Africa is broken. It is being dissected by the famous East African Rift which extends over a length of 5000 km along the eastern side of Africa and seems poised to destroy Africa as we know it. Some say a new ocean will form here. In that case a new name will be needed. Suggestions are welcome. Be aware that ‘Sea of Europe’, ‘Gulf of America’, or ‘China Channel’ are unlikely to be acceptable to the locals. It has happened before: the last time the new waterway was named after the part of the continent that left, hence the ‘Indian Ocean’. This time, Somalia seeks to escape.
The East African Rift begins at Afar. Here is the most famous triple junction on the planet. The three rifts join in the classic picture of a triple point, splitting Arabia from Africa and splitting Africa apart. It is also the location of a flood basalt and it is considered to host or have hosted a mantle plume. The image of a mantle plume breaking up a continent is irresistible. It is too good not to be true.
But what is the evidence? Is Afar the beginning or is it the end of the East African Rift? Did the rise and fall of Afar spell Africa’s demise? Paraphrasing Hermione ‘Afari’ Granger, using an unlocking spell which in her story is of West African origin: Alohomora Africa!
The East African Rift system
The Afar triple point combines three rifts: the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the East Africa rift. We will start with the latter, as it is the one that grabs most attention.
The African rift valley is a sight to behold. I remember driving into the wide rift valley in southern Malawi. The slope was not particularly steep, but it still felt like descending into the depth of the Earth. The last part was cross-country to get to a small village near the Shire river. I was glad not to be the driver!
This was towards the southern end of the rift system. The East Africa Rift is a system rather than a single rift: it is not a single structure but consists of separate pieces, not all well connected. There are four main branches. (I recommend looking at a map of Africa at this point.) The West Arm runs from Kenya to Malawi, west of Lake Victoria. The East Arm runs from Afar through Tanzania, east of Lake Victoria. It (almost) joins up with the West Arm at Mbeya.
There are two less familiar arms, located in the south. The Southeast Arm branches off near Nairobi towards Zanzibar on the coast, and from there southward into the Mozambique Channel. The Indian Ocean Arm runs from the southern border of Tanzania to the Comoros and beyond, and from there southward through Madagascar.
The Kariba rift towards the Okavango may in the future develop into a 5th arm. This is beginning to sound like an elephant in the making!
The four (or five) arms are in different phases of development. They seem most developed in the north and are still feeling their way forward in the south. This suggests that the Rift system started in the northern half. This brings Afar into the picture. Lava adds to this view. Although all four arms have some volcanic activity, major basaltic flows are only found along the East Arm, in Ethiopia and Kenya. Here is where mantle melt is breaking through. Thus, the East Arm is viewed as the main rift, and the others are side shows. The West Arm (with the main Rift lakes, the Mountains of the Moon, the gorillas and some good-looking volcanoes) may be known as ‘the Rift Valley’, but it is not the main-stay and is not where Africa will break – at least this time.
Volcanic dating shows that the Rift system formed over some 40 million years. The oldest lavas are found in the Turkana region, in southern Ethiopia, and were erupted 40 million years ago. Northern Ethopia was next, at 30 million years ago. Other parts of the East Arm were active by 15 million years ago and by 10 million years ago there was activity along all four arms. The West Arm is therefore younger than the East Arm. Clearly, the Rift system is still developing.
And in spite of its reputation, it has not split the continent yet. There is no sea invading this rift. One day, perhaps.
The Gulf of Aden
The Gulf of Aden is the most developed of the three rifts of the Afar triple point, has widened the furthest and has formed a proper sea. The rifting in the Gulf of Aden started already 40 million years ago, with the formation of a basin from stretched continental crust. Oceanic crust began to form in the basin around 18 million years ago, first at the Sheba ridge in the east and over the next 8 million years progressing westwards. 10 million years ago the rift reached Aden. Here it waited. The basin further along towards Djibouti had already subsided, but not yet split.
The westward extension of the rifting toward Djibouti resumed 2-3 million years ago. It breached the coastal mountains 1 million years ago, forming the Gulf of Tadjoura and splitting the Danakil Block from the Ali-Sabieh Block in the process. It remains a work in progress.
The Red Sea
The Red Sea started its formation later than the others. A series of basins had already existed, but it developed into a rift 24 million years ago when volcanic activity started over a distance of 1700 km. The basins started to rapidly subside, first in some locations, and along the entire Red Sea by 20 million years ago. By that time, the Red Sea had formed.
Over time, a small oceanic spreading centre formed in the central Red Sea but it did not progress. Only in the last million years or so has the rifting moved into the Danakil Depression, taking a detour from the straight line through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. This is also about the time when the Gulf of Tadjoura formed, working to complete the Afar bypass.
The old volcanics
Afar is known for its volcanic activity, both present and past. The three rifts themselves ranged from hyperactivity along the African rift to little along the Gulf of Aden. Africa had been volcanically quiet for a long time, in fact ever since Gondwana broke up. After a volcanic sleep of almost 100 million years, a careless prince wandered in and volcanic episodes began. This started in northeast Africa, but not (at first) in Afar.
First stirrings
Volcanic activity along the East African Rift system started near Turkana, in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, where lava began to flood the region. This was 45 million years ago and lasted for 10 million years.; it can be viewed as a ‘minor flood basalt’. It is called the Amaro and the Gamo basalts, where the latter name is assigned to the later phases of this long volcanic episode. The total volume is 30,000 km3. A tuff layer dated to 39.6 million years ago show evidence for an explosive event.
The rifting in Africa thus started not at the triple point, but south of Afar, in the middle of the East Arm.
The next event was far more dramatic.
The Afar flood basalt
30.5 million years ago, a true flood basalt started in central and northern Ethiopia. It continued for a million years, brief compared to the previous or following events. It is called the Ethiopia-Yemen Continental Flood Basalt (not a name that rolls off the tongue – Afar flood basalt is a lot easier to remember) and is typically attributed to a hot spot. A total of 350,000 km3 of lava was erupted, ten times that of the previous eruptions (which also had lasted ten times as long). To put it in context, this is about twice the volume of the Columbia flood basalt but less than a third of the Deccan flood basalt. Lavas from this episode are found in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen, and extend south as far as Turkana. It is mostly absent from the Somalian plateau.
Near the end of the flood basalt phase, a very large shield volcano formed on top of the erupted basalt. It is called the Simien shield, with a centre in Ethiopia some 200 km northwest of Afar. The volcano formed when the magma supply was decreasing and the eruption began to focus on a smaller central region.
In its final phase, the flood basalt gave way to silicic eruptions producing large ignimbrites. 29 million years ago, activity largely ceased. For the next several million years there were only a few eruptions across the region.
Wake-up call
This volcanic sleep ended 24 million years ago with a new phase of volcanism. It occurred over a large region along the Red Sea, Ethiopia and as far as Turkana. Different from previous events, this phase formed distinct volcanoes. In Ethiopia, the new volcanoes formed on top of the large Simien shield. They are enormous in size. The highest point in Ethiopia, Ras Dashan (4500 m) on the Simien shield, is one of these volcanoes. Choke also rises to over 4 km and is 100 km across. The lavas are basaltic, with a thin pyroclastic cover. Being so old, these mountains are now deeply eroded. The lavas from this time are also found on the Somali plateau, but here it erupted along fissures rather than individual volcanoes. The Somalian fissure flows were low viscosity and went far into Ogaden, the low land to the east.
The new phase of volcanism differs from the earlier flood basalt. The eruptions were smaller but extended over a large region. The phase also lasted much longer, for some 4 million years. This indicates that this phase has related to tectonic motions and stresses, rather than a singular hot spot.
The activity extended well beyond the earlier flood basalt. There were eruptions along a long stretch on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, although not on the Yemen plateau. To the south, there were eruptions in the Turkana basin. By 20 milllion years ago the entire East arm of the African rift was participating . However, there is no record of volcanism along the Gulf of Aden. After 20 million years ago, activity moved south into Kenya but declined elsewhere.
Remains of this volcanic activity can be seen around the Afar Triangle itself. The escarpments and the Danakil Alps show the dikes left by this phase.
Younger activity
A longer period of semi-quiescence followed, with some volcanic eruptions but no large basaltic flows. This changed 12 million years when again basalt began to flood the land along the East Arm of the African rift. The event started out (again) at Turkana but extended from there both south and north. By 11 million years ago it arrived at the southern point of Afar. This was the first time the Ethiopian Rift reached Afar.

The flows of 12-9 million years ago in the Ethiopia region are indicated in blue. Source: Tooney 2020, Lithos Volume 360, 105291
Some of the flows near Medina on the Red Sea date to this time.
The final (and last?) volcanic phase in the Afar Triangle started around 4 million years ago; it lasted until 0.5-1 million years ago. For the first time, this focussed on the interior of the Triangle. It was another minor flood basalt, called the Afar Stratoid series. (‘Stratoid’ is a word used for flood basalt.) This outburst covered 55,000 km2 of the central and southern Triangle to a depth of up to 1500 meters. The lava flowed from fissures along the general direction of the rifts, parallel to the Ethiopian rift or parallel to the Red Sea.
Basaltic activity subsided again after 0.5 million years ago. The volcanics here seems to go in phases, with a period of basaltic flows followed by shield building and silicic volcanics, after which the cycle begins again.

Volcanic activity along the different parts of the African rift system, showing the start at Turkana Tyrone Rooney, Lithos, 286, 264 (2017)
Rifting
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In this region, basaltic activity often coincides with rifting. We can try to piece together the formation of Afar and its three rifts from this volcanic history.
We have seen that the East African Rift system has been 40 million year in the making. It began not at the current triple point in Afar, but at Turkana, much further south. The Gulf of Aden also first formed far from Afar, 40 million years ago, and expanded towards it.
The rifting activity accelerated 24 million years ago. The Red Sea flared up along its entire length: it became a proper rift at this time. The African rift activated and extended northward but was slow to progress. The southern part existed by 18 million years ago, but the Afar Triangle was reached only 11 million years ago. Only in recent years (geologically speaking) did the African rift organise itself towards splitting an entire continent.
The fact that Ethiopia and Yemen both show the outpourings of the flood basalt of 30 million year ago, but the plateau in Yemen lacks the 24 million year event suggests that their split happened in between these times. In fact, the Yemen plateau shows no volcanic activity after 26 million years ago. The coastal region shows volcanic activity continuing until 20 million years ago, and erosion sediment indicates that the coast was subsiding. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the Yemen split occurred 26 million years ago, and it drifted away over the period between 26 and 20 million years ago.
When did the Danakil Alps separate from the Ethiopian Plateau? There are similar granite intrusions in both dated to 20 million years ago, so at that time the two were close together. This intrusion was likely related to the rifting. One possibility is that the Danakil Alps separated at the same time as Yemen, as two parallel rifts. At first, the spreading was mainly accommodated by the eastern side (the Strait) and later mainly by the western one (the Danakil depression). The split may also have happened 20 million years ago.
Either way, this occurred long before the arrival of the Ethiopian rift. Thus, Afar first formed as part of the Red Sea, some 6 million years after the big flood basalt. The subsiding basin of the Gulf of Aden may have arrived around the same time or later, and the East Africa Rift joined up much later, 11 million years ago. Oceanic rifting reached the region only in the last few million years. Tectonics takes time.
The most recent volcanic outpouring, starting 4 million years ago, took place inside the Afar depression. This stratoid series was probably also related to renewed rifting, when Afar began to transition toward oceanic spreading. This was when the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea spreading centres approached and moved into the region. The effect of spreading was also seen in the Bab-al-Mandab’s Strait, which dropped below sea level at this time, with the Red Sea now filling with water from the Indian Ocean. (Before this time, it received water at its northern end from the Neothethys.)
That leaves a question: why did the spreading centres not move into and through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait? The Strait widened and deepened enough to become submerged, but the rifting from both sides turned away from it to enter Afar itself. A possibility lies in the basalt intrusions. Much of the magma never reached the surface but formed intrusions in the crust. While the crust stretched and thinned, the magma from below was thickening and strengthening it again. The density of the crust in the Strait can indeed be fitted as thinned continental crust with a large injection of basaltic magma. In the end, the crust here may just have become stronger than that in the Afar triangle. But it is also possible that when the Ethiopian Rift reached Afar 11 million years ago, it also split the Danakil Block from the Ali-Sabieh Block. In that case, the rift of the Gulf of Aden found a ready-made gap which provided a more attractive route than the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.
The flood basalt and the split

Reconstruction of the Arabian plate evolution, by Bosworth et al., Journal of African Earth Sciences 43 (2005) 334–378: The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Basins. The final panel shows the expected layout 10 million years from now. This is subject to change!
Perhaps surprisingly, the Afar flood basalt 30 million years did not play a major role in this. There is no evidence for strong rifting at this time.
In fact that makes sense. Flood basalts may happen every 15 million years or so on average. It is not something to expect to happen soon (neither do we know what signs would herald one), but they have happened many times in many places. Most flood basalts did not break up plates – it is not a standard part of the procedure. There were large flood basalts in various places during the break-up of Gondwana so there can be a relation. But most commonly there isn’t. The Columbia flood basalt didn’t break America. The Deccan traps and the Siberian traps didn’t break India and Siberia. Why would Afar have been different?
It is not easy to split a plate. It takes more than a push from below. It needs a pull as well. That pull needs to come from existing plate movements, such as a subduction zone pulling a plate towards it, as happens in the Pacific ocean. During the break-up of Gondwana, there was plenty of pull. Africa is more stable.
In Africa, the pull in the east-west direction is distinctly lacking. But there was a pull towards the north, where the final generation of the Tethys ocean was disappearing underneath Asia. This pull only ceased 10 million years ago when the collision was complete. And to the east, India continued to move north into Asia, in a collision that was already in slow-motion progress. The India plate was separated from Africa by a fracture zone in the Indian ocean, but this was a sticky zone and India was doing its best to pull Africa along. So Africa was under some north-south stress. The stress had create a number of basins, where the crust had stretched and weakened. Both the regions of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden already contained such basins, 60-80 km wide.
So the rifting had started before the Afar flood basalt. It developed in the general direction of the Afar flood basalt (which was actually centred south of Afar), but took a very long time to get there and arrived long after the time of the flood basalt. In the process it managed to form a decent width of oceanic crust. The fact that in the Gulf of Aden the rifting progressed east to west shows that the pulling factor came from the Indian ocean. India pulled the zipper.
The Afar plume hit south of a region where the crust was already being stretched and weakened. It helped it along: it melted and thinned the lithosphere and heated the bottom of the crust, creating a focal point for the stress to focus on. It pushed Africa over the edge. But not immediately. It took 6 million years for the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden rift to develop. The Ethiopian rift did not arrive until much later. The flood basalt did not form a triple point. That came much later.
Afar and away
Let’s go back to the Afar triangle itself. The triangle is in effect the region between the escarpments of the Ethiopian and Somalian plateaus, and the microcontinent of the Danakil Alps / Ali-Sabieh Block. On the other side of this block, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait separates it from Yemen plateau. The Afar Triangle can be viewed as a by-pass, a road around the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.
When Yemen rifted from the Ethiopian plateau perhaps 26 million years ago, it drifted north, and the subsiding crust formed the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait . This provided a seaway connection to the developing Red Sea. The Danakil Alps / Ali-Sabieh Block remained close to Africa. But then this microcontinent started to move. In the north the Danakil Alps remained pinned to the African plate, but in the south, it was pinned to the Arabian plate. Under the pull, the new microcontinent began to rotate anti-clockwise. This rotation expanded the Afar depression and is one reason for its triangular shape. The rotation has now reached 23 degrees. Much of this happened in the past 5 million years: this rotation is related to the Afar stratoid basalt flows.
(The existence of the microcontinent is not universally accepted. It is also viewed as part of the Arabian plate, just on the wrong side of the Strait.)
Where does this leave the famous triple point? The location at the southwestern tip of the depression was never it. This is where the microcontinent split off. The connection with Yemen was on the other side of that block. But a triple point could not have formed until the East African rift arrived, which was much later. Even now, the three rifts haven’t fully formed yet and it is hard to point out a precise place where they meet. Perhaps there is no such thing as the ‘Afar triple point’: it is a region, and has not yet become a point. Perhaps it is pointless.
Rise and fall
The change in elevation between the Ethiopian plateau and the Afar depression, between close to 2000 meters to near sea level is extreme. It is also recent. Originally, the plateau was much lower and the depression less depressed, with a much smaller step change between. What happened?
We should first note that the high plateau is not in itself caused by the deep flood basalt of 30 million year ago. Basalt is heavy, only a little less than the mantle below, and the weight would have depressed the region by about its own thickness. In any case, the flood basalt does not cover the entire plateau. To support the 1000-km wide plateau requires support from below, either in the form of heat (making the mantle less dense) or upward convection (pushing the crust up). This is part of the evidence for a mantle plume, which would have provided both the flood basalt and the uplift. A mantle plume head also has about the right size. But this was 30 million years ago. Why is this region still so high?
It turns out, it wasn’t. Up to some 5 million years ago, the plateau was no more than 1000 meters high. The further rise of the plateau to the current height happened after that. It is not fully known what caused it. A new pulse of heat may have reached the region. Was this a new plume, providing the push, the enhanced spreading and the stratoid basalt? Models are not in agreement on this.
Incursions
Currently the Afar Triangle is dry, even where it is below sea level. That has not always been the case. The Danakil Depression is deeply covered in salt (mixed with a fair amount of volcanic ash). It shows that this depression was once connect to the Red Sea. At times this connection to the Red Sea became closed off, and the sea arm would evaporate, leaving the salt behind. This may have happened several times over the past 200,000 years, the last time 30,000 years ago. Scattered around the region is fossil coral, left behind from the time this was an open sea arm.
There are also remnants of evaporated saline lakes, but these are much smaller than the massive deposits of the time when this was sea.
Lake Assal has also been connected to the Gulf of Tadjoura in the relative recent past. This connection was closed off by the growth of the intervening volcanic range.
Oceans past and future
There are many articles in various newspapers and websites that talk about a ‘new ocean’ forming. The depressions and cracks which these articles point to are along the Danakil depression. But this is not a ‘new’ ocean but is a completion of the Red Sea. And the Ethiopian rift is nowhere near forming an ocean. So those reports should be taken with a grain of salt.
But all across the regions are the signs of submersion, from the extensive salt layers to ancient volcanoes with submarine shape. How is that reconciled with on-going subsidence? There is uplift in regions which interferes with the inflow of water, as it does at the moment at the end of the bay of Djibouti. It is not a one-way route towards a sea. The water comes and goes as the land rises and falls.
Play of plumes
A topographic map of Africa immediately draws the eye to Ethiopia and its high plateau. It sticks out like a sore thumb. It looks like the elephant in the room.
To create high altitude plateaus in the absence of continental collisions requires a push from below. A plume is often assumed. Plumes have limited size, but a large plume can create a plume head 1000 km across. Mantle plumes are expected to cause large basaltic eruptions, while their heat causes the land to rise over the size of the plume head. This fits Ethiopia and Kenya, both of which show such eruptions and a size of the bulge of around 1000 km, as expected for a plume head. The mafic flood basalt and the size and shape of the Ethiopian rise fit the expectations well. The ‘Afar plume’ is among the best established ones in the world. That was 30 million years ago. Africa is slow moving, and the plume could not leave a trail like Yellowstone or Hawai’i. The fact that the rise still exists suggests that the plume still lingers as well.
But is it not the only such plateau in Africa. There is a second one: the area in between the two arms of the African rift. It covers Kenya and Tanzania with Lake Victoria at its centre. The edges of the plateau show mountain ranges, among them the Mountains of the Moon. A low corridor exists between the Kenyan and Ethiopian plateaus: they appear to be separate structures. Since the two plateaus are separate, does this require two plumes? It is commonly interpreted as such. The lava compositions show that both regions are fed from the mantle, with Afar having a deeper source than Kenya. So one is considered a deep plume and the other a shallow one.
Much of the southern third of Africa also has a high altitude, peaking at the Drakensberg. This large rise (a ‘swell’) even extends into the nearby Atlantic ocean. This swell connects to the Kenyan plateau but appears to be a separate structure. Unlike the other two rises, it is also entirely non-volcanic. The rise of Southern Africa extends over a much larger region than the other two, larger that expected for a plume head. That is no problem for the geologist: to explain such a region (a super-swell, as it is often called, where presumably a ‘swell’ is limited to the size of a plume) must obviously require a super-plume. So now we need two plumes and one super-plume. We are looking for a plurality of plumes.
(The elephant analogy would suggest four plumes, as an elephant has five arms and four stomach chambers.)
A name is needed. What is an appropriate collective noun for plumes? Sheep come in flocks, bananas in bunches, girls and ladies in gaggles (I am not making this up) but if they are movie stars they bunch up in galaxies, rioters form mobs (soon to be known as Muskies), lions form prides, owls make a parliament (thank C.S. Lewis for that one). So how about plumes? If strict alliteration is required, then ‘play of plumes’ or ‘plume plethora’ will do. People who fight for plumes (the PLF or Plume Liberation Front comes to mind) may prefer ‘exuberance of plumes’. Plume opponents (the WOPS or ‘War on Plumes’ party) may prefer ‘plume extravaganza’ or ‘indulgence of plumes’. Neutrals could pick the boring ‘plenty of plumes’. Pick your choice – or suggest a better one.
Afar is the poster child for mantle plumes, flood basalts and continental break-up. It makes a strong case and a good story. But sometimes a story is too good. This plume did not break up the continent. It just helped things along that were already happening. And the story is incomplete. One plume can not explain the rifting of all of east Africa. Multiple plumes will help but where do several plumes in short succession come from? And what is a ‘super plume’?
Deep underneath southern Africa lies a peculiar region. The LLSVP (large low shear seismic velocity province) is often blamed for the superswell, and sometimes an LLSVP is even equated with a superplume. (If you do not know what an LLSVP is, you may want to read The Living Earth.) But the LLSVP is located 1500 km deep, and although warm, it is neither rising nor a plume. Can it explain the superswell in Southern Africa and could it trigger the other, smaller plumes? We don’t know.
Being a poster child is not easy. It hides complexity: real people are always so much more than the poster. Afar has everything. But it is neither the end nor the beginning. It is itself, a region of fascination where we can see tectonics in action.
Albert, January 2025

Rifting and subsidence in Afar. Source: Columbia University https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2013/07/08/in-the-ethiopian-desert-a-window-into-the-rifting-of-africa/
Further reading
https://www.volcanocafe.org/volcanoes-of-saudi-arabia/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ltsv-Jmew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZc1bf8R3fw
https://www.nature.com/articles/39853
Conti et al 2015, Rift-Related Morphology of the Afar Depression https://flore.unifi.it/bitstream/2158/1136615/1/Corti_2015_springer_book.pdf
Io had another mega eruption so something for Albert
5.1 in Greece half a hour ago:
Magnitude 5.1
Region DODECANESE ISLANDS, GREECE
Date time 2025-02-03 12:17:42.6 UTC
Location 36.623 ; 25.651
Depth 10 km
Distance 151 km N of Irákleion, Greece / pop: 137,000 / local time: 14:17:42.6 2025-02-03
30 km NE of Oía, Greece / pop: 3,300 / local time: 14:17:42.6 2025-02-03
Source parameters reviewed by a seismologist
Im absolutey freezing up in Scandinavia so a tilt scenario like Seapole woud be ideal for me we calls it ”Scandiapore” 🙂 now Iceland becomes a very inviting place indeed
Sorry Boys and Girls, i’ve been only lurking lately…. gotten older and slower, but what is the real skinny on Santorinni? i only trust You Guys for accurate information…. Thanks,,,, and like forever…. Best!motsfo
Me too Mots, you take care.
Current estimate is that this is purely tectonic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsVvr_sc4dk
1956 there was a destructive 7.7 earthqukae with a tsunami: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Amorgos_earthquake
The earthquake risk is a threat on its own, even if the volcano decides to stay dormant.
Great to hear you are still lurking! O dear, we will have to behave again. The skinny is that there is a chance of a small submarine eruption, a slightly larger chance of a larger earthquake near Santorini (M5-6) and a larger chance that this dies down and restarts in one or more years from now. My guess is a small magma intrusion which hit a weak spot in the slip-strike fault running from Santorini in this direction.
There have been two m5.1 and a m5 in the last 24 hours, as well as m4.9 and several other m4+.
Thanks, Albert, Hugs!
How nice to hear from you, Mots!
Kilauea has finally started again 🙂
Huge fountains, definitely the highest of the eruption so far.
Nearly as tall as the caldera wall. So at least 200 meters. Lots of rootless flows down the wall under the fountain. This is probably the tallest lava fountain in the caldera since 1959, and in Hawaii overall in nearly 40 years.
The Onset looks like the opening of a great lava Champagne bottle. There was maybe a lot of stored gas pressure to begin the eruption again.
The lava fountains reach to the altitude of Caldera Rim. They are probably the highest since 2020. I’m not sure if fissure 8 2018 did ones like that.
Fissure 8 was up to 90 meters according to HVO. I tbink maybe it was a bit bigger at times. Fissure 17 went higher, theres a video of it over 100 meters from the Pahoa-Kapoho road, to be expected for a more viscous gas rich magma. Mauna Loa in 2022 also went over 100 meters closer to the end, maybe 150.
But nothing since the mid 80s has gotten anywhere near 200 meters before now. And this is definitely that, the rim behind is 1184 meters elevation, the floor is 940, so 240 meters or nearly 800 feet. If anything 250 meters is a closer number. The HVO helicopter was there in one of the webcam stills, I think they might have an aerial video.
Yes, maybe fissure 8 wasn’t as high as the current lava fountain, because it was mainly fluid (magma) driven by the draining of the summit’s magma reservoirs.
Kilauea has a more Strombolian-Hawaiian behaviour now, a gas-driven rythmical eruption, more or less regulary. The spattering since 7:15 pm HST on February 2 shows this Strombolian element. Maybe it shows the moment, when gas pressure increases beyond a certain point, but not enough for the full eruption. This time the spattering period lasted two days, until the main episode 8 began. Episode 7 only had five hours of spattering. The Strombolian character has extended. The eruptions need more gas than before, to build up towards an eruption.
Now the ongoing eruption of the twin cones (yes they are two) reminds to the force of fissure 8 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG5zz9Sjw3E
How close is the current rate to the fissure 8 rate?
Im not sure an eruption rate has been given at any point by HVO, or a volume for this episode. The 2018 eruption was on average about 150 m3/s over the 4 months it was active but because fissure 8 did 90+% of the eruption in 2 months and had variable rate, it was much higher. During surges it might have been getting to 1000 m3/s for a time, and average was 250 m3/s. I cant remember if thats in DRE or bulk.
I think, last nights fountain was easily more than 100 m3/s, and probably more than 200 m3/s. But I doubt it was 1000 m3/s. And its probably a low average rate, the tilt is overall flat for the last 3 weeks so eruption rate is the same as base supply but not continuous.
Each episode is getting higher eruption rates, judging from the tilt. We might really end up with Kilauea Iki-sized fountains at this rate…
Why is the rate increasing? Do next episodes need increasingly more pressure (and volume) to begin?
It’d go for a rapidly widening conduit. We don’t know what’s going on down there, but it’s along the caldera fault, there’s likely a lot of loose material. The fountain might be ejecting rubble along with the lava and gouging out a wider pipe, or even melting the walls.
Another possibility is that chemistry is changing. If I remember right, during the Kilauea Iki eruption, the primitiveness of the magma went up with fountains.
We’ve got two cones. Do they have the same single conduit below or are there two magma pipes?
Can the widening conduit lead to some kind of lava lake? We had glow between the episodes.
“Do they have the same single conduit below or are there two magma pipes?”
I don’t know, and not sure if we can know.
“Can the widening conduit lead to some kind of lava lake? We had glow between the episodes”
I could see that happening.
There probably is a small lava lake in the north vent based on how bright it glows, but no view exists to show it live.
This episodical, Hawaiian-Strombolian activity reminds to similar phases of Fagradalsfjall 2021. Fagradalsfjall’s cones often began with “Hawaiian” style, but when the cones reached to the upper limit of their potential growth, they changed towards a Strombolian activity with spattering or rythmical recurring lava fountain eruptions (“lava geysir”).
Maybe Kilauea Caldera is filled up until the level, when the pure magmatic upward force is too weak to do a eruption. Gravity and magma’s weight is too strong resp. heavy for this. So only gas pressure can build enough force (Newtons, Pascal) to counterbalance the weight and gravity now.
Given it was higher 8 years ago with a flank vent, and 300 meters higher during the summit overflows, I doubt it is anywhere close to overpressured. Its episodic because the vent is open and will build some pressure until there is enough to erupt then it restarts. Same as a geyser.
It only stops fountaining when the vent is wide enough to convect, which is a lava lake. Or a vent opens down low enough, but even this probably wont destroy the conduit unless a caldera collapse is initiated.
There have only been 4 open conduits historically at Kilauea, Kilauea Iki in 1959, Mauna Ulu, Pu’u O’o, and the 2008-2018 Overlook vent. Going back further was the one where Halemaumau formed that likely started in the early years of the 19th century and lasted to 1924. Before that was at Heiheiahulu in the mid 18th century. Out of these, 4 of these failed due to lower ERZ activity, while the other two failed because of major earthquakes. 2018 is maybe unique because it killed two of them with both of these methods at the same time…
But basically now this vent exists, its very hard to kill.
The established shallow summit plumbing system was probably destroyed 2018, so we’re seeing the development of something new. It’s possible that the Overlook conduit 2008-2018 had a more narrow magma pipe that facilitated the rise of liquid magma. Added to this it’s possible that the 2008-2018 eruption had higher magmatic pressure in the summit that succeeded on this height above sea level. If the major intrusions in SWRZ and ERZ 2024 hadn’t happen, but had concentrated on the summit, the summit would have got a very strong eruption.
Not all of it was destroyed, the lava erupted at the summit since 2020 is the same as the 2018 lava lake. The Napau lava was local rift magma, and im not sure what the SWRZ lava is or the lava erupted last night as I havent seen published data yet. But the 2018 eruption needed to be several times bigger to totally drain Halemaumau and didnt touch the rest of the plumbing other than lowering pressure.
Overlook vent also was very wide as it drained in 2018, not the small vents seen there in 2011, opposite of a high fountain which needs a constriction and very high flow rate both with a water geyser and a lava geyser, or a rocket engine…
There also is no connection to the ERZ right now either. From July to November was a strong connection going to Napau that did erupt but since early November that completely stopped, same for the SWRZ from August 2023 to July 2024 that also erupted, but neither have any deformation at all now for several months. So there is only pressure to the summit now, not either rift zone, and it is close to as high as it was in 2018 already too on all the summit instruments.
The summit vent likely needs to be at least as high as 1000 meters to have all the eruptions go to the rifts like before, although that doesnt mean the rifts will stay completely silent as the summit eruptions continue but not a Pu’u O’o there yet, the summit vent is the new Pu’u O’o right now.
The lid might be getting tougher to break through. The high fountains early this morning came from a small opening. Now the opening is much wider and the fountaining much lower. A small opening suggests harder rock to break through.
Thats been the case every episode though, its taller at the start and lowers. The start was also just the north vent, south vent took a few more hours to get going and actually it nearly topped the wall too briefly. So its probably because there are two vents that it isnt still going up to that height right now.
Im surprised the south vent is still active though, its likely to shut off soon but I said that a few weeks ago too…
This is the same view in the morning, with fountains 50 meters high. The fountains barely get above the cones now.
EpicLava live there on facebook, the fountains are actually even taller than the rim
From B2 cam
https://i.imgur.com/dvgOOop.jpeg
Apparently the lava fountains were only 100 meters in this image. Im not sure what HVO considers the height of a fountain to be but it was going up this high sustained and the back wall is much more than 100 meters high. Its a bit strange actually.
Episode 8 has just ended. There actually was a little lava lake in the north vent before, inside a spatter cone. If I had to guess it was the small opening of that cone causing the jetting fountains, and it was eventually eroded away. The two vents seem to be fairly separate, the south vent started and finished after the north vent, and still erupts again despite being dark during pauses. There was also a small shallow quake on the other side of Halemaumau, probably nothing but interesting still.
Also the lava flow was huge this time, a day and it covered nearly all the floor.
Very fun indeed.. sadely its not a swedish tropical colony 🙁 even if colonialism been a rather terrible and racistic thing through the years.. but the fantasy living there under free citizen flag woud be a fun alternative reality fantasy
We are seeing the New Puʻupuaʻi 2.0 under construction the taller the fountains gets the more clasts and the bigger the tephra cone will get too, the lava is very hot likey 1220 c so alot of materials gets washed away now in fluid clastogenic flows.. ERZ is still open in depth so will be fun to see how high this rootless lava lake will become.. the vent may get more open and open too as it erodes .. so while fountains will be taller and taller likey the comming episodes they may become broader and resemble fagradalsfjall during july 2021 if the vent keeps getting wider just with far more magma supply behind
Well, the 2018 caldera will overflow in a few years at the current rate if a flank vent doesnt form. And not too much later it will overflow out to the south. Probably within 10 years, possibly as little as 5.
The cones now might actually be bigger than Pu’u Pua’i, that formed on the rim of Kilauea Iki so isnt as big as it looks within the crater. I think vent geometry can be variable, and especially with a growing cone around it. To be honest the fountain now could be being held back still, the biggest fountains of Mauna Ulu and Pu’u O’o (over 500 meters each) were when there was no lava pond over the vent. And Etna is the same to the extreme, 500 meters is baby numbers there…
Im going to make a claim, episode 9 or 10 will top the rim, completely. And a 500 meter fountain is not unlikelyat some point.
Personally, it seems if this goes on longer, the fountains may eventually stop and begin a more continuous shield building phase and, if there are no flank eruptions, fill the 2018 caldera…
It is possible for this to reach Kīlauea Iki-type intensity before this happens, but it may take a longer time. I have noticed that the more intense eruption might be, the longer the pauses will be until it reaches that pre-phase peak.
Well, open vent can be either and swap between them. Pu’u O’o failed in 1986, intrided into the rifts and erupted out the side instead, and stayed there. But its much harder to do that right now with this vent, so even forming a shield could have it fountaining. Mauna Ulu resumed high fountaining near its end in 1974, not to 500 meters but it did get to 100 again.
But I agree, if theres no flank vent formed in the next decade then this will become a lava shield and fill the caldera. And probably overflow the rim too.
My comprehension of this is falling short. It belongs to the United States. It sounds as if zou consider Sweden free and the US not. Maybe I misunderstand this. But honestlz, I would prefer to be a US-citizen than to being Swedish.
I dont want to live in US with souch disasterous and powerful junk food capitalism and big pharma and flawed healthcare systems
Better to chose Iceland
Well. When the Donner-Party died (half of them) they would have loved some Starbucks and Burger-Places, and I love them too over there and also on our Hwys. When I have to do miles and miles and miles I have no time to eat for an hour or two, and I love my coffee cup beside me.
But when I was in Boston last I ate in a fantastic Mexican Restaurant. So, these places are needed there because it is a huge country.
Pharma is everywhere, no matter where you live. It is good and bad. Without Penicilline we would still die of Strepto- and Staphycoccus. Pharma has two sides. Many a cancer can be cured today.
But the main thing is another. They are extraordinarily friendly and hospitable with tourists and have a good sense of humor, probably inherited from the Brits.
Concerning capitalism we were not different, when we came over, Brits and Germans and the Swedish and the French and when, in the 19th century the gold-rush began. The Italians established the Mafia, and the Irish were not without faults either.
I altogether love the United States.
Living in or visiting the US is not as bad as that. People are welcoming and helpful, in my experience, very different from what you might expect from the extremist politicians. Cities can be great (I especially like Boston), countryside is often spectacular. Most social problems you can point at are present in other countries as well.
Yes, countryside is strikingly beautiful. It is so wide. Their history has a lot to do with that width and sometimes solitude and tranquillity. I have read about a few scouts and pioneers. Joseph R. Walker has married into Shoshone. Accordingly, he got along with them. JRW and his wife by Alfred Jacob Miller
The Walker Lane and some other places like Walker Pass, Walker, Arizona, Walker River, Walker Lake are named for him. He was a responsable scout. He took the people back south to where is now Lake Isabella and opened up the best way though the Sierra.
One can see the striking difference to soldier and – well – explorer Lansford Hastings with one single look at their faces – wisdom vs arrogance.
After the Donner Party disaster there were calls to lynch Hastings. He had written The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California. The wagon trail got slowed down on the Wasatch Range and stuck in the Great Salt Lake. They lost many wagons getting stuck in the salt and cattle who died for the lack water. So finally they were confronted with Northern California snow which has to be imagined in a pristine landscape, so walls of snow.
Hastings went to Brazil and wrote the
The Emigrant’s Guide to Brazil (1867)
I hope nobody took his advise.
Joseph R (Rutherford) Walker is rightly honored. The graben-transform fault Walker Lane starts south in an intersection with the Garlock Fault in Death Valley
and ends between Pyramid Lake (Paiute Reservation) and Lassen Peak.
Dacite on Lassen Peak
The cones are dormant again, but the broad lava field/lake still shows some activity. Does lava effusion continue quietly below the surface?
The thermal webcam shows that the eruption continues somehow:
No its just still liquid so any ponded lava will keep flowing down channels. It takes a few days to stop doing this but even low eruption would make tremor which is gone. Just lava in the vents now.
https://www.ertnews.gr/eidiseis/ellada/se-katholiki-epifylaki-gia-ta-rixter-stis-kyklades-oi-ektimiseis-ton-eidikon-gia-ti-synexeia-ton-fainomenon/
A bit of google translate is needed but this the main Greek news website. The relevant points are :
-several Greek geologists are more inclined to believe the recent seismic activity is magma intrusion related
-the official government position remains that this is purely tectonic and will like end in a somewhat larger earthquake along the Amorgos fault
-seismic activity is headed more NE towards Amorgos
-the data on Kolumbo Volcano is very limited, so 4 new underwater seismographs are being dropped into the volcano’s crater, these are also able to measure the chemical features of the water.
Obviously from a volcanic interest point of view would be interesting if something volcanic did happen there, although the potential for damage is very high with even a small decrease in tourism potentially devasting. I’m just an armchair geologist, have there been other areas of the world where there has been purely tectonic activity that has created such intense swarms that have lasted for 4-5 days or more?
I personally think this is definitely magma intrusion-related. The points being that it’s occurring in an area where there are submarine cones. That it has been gradually escalating since the end of January with constant small earthquakes that started under Kolumbo, that have been gradually climbing in magnitude and migrating north, which is a volcanic behavior; plus, at one point tremor was visible in the seismograms before earthquakes got so intense that they obscured the graph.
I definitely agree. This looks a lot like a magmatic intrusion. Of course, that does not rule out the triggering of a larger earthquake in the end. It’s too bad InSAR cannot capture changes of the seafloor. I suspect there would be a nice psychedelic butterfly if it could.
Weather makes Svartsengi observation difficult for IMO now. They have to wait until the feet get warm … or the borehole-method finds something. https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/magma-accumulation-beneath-svartsengi-continues
“The period of increased risk of a volcanic eruption risk may last up to a month or longer”
It’s a time of waiting torture, because anytime it can happen … as well it can stay quiet for weeks.
Selfishly, I want it to erupt on my birthday!
The nearby ‘trigger’ quakes are slowly getting larger, very little on or around the dyke still though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQipvq8JlDs
11 you say!
6 M4 earthquakes at Santorini (well – 20 km north off) in the past half an hour. Poor people.
The events are migrating a bit south -southeast-wards.
Last earthquakes have the latitude of Amorgos and a little bit south and the longitude of also Amorgos and a bit east and were also felt on Ikaria, an island west of Samos where there was an earthquake of magnitude 7 in 2020. A line between both areas runs parallel to the Central Hellenic Shear Zone and oblique to the West Anatolian Shear Zone.
Underwater seismographs are being installed in The caldera of Kolumbo and near the fault of Anydros by Geomar and Evi Nomikou, professor of Geological Oceanography of National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.Location of fault between Santorini and Amorgos
https://www.tovima.com/society/anydros-the-quake-battered-rocky-islet-in-the-southern-aegean/
Also> Landslide with rocks on Santorini
https://www.tovima.com/society/santorinis-famous-red-beach-closed-after-rockfall/
Some Greek guy drives to Sousaki, and talks a little about Santorini as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EEDocyzfV0
(The automatic translation seems to work quite well. I didn’t know that “volcano” in Greek is ηφαίστειο, “ifestio”.)
And a nice old reel from the 1925 eruption of Santorini:
Ancient Greek god of fire and blacksmithing was Hephasteus, who the Romans basically copied and called Vulcan. So makes sense, its basically the same word.
Landslides normally do include at least some rock! lol!!
The Mediterannean Sea allowed the observation of possible deformation (inflation) by the rise of rocks on the island Anydros above the sea level.
English and Japanese versions its souch a nice and rather scary famous accurate simulation made by geophyscial experts showing the effects on the current Earth of a hadean type/ sized protoplanetary impact ( what woud happen if Ceres or Pallas hit Earth ) I think the avarge person avarge citizen in any society cannot simply grasp just what an incredibley violent process planetary formation / accreation is! the ammount of kinetic energy from a giant impact, planetary merger is simply beyond the word collosal .. making halemaumau activity look puny
Impacts like these are so violent, so much energy that Earths atmosphere becomes a ”rock vapour photosphere” for quite a while after souch an major impact.. an atmosphere of hot rock gas as hot and bright as the surface of the sun, in its early days Earth was enveloped by a hot cocoon nebula of vaporized rock. I specialy like the scene when the wall of thousands degrees vaporized rock approaches the Himalayas souch an epic sight better than any disaster film!
Lucky Impacts like these only happens during the peak of Earths formation billions of years ago…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PENT_hnyO-o&pp=ygUdNTAwIGttIGFzdGVyb2lkIGhpdHRpbmcgZWFydGg%3D
https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=400+km+asteorid
Good times to climb Mauna Kea and be blown away by a gust of superheated wind that arrives just before the rock vapour wall arrives at many times the speed of sound.. it woud be a crazy sight and your helpless body catch fire from the thermal radiation way before the rock plasma even reaches you
I would probably prefer if this didn’t happen ..
Same here.. results in near instant vaporization once you see the rock vapour front comming towards you.. searing front of ”rock plasma gas” 100 km tall and at temperatures of 6000 degrees c and I really guess that the ejecta curtains massive kinetic energy when that falls into the atmosphere is more than enough to incenirate all earths citizens well before the rock vapour itself arrives….
I put a collision with Ceres into an impact calculator. There may have been one such impact during the Late Heavy Bombardment (after the Earth-Theia collision). https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=15000&diam=650000&pdens=2100&pdens_select=0&vel=15&theta=45&tdens=1000&tdens_select=0
It wont happen.. thats stuff of Earths early days.. still majestic indeed and hard for us to imagine what that may look like or sound like!
Jupiter the largest planet likley swallowed alot of lost planets in the solar systems youth.. so giant impacts was an even more common sight there than on Earth
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bA2afzgT1iM&pp=ygUPNDAwIGttIGFzdGVvcmlk
Japanese version haves highest resolution .. during souch large hadean era type impacts Earths atmosphere, oceans, and crust are in comparison is just a thin film…
Has anyone found any information to see if the depth of the Kolombo earthquakes has changed at all over the past few days?
I don’t think that’s possible. Too far from nearest seismic station; most of the hypocenters I’ve seen have been fixed to 2km or 10km depth because free depths are invalid.
Someone made a plot yesterday and posted over on /r/volcanoes @ Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Volcanoes/s/9o968emBRc
You can find the depth of all the quakes here (official and manually reviewed): https://bbnet.gein.noa.gr/HL/seismicity/real-time-seismicity/last-24-hours
Volcanodiscovery also has a plot of depth vs time but it broke today and almost all quakes are missing.
Just know that the depth data is very unreliable. You need seismometers almost on top of the earthquakes and a very accurate 3d model of the wave velocities to be able to get good depth estimates. Manual review of quakes does not mean that the locations are perfectly accurate. There’s still a large margin of error. Mike Ross above is a professional who does these things for a living. When he speaks, I listen 🙂
Also know that quakes show where there is strain in the rock, not where the magma is. Inferring the location of magma migration from earthquakes means you have to be able to interpret changes in the strain distribution from the pattern of earthquakes. Sometimes it’s the lack of earthquakes that gives the most information.
– Sometimes it’s the lack of earthquakes that gives the most information.
You happen to have any time to explain this?
Sounds interesting.
Earthquakes happen in rock, not magma. With dense seismometer networks and very precise quake relocations you can sometimes trace regions where no quakes happen. If you find such a region void of quakes, you have potentially found a magma body. Unfortunately, the level of precision required is not possible with the regional seismometer networks and velocity models.
Thank you Tomas.
My Apple Account have the sequirty questions locked since years back, and the ability to reset the sequrity questions that I cant answer is permanently locked too.. : ( … I can login but I cannot use any features but can force a password change from my email… but otherwise than that the account is locked, Appple Offical Support cannot find my account in their systems… but its defentively there! its been like this for 10 years now and it feels like a hopless situation
Interesting real time worldwide earthquake monitoring system. Don’t know much about people behind it.
Live GlobalQuake
Some more info at https://globalquake.net/
Thanks for that link! I guess they are all Raspberry Shake stations? That must be the biggest citizen science ever!
I’ve often checked the Iceland Met. Office’s Raspberry Shake page, but they don’t seem to show all of them.
Also uses traditional sources
I did a bit of searching and the guy behind it Jakub Španger built his own seismometer in the basement. Details at https://github.com/xspanger3770/ZejfSeis/tree/main/arduino
Report on Santorini by EMSC: https://www.emsc-csem.org/Special_reports/?id=351
Greek website with earthquakes (University of Thessaloniki) in English: https://seismo.auth.gr/en/home-en/
There are also two articles on the swarm on the ‘Judith and Kyle from Earthquake Insights’ web site:
https://earthquakeinsights.substack.com/
I linked the main link since there are regularly new articles which are interesting to many of us I think.
You can subscribe to receive updates by mail
I have been watching that for a couple days now.
It really isn’t slowing down at all. Do you think it is crustal extension?
How stretchy is this rock?
OK stretchy isn’t really a scientific term. The opposite of brittle. Brittle rocks fracture though.
Do we have any idea how much movement (lateral, up/down, or other) there has been?
Aegean extensional province
A very normal process. Subduction and an island arc, extension of the surroundings. There will always (always meant in human time, not geologic time) be earthquakes and also volcanism. Basically it is s.th. beautifully normal. For earth and also for geologists.
For economy (tourism) it is less beautyful. What will happen next? Will anything bigger happen at all? And where? And when? Better to leave the beach with the landslide closed this summer. Happens in Dorset all the time.
I am not going there. Never. I prefer bigger places. Crete is big enough, lots to see.
The word you’re looking for here is “ductile”.
Sorry for being picky 🙂
Both brittle and ductile rock will deform elastically up to a point of failure. Elastic deformation is reversible. Remove the stress and the material goes back to its initial shape. Beyond the point of failure, brittle rock will break and we get earthquakes. The material on both sides of the break will strive to resume its original shape. The stored elastic potential energy is released.
Deeper down, below the brittle-ductile transition, the rock is ductile. Stretch it beyond the point of failure, and it doesn’t break with an earthquake. Instead it will go through an irreversible change in shape. The material will bend and flow and assume a new permanent shape.
In extensional regions, the brittle part of the crust will deform elastically and stretch over time (it is indeed stretchy). During a rifting event, the stored elastic potential energy is released in a series of earthquakes. It can be purely tectonic and create a rift valley, or magma can flow into the crust to fill the space.
The key word here is elasticity.
Thanks. Elasticity and stretchiness are the same concept.
To my ear “ductile” sounds like something that is good at conducting electricity, not something that bends without breaking.
It’s quite odd, the earthquakes seemed to have moved NE for a while and have all of a sudden started moving back SW by the looks of it today.
Some satellite data has been released that shows there is a slight bit of inflation on the northern side of Santorini by the looks of.
It is a rifting event, I think
Apparently Campi Flegrei wants its share of attention too. 103 earthquakes of magnitudes between M0.1 and M3.1 in last 24 hours according to volcanodiscovery. Schools evacuated, if I understood this correctly:
https://www.napolitoday.it/cronaca/terremoti-scuole-campi-flegrei-5-febbraio-2025.html
So, maybe there will be a Mediterranean double-kaboom?
Damn, Crazy week!
Just need a bit of Iceland to make the week complete. Bárðarbunga is creaking a bit and the way things have been going lately it could just as well do something interesting. Low level quake activity has also returned to Sundhnúkur. Next episode is getting closer.
Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, Fentale is still having quakes. The latest InSAR shows that expansion is slowing down, but it’s not over yet.
The thermal webcam still shows activity in Halema’uma’u:
I think the last week of slow tilt before erupting actually was a DI event, with the huge supply offset by the D, then episode 8. Now is the I, which has basically shifted episode 9 forward to a few days away.
The south vent also completely filled in after fountaining stopped, doesnt mean it is dead but lava will no longer pond over it so could see it fully unobstructed. If it is dead now, then the north vent is getting tbe full flow. Episode 9 is going to be huge.
Apparently not a real signal
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/uwd-tiltmeter-data-currently-unreliable
But I still will put a bet episode 9 or 10 will be bigger than we just saw in 8. Over the rim.
SDH tiltmeter still works as normal
Seems to be recovering quickly still, probably mid next week for episode 9. None of the slowing inflation of UWD before the last episode happened at SDH either, interesting.
Trying to find a post on Thera Santorini here in the Café archives. Think there is one but maybe I am wrong?
https://www.volcanocafe.org/santorini-beauty-and-the-beast/
Thanks!!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ8ls5oN3ps&pp=ygUTaG9ybmV0IG5lc3QgcmVtb3ZhbA%3D%3D
Hahahah what an inferno of hornets.. not a volcano but impressive anyway.. this woud kill an unprotected person in minutes as stung countless times. father took a bird nest box that became a dangerous hornet nest quickly plugged the opening with duct tape and glue and drowned it in a water filled sealed box after drilling a small hole in the roof.. rather cruel
Its best to let them be as long as they dont nest in your bedroom here in the Arctic they dies off during the winter so Scandinavian nests remains quite small
Jesper; UK here. I live surrounded by my quite big patch of pesticide-free “wild”, but it’s not enough, I didn’t see a single wasp or hornet last summer. “Planeticide” is horrible, distressing, depressing.
There was a time when wasps lived in my roof space every year. I used to leave the kitchen window open with honey on the sill. Wasps would come for a snack, but never entered further inside. They seem to have some kind of intelligence or awareness But I think bumble bees are a bit stupid.
Definitely noticeable the decline in flies, wasps, bees, butterflies etc. in recent years. I would even say there’s less birds about.
I’m glad to say regarding birds and bees (not a joke) we’ve seen an increase over the years. We live close to a Surrey town centre and our small bird population is very healthy with all the expected regulars. We’ve added jays, songthrushes, woodpeckers and nuthatches to our visitors. Above we regularly see buzzards, herons, the occasional red kite and, recently, storks. Oh, and the occasional parakeet.
Bees regularly swarm though our garden in March and October and are busy in the garden.
Having a pond and a bird feeder does wonders for the population. Bees need plenty of water as well as pollen!
This also attracts squirrels. Plenty of them!
I think individuals can do much to help birds. Shrubbery and feeders will get a lot into the area.
Iceland has Red Warning concerning storm today, with gusts above 160km/h. This makes volcano observation nearly impossible. https://en.vedur.is/alerts/area/south
Yes indeed, https://vafri.is/quake/ is only showing four quakes in 24 hours, just the largest.
Another 3.0 at Ljosufjoll; that’s going to give us a show at some stage.
It’s a weather to stay at home … both for humans and magma. I hope that monitoring instruments survive the storm.
Looks like another swarm at Bardarbunga. 1-5km depth
Santorini seismographs and geophones
The Greek government has now noticed all the shaking…
Greece declares state of emergency on Santorini following quakes (Reuters, 7 Feb)
In the last hour, there have been eight earthquakes over magnitude 3, including one over 4 and one over 5. This doesn’t seem to be calming down.
Not entirely fair: they have taken note already for a week. Hence the evacuations
For long time some said that it only would be tectonic. Now it looks more like if they accept that it’s very much magmatic/vulcanic, even if an eruption doesn’t happen in the end.
They would evacuate as well if it is “only” tectonic.
I do not feel like checking this now, but I bet that the number of fatalities caused by earthquakes, also and especially submarine earthquakes since 1900 is somewhat higher than the fatalities caused by eruptions.
https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-guatemalan-earthquakes-of-1917-and-1918/
https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-sulawesi-earthquake/
It is not only the death toll, but also the destruction of all homes and homelessness, mentioned in the Guatemala piece plus ugly stuff like licquefication, described in the Sulawesi piece.
Nothing can be done to prevent earthquakes. Some astonishing things can be done to mitigate the damage of future volcanic eruptions:
https://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/gunung-kelud-or-who-poked-a-whole-in-the-volcano/
Unfortunately, Napoli hasn|t learnt anything from this. When Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, Pompeii had been built on a volcanic plateau bordering the sea and having a lot of sediment on top. Even if the Roman Republic knew Thera, they might not have realized that there was similar stuff underneath.
But since Pompeii and Ercolaneum have been found everybody knows. Yet when you drive along the coast between Naples and Amalfi you hardly move. On the newly acquired sediment down the hill from Pompeii e.th. is settled. As the traffic hardly moves in normal times evacuation imaginations are awful.
But anyway, earthquakes probably cause more damage and have a higher death toll, so I consider it a bit cynical to speak of
“Only Tectonics”
The China 1976 eq killed 400K by itself, probably more than all eruptions in the past 250 years.
I counted them roughly. Earthquake the Tiger Woods of Natural disasters, after that storms.
Denali,
Thanks for the link concerning gunung kelud, that’s really amazing. What an achievement!
I think we humans, en masse, usually just do what we consider best for our immediate future and profit, despite the knowledge and warnings of scientific experts. We don’t “think of the children”, lol.
For instance, we keep increasing the CO2!
So far, all ensuing disaster has been localised, but in the future they *may* be global. There are good economic reasons all our big cities are coastal, and here we are, endangering them!
Perhaps we’ll adapt. Already Jakarta is relocating.
Thank you.
That is basically right. But only partially. There were times on earth where more water was around. Also less (Pangaea).
If we had known this say 4 or 5000 years ago we would still have lived there.
The Beauty and the Beast.
Some live on Nyaragongo (“Sprinter”-lava), because they are poor and there is no other place. But some are rich and famous and have a house in Jackson Hole with a melting anomaly underneath.
Then we have another calendar than earth, earth takes time. When problems come up the Dutch will become rich 🙂 . I read recently that they have already built some dikes (in the sense of embankment) in Bangladesh.
Ten deadliest natural disasters:
Five quakes, three typhoons, two floods, zero volcano
20th century:
12 quakes, two volcanoes (Pelee and Kelud) under the first 20 candidates. The rest of the list showa no volcano.
21st century:
Goes on like this: Volcanoes zero, list of earthquakes, floods. hurricanes, typhoons and some heatwaves.
This shouldn|t mean that volcs have no victims, but – as I said – far less than earthquakes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll
Those numbers don’t take into account volcanic famine deaths
S.th. like this, right:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536
That would certainly not happen the same way today. What is better? Faster trade, better connections, more pity and a willingness to help, i.e. from south to north or north to south.
Example: Sanctions for Russia. If s.th. erupted bigger in Kamtchatka, those war games would be laid aside for a while. Example 2: Iran on near permanent sanctions since decades ago. When an earthquake happens, the world tries to help, also Israel.
Glass houses for vegetables, fruit. Medical ships. Medicine in general. Mass Media. Very bad people as they try to scare us, but very good when reality sets in and it comes to real disasters. Everybody is on alert then, there is a lot of information and a willingness, even Grandma with a small portfolio wants to help.
So, this is certainly different from say 536 or say the Thera/ and Aniakchak eruptions ~3600 years ago.
The same goes for earthquakes.
Curious as to the basis for thinking this may be volcanic?
So far it seems to be a classic tectonic swarm event with nothing resembling a mainshock/aftershock sequence, with all the largest magnitudes being low 5s.
I haven’t heard anything suggesting deformation. All the focal mechanisms I’ve seen are typical normal faulting, I haven’t seen any suggestion of non-DC or CLVD events. No VT, hybrid, long period events, or tremor.
I did see this reported yesterday https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/santorini/current-activity.html
WEAK GROUND UPLIFT REPORTED – POSSIBLY SIGN OF VOLCANIC UNREST
Update Thu 06 Feb 2025 18:52
The latest satellite-based radar measurements of the surface of the island group seems to show that some inflation has affected the volcanic complex since the start of the seismic crisis about 10 days ago. Michalis Foumelis, associate professor at the Department of Geology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, reported to a local newspaper that “for some time now we have detected some signs of change in the volcano compared to its previous state of calm.”
The findings are not yet very conclusive and the observed deformation is still relatively weak, but could mean that magma has intruded at shallower levels, raising thus the chance of a new (probably small) volcanic eruption in or near Santorini.
“We were waiting for the other IMPIS networks to confirm that there was something and in turn we contacted the competent authorities, informed them and everything that is now underway began”, Foumelis added.
That’s a bit difficult to square with the seismicity – the centre of the seismicity is ~25km ENE of Santorini; there are virtually no EQs under Santorini itself, where this weak deformation appears to be centered.
If there is deformation associated with the seismicity, I would expect GPS in the surrounding area to show it.
There was some activity and Santorini itself in December, before the current swarm started. Whether the two are related is not clear to me, but inflation at Santorini itself is more likely related to that earlier event.
How do you measure uplift in an area under water?
Are GPS units attached to an achor and a buoy? (the buoy being so you can find your GPS sensor later)
Also, the sharp earthquakes represent rock fracture, correct?
@canthisbenull – no, you would hope to detect a signal from GPS stations on the closest islands, showing movement up or out, away from the seismicity.
Yes, there has been no suggestion of volcanic tremor. The swarm is on known faults, I believe, which are at the north end of the M7 some decades ago. But it is within a volcanic zone, previous swarms show some related activity at Santorini which is a fairly regular eruptor, and the swarm is lasting a long time at a constant level. My feeling was that some extension/rifting might be involved on the faults.
The list in https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/past24hours.html
now also shows both Methana and Sousaki as having mag. 2.5 – 2.8 earthquakes in the last 24 hours.
Is the whole region shaking now?
Also, see:
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/santorini/current-activity.html
https://www-tanea-gr.translate.goog/2025/02/05/greece/santorini-paratireitai-stadiaki-anypsosi-tou-ifaisteiou-ti-deixnoun-doryforika-dedomena?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
“Then the deformation reached a certain limit, _which lasted 14 months_ – that is, it is not something that happens within two days and stops – and in the end, without an eruption of the volcano, the activity stopped, and it gradually returned to a state of calm.”
My goodness I’m sad for the people of Santorini, with their income mostly from tourism, probably more than in 2012.
Three Gorges Dam and earthquakes.
https://journal.probeinternational.org/2021/02/25/seismic-activity-in-the-three-gorges-region-2021-update/
“Therefore, it is still necessary to pay close attention to the earthquakes induced by the Three Gorges reservoir and their impacts and prepare a disaster prevention and reduction plan in advance.”
Despite the problems and controversy, I think the dam has _probably_ been a net gain for the people of China, and I sincerely hope it stays that way.
This is beautiful.
Unfortunately most of what we need is so ugly. That is why I do not like the expression Anthropocene. Earth is chaotic and beautiful, we create a lot of hideous stuff.
Fortunately, all the hideous stuff will be gone one day. It’s sites like these and some geology videos in Youtube (like e.g., those of Myron Cook’s) that has made me more conscious about the deep time, and given me solace how the current ugliness will be eventually worn away, and an _event_ called “Anthropocene” left just as an anomaly in the geological record.
And regarding the photo, I wonder what kind of time-bomb the megadams built this or last century upstream to big cities will be in the coming decades and centuries, especially if the technological/organizational level of the humankind then is not up to the task of repairing them?
Three gorges, Aswan, Kyiv Reservoir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv_Reservoir
Must be several others.
Some data about Fentale.
GHGSAT & Sentinel-5P TROPOMI Satellites Detect Giant Methane Emission From Ethiopia’s Mount Fentale Volcano (7 Feb)
They mention that they’re going to look for SO2 as well, but I checked just now on Windy and there’s nothing much around Fentale. However you can see the SO2 plume from Nyiragongo quite plainly.
I had a poke around on TROPOMI myself and couldn’t see anything resembling an SO2 signal.
Santorini did a far larger intrusion in 2011 but it barely had an effect. 21m m3 according to measurements.
This swarm is either tectonic or related to volcanism we don’t really know about north east of Kolumbo.
It presents as more of a volcanic field there with scattered small seafloor vents.
Past monday was the 5000th day after Grimsvötn’s eruption ended. Predictions didn’t come true yet… 😏
Coincidence or not, the flattening of the csm plot started about the Sundhnúkur fires began!
Kverkfjoll did a deep swarm today. Perhaps magma is being stolen/diverted away from Grimsvotn to Kverkfjoll and/or Bardarbunga, because Grimsvotn is currently pressurised.
Maybe the empirical examples of 1996-2011 are after 2011 not a good base for an “eruption model” anymore. It applied for two or three eruptions, but ceased to work afterwards. Volcanoes don’t like (statistical) rules. Grimsvötn shows that again. Did 2011 (Grimsvötn) and 2014-16 (Bardarbunga) cause a dormant period like before 1996? The busy period 1996-2015 exhausted the volcanoes probably a lot.
No… volcanoes LOVE statistics. In some cases that is the only way to understand them.
Celebrate William Sealy Gosset…aka “Student” for consistent consumer products.
Indeed, over a sufficiently long time period.
Even then the statistics of small numbers makes prediction of future behaviour problematic.
However where the numbers are larger predictions may be more reliable.
PS For some value of “long period”.
An odd request from a long-time lurker. I recently made a Wikipedia page about the mid-century modern house on top of a cinder cone in California:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano_House,_California
A couple of queries I am hoping the good readers here can help with.
1. Does anyone know what volcano field/region this belongs to, and its age, extent etc? Some info on the talk page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Volcano_House,_California
2. Some sources say the cone is extinct, others say dormant. Any idea which is true?
As usual with Wikipedia, sources are needed for information added, so I’d be grateful for those too.
Grateful thanks in anticipation, Stronach
It may be this one : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavic_Lake_volcanic_field
Activity from 100,000 years or younger. Every cone erupts only once, so the cone is extinct but the region may not be.
It could also be the Cima Volcanic Field, also Mohave, a bit further east.
You will find it on wikipedia.
From both fields you can see the Rodman Mountains and also the Newberry Mountains.
I recommend not being too precise, saying s.th. like “believed to be in the Mohave Desert”. In case you live close I recommend field work.
I will get there in about a year or so. In case you live far away tell me, I will take a look. The man from California in here is Craig Heden, he lives in No-Cal though.
Albert is right. It is in the Rodman Mountains Wilderness in the Rodman Mountains Range itsself, and one of the cinder cones of the Lavic Lake Volcanic Field is in the range, the others outside further east.
https://eu.desertsun.com/story/desert-magazine/2016/09/28/step-inside-volcano-house-desert-masterpiece/91225446/
From the piece above:
“Ultimately, the architect says, it was the theft of Wallace’s machinery from the structure that compelled the draftsman to sell the property.”
They have a few spectaclular places to stay in the Mohave, my son suggested one, completely out of season. “Not without our friend and a gun, I said”. It is really a wilderness. America can be nice if you understand what to do when and in in which configuration. Nonetheless one can be unlucky like Sharon Tate, but that was – I hope – an exception.
One German motoricyclist died in Death Valley while one friend had to be hospitalized, four were treated on site. July 2024, temperature ~52-53 degrees celsius. Choppers could not fly. The magic When is very important. Both, Mohave and Death Valley, the latter more as under sea level, belong to the hottest places on earth. Also Afar, also under sea level, see article here.
https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/news/motorcycle-fatality-july-2024.htm
Thanks both. I wrote this on the talk page when I first made the page:
“[Possibly the] Lavic Lake volcanic field, but the Global Volcanism Program entry suggests this is a little too far east and south: https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=323190”
Anyhow, as there seems to be some uncertainty it’s probably best left out of the article for now.
Thanks for the extinct cinder cone info Albert. I didn’t know that they only erupted once.
And Denaliwatch: if you are in the area and can take a closer photo than the pone in the article, that would be wonderful. As it’s on private property it’s hard to get good close-ups. I’m in the UK so no chance for me to visit!
PS Dragons – I’m getting ‘multiple suspicious connections blocked’ notifications from Bitdefender for commenting here.
Jesper Sandberg’s comment which begins “Im absolutey freezing up in Scandinavia so a tilt scenario like Seapole” has an embedded image from site worlddreambank. which has an invalid certificate when accessed via https. Bitdefender flags this up to you.
“This server could not prove that it is http://www.worlddreambank.org; its security certificate is from *.idatatools.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration or an attacker intercepting your connection.”
A dragon could edit the image out of the comment as nobody sees it anyway.
Done as ordered, image incinerated – a dragon
HVO has placed a bet: “Current inflation rates at UWD and SDH indicate that the most likely window of time for a new episode to begin is between Saturday, February 8 and Tuesday, February 11.”
Inflation is at the moment higher on SDH station than on UWD:
At the same time the gas stations on the SW corner of the Caldera (MG21) and close to SDH (HRSDH) show a steep ascent of SO2 emissions:
The location of the gas stations and SDH station reminds to the 9/1971 eruption (yellow area in the old summit map) that extended from the W corner of the Caldera to the SW part of the summit:
This is just wind direction, if it blows over the sensor.
I had mid next week, so the later end of their range.
A dissident voice against the tectonic theory: Professor A. Zelilidis: “A volcano will erupt and it will be Kolumbo”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpr3yHNUpPg
Automatic translation to English seems to work quite well, except “Kolumbo” is rendered as “Columbus”.
And note that Greeks actually pronounce Santorini as “Sandorini” or even “Sadorini”, and Kolumbo as “Kolubo”. The latter comes from the swimming, κολυμπάω, kolympáo, and has nothing to do with Columbus.
HVO says the current eruption reached 0.04 km^3 before Episode 8. So that’s almost 0.25 km^3 in total since 2020, or about 30% of the 2018 collapse volume.
Looking at average eruption rates, since 2020 Kīlauea has been in a state of eruption about 50% of the time and 0.25 km^3 in 4 years averages out to about 0.06 km^3/year, or half of the long-term magma supply rate. So we can say that when Kīlauea has been erupting since 2020, it on average does so at the long-term average rate.
For comparison, the current eruption averages out at twice the long-term rate (0.04 km^3 in 2 months = 0.24 km^3 per year). I wonder if it’s possible to estimate how high the current supply rate is given these figures and considering that the summit has been inflating very rapidly at the same time.
I’m also wondering about how this relates to the recent paper that suggests that the mantle plume source that is shared between Kīlauea and Maunaloa is showing signs that it might be gradually returning to Maunaloa, which if true suggests that the recent higher supply rate at Kīlauea is just temporary and in response to the 2018 collapse and Maunaloa will return to dominance in the next few decades.
Base rate supply for Pu’u O’o was 0.13 km3/year, at first partly from the summit slowly deflating but after the mid 2000s entirely from the plume, and growing. Post 2018 is double this, and seems unlikely to change short term. If the Pahala quakes are magmatic or related to such, they are definitely a Kilauea thing, no change in 2022, and responding to Kilauea getting depressurized during initial eruption. 0.24 km3/year will overflow the caldera within 10 years, not totally erase it but overflow south still.
Can you link the Mauna Loa article?
Should have said the supply rate was 0.13 km3/year, doubled now. Most of it went into refilling 2018 but now it is all going up again. Pressure on all the summit instruments is as high as before 2018, just lower elevation. Its still an unlikely immediate outcome to get another lower ERZ so soon but its also unfortunately not a 50 years away thing either. Maybe if the middle ERZ makes another shield it could put it off, but a summit shield is very tall and it might just go all the way in 10-20 years.
But right now, basically Kilauea has filled to its new max, the rest of the hole needs to be filled physically not just with resurgence. So a very exiting couple years ahead 🙂
https://academic.oup.com/petrology/article/65/12/egae121/7902988
I havent read all of it yet but their assumption of diverted source to Mauna Loa after the mid 2000s is pretty much exactly opposed to the actual deformation trends that Kilauea showed. Mauna Loa recovery after 2022 was rapid for 2023 but has levelled off, lower than before. While Kilauea has only increased over the time its magma composition has slightly evolved, which is a characteristic of a massive magma chamber forming and olivine settling out not a reduction in source melting rate.
Maybe addressed further down, but 2022 was also the lowest MgO % of any Mauna Loa eruption, the only one under 7%. Kilauea is usually slightly lower on average but has sat at 6.5% since 2011 except for the early and late 2018 lava that was lower and very high respectively. I havent seen if the newest lava now is different, it might be more primitive again with the tall fountains
Other thing too, even when there is a dominant volcano the other isnt exactly ‘weak’. Kilauea in the period from 1918 to 1924 was pretty active, regularly high standing or overflowing and even escaping the caldera multiple times on both rifts and even briefly overflowing the caldera itself, then a major ERZ (probable) eruption offshore, all during a period Mauna Loa was ‘dominant’ but in reality was actually silent nearly the whole time. The same sort of thing probably happened to Mauna Loa in the early 2000s, and late 2010s-2022, but no open vents to make it obvious until it was at the limit. Mauna Loa since 1950 has still erupted at least 0.4 km3 of lava, which is like at least borderline VEI 5 tephra bulk, something I dont think any volcano in North America other than St Helens has come close to in the same interval.
There is also possibly a long cycle where both volcanoes are up and down together outside alternating, a deeper plume cycle. One which we might be approaching a peak, so both volcanoes will just be extremely active even if one is more so. But this is just something I remember Hector bringing up once so I cant confirm any reliability.
It would be good to know the eruption rate during the last few eruption episodes, since episode 5 when the eruption became in equilibrium with deformation, it could be a good opportunity to know where the supply stands right now, but the scale of the lava lake level map is quite a bit off.
There has definitely been some increase in the activity of Mauna Loa relative to Kilauea since 2000, which has probably been reflected in the chemistry. But I don’t know if the chemistry has any predictive value above what deformation already shows, or if it’s a trend that can be extrapolated or not.
I’d expect that Kilauea does some final big eruptions on the rift zones like 1823 and 1840, before it decreases to lower activity and lets Mauna Loa do more. We may like in 19th century have to wait 15 years, until the transition happens.
After the major ERZ eruption 1840 (along the whole ERZ from Alae to Puna), it lasted only three years, until Mauna Loa began its dominant acitivty 1843.
“Between 1823 and 1840, magma was supplied from source 1 at a very high rate of more than 0.2 km3/yr, … rates diminished to one-tenth of that value after 1840, in part because of increase in the activity of Mauna Loa beginning in 1843.” https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1806/
Probably, but Kilauea took about a decade to properly wake up, from 1950 to 1960. Mauna Loa was probably inflating and otherwise active but not erupting for years before 1843 probably most of the 1840s and 1830s. Its probably a bit of a coincidence that Kilauea had a big eruption just before, or that Mauna Loa did too in 1950, as Mauna Loa hasnt taken over after 2018 if this was actually a real trend. Still some decades away or more.
The north vent is glowing brighter now, and tilt is about 2/3 of the way refilled. So in about 2-3 days. Mid week.
Well, I personally don’t think Mauna Loa is going to take over. The most obvious factors controlling the dominance of the two volcanoes are large collapses that take out rift plumbing. Hapaimamu that collapsed the upper SWRZ of Mauna Loa around 1670, and 1790 that collapsed the upper ERZ of Kilauea.
After 1790 Kilauea continued to erupt vigorously as the deep caldera filled, but once the floor hit 950-1000 meters or so the eruption declined, and unable to access the rifts due to the recent collapse this diverted supply to Mauna Loa, though not fully, as Kilauea continued to erupt during this time.
Same with Mauna Loa. Almost all the youngest prehistoric rift eruptions of Mauna Loa are dated with radiocarbon. And the calibration curve is luckily steep enough that the last eruptions of the NERZ, and the Hapaimamu eruption of SWRZ can be dated confidently to the late 17th century. After that, there was over a century of no rift eruptions of Mauna Loa until 1800-1810 AD, when the Manuka and Pele Iki eruptions happened from the SWRZ. In general the 18th century had little very little activity in Hawaii as a whole, but it was definitely Kilauea time, since Kilauea at least managed a Mauna Ulu-sized shield, a lot of dikes, a bunch of fissure erutions, some of which were considerable, while Mauna Loa did absolutely nothing outside the caldera.
So while we don’t know much about the history of Hawaiian volcanoes, at least two of the last turns seem motivated by large collapses that damaged the rift plumbing with the formation of rift pit craters. Smaller summit collapses like 1868 for Mauna Loa, or 2018 for Kilauea I don’t think change the supply much, since all the rift connections are still the same. Right now both volcanoes would have a healthy rift plumbing, but Kilauea likely has a stronger pull being younger and with a longer rift, so it takes over. The slight decline over the last 20 years, may have been due to the Pu’u’o’o eruption declining and then stopping. Though again, there’s a lot that we don’t know about their past and behavior.
7,6 earthquake yesterday in the night between George Town, Cayman Islands and Honduras, in the zone of The Cayman Ridge and Trough, subduction zone with island arc long ago (last in Eocene).
The islands are tectonically active being also close to the Oriente Transform Fault and the Mid-Cayman Rise, a short (110 km) spreading center between the Caymans and Hispaniola.
Volcanism inactive along the line.
Recommendations to move to higher ground.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-02-08/a-7-6-magnitude-earthquake-shakes-the-caribbean-southwest-of-cayman-islands-usgs-says
pics from wikipedia
please delete this, posted twise
Spreading zone and microplate
Both pics from wikipedia
Earthquakes on Kolumbo: “continue to be frequent, but also a slowly decreasing trend over the past 24 hours.”
While there until now no eruption happened, Etna has begun a lava flow from base of Bocca Nova: https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/etna/current-activity.html
New post is up! An interruption from Afar to A-near: the shaking of Santorini.
https://www.volcanocafe.org/santorini-shaking/