The Weekly Update #11 (22/04/16)

Welcome to a fairly quiet Weekly Update.

Following the excitement of Sakurajima, Popocatepetl and Zhupanovski over the past couple of weeks, I guess the Volcano Gods are taking a break.


Map showing the areas of operation of the various VAAC bodies.

Map showing the areas of operation of the various VAAC bodies.

We start as ever with the quiet zones, London, Toulouse,AnchorageMontreal and Wellington all have no reports in their respective VAAC areas of operation.


 

Washington VAAC

Colima

colima

A quiet week from Mexico’s Colima with only days of activity reported by Washington VAAC, and even then it has been fairly low level stuff.  Starting on the 15th we have a report of “discreet” ash and an emission reported on the 17th but with no further information attached.  On the 20th, a further emission was reported, and scientific models suggest that this reached 18000 feet.

 

Popocatepetl

Popocatapetl

A single event listed for El Popo, an explosion was detected via webcam monitoring and this sent ash up to 24000 feet.

 

Sangay

Sangay

A hotspot was spotted in the IR imaging of Sangay on the 16th followed by a “possible” ash eruption, and a confirmed ash eruption on the 19th with ash reaching 20000 feet.

 

Santa Maria

santiaguito

One of our busier volcanoes this week, Santiaguito served up a daily plume.  Starting on the 15th, we had “discreet” emissions to 18000 feet, followed by a couple of days of plumes to 16000 feet.  Then on the 19th we had a couple of plumes sent up almost on top of one another with the first reaching only 13500 followed quickly by a larger plume to 25000 feet.  The 20th also saw two plume with the first reaching 20000 feet and a later one reaching 18000 feet, and then a final burst of activity on the 21st with a “small” ash event sending a plume to 15000 feet.


 

Darwin VAAC

Dukono

dukono

Dukono really is a very consistent volcano with another week of constant plumes to 7000 feet.

 

Kerinci

Kerinci

A couple of reports by CVGHM of eruptions on the 16th and 21st sending plumes to around 14000/15000 feet mark.

 

Langlia

langlia

A single report from Langlia.  On the 21st ash was observed emitting to 7000 feet.

 

Semeru

semeru

Another single event reported at Semeru, with ash observed to 14000 feet.

 

Sinabung

Sinabung

we have three days with reported activity at Sinabung each with multiple events for that day.  Starting on the 16th. CVGHM reported two eruptions with ash to 15000 and 13000 feet.  On the 18th, ash was observed at 12000, 14000 and 13000 feet at various times throughout the day.  And finally on the 20th, we have another pair of eruptions, this time to 12000 and then 14000 feet.

 

 

Tengger Caldera

Tengger

Bromo continued where it left off last week with reports on the 16th and 17th, and then 19th and 20 each with ash reported to be at around 10000 feet.


Tokyo VAAC

Alaid

Alaid

Another volcano that has had a quieter time over the past week compared to previous weeks is Alaid in the Kuril Islands.  The only reported activity was on the 18th and 20th when ash was reported to 10000 feet and 12000 feet respectively.

 

Klyuchevskoy

Klyuchevskoy

Following last week’s late entry Klyuchevskoy had a couple of events at the start of the week before going quiet again.  On the 15th a continuous plume was reported to 18000 feet, I am suggesting that this is a continuation of the event on the 14th(as reported last week).  Another event later on the 15th saw a “possible” eruption sending a plume up to 23000 feet, but this could probably be a confirmed eruption given that another “continuous” plume was observed to 23000 feet.

 

Sakurijima

Sakurajima

Again, we have a volcano that has been extremely busy over the past few weeks that appears to have gone very quiet.  Just a single event was reported on the 17th with a plume to 10000 feet reported.

 

Suwanosejima

suwanosejima

Suwanosejima continues it’s recent trend with Strombolian activity reported almost everyday, sending plumes to around 4000 to 5000 feet, with the exception of the 19th and 20th when plumes were sent higher to around the 7000 to 8000 feet mark.

https://twitter.com/SherineFrance/status/722753862344421378

https://twitter.com/SherineFrance/status/722753862344421378


 

Buenos Aires

Copahue

Copahue

Another quiet week at Copahue with only light steam and ash reported on the 17th and 18th of April.

 

Sabancaya

sabancaya

A confused report of an eruption on the 16th sending ash to 20000 feet, however there are no details as to where this report came from and no further information given.

 

Villarrica

villarrica

Our only new entry into the report is Villarrica in Southern Chile.  A single report of Light ash and steam emitting from the summit is our only activity report from here.


And so there we have it.   As I said at the beginning, it has been a much quieter week than recent times and the pictures have been harder to source.

Carl said that last week’s report still had an issue with jumping around when he tried to comment and suggested that perhaps the Twitter/Facebook video’s included last week were to blame, so this week I have omitted those in the hope we can solve the issue.

/Hobbes

 

 

 

17 thoughts on “The Weekly Update #11 (22/04/16)

  1. Dear Hobbes, thank you for this weeks summary! Once again very informative and no “jumping” of the article. Good job!

      • Less jumpy? so it appears it was the cross loading of images/videos from other sites… Lesson learned 😀

        • Now it has stopped jumping completely. Some sort of residual jumpiness…

  2. Many thanks for this week’s excellent update! I really appreciate the work you put into these!

  3. I found this nice photo of the eruption from the Villarrica volcano last weekend

    The link provided did not work. The site will only accept a link directly to the picture, without framing or embedded code. Photobucket does not seem to make that possible – at least I could not see a way around this. /admin

      • No, this is not Hellisheidarvirkjun.
        This is tectonic earthquakes at Brennisteinsfjöll.

          • The driving force behind the two swarms are different.
            The first swarm at Hellisheidarvirkjun is caused by wastewater-reinjection and the second swarm is caused by tectonic shear on the Brennisteinsfjöll volcano.
            One did not cause the other, the first swarm was just too small for that.

        • Well, if they are tectonic in nature, then the common item would be the crustal plate that they are associated with. A wide range stress field change could be the culprit, but since plate boundaries are akin to the edges of a broken piece of pottery, any grinding along that interface is going to be pretty random in origin. From that, I would have to lean more towards coincidence. But, keep in mind that the first scenario is also just as likely.

          Synthetic Aperture radar analysis of the areas would really be the only really good method of saying either way. It would reveal fine grained detail in the ground movement and illustrate if there were some large stress field change at play. SAR imagery is usually hard to come by unless you stumble across it in someone’s research paper. To be applicable to the swarms, it would need imagery before and after the swarm to really point it out. Two passes just before the swarm would show the stress field leading up to it, bracketing the swam time period would illustrate what had changed during the swarm.

  4. Great article as always.

    Offtopic
    Askja getting busy lately…

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