude to the third deflation event, but if so then it is significantly delayed compared to the prediction I did.
Finally found it, I have been looking for this paper for ages. Mean average effusion rate of Ahu’aila’au was 150 m3/s over the entire event, but that is not accounting the stages of eruption, or that a whole month happened where there was no eruption at all. Peak eruption was reached near its end, surges were routinely getting to rates of nearly 2000 m3/s , and with a low of 500 m3/s. DRE is lower and the source of the common numbers, but maybe calculating eruptions based on DRE is being misleading, the lava is almost never entirely degassed and assuming it is might give the wrong impression of how big an eruption really was when it happened.
So as you all can see it is not just my own exitement leading me to claim such things about Kilauea, there is some real data for it 🙂
https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/06_december_2019/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1543705#articleId1543705
And a video 🙂
https://youtu.be/GkyaX5shIH4
Last thing about Kilauea until it actually does something noteworthy I promise 😛
Might be of use to Hector, and to Jesper, and perhaps with a bit of wishful thinking it just might pique Carl’s interest 🙂
https://imgur.com/a/N84QCgI
A map I made showing the points along the ERZ magma conduit that correspond to a surface location equal to that of the caldera floor for the given time period. I did find it curious how the pre-2018 floor is about equal to the elevation of the ERZ at Hi’iaka crater, which also is the closest point to the summit along the conduit that ERZ eruptions have happened in recorded history. Maybe the lack of anything between there and the caldera is simply elevation related, and not determined by the odd angles of faults as has been suggested.
As for now, the conduit was active as far east as the blue dot prior to both the eruption last year and the one now, though it appears to be asleep at present at least according to GPS data. December 2020 the caldera floor was at the elevation of 540 meters ASL, the equivalent elevation on the ERZ was well beyond the extent of active conduit at that time. In September this year the floor was at 734 meters ASL, the conduit was active to a point near where this elevation exists, just west of Pu’u O’o, but it still happened at the summit just because it was quicker and more direct. Now though the floor is at about 800 meters elevation, which is above the floor of both Napau and Makaopuhi. The conduit seems to be inactive right now but if the pressure builds again to the levels of before the last eruptions it could well break out on the ERZ, and the higher the floor of Halemaumau gets the more this is favored. So ERZ eruptions at Makaopuhi to Pu’u O’o might begin quite soon. This might be a hypothesis to test over a scale of a few years though, can be called the Chad Experiment.
If need be I can elaborate in a proper article, though I dont know how many are already lined up at present.
Also any way to make imgur links display the actual picture would be appreciated 🙂
The whole ERZ haves conduits and arms and accumulating zones of magma ..togther with the Puna Ridge its insanely long. There is also lots of hot magma mush there.
Kilauea is Impressive able to feed whole calderas on its rift, the chain of crater road are pure calderas on its own right for many other volcanoes
When souch bodies drain out gets lava floods and pits. Puu Oo was just the latest example. But most ERZ pits may not be acossiated with collapsed lava shields.
Kilauea is No easy pushover
Producing a majority of the worlds holocene lavas and probably capable of Laki sized drainouts and Taal sized blowouts knowing the size of the old Powers Caldera
I think Cthulhu is a much better fitting deity for Kilaūea than Pele .. Pele is simply not mean enough 🙂
Might be a lot of objection to that, Kilauea is not usually so dangerous to be treated with fear, just it is important to know it is not harmless either. Pele means more to Hawaii than it seems fron the outside, at least is what I have gathered over my decade of watching Kilauea 🙂
Laki sized eruptions would pretty much have to be entirely underwater at Kilauea, so very hard to truly confirm though logical reasoning would suggest they exist. Caldera explosive eruptions seem to not be enormous volume either, technically VEI 3-4, but very high intensity. The caldera is created by lateral drainage and the explosions are more secondary from decompression and maybe hydrothermal. But Taal seems to be the same in that regard too, I doubt it can really go bigger than a low 5 by volume but that 5 will be quite the bang, and probably of a similar intensity to a 6.
Yes Pele will always be acossiated with Kilaūea for rest of human history
They wont accept Lovecrafts abominations, althrough Cthulhu coud perhaps be a fitting figure for Taal 🙂
This one is pretty mean: “Achamán fought Guayota, freed Magec from the bowels of the mountain, and plugged the crater with Guayota. It is said that since then, Guayota has remained locked inside Teide.” For the Guanche in Tenerife Guayota was the devil. To be read on wikip. for El Teide.
It would be nice indeed to see if the elevation of the caldera floor and the earthquake activity of the ERZ conduit can be used to predict the location of future eruptions.
In order to show the image you must page the URL of the picture itself not the web page:
https://i.imgur.com/EPJ8E1F.jpeg
Or maybe not.
Thanks Carl, I always like to see data being interpreted and it is why the runup to the eruptions is what has interested me, because I also get to play around with a bit of data, even though I have limited knowledge.
I’ve been a bit incommunicado the last couple of weeks, after a trip to Spain and then a but busy, so I’ve lost track of what is going on. This has helped me have a quick update without having to read through reams of comments. To be honest, it didn’t seem like 7 pages of A4 either.
Trip to Spain, to a certain island…? 🙂
No, it was actuallty a trip to Denia, that had been postponed three times since May 2020.
https://youtu.be/yQJzMh2I1Pw
Timelapse of Cumbre Vieja from El Galeon.
Carl, I do have to say I enjoy reading your articles because the are extremely informative and yet written in a way that people like myself, whose knowledge of volcanology is limited (but growing), can understand and learn from.
This is a characteristic from someone who really knows their area of expertise completely.
Another factoid is that whilst reading its always very clear and obvious, but 2 mins after reading you find you cannot repeat the lucidity you had whilst reading.
Most irritating ……
Thank you Peter!
@farmeroz:
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles do not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend.”
What is known about volcanic activity during the Maunder Minimum?
This story is during the Maunder minimum
https://www.volcanocafe.org/sahara-scotland/
Tseax was also during this period. 1640 Parker was just before
Er, I think you may have stared a new post by accident, albert.
it was published a few years ago. It is one I really enjoyed researching
Interesting story, little known outside Scotland:
“The following year, when Culbin was lost and the baron petitioned not to have to pay property tax on his lost property, an act of parliament was passed to prohibit the removal of grass from the dunes.”
That goes for all the North Sea Islands today. In our islands and probably also in the Dutch islands it is forbidden to walk in there, and tourists have to pay high fines it they (or more their children- nice hide and seek) neglect the order.
With this fine piece I can see how important this is.
Can someone else contact Phivolcs about the mid range deformation at Taal? I’ve tried but they won’t respond to me
Reaching PHIVOLCS? Oh man good luck.
Mid range deformation? What does it mean?
Well, I would some information on the scale of deformation in the past year
Have to consider the tectonics. My interpretation is that the deflation of the centre is down to the ring-dyke type structure but also it’s the regional extension and transtension. The Macolod corridor is a pull-apart basin/graben which has come about because the Manila trench is subducting the Sunda plate on the west and the Luzon trench is subducting the Phillippine plate (and the massive Benham rise!) on the north-northeast, but this isn’t parallel to the other so it’s created this massive NE/SW shear where magma is accumulating to plug the gap.
Basically the magma is being spread laterally and ever wider along the length of the corridor hence the NE/SW trending dykes from Taal and Laguna de Bay area. It is accumulating and will continue to do so as the Macolod corridor will continue to extend southwest. But it won’t behave like a standalone caldera as the magma is being pushed into the area as a whole. At some point the centre will deflate or even collapse and the magma will push dykes up the sides in a ring structure and the whole place will go to pot.
Should add that it isn’t just about it being parallel or not, if one plate is moving quicker or in a slightly different direction to the other you’re going to get shear.
Phivolcs and North Korea are the only places not giving out any data when I ask… wait a minute, I have not asked North Korea for any data yet… Hm, so theoretically at least they are better than Phivolcs. 😉
Edit/ After a quick ponder. I know someone who has access to the North-Korean network, and who would be happy to share. So, Kim Jong-un is more forthgiving than Phivolcs…
4.6 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP
2021/11/07 17:07:10IV
37
Has now been revised.
4.5 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP
2021/11/07 17:07:18
38
+info
4.6 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP
2021/11/07 17:07:10IV
37
+info
http://www.ign.es/web/resources/volcanologia/tproximos/canarias.html?fbclid=IwAR3GEqfr-AJg4p18QS_fWpPmSxss6-_xwEAQJjv-33JqoKCac_KxSOqQ0A8
Today’s images at 4:00 p.m. (Canarian time) from the surroundings of the Llano del Jable Astronomical Viewpoint. Créditos: Sabrina Mugnos.
https://twitter.com/involcan/status/1457419034580996096
What is uplift and expansion at Taal over the last three months?
The issue is we don’t know, Phivolcs won’t publish any information concerning the scale of the deformation.
Tallis, are you sure they have the data? Why on earth would they have data, especially such critical data, and keep it secret, including from their own citizens near the volcano? I’m not doubting you, I just can’t fathom why they’d do such an abominable thing. The only thing I can think of is if they don’t actually have the data.
I find it inconceivable that they don’t have the data, especially given the amount of VEI 6+ in the last 500 years of the Indonesia-Philippines region, compared to rest of the world.
The only two things I can think of; is not wanting to cause a panic, or corruption, or both.
Which unfortunately, increases Carl’s ~1% chance of a VEI 6+…
I would be incredibly surprised if the Phivolcs did not have the data.
It is just that they are very secretive about their data.
The problem is also that I do not have a good friend at that Phivolcs that I can pester for the data. Indonesia is for instance not a problem, just ask the right ‘crazy’ professor and you get the data. And in this case crazy is positive. 🙂
@ Peter Bray, @ Tallis, @ Carl;
Tallis Rockwell, sorry I questioned you on this – you had it quite right. I found it inconceivable – but I was wrong, it’s real.
Peter Bray, yipes. Yes, if they are keeping the data secret, it certainly does make it more likely that there will be an unforcast VE6 or worse. I can. though, think of one reason why they might not actually have the data; what if the instrumentation was funded, and instead of using the money on instrumentation, it was diverted into personal Ferraris or similar for Phivolcs officials. So, they have to claim to have the data, but can’t release it because it does not really exist. That would, of course, be reprehensible behavior, though so is keeping this sort of data secret if it exists.
Carl, thank you so much… though I’m beyond appalled at what you’re reporting. IMHO, the people living near active volcanoes have an absolute right to know what’s going on, CGPS displacement data very much included. I’m of the opinion that, even if they aren’t competent to run a website, Phivolcs could probably manage to tweet, so I see no excuses for keeping their citizens (and outside experts who might well spot a danger sign before Phivolcs) in the dark. I do not expect them to cater to people like me, they own me nothing, but they most certainly do owe the people they are supposed to protect (and who pay their salaries) transparency.
Sorry for the rant, but this shocked the heck out of me.
@CJ… One thing to consider. Many of these geophysical organizations have a problem with equipment getting up and wandering off.
The Philippine Authority are pretty much the only one not handing out data to me when I ask for it.
This is a bit unusual in the world of science… The norm is to give out any data that is not directly used in a research project, but they do not even give out filtered data.
I hope you don’t mind this, but I’m struggling to find sources detailing mantle plume cycles and the like, and that we’re approaching the peak of one in iceland. it came up in conversation elsewhere, and i was asked for sources, but uh, volcanology makes it papers a bit tough to find at times
Google Scholar be thy friend!
Here is the link!
Do note that this paper is about the plume cycle and not the rifting cycle affecting Bardarbunga, Grimsvötn and Katla. That one has a longer duration, roughly 270 years. The interesting part is that this is the first time for a long time that they intersect.
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/26/10/943/206805/Eight-centuries-of-periodic-volcanism-at-the?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Thank you, Carl! Helps a bunch. And I’ll keep Google Scholar in mind for next time this comes up.
I have a question, regarding this cyclic behavior of Iceland. When was the last time that the plume cycle and rift cycle did coincide and what happened when it did?
Jesper,
concerning LIP I suggest the following:
Take this image first:
There are certainly better images, but this will do for the time being.
America, the core of it, is sitting on the equator, the rest is sitting further south.
One after the other they take off, first Siberia and Baltica, and travel north and also, later, ENE (Australia and NZ).
In between the biggest masses collide in the middle. I consider this collision an accident like on a clogged highway. The mantle is extremely discontent about this weight on its shoulders ;-). It starts coughing uncomfortably and breaks out in the weakest spots which is between the thinner continental shelves and where mantle plumes have built up. This creates all the big LIP. Then the normal state starts again which is continental drift. And that’s the state we are in, no need for the build-up of LIP.
The collision – which might be an accident – takes down 96% of all life and most clades. That was a nearly dying patient. The LIP were probably the salvation of life.
That’s why I abhor all shallow (media) talk about a future Pangaea. A future Pangaea would be an accident when the continents, obviously driving towards the North Pole and collecting there (with some exceptions on the southern half) will travel back to the South Pole and collide. So, my idea is, that LIP are past tense and far, far in the future, like at least 500 million years away in the future. And then, there might not be a recovery with a hotter sun.
Lesson of this: One should enjoy life if possible. It’s a pure gift.
Mantle Plume sourges happens under big continents, because of their insulating effect, making the heat build up in the mantle. LIP s are products of wast melting of Plume heads
Thats right.. future greenhouses brought on by volcanic and tectonic CO2 outgassing, will be more Severe than the previous hothouse because of the future sun is stronger and more warming.
In the far future, the sun will get so strong that it will supercharge the water cycle, and sillicate weathering
( rainfall CO2 scrubbing) will scrub away the CO2 killing the plant life by removing the CO2 faster than the volcanoes can replace it.
As the sun get stronger, the CO2 will be scrubbed away by increased rainfall. Plant life wil die off.. and animal life too without oxygen
In 800 million years Earths landmasses will be warm deserts under an 8% brigther sun, and oxygen and CO2 will be very low
Life will be found in the oceans for a while still.
Earth will probaly loose its oceans in 1,5 to 2 billion years as the sun gets even brigther
A somewhat smaller star woud be ideal, it woud give Earth a few billion years more ( K Dwarfs coud be superhabitable as stars )
500 million years to the next LIP?
I seriously doubt that number, I would be surprised if it takes as long as 1 million years, and I can pretty much say where it will go boom, Lake Baikal.
The knockon-effect of that will be fairly hilarious with India being shot down towards Antarctica.
Severe LIP events can cause global warning as Siberian Traps did
Souch LIP events in the future will be very bad .. because the sun is brigther now than it was in the Permian
So you gets more warming for the same ammounts of volcanic CO2 ..
There will be a time When the Earth is not habitable anymore
Etiophia – Kenya and likely Virunga coud be places for near future flood basalting?
But Afar Plume did its flood basalting almost 30 million years ago and only resulted in a moderate sized LIP.
As African Rifting proceeds more of the Super Plume Head will be exposed to lower pressure and perhaps massive decompression melting?
But I doubt it will be anything like CAMP that was the biggest lava flows since complex life began.
For Baikal to become serious, it needs more pull. The break is caused by India (of course) but to be amplified the sides need to be pulled apart. That is done by the subduction around the Pacific. However, this is largely compensated by the expansion of the Atlantic. To break Asia, you should either stop the MAR, or initiate subduction in the Eastern Atlantic. That is still some 10’s of million of years away, I think.
Needs to be a Mantle Plume under the too.. If you wants massive decompression melting
I dont think There is a plume below Baikal 🙁
This is completely logical, and that knowledge influenced me to a great deal. Albert is top in plate tectonics, fascinating.
Me and Albert have a long-standing discussion on Baikal.
It all boils down to more or less if the pull is enough (Albert), and if the nascent hotspot is enough (Carl).
We are literally having a push-pull discussion. If we discussed MOSFETs I would be advocatin PNP over NPN, and Albert the opposite. We are having way to much fun sometimes.
The next LIP will come well in advance of the next continent reconfiguration I’d assume. But I think if Pangaea Ultima comes to pass it means the supercontinent hovering over the African LLSVP i.e. antipodal to the last one.
Afar to me is an LIP if we’re using size and being contemporaneous with continental break-up as markers.
You are the physicist and might of course be right. But the landmass of Pangaea was nonetheless the biggest landmass in the last 250M.
Today there are more than two oceans and there are ample spreading ridges and continental drift. I would call this a lively planet, whereas Pangaea was close to creating a dead planet, Jesper might rightly say hell. Rarefication of shelves too, low water level.
Plate Tectonics maybe possible for
2 billion years more, as a planet the size of the Earth contains plenty of internal heat.
But as the Earth dries up under a brigther sun, the litosphere maybe become to dry for tectonics. And Earths enters a venusian – marsian stagnant lid with hotspot volcanism
But Earths mantle contains plenty of water in the minerals, althrough the brigther Sun will rob Earth of its volcanic water vapour.
In 1,5 billion years the sun will be 15% brigther and Earth maybe become a venusian hellscape as the atmosphere fills with heat trapping water vapour
Next LIP will geologicaly soon
Perhaps Africa or Baikal ( it There is a plume under Asia )
I was talking about Earths gloomy future under a brigther sun .. the lumminosity is Increasing
Gloomy future? When the luminosity is increasing? 🙂
Plus this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYkACVDFmeg
We will survive.
With the content I have nothing to do, the title and speed of the song, her voice and her power are magical.
I’m more into classical music, so I didn’t know the song a few years ago. Then, while driving around with some Jay (a Jay is a person born in India whose name is even harder to keep in mind and pronounce than K-Town=Kaiserslautern), and he said that he once lived close to Gloria Gaynoir and ran into her in the street.
Mesays stupidly: Who is Gloria Gaynor? Since then I love that song. That is the good thing about globalization: You meet a guy born in India who shows you an American singer you didn’t know. It’s the kind of thing that makes us broader in spirit an brighter.
@ admin: Sorry for the -i- in her name. Must have touched both vocals, but the name appears again, written properly.
Gloria Gaynor is fabulous.
Jupiters Poles are one of the strangest things I ever seen. No banding at all, just convection and vortexes.The poles are a bubbling pot of atmospheric convection. Storms and thunderstorms, cyclones everywhere. Electrical Thunderstorms are also much more common near the poles. Less windshear too near the jovian poles.
Jupiters weather are not driven by the sun at all
Its Jupiters own massive internal heat, that drives these patterns, churning up the upper atmosphere. There is gigantic thunderstorms that can grow 100 km tall and thousands of kilometers wide. There is hailstones of water and ammonia. And torrential rainfall. The rain and hailstones, falls into the hot depths and evaporate, rise up and forms clouds again in an endless cycle.
Althrough I should post this in the VC Bar
I wants a Hot Hydrogen Zeppelin and float around in Jupiters storms.
Must be a spectacular sight, with Mega thunderstorms looking like walls of cauliflower pyroclastic flows, and storm anvils thousands of kilometers wide, with giant blue electrical sprites
The Auroras will be spectacular too
10 000 times stronger than Earths polar lights, so very strong
Yup!
Thank you for the clarification blog post, Carl.
Much appreciated and very educating as always 🙂
I didn’t think about Taal. Didn’t think about 2020 not having been even a tiny dent to its magma chamber.
Even wondered why FAF didn’t make it into a VC tab while Taal, long stopped since, is still in that tab bar.
Now I know why 😮
OT: In the night you could still see something I would suggest to be active lava at the volcano.
Clearly in sharp decline though, with a particularly small and calm tremor the last hours.
That is residual heat glow, remember that the residual heat is ginormous at Fagradalsfjall.
The field is in places a 100 meter thick layer of still molten lava. No surprise it glows in the dark as new cracks in the top layer appears.
Once upon Pacaya I found red glow visible in the daytime in a crack on a 2 year old lava-field that I walked across.
I admit, I did roast marshmallows with my mother-in-law in that crack. (I like my mother-in-law, she is utterly bonkers)
The middle of the lava lake in Kilauea Iki is still around 500 C even now and it took many years for the middle to stop glowing visibly in daylight down the boreholes. That lava is about 120 meters, probably it will take similarly long for the lava in Geldingadalir to cool being similar thickness.
Was referring to the volcano at La Palma though, it was still untitled last time I checked 🙂
I might have witnessed such at FAF too, though I wouldn’t call that “active” lava as opposed to La Palma.
Thanks for your thoughts anyways, sounds like something I’d like to do once 🙂
Let us name it Baldrick.
At El Hierro Lurking named the volcano into Bob after the Blackadder character.
That drove Juan Carlos Carracedo bat shit crazy since it stuck and 99 percent of the world calls the volcano Bob.
Good one Lurking…
I think what’s funnier out of that is half the world have called both fagradalsfjall and la palma Bob in the YT chats I’ve seen.
I wondered why that was happening, now I know! I support the idea. Post Baldrick few times on the Afar channels and I bet it’ll take a life of its own. By why does Baldrick beat out Queenie or Flashheart? 😂
It was rather surprising that the Volcano Bob, became Bob the Generic Volcano.
I find it hilarious since we know how it all started.
I thought it had already been named Tajogaite, or something closely similar?
Is that another mythical fish name?
Carl
And Fagradalshraun is tiny tiny tiny compared to Puu Oo s cone thats result of almost 40 years of shielding.
How long will it for Puu Oo to cool down? Its very very very thick that pile and still glowing on some cameras.
Mauna Ulu 1,2 km3 is also still very hot
Huge thick Sillic flows .. 15 km long and many 100 s of meters thick, are probaly the lava flows that cools the slowest? This one must have taken 1000 years to cool because of its thickness
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Chao
The volume erupted is larger at Puu, but the depth of the lava is thicker at Fagra since it filled in a sizeable valley. Fagradalsfjall is now more of Fagrafjallfjall 😉
Puu Oo is much much much thicker than Fagradalshraun!
I think its many 100 s of meters thick If you takes with the shield.
Puu Oo also produced many many Holuhraun volumes of lava over the decades
Fagradalshraun is only little above 0,1 km3
I am not talking about the cone of Puu, I am talking about the thickness of the lava-flow at its deepest. Something quite different Jesper.
Pu’u O’o is about 150 meters tall.
So, after decades the cone of Puu is only 150 meters tall? Well, that is the same as the height of the final vent at Fagra… something seems a bit odd here.
And no, I am still talking about the flow-thickness…
Was way taller in the mid 80s, it got to 255 meters. But it collapsed over the next decade as the conduit expanded a bit more west and consumed the summit of the cone completely in early 1997.
Pu’u O’o also sent most of its lava flowing very far from the vent. During the paroxysmal phases 10 km was not uncommon and at one point a flow went 14 km in a day, really they were proper lava floods at times. Tube fed flows got even further, 23 km in 2014.
Thats right .. Puu Oo flows where many layers of thin pahoehoe flows .. tubes
And not any thick lava ponded lake
Althrough Pahoehoe flows often inflates to heights thicker than Holuhraun after a few weeks, a centimeter thin breakouts .. can a few weeks later inflate to 15 meters thick.
But the leading edges of tube feed pahoehoe fields can be only centimeters thick
Mostly on the coastal flats and behind Puu Oo on the flat ERZ that conditions are favorable for inflation to meters
Kilaueas almost flat ERZ profile is result of fast tube feed eruptions that allowed the pahoehoes to spread far and wide.
Kilauea is mostly made of pahoehoe and pillow lava
Halema’uma’u is slowing down : (
I know who is resposible for the slurp 😉 : D
I was livid when he drained the overlook…2018
I should stop blaming my friend : )
Weird tilt signal too, a jump followed by a fall about twice as big. Not big overall only a few microradians but it stands out. Might be gas pistoning possibly.
The surface also might just be getting pushed up, with effusion of lava under the crust and the cone just beign a spatter source above the submerged vent. The visible lava is not an open hole into the deeper lake it is a thin veneer on the crust, which could be rising more than the vent area and tipping the liquid off, so to speak.
It might actually be ending though too 🙁
Will be interesting if it drains back, seeing the floor sink and the edges of the lake exposed glowing. Will also be interesting to see if it erupts again at that vent afterwards, whether it be hours or months later.
The upward jump just before a DI event has been seen before. The explanation is not clear
It is pressure related though, the 24 hr timelapse shows the lake surging before declining a lot, so there was an actual response.
Does look to be just a DI event not anything bigger. So the eruption probably isnt over yet and could return to normal as the I in DI happens.
So. The 17th century BC had a Tunguska-sized explosive that wiped out a city, the Aniakchak bang, the Veniaminof bang (likely) and a third large eruption, but none of these three are Santorino. Radiocarbon dating however suggests Santorini took place in the 17th century BC as well, but it might not have left a footprint on Greenland.
No cold epoch? No global crisis?
We do know exactly when Santorini and Aniakchak happened, 1628BC.
More to the point, we know that they happened the same year.
We know this from ice-core samples that contain 70 percent Aniakchak and 30 percent Santorini ash in the same layer (year).
The percentages also pan out visavi the amount of ejecta based on calculations of how much is missing in the volcanoes at hand from each eruption.
The reasons we did not get a global cold-spell is that they are in the northern hemisphere, if it had happened at the equator the effects would have been worse.
That being said, the Minoan culture vanished, and in Alaska the large migration took place displacing a large proportion of the nations around Aniakchak. So locally the effects was pretty bad, and would also be pretty bad in our time if it would have happened now.
https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-great-american-volcano-aniakchak/
“The pipes run in twin systems, indicating that Therans used both hot and cold water supplies; the origin of the hot water probably was geothermic, given the proximity of the volcano.”
On Thera in wikipedia.
There is a whole group who place Thera later, possibly even in the 16th century BC. so there is an ongoing debate, and problems are not solved at all. Read also about “Miyake events” at the end which will be used to get further. This is interesting, isn’t it? Those Minoans were the trade partners of cities in what’s today Jordan and also Egypt, there is oral testimony, albeit in that grey zone between history and legend, there might have been the Exodus from Egypt, and the Thera debate is not finished.
Besides, the authors state in the paper that Pompei left no traces in Greenland ice cores, but was smaller than Thera:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/absolute-treering-dates-for-the-late-bronze-age-eruptions-of-aniakchak-and-thera-in-light-of-a-proposed-revision-of-icecore-chronologies/0E06053BFD90C1EA58ED8822814DC6F8
That’s exactly the kind of enigma I like with ongoing debate.
The 1628BC date is pretty firm. It has been co-documented by other tree ring studies.
When doing ashy stuff you need to check many glaciers. And for smaller eruptions the wind direction during the eruption becomes ever more important.
Let us start with the wind direction during Pompeii 79, the ash travelled to the southeast, that is not very conducive for glacial harddrives.
Secondly size. Vesuvius 79AD was surprisingly small, it was 1 cubic kilometre of uncompacted ash. Barely a VEI-5, and just a tad larger than Grimsvötn 2011 and Kelud 2014. It just had the worlds greatest PR machine at the time, Pliny the Younger.
So, Vesuvius was sixty times smaller than Thira, and 100 times smaller (conservatively) of Aniakchak.
I retrospect it is not that odd that Thira and Aniakchak shows up in every single glacial core-sample old enough, Greenland, Svalbard, The Alps….
Size is indeed relative.
Very interesting the point with the wind in Pompei and extremely funny: Pliny the greatest PR-machine.
That leaves another possible event earlier in the Near East untouched. Altogether it was probably a terrible century for a prosperous society, similar to what happened to the Romans. But the Roman Empire was bigger.
Today I would compare it with Fuji. So, Fuji has to be a good boy, better behave. It’s too beautiful too.
Btw, next Monday you hopefully feel very proud or (as physicists are often modest) at least very happy. Nice team, great collegues, great readers, to bad that Henrik went to a place where he can watch better. I love his phantasy in the NDVP for his Number 1.
Scratching my head over what is happening next Monday…
Henrik knocked that sollidly out of the ballpark with a cricket-bat. Stunning imagination.
It might be interesting to start with the story (some people make the mistake to throw the bible away with the church): There is a desastrous event. It can be an earthquake, Thera or an airburst or even meteor impact in the Red Sea, buried under loads of salt and sand. Then there are seven meagre cows (years without harvest), people have died, food is down next to null and then crickets born in the marshes eat the rest of the harvest, newborns die, the Red Sea is said to have retreated and come back (tsunami), there is migration, and then Moses and Aaron decide to build up a new society and bundle the events in a book. The Egyptians describe the events in the Tempest Stele instead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_Stele
In the end the culprits today are the three I named. If Thera erupted later it hit an already impoverished Minoan society. It might be the most interesting century BC and Thera therefore one of the most interesting historical volcanoes.
Farmeroz:
I’ll order some of the books recommended by Carl and others. In school I was very good at maths, also all my children. The problem is more that I went to a school specialized in languages, and we didn’t have enough maths. So I wonder if I can catch up. Languages wasn’t bad at the time, we were into that growing French-German approachment of de Gaulle/Adenauer and later Giscard/Schmidt. If I start with some maths and physics I can ask my children. When I discovered Albert’s Pacific piece I showed it to my daughter, full of enthusiasm and read it to her.
She is sometimes raw like all daughters. She asked me whether I had understood the numbers on the ocean floor. When I said “yeah” and read on she stopped me and explained the whole thing to me. So, there are chances, if I take the time, that I’ll get somewhere. Thanks for the help with sources to all of you, very kind, indeed.
I would take a look at the cambridge international cgse textbooks. Just a peek. Its the basic understanding of
physics you can get without lies.oversimplification. No need to treat it as a textbook, just as a read. Maths is always good, how you handle calculus is interesting and not iq related.
To me its quite obvious but to many its bizarre. People just seem to binary split over it.
You may surprise yourself.
https://twitter.com/involcan/status/1457711827379425285
Our Italian colleagues from
@INGVvulcani
have estimated the minimum height of the plume today in 1600 meters
At https://www.space.com/la-palma-volcano-bomb-proposal “Politician suggests bombing erupting La Palma volcano to stop lava flow”.
The general consensus is that the politician in question is very much in favour of herbs.
Must have been boning up on Mauna Loa’s eruptive history.
08/11/2021 lava flows status.
Whew! Definitely not looking like that in the TV Canarias life stream 😮
In your video it can clearly be seen that the lava is still actively flowing.
Night time views from the El Galeon still camera show the glow of active lava streams every night.
Back to Iceland – the FAF tremor graph is showing a sharp rise approaching the 5000 mark and earthquakes have practically disappeared from that area. This could be interesting.
That’s indeed true, the low freq overtakes the two high freqs. Well, let’s see.
Let’s hear what Bob Dylan has to say about that graph:
https://youtu.be/vWwgrjjIMXA
Maybe I should elaborate. Check other stations, not just faf. During the eruption, the signal was strongest at faf and gradually weaker at stations further away. Now the signal is strong at all stations near the south coast, but not at vog or kas to the north of the eruption site. Continue further along the south coast and find that station esk says that either Katla or Eyjafjallajökull is about to go off. Either that, or it’s like Dylan sings in the video.
Just as one could suspect, the wind is blowing straight from the south.
https://vedur.is/vedur/spar/thattaspar/#teg=vindur
And you told me before. I just do not learn. (Too old already?)
You learn from your mistakes and repetition is the mother of all learning. Therefore, repeating your mistakes is probably the best way to learn stuff.
Yes, but you learn to do it wrong. You are better off making a different mistake every time
When I read s.th. like the answer to Quin from Tomas Andersson I regularly say to myself: Beautiful site.
I excell in making new mistakes.
I seriously enjoy all my mistakes, such mischief, and so much to learn.
Of course, there is also this saying (often falsely attributed to Einstein): The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Seems like learning and insanity are closely related. Would explain a thing or two about some people I have met in academia 😆
Yup, the boring truth is that many things that look interesting in Iceland is a storm.
General rule, check the Icelandic weather before getting happy…
Halema’uma’u keeps dying away…
I know who are resposible for this 😉
Just wait until Kilaūea throws out a Sakursunarvatn 2.0 🙂
Kilauea haves the magma supply and even the gas content for that,
( Hawaiian basalts are one of the very most sulfur rich on the planet )
The problem is that Kilaūea is to open for that .. letting off pressure all the time. Preventing souch caldera eruptions.. at Kilaūea
On the subject of ring dykes:
I should think there would be three kinds of behavior that a volcano summit caldera may display, depending on how the ring fault dips.
Inward dip makes the plug above the magma chamber a cone that tapers downward and sits in a socket in the surrounding terrain. Enough pressure in the magma chamber can lift the cone and open up the ring fault, leading to eruptions around the rim of the crater. If the cone tilts these may happen on just one side. The Galapagos volcanoes and Grimsvotn appear to behave this way, and some of the Kilauea summit eruptions. When the pressure drops enough, the cone falls back into place and closes the ring fault, cutting off the magma pathways to the surface and ending the eruption. A flank eruption will also halt summit eruptions by removing the pressure needed to hold summit conduits open. We saw that at Kilauea in 2018, with the Overlook conduit slamming shut.
Vertical sides make the plug a cylinder that behaves like a piston. The ring fault never opens, so is difficult for lava to use to escape. Instead one gets flank eruptions that reduce volume in the chamber while the piston drops, maintaining the pressure and keeping the eruption going until friction between the cylinder and the hole it’s in exceeds the other forces in play. The piston can drop further the lower the flank outlet is. This happens at Bardarbunga and explains why Holuhraun (erupting to a higher altitude part of the flank) was smaller than the Veidivotn eruptions (vents at much lower altitude), and why it has far fewer summit eruptions than Kilauea or Grimsvotn.
The real nasty one will be an outward-dipping ring fault. There the plug is a cone with the point upward. Pressure may hold it in place, but enough drop in the pressure below (e.g. from a flank eruption) and it sinks down, opening pathways for lava to erupt. Once that starts, the whole system overturns, since the solid-rock cone is denser than the hotter, liquid rock of the same composition that lies below it. The cone falls into the magma chamber and the magma chamber spews out at the summit. These calderas are one-and-done: once an outward-dipping ring fault forms, the next depressurization will lead to a maximum-size eruption for that volcano and the collapse of its magma chamber.
An obvious question is: which type is Taal?
Kilauea is actually both 1 and 3, only a total collapse the way you describe with the plug falling in isnt really possible there as the chamber is more layered sill structures than a single unit (probably that is true of most if not all volcanoes). There were massive lava fountains out of the ring faults at Kilauea in 179-1791 and in the 1500s, and possibly other times in that interval. It appears the faults dip in both directions and the deeper ones are outward, though rarely active and only during major collapses.
Also something, in scenario 3 the fault will fill with magma and this is basically the same thing as a ring dike.
Taal I would expect is probably either the same as Kilauea or just a straight 3. It has got a history of big eruptions that wouldnt really make sense with the other mechanisms.
#ErupciónLaPalma | The volcano is fed back, but with less intensity
There are symptoms that the magma reservoirs are diminishing, but it is not possible to speak of the end of the eruption, according to Pevolca # TN2Canarias
https://twitter.com/RTVCes/status/1457817948106657806
I’ve read that INVOLC just posted a video showing that increased gas emissions are present on the northern half of the island of La Palma in the Taburiente caldera.
Gasses including helium are bubbling out of hot springs in the ground.
Does this mean anything significant in terms of the fact it’s the north instead of the southern part?
No, this is normal activity and don’t mean any increasing activity or any unusual
https://twitter.com/rubenlodi/status/1457800354859393028
Helium is found in the deep mantle but also in the crust through radioactive decay. Likely all the earthquakes have created fractures, so it’s more to do with seismicity rather than rising magma.
CO2 is a better indicator of deep magma. SO2 is a sure indicator of shallow magma. Helium really only means there is upwelling mantle, with powerful plumes having more. It is also important to look at isotopes, primordial helium has more He3, He4 can form anywhere there is naturally elevated uranium concentrations. So the ratio of He3 to He4 is important too.
Thank you for your educating statement.
So, I take it when the fresh stuff started to erupt the SO2 started its decline and meanwhile CO2 went up.
This tweet?
https://twitter.com/involcan/status/1457691359112990731?t=FZFOshn0ZYnNH_0V64xElQ&s=19
“Bubbling of Dos Aguas, inside the Caldera de Taburiente. Here significant amounts of CO2 are emitted, and a small amount of helium from the earth’s mantle is degassed, with a significant proportion from the lower mantle, that is, more than 600km deep.”
El Taburiente is where the very deep contuit is located, but there is no conduit upwards from there, it instead diverts towards the dyke swarm to the south.
But, gas can easily penetrate the fractured ground and collect inside the collapse caldera.
The increase in gas is most likely caused by deep upwelling magma, and might point towards a future eruption at this stage. Well, unless we see increase of SO2 in the caldera, than things could get interesting. 🙂
Tremor Slowly ascend.
and the number of earthquakes
A recharge?
Hmmm to me the tremor is looking very tiny right now…
And the silence, plus lack of heavy ash presently is a hopeful sign of shutting down .But I know volcanoes can make fools of us.
Just checked-dark plume of smoke arrived.Now can eat my own words- see!
Three earthquakes within minutes of each other at 07:59 I think caused this uptake ?
3.1 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP
2021/11/09 07:59:59
10
3.4 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL
2021/11/09 07:59:30
10
2.7 mbLg
SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP
2021/11/09 07:57:36
14
While reading a bit about Jules Verne’s life (very nice life I’d say) I found this well written and slightly romantic piece with many nice thoughts about the Icelanders and a few quotations from the voyage that started in Snæfellsjökull, a piece avout Snæfellsjökull worth reading:
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20110107-an-icelandic-journey-to-the-centre-of-the-earth
I think England has his own Jules Verne. His name is C.S. Lewis. He didn’t travel from Snæfellsjökull to Stromboli, but randsomly to Mars and Venus (Perelandra Space Trilogy).
The precise temperature of Venus wasn’t known yet as far as I know, and in Verne’s time:
‘At the time Jules Verne was writing, some people believed the earth was hollow,’ he says. Haraldur Sigursson, quote from the BBC-piece.
Corr.: Haraldur Sigurdsson
Dear old Haraldur!
The man who literally wrote the book on volcanology.
We should all lift our collective coffee mugs and salute in his general direction for all the fun we enjoy daily thanks to him.
🙂
Henrik’s piece about the number one reminded me of Jules Verne. Phantasy, well contained and characterizing it as what it is, is a gift. And after what I read further up about physics and maths it doesn’t seem too unimportant in both fields. That’s probably why physicists and mathematicians can also excel in music, best example Albert Einstein.
I studied piano and counterpoint (composition) first, I then drifted into how sound is produced, that in turn led me into physics… and then wave propagation theory, and that in turn turned into geophysics.
Squiggly waveforms is kind of the thin rope that joins together my otherwise disjointed life. 🙂
Sadly electronic fugues based on earthquake data is not in fashion…