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. Will NASA make one more attempt to revive STEREO Behind (B) spacecraft?

    https://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/plans/plans.shtml

    Upcoming events: 2023:

    * Jul 2 Behind: Closest approach to Earth

    Back in 2018 NASA ended attempts to recover STEREO-B after concluding that attempts to recover the spacecraft had likely induced a tumble due to a frozen fuel line causing some thrusters not to fire during during an attempt to leave safe mode to enter “engineering standby” and bring up the High Gain Antenna. Subsequent very weak, brief signal locks were detected by the DSN during later efforts but these were either spurious or confirmation the spacecraft was tumbling at a rate where it was impossible to get a complete command through.

    However the possibility was left open of trying again when STEREO-B was back close to Earth – I haven’t seen any attempts so far but perhaps interesting that Behind closest approach to earth is in “Upcoming events”

    The Final Status report in October 2018 ended

    GOING FORWARD: As STEREO-B’s orbit brings it closer to Earth, the spacecraft’s antenna orientation and closing communications gap may improve the chances of further communication.

  2. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGa_n21UUAE_PbH?format=jpg&name=small

    Intense eyewall convection around Typhoon Hagibis, taken a while ago If this Photo pops up. When they are as intense as that, its almost as strong as an F4 Tornado as Hurricane Patricia was and Hurricane Dorian was as strong as a strong F3 ( Patricia was over 300 km an hour )

    Completely Dwarfs any Icelandic storm

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar8Usv-Kwvs&pp=ygUOZG9yaWFuIGV5ZXdhbGw%3D

  3. Which volcano would make an awesome but scientifically accurate summer blockbuster? For me it’s gotta be Tatun, if the volcano just erupts 2% of it’s 3,000+km3 it could immediately kill 10 million people and cause to nuclear meltdowns worse than Chernobyl. The most dangerous and underrated volcano in the world

    • Climate/weather disasters are more likely to cause disruptions this summer. Droughts, hurricanes, floods, …
      Added to this the continuing “war games” can lead to unpredictable consequences.

      I hope that we get some volcano-esthetical happenings with good videos/photos.

  4. Not a volcano topic but this is something that really could be a big turning point in our understanding of evolution.

    https://www.sciencealert.com/oldest-ichthyosaur-known-to-science-discovered-on-remote-arctic-island?fbclid=IwAR2i2NZmQlymH8EbG9QCHa-qKuTq5tRQQMz9qEIlh7LDu3ht3_QzefTtAhY

    So apparently Ichthyosaurs probably survived the Great Dying, and not on land but already as aquatic and derived animals… This is basically the equivalent of finding a fossil of a fully aquatic whale right under the K/Pg boundary, it is a massive shake up of the evolution of life and true affects of mass extinction. Hopefully there is more to come from this.

    • Very interesting. But 1 My is not a lot. I wonder whether there could be an error. If not:
      All interesting things come from Scandinavia. This includes Iceland.

      • Yes I think in this situation there is a reasonable chance of error. But at the same time the oldest undeniable ichthyosaurs are still only a couple million years younger and represented by a substantial fossil record, including one which was some 20 meters long. So if something can get that big only a couple million years after the Great Dying, it either implies a small lizard-like thing survived, took to the oceans and became gigantic in 2 million years, or it took rather longer but that process happened in the Permian, and both options are fascinating and have big implications because there isnt a similar case among other animals.
        There isnt really a comparison, whales didnt appear until about 10 million years after the K/Pg and didnt become properly aquatic and really big for about another 10 million years after that, plesiosaurs did survive the T/J extinction but that one seemed to not be as bad in the ocean as it was on land for whatever reason. Mosasaurs evolved into large animals quite fast but that was not in the wake of a real mass extinction, just a power vacuum after pliosaurs disappeared, and they didnt make it to the Cenozoic obviously. Although there are aquatic varanids that sometimes swim out to sea maybe in the future we get Mosasaurs #2.0 🙂

        The Triassic is probably my favorite and the least represented time of earths history. Only the Walking With trilogy tried to do anything with it but that was over 20 years ago and it is looking pretty dated now. Such a fascinatic time, with very little representation unfortunately. But there is this thing, and in my local part of the world 🙂
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmaniosaurus

        I guess the world at this time was just things like this, and lots and lots of Lystrosaurus…

  5. Also for Hector

    Inflation is originating from the SWRZ connector, and there is tilting in both axis recorded and to the same magnitude as is happening at U’ekahuna. There isnt a working tiltmeter at the summit otherwise but it is clear that some major ground movement is going on, at least in a relative sense. CRIM station is also moving south faster than any other time in the past 10 years, so is OUTL, and all other stations near to and roughly south of the caldera at least have accelerated southward movement. BYRL has got a strong NE movement instead, and UWEV a strong NW movement. And every single one of the stations anywhere near the summit is going up, CRIM by 8 cm in the past 2 months following the last eruption.

    An eruption would have started by now following the other post-2018 examples, something is different now, something changed…

    • 4 months of quakes preceeding the most recent eruptions. it is pretty obvious how the ERZ has completely died following the SWRZ connector beign reactivated in August 2021. 2020 and 21 eruptions also had actual intrusions in their runups, not so with the 2023 eruption in January and so far now, so gives a high quake count.

      2018

      2020

      2021

      2023

      Now

      Seems it also doesnt make as many total quakes as before, maybe all of the pressurization that can be done with plastic deformation has been done. 2018 collapse was big but most of it was the actual collapse, not much left over to fill up underground I expect.

  6. I sent my article to VC and Albert

    Its not competely finished yet, as my computer broke down, But whats been sent is a good draft .. woud be good to have it shared in a Google Document so I can still write on it

  7. Earthquakes starting to advance down the SWRZ connector now, not an intrusion but it might turn into one if this keeps going.

    • And coinciding with this the tilt has stopped going up, although there isnt any deflation

      Seems magma really is flowing into the SWRZ now. The southernmost earthquakes on the map are under the Kulanaokaoiki fault, the southernmost of the Koae faults, and about 910 meters above sea level at that location. So it is looking quite possible that an eruption might happen on the SWRZ next and probably pretty soon at this rate, in the next month possibly.

      • It would be the first SWRZ eruption since digital volcano observation expanded to the current quality. Due to the low frequency of eruptions on the SWRZ, HVO has supposedly little experience in predicting and working with possible eruptions there.

        • Low frequency I think is a historical artefact, it is probably lower than the ERZ but only in cumulative volume, and that might be because it doesnt form Pu’u O’o-type shields or do caldera formation eruptions. But in terms of eruptive frequency it is probably more active than we think.

          Problem with the Hawaiian volcanoes is how cyclical they appear to be, and how short the observation window is. If permanent record of Kilauea was taken since Cook’s visit, or at least since the 1790s, then the SWRZ would have been much more active historically. I also think it was probably priming to go into an active episode in 1975, but the earthquake shoved the south flank out of the way and opened the ERZ too far. Pu’u O’o was the result, but the majority of the active intrusions between 1875 and 1982 were on the SWRZ. If those were given the full supply instead of most of it going into the deep ERZ then probably many eruptions would have resulted.

          There are some pretty big eruptions on the SWRZ. Most obvious is 1823, which was probably over 0.1 km3 and a Nyiragongo-type lava flood. But in the 30 years before were the Kealaalea flows and the Kamakaia eruption, which were both probably of similar scale, and Kamakaia at least began fairly fast and with some high fountaining probably going a couple hundred meters given its evolved composition, it was a lot like fissure 17 in 2018.
          Going back a couple centuries are Cone Crater and Pu’u Koa’e, which at least the second had a high fountain stage and made a quite long flow with preserved narrow braided channels.

          Also way down the rift, near the 1823 fissure, are some half buried cones flooded by 1823 lava. But one of these cones is over 100 meters wide, as big as the crater of Ahu’aila’au, so probably this eruption was quite a major event when it happened some 1500-2000 years ago. There are also come extensive exposures of a’a without an existing vent that are exposed all over the rift underneath the Observatory flows from the summit.

          I think a SWRZ episode is going to happen, something like the last 60 years on the ERZ, or the early 19th century. If the 1974 eruption is anything typical then this flank of the volcano might be unrecognisable in a couple decades… good thing no-one lives in this area.

          • Indeed on a geological timescale SWRZ is very active. Since 1912 when HVO was founded by Thomas Jaggar the SWRZ had much fewer eruptions than ERZ. In this part HVO and emergencies have fewer “live experience” with volcanism. They need this to get practice. So the next eruption on Kilauea’s SWRZ can imply some surprises for HVO.

            Eruptions there can be short, but can also develop very quickly.

          • Funny that up to 1955 there had only been 3 observed eruptions on the ERZ on land, one major one in 1840 and two tiny ones in the 1920s. Probably also some submarine eruptions, and a tiny eruption in 1868, but none of those are confirmed for certain.

            Compared this to 1823, 1868 and Mauna Iki,, two being father large eruptions, as well as all the then unknown but clearly young flows now known to be early 19th century, it was actually thought the SWRZ was more active when HVO was founded 🙂

            It was also thought the surface of Kilauea was over 10,000 years old and that Mauna Loa was younger too… shows how much we have learned in a century.

          • Inflation and earthquakes have decreased now a bit. It looks like an intrusion has been completed or the inflow of magma into the shallow chambers has decreased.

          • Calm before the storm… 🙂

            I think it is possible though that some magma has flowed down the SWRZ connector, maybe not much but enough to induce earthquakes, and the signal on the tilt. But it isnt a deflation just a stop in the inflation, presumably temporarily.

            So now I think we need to add all of the upper SWRZ as a potential location for the next eruption. Still more likely that it will be in the 2018 caldera but things have changed a lot since the start of the year.

          • The long SWRZ eruption 1919-20 was the first rift zone eruption since 1868. This eruption which lastet 223 days happened after three years of “gradual filling” of the collapse crater which appeared in the 1916 collapse. So it is possible that after a long period of “gradual filling” in Halema’uma’u a SWRZ eruption follows.
            After the 1919-20 eruption two ERZ eruptions followed 1922 and 1923. Maybe the SWRZ also opened somehow the ERZ.

    • Chose the name of the first king of the Visigots, that tells you a lot. The king plundered Rome.

    • One single sentence of comprehension: It is a sadistic pleasure for some to get the stupid into fear.
      What they regularly forget is the children and the very old, the weak therefore. That is why this is irresponsable.
      If we died by a meteorite impact (or in a plane crash) we really wouldn’t realize enough to be afraid. We are generally much more afraid when we have an incurable malign tumor or when the pilot saves us, so fear needs time. Creating fear about s.th. that wouldn’t even make you afraid, but just take you down, is sadistic, a game of an empty mind. No feelings in such persons I guess.
      Hollywood is not much better. “Independance Day” really scared me out of my wits (that alien), the same goes for “The Shining”. I learnt to avoid that kind of stuff.

      • I can’t help myself but I really enjoy watching and reading stupid things. It’s a special type of funny to me. doomsday predictions always scared me as a kid I’m sure that that this guy’s work won’t be able to fool anybody above the age of five. Being some 28 legged bears would be cool though

        • If you enjoy watching stupid things you can watch this series. It’s in Polish but it has english subtitles.

          • Flat-earthers are the creme of the crop when it comes to fatuous rubbish, rivaled only by “Ancient Astronauts Theorists”. How many of these dumbtubers actually believe what they say?

          • I think flat earthers are the winners there Tallis. Ancient Astronauts have no evidence of actually being a thing in real life but there isnt anything theoretically implausible about aliens visiting our planet in the past, its at least as likely as them doing it now statistically. Flat earth is impossible in so many ways it is funny 🙂

            Sometimes I do wonder what people got up to in the prior interglacial. Similar conditions to now and every culture today make artificial structures to live in.

  8. Britannotitan attenborum aka David Attenborough has turned 97 today which means he is a sort of living fossile.
    Happy Birthday!

    • In 1984 he stood infront of the last fountain cone during the largest Krafla Flow in Iceland .. a Magnificent sight for soure!, that was done for the first episode of The Living Planet 1984. Attenborough almost got killed when a near meter sized lava blob landed just behind him, it was same year when Maurice and Katia Krafft Did their badass recordings of themselves infront of the same vent as well.

      Living fossil pretty much, born before the Age of commerical mass scale aviation and space travel and born before satellites. But even at his date of birth, most of the industrialized world was electricified and communications was possible between continents quickly. AMF skyscraper revolution was in full swing in the west world. He surivived WW2 as well was always a risk being called in and then be shot down over germany.

      : D D : Im getting old too, at 27 Im old enough that I was born when 3D CGI was at its infancy and the first complete CGI film came out in 1995 I think. And internet barely existed when I was born, and primitive 3D games was a huge revolution, high defenetion TV Did not exist for avarge person when I was born as well and smartphones was not present.

    • They will just have to postpone the eruption. I am sure Kilauea will understand that politics comes first

      • It has already far passed the point that triggered eruptions before, I think something might have changed a bit in the subsurface. I did notice for the first time I have been aware that all of the quakes at Kaoiki pali actually trace the bottom of the slope. Usually they form a random blob… maybe means nothing but if Kaoiki is an old caldera fault of Kilauea it being pushed around now might mean there is some significant magma movement, just not breaking rock in the process.

        So might still be some time, but it will probably be a real firework show when it does erupt 🙂

      • Otherwise they just have to rely on state level or communal administrations like fire department in case of an emergency eruption. This is the state lavel emergency organization (responsible for natural disasters like hurricanes, volcanoes, tsunamies ….): https://dod.hawaii.gov/hiema/
        The county’s volcano management: https://hawaii-county-volcano-hazards-hawaiicountygis.hub.arcgis.com/
        So the volcanoes are not without observation if HVO quits service. But digital coverage would certainly collapse.

  9. https://www.google.com/amp/s/thedriven.io/2023/04/21/worlds-largest-battery-maker-announces-major-breakthrough-in-battery-density/amp/

    https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html

    This is revolutionary.

    In case anyone doesnt know CATL is the worlds biggest battery manufacturer. By a huge margin… They are the major supplier to Tesla, and also supply the cells used by Ford, BMW and Volkswagen. This isnt some novel lab test by a startup like we have seen a million times by now. There will literally be tens of millions of EVs made in the next couple years that have these batteries, a model 3 with such a pack would go 1000 km on a charge at the base level.

    Welcome to the future 🙂

  10. In April Kilauea stopped Deflation/Inflation cycles. Since April 21st it is more or less steadily inflating. What has changed?

    • Sometimes it goes on and off, a train of DI events in a row, then a period with no event. It was already inflating fast before the DI events stopped, so I’m not sure whether that is related.

      On other news, Mauna Loa stopped inflating on May 3, although it looks like it may be restarting its rise. There is no obvious correlation with Kilauea. Kilauea stopped inflation between May 6 and May 9, but has picked up again since. Earthquakes have also gone up with the renewed inflation of Kilauea.

      • The swarm of quakes going to the west is a lot stronger now than other swarms have been, and much longer lasting too. Usually it is a couple quakes and maybe as many days but this is going on weeks now and as strong as the quakes in the magma system.

        I can only think of it as being potentially a newly formed magma body, it is unlikely but that is all I can think of now, a new connector that has reached the Kaoiki pali and been stopped, an eruption way out there would be a big shock, even if not particularly dangerous. If it isnt that then this inflation sequence is pushing on faults that are way outside the usual area of effect, at least the size of the outer caldera fault and beyond that in places. Possibly it is even both of these things…

        And yet all of this the ERZ is deflating still and dead silent. It is like there was so much magma pushed east before 2020 that it has come to overwhelm the summit now, first as eruptions but apparently now even that is not enough…

        • The Namakanipaio Swarm was first active during the aftershock sequence of the 1983 M 6.7 earthquake of Mauna Loa, so it’s almost certainly tectonic in origin, related to the flank sliding. Since inflation of Kilauea’s summit seems coupled to the entire Koae area sliding seawards, then that could be triggering Namakanipaio. But this is speculation.

          • Yes I think it being a new magma path into the area is a bit speculative… although nothing is certain 🙂

            Even if this is a tectonic swarm still and not in itself a rare occurence, there is nothing I am aware of that is close to the intensity this swarm is at. It is even lighting up the actual Kaoiki faults at the bottom of the pali, and curving around Kilaueas summit. If this fault is being disturbed that says enough to the magnitude of the current inflation, probably the first time since 2018 that anything has affected this far out. And 2018 might have been the first since 1983. Got to wonder if the longevity of Pu’u O’o is completely coincidental to this, it began earlier but surely having a 6.7 basically right next to Kilaueas magma system would have shaken things up, even if it was ultimately a Mauna Loa thing that triggered it. Quakes of this size on Kilaueas own south flank lead to significant activity after all. Maybe Pu’u O’o would have been a shield regardless but not nearly so long lived as it ended up being.

            Not sure now when it will erupt, this situation might mean it takes a lot more to break thing than before. But when it does go… 🙂

          • Also did just look at the stations, Kilauea in the past 5 years has expanded by 1.3 meters across its caldera, about half of what was lost in 2018. UWEV and CRIM stations have also moved up vertically by 33 and 25 cm respectively even though neither is actually even in the caldera, I can only assume the inflation is much more at the center on the end of the downdropped block, perhaps meters or more.

            SDH tiltmeter also shows strong inflation, nearly as much as UWEV, down towards the southwest.

          • Almost 12 microradians of inflation in the Uwekahuna tiltmeter during the past month. Might be the highest summit inflation rate since well before the 2018 eruption. Or at least I don’t have any saved captures of the past month tiltmeter data with this much change. Although in 2019, inflation at the summit, which was at a few times almost as fast as now, would happen in unison with rapid ERZ inflation. Before the magma drought of 2020-21.

          • Here are some vertical movements. This is just the adjustment since the end of the last eruption, so about 2 months.

            UWEV: 8cm UP, 5cm N, 5cm W

            CRIM: 9cm UP, 10cm S, 5cm E

            BYRL: 8cm UP, 2.5cm N, 7cm E

            OUTL: 5cm UP, 8cm S, 0.5cm E

            AHUP: 5cm UP, 13cm S, 4cm E

            Based on the lack of E/W movement the center might be at least directly inland of OUTL, which is about the location of the center of the 2018 caldera, and a little east of Halemaumau. So now that as the deep pit has filled up eruptions might well occur now at locations all around the downdropped block and not just in Halemaumau itself. The attempted intrusion just after the last eruption ended was apparently on the eastern edge of the 2018 caldera, which would support this. But given how much more pressure has built up than then and the extent of active seismicity over the whole summit, the next eruption might affect a larger area of the 2018 caldera, or go outside of it altogether.

  11. Also fun showing Hector how huge Cumulunimbus clouds can get over Facebook

    I found some insanely huge cells and have more to show.

    Apparently deep tropical Cumulunimbus can grow to the size of small Countries some really Big ones have anvils 700 km wide with gravity waves all over and overshooting areas the size of Big Island or bigger. Its these mega sized cells that cause lots of flooding in Asia I guess during the monsoon season. Vietnam recently had some sickly huge MCS cells with – 97 to
    – 100 C tops

    In my last visit in Vietnam and South Asia I was under the anvil of souch a monster Cumulunimbus was a hot humid night at an restaurant and the ligthning was flashing silently distant in the mammatus anvil shield far above my head. The day after was overcast and the streets flooded as the night MCS complex had dropped pretty much many years of Nordic rainfall in just one night!

    • It shows that warm air can contain much more water than cold air! Which clarifies one of the consequences of global warming: more intense rain

    • Yes I guess PETM storms must have been absolute monsters

      Yes I found some enormous cells on satelite imagery thats I saved looking for the source.

      Yes overshooting tops for 100 s of km and massive germany sized anvils are possible even today

    • Here in Northen Europe there is Not much thunderstorms and the main reason for that its very oceanic in climate. Scandinavia is sourrounded by a cool ocean and that means generaly unfavorable for land heating.
      Not enough large land surfaces for that. We mostly gets weak garden thunderstorms and weak fuzzy anvils.
      Even If its a warm humid summer day the anvils never gets very crisp.

      Further down in Europe MCS are much more common, specialy so over poland, Italy, Hungary with more in-land heating plus with added warm humidity from the nearby Mediterranean

  12. My VC article is not done yet, as its needs to be fleshed out and improved somewhat, But I have No computer thats working. I dont want it cut up either .. its a single article ( But its indeed nearing completion )

    So share it to me through a document that I can later write on iphone after you done editing it

    • patience.. we just finished a monster post for release tomorrow. Yours is next

    • Very good, and mine is not complete I wants to be able to write on it by phone, I tends to clean my gmail so cant acess it by now

  13. A bit of a disappointing, and at the same time interesting, information about Hawaii. There is a drill-core located in the Lower East Rift Zone of Kilauea near Leilani, and apparently basalts in this drill-core are dated. Lavas from a depth of 1540 meters are as old as 350,000 years. If this is correct, then it means a small fraction of Kilauea’s total volume has been erupted in the past 350,000 years, since the lava pile is about 6000 meters thick where the drill-core is located. Well over half of Kilauea’s volume would have been erupted before 350 ka. Should we doubt this age?. In reality, there is not much reason to doubt this date. There are two separate studies looking into these lavas with two different dating methods, and all the ages given agree very well stratigraphically:

    https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10024818
    http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/FACULTY/garcia/publications/Quane%20et%20al%202000.pdf

    It’s starting to look like activity may have waned considerably since Haleakala’s time. Particularly considering that Haleakala’s rift grew to its maximum length and its surface to its maximum area about 1.35 Ma, that much, if not all, of Kohala’s submarine rift had grown by 1.15 Ma, and that Mauna Loa’s submarine rift was practically complete by 470 ka.

    • If this is true that might make the last couple thousand years all the more notable, with the frequency of caldera collapses as well as at least 6 huge shields. Probably also means the earlier estimates of a large volume for Kilauea are more correct, if it has been active so long them it wont just be a relatively thin layer on the side of Mauna Loa. Or, it might show Kilauea has become significantly more active in the Holocene than it was before.

      This does seem to really contrast with a lot of the other data out there though. Not an expert on this subject but I would think isotopic dating is dependant on environmental conditions and might not be as universal as is assumed. That is, the number needs to be calibrated locally. Particular as Ar is a gas and thus presumably atoms of it would be easily moved around in such an active environment, as well as the rocks being constantly reheated by intrusions a couple times a century which is the enemy of isotopic dating.

      Really the best place to test this would have been on the south coast where direct eruptions dont happen. But then maybe the hole was a geo well so not of their control.

      • I’ve been puzzled by a few things. One of them is that practically no lava has erupted on top of the Pahala Ash in the south flank, there are only some meters of summit overflows on the Pahala Ash, which is 11,000 years old at its youngest, if I remember right. I have also estimated volumes of most eruptions of the past 1000 years, including lava deltas, and it is well below the long-term effusion rate of the past 3 million years. And the period between 1000 and 2000 years ago I haven´t estimated, but probably had lower activity, In fact from ~200 AD to ~1100 AD, Kilauea did, to my knowledge, only one big eruption, which was Puu Honualua, as well as the limited Hornet Kipuka overflows of the south flank. And Mauna Loa spent this whole time doing summit overflows, with practically no rift activity, except for Kukuau, Panaewa and a few smaller rift events.

        • There is a possibility, albeit one we cant test so all speculation, that the volcanoes grow extremely fast very quickly and reach maximum size from a lower point only later in their evolution near the end of their shield stage. Maybe Mauna Loa has just done this some time in the pst 100k years and is effectively waning, not enough to alter the magma composition but enough to be genrally outpaced by its subsidence, except for its southwest flank which is filling in the Alika slide scarp and is still growing barely. Even with an older age, Kilauea has not done something like this, whic hwoudl make its present activity very anomalous, but perhaps this is not the case if it is coming to dominate the source more then the present activity coudl be like an early phase of this rapid growth, and the volcano wil lspend more time liek this in the future. Maybe this doesnt eve nhave anything to do with the actual age of the volcanoes but how close the dominant one is to the plume, and when the torch is passed on so to speak even a relatively old volcano might still be considered in its early shield stage, before growing rapidly. The rate we see at present and for at least the past 200 years is at least 1 km3/decade and has showed through both volcanoes, making it unlikely to be a point source. I guess the lack of dates accessible for even the surface flows will make this hard to get details on, and HVO will be far less willing to speculate than us.

          Possibly the structures of the volcanoes have not changed significantly in many millennia, not sice the Pleistocene, so that the same areas as we see today get covered by lava repeatedly, and areas have been left alone for this whole time basically. Kilaueas south flank south of the caldera is behind the Koae faults, which probably have presented a barrier ever since their formation, and only long lived summit overflow stages could overtop this which is an infrequent mode of operation for Kilauea compared to rifting, only happening maybe twice in the Holocene. I imagine that areas which get buied by lava frequently also subside more, it isnt just going to be neat layers. So the upper-middle ERZ and summit where shields form might subside greatly. The LERZ though does huge fast eruptions, where the lava flows away fro mthe rift axis, so the majority of subsidence might be on the flanks not the rift crest which is where that measurement was taken. Not to mention that the south flank of the ERZ slides frequently and more so towards the east, so could be buried by much more lava.

          The same is also probably true of Mauna Loa. Areas that accumulate more lava will sink more, and also probably represent areas that are more likely to erupt in general.

          I did read that alteration by hydrothermal processes was accounted for, but the heat aspect still exists. I know zircon fission track dating is useless if the sample has been heated over 500 C, it resets the crystal back to being 0 years old effectively. K-Ar is not identical and is a ratio of K40 to Ar39 but I imagine the Ar atoms would escape at a greater rate in hot rock, and given the area is a very active rift zone with abundant ground heat… I realise this would actually make the sample look younger not older, but the atoms are not going to magically escape into the air easily from 1.5 km depth, but probably will concentrate more near faults and those also tend to be targeted for drilling. It isnt helped by the magma in Hawaii being low in K to begin with so would only exaggerate the age if a higher concentration of Ar was found.

        • The period from 200BC until 1000AD was dominated by explosive eruptions and weak effusive activity. Before such an explosive period begins, Kilauea usually does a shield eruption on the summit which finally collapses and creates a deep and large caldera.

          Kilaeua had a similar explosive period 1500 to 1790, but that was much shorter. The present effusive stage can still take centuries until the next change towards an explosive period happens.

          • The explosive stages are just where the summit overflows arent happening though, in the future when our rock layer is only an exposure they would consider us to be within such a period. The Uwekahuna tephra lasted over 1000 years, during which time large parts of the ERZ were buried by lava. Then the ERZ went quiet and summit overflowed, then it collapsed and went explosive while the ERZ became active again. There will be shorter variation but this is the general idea. The current rift dominated activity might last for most of the next 1000 years at this rate.

            The actual explosive eruptions are probably caldera collapses of various sizes as magma drains towards a rift eruption. Which is also what happens presently, although infrequently. I wish there was a greater depth of study by HVO on the ERZ, its really a bit frustrating how much it is ignored in the activity projections. It is like they consider the past 100 years a complete freak event with no comparison.

    • Looks like Mauna Loa have been the huge monster all along 🙂 But Kilauea haves huge potential as she reaches the main shield building stage.

    • That coud be the chase as Chad say, we are not seeing any Hawaiian volcano at the peak of shield building today because Mauna Loa and Kilaūea are just between that. Then magma supply to a Hawaii Volcano at its peak coud be orders of times larger than 0,1 km3 – 0,2 km3 a year

      This coud indicate that most of Mauna Loas subarial swollen bulk that makes it one of Big Islands top summits coud be formed during the last glacial period? If Hawaiian volcanoes have a superfast main shield growth spourt.

      • Not sure about peak rates being higher than we see now, just that the volcano spends basically all of the time in this state rather than being competitive with the neighbors. The shield stage is linked with the volcano making tholeiitic basalt but that doesnt mean the volcano grew at equal rates in this time or that the growth immediately accelerated, or was even consistent between volcanoes. It is already known that many of the volcanoes have very variable post-shield stages, from not at all to well over a million years, so it would be unsurprising if the growth stage of the volcanoes is similarly variable.

        It is also always possible that more random surges happened that raised eruption rates by maybe double or more, but these would be on the scale of years or less not anything we can see on geological time. I think possibly one of these surges might be happening right now though, given the high rates of inflation at both volcanoes and earthquake swarms happening at Kama’ehuakanaloa suggesting it is also getting magma.

      • I don’t know; it seems like Hawaiian volcanoes have a lot of variation in the intensity of their activity. You have the 42-32 Ma period, where Hawaii only made a few small conical seamounts that did not reach the surface. Then you have a monster volcano like Puhahonu that grew out of nowhere to enormous size, completely dwarfing its predecessors and successors. Of the post-Puhahonu volcanoes, I think Haleakala likely had the highest eruption rates, given its extremely long, very shallow-sloping, subaerial rift with a well-defined thrust system on its north flank.

    • Very interesting. You would need to do this along the full rift, including off shore, to get a good idea of total rift activity. There may also have been some north-south migration of the rift. A spot measurement shows the local record but may be off for the full record.

  14. Jesper here is an answer to one of your questions about planets and stars.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9njdZ33j4A0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9njdZ33j4A0

    Seems from the outside not much happens if it enters from an orbit, I guess the velocity is much lower compared to a direct impact. But a direct impact even from a small planet might be quite spectacular, let alone a gas giant or a brown dwarf. If one considers a neutron star as a sort of planetary object, which is not unrealistic in many ways, then it gets much better 🙂

    • Depends how deep the planet is too into the Star, in the outer layers it woud take a long time to destroy Mars because of low heat transfer

      In the suns mantle where the hot medium is as dense as liquid metal it may take only a few months to destroy a planet and transform it into plasma

      But they are destroyed long before that either by kinetic energy or slowly being destroyed being stuck in a close orbit close to the photosphere as the video say

    • I have always wondered, If it woud be black skies If I was ”floating” in the outer photosphere of the sun .. and looking into space, or woud it be the same blinding light as below. The medium there have a very low density about 1/6000 th of Earths surface pressure for the outer photosphere top, yet it glows brigthly, But coud just be the much denser stuff that glows below it.

    • But then there is the radiation as well not only the density medium of heat transfer. Difficult for any machine to get close to the sun because of extreme radiation heating things up

  15. Has anyone got any late info on Nyamuragira? As far as I know, it has been in some weird phase where it seems to be filling the caldera, atypical for its typical eruption style in the last maybe 200 years. When I think about that phase, it reminds me of that similar phase at Kīlauea at around 1000 AD to 1400 AD, in which it filled the Powers Caldera (potentially with no known eruptions from either rift zones). Either way, I could spot a few similarities to each other.

  16. Rapid deflation has just started at Kilauea. Probably a DI event but if it goes a bit longer then watch the live closely. Nothing showing on the seismometers though.

    • Has an intrusion happened anywhere? How would an intrusion look like that doesn’t erupt?

      • Was a false alarm, the signal was small, but the deflation does continue at about the same rate as it was inflating before. Which is really weird, because the SDH tiltmeter at the start of the SWRZ doesnt show any change in tilt direction and records a comparable scale of deformation… So I am not really sure if there is actually any deflation going on or if it is only affecting the UWEV site. Or even if magma from the summit is passively flowing towards the southwest and building up at the start of the connector.

        An eruption that is anywhere outside of the summit area would look like a huge drop out of the tilt, the daily wiggles and DI events would basically become a wavy line next to a massive abrupt drop. Even small eruptions on the rift will look like this. If the dike forms in the summit caldera though then the UWEV tiltmeter will be shoved sideways and will actually rise up a lot very suddenly before doing the deflation dip, at least that is what the last few eruptions did to it. I dont have pictures of that saved but Hector might.

        Basically if an eruption or significant intrusion happens then the tiltmeter will drop out. But that has to start, and I thought maybe it did, but apparently Pele had other plans… 🙂

  17. https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/past-month-monitoring-data-kilauea

    Lots of graphs on here, they seem to show an increase in SO2 from Kilauea just recently. Not as high as when it is actively erupting, where the number is typically thousands of tons daily, but for the past months the number has been at 150-200 and then suddenly went to over 400, at the same time as the small deflation signal showed. Perhaps some small amount of magma was able to get into the lake in Halemaumau, or into a heavily cracked ring fault, so that the magma could degas to the surface.

    Or maybe this happens all the time, the emissions being 400t/day and the sensor is just not optimally located…

    • With weekly measurements only, you can’t be sure when the increase happened. Most likely during the phase of slowing extension. The important point is that there are now two measurements in consecutive days. HVO is interested in the development. The activity is pointing at magma getting close to breaking point. It seems to me it is now a matter of when, not if (but volcanoes don’t like being taken for granted!). ‘Where’ of course is open. Within the summit area is more probable, I think, but there is some quaking towards the southwest rift.

      • This is actually notable though, because the last 3 eruptiobs gave no warning other than seismicity, it was expected to see increasing gas emissions (or rapid increase in acidity of the water lake) but that never happened. It did happen in 2008, when instead of a fissure a cylindrical conduit formed instead, and this is also what happens at stratovolcanoes where gas emissions are a classic sign. If one of those is forming somewhere then things could get very interesting as there isnt a flank vent to keep the lava level down now like there was before 2018, so a new summit shield actually could be the most likely outcome.

        Open conduits also can become lava geysers, Pu’u O’o did, the 2008 lake didnt because Pu’u O’o was still open, but that is probably not a common situation.

      • Past SWRZ eruptions often began initially at the summit and migrated to southwest afterwards.

        • Those eruptions began in Halemaumau, and at least a large part of the SWRZ is on a fissure swarm that is centered at halemaumau. But eruptions can also began directly on the rift just like happens on the ERZ. The only historical example of this is in 1974 but there are a number of other intrusions that didnt erupt which began directly on the SWRZ connector, no summit involved. The last of these was in 1982, just before Pu’u O’o.

          There are also a lot of recent prehistoric eruptions that would have been like this. Kamakaia Hilla, Pu’u Koae, Cone crater, all of these are pyroclastic cones that would have had lava fountaining, as much as 100 meters, which implies the magma wasnt degassed at a lava lake first. All of these are under 500 years old, Kamakaia is probably historical just unobserved directly, erupting somewhere between 1790 and 1868 but probably in the late 1810s.

          • I’ve once read an article about the cones which were active around 1790-1823. There was much activity on SWRZ during these decades, when British/American rule was still far away from Hawaiian life. The cones had more Strombolian activity than conventional Kilauea activity. Was the magma more gassy, more evolved or cool there?

          • Those cones are the Kamakaia hills, the lava erupted there was sometimes closer to andesite than basalt, although most of the lava is normal basalt. There are actually lots of cones in this area, some are probably going back hundreds of years, to when the caldera first formed. The latest ones erupted the evolved magma in 1815

            Technically at this time too, the Hawaiians already had made a lot of contact with the Europeans, for good or for worse both ways. They were probably instrumental in the victory of Kamehameha I, who made extensive use of firearms and cannons, as well as metal weapons, and was later on quite friendly with the British Empire. At least a few of his higher ups were former stranded Europeans too, some from Cooks original expedition, and one of whom actually saw Kilauea erupt in 1790 from the Kona coast, as well as the last eruption of Hualalai, and were able to write it down. Hector probably has much more of those details though, most of this is off of memory.

          • I was a bit skeptic of the article, but upon re-reading it the stratigraphic evidence is for Kamakaia Waena and Upper Kealaalea erupting after 1790 is solid. The weathering state of Black Cone, Lower Kealaalea, Kamakaia Waena, and Black Cone, is much more fresh than I remembered. Upper Kealaalea, Lower Kealaalea, and 1823 all seem to have erupted along the same fissure system, and all three emitted entirely degassed magma, with no pyroclastic material, at all, visible in any of the fissures. Probably the degassed magma came from the large lava lake that existed at the summit during that time.

    • Kilauea is a monster in supply so I guess its going for something Galapagos style If it does not erupt soon, woud be fun with a 1974 like event fast flood of superfluid lava leaving nice tree casts behind

  18. Hi Albert woud be good to get an edit of my New article in a Google Document so I can finish it .. its almost done, But I wants to add some stuff and improve the texts quality

    • Looks like it will be starring Fagradalshraun as background ; ) in one of its episodes

      • While Superior in terms of biological accuracy and CGI for Prehistoric Planet, I still do think its not at all as mysterious as 1999 s Walking With Dinosaurs, the original was also filmed in more accurate biome locations I think for the non cretaceous episodes

        WWD is terrible inaccurate in terms of animals but good in terms of shooting locations and fantastic in terms of the atmosphere they created. Prehistoric Planet is more like a ”Planet Cretaceous Earth with Dinosaurs” than an Re – Wamp of Walking With Dinosaurs. Late Cretaceous had broadleaf rainforests but probaly No modern taiga that was used in the polar episode of Prehistoric Planet. Still during the cooler parts of cretaceous its possible that the poles may have had seasonal snowfall

        All original walking with dinosaurs can be found here https://watchdocumentaries.com/walking-with-dinosaurs/

        But yes Prehistoric Planet is well needed! As WWD is almost like the 1800 s now in its current inaccuracy of the dinosaurs. A fully Re – done WWD is well needed now after 24 years

        • Some times in the Mesozoic the poles were probably as cold as they are now, glaciation is a relatively recent thing, and there were no ice sheets in the Mesozoic, but certainly the environment would have been freezing, probably even in summer sometimes. The biggest dinosaur with confirmed feathers is a 9 meter tyrannosaur, Yutyrannus, from the early Cretaceous in central Asia, one of the many fantastic fossils out of Liaoning, China. Same place that Microraptor and Sinornithosaurus were found, which began the whole feathered dinosaur thing back at the turn of the century. Yutyrannus was not a tyrannosaurid proper but was probably ancestral to the group ultimately, or related to whatever that was.

          Growth of plants in late Cretaceous Alaska also shows it was as cold as -11 C the winter, although summer was much warmer. So that episode showing the snowy tundra is probably pretty accurate. Not sure about the trees but conifers are ancient, it would be surprising if there wasnt something at least visually similar back then, most of the adaptations of taiga trees that give them their characteristic appearence are for cold tolerance.

      • CGI is terrible in 1999 s WWD some of the dinosaurs looks like plastic toys, But some still look very good, But most are far out – dated in terms of biology accuracy

        • At least they used real locations, New Caledonia for cruel Sea was my favorite with its blue waters and chalk coasts and prehistoric vegitation

      • Wow as cold as – 11 C then the cooler parts of dinosaurs eras are colder than I imagine, looks quite Scandinavian then at the poles, like Northen Sweden and interior of Northen Iceland. But not as cold as example Siberia and Canada today. I tought the cooler parts of Cretaceous had poles about similar to pacific northenwest, But with warm humid almost tropical summers, and misery winters that sat around freezing with infrequent wet snow.

        But during the Supergreenhouse phases the polar winters never hot colder than +15 and allowed crocodilians and huge turtles and palms to grow there, PETM even had megathermal rainforests along South poles rim. But Thats only for the warmer episodes on Earth.

        Future volcanic supergreenhouses will be terrible as the sun gets brigther and cO2 gets even more powerful. Chad how long Do you think the planet will be habitable?

  19. Logged into VC now and editing – improving my article thanks to Gaz : )

      • Great just worried Messing things up

        I sent a photo to Albert that he can push into the article

    • The real version on my Article exist on VC WordPress now as a draft and not in Alberts gmail box. So Albert should login to VC and place the photo there instead

  20. Something has gone wrong with the Rabbit 1 page. I don’t see any new comments there in 24 hours, even with shift+refresh.

    • No one likes a good famine! But I think the problem has just been resolved thanks to Iceland.

  21. Looking at iceland, an interesting (yet dull) line of deepish quakes under Hekla. 14km.

  22. Albert you mentioned in a comment above that CRIM station is jumping up fast. Seems it really is, now that some more points have been added. But it is not only CRIM, actually all of the stations that are on the summit of Kilauea have done this exact same jump, a very abrupt vertical movement of between 1 and 3 cm in a couple days, pretty uniform across the whole summit and possibly into the SWRZ.

    I dont really know what is going to happen now at Killauea. If it was like all of the other build ups, then it would have already long since erupted, even HVO directly says this in their update that the magma pressure and quake count is higher than what triggered the January eruption. There are also abundant and sometimes relatively large quakes that are happening now well outside of the 2018 caldera, going all the way down the SWRZ connector, and also along the large outer caldera fault around Kilauea Iki. The ERZ connector is active within this fault, out to Puhimau crater where strong inflation is seen, but nothing at all down at Mauna Ulu. The quakes at Kilauea Iki intrigue me, because I had never seen them happen there at all before this year, perhaps during the collapse in 2018 but nothing stood out.

    I dont think the next eruption is going to be particularly large, but after all of this it could be significantly larger than the last 3 have been. Still summit, but possibly outside of Halemaumau. And if it is in Halemaumau, well, a year ago it was expected to flood the downdropped block in November, there is catching up to do…

    • I was expecting an acceleration, based on past behaviour. The GPS movement so far was clear but not fast enough to signal an eruption. In previous event, there was a similar phase, followed by a sudden rapid inflation in the weeks before the eruption. The current signal (only three days though) looks similar to that change. Let’s see whether it continues.

      • I expected to see it at either CRIM or UWEV, but not elsewhere so clearly, and never this much over such a wide area and such long build up.

        • Wait and see. The GPS measurements are sometimes redone one or a few days later when updated orbits for the satellites become available. So the points may still be changed. I would have expected this to happen faster than this though – 3 days should be enough for a trend.

          • The summit GPS stations are usually very clean and dont show wild daily variation, so the signals there are usually pretty reliable after only a few points. The ERZ signals are much less reliable, I give those at least a week to try and make any assumption, and really they probably need a month to be certain of a trend. I thought maybe somethign had changed at Pu’u O’o recently but now it is pretty clear there is only secondary effects and the long term downward trend is still consistent, showing that no magma is getting there from the summit and the south flank sliding is dominant.

            I would like to see any data that comes from the other SWRZ stations, like CNPK and KOSM, so tell if the inflation is only within the summit or if it goes down the SWRZ. My expectation is that it does and there is magma actively going into the SWRZ with potential for eruptions there soon, but there is no easy way to tell on the HVO site, and HVO wont report on any deformation as being more than ‘minor’ unless it is an actual intrusion…

          • HVO has to be very careful in what it says! We can speculate as much as we want (making clear what is speculation, of course) but anything they say gets quoted with all context removed. And compared to long-term changes, a few centimeters is ‘minor’.

          • Yes that is true, but a few cm in under a week over an area that is the best part of 100 km2 is not a trivial amount, and Kilauea isnt historically prone to large vertical movements in short times, a few cm in as many days is about as fast as I have ever seen it. Lateral movements are much more extensive of course, but mostly as quakes, and not usually in summit eruptions.

            2 cm over 100 km2 is 2 million m3, over 3 days is 750000 m3, or 8.6 m3/s. Probably being overly optimistic with the area of effect but the magma supply seems very healthy right now, even if it is half of above that is still somewhat above the input rates to the lake recently. 8.6 m3/s is 0.27 km3/year.

            Maybe, the magma from Pahala has finally found a way out… 🙂

          • Yes, it is not insignificant. (A mogi model may be needed to get more accurate numbers.) But this rate of inflation at CRIM also happened in Sept 2021. That was actually what I was looking for. At that time the rise in UWEV was less though – perhaps the centre of inflation is now a bit further to the north than it was in 2021

          • I think having the defirmation over such a big area would imply the origin is quite deep. The magma body under the whole caldera is probably inflating, but ut hasnt fully followed up at the shallow levels yet. At this point all of the summit systems are equally capable of erupting, and it jsnt impossible more than one will do so at the same time, or in short succession like in 1971 or 74. Or it can just go past all of them and we get massive gas rich eruption with high fountains like 1959 🙂

          • I noticed now too that the cross-caldera graph has stopped going up at the same time as the sudden uplift on all the stations, so likely shows that the inflation source is equally under both CRIM and UWEV and not inbetween them. So Halemaumau is probably not driving the signal now, it is coming from the south caldera source.

            So the tiltmeters and main page GPS probably isnt so useful right now, unless it shoots up or down suddenly. But if it does do that then get the livestreams out 🙂

  23. My VC article is soon compete, But WordPress is not meant to be used on IPhone, with adding video links to the photo Albert inserted it vanished from the article in terms of a glitch do wants it Re – added please. Maybe there is an undo button?

    • I sent the video links now : ) add them in the same photo with description that was lost

  24. Kilauea’s 1790 eruption was a bit Hawaii’s Pompej 79. It was a deadly ashy eruption which killed around 400 people and left their footprints behind with work for archeologists. While the natural scientific event was different to Vesuvius, the human and cultural impact for the island was large compared with later US Hawaiian eruptions.
    “The wet ash occurs south of the caldera, where the lithic lapilli fell into it, and is also found west of the caldera in the saddle between Kilauea and Mauna Loa, where the victims were probably walking along a main foot trail still visible today. A lithic pyroclastic surge swept across the saddle, locally scouring away the wet accretionary lapilli layer but generally leaving a deposit <1 to 15 cm thick on the ash and embedding 1-cm lithic lapilli deeply within it. An account written in 1843 by Rev. Sheldon Dibble describes the dead victims as lying on the surface or "sitting upright clasping with dying grasp their wives and children," not buried by ash or battered by falling debris, and "thoroughly scorched" but "in no place deeply burnt." "
    Cited from an abstract of an article from D. Swanson et al.: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011AGUFM.V41A2479S/abstract

  25. The quake counts are getting ever higher, over 120 a day for 6/7 days this week. There are also some deep quakes under Kilauea now too.

    The Pahala swarm also has really flared up in the past days too.

    At this point I am starting to consider this might end up being more than just a small summit eruption. At the very least, the downdropped block is getting flooded. If the eruption breaks out anywhere that isnt under the lake, then some big fountains are possible. At this quake rate I give it another week before something breaks.

  26. This is the worse, scientific “debate” I have ever had the misfortune to witness, and right in my home city of Houston! The Moderator of this debate should be fired because he did a terrible job of reigning in the ‘debate’. A good scientific debate should make me learn and reconsider my views and this “debate’ only succeed in giving me a headache. Dave Farina’s conduct was incredibly impertinent and tactless even going so far to insult the audience when asked a basic question whereas James Tour become too emotional and loud. If this is the future of scientific debate then take me off the planet right now.

    • Or not 🙁

      Seems that whatever was triggering eruptions before is not a reliable indicator anymore. Maybe all of the residual strain that didnt collapse in 2018 is gone now, along with Halemaumau being filled, so the eruptions will require all of the connected magma system to be under high pressure.

      It might be a good while before that happens then, I didnt think it was possible for the current unrest to go so long.

    • Earthquake number today already exceed 200, more than yesterday (around 160). Deformation had some vertical jumps up/down today.

      • Yes, all that and still no eruption… I guess having that deep pit kind of made for a convenient path, but its filled up now so possibly now the immense weight of the lake only serves to keep those faults closed tighter, so requiring more pressure to open and erupt.

        That is to say, perhaps Kilauea has just gone from its normal self to more of the style of Galapagos volcanism, right before our eyes. So the next eruption might be a powerful fissure eruption circumferential to the caldera. This has only happened to my knowledge in 1790, and that was small, but the 1959 eruption might have begun through this before diverting angles to follow Kilauea Iki, the vent that became dominant was right along the ring fault…

        Still 200+ earthquakes a day and still going…

        • I’m thinking about whether Halema’uma’u is going to move its place. The eruption since 2020 was already different to 2008-2018. The whole system may change somewhat, and the process of change can be exciting with multiple different happenings.

          Maybe we get a series of tiny different eruptions on different places and different styles, before they are going to focus on a single point.

          • I think that is a likely possibility, the 2020 and 2021 eruptions mostly happened from the same spot or close enough. But the eruption in January was in the middle so I dont know now.

    • The jumps in the tiltmeter were caused by earthquakes. It is remarkable how close in time the M3.1 in the Namakanipaio area and the M 3.7 in the northern caldera rim happened, the first earthquake probably triggered the second. I don’t know if it’s coincidental that the last M 3 undid the deformation of the earlier two in Uwekahuna. It is at least curious that the last M3 would produce the reserve effect of the earlier events.

      • Quakes on the outer caldera rim and beyond like that strong one near Kilauea Iki a few weeks ago, seems pretty good evidence that the majority of the inflation is coming from the deeper chamber, not just Halemaumau.

      • Often earthquakes precede eruptions at Big Island because new magmatic dykes move the earth. What kind of earthquakes do we have to expect now?

        Now I’ve noticed an earthquake swarm on the saddle between Kilauea and Mauna Loa. Does it show an interaction between the lava layers of both volcanoes?

        • The swarm in the saddle is at Namakanipaio, which is at the edge of the Kaoiki pali fault system. HVO thinks those faults are remnants of a similar feature that is on the south flank of Kilauea now but from before Kilauea was as big as it is now. But that seems not very likely with how Kilauea is at least a few tens of millennia old at a relatively similar size to today, and Mauna Loa has been active frequently too.
          Hector proposed Kaoiki pali is a caldera of Kilauea that has been otherwise buried, and while perhaps a bit radical it does make sense, the faults go around the present summit, and todays swarm does actually show that very well as the faults are lit up.

          Swarms at Namakanipaio historically begin apparently after 1983, so probably started from that years Mauna Loa quake, that probably triggered the 1984 eruption. But Pu’u O’o did start that year too, and other historical eruptions at Mauna Loa on its NERZ have happened without triggering similar quakes. So seems to be a joint effort at least. And definitely all of the seismic activity since then has been associated with Kilauea more than Mauna Loa in my observation

          • Thanks for your explanation of Namakanipaio! This area appears to be somewhat opposite to Koa’e fault system (on southern side of caldera), where 1973 and 1974 two small eruptions happened.
            Should we also expect some major earthquakes before the next eruption begins?

  27. Any update on CCN Tallis (or anyone)?

    I definitely feel that entire complex is building to an event, but with thousands of years of an “inertial cork” to overcome, I think it’s going to continue to take its sweet time even through continued serious surges of seismicity. I think it will culminate in an eruption (it’s been too long and persistent, the underlying unrest hasn’t faded), but when? If I’m betting, I’d say within another ten years probably weighted towards the middle of that timeframe.

    Effusive / explosive? I still feel something like a Cerro Azul / Quizapu situation is possible, and either a predominantly effusive or predominantly explosive event is possible. That stale magma under there has to be pretty gas rich and volatile, unless the majority of the magma is solely from recent intrusions with little involvement of stored magma?

    I still check SA news every few days, and it’s still perhaps my greatest volcanic intrigue at the moment. I mean, if nothing else it’s just interesting to see such a long dormant system rock and roll to an unknowable end. And it’s comforting that local populations have been taking it seriously with disaster planning / drills, etc.

    • The swarm is continuing, Tornillos and VLF earthquakes are present which is indicative of some type fluid movement but magma isn’t the confirmed cause. Some of the gases from the fumaroles and hot springs have Mantle signatures. There’s been no confirmation of the cause of the swarm, but my guess is that either gas or magma is rising and is destabilizing the hydrothermal system as a result.

      • Thanks Tallis. Couldn’t a phreatic detonation of some magnitude lead to a magmatic eruption by destabilizing the system? Perhaps it starts off with intense phreatic activity and then transitions to magmatic activity, there has to be a pressurized “chamber” down there, no? I guess the rub is whether it’s eruptable or not without rejuvenation.

        Assuming the majority of the seismicity is hydrothermal, something had to activate the system or is it possible it simply has these liquid unrest episodes and recorded history is simply too short to know about it? Granted my assumptions are predicated on the current activity being anomalous, I don’t know. Lots of guesses and assumptions on my end, still think overall whatever happens is fascinating. Even if the answer is nothing (though I admit I’d like to hopefully know more).

        • Last swarm was the result of shallowing magma in conjunction with the.decade long intrusion, it’s almost guaranteed that the system has been activated. You are right in the sense that’s it’s unknown what this system is capable of. But any phreatic activity would increase chances of magmatic activity.

  28. Nyiramuragira is now overflowing! check Charles Balagizi s Facebook post

    • Guess it is going into another phase of shield building 🙂 probably something it hasnt done in a couple centuries or more.

      Perhaps DRC can do volcano tourism around it to boost their economy enough to not rely on foreign aid, Rwanda next door was a terrible place 30 years ago and now is thriving so it is certainly possible. And DRC is very wealthy in minerals, not only cobalt but pretty much everything the growing renewable economy will need, no need for them to even engage in fossil economy they can just skip that step like a lot pf eastern Africa is trying to do, there is a bright path forward 🙂

      Perhaps that will also allow Goma to be more safely located too.

  29. Poor deep Sea fishes .. evolved into a mess of an apparence.. Althrough becomming a blob is a way to save energy in the dark deep energy poor waters

    Reminds me alot of Dark Samus a bit .. the antagonist in Metroid Prime 3

  30. It looks like the swarm of quakes next to Kilauea has changed location. It was earlier located underthe Namakanipaio area, pretty much under the highway. But now most of the swarm is located directly under Kaoiki pali, which suggests those faults are being shoved around. Not sure I have seen anything like that before, and coupled with the outer quakes near Kilauea Iki it is very intruguing.

    Actually, I wonder if this is a sign of longer term change towards summit centered activity, after being dominated by the ERZ since monitoring began. Before the magma could flow immediately into the voluminous storage in the ERZ and not build too much at the summit. But now the ERZ is closed off, apparently, and the SWRZ is open but doesnt rift in the same way or nearly on as large a scale. The 2018 eruption was about 1.5 km3, maybe a bit over 1 km3 DRE, and the collapse was 0.8 km3. The caldera is not resurgent so to recover only needed 0.3 km3, which is 2-3 years. Next eruption was after 2 years 3 months 🙂
    Up to this year the caldera filled, now the deep pit is gone, and there are no easy ways out. So now all of the supply is concentrated at the summit.

    The tilt signal now, I wonder if it is reflecting smaller scale movement at Kaoiki, going counter to the caldera extension..

    • I think there is a bit of slipping going on. The pali has some downward slip, this puts pressure downslope which then resolves that stress with its own activity. It fits with the tilt changes that have been seen, and the movement of the centre of expansion in the caldera area

      • Would be likely that some degree of sliding is happening, especially given Mauna Loa erupted uphill recently. But the Kaoiki faults wrap around Kilaueas summit not necessarily in the direction of tectonic movement, so seems it is more complicated.

        I think in the coming days there will be another surge in quakes, the past two times in recent weeks showed increased activity on the SWRZ connector followed by the summit spike.

  31. https://tv.apple.com/au/show/prehistoric-planet/umc.cmc.4lh4bmztauvkooqz400akxav

    In case anyone hasnt watched this, they should. Probably the best portrayal of extinct life that has ever been made, it far surpasses Walking with Dinosaurs even. And it is narrated by David Attenborough 🙂

    For Denaliwatch, because I know Mosasaurus is your favorite extinct animal 🙂 apparently they could swim as fast as 50 km/hr and accelerate to that speed in a little over a second, which is faster than most cars, absolutely mind blowing that this thing was a real animal… I bring that up because you can see the results on the promo picture.

    Also lots of footage of Fagradalsfjall, in episode 3 🙂 was not aware dinosaurs were volcano junkies like us but the fossils dont lie.

    • Yes … I knew they woud feature fagra really fun and very good CGI animals and up to date as well

      The original WWD s CGI dinosaurs are pretty aged now .. looking like plastic toys or video game creatures from a PS2 🙂

      Prehistoric Planet 2 looks incredible

    • Good they use fagradalshraun but on the other side Deccan Traps was volcanism on a completely diffrent scale .. but not Impossible to think some of the smaller vents at Deccan Was not bigger than Fagradalshraun so probaly quite accurate anyway and many Deccan Flows where acually pahoehoes.

      Althrough Siberian Traps and Camp was far worse

      • Flood basalt provinces would have had eruptions that were normal sized too, just that the potential upper size limit was much higher than anywhere that is active today has. Ethiopia had a complex of lots of large shields, which transitioned into enormous ignimbrite calderas in the northwest end in Yemen. These would have all been powerful volcanoes on their own but also all originated from a common source, which could do eruptions of its own. So I guess a lot of LIP provinces probably would have resembled Hawaii in a way, where a the surface it is multiple volcanoes but all are fed by a single supply and are loosely connected.

        The 2018 eruption of Kilauea probably shows this idea well although not on such a large scale. Halemaumau has its own magma chamber, fissure swarm, collapse pit, and its own magma conduit, it is basically a whole volcano in its own right. Each of the pit craters and large cones on the ERZ is the same, one of which was also erupting as Pu’u O’o. The two couldbe thought of as related but separate volcanoes. 2018 began at yet another one of these satellites, under Heiheiahulu, which had been quiet for 53 years until 2013 when it began inflating, and it broke 5 years later. But this set off a slip of the whoel flank, and the entire main magma chamber feeding all of the satellite volcanoes, all of them joining forces effectively, resulting in the major eruption which was far larger than was ever predicted beforehand.

        I expect that the eruptions that freated huge flows like the Ginko and Roza flows of the CRB probably were termiation events millennia in the making where magma built up in the crust under the McDermitt volcanic field, feeding probably frequent large eruptions at the latter. There are somethign like 30 VEI7 calderas in that volcanic field, I think it is likely that many of them formed at the same time as one of the CRB flows, the two were contemporaneous, the VEI 8s began in the aftermath of the CRB although lava floods happened well after, the last that was of flood basalt scale was only 7 million years ago and the Snake River volcanism is smaller but still very powerful for intraplate volcanism, some of the biggest lava flows in the Holocene are at Craters of the Moon, rivalling the rifting events that Iceland puts out.

        I am not sure that those Isisaurus would have walked so close to the lava though in reality, they did go rather insanely close at one point but I guess maybe they were upwind, maybe they liked looking at it as much as we do 🙂

        • Ontong Java Plateau was insane stuff too around 100 milllon cubic kilometers mostly in under one million years

  32. Was an earthquake at 10 km depth within the boundary of Mokuaweoweo just now. Not big, mag 2.2, and given how many quakes Kilauea is doing which are apparently not setting anything off, seems unlikely that an eruption will result. But the location is very interesting and is showing maybe that some pressure is returning after last years eruption.

    Would be great if the GPS for Mauna Loa was fixed, to show how much inflation has really happened, the tiltmeter has been going up pretty much ever since last years eruption ended so it is likely the GPS trend continues, which would be putting it at almost fully recovered from the 2022 eruption. So possibly Mauna Loa is getting a magma supply that is as high as Kilauea right now, maybe even higher, almost 0.2 km3/year. Doesnt mean it is getting that magma right out of the mantle like Kilauea is, but that is maybe not very important regarding the chance of it erupting again…

    • I’ve the impression that something broader is developing below Kilauea. There is not the Single inflation which leads to a local eruption, but more a general, systematic inflation in a greater area. Inflation looks slow, but sustainable.
      It could lead to a series of summit eruptions … or a longterm shield eruption. How else would seismicity and deformation look before a shield eruption?

      • Seismicity before Pu’u O’o was not different to before any other eruption in that area, nor was the character of the eruption when it began either, although the eruption was very powerful with a 100 m fountain and flow that advanced 5 km in a little over an hour. But it was not until the eruption resumed a few weeks later, and then did so again and again, that it became clear it was not typical. But really there was nothing in the seismic signals that would have indicated Pu’u O’o was to become the biggest effusive eruption on the planet in the past 230 years. I think perhaps if the conditions are right a normal eruption can evolve into something much larger, but doesnt necessarily begin with any warning of this. 2018 was the same, it began a lot like the 1955 eruption, a dike beginning near the highway, but when the quake happened a few days later it opened up the rift liek happened in 1975. But unlike in 1975, the flank slip happened adjacent to an open vent, and below a lava lake at hig helevation, and then to the east was a newly opened dike… It was a perfect storm.

        But agree with you on the way Kilauea is behaving, it has changed a lot, if it was still bound by the same rules as before then it woudl have logn since erupted or just not even stopped in February to begin with. Inflation is happenign over a wide area, and deep down, but it is also powerful enough that it is actually pushing on the tiltmeter. I thin ka major eruption is in the works at least some time soon, but not a shield, I think somethign much more powerful is on the cards. 2018 formed a ring fault, which has been intruded by dikes and seen quakes frequently since then, and now the outer faultso the caldera have been activated. Kilauea before 2018 was ERZ dominated, the summit was fixed, but now the summit is dynamic and the collapse has broken open all those old faults.

        An open vent liek Pu’u O’o probably will form somewhere in the summit, and it might become a new shield that buries the caldera. But the formation of that vent wil be anythign but quiet. Pu’u O’o had a month between fountains, but Mauna Ulu was only a week on average, while 1959 was maybe 3 days. The open vents in the caldera have a direct connection into the heart of Kilauea, no lag time, the fountaining episodes would be violent and in rapid succession, much more gas rich than flank eruptions as the CO2 doesnt exsolve yet. No-one was in Hawaii when the Observatory vent opened, but it probably wasnt as quiet as we tend to think of it. Something like what Etna did in 2021, with dozens of powerful fountains multiple times a week until the vent is too wide to confine the fountain and becomes effusive.

        Or a second Pu’u O’o forms on the SWRZ… 🙂

        • Pu’u O’o was a shield volcano, but on the rift zone. I’d expect that signals for a longterm slow shield eruption on the summit look different to rift zone shield volcanoes. The last big summit eruption of this type was Ailā‘au 1410-1470. It took 60 years, so nearly the double time of Pu’u O’o, and it shows that the summit is the “boss” in shield eruptions. Shield eruptions can cover parts of Kilauea with lava that usual eruptions of summit or RZs don’t cover.

          Maybe the summit shield eruptions need the ERZ to be blocked/cut off temporary so that magma doesn’t go there. The end of Maune Ulu eruption showed in small size what can happen when the inflow towards the ERZ is blocked: The July 1974 summit eruption of Keanakākoʻi.
          https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/pp1613
          HVO discovered: “net summit inflation during the latter half of 1973 indicated a blocking of the supply conduits to Mauna Ulu (Tilling and others, 1987) and helped set the stage for a return to summit eruptive activity.” (page 17)
          Pu’u O’o is at present still deflating. This may possibly show a blockage towards the ERZ and the ability of Kilauea to concentrate future eruptions on the summit.

      • The longer time goes without eruption the more massive will the next one be I guess .. I wants a shield to bury the whole summit and flow pahoehoe all over the edifice 🙂

  33. Bad shape my local ocean is in .. neither can I swim or enjoy nature. I guess its toxic too. The whole coast here smells like dog poop D : Thats how bad it is with the pollution here. The Baltic Sea haves to the worlds most polluted, overfertilized ocean, caused by excessive agicultural runoff, the enclosed nature of the sea only makes this 100 times worse as well.
    The whole ocean at my home is turning into goop 🤢. Too much nutrient influx from all Countries around the Baltic Sea, its a truely terrfying situation. The plankton goes crazy with all excess nutrients, creating wast blooms in the summer season. The more nutrients that fills the sea.. the worse the algal blooms will get.

    I woud either want to drain the whole sea or boil it away or make land out of it as its not a real sea geologicaly in anyway.

    Woud be fun with a New CAMP or Siberian Traps eruption in the Baltic Sea so the awful mess simply boils away : D and gets replaced by a lava plateau instead. But that woud flood euroasia with lava as well sadely

    https://www.svtstatic.se/image/wide/992/18673974/1531737798?format=auto

    • Woud be good with a massive volcano in the Baltic Sea and just blow the heck out of this mess

    • Only possibility for volcanic activity is a reactivation of the Mjøsa rift system of Oslo … 😉
      But that’s far away from open Baltic sea, and it was last active during Perm.

    • Yes the Sea situation sucks .. way too much nutrients and plankton growth the whole sea is Hyper – Eutrophic, this is the worlds most Eutrophic sea. Visibility is just a centimeter, decimeter at shore coasts to Maybe a meter out at sea. If its a plankton bloom the sea can be as opaque as green paint 🤢 Baltic Sea is Hyper Eutrophic

      Baltic Sea is a poop ocean = bajshav
      So I will never swim in it, in Stockholm Area the sea is in souch poor state its like green paint or like vietnam river

      Compare that to a Ultra Oligotrophic Ocean like Hawaii where visibility can sometimes reach 300 feet at dive sites like molokini crater! But there almost nothing grows in the water althrough corals thrive well in souch low nutrients water. Visibility in Hawaii can be so good it approaches sterilized water.

      Woud be good with a huge bad volcano in the Baltic Sea so this awful mess can dissapear 🙂 sometimes I wants to block the danish canals and make land out of this awful mess of a sea

      • You’d find that the volcano would fertilize the water very effectively (after the sulfur is gone). Eruptions can cause mercury and fluorine pollution but you also get a a lot of useful stuff. So I am not sure it would help you all that much! The best way to clean up the baltic is to create a channel to the Arctic and make Sweden and Norway an island. It worked for England.

      • Well well I only wants ultra oligotrophic oceans and thats an Impossible goal as its too much land around it and too cold in one part of season so the sea overturns and always gets fertile and too much land runoff.

        But is it possible to get the Baltic Sea as clear as Norway coast with that massive geoengineering stuff?

  34. Almost four months of inflation at Kilauea and Mauna Loa by putting together monthly tilt figures of HVO. I also try to get rid of the DI events of Kilauea, which are transient deflations of the volcano driven by its own inner workings, I’m not sure if we are in a broad DI or not right now, so there is two options for the end:

    Mauna Loa just deflated, it will be interesting to see if Kilauea starts inflating rapidly like it has done in the past in such situations.

    • This says it all really. The only other time in the past 5 years that had a higher rate of inflation was immediately before the September 2021 eruption, which was right after the SWRZ reactivated and was also the last time the ERZ responded to the pressure at the summit, so something changed a lot then. But that also broke after a month, and with fewer quakes, in only the 3 months since the last eruption ended there has been 15 cm of extension, equivalent to 60 cm a year, which is as far as I know the highest rate of inflation of any volcano by a long margin.

      Your plot also shows Kilauea and Mauna Loa being pretty equivalent up until a few weeks ago when Kilauea really takes off on its own.

      • Looks like Kilauea have a major sourge in supply again But its been very high since the late 2000 s, If i remebers correct the 2018 event was caused by a massive increase of supply as well, yea maybe something like a New Puu Oo will form soon with souch high supply

      • Around March 10 there was a marked increase in inflation rates of both Mauna Loa and Kilauea. Initially Mauna Loa was inflating faster (assuming the measurements can be compared), but over time Mauna Loa has gradually slowed down, while Kilauea has simultaneously sped up. Mauna Loa was inflating at about 7 microrad/month during March, but was only inflating at 2 microrad/month in May.

        Another interesting thing is that the most intense bout of inflation at Kilauea started around the time of the deep long period earthquake swarm under Mauna Loa. The DLP earthquakes happened around April 23-26. The fastest jump in the Kilauea tiltmeter started on April 25 and continued to April 29-30. During those 4-5 days, the tiltmeter was climbing at 25 microradians/month, which I think must be one of the highest rates ever recorded. So I think this establishes quite well (when taking into account what happened in 2002 and 2004-2005 too), that swarms of deep long-period earthquakes under Mauna Loa mean surges of magma into both volcanoes.

    • It looks like a systematic intrusion. The summit of Kilauea is supposedly rising now, and intrusions are an important type of growth for volcanoes.

    • I wish they could send an expedition up there to see what is going on in detail…

        • : D holy shit so happy this makes me .. looooves it

          Hmmm Nyiramuragira is maybe doing it to to make me happy

          • Its been doing that before as well .. haves lots of pahoehoe mounds on its slopes, but these more vigorous overflows may turn into Aa. If it continues it coud perhaps form a lava tube perhaps

          • It had already overflowed outside the caldera? Didn’t know that.

        • I’ve been looking at images from a year ago in Google Earth. And for the caldera to be overflowing must mean about 0.03 km3 have erupted in 14-15 months, which is not Hawaii/Iceland level, but is similar to the long-term effusion rate of Reunion, I think

          • By the looks of it, it could fill the caldera completely within a few more years and already filled the pit craters.

            What is interesting is that there is the “May 9th” vent, which is either a separate vent from the same chamber or something related to the shield-building process (I.e. para-vents from main vent.

    • Nyiramuragira going insane now .. I guess the magma column coud get too heavy and we gets another flank eruption. This is vigorous shield building. Nyiramuragira is an absolute monster in terms of magma supply among land volcanoes

    • Whoa. Now that’s intense. Lava fountains are issuing from multiple sides of the 500-meters wide crater of 2012 and making lava flows all over the caldera. I wonder if a fissure opened below the lava lake filling the 2012 crater, like what will happen at Kilauea soon enough.

    • Did this many times before 🙂 before modern times If you look at older flows in Google Earth. At Equator I guess lava flows dont last long at all .. Nyiragongos 1977 and 2002 flows are competely gone now under crazy vegitation .. the volcanoes are figthing some insane biological growth

      How long will Nyiragongos 2021 flows last ?

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