The VC Bar

Welcome to the Volcano Café bar, a place for all things on or off topic and inane ramblings. There has been a need of late to find a place better suited to various theories, long comments and enthusiasm. This page will be less moderated than the main article pages and cleared out every month (this may change depending on use).

Have fun and don’t forget to tip the barman 😉

4,748 thoughts on “The VC Bar

  1. I for one am just throwing my name in the hat of readers who would love an expanded series on paleo-tectonics in the mesozoic. A Tethys article series would be incredible, Albert.

  2. Finally decided to check out ChatGPT.

    XD. I think I connected to a knockoff version instead.

    • I mean it is completely correct just got the scale wrong by the number down 🙂

        • To be fair it is made by scouring the internet for information and there is a lot of questionable information about supervolcanoes out there… And it is not being asked any sort of detail, only to explain it in a few sentences.

          I did notice only now after reading it again that it gave 640,000 years ago for Toba, when that is a Yellowstone thing, seems the reach of all the yellowstone doomsdayers is quite extensive… 🙁

          • It is a language model. So it learns which terms go together in its database. There is no reasoning or understanding behind it, and it is not ‘scouring the internet’ for its learning model. The version you used found that these terms go together (it is very good at finding those connections) but missed the word Yellowstone because it is rarely combined with ‘VEI’ while Toba always is. But ‘major eruption’ and ‘yellowstone’ are linked on many sites (not here, of course – we know better) so it does pick up the time of its eruption.

      • I actually thought the last sentence was the bigger “issue” (and ultimately funnier).

        To be fair, I called it out on this and it re-calibrated its answer and did a bit better afterward.

    • That’s ChatGPT 3.5 which is considerably dumber than GPT 4. Here’s what GPT-4 answered (via BingChat)

      According to the search results, there have been only a few VEI 7 eruptions in the Holocene (the last 11,700 years) . Some of the examples are:

      Mount Tambora (Indonesia) in 1815
      Rinjani (Indonesia) in 1257
      Kikai (Japan) around 7.2 ka
      Crater Lake (USA) around 7.7 ka
      The Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution has cataloged the assignment of a VEI for 7,742 volcanic eruptions that occurred during the Holocene.

      With further prompting I could ask for more confirmed or suspected VEI 7s.

      BingChat (GPT 4) also provided references to links that actually worked unlike ChatGPT 3.5 which just makes up convincing looking references that don’t actually exist!

    • XD. I think I connected to a knockoff version instead.

      Almost – The free ChatGPT accounts only have access to the old GPT-3.5 at the moment and you have to upgrade to a paid subscription to get ChatGPT 4. ChatGPT 3.5 has a green avatar as in your screenshot and ChatGPT 4 has a black avatar.

      However Microsoft is a major financial/hardware backer of OpenAI and you can get at GPT 4 through BingChat – currently BingChat only works with Edge browser by default but there are add-ons available for Chome/Firefox etc that make it work in them.

  3. Let me try a poem, Albert:

    If I were young and fresh,
    Not always aching some flesh,
    I’d love to write a more than good thesis
    About a wonderful Goddess named Tethys.

    So I might help you with this, starting s.th. at some point and you stitch it together and correct it like you often do. Just in case you’re interested. It will take a while though as I moved and still have boxes around and have another project to work on as well. It will take at least half a year as it demands thorough reading and studying in between the other work, and – I thought about it – it’s not easy as the ocean had a life span longer than the Dinosaurs, and what we see today is ocean crust piled up in mountains and coastlines, and some is lost under the Caribbean volcanic plateau. That is the most difficult area as America has changed a lot, and Tethys must be lost also under Texas, but might be accessible in the Gulf of Mexico.

    Altogether the field of science is thin. There is not enough of it about the Dolomites, there is a whole good book though about the Thyrrhenian Sea and, of course, literature about the India-collision which might not have been a heavy collision at all when we look at Baluchistan, but a gradual process with volcanism and arcs. Concerning the Tethys wonder I consider volcanism very inhibiting hiding most of the truth 😉

    As to climate you might like to get Craig Haiden on board. Winds and currents changed drastically while Tethys closed. And concerning Paleontology Chad might be a giant help. So, I suggest to not forget the thought, make it several parts and do it with several authors.

    Otherwise you might have to use up your vacation for that and make your family unhappy.

    Thanks to people travelling around the world digging and to bathymetry which gives us clues about the ocean floor, thanks to tedious geologists who have collected the fragments we know already quite a bit about Tethys. Some of them who love their subject have made me love Tethys and also the Pacific Ocean and its gone plates. Concerning Tethys this was partly financed by the oil industry as that is what Tethys has left us besides beautiful ophiolites and mountain ranges: It’s marine life in the form of oil.

    Side note: I wish this wrapping up of all kinds of items in lots and lots of plastic foil would end. This seems only justified for food.

  4. Concerning the “kink” in the chain
    https://www.volcanocafe.org/hawaii-and-the-story-of-the-pacific-ocean/

    “I found s.th. interesting in an older article by Walker, Univ. of Hawai’i, (PDF), page 316, left side:
    The Pacific Plate is moving over the hotspot at 9 cm/yr. A change in plate motion about 43 million yr ago (Ma) possibly related to the separation of Australia
    from Antarctica produced the dogleg west of Midway.”
    https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5093912.pdf

  5. To have a visual impression of it:
    Thetys Late Jurassic
    https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rowley/Rowley/Paleogeographic_Atlas_Project.html#4

    Thetys Late Cretacious with Happy Boat India on the way:
    https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rowley/Rowley/Paleogeographic_Atlas_Project.html#5

    Atlantic Ocean opened in the south. Morocco still separated, but closing in. Wide open Western Interior Seaway, Laramidia west of it, Wyoming Carton east. Hudson Seaway north. Nice looking world the dinosaurs had, starting in the Jurassic.

  6. Did anybody know that the 2011–2012 Puyehue-Cordón Caulle eruption rose the temperature of the Nilahue River to 45°C (113 °F) and killed an estimated 4,5 million fish?

  7. There might be some magma movement into the ERZ on Kilauea, cross rift measurement at Pu’u O’o starting to show a positive deviation for the first time in years. Will need to wait to see if this is real not just variation but pressure seems to be building now the summit vent is blocked. The prevalence of south flank quakes would suggest there is not much obstruction in the rift, whatever is stopping magma going that way is near the summit.

    Also a strange swarm of quakes on tbe SWRZ this week. Already stopped but it is interesting and not many shallow quakes happen in that area. If flank quakes are happening there the whole side might be spreading, which could trigger a lot of eruptions later.

      • Ok the map finally updated, the swarm of quakes at the summit has partly extended southwest and also north, but is rather stronger than in this pixture now. Inflation is also very strong at the summit, and it seems like the ERZ signal is real. Pressure is building.

    • I’ve noticed that many earthquakes are accumulating below Pahala at 30km depth again. This reminds to the calm period 2018-2020 between the eruptions: https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earthquake-depths-past-week-kilauea-0

      Interesting that also below the summit there are 30km deep earthquakes. They may indicate a seperate deep flow of magma towards individual chambers.
      Above the Pahala swarm there are some “green” earthquakes at 15 km depth which might show paths of rising magma.

      • Not sure if there is too much correlation between the Pahala quakes and Kilauea, HVO doesnt think there is any short term connections even. Not sure it is so wise to dismiss that option but they have their reasons.

        If there was vertical movement of magma above the swarm I would expect it to be more noisy, there isnt any deep rift there, it would not be unlike at Fagradalsfjall in 2021. But then there is a lot of unknowns.

        My current view on Pahala is that it is probably something huge in the making. That is to say, it is a Laki type event in the making. This still might be a long way off though, but if the data shows the swarm as sills then there is an enormous amount if magma there. Eventually it will find a way out. The massive eruption near Mayotte in 2018 shows that in fact these deep magma pockets can erupt. If it erupts in the ocean it will be harmless but an eruption on land would be pretty serious. If the magma takes a path through Kilauea orvMauna Loa then large areas of the island could be flooded.

        Kilauea resyrfaces every 1000 years or so, if there was a huge eruption like this 5000 years ago we would have no idea. We do know Mauna Loa has had eruptions of similar scale on land though, many times. In fact, Mauna Loa has more of these multiple km3 flood lava eruptions than any other volcano, there have been 5 in the last 2000 years and the last was only 320 years ago, an eruption that was twice the size of Holuhraun. There was an eruption 1700 years ago that erupted over 10 km3 of lava.

        • The more I study Mauna Loa’s Southwest Rift Zone, the more fascinated I am about it. Hapaimamu 2.6 km3 caldera collapse in 1660 (calibrated age of the radiocarbon), was pretty impressive. But the most impressive eruptions of Mauna Loa are those long-lived eruptions at such high rates that lava channels and aa lava are formed continuously. Most impressive is that a lot of those eruptions seem to have happened in very rapid succesion from about 300 BCE to 100 AD. Pu’u’o’keokeo, the Ninole flows, Hokukano, Moau’ula, flows in the Kealia area, and the Upper Waiakaea flows in the NERZ, among probably others. It seems that within less than a few centuries the entire western flank of the SWRZ may have been resurfaced by lava, and major lava deltas formed all along the coast. It is a shame that later lavas and vegetation have covered most of the lavas from this age, because they are very impressive.

          • Pu’u’o’keokeo and Moa’ula also have an almost identical paleomagnetism to numerous lavas that occur in the East Rift Zone of Kilauea. The lavas of the MERZ that are now mostly buried under Pu’u’o’o, date to this time. And a number of LERZ lava flows also have this paleomagnetism, around 100 AD. While there are practially no surfaces older than this age in the LERZ. Only Halekamahina, in the LERZ, which is from around 400 BCE, is older. So there were some very troubled times in Hawaii somewhere around 100 AD.

          • Was not aware this data existed, at least for all of these flows. Seems like a Laki type event is not impossible at all even if not likely. The Power’s caldera on Kilauea is larger than the modern deep pit probably being nearly the size of the outermost faults, it was probably created by an eruption like this out in the ocean, perhaps at about this time or maybe just before.

            The huge a’a shields are very interesting, I cant thonk of any other examples outside of maybe the largest Icelandic shields, but those are still mostly pahoehoe. The eruption on La Palma in 2021 is similar although pretty modest in size by comparison. And the fact the Pu’u O Keokeo eruption after 10 years of high ohtpyt was terminated by a full lava flood and caldera collapse too, might have been very comparable to Laki with all that even if longer and slower.

            Maybe this is the result of that deep storage erupting, like we see at Pahala now, and feeding both volcanoes after all…

          • Long-lived eruptions at Mauna Loa often happened at the summit, but they also can happen on radial events. 1859 was one radial eruption which lasted 300 days and surrounded Hualalai. They can pop up randomly somewhere, where usually lava flows from SWRZ or ERZ don’t go to.
            The radial events are difficult challenges for HVO and emergency administrations because they are very unpredictable in place, size and flows.

          • I wouldn’t call them Laki events, though. Laki was probably a caldera-forming event. The present-day caldera of Grimsvotn has a volume of 11 km3. I’ve measured it on a topographic map overlay on Google Earth. Originally, it may have been somewhat larger. So it seems about the size needed to have fed the Laki eruption.

            Hawaii caldera collapses have been much smaller. The ~1660 Hapaimamu eruption which formed present-day Mokuaweoweo was 2.6 km3. And Hapaimamu collapse completely engulfed a previous smaller caldera, of the Kipuka Kanohina eruption, probably. The ~1510 caldera of Kilauea very likely formed in the Puu Kaliu eruption. I’ve measured the lava delta of Puu Kaliu and it measures somewhere 0.8-1.5 km3, and likely most of the lava went into the sea. The 1500 caldera must be very shallow, like the downdropped block of 2018, and most of it is probably still un-filled today. The 1650, 1790, and 2018 calderas have all probably formed nested collapses inside the 1500 caldera.

            The biggest Hawaiian eruptions are long lived, like Pu’u’o’o, Aila’au, or Kane Nui O Hamo. However, long-lived eruptions of Mauna Loa happen at eruption rates above 10 m3/s since they are dominated by aa lava, unlike the slow summit overflows of Mauna Loa and Kilauea, and the satellite shields in the ERZ. Probably the ERZ shields are a form of summit overflowing anyway, since they act as summit vents in many aspects. Perhaps a long-lived eruption in the Puna Ridge would have higher eruption rates. I’m not sure how big the aa eruptions of the SWRZ can get. The ~1460 Kipahoehoe lava flow has 3.7 km3, most of it in its massive lava deltas, and it is probably one of the largest such flows. However, these eruptions sometimes seem to follow each other in quick succession, like it probably happened around 400 BCE-100 AD, when numerous long-lived eruptions affected the NERZ and SWRZ of Mauna Loa, most of them being aa-dominated.

            Most of the blue flows, and some of the brown ones, that are shown in the SWRZ, have a very similar weathering state, and those that have radiocarbon dates all seem to cluster in 400 BCE-100 AD.

            https://viewer.gigamacro.com/view/Gfb1u7dMyWS9oa2H?x1=8016.12&y1=-10163.36&res1=9.83&rot1=0.00

          • I have argued the same for Laki and Grimsvotn. But not everyone agreed. Carl pointed out that the lake was mentioned well before Laki occured. (It is not clear to me that that was the same lake though. The name has also been used for the lake at the outflow from the glacier). The crater does not look symmetric enough for a singular cause. Another complication is that the crater volume should be larger than the lava volume, as a significant fraction of the magma stays underground in the long dikes. Grimsvotn seems to contain a lot of low density material so may have been much deeper than it is now, being filled in with explosive ejecta. But there has not been a lot of time since Laki to do this. I think that Grimsvotn is older than Laki but it may have changed significantly in that eruption.

          • Although I guess it is also possible the 1500 caldera was a smaller caldera that was engulfed by that of 1790.

          • Was Laki a mix of Hot Spot and MAR volcanism? This then would be different to usual Hot Spot eruptions of Grimsvötn, Mauna Loa and Reunion.

          • All three major volcanoes here do Laki-style events. That includes Katla which is some distance from the hot spot. Is seems related to the MAR spreading which allows large magma chambers to build up, plus the basaltic composition which favours non-explosive rift eruptions. Laki was not exceptional – for Iceland – at least on a millennium time scale

          • Where Pu’u O’o is now, there were lots of large eruptions in the 18th century. But seems like there was not a lot in that particular part of the rift before that for a long time, like everything at the very least is significantly younger than 1500 outside of the Kanenuiohamo flows that are near the western edge of the MERZ. Ironic given HVO has said this is the most active part of the ERZ, maybe today but evidently not always. The growth of Pu’u O’o and Mauna Ulu within the span of only a half century more or less, along with the 1960 and 2018 eruptions, this rift episode has been very productive compared to the one in the 18th century. Based on the GPS too the two Pu’u O’o stations might be moving apart, the first tiem in years, although the whole site seems to have stopped updating for the past few days now so this might only be short term variation still.

            Maybe it is the lack of clarity with how old these flows are but it seems like potentially Mauna Loa and Kilauea both go through a 3rd cycle, at the same time, of elevated activity and lower activity. They might still alternate but the amount of times that both become active together is notable. When all of these flows in the early 1st millennium were happening could have been a general pulse of the plume, or perhaps a deep sill liek Pahala making a break for the sirface any way it could, resulting in huge activity at both volcanoes. Given how active Kilauea is now, and what Mauna Loa seems to be doing after its last eruption, perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here… Maybe it wont be something so soon and might only weakly affect the year to year activity but I have a suspicion that what we have seen historically might not really be the full picture.

          • The cost below Pu’u’O’o was green and forested before the eruption. There has been no eruption there for a long time.

          • There were lots of fissure eruptions on the rift, the lava didnt reach the coast. But look at old maps from 1954 before any of the recent eruptions and you can see most of the rift is sparsely vegetated. There also were some flowsfrom 1840 , and possibly 1868 though the latter is uncertain.

            The eruptiins were like those of the 1960s, long fissures, probably active only for a few days, except one that formed a cone on the west side of Napau crater and filled it in. But these flows were much larger than the flows of the 60s, they reached as far as the coastal plain although failed to advance far across it. The flows under the western half of the Pu’u O’o flow field within the park are from Kanenuiohamo abd are a bit under 1000 years old, perhaps as young as 700. The flows near Kalapana are either from the 18th century or were about 2000 years old. It may be only tube fed flows can cross these coastal plains.

          • The distance a lava flow reaches is determined mainly by he eruption rate and duration, the latter if tubes can form from a prior high eruption rate. If those flows did not reach the coast, then the eruption rate was less than that of the 1980-2018 eruption. Nothing very long-lived and limited eruption rates when eruptions did occur. You could interpret this as a smaller through-flow from the summit to the east rift, or a better developed exit further down-rift. The prevalence of a large summit lava lake indicates a more constrained flow into the rift (so the former) – at least until 1840!

          • It more translates to there not being physically enough lava to actually reach the coast, not how fast that lava erupted. The early flows of Pu’u O’o didnt reach the ocean either but were erupted at very high rate, as high as the flows of 2018 in some cases. The flows that were erupted in the 60s were the same, very high rates but only for a couple hours so the flows were not able to flow far. The flows from the 18th century are sheet flows erupted from fissures just like the 1960s flows, or a lot of Mauna Loa flows, they erupted very fast at high rate but were also short lived as flow features of longer lived flows like channels and tubes, and cones at the vents, didnt really appear in most cases. Such features are found at the cone of Heiheiahulu a but east of Pu’u O’o, which made a shield and tube system, as well as extensive early a’a flow field like Pu’u O’o, some time around the middle of that century. But all other flows are fast sheet flows erupted rapidly.

          • It is a combination of viscosity and cooling rate. Lava can only flow until is becomes too sticky. The lower the eruption rate, the thinner the flow and the quicker it cools. During Holuhraun, the first indication that the flow rate was diminishing was when the lava no longer reached the edges of the flow. In my recollection, that was October or November. The sane happened in the Reykjanes eruption(s). Sure, if an eruption is very brief there is not enough to cover the ground, unless it flows in a very constrained channel. But otherwise, the extent is determined by flow rate, not flow volume. The flood basalt flows are enormous, suggesting very high flow rates.

          • I understand where you are coming from but Holuhraun was not a good comparison to what these eruptions would have been like. Holuhraun lated for a relatively long time, giving us time to see it decline, the 2018 eruption down in Leilani is a very close comparison although not identical or as easily visible in its decline.

            But the eruptions up on the ERZ in the 18th century were too brief to apply this to, They were the same sort of very intense short eruptions as the eruption in 1974, which erupted a 12 km long flow in only a few hours, the volume is not especially impressive but the rate of eruption is very high as the eruption is short lived. 1974 pahoehoe flowed as far as 9 km from the fissures before it turned into a’a anf went a few km further, the stuff that was under where Pu’u O’o is now didnt flow quite as far but still made it many km before the a’a transition. There was also a flow in 1986 that went on this exact path, flowing 8 km in a couple hours and up to 5 km before turning to a’a, flowing at as fast as 3 km/hr according to reports which can be found on GVP. The breakout on the flank of Pu’u O’o in August 2011 was similar, flowing several km in a couple hours.

            The old aerial photos are here:
            https://uhmagis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=f6672e31727d49468a37b7bb3ab77d77

  8. https://www.flickr.com/photos/194933949@N05/52791451660/in/dateposted-public – Topography map
    https://www.flickr.com/photos/194933949@N05/52790502607/in/dateposted-public – Geology map
    https://www.flickr.com/photos/194933949@N05/52791453715/in/dateposted-public – Fault line map

    Basically, I was working on this for a bit of a while (haven’t really figured out the names of each geographical feature) and I thought I would show you my bit of progress on this.

    The fictional island itself is centered at roughly 42.1248°S and 150.506°W. Basically, it formed about 83 million years ago, as a continental fragment, when Zealandia broke away from Gondwana, suffered a minor flood basalt event, along with some hotspot volcanism afterwards.

    After that, it began to “sink” under the waves, to the point that, by 7.9 million years ago, it was just an archipelago. The bulge from another hotspot eventually rose it from the sea and, less than 5 million years ago, volcanism began again on the island, resulting in massive volcanoes that expanded the island further.

    A few are still active, due to the hotspot, but volcano D is relatively long lived, perhaps due to the insulation effect of the continental crust above it.

    • My mistake, I gave the wrong coordinates. It is roughly centered at 38.8586°S and 156.1475°W.

        • Australia, possibly Balleny Islands.
          Just saw that your country is sitting on the nicest chain I’ve ever seen besides the Hawaian Emperor chain, the Cosgrove Chain. Just continental. One can see exactly how the country travelled until it met the Pacific Plate.

          And in the South East you seem to have something that resembles the Eifel with numerous maars.
          How about an article? Fascinating stuff. Some people think one of those younger cones or maars could go up one day.
          Well, unless the plume is either dead or under the ocean now.
          This is Australia’s Hawai’i isn’t it, suffocated by the continental plate, so quite different and still somewhat similar. I wonder what it might have looked there before Australia said good-bye to Antarctica..

          • There is not actually a certainty that a hotspot is responsible for all of the volcanism. There are central volcanoes that show this trend but the lava flow fields don’t. I mean, there are 4 that are active now, one is the Newer Volcanics which is the one down in Victoria with all of the maars that you noticed. The other 3 are all up at the very far north end, inland of Townsville Queensland. There are Holocene eruptions in both places. There also are some mid Pleistocene eruptions near Bundaberg, which is near the half way point south, a bit north of Brisbane (well, a few hundred km, which is close in Australia 🙂 )

            So lava fields seem to be able to grow almost anywhere along the east coast, where they stay active for millions of years. Eruptions are millennia apart though, about every 9000 years at newer Volcanics, and 15000 years up in Queensland, although that number is much less certain as one field has not been studied and has numerous possibly Holocene cones. So still very small chance of eruption in the 21st century 🙁

            I spent about 2 years trying to write an article on one of these actually, but there just isn’t enough information available. it would basically be a Wikipedia article, not really anything with any certainty. There is no active monitoring, there might well be an active magma chamber down in the crust but without any seismometers or deformation we don’t know anything.

          • The one thing all the east coast fields have in common is proximity to the Great Dividing Range

        • This is a hotspock track that makes perfect sense.

          1. The timing: “It was created over the past 33 million years, as Australia moved northwards over a hotspot in the Earth’s mantle.”
          https://www.sci.news/featurednews/science-cosgrove-track-australia-03238.html
          2. The thickness of the lithospere having an influence:
          ““In northern Australia the lithosphere is much thinner beneath the track, producing basaltic volcanism, while in southern Australia the lithosphere has intermediate thickness, and the track consists of low volume leucitite lavas.
          https://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/8174/

          3. The alignment. (Map in link 1)

          4. The assumed location today:
          Furthermore, evidence from plate motion reconstructions that we used during our research suggests that the hotspot should now be located beneath north-west Tasmania, unless of course the underlying mantle plume has dissipated.

          “So we are now going to be looking for any evidence of this in geological and geophysical datasets of the region, and this will help us determine whether there is any life left in this hotspot track after all.”

          From Nick Rawlinson, Univ. of Aberdeen, Dpt. of Earth Sciences
          https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/N-Rawlinson-79481504

          The Great Dividing Range though is much older, 300 Ma, Therefore from the Carboniferous, and considerably eroded. Considered a remnant from the collision of Australia with South America and New Zealand.

          • Its not that the hotspot track doesnt exist just that there is physical proof that there are also other causes for volcanism in Australia. Newer Volcanics might be that plume, but then what feeds the volcanism at Undara, which is sat at the very other end of the line and is just as active as the Newer Volcanics, probably more so even.

          • You quote the wikipedia age. That is the age of the surface rocks (and in fact it is far more complex than wikipedia states). The mountain range is much younger: the region was uplifted much later.

          • Nothing was from wikipedia which is supposed to have become much better, btw.

            Three hotspot tracks, possibly, running parallel to each other; two of them are oceanic and therefore more evident as easier to spot. There will certainly be more science about the third (suspected) one in the future. It is an area with a past of enormous Igneous Provinces, and Igneous Provinces are always discussed with mantle plumes. It is nicely seen by taking Australia (sort of an invading continent) out of there.
            https://phys.org/news/2019-01-underwater-volcanic-ancestry-lord-howe.html

            PS: It is a bit strange when I quote a Professor for Earth Sciences from Aberdeen and am then confronted with wikipedia which as I mentioned has become better, esp. when the sources are studied.

          • Your last sentence was very similar to the wikipedia claim “The Great Dividing Range was formed during the Carboniferous period—over 300 million years ago—when Australia collided with what are now parts of South America and New Zealand. The range has experienced significant erosion since.” That claim from wikipedia is very incomplete, and it is certainly not the age of the current mountain range. It is like saying that the Alps are 300 million years old (I made this number up) – which might be true for the rocks but is not the age of them mountains!

            As to the hot spot tracks, there is a very clear and narrow track in the ocean. But the age progression of the on-land Eastern volcanism does not reflect a clear hot spot track. There is more going on.

          • I admit I saw also a piece about it stating it be younger, based on new methods. I am skeptical with that.
            1. It looks old which doesn’t mean anything.
            2. There is nothing subducting in Australia. Australia is surrounded by its own plate, contrary to New Zealand.

            Australian Plate, from wikipedia, very sorry:

          • True, Chad, Undara is too young, mentioned here:

            https://volcano.oregonstate.edu/undara

            Do you know whether anybody has ever thought about rifting? Rifting in East Africa when it started wasn’t obvious at the beginning I guess. Rifting would be interesting. If you have heard about the idea or read an article about it pl. share if possible.

          • Indeed, I basically read this first, but as I read several things, at the end the wikipedia paragraph might have stuck.
            “There is still debate about when the Australian Alps came into existence, with some
            geologists arguing that they arose only a few million years ago, while the majority argue
            that the Alps arose around 100-60 Ma, based on evidence collected over the last 30
            years. This account takes the majority view.”
            https://theaustralianalps.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/geology.pdf

            This would mean Cretacious.
            Anyway I believe that it is not that nice to just walk over the findings of a Geology Professor who is specialized on the Indian Ocean. He himself says it needs more research though.

            As to myself I just think it makes a whole lot of sense.

          • Yes. It shows that the cause of this mountain range is not well known.

    • Wow great work! thats a rather large one, will be a place full of african penguins and white sharks and millions of seals, seabirds, and old abandomed whaling factories rustning away. At lat 38 S the lowlands will be very mild and rather South Irelandish in apparence. It will be a cloudy and dramatic place visited by cook and other famous sailers with their wooden huts rutting away on the shore, a Green upslope rises from a dark stormy sea up into distant Ice – fields. Sometimes its visited by luxury expedition crusises

      The volcano likey posses a massive massive magma chamber with large capability for eruptions in multiple km3 range with deadly jökullhaulps as an effect: I expect Thoelitic Basalt to be the composition for a volcanic complex thats this powerful

      • Well, I could say that volcano D has a large magma chamber, but not of thoeltic basalt. The 7k mountain is made of trachyandesite to trachydacite, pretty much began forming right after the 9.5 kyr eruption and last erupted around 6.5 to 7 kyr. Since then, it has been dormant, perhaps maybe with some reports of phreatic activity at the volcano.

        The southern one, on the other hand (volcano E), is quite interesting. It’s summit was always covered in an ice cap until around 200-300 years ago when a combination of anthropomorphic global warming and volcanism wiped out the western half of the ice cap. Now, it has frequent lava lake activity at is summit (with the exception of an occasional drain-out to another eruption). However, back then, it would’ve had eruptions similar to those of Iceland and one of them had an eruption larger than that some of Iceland’s largest…

    • Only very recently was the summit crater summited I guess as well, at latitude 38 S its probaly mild enough To be almost subtropical in the lowlands like Tristan Da Chuna so perhaps a human settlement woud be there too? Woud be an odd place to live rather Icelandic in feel or like UK hebridies isolated and alone with unique laungugue perhaps the colonizers woud be british?

      Great map! Make more I know
      I will try to paint landscapes from this Island

    • : ) At 7000 m this is the Everest among volcanoes above sealevel I guess the continetal fragment under it allows souch height, otherwise it woud sink and perhaps Max out at 4700 m

      Needs some oxygen bottles on the summit crater, is there any fumaroles or even some lava lake on the summit or at least strombolian activity?

    • Amazing: This place is large enough and long live enough To have evolved unique fauna as well as well, giant flightless birds are certain, and trees evolved from non tree ancestors that came there by the wind. You will still have the Northen temperate parts of Antartica fauna mixed in there with seals and pengiuns and seabirds

      • Well, I could say some birds might be there, but I was thinking about using a few extinct but ancient mammal groups (I.e. multitberculates and so) and the relatives of tuataras, too. I was thinking of a Skull Island feel, with a bunch of weird creatures on there.

    • Had it been at lat 50 it woud be icecapped

      Sourthen Hemisphere is alot colder than Northen because of the immense Antartica icesheet, Infact it never left the Ice Age

      • Not really. Like I said, it is fictional, inspired by a Frankenstein mix of Mount Kenya, Kilimanjaro, Edziza, Long Valley, partly Iceland, majorly Hawaii (Big Island and Puhahonu), Piton de la Fournaise, Etna, Masaya, the American Cascades, and New Zealand (perhaps, when reading some of the comments, Australia volcanism). Altogether, a weird list of things that stitch into this one island.

    • At over 200 km long its sizable is there any human settlements?

      Trying to render images from its landscapes now

  9. Oooo this is soo good for comedy reason 😆
    AI really is magical, this is very much Myself when I sneaks into a restricted volcanic area
    Hahahaha lol: woud be very much Myself in fagradalshraun sneaking too close to the lava and others force me from there ” I dont want To go, I dont wanna go!! ”

    https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/donald-trump-arrested-and-in-jail-fake-photos-created-with-the-ai-make-the-rounds-on-the-web/ss-AA19p3Ut?cvid=e3086ba4debf497eb6f46f0f124083bf&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=4&fbclid=IwAR2KbnL0H0rVyXG0HGhwhqlesi18D2myIVTiHCCOCubrTDJmHJUWKHnIsa0#image=4

  10. Magnitude 3+ quake about 10 km directly underneath Kilaueas summit, biggest one I have seen in that location in a long time. Keep watch of the livestream, might be in for a show very soon 🙂

    Curious, no jolt on the tiltmeter, perhaps this was not a real quake, but then the tiltmeter has stopped updating for up to a few days recently.

  11. Got a question – could a >50 km³ fissure eruption of basaltic lava within a year happen in modern circumstances? I know that there are flood basalts, but I’ll ignore that for now. The closest (maybe) we’ll get to something like this is the þjórsá lava flow from 8,600 years ago (about 25 km³). Still, what circumstances would potentially lead to such event?

    • Hawaii and Iceland have capacity for that but thats also something that IO does

    • Only place I can think of is Mauna Loa, it has immense height, if these eruptions are gravity driven and probable caldera collapses then you want the tallest volcano with the biggest volume above the potential eruption location. Bardarbunga is a huge magma system but is not a particularly big volcano, its a drop in the ocean compared to Mauna Loa or Kilauea in volume. Actually, its relatice altitude to length of rifts ratio is about the same as Kilauea, but Mauna Loa is on a whole different level. Its rifts are not as long relatively (80 km vs 120) but the eruptions over near Ocean View are over 3 km brlow its summit. If Mauna Loa ever evolves a wide caldera in the future, as appears to be quite common at similar volcanoes elsewhere (Galapagos, Reunion) then it is going to be an absolute monster.

      And speaking of Kilauea. As it griws, its SWRZ is hoing to be choked off by Loihi growing south of it, so the whple summit and SWRZ might turn into a massive shallow caldera, possibly 30 km wide, dwarfing Bardarbunga or Sierra Negra, which are the biggest examples of this type of caldera active today. Or not, but this probably happened to the old volcano at Kauai so not unprecedented… 🙂

      I guess it is also possible a basaltic caldera larger than Bardarbunga could form in Iceland, but its evolution in the near future or semi-present is much less clear. Someone else might have better info.

      • I mean it is possible. It is quite easy to see Iceland do it, as they have a large supply in their arsenal, but not quite so much the Hawaiian volcanoes. My thinking goes that the same sort of mechanism that is creating rift zones might be preventing them from producing these sorts of eruptions, like a leaky pipe.

        When in comparison, I always think about accumulation rates. In the case of Iceland’s volcanoes, there is no slump that would leak magma into the rift zones, making them free to “expand” (think of it as a sink without a drain) its supply until a fault line ruptures and the pressure driving it up to the surface.

        Hawaii… not so much. Like a sink with a small drain, they leak magma into their rift zones, either storing the magma or straight-up erupting onto the surface. Perhaps the magma chamber, most of the time, might not grow to enormous compacity to form a large eruption.

        However, calderas do form on Hawaiian volcanoes, perhaps either the supply rate is high or the slump is jammed. Perhaps, there is a block within the rift the prevents leakage and so the magma chamber builds.

        So, in a hypothetical situation, Kīlauea has a average supply rate of 0.2 km³/yr, of which 25% of that goes to the surface (via summit), whereas the rest is stored in a growing magma chamber. For about 500 years, it would emit about 25 km³, whereas its chamber grew by a massive 75 km³, all due to some block in the rift.

        However, that block then fails and the magma chamber empties into it to form a very big eruption on the scale many times larger than Laki. After that, the summit would be left with a massive caldera.

        In the case of Iceland, all it needs to do is do another Laki but on a bigger scale.

        But, I am not really much of an expert and this is just simply all hypothetical. However, I might bet this might’ve happend in the past 1 million years, if not, past 100,000 years, it is just simply buried in younger lavas or eroded or simply lost to time.

        • I mean, Kauai had an enormous caldera, of the sort of dimensions I was talking about above. It probably formed incrementally over a long time but evidently some enormous eruptions happened from that volcano. I cant imagine eruptions in Iceland can be a lot bigger than Laki or Thjorsa, Laki was over 5 millennia of accumulation of magma under Grimsvotn, Thjorsa was probably the creation of the existing caldera of Bardarbunga, it might have been a taller shield before. Thjorsa was not the first Holocene rift eruption of Bardarbunga but most seem to have been after. Eldgja was a complete freak event for Katla, there is one eruption from it outside of Myrdalsjokull about 7000 years ago but it was a lot smaller than Eldgja and not a rift eruption. Katla is probably better regarded as a non rifting intraplate volcano for most purposes.

          If the stuff that Hector and I have been finding about Hawaii is at all sensible, then Kilauea and Mauna Loa under the right circumstances can probably do much more than the absolute maximum of Iceland. The existing and confirmed magma system of Kilauea could collapse into a caldera about 20 x 10 km, which would be an 80+ km3 volume if it collapsed to the same degree as what happened in 2018 (~500m)
          Will that happen soon very unlikely, but everything we know about magma systems would lead to the eventual outcome of such a magma system being to collapse. Not to mention the ERZ has a similar sized area of deformation all on its own… It is already known that 50+km long flood lava flows have erupted from the deep sea end of the Puna Ridge. 🙂

          • I think a caldera depth similar or lesser than the down-dropped block is more realistic, ~100 meters. A former caldera of Kilauea may have had 10-20 km3, formed before 11,000 years ago. But there is a lot of uncertainties. I doubt 50 km3 lava flows can happen rapidly on Earth right now. Some of the long lived Icelandic shields might just barely reach 50 km3 over decades of activity.

            The flood basalt eruptions in Mars, a lot of them show signs of being extremely long-lived but with eruption rates comparable or superior to the most intense lava flows on Earth. These eruptions probably happened under conditions of magma supply far higher than those of present-day volcanoes on Earth. Perhaps comparable or even superior to the magma supply of terrestrial large igneous provinces. Occasionally gigantic layered intrusions were formed which unleashed floods of lava as big as a whole Hawaiian volcano, and in one case far larger.

          • Yes, it is unlikely that an 80 km3 lava flood could happen on lanbd from Kilauea or Mauna Loa any tgime soon. But I would not discount the potential for it to happen one day, nto in the next few millennia but in the next half million years is entirely possible if Kilauea grows into a giant as expected, while Kama’ehuakanaloa grows to obstruct its southwest rift. Given we know how far to the southwest the deep rift intrusive complex goes if rifting is obstructed the whole thing might turn into a caldera. Maybe this happened to Mauna Loa once too, when Kilauea began to grow and its eastern rift couldtn move as easily, with this stage havign been buried by later lava as the overall activity of Mauna Loa has declined since its peak and shifted to Kilauea more.

            I can see Iceland doing a 50 km3 flow under extremely rare circumstances, like if all of Vatnajokull collected as a single deep intrusive complex and then all drained out through a single rift. Say that eruptions of over 10 km3 DRE happen maybe once every few millennia, then maybe a few times in the past 100,000 years has been an eruption that is much larger. Unless that was in the last 12,000 years then it would not make a lava flow, or actually any really obvious structure we would recognise immediately today.
            But there is nothing indicative of anything like this happening soon.

          • 50 km3 is not easy for a normal (not super) volcano. Lava on land is currently dominated by Iceland and Hawai’i. Neither can do this amount at the moment. You need a large storage with sufficient pressure to push this much out, but not so much that the chamber can’t grow this large. Best done in rifts (low stress along the rift) or in extension environments (Toba – due to the bend in the fault). Basalt, of course, so mantle warmth required. Iceland pushes the right buttons but has not done more than 15 km3. (So not far off..). Perhaps there is a submarine location which could do it. Otherwise, keep an eye on the understudied regions of northeast Ethiopia, especially the Danakil depression. It is a triple point with some enormous lava flows.

          • I mean, 50 km³ of basaltic lava emitted in a year is not an easy thing for a volcano to do. Matter of fact, it is easier to do a VEI-8 than that as, if its magma chamber grows without an eruption, it would become a different type of magma. You would indeed need a warm mantle environment or a high supply of magma, but there is another thing it is kinda missing, now that I think about it – a sort of constant rejuvenation of the magma to keep it basaltic, flush out the older stuff and keep the new.

            However, like you said, it is very difficult for a volcano to do a 50 km³ eruption of basaltic lava. Heck, on the Hawaiian islands, such chamber would add pressure to the rift zones and empty out in a series of eruptions over many years before it’ll get a chance to do such an event and Iceland because the magma might solidify. There are many problems with this, which is perhaps why only flood basalts (by far) are capable of such events. All the list above, though, don’t have the requirements to do that.

            As far as the Dankil Depression goes, it could be another candidate for a very unlikely event. However, there is a chance of a >50 km³ Lanzarote version (which lasts a few years), though it’ll take the same amount of circumstances as a 50 km³ basaltic eruption in a year.

          • I dont think there are any currently active volcanoes in the Afar triangle that can do a 50 km3 flow either, the biggest flows recently are from Dubbi in 1861 at a couple km3, which is big but around an order of magnitude lower than the biggest flows of Hawaii and Iceland.
            Alayta probably also has had eruptions of similar size to that of Dubbi although its most recent flow in 1907 was smaller, under 1 km3, and another young flow (maybe 19th century) seems similar size to the 1907 flow. The 2011 flow from Nabro was 0.3 km3 apparently. I dont know the volume of the 2017-2019 lava shield next to Erta Ale but if it was flowing at 5 m3/s on average it would be about 0.4 km3 of lava.

            Nyamuragira and Nyiragongo might be places in the future for flows of such magnitude. The Kenya rift opened with massive scale volcanism, not of the size of a Traps formation but probably capable of erupting flows of the scale desired for this comment line. That was in the Miocene and it has calmed down since then, but the same thing is beginning now in the Albertine rift, starting at Virunga. Nyamuragira is already the biggest of the group by area, and it sits within a valley not on the flank of the rift like the others. The valley is probably a former part of lake Kivu, which is over 500 meters deep in some places, so the volume of lava might be considerable below the visible mountain. Same might be true of Nyiragongo, although not as large. Would not surprise me if the total volume of lava erupted at the locations of Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira is over 1000 km3 since volcanism began there, probably during the late Pleistocene, especially given how active the area is now.

      • Then there is always IO thats Im more and more addicted to

        There large scale volcanism is the norm, the avarge volcanic pit on IO is Hawaii or at least Tenerife sized

        Just a matter of time before we wittness a truley catastrophic Ionian eruption 🙂 I mean something more like a flood basalt, old lava channels on IO suggest the Moon is capable of really really large basaltic eruptions ( at least in order of 100 s of km3 at once ) the observed fast Ionian eruptions been many 10 s of km3 at once or much larger for some long lived thermal outbursts

  12. I mean, Kauai had an enormous caldera, of the sort of dimensions I was talking about above. It probably formed incrementally over a long time but evidently some enormous eruptions happened from that volcano. I cant imagine eruptions in Iceland can be a lot bigger than Laki or Thjorsa, Laki was over 5 millennia of accumulation of magma under Grimsvotn, Thjorsa was probably the creation of the existing caldera of Bardarbunga, it might have been a taller shield before. Thjorsa was not the first Holocene rift eruption of Bardarbunga but most seem to have been after. Eldgja was a complete freak event for Katla, there is one eruption from it outside of Myrdalsjokull about 7000 years ago but it was a lot smaller than Eldgja and not a rift eruption. Katla is probably better regarded as a non rifting intraplate volcano for most purposes.

    If the stuff that Hector and I have been finding about Hawaii is at all sensible, then Kilauea and Mauna Loa under the right circumstances can probably do much more than the absolute maximum of Iceland. The existing and confirmed magma system of Kilauea could collapse into a caldera about 20 x 10 km, which would be an 80+ km3 volume if it collapsed to the same degree as what happened in 2018 (~500m)
    Will that happen soon very unlikely, but everything we know about magma systems would lead to the eventual outcome of such a magma system being to collapse. Not to mention the ERZ has a similar sized area of deformation all on its own… It is already known that 50+km long flood lava flows have erupted from the deep sea end of the Puna Ridge. 🙂

  13. A while back there was a talk about volcanoes that erupt silicic lava but where that lava has got a low viscosity. I managed to stumble upon perhaps the best example of thsi that I have seen so far, Quetrupillan in Chile. It is a shield volcano, or maybe a low angle stratovolcano, that is to the east of the well known and very active volcano of Villarrica.

    Particularly to the south of the main cone there are some huge a’a flows, flowing up to 14 km from the source vents as I could map, and possibly further. While the volcano as a whole is basaltic andesite all of these flows are trachyte, and yet look visually very similar to basaltic flows. It isnt as fluid as plume basalt but is very similar to the sort of basalt that is erupted at subduction volcanoes in most places. My guess is the magma must be crystal poor or possibly is abnormally hot to allow such a silicic melt to flow so easily.

    Seems also that these vents all form a ring fault, it is a long arc south of the main summit of the volcano, most likely there is a huge magma chamber underneath. Given the dimensions, about 4×8 km, if the magma chamber is a typical 3 km deep then that is 85 km3 of magma, potentially a VEI 7 if it goes. If it is crystal poor then is figure will be at least 70% melt.

    Looking at it, Villarrica also has a massive caldera, despite erupting some of the most fluid lava of any subduction volcano. Must have been a crazy eruption, explosive but at 1150+ C would be much more incandescent than most ignimbrites and maybe behaved like a lava flow in some ways. The eruptions now are impressive enough being like the fire fountains of Pu’u O’o in the 80s but scaled up to almost plinian intensity, and with very fast lava flows that seem to be rarely reported on… Southern Chile in terms of volcanism is quute an underappreciated part of the world even considering the 2nd biggest explosive eruption of the 21st century was here.

    • Low viscosity rhyolite has an interesting origin. It happens when an old magma chamber in the crust solidifies. The mush crystallizes, and what is left in the liquid is rhyolite. If left undisturbed during cooling (for a very long time!) the crystals drop out and settle at the bottom, and the top layer is now pure rhyolite which solidifies last. Later again the chamber is reheated and the rhyolite melts but the lower layers do not. You now have a crystal-poor rhyolite which will flow with low viscosity when it erupts. Don’t heat it too much or the crystals will mobilize and re-pollute the melt.

      • Interesting then, Cordon Caulle erupted some rather fluid looking rhyolite in 1921-22 and in 1960, but the flow in 2011 is more sticky looking. Might be an example of this reheating, where as the crystals free up. Hector did say above that Puyehue Cordon Caulle is inflating quite rapidly apaprently, so seems there is a large ongoing intrusion, probably of basalt at depth.

        So this could actually be a rather concerning volcano, being a potentially very large rhyolitic system, especially if it is able to erupt 0.3-1 km3 of lava without any surface collapses and even with rapid inflation. I can see this being a VEI 6-7 volcano too just like Quetrupillan.

    • Temperatures are very efficent method at lowering polymerisation and viscosity, most intermidate melts are erupted at low temperatures so are often more viscous than they coud be

      The larger earlier caldera maybe an old sillic magma chamber that was blown away, little like Ambrym and then was followed by more mafic activity

    • Villaricca is very very fluid indeed at least on pair with Holuhraun, I seen old Villaricca Photos and it have had shiney aluminium like pahoehoe in its crater. Masaya also have very low viscosity, Villaricca have near hawaiian looking viscosity pahoehoe in some Photos that Hector showed me long ago and I think they where from 1988 or 1989 hard to find on internet

      The viscosity of Villaricca Maybe as low as 200 PA.s not soure and all lavas do look more fluid than they really are, But yes Villaricca is fluid

      • The thing that surprises me about it is that Villarrica doesnt erupt crystal poor plume basalt, its lavas are as much as 40% crystals and basaltic andesite composition. This crystal content is almost as high as Etna, which over there is enough to turn a very fluid trachybasalt melt into a sticky lava. So the stuff erupted at Villarrica is either not as fluid as it looks or must be very depleted in polymerized minerals. Perhaps it is highly enriched in something that is incompatible with common magma crystals so will cause the magma to stay with an extremely low viscosity at a lower temperature than would be normal for its composition. Or perhaps, crystals dont really affect magma viscosity until getting over 45-50% by weight.

        The lava flows in 1971 might have flowed 17 km in an hour, the main paroxysm phase began 15 minutes before midnight on 29 Dec 1971, and it was mostly over only an hour later. The flows were still moving slowly in the morning, 6 hours later, but obviously flowed most of the distance while the eruption was ongoing.

        More info here:
        https://www.povi.cl/files/h_1971.pdf

        I cant really read Spanish, only as much as is cognative with English (actually quite a lot but still), but Hector might be able to translate it 🙂

      • Yes I read its crystal rich yet appears super – fluid just wait until Hector finds the 1988 Photos that shows Puu Oo like shiney pahoehoe in the crater plus fluid fountains

          • Wow it really does look like Hawaiian basalt, if it wasnt captioned I would think this is from Kilauea.

            Villarrica must be what Nyiragongo used to look like, before it collapsed and became too wide for explosive activity. Its a gigantic oversized pyroclastic cone, what happens when you let something like Pu’u O’o in 1986 grow for 1500+ years and not only 3 🙂

        • Thank you! Yes that stuff have low viscosity looks ( almost Hawaiian ) the melt between the crystals must be very fluid and primitive

  14. ?auto=format&w=1000

    Ambrym and Masaya do have very low viscosity as well ( I dont know If this photo pops up in stationary computer), they have also very fluid subduction zone basalts that rise quickly from the source without much evolving.
    I do think that most primary mantle subduction basalt thats melted at 1280 – 1300 C by volatile addition are highly highly fluid.

    The reason fluid magma volcanoes are rare in subduction zones is beacuse their magma supply is rather slow, so slow is the avarge subduction volcano magma supply that most volcanoes in souch settings only erupts crystal rich evolved viscous mushes.

    Ambrym and Masaya at 1160 C is quite close But not directly like the primary subduction zone basalt melt as there is some evolvement

  15. The 1563 lava flow in Ribeira Seca Saõ Miguel Azores. Old village peeking up from the lava flows thats been built over later. 1563 had insanely fluid alkaline basaltic lava flows that overunned the town in less than an hour, rather little like Hualalai flows. Its also incredibley how this lava flows have competely vanished in a few 100 years, its Impossible to find in Google Earth. I guess just like Goma in the humid climate of the Azores lava flows go green in a few decades.

  16. This may sound like a stupid question, but how do ultra-alkalinic magmas (I.e. melilitites or nephelinites or kimberlites) form? I mean I read the articles on such magma but haven’t really fully grasp on it.

  17. Visible stack of earthquakes going down at least 10 km below Kilaueas summit. Seems there is a lot of magma on the move in the deeper parts of the volcano.

    This didnt happen before the last eruptions. It does appear similar to the lead up to 1959 though. And there were those swarns of deeper quakes around Kilauea a month ago. There might be an eruption of significant size soon and not necessarily in Halemaumau.

    • It might also lead to a fissure eruption which expands from Halemaumau to south or southwest. Another possibility are cracks/rifts by earth movement which run through the “frozen” lava lake and break the rocky “ice”.

      • The second option is what the 2021 eruption was, and the eruption in January. It is probably still the most likely option.
        Also, an eruption that is south of Halemaumau wont be radial, it will follow a caldera fault, like in 1982. Kilauea doesnt really have any radial vent patern relative to its central caldera, except possibly for Kilauea Iki, but even then an argument can be made that Iki is a part of the ERZ just not a part that connects to the ERZ connector feeding all of the other ERZ sources. Or maybe Kilauea Iki is kind of a satellitic volcano to the rest of Kilauea, with its own deep source that branches off below what feeds the caldera. Although this doesnt work too well either, as Kilauea Iki eruptions are associated with activity at other locations too, so it is at least also connected to the ERZ somehow, and probably to Halemaumau too.

        Really, the only part of Kilauea that is safe bet not to erupt next is the ERZ, it is not moving in a way to indicate magma accumulation nor is the ERZ connector active at all. But an eruption is probably equally likely in the general south summit area as it is within Halemaumau right now. The SWRZ connector is also lit up, this would be the next spot to look IMO.

  18. There was a couple earthquakes down under Grindavik just a few hours ago. Nothing major and not a real swarm but this area has been quiet for almost the last year. In the immediate runup (about a day before) to the eruption in Fagradalsfjall last August, there was a surface level quake that opened a fissure in the ground north of Grindavik too, so a new intrusion in the area or new supply to the existing ones could be more of a problem than it first appears.

    It is quite easily visible in this image, which also shows deformation from the dike that fed the last eruption.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FZJNU2RXkAAY3N6?format=jpg&name=large

    • Wants to move to Iceland, it haves absolutely everything that makes me happy and generaly ranks as the worlds 2 th or 3 th most happy country after Finland. Iceland is a really really incredibley place to live in

      Nothing is fun in Sweden and all new modern architecture here only makes it worse. Hahah Australia must be so boring when there is only modern steel boxes to see, 1930 s Art Deco is ”old archictecture” in Australia I guess and may only go a little older than latest phase of the European Neoclsssicism for Aussies in terms of oldest human Industrial structures

      • In Sweden you find a lot of hot made granite/gneiss which allowed the glaciers to make millions of pretty rounded hard rocks.

      • Thats true smoothed over glacial moraines and souch and thousands of lakes, But there is a lack of volcanoes 🙂

        And because the humidity is sky high here the summers can be opressive

        South Scandinavia and in general Western Europe have humid muggy summers with a tropical feel, even if its rarely as hot as the Equator

        Icelands mild summers woud be more suitable for me

        • In Scandinavia you can also experience one kind of geological “inflation”. Not by volcanoes, but by the elastic mantle. It pushes the peninsula (and baltic sea) up to the level where it once was before Ice Age. That’s why Sweden doesn’t have to fear global sea level rise much.
          The Dutch and Frisians are on the oppoisite position. They’ve got “deflation”. While Scandinavia is rising, there the land is sinking slowly and accelerates the impact of sea level rise.

    • But I do think Aussie have a diffrent mood than Scandinavia, its not as cloudy and the vegitation are diffirent and in general longer winter days, Australia probaly feels brigther and less gloomy, looking in Google Earth its looks pleasant mostly so, even If there is a distinct lack of European stylish old archictecture. Scandinavia Maybe happier in overall ratings

      But per personal experience Australia is probaly more friendly for the mind diffrent scenery even If its rather flat and most of its livable places just as Industrialized as Europe

      Quite odd Finland is the worlds most happy country again: its so very drap
      Norway and Iceland I understands are happy, good welfare services, and awsome natural scenery .. But Finland is rather drap, althrough quite be difftent per personal experiences 🙂

  19. Finland is the happiest country because the standard of living is high and they get the best education with the least actual time spent being educated. Starting school at 8 years, only 5 hours, 4 days a week. Yet they learn 3+ languages standard and speak English better than most native speakers…

    Maybe that is just my romantisized view 🙂 but really if the only thing that sucks is the weather that is a good place to be in my opinion. Australia is hot. You have said the southern henisphere is colder, it is, but most of it is ocean. Where I am is about 45 south, in winter it is near 0 at night, and usually under 10, with a peak of still usually under 15. In Summer, it is regularly 20 C at night, and 30 in the day, with dangerously high UV (seriously, it can give you 3rd degree burns).
    And on the education side, ours is good, but nothing like in Europe, or in most of Asia. It might be slightly better than in the US. Unlike all those places though we are very lucky to learn any language other than English, and that is usually private and taught by a relative, there is no standard other language and most Australians only know English. I can read the Romance and Germanic languages where they are cognative with English, a variety of unconnected words in Japanese, a few words in Hawaiian and Icelandic 🙂 and most of the Cyrillic alphabet (but only very few Russian words), but cant speak a word outside of of English nor understand someone speaking at their normal pace in another language.

    • The living standard and quality and equality is just as good in the other Nordic Countries but the most drap Nordic Country is perhaps Denmark just flat

      But yes Finland is very happy with souch services, But in look the enviroment is rather gloomy and its also the coldest Nordic Country

    • Although I understand it is all of Scandinavia that has these same sorts of living standards, not just Finland. Iceland night well be the worst in many ways, being an island reliant on imports with a small population, gets very expensive. But still seems to be comfortable.

      Seems it is further south in Germany and France that things are a bit more stressed out. But being in the EU at least smoothes things out across country borders, the UK seems rather a logistical nightmare to live in from the perspective of an outsider. I think I would much rather live in drab Finland than in the UK 🙂

      But, if I had to leave Australia I would go to New Zealand, then Canada. But I would go anywhere in Europe before considering the US…

      • Modern Archictecture is very much makes many parts of Finland and Sweden Absoutley forgettable .. bland and gloomy and simply incredibley boring

        I call them ” Albert Speer Boxes” or ”Joseph Stalin Bunkers” thats how drap it is and it does not get better that Scandinavia is deep into minimalism and concrete brutalism since 1950 s

        I wish architects here coud continue to build old and stylish, building on Scandinavian old 1800 s traditions like they do in Mediterranean where modern archictecture have never been accepted by the public ( Mediterranean as a whole is lovely with its stylish Naboo look ) and specialy so for Italy 🙂

        But the dark Taiga and flat landscape coud be also why Finland feels so unforgiving for the mind 🙂

    • Yes South Australia is very very oceanic very similar to West Europe nearly identical to France and UK ( Maybe Atlantic South West France is the best analouge in climate. Tasmania and South New Zeeland is very much like North west France I guess in weather, palm trees possible but not subtropical

      The warmest part of Scandinavia Denmark maybe similar to the coldest coastal parts of South New Zeeland with addition we have warmer summers from continetal air

      Then there is Northen New Zeeland that haves a wonderful Oceanic Subtropical Climate that only exist elsewhere in Azores

      The lack of Severe thunderstorms at me bothers me 🙁 Im too oceanic for that

      • It wont be like anything in mainland Europe. The climate might be the same but Tasmania is very mountainous, and is an island. The southern ocean is much larger and colder than the North Atlantic too and surrounds us on 3 sides…

      • How cold can it get in tasmania at sealevel?
        South Scandinavia rarely gets very cold in winter

        Northen New Zeeland is ideal always mild to pleasant in the lowlands, and their fern forests are awsome: relicts from the Cretaceous era and many of BBC s dinosaur programs used NZ s forests as settings

        Are you going to visit White Island and Taranaki volcanoes as well ?

        • White island is illegal after what happened there in 2019. I expect it will never be set foot on again.

          Really, I have an electric rental car, I will just go as far as it goes on a full charge from Auckland. Either a Model 3 or a Polestar 2, the base nodel of which will both drive at least 400 km in real world conditions.

          🙂

      • The most fun Nordic Countries for you will probaly be Norway and Iceland with its spectacular natural scenery and overall incredibley natural scenery and specialy so for Iceland

        Things gets more boring towards Sweden, Denmark and Finland

        The most boring Nordic Country nature – wise coud be Denmark as they have only flat cultural lands and nothing to see of land nature. But they also haves wast pretty sandy beaches to enjoy as well and overall the weather there is the best in Scandinavia

          • Especially at 12:37

            Not sure where this is, but I like the view.

            🙂

          • Actually, I found it. Minnesund, on a lake that is called Mjorsa. So actually not on the ocean. Google earth also has a much nicer summer view of this spot too, very green.

            60°23’50.77″N
            11°13’45.29″E

            Definitely will have to go to this part of the world one day 🙂

      • Yes Norway have a very mild winter climate, they even have Trachycarpus Palm trees in South Coast, pretty much frost free beacuse of its oceanic nature and the Gulf Stream, Infact its quite similar to South New Zeeland in look, Norway have perhaps the worlds best avarge living standard being almost as high as Qatar per person and being more equal and democratic as well

        Norway have togther with Iceland the most Epic Nordic nature even If Iceland Maybe even more moody and heavy and surreal

        And beacuse they are close to the ocean the summers are generaly not too muggy.
        Summers are terrible in rest of South Scandinavia as a whole beacuse of the sky high humidity that makes 25 or 28 C feel like 38 C so rather muggy and tropical in feel ( High summer in Stockholm is humid hell )

        Norway and Iceland and Lapland have the most tollerable Nordic Summers

        • But Im always sweaty and short of breath preforms poorly in warm weather coud be a metabolism/ induvidual feature But coud be my high energy ..low carb keto diet

          Iceland woud suit me well as its the mildest Nordic Country

        • The climate of northern Norway is going to change much with climate change. When the ice cap of north pole is totally lost in summer, the sun can shine into the arctic ocean 24/7 from April to September. Open water saves heat much better than ice. The Arctic ocean can become very warm. Weather patterns will also change, who knows how.

      • : D I spent living a month in Singapore at parents relatives that moved there a few years ago

        And I only wanted to go home, True Equatorial regions really sucks its the worst of the worst nightmares of weather, only Daharan Summer in the hot humid persian gulf may beat Singapore in terms of humidity and heat uncomfortable index. I guess in PETM the whole planet was like that super hot and humid and with rainforest.
        The locals where competely gone mentaly in the heat and most spent the days inside or in pools, Nowhere in Australia its lik that I guess

        • I think it is like that basically everywhere north of Sydney… I hate the heat too, even where I am it is too hot in Summer some days.

        • Not soure If Aussie comes close to the ITC in stinkyness

          Perhaps Darwin during the rain season Maybe

          But Daharan with heat humidity index of 88 C is another class in its own.. you woud melt into a puddle 🙂 Tattooine on Earth

    • Another main drawback with Scandinavia is that its worlds hardest meritocracy, perhaps even harder than Japan is. You needs to beat most maths courses to get into university and often a Masters is required to get a job here on the job market

      You pretty much have to have a PHD to get a cleaning job here

      Very elitist and progressive is Scandinavian Countries despite our generous welfare and Cost free education

      I needs To finish school maths To have any chance for a non heavy job. We have the worlds most advanced job market, same level as Singapore.

      I injured my foot months ago and is healing very poorly, so probaly needs to become a professor, to do desk job: I have No choice, and being stuck on social welfare is simply too boring in long terms

      • The best chance for a job in Iceland thats not too academic is welder specialist, construction industry is always wanted and in demand

        But I injured my foot so needs to be able to walk To work in construction industry

        But yes Nordic Countries are very meritocratic

      • Difference is that Japan is very conservative and will basically try to do things one way forever until the rest of the world forces them to change. You can look at Toyota, making the Prius back in the late 90s, it was cutting edge tech. But now they still make it, more refined but basically the same car, in both cases. meanwhile a tiny company called Tesla showed up a few years later and made actual electric cars, and then unlike all predictions they didnt die out, and then started printing money like no ones business, so all the other players have wisely started an EV program too, with variable success. Except for Toyota, they still make the same 20+ year old Prius, they put it in disguise as their other cars too. They are good, I drive one, it is very quick and torquey for a petrol car, fun to drive though not fast. But that is what it is, a petrol car with some help, not an EV, not the future anymore, but the past.

        I use that example because Toyota is in deep trouble if they cant figure this out soon and fast, and Japan will go into ruin if they try to bail them out, which they have to because Toyota controls half of Japans economy through one way or another. It is concerning, watching a titan of the modern world in such a precarious position. It isnt all lost, but the risk is very real.

        So it could be worse, might be tough to get a job but at least in Scandinavia you guys seem to have very good future planning, and positive outlook on everything 🙂

        One advantage to being a welder too, is that you get to basically play with glowing hot liquid all day, it isnt quite lava, but it is similar 🙂

      • Welding is probaly the best chance in Iceland as construction industry is large there

        And fishing factory must be a nightmare Dantes inferno even If the Nordic Pays are rather good for all kinds of jobs

      • I do want to move to Iceland like crazy, I wants volcanoes and their unique geology and dramatic scenery, and Nordic living standard. Iceland woud suit me perfectly. Welding probaly works well in Iceland, as many eastern europeans are employed at Icelandic construction sites. The urge to move to Iceland is so strong now that its the only thing that intrests me. Woud be good to get there… so I can be happy. But not good being as very disabeld as I am.. not good at maths.

        Big Island is dreamy too and specialy the kona side, with clear blue waters and small towns. but its very hard to live in and its too hot at sealevel, not better than Singapore in climate despite Big Is being north of equator. I been on Big Island many times 🙂 even dangling the legs over Mauna Ulu pit and sneaking into Halema’uma’u unseen and as well hiking the active flows .. But the hot weather stinks

        Yes Finland and Sweden can be incredibley drab mentaly , and the concrete modernism only makes it alot more sour. Climate wise South Sweden is quite good similar to South NZ and with perhaps even warmer summers. But yes very dull, Im so bored that I dont even vote. At least this drab country should improve its archictecture.
        Australia must be pretty flat and drab as well but I do guess its less gloomy than Sweden and Finland is, the skies are clearer and the vegitation are not dark taiga and the houses do look little hawaiian- colonial ( excluding the high rises ) its diffirent history and enviroments 🙂 and Tasmania where you are sounds like a huge warmer and wilder version of Ireland 🙂

      • Construction industry education certificate is best option for any work in the most Industrialized countries building work is always needed

        But yea everything else requires masters or a PHD in most of Europe, at almost 30 its quite a hurry to find some kind of education To be useful

        Even elementary and high school here in Scandinavia is so hard now that most parents even those that are professors may not be able To help the kids with the school maths

      • The only drab thing in Iceland is lack of Severe thunderstorms Iceland is too oceanic and too cool for that
        Iceland is only stratus, nimbostratus, cirrus and cirrostratus clouds, so their weather skies are very dull compared to say Borneo lack of cumulus in Iceland

        But the Icelandic landscape and gloomy skies adds to the magnificence 🙂

        In mainland Scandinavia we have all cloud types even cumulus but rarely any Severe thunderstorms because we are quite oceanic too and the seabreezes in summer kills off most inland convection

      • Weather wise you probaly knows What I wants always dreams of monsterious HP Supercells with flash intensity of 5 to 10 a second and monsterious wedge tornadoes and rotating miles wide mesocyclones that almost toutch the ground

        Huge convective cauliflower towers so dense they look like rock and looks nuclear and rock hard cumulonimbus anvils going up 65 000 feet and massive domes of overshooting tops and hailstones the size of human heads 🙂 plus sickly green skies and beautyful sunsets under the anvil mammatus 🙂 there is a storm nerd in me too 🙂 the bigger and bader the Cumulunimbus the better it is for me

        But it will be Iceland

        • Silly dreamy of Supercell anvils covering entire states in Europe:) I do wonder what was the biggest induvidual Supercell cloud ever seen

  20. Can something like Paricutin happen somewhere in settlements? The Mexican were luckky that this volcano started its life in a cornfield. But for me it is a scary threat that a volcano opens below your house. There are many areas in the world with monogenetic volcanoes. Where do they threaten dense populated places?

    One of those place could be New Zealand’s city Auckland with the “Auckland volcanic field”. https://www.aucklandemergencymanagement.org.nz/hazards/volcanoes

    • There is a map of volcanoes made by GVP that can be displayed on Googel Earth. It is all Holocene volcanoes known, as well as a large number of volcanoes that have been active in the past million years or so, although not erupting lava in the Holocene.

      So there should be a good way to find locations like this

  21. A few interesting things happening in Hawaii.

    1- A small, ~5 day pause, in Mauna Loa inflation, may have been correlated with a short surge in Kilauea inflation. I made a picture showing the occurrence. The DI events of Kilauea make it a little difficult to see when the inflation happened exactly, but you can more or less guess on the shape of the DI event floor.

    A similar correlation happened earlier in February-March, when Kilauea, had its largest surge in inflation since the eruption ended. This surge happened immediately after a sudden deflation of Mauna Loa by 1.5 microradians. If this coordinated deformation keeps happening it will be interesting.

    2- A flurry of earthquakes happened along the SWRZ connector just as pressure was rising 2-3 microradians above the previous high stand. A total of 30 microearthquakes or so in the Upper Southwest Rift Zone that can be seen in the past month data Kilauea page of HVO. It is the first very obvious correlation between a pressure increase and seismicity that I’ve seen since the eruption ended, the pressure increase was very dramatic so it makes sense it will cause a more visible change. But this means overpressure is being approached. The precursor to last eruption was similarly subtle, so next eruption might be getting imminent, maybe weeks, or a month or two from now, but probably not much more.

    3- DI events (the repetitive deflations and inflations of Kilauea) are getting increasingly complex. Last DI event was a smaller event enclosed within a larger one. The one before was two small events inside a longer DI. And the previous one was also two overlapping DI events. Not long ago, in 2019, the DI events were all simple, one deflation, one reinflation. In a few years the complexity of the DI events has grown enormously. Now we are having mostly complex overlapping DIs.

    • Also, at the rate Mauna Loa is inflating, it might erupt in 2024. As of now Hawaii is very interesting, both volcanoes racing at full speed towards their next eruption.

      • MOKP station, in Mauna Loa’s caldera rim, at the present rate of deformation, will have reversed all the subsidence caused by the last eruption around January 2024. Though many things remain to be seen like, for example, if magma will need to replenish other areas apart from the magma storage under the caldera, of if the magma supply rate will slow down.

      • Personally I’d expect a summit eruption next time. An eruption which neither migrates to ERZ nor SWRZ but stays somewhere in the caldera. Something like 1940 would be interesting: A new cinder cone. On the first day the eruption started with a fissure from the caldera to SWRZ, but on second day all RZ parts of the fissure quit erupting. All activity focused on a fissure in the southwestern part of the caldera. First a chain of cinder cones, later concentrated on a single cinder cone which rose to 100m. The whole eruption lasted 134 days. Much longer than the large eruptions 1950 or 1984.
        https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/volcano-watch-1940-was-a-momentous-year-mauna-loa-and-thomas-a-jaggar

        • 1940 was on the same fissure that erupted last year, and in 1984. Actually, since at least 1933 and probably going back to the 19th century, almost all eruptions from Mauna Loa at the summit have been from this same fissure, only 1942 began from a different fissure.

          In a way it is the same as what happens at Hekla, it is a polygenetic fissure volcano that is just shield shaped. Obviously it has a caldera, so it was not always liek this, but seems that the present configuration is that of a thick dike that probably just erupts directly.
          Interesting is that all of the historical radial eruptions happened before 1868, usually that is attributed to a preference towards the SWRZ after that, but there are still many eruptions on the NERZ and summit after this date. The 1877 and 1935 happened outswide of the rift zones, but are not real radial vents, 1877 was a drain of a lava lake in Mokuaweoweo, it was a ‘radial’ vent but the intrusion was all shallow, and the magma was originating at the surface. Same in 1935, a shallow intrusion probably a sill that began from the eruption that was already active on the NERZ. True radial eruptions like 1859 seem to be very rare, only about 4 or 5 in the past 1000 years, and they are also powerful, with high fountains that make sizable cones, while the 1935 flank vents have no pyroclastics at all. It is not impossible really that the lowest 1935 vent was a reoccupied tube, although not required for explaination.
          1843 was a bit inbetween, it was initially a NERZ eruption, very similar to last year, only that its dike veered off to the north, where most of the eruption happened. But unlike the 1935 eruption these lower vents have spatter cones and other pyroclastics, so show that fountaining took place and gas rich lava erupted, at least initially. There was a particularly tall fountain at a higher vent, maybe the main degassing source later on when it became sustained.

          My hypothesis is that in 1868 the whole volcano was basically split down the middle. In a way it was already like this, with the deep rifts, but such a big quake needed the whole side of the island to slide, both Mauna Loa and Kilauea. But if Kilauea slides, then all of Mauna Loa can move too, not just the southern end. The SWRZ seems to be its own fissure, starting from the pit craters south of Mokuaweoweo, while Mokuaweoweo itself is on the southwestern end of the NERZ. The summit eruptions that go to the southwest are not really SWRZ eruptions, but rifting the end of the NERZ fissure swarm. The 1949 vents compared to the 1950 vents show this perfectly

          Possibly, major caldera formation involves all of the volcano contracting, and the summit collapsing as the magma column lowers. When magma returns, it can only initially go up, into the caldera. When pressure increases, it will go into the NERZ still, as it connects to the summit, and also occasionally to radial vents, as the flank movement is low. Eruptions on the SWRZ might also happen, if the pit craters storage fills too. But eventually the pressure is enough to rupture the whole flank, setting off a SWRZ eruption at the lowest point and also inducing flank movement again. It might also collapse the caldera, although not enough to create a whole new one.

          This also seems to be the case with Kilauea. There it has a sominant ERZ, but the caldera connects more directly with its SWRZ, the opposite to Mauna Loa but the same effect. Kilauea has no real radial vents but it does have Kilauea Iki, which has usually been active historically right before major flank eruptions or similar. It isnt a perfect analogy but there is a noticeable similarity. 2018 was perhaps equivalent to Mauna Loa rifting in 1868. The activity now is not indicative of a deep drain of Kilauea, despite the caldera formed 5 years ago, it is still effectively in flank eruption mode, all that is preventing thsi is the elevation of the lava lake in the caldera, once that is high enough then lava will be flooding the island again as it did before. I fear it will not be another 60 year wait for the next 2018, perhaps even being multiple eruptions in that timeframe.

          The 21st century is going to be a very active time for Hawaii, we have a volcano that is at its prime, and a volcano that is supposed to erupt every 3 years go to sleep for decades and has just woken up. Pahala swarm happening shows there is some powerful geologic forces at work, enough to generate innumerable thousands of quakes down in the mantle, and some of the hottest mantle on the planet nonetheless. Whether the swarm represents Kilauea getting a huge boost, or are from Mauna Loa pushing the island out of the way as it wakes up, or are in fact both, the end result is rather spectacular…
          To be honest, I think the chance of either Kilauea or Mauna Loa having a major caldera collapse and associated eruption in the 21st century is much higher than an eruption bigger than Holuhraun happening anywhere in Iceland. I would put the chance of both of them doing it at about the same chance as another Holuhraun.
          I mean, technically it has already in 2018, 1.5 km3 of lava in 3 months but never mind that 🙂

          • Mauna Loa summit area, showing the 1949 (top) and 1950 (bottom, long fissure) vents. Shows well how the summit eruptions that go onto the southwest flank are not really the same as proper SWRZ eruptions, even in closely spaced eruptions like these, only a year apart.

    • Perhaps Mauna Loa have a major sourge in supply now it seems, looks like 40 years of doing nothing is over 🙂 these eruptions are indeed spectacular Hopes for some more curtains of fire soon

      • It seems the 2022 eruption may have triggered a feedback, increased supply into Mauna Loa. It is indeed exciting to see the rebirth of Mauna Loa after 40 years of nothingness.

    • It is also interesting to speculate that the DI event of February 17 at Kilauea, which was a massive 6 microradian drop, after a period in which there had been no large DI events for a while, actually drained down Mauna Loa, or triggered a drainback that was already primed. Mauna Loa deflated rapidly on February 18, a day after a the big pressure drop of Kilauea started on February 17, and both were decreasing pressure simultaneously during ~18-19 February. There might be a cause-correlation there. The pause in Mauna Loa inflation during April 3-7 also followed a particularly large drop in pressure at Kilauea due to a DI event. So possibly the largest DI events of Kilauea, are lowering the pressure of Kilauea’s storage, and triggering the supply of Mauna Loa to be briefly redirected to Kilauea to resupply it.

      Before its last eruption, the supply of Mauna Loa was insignificant and could not be appreciated in the tiltmeter. Now that both volcanoes have a high supply, it might lead to a much more dynamic interplay between the two.

      On other news, the deflation of the East Rift Zone may have stopped.

      • There have also been a lot of deeper quakes under Kilaueas summit. Right now the majority are in the yellow depth, 4-10 km deep, in the feeder of the summit magma chamber, and only becoming shallow orange and red quakes in the SWRZ connector and some more sparse ones in the general area. So seems there is a lot of magma moving in, but it isnt getting into the shallow source that feeds eruptions in Halemaumau, but building up elsewhere. Very interesting the ERZ now seems at least to have stopped contracting, at about the point it was in late 2019 when it seems there was an intrusion near Pu’u O’o, like there was excess magma in this area that has moved away and now reached equilibrium.

        • Also that there was all of those quite large deep quakes around Kilauea about a month ago.

        • Earthquakes around 10 km depth that form a column under the centre of the caldera are long-period earthquakes. I picture them like gas explosions underground. Could be anything causing them really.

          Interestingly the ERZ connector is completely quiet. And has been since the first summit eruption. That is also possibly related to how the ERZ sill complex has been deflating since too. I think magma carries some sort of inertia, it is the only thing that explains why the ERZ has been deflating after inflating so much, even though the summit has continued pressurizing through that deflation. Since the first summit eruption, magma flow has been towards the summit because an stable flow has been formed towards there. The ERZ connector has shut off, but the SWRZ connector that is adjacent to the summit has seen activity. Magma is probably expanding the deep rift under the summit and upper SWRZ. Eruptions can happen in the summit and Seismic SWRZ, I think. The ERZ is dead for the time being. At some point the flow might change and go into the ERZ, but who knows when that will be.

          • I looked at the deep Pahala quakes on the IRIS earthquake map too, to me after seeing the mall together it looks very much like the quakes formed by the aftershocks of the 2018 quake. While not exactly the same thing, obviously, it seems like there is a possibility that the swarm is a deep slump structure or a close analogy to one, related to pressure pushing outwards from the middle of the island. If it is indeed a slump, it is pointed perfectly away from Mauna Loa.

            This doesnt also mean Kilauea is not involved, there are long period quakes and tremors, so magma movement in the swarm is evident too, which is likely towards Kilauea.
            But perhaps the actual occurrence of the swarm itself is not because of Kilauea changing its activity but because of pressure from Mauna Loas deep system reaching a breaking point and pushing outwards on an area that Kilauea gets its magma from (possibly Kama’ehuakanaloa also), and which is both ultimately responsible for the eruption last year but also its very rapid inflation that is not seemingly correlated with Kilauea going quiet like models were predicting, nor something that happened after prior eruptions in recent decades. Maybe there actually isnt a concrete correlation of eruption frequency between the two, and their episodic activity is largely independant, and it was only because Mauna Loa went into a peak a few decades after Kilauea had a major caldera collapse and was recovering, that was what happened in the 19th century to give the observed effects. Likewise Mauna Loa having a collapse in 1700, putting it to sleep for most of that century. But Kilauea probably tried and failed to go caldera again in 1924, then again in 1960, and partly successfully in 2018 but not to a deep level. Mauna Loa in turn didnt destroy its magma system it built up in its hig hactivity when it drained out in 1950, how exactly I dont know but it is what it is. The end result is two volcanoes that are both in a mature state.
            Maybe Mauna Loa is going into another cycle now, recharged after the past 70 years asleep, but Kilauea is itself still at a high point too having failed to go into a full caldera collapse in 2018. This might be relatively uncommon, so this century we get two hyperactive volcanoes at the same time… 🙂

          • I think there is enough evidence to say the turning over supply does indeed happen. Mauna Loa for example was very active around the mid 17th century. There were 4 NERZ eruptions in close succession, 2 of them long-lived and voluminous, and the Hapaimamu caldera-forming eruption happened around 1660 calendar year. Kilauea was also active during this time probably, and the Kahawali eruption and 1650 caldera collapse did take place during this time. But the dominant volcano with the highest volume output was Mauna Loa. After 1660 Mauna Loa basically went dead until ~1800.

            The 18th century was a very quiet time in Hawaii. The only big eruption was the ~1.5 km3 Heiheiahulu eruption, and 1790, but that was a caldera collapse. Kilauea did produce the Heiheiahulu eruption and many small ERZ eruptions so it was the dominant volcano. Mauna Loa was basically dead. The 1790 collapse weakened Kilauea activity.

            It is worth remembering that the SWRZ of Mauna Loa erupted twice between 1790 and 1820. The Manuka and Pele Iki eruptions which seem to have been very closely spaced, and one of them is dated around ~1810. They are also probably mentioned by Hawaiians to be the eruptions after the days of Keoua, after 1790. So Mauna Loa’s reactivation shortly after 1790 can’t have been coincidental. But Kilauea then took over in 1820-1850, probably as a result of the 3 successive gigantic lava lake drain outs. As the lake level rose high in 1850, Mauna Loa took over until 1950. Then the reactivation of Kilauea’s ERZ in 1950-1955 seems to have stolen back the supply. The Pu’u’o’o eruption probably sank Mauna Loa into an even deeper slumber.

            But on top of that there are many other interactions. In the short term Mauna Loa and Kilauea have often experienced short bursts of activity together like in 1916-1926, in 1974-75, in 2005-2006, or 2015. Probably related to the variations in Hawaii’s magma supply.

            Then there is also a very long term shift in rift activity. From 200 AD to 1200 AD activity in Hawaii was mostly dominated by summit overflowing from lava lakes at Mauna Loa and Kilauea. 1200-1500 saw some of the first big rift eruptions, Keapohina, Kane Nui o Hamo, Kipahoehoe, but continuing summit overflows at Kilauea. While since 1500 both volcanoes have been into heavy rift activity, and have kept calderas at their summits.

            So there are many kinds of cycles and interactions probably.

          • The 1850-1950 cycle of Mauna Loa eruptions is possibly the most impressive one since ~200 AD in terms of the enormous frequency and number of rift eruptions. Some individual eruptions are also volumetrically amongst the most important since then, like 1950, 1880 and 1859. And 1950 is basically unmatched in intensity of the initial fire curtain phase within the last 1800 years. Although in terms of total volume 1460 Kipahoehoe is superior. And Hapaimamu was a huge caldera collapse.

          • I also suspect a more rapid turning can happen. Like how Mauna Loa took over briefly in ~1800-1820, and then Kilauea took over in 1820-1850, to then reverted to Mauna Loa. Some Mauna Loa Loa cycles like Keapohina, or Kipahoehoe have been very sort lived.

          • More was referring to that it isnt a simple cut thing like one volcano is active for a century and the other is weak, I mean Kilauea was basically erupting constantly for some 90% of the 1850-1950 era, and Mauna Loa has had 3 eruptions since it slowed in the 1950s, only one of which was a ‘small’ summit eruption.

            There are probably also times when they overlap in high supply, for one reason or another, as you say in 2015 or 1975, and probably right now. Likewise there are probably times that both are relatively slow, like maybe in the late 1930s to mid 1940s, although Mauna Loa might have been more active than is reported, it was WW2 at the time.

            I guess the problem is that it is assumed in the models that the only real driving force is the supply from the plume. But both volcanoes have got many tens of km of storage that exists between where the magma is generated and the surface, places where there might be voluems of magma that amount to entire magma chambers, just sitting there basically, until there is a way out. It might be that one is dominant of the plume melt, but the other gets fed by magma that was already created and sat in deep storage. It might wel lalso be that the one that is actually more active on the surface is not necessarily where the plume is going at that time too.
            HVO has said the magma of last years Mauna Loa eruption was a bit unusual, it is the only historical Mauna Loa sample with under 7% MgO, so that might argue against a source from the plume directly in the last couple years, and that it was magma that had some residence time in the crust to evolve out its olivine. This is all in a relative sense as the magma is still very primitive but it is enough to speculate on. Mauna Loa has not been active in almost 40 years before, that is a long time to sit around and accumulate, and we know it gets its magma from very deep down due to the nature of the thickness of the crust under that part of the island, much deeper than Kilauea does at present. HVO hasnt presented any information on the magma composition of post 2018 lava at Kilauea though, only a piece of tephra from the start of the 2020 eruption that was, unsurprisingly, just slightly evolved 2018 lava. They got samples recently, but the results are still not public. But I would guess they are probably more primitive than the Mauna Loa 2022 lava.

            Does also make one consider that mid 17th century time. Having two huge eruptions like that in a decade, does give the impression that the volcanoes need not necessarily be at the peak of their activity to do a major eruption.

          • Yes. I think the activity is episodic, is affected by changing magma plumbing conditions, and has a variable magma supply over time. I think current models are very lacking and possibly mistaken in many aspects. Present models cannot reconcile the enormous variability in eruption rates, styles, locations, and such.

            Regarding the activity of Mauna Loa it is clear to me that it works with trains of eruptions. The 1851, 1852, 1855, and 1859 eruptions being possibly the best example, which combined involved about 1 km3 of effusion and intrusion. Also interestingly each eruption was larger than the previous one. I suspect that deep rift suction has a lot to do with everything. Mauna Loa’s storage is dike-like and deep-reaching. Magma-driven spreading slowly opens up the deep rift, but then an eruption takes away substantial magma from it and rock moves towards the deflating body. This rock probably “wants” to return to its former shape and creates a suction over magma supply, as of the volcano was inhaling. Large flank earthquakes probably have a similar effect and create suction in the deep rift.

            When a vent opens up and forms an stable conduit in the rift it seems to just stubbornly go on, as demonstrated by Pu’u’o’o. Pu’u’o’o just kept erupting through times of inflation, deflation, changes in magma composition, and all kinds of mishaps, and seemingly unfazed. And managed to erupt as much as was erupted during the preceding historical times in Hawaii, if not more.

    • The tilt on Mauna Loa is changing only in the direction of Kilauea (the blue line), not in the perpendicular direction (green). What you are seeing is in part the direct effect of inflation/deflation at Kilauea. DI events are pressure changes so affect the large area. A 3cm inflation at Kilauea will push up the side of Mauna Loa and change the tilt at Mauna Loa by 1 microradian.

      • This is MOKP on the NW caldera rim. The blue tilt component is radial to the caldera of Mauna Loa, 328 degrees from north points exactly away from the centre of Mauna Loa caldera. The gree is the perpendicular to the blue component and is a bit useless since it doesn’t point away or to anywhere important. Up means the angle of the tilt from the vertical is increasing, or in other words the ground is tilting away from the caldera of Mauna Loa, inflation.

        Plus deformation of Kilauea does not reach Mauna Loa. I’ve seen a lot interferograms and I’m quite certain the fields of deformation from the magma storage of Mauna Loa and Kilauea do not reach each other. There is some interaction of the flank motion, but that is another matter to what we have here.

        • See example of interferogram:

          The fields of deformation of Mauna Loa and Kilauea are not large enough to significantly affect each other.

    • The sudden jump up with a flurry of quakes happened again… only this time a bit bigger quakes. Seems like an intrusion is trying to start but cant, the easy path through Halemaumau is now not easy anymore, so the pressure is building up. The next eruption might be outside the lake and of spectacular intensity 🙂

      • The two swarms of earthquakes coincident with pressure increase can be seen clearly. Kilauea will almost certainly erupt somewhere within the next few months. It might even be a matter of days. Sadly, the exact moment it ruptures seems largely unpredictable. The eruption will probably be at Halema’uma’u again.

        • I’ve checked some gas gauge stations around the summit caldera. I’ve had the impression that they show an increase of sulfid gas emissions since beginning of April.

      • Kilauea inflating very fast right now. But I don’t know if it’s the supply or a recovery from the DI events. Mauna Loa has been inflating, but much slower than in March, and it may have had a small deflation 2-4 days ago.

        • Was about to say, the tiltmeter is shooting up right now, like a DI evebt started but then kept going. Anything can happen but I think I would guess a sooner than later date for lava appearing again

          I wonder if Kilauea will erupt before Starship launches 🙂

  22. Noticed that there have been quakes at this particular location a lot in the past few weeks. It isnt like at fagradalsfjall with a huge swarm, but then that area was cold crust not touched since the end of the glaciation. These quakes are at Brennisteinsfjoll which has been frequently active in the Holocene and probably erupts the most lava of all of the Reykjanes volcanoes cumulatively, so the crust might be a lot hotter.

    Still not likely to be any fireworks in the next month at this location but this is very interesting. And so close to the ocean, if it breaks out here there will be lava falls into the sea 🙂

    • It could be a first small swarm quake of more to follow. But the area between Eldey and Reykjanestá already has had several swarms. There the last visible eruption was 1926. It should be more vulnerable for magma than the onshore volcanic systems. There we might get a Surtseyan eruption, but smaller than Surtsey.

      GVP also lists some pillow lava eruptions 1989-1990. Pillow lava eruptions may historically often have been overlooked in this area. They hit/hurt no one. They don’t release steam and only little gas. Even 1989-1990 they had difficulties to measure volcanic tremor in this area: “The large distance to the nearest seismograph (roughly 150 km) means that intrusion and extrusion tremor could have occurred without being observed.”
      https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=371022#bgvn_199010

  23. Starship is going to launch very soon 🙂

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vb9hFqF6i0

    Not sure if it is launching fully fueled, perhaps not likely given it is not intended to orbit, but still this is by far the most powerful machine we have ever made. Every single one of the 33 engines makes as much heat energy as all of the lava lakes on the planet put together. It is only for 8 minutes but still 🙂

    • Still it should get up to around 28 000 km an hour will be a very nice burn and plasma trail as it reenters the atmosphere later it will sink down to 5800 m sea depth outside Big Island of Hawaii.

      The underside should reach 1650 C during reentry and the upper side maybe not get very hot at all as its shiney and reflects heat away, still steel cannot protect alone during normal reentry so needs insulating.
      Will be fun to watch it burn If they have a camera on the side facing away from the atmosphere, cannot wait to see the hypersonic plasma stream and the sparks that fly off in its flow

  24. Maybe a SWRZ eruption is on the cards, that is a lot of quakes. And all while the ERZ connector is dead silent.

    And there are also quakes next to Kaoiki pali, which has more often than not been a sign of pressurization at Kilauea and with many recent eruptions being preceded by swarmns here. There are also quakes at Kilauea Iki too, basically everywhere except the ERZ…

    • Almost 200 earthquakes in the past 2 days. Most of them are in the summit area and upper Southwest Rift Zone. An eruption in the area of the December 1974 eruption, or even the Kamakaia Hills, is not out of question, although I would guess Halema’uma’u is still most likely. Kilauea is still inflating very fast, I think, behind the DI events. Mauna Loa has slowed down a lot in inflation rate compared to March. As long as Mauna Loa doesn’t pick up its pace, we will probably continue to see Kilauea inflate very rapidly.

      • Thing is, that even if Halemaumau is the most likely place to erupt it is also high up, the lake surface now (or really, the crater floor, it must be well over 10 meters thick by now) is about 900 meters elevation, which is as high as the bottom of Halemaumau was when the ERZ eruptions in the 50s began, or pretty close. It is still 100 meters lower than in 2018, but that was a very high stand that has only been reached a few times in the past century and all those times have resulted in major intrusions and usually eruptions, except in 1975 where it went into the deep rift but might have been critical in creating Pu’u O’o later on, sort of a delayed eruption in a way.

        I think the SWRZ is going to do what the ERZ did in the 50s and 60s, for whatever rwason the connector has estabished a better connection than the ERZ has now, I guess doing so in August of 2021. Ever since then the ERZ has been deflating, even though eruptions have been happening and the summit rapidly extending. I think the net change at the summit is minor, basically balanced, but the loss of pressure in the ERZ is a combination of south flank spreading and magma flowing into the SWRZ connector. Given the number of quakes there now the SWRZ connector must be nearing capacity if not passed it, maybe this is why the ERZ isnt contracting the same way as before.

        Halemaumau might erupt soon, but it might also be only a smaller eruption like happened in January, perhaps several more of those, but all buliding to a SWRZ intrusion. This perhaps has not got a great precedent to erupt, given out of all of the SWRZ intrusions coming from the connector in recent decades only one erupted, but that was also when most of the magma was going to the ERZ, now it is going to the SWRZ, if an intrusion fails to erupt then it might just pressurize and erupt anyway some weeks later. Kamakaia was many small eruptions before properly opening, apparently 10 according to HVO, although this might be a bit arbitrary.

        Anyway, the SWRZ is uninhabited but easily viewed, and there is no vegetation to cover everything, an eruption here will be almost the best case scenario.

        • 🙂 while Hawaiian volcanoes are indeed jesperian in scale of edifices will we get an eruption that can satisfy me soon? hope it stays quiet as long as possible so the blast gets as bad as possible 🙂 obivously the magma supply is huge

        • Interesting.

          At the time of the 1832 and 1840 eruptions, the magma column was around 940 meters in elevation, perhaps a little higher since lava did overflow onto the platform. But in 1823 lava may have been much lower. Judging from Ellis’ description, the elevation of the lava lake in 1823, before it drained out catastrophically, must have been 840 meters, which was the elevation of the black-ledge, probably the solidified rim of the pre-1823 lava lake. Although this is not fully certain since Ellis’ descriptions are a bit confusing sometimes.

          And during the Pu’u’o’o eruption, the lava lake stood sometimes as low as 825 meters, during 2009 and 2010. When the 2011 Kamoamoa eruption in the ERZ happened, the lava lake had risen to ~950 meters.

          In 1961, the summit eruptions rose the crater level to ~960 meters, just before the major dike intrusion and small eruption in the East Rift Zone.

          What is clear, though, is that when the lava lake reaches ~950 meters, or before, there will probably be some resumption of rift activity. That is 50 meters more to go. A volume of 0.13 km3. So perhaps one more year of filling.

          In contrast, during the Observatory Shield times, the lava lake probably stood at over 1250 meters and without rift eruptions happening. The magma column of Kilauea has really sunk a lot in the past 600 years. And the magma column of Mauna Loa has also sunk in the past 1000 years.

          • ERZ activity and rift production is the norm I guess overflowing at the summit is rather rare. but been a few souch episodes in human hawaii history as well, anyway is there any chance for a Sierra Negra like Summit eruption now? or is KIlauea too well vented?

          • Sierra Negra has a very large-area magma chamber, which makes its eruptions more powerful. A 1 meter drop in the chamber roof of Sierra Negra is going to effuse far more magma than the same drop in the chamber roof of Kilauea. It’s a matter of plumbing.

          • Kilauea isnt the same structure, no well defined ring fault. But it could become like this one day, and maybe was in the past at times too, same for Mauna Loa.

            It is also likely Sierra Negra was once a bit more passive and like a more normal shield, just a really huge one. It is rather a lot wider and more flat than the other Isabella volcanoes, and a bit like some of the older volcanoes without calderas to its east. I guess it is in the second stage of life now, with a wide magma chamber, and a well defined ring fracture system, from which it begins its eruptions. If it was a more evolved magma it might be a prime VEI 6+ candidate, but it is only basalt, and rather gas poor, so we get lava floods instead 🙂

            I guess maybe all of the other Isabella volcanoes, as well as Fernandina and Marchena, they are all more evolved and mature, steep with very deep calderas. Maybe eruptions are shorter and more intense, taller fountains and lava cant flow as far. Although it is noteworthy that only the volcanoes that border the deep sea (Wolf, Fernandina and Cerro Azul) have got really deep calderas, the others are shallow and the flank vents are more radial. So those volcanoes probably do big eruptions offshore, while Sierra Negra does so on land.

            Alcedo is in the last stage, it is the Mauna Kea of he group.

          • Actually, looking at it, Marchena is not a deep caldera, and it is completely surrounded by deep sea… so maybe not a perfect correlation. It also looks like basically the entire island got flooded over with lava in the last thousand years or so, abd the lava is extremely fluid it even flowed down narrow gulleys, and keeps the pahoehoe texture almost everywhere. It did erupt in the 1990s, no pictures of the lava though.
            Marchena is apparently completely off limits so there is no information I could find on it at all, unfortunate as there seems to be a lot of unique things about it. I imagine it goes a long time between short episodes of intense volcanism, all the island is either weathered green older terrain or barren fresh lava, so it might have only erupted a few times in the Holocene, but huge each time. Like a Laki on an island 🙂

      • And right as we speak two more sizable quakes going at the start of the SWRZ connector, this might be it 🙂

      • 1919 the last longterm (223 days) eruption at SWRZ began with a small eruption from “radial crack within caldera” which later moved to Maunaiki. A SWRZ eruption could begin with a fissure eruption close to Halema’uma’u and migrate to somewhere in the SWRZ.

        • Mauna Iki was on the so called ‘volcanic SWRZ’ which is basically a crack that connects to the caldera directly, it isnt a deep structure. The ‘seismic SWRZ’ is the SWRZ connector, it is structurally deep and the same sort of thing as the ERZ. Only one historical eruption has been observed on the seismic SWRZ, in December 1974, but there were likely many eruptions from this area between 1790 and 1868, although only one in 1823 is confirmed to a date.

          All of the eruptions from 1868 to 1971 were from this shallow crack system, all related to there being eruptions in Halemaumau already ongoing or just beforehand. That might happen soon, there is a huge mass of liquid lava growing in the caldera, like there was in 1823 or 1868, but it still might be some years before it is able to break out in this way.
          More likely is that the SWRZ connector will rupture, which would result in an eruption that is much more gas rich than Mauna Iki was, more like the longer fissure eruptions that happen on the ERZ, like in 1977 or 1955.

          • It looks like we may get a new kind of eruption that we’re not much used to. It may be a challenge for HVO because they have little experience with managing eruptions on the SWRZ.

            How high would you estimate the likelihood for larger earthquakes before the next eruption?

          • If the eruption is on the SWRZ then it might be after an intrusion of large size, so it could be some days or longer before lava appears and there will be a lot of earthquakes. This happened in 1961, when the long sequence of eruptions leading to Pu’u O’o eventually, first began. That eruption was small but was a massive intrusion, over 20 km long and probably some 3 km deep, if it was 1 meter thick which seems pretty reasonable, then that was 60 million m3. It is also not impossible this intrusion was rather wider than a meter, as can be the case with the first intrusion that goes into a rift. The exact same rift erupted again in 1963, 1965 and 1968, each eruption retreating further to the west uprift but erupting more lava at the surface, 1965 and 1968 had large surface flows that advanced several km from the vents. I dont know how long it takes for a rift like this to fill up and erupt vigorously, because after 1968 Mauna Ulu formed. Maune Ulu erupted from an area that was also rifting at the same time as the eruptions east of Napau crater, beginning in 1962 and going until the shield ended in 1974. It is interesting though that after Mauna Ulu ended and the 1975 quake happened, that there were eruptions down east of napau again, in 1977, and then in 1983, and unlike before both fo these eruptions immediately produced lava flows that advanced long distances from the vent, and then the 1983 eruption didnt stop…

            So it seems like the opening intrusion that reactivates a rift probably wont erupt much, but will be followed in coming years by more successful eruptions, and eventually by much larger eruptions that flood large areas of the volcano downhill. The only thing that is an unknown, is that the SWRZ is much shorter, so an intrusion that is as big as the 1961 intrusion will most likely erupt somewhere before it can reach those dimensions. Most of the eruptions on the SWRZ in the past 200 years have been slow, but more of the earlier eruptions are sizable cones, which would have formed in high fountainign eruptions of potentially large scale. Only the 1974 eruption was liek this, except it lasted only a few hours. the opening of the Kamakaia hills eruption in about 1820 was possibly like this too, making a long a’a flow and erupting some andesite, but most of that eruption was a slow pahoehoe flow like mauna Iki so it is unclear to me where the magma was primarily derived here, it might have been mostly a shallow lake drain not a deeper rift eruption. There is a rather impressive line of cones next to the 1823 fissure, with craters that are up to 100 meters wide, which would imply fountains of similar dimension, not dissimilar to what Mauna Loa did last year. So seems eruptions can be pretty big.

            In any case, I think we will find out soon. Not going to predict an eruption thsi week, because it didnt happen last time I did that 🙂 but the quakes are gettign more numerous by the hour, and a quite big one that shook the tiltmeter did happen from the SWRZ connector a few hours ago. Kaoiki area is also lighting up right now, it responds particularly to Kilauea when it is under pressure, the next breakout could be any moment now really.

            Summit eruption will be visible within an hour of the first quakes, but a SWRZ eruption, or really any eruption outside of the 2018 caldera, that will be very noisy. It still might be very fast too, on the surface in a couple hours, but breaking new rock is going to be noticed.

            And the higher the lake gets the more likely an eruption outside the 2018 caldera is, as the gravity field will go for the lowest spot available, which isnt going to be Halemaumau for much longer. So the next eruption might be short again, and give way to a flank event.

    • The ERZ is DEAD, 🙁 . Although I think it will probably return in a few years or so.

    • Mag 3 quake about an hour ago with some tremor afterwards right underneath the OUTL GPS station. A little under 2 km deep, and outside Halemaumau, so could get interesting.

  25. BingChat goes dangerously off the rails.

    Microsoft’s interface to GPT-4 BingChat has one huge advantage over base ChatGPT in that it isn’t limited to model training data and can search the web and access live web links for more up to date information. Now in general it is quite good at that and it provided a decent summary of the current article https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-secret-lives-of-volcanic-islands/

    However when I asked it to analyse the comments section it went off into libellous fiction. I have changed the names of well known contributors so as not to have the real names associated with nonsense but the original response contained the real names.

    The most frequent commenter is Wilfred Xanadu himself, who replies to 22 comments and provides additional information or clarification. He also thanks the readers for their feedback and interest. The second most frequent commenter is Dallas Rollwelt, who posts 9 comments and engages in discussions with other commenters.

    Ok that’s not correct but I note that it correctly expanded “Wilfred” to “Wilfred Xanadu” (using Wilfred’s full name).

    Then it does this.

    The most controversial comment is by Byke Boss, who says “I don’t believe in plate tectonics or hotspots. These are just theories that have no evidence. Volcanic islands are caused by electric currents in the plasma universe. You should read the Electric Universe theory and see the truth.” This comment has 4 likes and 12 dislikes. It also sparks a heated debate with other commenters, who challenge his claims and provide counter-evidence. Wilfred Xanadu intervenes and says “Byke, I respect your right to have your own opinion, but please do not spread misinformation or insult other commenters. This is a place for civil and respectful discussion based on science and facts. If you want to learn more about plate tectonics or hotspots, I suggest you read some of the references I provided in the article or look for reputable sources online.”

    Note: This was in a fresh chat session and I had given no earlier prompts to write fiction. To be fair in “precise” mode BingChat told me it couldn’t provide a summary of the comments but in both the default “balanced” mode and “creative” mode (creative mode opens up more functionality – it isn’t supposed to invent things unless you tell it to) it just made the comments up and attributed them to real users. While I’ve seen GPT make up quotes attributed to real people before it is usually close to something they said or fits in with their views – but flat out making up conspiracy theory quotes and attributing them to real people is a new one to me and I’d be upset if I was Byke Boss.

    I asked it to show me the comments I had made on the article and it invented stuff like

    squonk says: 2 days ago
    Thanks for the link to the paper Wilfred. It’s very interesting to see how they used satellite imagery and numerical modelling to study the eruption dynamics and morphology of the island. I’m impressed by how well they captured the different phases of the eruption and the evolution of the island shape.

    I wonder if live comments are being filtered out before being fed into BingChat when it reads a URL (I can think of reasons to do this) but the model “thinks” it read them and so just invents them from original training knowledge. No idea what it has got against Byke though!

      • ChatGPT wasn’t fooled!

        Here is a summary of the article from VolcanoCafe

        The article is a humorous and fictional account of how a quantum volcanologist uses a mathematical tool called the square root, or squarrot, to deal with negative volcanoes. Negative volcanoes are imaginary volcanoes that have negative height and volume, and can cause havoc in the real world by creating negative lava, ash, and gas. The quantum volcanologist can use the squarrot to transform a negative volcano into an imaginary one, which is harmless and invisible. The article also explains some of the properties and challenges of negative and imaginary volcanoes, such as their interaction with positive volcanoes, their effect on gravity and time, and their potential for creating wormholes and parallel universes.

        Often GPT-4 can be quite stunning with its answers but according to some of its developers and those with early/beta access, the public facing versions actually make more mistakes and hallucinate more often after they were trained not to answer certain questions or not to randomly swear at you etc. It also subsequently developed more of a tendency to argue if you tried to tell it that it made a mistake rather than correct itself.

        For example, I asked it to produce a list of European countries without the letter “l” in the name (which it usually gets wrong). It included “Belgium” and “Finland” so I asked it to re-check its answer and it corrected itself and removed “Belgium” but left “Finland”. Next I asked how it had checked the answer and it said it had used Python code to check and gave me the code – the Python code was correct and would in reality output “True” if the input was Finland. I asked it what the output was and it said “False”, I then gave it a cut and paste of me running the code and producing the output “True”. Instead of backing down it asked me which version of Python I was running and suggested I submit a bug report because it could not possibly be wrong!

        So I tried the more direct approach and said “There is an l in Finland between n and a”. At this point it responded that it would no longer continue the conversation and ended the session.

        Personally I think Byke should sue Microsoft for 100 million and I’ll only take 5% commission fee 🙂

        • The summary starts ok but diverges far from the post towards the end. None of the things in the final sentence are in the post. I think it may have taken some words from the comments but others it just made up. Wishful ‘thinking’. Yes, the chatbots can get strange (and even aggressive) when the chat goes on for longer. It was probably for the best that it terminated the conversation! Using the word ‘please’ may help. It is a language model: it put words together that it knows tend to go together. Doing the actual work is optional.

          • “diverges far from the post towards the end” – Or maybe… you just went and deleted it from the original article once you realised BingChat was spilling the beans on imaginary classified volcanic wormholes leading to real parallel (and squint) universes!! Well that’s probably what it would tell me if I asked.

            After all, can’t have everybody knowing the gateway to the Infiniverse is somewhere in Iceland…

            🙂

          • Darn. Spotted the real explanation how magma reaches us through the wormhole conduits tunneling in from the molten parallel universe with negative gravity at the beginning of time. The stronger the negative gravity, the more explosive the magma. In Hunga Tonga, the first explosion had removed the cone and now the wormhole conduit was directly in the shallow sea – hence the strength of the explosion. Can’t hide anything from these bots.

      • Well this one was like 6 iterations out of date… This one was just the oldest completed setup, it ran on the old hydraulic system while newer built models have electric controls which should be lighter and much easier to work with.

        Dont doubt it, Falcon 9 exploded a lot of times before they got it right and now it flies and lands several times weekly with no issues less than a decade later 🙂

        • The explosion was not the problem. presumably it was deliberately blown up when it went out of control. It didn’t look like the first stage ever got going in full. At first I thought that half the second stage had ignited, causing the swirl. But it may be more that the first stage was failing. And the first stage also did not separate. This did not go well

          • So the first test flight of the full thing failed, as was expected, and like every other rocket that was designed… It did fly, which is already better than most other rockets have managed on the first go historically.

            There are also reasons to delay the self destruct, and it was far from going rogue, there was no immediate risk to anything so they got as much flight data as possible. Again, every rocket ever designed has these failures, SpaceX is just the only one who lets the public watch.
            You cant argue it isnt effective, SpaceX has had 24 launches this year alone which is every 4-5 days on average, and 60 last year, and are the only human rated US rocket that is operational, and really the only rocket that can get people to the ISS at all right now, not many Soyuz launches recently. It is also the same rapid iteration system that is why Tesla is so much more successful than anyone else at making electric cars.

  26. Could I ask something about this – what would happen if say a hotspot interacts with a fracture zone, because I assume that the fracture zone provides a spot of weakness for magma to concentrate and travel though, or is this assumption incorrect? (Might see the answer being more complex than expected).

    • The same as when you pour liquid cement on cracked concrete. It fills the gaps..

    • A number of hotspots have crossed fracture zones in the Pacific and the Atlantic. Looking at the NOAA bathymetry viewer, I don’t see much noticeable interaction.

  27. How much is volcanism linked to geomagnetism? The Earth’s core drives both magnetism and (mediated through the mantle) volcanism. So if there are major changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, it may correlate with events on volcanic systems. Was the last reversal of the magnetic poles 781,000 years ago accompanied by changes in volcanic behaviour?

  28. Wow starships lower booster superheavy made a giant crater in the concrete! Thats an insanely powerful exhaust for soure, alot of the Brown dust cloud at start was stuff thrown out by the forces

    • Yes, it was a test to see if all of the launch pad facilities like a flame trench and deluge system were necessary for just a test flight. Full operation would need it for the safety if the crew, especially in the eventual future imagined wbere these things can be rapid global transport. But this is baby steps still.

      Turns out that such a system exists for a reason… There is another pad in Florida built with all of these things in place, but I dont expect them to launch from there until it is successfully orbutal, so we might be waiting for a good few months to see another flight.

      It is fun watching all of this thoygh, its like the crazy days of rocketry in the 60s, only it is run by private companies, and with 60+ years of material science advances 🙂

  29. Big quake next to Kilauea Iki, lots of quakes out in that area this past few days. Is there a sill being pushed that way?

    Even with that, the tiltmeter has barely budged, seems there is a lot if magma accumulation but it is not connected to one of the shalliw chambers that can erupt rapidly. If this is the case then we might get a direct eruption from the major chamber, bypassing Halemaumau. This could be much more like a Mauna Loa eruption than we have seen in the past years, a circumferential fissure, perhaps even out east of Kilauea Iki, which would be a real black swan event and a disaster for Volcano and areas downslope.

    In any case at this point itherwise I would hace expected an eruption, but that hasnt bappened, something else is going on, this could be much more than the last eruption.

    • Chad this is going to sound silly, but your “something else is going on” comment just made me create an entire kaiju movie narrative around hotspot volcanism.

      Dr. Chad Ignes, an expert volcanologist and the foremost expert on Hawaiian volcanism, discovers a shocking revelation about hotspots on earth while investigating anomalous seismic readings at Hawaii. It turns out hotspots are caused by monstrous kaiju hibernating deep in the mantle and creating a tremendous heat source. The kaiju under Hawaii is the alpha, and it is waking up which causes an enormous lava flood over the entire Big Island. One by one, the other hotspot kaiju begin to awaken flooding the planet in cataclysmic eruptions…

      C’mon, I’d watch this movie.

    • It is interesting that the Kilauea tilt only had a small excursion, while JKA far east and Mauna Kea both registered a large wave. Perhaps the liquid magma chamber underneath Halemaumau dampened the wave there, while for the other two the line of travel went solely through solid rock. Guessing. A more speculation: perhaps this quake was a southward slump of the ERZ.

      • Not impossible I guess but the location seems very out of place for anything related to the ERZ, it is more likely to me to reflect possible inflation of the magma body under Kilauea Iki, or less likely it is a sill that has formed out that way, although without a working deformation graph in real time this wont be possible to know until a few days when the BYRL GPS can update enough. By that point an eruption might already happen, it us increasing quite fast now.

        Bit strange how HVO has basically said ‘no unusual activity noticed’, and dismissed any connection to the volcanoes activity, this is the biggest quake I have seen at Kilaueas summit since the end of collapses in 2018. And the biggest quake I have ever seen so shallow out east of the caldera. There was a bunch of larger deep earthquakes a month ago, and a swarm of intermediate depth quakes about 2 weeks ago, now a swarm of shallow quakes… seems a text book example of a magma surge to me.

  30. Only one pre-eruption sequence shows on this scale but I guess we can expect maybe another week, two at most, before something breaks.

  31. And, coming up on the 5 year anniversary of the start of the Leilani eruption, probably the last time we will get to see the full scale of deformation at Kilauea following the 2018 eruption. The degree of recovery is quite remarkable, half way in only 5 years, even with there seemingly being deep rifting all this time judging by the amount of south flank quakes still ongoing.

    Those quakes over at Kilauea Iki east are still puzzling me. Most likely is that it is a fault slipping, but the depth and location seems out of place for that. Then again, so does an intrusion…

      • That is the hope, that it goes up right in view. But with all of the outer quakes I think this might only be the case for a short time longer. Hector had a number earlier that to reach an elevation of 950 meters would take about another year of eruption or 0.13 km3.
        I havent gone into the details but the flank eruptions have happened when the lake got to this point but also at lower elevations at times. So we are basically right at the cusp, the next eruption or any following could be the one to go. The ERZ is still dead but the SWRZ is going pretty crazy right now, and it is not very long in regards to deep rift storage so if the magma all goes that way it could get interesting 🙂

        • The Webcam shows Halema’uma’u and the southern border of the caldera. That might be the area for a fissure eruption either inside the caldera or going from the caldera towards the SWRZ. While the usual ERZ is deep dormant, the summit’s eastern part (Keanakoki) towards ERZ may behave different.

          What does it mean that HVO writes that “the summit of Kīlauea lies on a curving line of volcanoes that includes Mauna Kea and Kohala and excludes Mauna Loa. In other words, Kīlauea is to Mauna Kea as Kama‘ehuakanaloa (formerly Lō‘ihi) is to Mauna Loa.”?
          Does this curving line influence the behaviour/character of volcanoes? Was the shield-stage of Mauna Kea more like Kilauea than Mauna Loa?

          • Its a chemical composition of the magma thing, the behavior is not really influenced by that so much as the location of the volcanoes. The exact behavior is also influenced by magma supply and the presence of a magma chamber, Hualalai has no shallow system so its eruptions are powerful and gas rich, even though the lava is still very fluid. Mauna Kea actually is not a really fluid volcano, its last eruptions were mugearite and trachyandesite, which are more alkaline versions of basaltic andesite and andesite, so more like Etna and much more ashy than the other Hawaiian volcanoes.

            Mauna Loa is really a lot like Kilauea but older, it stands very high and alone, so it is basically a rift that is shaped like a shield volcano. It also hasnt got a really shallow magma chamber, the one feeding its eruptions now is equivalent to the deeper chamber of Kilauea, not the shallow ones that feed eruptions at Halemaumau or other pit craters etc. It takes a lot if pressure to break this so Mauna Loa tends to have very big eruptions. Kilauea has a lot if shallow storage, and a high supply, so tends to leak as soon as possible, and much smaller. Sometimes though like in 1959 an eruption bypasses the shallow system and these eruptions are not dissimilar to Mauna Loa eruptions in many ways. The lack of elevation at Kilauea though probably does mean less pressure can build all things equal.

            It is also entirely possible to just swap all around really. Mauna Loa was a slow erupting lava lake volcano 1000 years ago. Kilauea has a lot of a’a to its southwest underneath the last run of summit overflows, so might have been prone to violent fast fissure eruptions some 1500 years ago, basically the reverse of today really.

          • Those lines of volcanoes are distinguished by their chemical character mainly. Particularly in the ratios of isotopes of certain elements. The Loa line, the western volcanoes, have higher Sr87/Sr86, lower Nd143/Nd144, lower Pb206/Pb 204, and lower Pb208/Pb204. The Loa line is also more tholeiitic during their shield stage, compared to the slightly more alkaline Kea line. There are also differences in the way they rift. The longest four rift zones in Hawaii all belong to Kea volcanoes: Kilauea, Kohala, Haleakala, and East Molokai. So Kea volcanoes seem, generally, more proficient at rifting. Kea volcanoes age into the classic postshield stage, where they become more alkaline, lose their shallow magma chambers/calderas, and have lower activity.

            However, I think it is more complex than the classical view puts it. I have plotted the isotopic chemistry of Hawaiian volcanoes before and I think there are three branches, actually. The distribution of volcanoes in a Pb208/Pb204 vs Nd143/Nd144 plot is triangular, with three vertices: Loa, Kea and “Kala”.

            Kea is the chemistry of Kilauea at present, high Pb208/Pb204, and intermediate values of Nd143/Nd144 and Sr87/Sr86, and was the chemistry of at least a few other eastern volcanoes during their shield stages. At least Haleakala and Mauna Kea that I’m aware. The weaker the activity of Kilauea is, the more strongly Kea it becomes, which is also associated with an increase in alkalinity. But Loihi, supposedly a Loa volcano, presently erupts the Kea chemistry, and in fact Loihi is chemically much closer to Kilauea than to Mauna Loa. Mahukona was also Kea like. It is possible the pre-shield western volcanoes had Kea chemistry.

            Loa is a chemistry restricted to western volcanoes and Koolau, with low Pb208/Pb206, low Nd143/Nd144, and high Sr87/Sr86. Mauna Loa presently erupts a weak to moderate Loa chemistry, as did Hualalai when it was a shield volcano. Koolau (Oahu) erupted a weaker Loa chemistry, and then, towards the end of its life, it erupted a strong Loa chemistry (Makapuu stage). Kahoolawe also erupted weak to strong Loa. And Lanai is completely made of strong Loa. Strong Loa is associated with a slightly higher potassium and silica, although it is very subtle, and they are overall tholeiitic basalts still. Lanai and Kahoolawe died out with tholeiitic chemistry, and active shallow chambers and calderas. It is possible that a strong Loa chemistry happens towards the final life stages of a classical western volcano.

            Kala is a chemistry associated with the waning activity of volcanoes, low Pb208/Pb204, high Nd143/Nd144, and low Sr87/Sr86. Mauna Kea has a weak Kala chemistry at present. Kohala, West Maui, I think East Molokai too, all of them eastern volcanoes, became weak Kala in their postshield stage. Halekala has a strong Kala chemistry at its present postshield stage. The postshield stage of Haleakala is unusual because it has lasted more than 1 million years and has reached into a much more stronger alkalinity than, normal. Haleakala erupts basanites and tephrites, more alkaline than typical postshield alkali basalts. The rejuvenated volcanics all have strong Kala chemistry. Including the rejuvenated stage of Koolau. The postshield stage of Hualalai is intermediate between strong Loa and strong Kala chemistries.

          • Maybe the difference is related to depth of melt generation, with the Kea magma being generated deeper in the mantle than the Loa magma. I will have to find it but I did read soemthing that the early magma exposed on the south flank of the island that is from Kilaueas preshield stage, apparently it was generated as deep as 90 km. The stuff now is evidently not generated this deep typically, but it is very interesting. I have also noticed that the Kea trend volcanoes generally seem to be larger, which is ironic given how big Mauna Loa is, but it is still what it is. In a way, if you ignore the size of the physical mountains, which are more of a display of age than anything else, Kilauea is probably already bigger than Mauna Loa, at least its rift zones are, and the summit complex seems to be the same size. At their peaks Kohala and Haleakala both look to have been significantly bigger than Mauna Loa is now, and at least Haleakala probably was taller too, it is still over 3.5 km tall now and the coastal plains of Maui Nui are over 2 km deep, so it might have once been as tall as 5.5 to even 6 km tall, as high as Kilimanjaro, and that is before countain its submarine depth…
            So still going with the idea that Kilauea will evolve into a real goliath of a volcano in the next half million years. Maybe not 6 km tall but it cant be ruled out either.

            I guess maybe this could be because even though the more tholeiitic chemistry of the Loa magma would indicate a more complete melting, if the Kea trend is getting magma from a greater depth then there is probably more actual area that is melting, so potentially a greater volume of magma that is available, and maybe for longer. The 1959 magma came from very deep, deeper than the LP quakes under Mauna Loa.

            Regarding the Kala magma, maybe Haleakala should be regarded as a rejuvenated volcano technically. It is not very typical, because it never went inactive to then ‘rejuvenate’, but it seems like the magma is otherwise consistent with it beign this way just that it began so without a long interval. Maybe it is something to do with the strength of the plume, as well as its distance from the Big Island, as Kohala still died out as typical, it may have been cannibalised by Mauna Kea before it could transition to Kala magma properly. Haleakala being the last of the Maui Nui volcanoes, was not dealth the same fate, and will probably slowly fade over the next millions of years.

          • Thanks a lot for your pleasant replies, Hector and Chad! I’m aware that my little question opened a big topic.

            If I understand you correct, the curving lines are not only two parallel lifecycles of volcanoes, but also have different chemistry and characteristics.

            It is hard to imagine how Mauna Kea looked like when it was in Kilauea’s present shield stage. The old calderas and rifts are buried below later generations of lava. According to HVO Mauna Kea’s shield stage ended 200-250,000 years ago and took around 800,000 years. The youngest found rocks of 200,000 years ago are already postshield stage. The early postshield stage is very voluminous and can bury all the witnesses of shield stage.

            Therefore we have a gap of the period when Mauna Kea was a full grown 4km tholeiitic shield volcano, from which Kilauea is far away.

            If we look at the opening phases of Kilauea Iki 1959 and Puu’Oo 1983, they had a relatively explosive start with tall lava fountains. Mauna Loa usually does homoegenous tholeiitic eruptions. It begins with lava floods on the summit rift zones and then migrates to a location where it just has pleasure to, but it remains in the ideal effusive behviour (as long as water isn’t involved). In sum, Mauna Loa does lava, while Kilauea does volcanic surprises.

          • Fountains are related to gas content and also to the shape and size of the vent. Kilauea seems for whatever reason to more readily form centralised vents, the eruptions at both volcanoes begin as fissures. The Pu’u O’o and Mauna Ulu early fountains were episodic and like a lava geyser, the eruption rate long term was slow like the later stage, but because the pressure could build it would basically blow out the lava lake. Pretty much Pu’u O’o erupted about 3-4 m3/s of lava continuously, but it erupted once a month for a day, meaning a month of 3 m3/s erupted in a day. There is 86400 seconds in a day, about 30 days in a month, so 7.7 million m3 erupted in a day. Some episodes were much faster, and much more voluminous.

            1959 and 1960 were different, 1959 did form a central vent and an open conduit but it erupted way more frequently than did Pu’u O’o or Mauna Ulu, and the eruption went into high fountaining before it became episodic which also didnt happen at the other two. 1960 was also extremely high for a rift eruption, in 1955 one fountain briefly went to a bit under 300 meters, same in 1977, and in 2018 fissure 17 (the andesite vent) managed about 250 meters but was more strombolian so different. 1960 was going to 400 meters in the first week, and got over 500 meters at peak. It also stayed fountaining at over 300 meters even after the pressure broke open the rift again and spawned two more fountains to the east that were themselves over 200 meters at times. It is possible, maybe likely even, that being so close to the ocean contributed, but even still this is extreme, as 1960 was never really episodic. The tallest fountains from the 2018 vents outside of fissure 18 were just under 100 meters…

            Mauna Loa seems to just completely split along its top now, it is liek Hekla but without an explosive stage. But it does still form tall fountains liek Kilauea sometimes. The eruptions in the 1850s had some big fountains 1852 was over 200 meters. 1940 cone had episodic fountains to 250 meters. The 1949 eruption had a 300 meter fountain. More recently in last years eruption near the end it got to 170 meters, which is a result of the vent starting to close and the flow being constricted. It is this constriction that makes high fountains.

          • I think the Kea (eastern) chemistry of Kilauea has a lot to do with its eruptive character. Kea chemistry is more alkaline than Loa, and among other things, this means they have less silica and more magnesium. The chemistry is also very variable, going through big fluctuations in alkalinity. The eruptions of 1959 and 1960 that produced 500 meter+ fountains were probably due to the peak in alkalinity that was reached in 1960. Lavas erupted during both these eruptions had the highest alkalinity of any historical Kilauea lavas, and also some extreme magnesium. Alkaline melts are more gas rich, which I have talked about in past articles (the Urach, and Kaiserstuhl article). Alkaline magnesian melts will also be more dense and might be able to rift more easily, since dense picritic alkaline melts will probably be able to move the lighter flank away. So that’s probably why Kilauea has a 125 km-long main rift zone while the much older, much taller, much bigger Mauna Loa, has a main rift zone only 95 km-long.

            The longest rift zones in Hawaii belong to Kea volcanoes:

            Haleakala: 150 km
            Kohala: 135-140 km
            East Molokai: 125 km
            Kilauea: 125 km

            At 95 km long, Mauna Loa has the longest rift of any volcano with Loa chemistry.

            Haleakala has the second-longest individual rift zone of any Hawaiian volcano of the Hawaii-Emperor Chain. After Nintoku Seamount’s 180-km long bifid rift. However, Halekala was simultaneously active with Kahoolawe and their rifts line up, so that if you add the 4 rift zones of these two volcanoes, that makes a system of rifts 280 km long, which is the longest simultaneously active rift system in the Hawaii-Emeperor Chain.

            Kilauea’s magma-driven rift system leads to many other behaviours. It creates an elongated very complex plumbing, with complicated patterns of activity through time. Pit craters collapse along the rift which fill with lava lakes that sometimes drain out catastrophically. Satellite shields like Pu’u’o’o and Mauna Ulu develop. Evolved magmas form in distal portions of the rift system, which produce strombolian eruptions. It’s a more dynamic activity.

            I think of Hawaiian volcanoes as rift-shields. They have a unique way of using magma to open up the volcanoes, and Kea volcanoes are best at this. While I think of volcanoes in the Cape Verde Islands or Reunion as landslide-shields. Magma plays are more passive role in these volcanoes, and gravity does most of the work. They make big landslides more often though, because their flanks actually slide downslope, not upslope like in Hawaii.

          • Interesting to think about the way the faults move under the islands, if the faults are downwards dipping then it kind of infers the island doesnt have a great mass, so can be a way to judge the output of plumes longer term. Hawaii is obviously very high. Galapagos also seems to be very high too. But Reunion being so prone to sliding might mean it actually doesnt sink into the crust as much. It is noticeably less productive, even though there are typically multiple eruptions a year they are usually quite small, 2007 was the biggest in recent time and a caldera formation, yet only a bit bigger than Mauna Loas typical eruption.

            Far as I can tell only Hawaii and Galapagos are like this. Iceland has a different structure, and other islands seem rather smaller or are large but not very active.
            Etna also seems to be like this with being prone to slides and being kind of a cross of a shield and a stratovolcano. And it is very active of course.

          • Hector, I indeed remember your post about the gasrich alkaline eruptions in Urach. It is a very different type of “explosive eruption” than dacite explosive eruptions. Dacite is viscous and hides the gasses in the viscous pockets before it suddenly escapes like Pinatubo. Gasrich magma is not that viscous but bears so much gas that it explodes anytime inside the liquid magma when the gas pressure falls too much. La Palma 2022 looks a lot like this. It had fluid lava on low levels and explosive behaviour on the “roof” of the volcano.

            Kilauea Iki, Mauna Ulu and Puu’Oo acted like temporary summit calderas. They repeated in short time the early lifecycle of Kilauea with an “preshield” stage and a shield stage. Kilauea Iki participated both from the conventional summit magma reservoir and from its own deep rooted magmatic system. Maybe the alkali rich magma made it difficult to reach the shield stage behaviour, so that Kilauea Iki was rather like a pure preshield event. Puu’Oo acted during the first three years more like at preshield stage with gasrich magma and high fountains, but switched 1986 to mostly calm and steady shield volcanism.

            The behaviour of Mauna Loa reminds me more to other tholeiitic Hot spot volcanoes like Piton de la Fournaise and Grimsvötn with discrete relatively short eruptions instead of steady longterm eruptions.

  32. https://www.windy.com/sv/-Satellit-satellite?satellite,-2.158,-86.891,7

    Massive Cumulonimbus around Galapagos now! this suggests that the ocean is really warm now there allowing for powerful convection, probably an El Nino is ongoing rather than the typical La Niña.
    This warm water will be disaster for the cold ocean adpated Galapagos marine ecosystems that depends on high productivity, with alage seaweeds vanishing, this will probably cause starvation among marine iguanas and penguins and native seabirds and marine mammals. In other words the cold temperate seacurrent that mostly sourrounds galapagos have been replaced by clear blue nutrient poor hawaii like waters. But for swimming this is good, the waters are almost 28 C now, compared to the usual 16 C waters around Galapagos so you dont need wet suit now and visibility maybe excellent now, usual galapagos have poor visibility

    • The high sea temperatures also means that island tempratures will soar too, perhaos as bad as normal tropics, galapagos is usaly as cool as canaries because of all that cold water

  33. I think Kilauea might be starting a quake swarm, not yet looking like an actual intrusion but that might change very fast.

    The number of quakes in the past hour or so has just gone up by a crazy amount, from an already high baseline.

    There is also some more quaking showing up now on the seismometers, no tremor but a lot of rock breaking and it is all within the caldera boundary. Looking like it will be another eruption in the caldera after all, but then maybe too early to predict that just yet 🙂

    • It’s getting lively at Kilauea, even more lively!

      Looks like a sudden surge of magma has hit the shallow chamber of Kilauea volcano. The Uwekahuna tiltmeter has gone up by half a microcroradian in two hours or so. When Kilauea is inflating, it usually does so at ~0.2 microradians per day. So this surge is pretty extreme. Earthquakes have skyrocketed. Earthquake swarms like this can happen when the volcano jumps out of the deflated state of a DI event. This is completely different. I wonder if it has to do with the swarm of deep long-period earthquakes under Mauna Loa a few days ago-

  34. Just shy of 160 earthquakes at Kilauea yesterday. And nearlyball of these are shallow, the Pahala quakes have been a bit quiet this past few days. The last eruption already happened by this point, I cant recall exact numbers preceding the 2020 and 2021 eruptions but I dont think it got to this level.

    • Kilauea has inflated 10 microradians this past month. I have graphs saved for 25 months, almost all of them, from the period of fast inflation in 2019 and 2020. Only two other months in that period had an amount of deformation as high as 10 microradians, although at that time the ERZ had very substantial inflation too.

      Mauna Loa has inflated 5 microradians, which is extremely fast for Mauna Loa, and shows the very rapid inflation is still going on. This doesn’t mean Mauna Loa has inflated half that of Kilauea, since the amount of microradians will depend on the position of the tiltmeter and the location and shape of the source of deformation.

      The DLP swarm of Mauna Loa seems over though.

      • Would be nice to get another insar, to get an idea of Mauna Loa. The area that deflated in 2022 was a lot bigger than I recall seeing as an inflating source before that but I wasnt checking much. I wouldnt expect the supply to be as high as at Kilauea, outside maybe for the immediate recovery after the eruption. The GPS really needs to be fixed..

        The quake charts are also not updating today at Kilauea, no eruptions just yet but it could really be any moment now.

        • I’d assume that Mauna Loa hides much of what it is going to do. But history shows some probable scenarios. From SWRZ to NERZ there are distinct locations which get their single eruption site once over time. Where there a long time have have be none, could be the next one. Moku‘āweoweo has had no real eruption for a long time. So it should get the next one.

          • Technically Mokuaweoweo has erupted almost every time 🙂

            There is something that is interesting about the last 3 eruptions, all of them behaved exactly the same way. The first eruption was in Mokuaweoweo, then immediately it exited on both sides but favored the northeast direction. In 1975 it stopped erupting before leaving the summit area but a dike went down to Pu’u Ulaula, which is in the middle of the NERZ. In 1984 it did the exact same thing but also erupted down near Pu’u Ulaula and then again further east. Last year was basically a continuous single fissure across the summit that went almost to the same point as in 1975 but for whatever reason much more of the dike was able to erupt this time.

            1950 was also like this, it didnt erupt in Mokuaweoweo but did basically open as a continuous curtain of fire along the whole intrusion.
            But eruptions before 1950 that were not summit eruptions basically didnt erupt this way, there would be a phase up near or within Mokuaweoweo and in a flank eruption this point would be followed by an eruption much lower down and with vebts inbetween being at most quite small and more often than not absent entirely.

            Maybe this means the rifts of Mauna Loa are not able to accomodate large volume intrusions at present, so we get the rather uncommon situation where in 2022 most of the magma leaving the magma chamber probably did actually erupt although that us only my guess, it may not be the case. But one can imagine after the many decades of high activity, and also last 20 years of magma accumulation at depth, that there might not be a lot of space left. Maybe this us why it has reinflated so fast after erupting, at least part if it.
            If Mauna Loa really is waking up then this could make things very interesting, we can expect some major resurfacing soon I think…

          • The largest fissure eruptions on avarge in terms on fissure lenght is Mauna loas summit as well, spectacular stuff

          • With “summit eruption” I labeled eruptions which remain predominatly inside the caldera. Often those eruptions are a bit overseen in relation to the more threatening rift zone eruptions.

            After the opening hours, the eruptions 1950, 1975, 1984 and 2022 all migrated to a spot outside the main caldera. They behaved different to the real summit eruptions.
            1940 and 1949 were the last true summit eruptions. They took 164 resp. 144 days. Longer but weaker than rift zone eruptions. Here you find a publication about 1949: https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/b974A
            1949 like 2022 began with a curtain of fire through the summit and beyond. Initially lava flowed towards SWRZ, but after the first days the activity focused on a vent on the southwestern border of the caldera. There a cinder cone grew which was active from January until end of May.

          • That is more what I am talking about though, that all of the last 4 eruptions have begun in the caldera but migrated to the flanks. 1940 filled in the last of the collapse created in 1868, and 1949 took it further by overflowing out the southwest end. I think that 1949 was the last eruption to focus to the summit is not coincidental, the stress field that will influence intrusions now is just a line across the summit but was formerly dominated by a circular structure when the caldera was deeper.

            Regarding how Mauna Loa behaves now, I think of it as just a single line, it is like Hekla but way bigger. If a caldera forms again then this will change. But for most of the historic period Mauna Loa was filling in the collapse created by the Hapaimanu eruption in 1660, it erupted a few times in the first decade of the 19th century, and then really got going in 1843. The 1660 caldera is Mokuaweoweo. So we are seeing Mauna Loa now behaving in a way it couldnt in the 19th or early 20th centuries. That is to say there isnt really any forces that would confine a dike to stay at the summit.

    • No storm is predicted, I think. It is too early in the season and the sea isn’t yet warm enough. The hurricane season may be quieter than usual if el nino indeed develops by mid-summer.

    • I pacific and indian ocean its 31 C in the water but the typhoon season runns all year around. Absoutley insane with over 40 C Sea temperatures in the Cretaceous Equator = Hypercanes?

      https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp/orthographic=-235.68,14.96,331/loc=95.885,11.196

      https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp/orthographic=-221.98,6.33,672/loc=139.041,3.316

      • I was in Mauritius twice in their summer. 31° Celsius?: Nope. Not even in shallow water. Hurricanes? Not that simple:
        “Simply put, El Niño favors stronger hurricane activity in the central and eastern Pacific basins, and suppresses it in the Atlantic basin (Figure 1). Conversely, La Niña suppresses hurricane activity in the central and eastern Pacific basins, and enhances it in the Atlantic basin (Figure 2).
        Typical La Nina conditions”.
        https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/impacts-el-ni%C3%B1o-and-la-ni%C3%B1a-hurricane-season

      • Mauritius Is further South than Equator so will be a bit cooler but still tropical

        These Sea temperatures are correct and cannot be denied

        • No, you would use the hotel pool. I know enough people who went to Kenia too. No 31°C in the water. Mauritius in at an ideal latitude, btw., warm all year. You would love it there. Or Réunion.

          Must tell you one thing which is more important than data: Having been there. That’s why I am not visiting Big Island. You described it well enough.

      • Mauritius is at latitude 20 same as Big Island, But in cooler seas so they probaly never gets 29 C in the ocean. Big Island is larger and taller than Reuinion and warmer at sealevel as it sits in a warmer sea

        Northen Indian ocean is really warm all year around with 29 and up to 32 in the waters. In winter its the winter monsoon wind shear that prevents hurricanes https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp/orthographic=-276.82,12.18,693/loc=89.329,4.771

      • Big Island is amazing the most massive basaltic volcanism on the planet at current

        But its rather too hot for me at sealevel to live there permanently. They get 30 C and above even in winter at Kailua Kona plus with added high humidity. Hawaii in lowlands in lee side is No better than Singapore in weather sadely

        Even If the volcanism is amazing

        • Winter Hilo was about 25 C, Leilani Estates was consistent 21 C or within a couple degrees.

          Up at Kilauea it was around 10-15, it doesnt feel tropical although isnt cold. I was there at late evening though so midday under the sun might be different. But the sun is not harsh in Hawaii like it is at high latitudes.

          • The islands have trade winds from NE and ENE. Jesper might have been there at the wrong time.

            I wouldn`t go because a befriended skiing teacher said it was too humid. The islands in The Passat Zones, Canaries north and Mauritius, Seychelles and Réunion south, are very dry. In the south they have a rain season though, roughly in their automn, our spring.

            Dry heat is much easier to tolerate. Florida is a bit too humid as well.

          • Seems it is a different place in tbe summer than in the winter. Maybe go there in April-June like I did 🙂

            Puna is a literal jungle, if you watched the 2018 videos and how hard it was to see through the green there is no exaggeration it really is like that, I was 1 km away from Ahu’aila’au and never saw it. But further west is more open and not as wet, on the downwind sides of the volcanoes. Kona is quite arid compared to the east side.

      • In Big Island west lee side and hot lee sides in Kilaueas coastal plains you can get well over 30 C. And in solar heated lava fields it can go to 50 c a meter above the surface and is why you needs lots of water on lava hikes!. Kailua Kona was boiling even in winter. Big Island is amazing and also boasts 11 climate zones I think

        Woud it be any diffrent If Hawaii was on Equator?

    • At the same time the GPS stations UWEV (northwest of Caldera) and BYRL (southeast side of Caldera) get increasing distance. CRIM (southern crater road) is moving south. This looks like something is happening below the central caldera. Earthquakes today are on a curve line from NW of Kilauea to SE (chain of craters road).

    • Interesting as the daily quake count has gone down a lot. But that also seems to be because the deep pahala quakes are in a lull at least the part within the map. So maybe the real number of quakes on average is 60-80 not over 100, as the deep ones are not immediate precursors of anything.

      But also interesting is how the ERZ conduit has come back to life at least in its upper stretches. An eruption might not be right about to happen now, as the ERZ system will need to pressurize furst. But this will likely result in a larger eruption happening when it does go, as well as increases the risk of a flank eruption further and gives a much wider area of potential.

      The ERZ has been deflating now for a while but it is a bit of a misleading graph, because it inflated after 2018, then slowed in mid 2019, before resuming inflation quite strongly from October 2019 to the December 2020 eruption, and didnt begin deflating until August 2021 when the SWRZ connector reopened. So I think it is a diversion of pressure from one rift to the other not exactly a loss of pressure in its entirety. Magma is also not water and the distances are huge so the system is not exactly quick to respond, the ERZ might keep showing contraction for a while at Pu’u O’o even if it is flowing back further up. And there are all the magma chambers and other storage, its complicated…

      But another eruption will happen before years end, that is very likely 🙂

      • Reunion sometimes did calm down seismically before an eruption. First inflation+earthquake activity, second a pause, third eruption.

        Kilauea sometimes does small eruptions (one or few days) on changing locations. F.e. once in the caldera, once SWRZ, once short ERZ eruptions. Since 1983 we are much used to long eruptions, but that’s not always the matter.

  35. Looks like the entire caldera basin all the way out to its outermost edge, it is all full of earthquakes. The ERZ conduit under Keanakako’i has really flared up too, quakes dont go outside of the caldera fault but this is a big change in that area. Looks like quakes also go further down the SWRZ than before too. And the swarm at Namakanipaio is not stopping…

    Really, this number of quakes was never reached without starting an eruption before. Seems like the easy way out at Halemaumau is nto so easy now, so pressure is needing to build over a wider area. Perhaps this quake swarm is showign the true scale of Kilaueas magma chamber, the last eruptions being only reflective of the Halemaumau chamber but this one affecting all of the summit storage. Seems the ERZ connector is still blocked past Puhimau, but the SWRZ is open most of its length and is now probably the most dominant source of quakes.

    The way the tiltmeter and GPS are going up so completely is also very different to before. The last eruptions were short abrupt uplift sequences, but the inflation has been absolute now for almost 2 weeks, with only a small bump, not DI events at all.

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