Volcano World Cup 2018: Groups A-C

Here are the first 3 groups, all you have to do is read through the countries of each group then select 2 countries in the polls of each group who you want to advance to the knockout stage.

 

GROUP A

Russia

Effusive eruption on Kliuchevskoi. SOURCE: Photovolcanica.

The host country and also a volcanic powerhouse with no shortage of active volcanoes. We have the majestic Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains said to have last erupted during more or less 50 AD, and in Siberia there are a handful of volcanic regions especially Jom-Bolok and the Azas Plateau but no historical activity has been recorded. The most significant volcanic regions of Russia however lies in the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kurile Islands. Notable volcanoes include (but not limited to) Kliuchevskoi, Sheveluch, Karymsky, Tolbachik, Avachinsky, Ebeko, Chikurachki, etc.

Saudi Arabia

Lava fields of Harrat Khaybar. SOURCE: Synthesis of the Geoheritage Values of the Volcanic Harrats of Saudi Arabia/ResearchGate.

The western strip of Saudi Arabia is where the volcanoes are, and is associated with the rifting of the Red Sea. If you look on Google Earth you can see numerous volcanic cones and extensive lava fields. Historical eruptions have occurred on Harrat Khaybar, Harrat Lunayyir, Harrat Rahat, and Jabal Yar. Hot spring activity occurs at Jabal Yar. In 2009, a seismic swarm at Harrat Lunayyir indicated a dike intrusion and also caused an 8 km long surface rupture.

Egypt

Volcanic hills in Egypt’s Black Desert. SOURCE: looklex.com

No volcanoes in Egypt but evidence for prehistoric volcanic activity can be found in the Bahariya Oasis Depression especially the volcanic hills of the Black Desert.

Uruguay

Cerro Batovi, a remnant of the Parana flood basalt. SOURCE: Wikipedia.

No volcanoes in Uruguay, but the Parana continental flood basalt province extends into northern Uruguay. It was formed as a result of a flood basalt eruption during the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean around 140 million years ago. Basaltic dyke swarms of Precambrian age are also present in Uruguay.

 

GROUP B

Portugal

Pico, the highest volcano in the Azores. SOURCE: climbingpicoazores.blogspot.co.uk

Portugal’s volcanism lies within the offshore islands. The island of Madeira is volcanic in origin but the most significant volcanism lies in the volcanoes of the Azores in the Mid Atlantic Ocean. The most notable volcanoes are Pico on the island of the same name, and Capelinhos on the island of Fayal which started off as a submarine eruption in 1957 before merging with the rest of the island.

Spain

Teide on the island of Tenerife. IMAGE: Ben Lostracco.

Mainland Spain has the Olot and Calatrava volcanic fields but both haven’t got a lot to offer, which leaves the Canary Islands having the most significant volcanoes of Spain and where the historical activity lies. It is on the islands of Lanzarote, Tenerife, La Palma, and Hierro where the most significant volcanism can be found. The most notable volcano is the majestic Pico de Teide on the island of Tenerife. The most recent eruption in the Canaries came in 2011-2012 when an underwater vent erupted off shore of Hierro.

Morocco

The cone of Jbel Hebri. SOURCE: israbat.ac.ma

Extinct volcanoes are present in Morocco especially Jbel Sirwa, Jbel El Koudiate, Jbel Outgui, and Jbel Hebri to name some. There are also numerous volcanic craters located southeast of the city of Azrou.

Iran

The conical peak of Damavand. SOURCE: wallpaperstudio10.com

There’s only a few volcanoes in Iran but a couple of them are impressive enough. Though no historical eruptions have been known, Bazman, Taftan, and Damavand are still fumarolically active. Damavand is the most prominent of all, this impressive conical stratovolcano stands at 5670m asl and lies northeast of the capital city Tehran.

 

GROUP C

France

Piton de la Fournaise on the island of La Reunion. SOURCE: Espirit Rando Reflex Photos.

Mainland France has a reasonably impressive volcanic chain located in south central France, the Chaine des Puys which last had an eruption at least 6000 years ago. But include the overseas territories and France has quite a nice selection of volcanoes, some of which had erupted during historical times. Two examples given are Matthew Island which is an above the sea section of a lava dome in the Pacific Ocean to the south of Vanuatu having last erupted in 1956, and St. Paul in the Indian Ocean which only had one historical eruption back in 1793. But the most notable volcanoes of France lie in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion. We have Soufriere Guadaloupe which last erupted in 1977, then we have Mont Pelee which was made famous from the devastating eruption of 1902, and finally we have Piton de la Fournaise a hotspot shield volcano which erupts more or less every year.

Australia

Mawson Peak, Australia’s most active volcano on Heard Island. IMAGE: K. Kiefer.

The Newer Volcanics Province lies in southeastern Australia, cones include Mount Schank, Mount Gambier, Mount Napier, and Mount Elephant. However, none of them have been active during historical times. Volcanic activity is present in the Australian territory of Heard and McDonald Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. Mawson Peak on Heard Island is where most of the eruptive activity is.

Peru

Sabancaya blowing an ash cloud. SOURCE: Photovolcanica.

The volcanoes of Peru forms the northern part of the Central Volcanic Zone in the Andes mountain range of South America. Historically active volcanoes include Huaynaputina, El Misti, Tutupaca, Ubinas, and Sabancaya. The most recently active Peruvian volcano Sabancaya is currently blowing ash clouds.

Denmark

The Geikie Plateau in eastern Greenland. IMAGE: Michael Studinger.

There are no volcanoes in Denmark but volcanism is evident in the overseas territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. One of them is the Geikie Plateau in eastern Greenland which is a flood basalt province formed as a result of the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean, and another is the Faroe Islands which is a remnant of the Thulean Plateau basaltic lava plain which is part of the North Atlantic Igneous Province also formed as a result of the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean.

 

Polls will close on the 16th June.

RENÉ GOAD

129 thoughts on “Volcano World Cup 2018: Groups A-C

  1. I picked the Siberian traps. You don’t get much bigger than that.

    Denmark was about as close as I could get to the CAMP which formed the Atlantic in its wake.

    • Bah… I should have picked Spain. They have Cabo de Gata volcanic field
      Three Large Calderas.

      • Reportedly, the world’s worse fly ash contamination was because the traps erupted through a coal seam.

  2. I would like to point out that in Australia there is a second volcanic area that is active, the McBride’s (undara) lava field. It was formerly believed to be extinct and predating human arrival, but recent studies (last year) have shown that not only is it still very alive, but its last eruption was only 7000 years ago, and that eruptions have happened in that area fairly consistently about every 10,000 years for 5 million years or more with activity slowly increasing over that time and no significant periods of inactivity exceeding 20,000 years. It is possibly somewhere between a shield volcano and a flood basalt in its character, as the eruptions that happen there seem to be uniformly big, and often just downright gigantic, but are very loosely centralized radially around a (slightly) higher point. It is also the source of the 160 km long undara lava flow, one of the biggest on earth.

    https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/114383

    I think if 20 million year old flood basalts are enough to count Denmark in this list, then a still active volcanic field that has done that same sort of thing in the last 10,000 years should count for Australia 😉

    • I understand the Atherton Volcanics; about 140 km from Undara; include relatively recent events (10K to 20K) as well, at Lake Barrine, Lake Eacham and Mt Hypipamee.

      Found in the dungeon – admin

      • Yes I believe you are correct on this too. They are all pleistocene craters but one of them is about 13,000 years old, I forget which one though. That area is probably related to the same source that feeds the mcbride and nulla/sturgeon fields, which might be another hotspot or it could be the result of something similar to what Carl described in his volcanoes of Norway article. If it is like that then it could be in the early stages of becoming a flood basalt province at some point in the future (that is very speculative though). Certainly there were probably quite a few eruptions that were observed by people in the area, and there will be more in the future.

    • Im actually surprised this hasnt been commented on, usually my comments attract a lot of attention for various reasons… (not bragging, just noting a truth 🙂 )

      In any case I think that if extinct eroded provinces of cretaceous to precambrian age are included in the volcanic features of other countries, then basically the entire eastern part of Australia should be similarly included, as there are eroded volcanoes all the way along there, as well as some still active ones. I think it is possible for eruptions to happen along the entire length, although they are extremely infrequent except on the Artherton tableland area and newer volcanic province. Australia is not anywhere near as volcanically inactive as was previously believed even a few years ago, and a number of places are considering the serious risk of a future eruption into their long term plans, including Melbourne.
      The chance of an eruption happening in a given lifetime in either area is about 3%, so it is 2000 times as likely as a VEI 8 happening in said time period.

      I’m just adding this because I live in Australia and thought I might as well represent something (for once…)
      😉

      • Technically, you’re not the one that deviated towards and beyond the Cretaceous, I was when I mentioned the CAMP. (201 myr or so). This was due to my tendency to drag ancient volcanism out to the forefront just because I find it interesting… and for not knowing or understanding the rules.

        I like the 3% chance note. That’s rare enough to be considered as practically impossible by some. If it were fully ignored by those responsible for mitigating the hazard if it happens, then it would be good Black Swan fodder. That someone in government is actually realizing it’s a risk (though long term) is a good thing and goes a long way towards dealing with what could be a disaster.

        The thing about the CAMP, is if it is included… any nation with Atlantic Ocean shoreline is in play. Even Georgia. (The State, not the Country) And an odd coincidence, was also originally intended as a penal colony. ‘yall have Melbourne, we have Athens.

        (Yes, that is an actual name of a city in Georgia. About the time it was founded, there was a rampant desire in the US to give places a Greek or Greek like name. It sort of a hang up. We have “New” York NY, “New London” CT etc. We even have our own Memphis, in Tennessee. “Lost Wages” is a different story → (Los Vegas)

        • The theoretical average time between eruptions is 10,000 years for NVP, and 15,000 for mcbride, but those are the minimum numbers because there are almost certainly a lot of older vents that have been buried. Particularly the undara eruption from mcbride probably buried dozens of vents from older eruptions, as eruptions there often dont make pyroclastic cones so they might be easily obscured by later events. The last eruption from there was 7000 years ago, but I dont know when the one before that was so I cant work out much from that, but the chance of another eruption happening in the next 5000 years is high.

          The last confirmed eruption that is undeniable is the eruption of mt schank, which happened 5600 years ago. Blue lake volcano could be younger but it isn’t as well dated so it might be somewhat older too, but it is definitely holocene in age and probably less than 100 years apart from mt schank to account for stories recalling both eruptions together. They probably formed as a result of the same eruptive episode.
          The next youngest volcano is the red craters near lake corangamite (9000 years), and then either tower hill (13,000 years?), mt napier (<20,000 years) or mt eccles (<18,000 years). Some of the volcanoes around Camperdown are probably less than 20,000 years old too, but there isnt very much information on their actual ages.
          Many of the volcanoes are very big and have probably erupted more than once, or had very long eruptions in several episodes that might have lasted over a considerable time period. One of the scoria cones inside tower hill is apparently only 7000 years old and there are two lava flows from mt eccles that are ~30,000 years apart but start from the same area . The mt eccles crater (lake surprise) is a long line of pits that probably contained a massive lava lake, it probably looked similar to holuhraun when it was erupting.
          I went to most of these places last year, so I actually have personal experience with this one, unlike most of the other stuff I talk about on here 😉

          With that in mind, the average eruption separation for more recent activity is probably more like 5000-6000 years, and given that the last one happened about 5500 years ago it is actually more like 500 years until another one could be expected. The chance of an eruption happening before the end of this century is then about 20%, which is actually not low at all and is high enough to give me a decent chance of seeing it. It is not anywhere close to overdue though, as most of those reports were because a lot of other vents were undated and believed to be holocene when they weren't, giving a 2000 year average between eruptions.

          Wasn't there a post about the newer volcanics province on here from a few years ago?

          • Mt Burr is another volcano in the vicinity of Gambier and Shank that erupted around the same time. I nearly bought a house there last month. Cheap real estate; but not because of the risk of imminent eruption.

          • Did you find the 10,000 years number by using the number of vents (~400) and the age (4 million years)?
            There is actually an information center in Penshurst which has a lot of information on the ages of the volcanoes and rocks there. Eruptions at some points were as much as 50,000 years apart on average, but now it is far less.

            The known holocene volcanoes are:
            VIC/SA
            -mt schank and blue lake volcano (5500 years)
            -red craters volcano (probably multiple eruptions, 10,000 – 8000 years)
            -possibly one cone inside tower hill (7000 years old cone?)
            -possibly some of mt eccles (not sure how old but after glacial maximum)
            QLD
            -kinrara volcano on the mcbride field (7000 years old)

            Late pleistocene volcanoes include:
            VIC/SA
            -mt napier (apparently 32,000 years old but it looks much younger than that, probably a very long eruption like pu’u o’o or several different eruptions over a time period)
            -tower hill (13,000 years old, probably multiple eruptions)
            -mt leura (~10,000 years old)
            -mt eccles (50,000 and <20,000 years old, multiple eruptions)
            -lake purrumbete (~20,000 years old)
            -lake bullen merri (not sure but probably less than 30,000 years old)
            -mt elephant (not sure but less than 50,000 years old)
            -mt noorat (not sure but less than 100,000 years old)
            -some volcanoes in the Ballarat area (not sure)
            -probably a lot more that are undated.
            QLD
            -toomba lava flow on the nulla/sturgeon field (23,000 years old)
            -mt fox (300,000 years old and some later vents)
            -undara lava flow(very long eruption, 189,000 years old)
            Some smaller volcanoes on mcbride lava field that are younger than undara.

            Obviously the volcanoes are hard to date as you go further back, but at least two unrelated volcanoes in the newer volcanics have definitely erupted in the last 10,000 years and possibly 2 more have as well although that is uncertain. There have also been at least 4 more in the last 30,000 years. I know volcanoes dont hold to patterns very much but it would be more sensible to assume an eruption frequency based on the recent behavior rather than the entire thing averaged over its lifetime. 30/6 is 6, so with 6 eruptions in 30,000 years there would be an eruption every 6000 years, which is pretty much spot on to what is observed. It is also not as simple as a volcano appearing one day and then it is done after its first eruption, many of the vents probably remain active for a long period of time, much longer than would be expected from the simple term 'monogenetic volcano'.

            Based on this, there is a high chance of an eruption in the next 500 years, and assuming a 100% chance after that time there is about 20% of it happening this century.

          • My notes don’t say. However, I am cautious about claimed dates. The long-term experience is that younger eruptions tend to be dated too young (mainly I think because people tend to go for the youngest date allowed by the data). I would have taken a longer time period, because it has the effect that you get too many young dates and a deficit in older dates. The funny things is that if you making dating errors (not the romantic type, obviously), your final list of recent eruptions becomes dominated by ones dated too young. That is true even if the errors are completely random, i.e. equally likely to be too young as too old. In astrophysics the effect is called the Lutz-Kelker bias. I wouldn’t have taken 4 million years – that is too long for a current average. But it would have been much more than 10,000 years.

            By the way, if the average length is 10,000 years, the expected time until the next eruption does not depend on how long ago the last one was.

          • I have heard of mt burr but I think the age of 7000 years is probably inaccurate based on its appearance. That date might have been from confusion with the dates for blue lake and mt schank. I dont know though exactly so it might be another holocene volcano to add to the list.

          • What about Heard Island..its Australian Territory..and still active

          • Greg this is more about volcanoes on the australian continent, rather than overseas territory. Heard island is very active though, one of that elite group that appears to be active continuously for very long time periods. I think it has erupted every time it has been observed so it should actually put australia quite high on the list, at least equal with france, though maybe a bit behind peru at the moment.

            Albert the eruption dates for most of the younger vents are well known. There are 3 undeniably holocene volcanoes in Australia, 4 if you count blue lake and mt schank as separate events, and 7 counting heard island and mcdonald island. The date for the supposed 7000 year old cone at tower hill is based on information from the visitor center there, and I haven’t found anything about it elsewhere, but I also haven’t found anything saying it isn’t 7000 years old so I will remain neutral on that date until someone can prove it is a false number. Apparently the outer maar crater of tower hill is 25000 years old but I remember seeing a date of 13,000 years for some products inside the crater so this center might have been active more than once or over a very long time period. This same problem is also found at mt eccles where there are very widely varying dates for different lava flows, with the oldest dates being around 50,000 years old but some are much younger. The crater is also very un-eroded despite being in a wet temperate environment, so I have doubts that it is entirely over 30,000 years old like is claimed on wikipedia. In all honesty it looks about as young as some of the cones on kilauea that are near the current eruption site and are less than 500 years old (not saying it actually is the same age but it is interesting)…
            Volcanic cones in other parts of the world that are 30,000 years old are usually very eroded under those conditions so it seems strange that this would be an exception.

  3. Here’s the latest caldera event

    https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/hv70256021

    5.3 Volcanic Eruption 5km WSW of Volcano, Hawaii
    2018-06-12 11:52:51 (UTC)
    0.8 km

    https://twitter.com/USGSVolcanoes/status/1006537076819423232
    USGS Volcanoes
    🌋
    ‏Verified account @USGSVolcanoes

    Kīlauea Message Tue, 12 Jun 2018 03:58:21 HST: At 1:52 AM HST, another small explosion occurred at Kīlauea’s summit. This event and many of its precursory earthquakes were widely felt in the Volcano area. Ashfall may impact communities in the south part of the island.

    And two more 3+ in the Pahala area sequence.

    https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/hv70255881

    3.4 6km WSW of Pahala, Hawaii
    2018-06-12 11:12:16 (UTC)
    36.4 km

    https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/hv70255681

    3.5 4km ESE of Pahala, Hawaii
    2018-06-12 10:04:27 (UTC)
    34.5 km

  4. Reports say Harry Kane has claimed all the volca…. ah, never mind, old joke lol

  5. There is another volcanic area in Spain, Cabo de Gata. Please be precise when you give details or don’t give at all.

    • Popocatepetl’s current alert level is set to what it has been for the last 5 years….

  6. The Danish king ruled Iceland 1523 – 1918. One could argue the eruptions happened in Denmark in that time span.
    Laki = Denmark 😀 😀

  7. There is a slight increase in the tremor signal picked up by a seismometer uprift from Leilani, close to Heiheiahulu. It is not much thing but during the last days it had been very stable.

    • The fountain at fissure 8 looks lower now too. The cone is ~40 meters tall and the fountain is about half the height of the cone, so much less than before. The lava flow looks about the same but that could be because of a recent change. HVO hasnt said anything about it yet so it might have only happened in the last few hours.

      The steaming 130 fissure is near heiheiahulu, so it could be an indication of a jump to that location. I dont think much will happen from there compared to the massive flow from fissure 8 though, as the deflation at the summit is probably going to stop some time soon and the eruption has probably gotten to most of its maximum size, but if it flows south it might reach the ocean quickly. If it flows east then the rest of leilani will be doomed.

      I dont think anything will happen after that though (pu’u o’o reactivation is very unlikely at this point), and kilauea will actually stop erupting for more than a month, for the first time in my life…

      • My interpretation was that the magma transport rate had increased and I was waiting to see changes in the eruption but right now it is nightime and that makes it difficult to tell if the fountain is lower or higher. The vent doesnt seem to have moved up to now.

  8. Pu’u’O’o has changed behaviour from exponential decay (e^-t) to a linear one. The exponential phase would have bene dominated by relaxation after the sudden emptying of the magma chamber, in the first days of the crisis. The fact that it is now linear suggests magma is still leaving, now at a constant rate, and is not being replenished (at least not at the same rate). As the fissure-8 eruption has a fairly constant eruption rate, the suggestion is that the two are related. The eruption is feeding from the magma higher up the rift. But it makes the Pu’u’O’o area a source region for the eruption. Kilauea magma is not replenishing the area. Makes you wonder where the Kilauea magma has been going. Perhaps it stays uprift from Pu’u’O’o, or it bypasses it.

    • Interesting observation. The magma is probably going into the area that was initially drained, between pauahi and makaopuhi craters. Maybe this also means the eruption will stop soon and that the rate of magma flowing to pu’u o’o through the rift has decreased with the deflation at the summit. This could shut off the east rift for a while as the summit either re-inflates or eruptions just directly happen at the bottom of the crater.

      This could turn out to be a significant point of understanding how this works.

      • There are various interpretations possible. I have the impression that it now differs from Holuhraun where the eruption was diminishing a bit after 1-2 months. I expect that most of the magma for Puna was stored in the rift, not in a magma chamber. The rift is in pressure balance, between the magma and the rock. Remove some magma and the rift will close a bit, keeping the pressure the same. That might be happening here. In that case the eruption could start to get less quite suddenly, when the rift gets so narrow that the magma can no longer flow the distance. But let’s see what happens.

        • I think the magma storage capacity of the Upper and Middle ERZ is larger than what most people think. I have tried to calculate the initial volume of the East Makaopuhi crater before being mostly filled by recent eruptions through assuming the same width-depth ratio to what Hiiaka has (which is already slightly filled) and obtained a depth of 208 m after collapse which is probably an underestimation. The volume for half an ellipsoid using these dimensions (0.5kmx0.5kmx208m) is of 109000000 m3 which means that the East Makaopuhi former reservoir could have fed the 1960 eruption alone and Napau should be similar in size. Napau and Makaopuhi are similar in age so there is a posibility that they formed at the same time, I would estimate a combined volume of almost 200000000 m3. These two reservoirs were probably destroyed during their collapses and I dont know how fast can they recover again but Makaopuhi suffered a second large collapse, the West Makaopuhi pit, just a few hundred years or less later. Other smaller but still large collapses have happened at Pauhai, Keanakako and Alae. It would be very interesting to see some new pit craters form during this eruption.

          One difference between Holuhraun and Leilani is that at the beginning of the eruption the south flank of Kilauea slipped up to 0.5 m towards the ocean during the M6.9 earthquake on May 4th and I dont know how much of that is reversible. Maybe the opening of the rift is also responsible for part of the deflation at the summit as magma flows into newly opened spaces.

          • Actually after another calculation I have obtained an approximate volume for the East Makaopuhi crater when it formed of 232000000 m³, this is because I think the depth of the crater when it formed would have been around 430 m which is more than double of what I considered the first time. Hiiaka is maybe the best conserved pit crater of the ERZ since most of the other craters have been completely buried or partly filled by recent flows but the West Makaopuhi crater is maybe the most recently formed one and before 1965 it was almost untouched by any lavas and so I consider it a better example of how the original shape of these craters is, before 1965 it had a depth of 310 m so that already means that the bigger East Makaopuhi had to be deeper than that. The shape should also be more similar because they affect the same materials as they are next to each other.

            232000000 m³ is more than what the 1840 eruption is thought to have produced and when adding Napau the combined volume of the two could rise close to 400000000 m³. If the caldera-like model is right then all that volume corresponded to magma that was either erupted or intruded somewhere.

          • @Thedustdevil and anyone else that is interested.

            The raised “3” denoting “cubic” something can be written on the fly by holding down the [alt] key and typing 0179 on the numeric keypad. 0178 gives you the “2” for “square” annotation.

            → Yes, there are other combinations that give you different symbols. ←

            WordPress™ doesn’t seem to complain, though other forum software can get obstinate a give you garbage (depending on Admin settings)

        • I guess this might also be another line of evidence to support my hypothesis of the summit collapse (both now and in 1924 and 1960) being mostly the result of the conduit feeding the lava lake collapsing, rather than a piston-like collapse that we saw at bardarbunga when holuhraun was forming. This would also mean the lower part of the conduit is probably still there and as such eruptions could probably happen easily and might do so with almost no warning. If it goes a few years without erupting then the ground might become cold enough to allow water to deep in and cause a big phreatomagmatic eruption but somehow I doubt it will be that long before another eruption happens there. Even in 1924 with the extremely low magma supply rate it still managed to erupt multiple times within a year afterwards, so now with the high supply rate it could be as little as a few weeks but a few months is more likely, still not long though.

          I think there is a known magma storage area between pu’u o’o and napau, or partly overlapping napau, so that could be the source of the current eruption? It is what fed the eruptions of the 1960s as well as 1983, 1997 and 2011, and probably also that tiny almost failed eruption on the west side of pu’u o’o at the start of the current episode. In this case pu’u o’o might end up being partly cut by a big pit, another uncanny similarity to kane nui o hamo and makaopuhi. Pele is doing a lot of landscaping recently, she must have been getting bored of doing the same thing for a decade.

          I honestly never thought I would see this much change so quickly at kilauea within my lifetime. I thought pu’u o’o would eventually just die out and the overlook crater would quietly continue to erupt in the same manner and fill the summit eventually until another big flank eruption happened somewhere. Instead both of them have changed beyond recognition, going out with a bang more than a whimper, and the second biggest lava flow kilauea has ever done in recorded history was apparently also in the plan too…
          It is stuff like this that earns it the title of ‘worlds most active volcano’, although it might lose its ‘worlds safest volcano’ title after what has happened recently and the recent discovery of its ashy and violent history…

          (Technically kilauea is a flat stratovolcano because it’s summit area is built from tephra just as much as lava and it has erupted violently in sequence with effusive activity, shows how useless our definitions can be sometimes).

          • I have read about a reservoir 4km under the sea level beneath Napau. Other locations that have been suggested to host bodies of magma are Pauhai, Mauna Ulu-Makaopuhi, Kupaianaha and Puu Kaliu. You also have mentioned one under Keanakako which would make sense to me.

          • There is also one under the kamakaia hills on the southwest rift. It was the only place on kilauea that had erupted something close to andesite before this year.

            I don’t know if the magma under pu’u kaliu is the same sort of thing as the actual chambers under the upper rift, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most of that area is under lain by small pockets, one of which must have been there for a long time to create silicic magma.

            The deep chamber under the napau area is very probably not what the crater formed from either, or napau would be way bigger. The collapses are cone shaped so they start off smaller than they are at the surface. Some eruptions could have been derived from that chamber though as you have said before.

          • Technically volumes should be measured in m³ (thanks Lurk), km³ (ie 1000m³), Mm³ and so on but unfortunately this can get confused with Gm³ = (km)³.

            However I really don’t like all these zeros like 232000000 m³ because mistakes are easily made and its very hard to get a feel for magnitudes. Very few figures justify even two orders of magnitude in their accuracy (ie 1.0 to 9.9) let alone three.

            I propose, as a scientific blog, that Gm³ are used but happy with (km)³. Not that anyone will take any notice as gross overspecification of pseudo accuracy is sadly rife in the whole scientific community let alone here.

          • Yes, it is best to put the number in cubic kilometer. 1 km3 = 10003 m3, by the way. This avoids having to carefully count zeroes. A hole of 0.5 by 0.5 by 0.5 km gives a volume of just over 0.1 km3. Much easier than 100000000m3.

          • In that case my estimation of the volume for East Makaopuhi after being formed is of 0.23 km³ for a bowl shaped pit 1kmx1kmx0.4km. Napau should have been close to 0.2 km³.

  9. just spent some time scrolling back over the Hawaii earthquake times (39:37) for the latest of 5.3 and coordinating it with the live cam but couldn’t see any indication of an eruption/ rock fall. So there’s 30 minutes of my life i’m not getting back( as in James Acaster’s commentary)ps… if You haven’t heard him; he is a riot and on Netflex…. must have more coffee) Best!motsfo

  10. Hawaii News reports on a plan to relocate the affected Leilani residents. The proposed locations are on or next to the 1840 lava flows. I am a bit uncertain on the wisdom. The lava flows of the past 200 years have very carefully avoided duplication: they tend not to overlap. So perhaps on top of the 1840 flows is doable (or even on top of the 1960 flows). But it does not sounds reassuring to me.

    • If the flows were similar to those of, say, Etna -about 10-15m thick- this would make good sense, since lava streams are very much gravity-dependent Higher ground is your friend For flows like the current ones,(are these more typical for Kilauea?) sometimes only about 2-3m thick, the difference in elevation might not be so effective.

      And if a fissure opens up under your basement, you’re screwed anyway

      • These lava flows are way more than 3 meters thick. The ground where fissure 8 is erupting now is at least 20 meters higher than before the eruption started, and then the cone on top is about 40 meters tall so the top of the fissure 8 cone is actually about 60 meters tall at least compared to the spot that was there when the vent formed.

        I made this gif of the rise of fissure 8. It isn’t that good because I didn’t save any pictures before May 23 apart from one on May 6th (the active vents were out of view in that time period), so it kind of jumps a lot, bit it is definitely noticeable that the vent area is higher at the end.

        The perched lava channel is probably a similar depth (15 meters?), and the lava near kapoho is probably about 10 meters thick based on what the pictures looked like when it was overrunning the place.
        The majority of the flows in this eruption are big channelized a’a flows, which are similar to the ones on mt etna. They are much less similar to the thin pahoehoe flows from pu’u o’o.

        • Comment placeholder left intact in case there was a response to this.

        • Comment placeholder left intact in case there was a response to this.

        • I was going on the basis of video/photo footage from Leilani early in the eruption, with shots of flows moving down roads etc these seemed to be little more than head height judged against the individuals watching them A 10-15m thick flow stands about as high as a two-storey house; and yes, the sustained ‘canalised’ flow from 8 will certainly be 10m or even more, especially once it develops levees

          • Yes, they start at 2-3 meters deep, but usually they end up being 10 meters deep and sometimes up to 20 or 30 meters deep by the end. It might be better to call something like that a ponded lava lake rather than a simple lava flow though, but it still
            The flow near kapoho was definitely more than 5 meters deep though when it was flowing through the town.

    • At least the 1840 flows aren’t actually on the rift zone… The 1960 flows are so eruptions could happen there in the future so not as good. Really hazard zone 1 should just be restricted to farming and allow no official residences. Hazard zone 2 is better but still a bit sketchy but hazard 3 is probably fine.

      A lot more of the area north of the rift will have to be added to the second hazard zone now though, as pu’u o’o has effectively created a ridge that will push lava that direction in future eruptions from that area and downrift. Granted it would take a pretty big flow to reach the inhabited areas ~20 km downslope but it has managed that before. The fissure 8 flow now could probably reach that sort of length pretty easily so something like that but up on the north side of the pu’u o’o complex could be a big deal for the places on the north side which previously never had to deal with rift zone flows. Basically all of puna is now at potential risk of lava flows from the east rift zone.

  11. The webcam shows the lava channel but no fountain. There are three steam plumes further away along the rift, visible because of the change in wind. Some new burning on PGV property. The lava river is looking more crusted over than before but that may look different at night. Close to the camera, the bushes and trees have lost their leaves, presumably due to sulphate poisoning.

    • What a difference tro May 22nd:

      (this is an animated gif, don’t know if forum software does recognize this correctly. If not click it and watch the gif at the host or copy the url to the browser#s address bar)

      • That is what I was aiming for when I made my gif but it didnt work as well…

        HVO has said on images today that the cone is about 40 meters tall now and the fountains are slightly higher. The lava eruption rate is still about the same so there must just not be a lot of dissolved gas in the lava now.

        The cone looks similar to the eruption that happened on piton de la fournaise in August-October 2015, which also formed a spattering cinder cone about 40 meters high (it was named piton kala pele, the first time a vent was named on reunion this century I believe).

        Of course the effusion rate of the eruption now is way higher than the eruption on Reunion, leading to the cone bing a lot wider at the base (probably about 150 meters at least) and also breached. I dont think piton de la fournaise has ever had an eruption as big as the one on kilauea now in its entire 400 year recorded history (2007 was close but has since been significantly outdone after fissure 8 started). Clearly the source feeding Hawaii is much more powerful than the one feeding Reunion

      • A new system of units seems to be appearing to describe volume x Dump Trucks = 1 Olympic Swimming Pool This could be invaluable for Daily Fail journalists,at least 🙂

        • Maybe they could go the extra step and define it as undercroft sizes.

          Though I think I may be to blame for the dumptruck unit of measure. I used dumptrucks per second several months ago to scale just how large an eruptive mass rate was. The problem with dumptrucks is that they come in various sizes. There is no “standard” dumptruck. I used 9 cubic yards for my hypothetical dumptruck… which I found later was still incorrect… Tri-Axels are typically about 12, and I only used Tri-Axels because around here, they are usually the ones zipping in and out of traffic like a sports car. (When unloaded, they have a significant power to weight ratio)

        • That is the weight of 560,000 Rio de Janeiro (2016) olympic medals per second.

          • In retrospect… this whole dumptruck/swimming pool thing is just like my Twinkie scale for denoting rediculously small quakes in Iceland that people were freaking out over. Measured in the food energy of Twinkies, they don’t seem that hazardous.

      • That is about what I calculated last week, good to know I wasnt overdoing it.

        That eruption rate is roughly 8.9 million m3 of lava per day. The estimate of 6-9 million m3 of lava per day was already in use on the second day the vent was reactivated so that would mean that the amount of lava erupted from fissure 8 alone is about 150 million m3, or 0.15 km3. It has done more in 2 weeks than the entire 1960 eruption did in a month. That is completely ignoring the just under 2 weeks of similar eruptions along the eastern half of the fissure…
        If the insane figure of 12 million m3 per day was actually a real number for the last week of May, then that adds another 84 million m3 onto that 150 million m3 from fissure 8, and even if that number is too high (it probably is) then the lava eruption rate across the fissure was probably about the same as it is now which would be 63 million m3. This eruption is at least 215 million m3 or 0.215 km3 of lava at this point.

  12. This just posted by USGS on facebook in response to a question

    https://www.facebook.com/USGSVolcanoes/posts/2063109657050918

    USGS Volcanoes: This is history in the making. We’ve not seen anything like this before at Kīlauea. The caldera itself formed around 1470 CE after the ‘Ailā‘au eruption ended. It was probably around 600 m (1970 ft below the present-day caldera rim. Eruptions at the summit in the years since filled the caldera to its current depth. Prior to explosions at Halema‘uma‘u in 1924, the entire crater hosted a lava lake. However, the crater diameter was closer to 500 m (1640 ft). The lava lake drained in February 1924, then subsidence and explosive eruptions occurred over a few months. Halema‘uma‘u doubled in diameter to approximately 1,000 m (3,280 ft) and subsided about 285 m (935 ft) after the lava lake drained. What we’re seeing now is a similar process, but the scale of deformation is larger.

      • HVO isn’t actually there now. They moved their operations to office space provided by the University because of the projectile threat. (Following their version of the “don’t be there” common sense idea.) They do have facilities there, and until those structures are destroyed, I imagine they will still use them to support field operations.

        • Yes I guess they are not hanging about there too much at the moment! I just meant about the location of the current main HVO building so it is a similar camera location to that of today’s webcams.

  13. Faroe Islands aren’t really known for geothermal activity(there’s one spring with water some 20ish celsius hot), which made the discovery that a tunneling crew (Constructing a subsea road tunnel) , when they encountered boiling water a rather unique experience.
    They didn’t think anything particular of it weirdly enough, filmed it and put the disovery on Facebook, and then paved everything over. Now authorities and scientist are going to open up the pavement and do some extra digging to find out more about this boiling water, if there’s enough of the hot water it might even be put to use for heating and whatnot.

    Short vid of boiling/steaming water in the article.
    http://portal.fo/hava+moguliga+funnid+heita+keldu+undir+skalafjordinum.html

  14. USGS Volcanoes
    🌋 Retweeted
    Jascha Polet
    ‏ @CPPGeophysics
    4h4 hours ago

    Like clockwork…

  15. Future storm Beryl (not even a tropical storm yet) seem to be following in it’s brothers footsteps.

  16. HVO had to move operations…. it’s impossible to observe a volcano if on the edge….. too much fallout interferes with everything…… and the air is impossible to breathe. Dirt people are down to earth…. (“WAy down….. to the core” says hubby from his comfey chair) Best!motsfo

  17. Impressive before and after image slider May 3rd /June 13th

    From Richard Payne on volcanoyt chat stream

  18. Triggered by the interesting post above by Albert (in which he mentioned “Pu’u’O’o has changed behaviour from exponential decay (e^-t) to a linear one”,
    https://www.volcanocafe.org/volcano-world-cup-2018-groups-a-c/comment-page-1/#comment-27747 ),
    I did a quick & dirty extraction from the GPS graphs (Credits USGS/HVO). I used data about from five days after the start of the propagating dike (5 may).

    Looking at the earthquake data mapped by USGS the dike would be rather south from the elevated ridge where a.o. Puu Oo is. I was curious in what direction the GPS’s are moving and if a relation with the rift can be made.

    NPOC at the north slope of Puu Oo and JOKA are moving south. NPOC possibly influenced by the withdrawal of the lava in the crater.
    CRIM and possibly DVEL are moving towards the Kilauea caldera because of the vent collapse.

    The others are going in Northeastern direction (except APNT, which is not moving at all).

    I see no contra/pro theories in connection of Kilauea summit in contact with the magma flow in the dike.
    Major things as slump and collapse may influence the GPS much…?

    The numbers 80 (120) must be read as 80 cm moving in the direction of the given arrow and 120 cm subsidence. It is just an approx extracted from graphs! But indicative.

    • Something maybe interesting is that the Mauna Ulu GPS is moving east so the deflation in that area should be centered around somewhere east from there but it is also slightly moving north and I dont know what does that mean as MALU is directly above the rift or maybe a little to the north of it.

    • About the quakes being mostly south of the rift, that is normal for kilauea. The dike would have moved along the crest of the rift and in doing so it would have pushed the south flank towards the ocean and that movement would create quakes. The rift zones of kilauea are like the more active parts of the Iceland rifts, they are too hot for earthquakes to happen very much so the rock must be hot and ductile, and we know that in many places they are still molten from previous intrusions (dacite under PGV, andesite at fissure 17, kamakaia hills and maybe the 1977 vents, pit craters on upper rift being collapse features). The dike probably also followed older dikes from 1960 and 1955, and then it found a weakness and erupted. The places where vents have formed are between the two main 1955 flows so this might be thought of as filling in the gap made in 1955.
      I would also take measurements from the edges of craters with some skepticism as the edges will move much more than the average, NPIT being a very good example as it has fallen 10+ meters when the actual deflation is less than 2 meters. It sits on the rim of halemaumau (or what was the rim) and has plausibly fallen in and is riding a large block of material as it slumps into the deep pit.

      Everything else is probably spot on though.

  19. Having shifted a little dense rock equivalent gravel recently in a 100 litre wheelbarrow, I find myself ridiculously curious about measuring the flow of fissure 8 in terms of (very robust) wheelbarrows. If it takes 10 (very strong) gender neutral people to move 1 cubic metre in 100 litre wheel barrows, how many people running at 1 metre per second would it take to shift the lava erupting from the ERZ at peak flow using 100L wheelbarrows?

      • Eruption rate is 100 m3/s as stated by USGS

        The volume is not officially known but I did some calculations and it is very likely to be at least 215 million m3 and might be actually somewhat higher than that as my estimate is based on some uncertain numbers and USGS has also said that their estimate is quite likely to be a low figure… 1960 was probably 140 million m3 at a maximum, and 1955 was somewhat smaller than 1960. I think at this point any comparisons to 1960 or 1955 just dont cut it anymore with the sheer amount of lava erupted.

        It is quite a massive contrast to one of the earlier posts from when the eruption was still new… (https://www.volcanocafe.org/when-pele-comes-to-puna/)

    • If the total volume of lava erupted at Puna in 25 days after 17 May 2018 was 137.5 billion litres (Daily Express is my highly reliable source) then the average volume erupted per day would be 5.5 billion litres per day, or 63,657 litres per second. I calculate this would require about 637 people to fill up 100 litre wheelbarrows with lava and cart it away at a fast clip of 1 metre per second. Anyone want to amend the volumes or check the math?

      • Total number of people with 100L wheelbarrows required: about 55 million per day; roughly everyone in Britain over the age of 2.

        • The obviously correct unit is of course the number of fridge sized refrigerators per second (presumably filled with bottles of beer) 😀

          • 🙂
            unfortunately the requirements for the container is that its filled with lava

          • Assuming 500ml rather than 1 pint bottles, that would work out to 127,314 bottles per second. As the capacity of an average frig size refrigerator is 70 bottles, including 16 in the door, that would amount to 1818 refrigerators of warm beer per second.

    • Meh, let Nemisio worry about it. He wants to be the “end all – be all” of it… give him a call. Just make sure you have your B/S filter turned on… you’ll need it.

  20. http://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2018/06/13/video-drone-captures-dramatic-drop-at-kilauea-summit/

    A video of the summit from today. It seems to be falling in on the north side now, with the bit going southwest looking like it has stabilized now.
    It must be getting to over twice the size of the original halemaumau crater at this point.

    The interesting point they pointed out was that the craldera filled in by 2/3 in the early 19th century. The caldera hasnt really changed much since 1924 up until this last month, with all the major eruptions happening on the rift zones, but with a new big deep crater again it might be more favorable for the sustained summit activity to resume again.

  21. If this LERZ eruption ends and also ends the eruptive period that started in 1983, should we expect Kilauea to go back to its more typical style of many but short eruptions, like in the thirty or so years before 1983 e.g. 1982 twice? Or could a new long-term period happen again?

    • I think we can confidently say that we have no idea. Halemaumau is damaged beyond repair. Aesthetically, the entire caldera should be be re-floored but whether that will happen is not clear. We don’t know what is a ‘typical’ sequence of events at Kilauea : we haven;t studied it for long enough. Perhaps it will now do nothing for the next century!

    • The problem is that I dont think that is the typical style of Kilauea I dont think it has a typical style. Sometimes it decides to go explosive for periods as long as several millennia (Pahala Ash, Uwekahuna Tephra) and no significant effusive activity happens, or it builds large shield volcanoes in the East Rift Zone for decades (Pu’u’o’o, Kane Nui o Hamo, Mauna Ulu) with small eruptions in between, or sends some lava into Lower Puna (1955, 1960) and it also can focus at the summit and the Southwest Rift Zone, even overflowing the caldera and generating extensive flow fields (Observatory flows, beginning of the 19th century).

      If the eruption of the 1790 flows is a good analogy to this eruption then activity could go back to the summit and the Southwest Rift Zone for some time. The 1790 flows which may be older than 1790 followed intense activity at the Middle and Upper ERZ with the eruption of the Heiheiahulu shield happening around 1750 and probably many other eruptions uprift that is why that situation is similar to the one we are in right now and it was also a voluminous eruption that happened in the same area the Leilani fissure is right now.

      • I would like to point out that apparently some of the explosive eruptions in the uwekahuna ash series were accompanied by short lived but very extensive lava flows from vents near the summit. This activity is something we have not seen on kilauea before in historical time, but is quite similar to the sort of eruptions that some of the galapagos volcanoes do. These eruptions involve massive lava fountains (volcan wolf erupted lava fountains in excess of 800 meters tall in 2015) and very fast lava flows fed at huge eruption rates but only for a short time (1-2 days) before it dies down to a trickle. None of the summit of kilauea from when the uwrkahuna tephra was erupted still exists today, and the current caldera is believed to be somewhat bigger than the powers caldera so it is unlikely that the vents from that time still exist, but the combination of a high volume fire fountain with a basaltic plinian eruption at the same time must have been an incredible sight, and also something that would be devastating to the big island if it happened now… it is very unlikely that anything like that is in the near future because there is a robust shallow magma chamber to absorb any energetic intrusions of new magma, but eventually this wont be the case and kilauea will show its dark and violent side again. Eruptions like this almost started happening with the current caldera, as there is extensive basaltic pumice left by huge lava fountains that erupted in the caldera in late prehistoric time, called the golden pumice. Some of these fountains would have been over a km tall in order to cover that much area downwind with tephra. However things seem to have been different and this never really got started.

        I think that all I have done here is made kilauea seem even less consistent than before this comment, but if that is the truth then that is what we should know.
        It is likely that the next eruption wont be very unusual, and almost certainly wont be more than a few years in the future, probably even within a year of now at the bottom of the pit where halemaumau was. However if there is a magma surge like there was after the 1790 eruptions and collapse (much bigger than the current one) then things could happen very fast and with almost continuous fairly large eruptions for decades, only at the summit and upper southwest rift instead of the east rift. I have talked about that theory quite a lot though so I wont go into that now.

  22. Because I like drawing on maps in Paint 😉

    I made this because I finally found a big map of the entire summit area of kilauea with the surface being age colour coded. The historical vents are in red and the prehistoric vents that still exist are in dark blue. The black is the rough outline of the current summit crater. The orange is a crack in the koae fault system that has erupted lava spatter in it that overlies the 1790 ash (hence ‘historical’) but is undated and was not observed. There is more information on that here: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/hvo_volcano_watch.html?vwid=136

    (the map is from https://curvirostra.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/kilauea-summit-geologic-i2759map.pdf)

    • I am having some trouble finding the orange crack, I can only see red and blue.

      • You cant find the orange crack because it somehow got turned red when it saved… It is the long red line near the bottom of the picture. I couldn’t locate the exact spots where spatter was erupted but it is somewhere along that line.

        • I think that is where the 1963 intrusion happened, the one that travelled from the SWRZ into the ERZ

          • That would make sense as a source, as the spatter is weathered but not really old, so it is quite plausible that the 1963 intrusion did erupt a tiny bit. I really dont get why it didnt erupt bigger than if it had enough pressure to intrude back up the east rift towards the summit again though, unless that intrusion was deeper and the spatter is from older stored magma that never came into direct contact with it.

    • For the rest the map is very ilustrative and shows how complex the summit area really is: It shows how there is a direct connection between the summit and the volcanic SWRZ and how Kilauea Iki is a continuation of this rift structure, the two transverse boundaries at the top of the seismic SWRZ and at the top of the ERZ are also visible and how the Koae fault system acts as a secondary rift zone connecting the SRWZ with the ERZ.

      • It is also notable how the recent collapse has roughly followed that line from kilauea iki to the southwest rift. This picture is a bit to elongated because i looked at the recent pictures and some of the south rim is falling in too, probably because of oversteepening of the wall there.

        it also looks like eruptive fissures can happen north of mauna ulu and quite far north of the typical line of the rift, still alligned with the koae faults. Maybe the aila’au lava field has buried a lot of faults there and some of those could erupt again in the future. Obviously they dont extend too far but the aila’au lava flows arent that old so there could have been numerous eruptions in that area before the main aila’au shield formed. This is stuff that could be important in the future as most of the activity is probably going to be in the summit area of the volcano for a while. and eruptions could happen with very little warning. If there is any possibility of fissures opening north of kilauea iki then that could be a new risk.

      • Something else that I found interesting is that there are some substantial a’a flows coming from near HVO. I would assume these are from the observatory vent complex.
        They arent very big compared to some of the other flows, but with the area being so flat it indicates that these eruptions must have had quite a decent eruption rate. It might have been like some of the 1970s eruptions that only lasted a few days but generated significant lava in that time. That could indicate that there weren’t always continuous eruptions at the summit during that time, and it was likely episodic like pu’u o’o (‘sustained unstable’). I dont know what this would mean for future activity but it could be important to know in case lava goes in unexpected directions.
        The length of the aila’au flows likewise would suggest the flows were not continuous from their either. Aila’au erupted about 6 km3 of lava over its 6 to 10 decades of activity, pu’u o’o erupted about 5 km3 over its 35 years of eruption. The June 27 flow went about as far as the supply rate could allow, and yet some of the aila’au flows were over twice as long. But the eruption rate for aila’au averaged out would be much lower than pu’u o’o, which means in order to have the eruption rate necessary to flow 40+ km, it must have been intermittent and maybe quite fast when it did happen, rather than a very slowly advancing pahoehoe flow that takes years to reach the sea it might have been a faster sheet flow that took weeks or less and was much more immediately destructive. After that the flow rate declined and lava flowed in tubes until it couldn’t even get that far and the vent effectively went to sleep again, probably with semi-continuous activity (lava lakes and shallow flank vents) in the immediate area much like pu’u o’o, contributing to building a massive shield. Apparently there is scoria in the side of kilauea iki from when aila’au formed, so at least at the start this vent was quite serious and those flows were probably not much different to the current fissure 8 flows now, or the start of pu’u o’o. As we know from how vigorous the current activity is now, the only thing really keeping the lava from fountaining was the lack of a narrow vent, the lava erupting now is as gas rich as the lava that was erupting in the 1980s but there is no small hole to cause it to jet. The summit overflow phases 500 years ago could have been similar with the activity there possibly turning into brief but very intense lava fountaining sometimes, a bit like what happens on mt etna. Kilauea means ‘spewing’ or ‘much spreading’ when translated, so it must have earned that name somehow and the way I have described just then would be perfect.
        Related to that, there is a possibility that when kilauea erupts again after the current events, it will begin with a high and gas charged lava fountain from the overlook crater, maybe with a result similar to the 1959 eruption. I guess it probably wont take long before we find out, with no easy release vent for a while who knows what could happen.

  23. https://twitter.com/USGSVolcanoes/status/1007268840739237889

    USGS Volcanoes
    🌋
    ‏Verified account @USGSVolcanoes
    14m14 minutes ago

    #KilaueaVolcano #LERZ #eruption overnight field crews make observations of incandescent #lava that is harder to see in daylight. They film, measure, record, track, and report info back to the emergency operations center at @CivilDefenseHI. They all make great annotated photos.

    • The cone is about 50 meters high now, wow. That is a 10 meter increase in the last day (HVO said it was 40 meters yesterday). If it is 50 meters tall then it is also over 200 meters across from left to right, which is a pretty decent size. I think it is getting close to the height of pu’u honuaula (the cone the webcam is on) and is big enough that it will actually be visible when forests grow over it eventually. if HVO doesnt name this properly then I dont really know, because that is literally the exact definition of a hill.
      I dont know if it would actually translate exactly as this, but it would be pretty appropriate to call it pu’u luku. It translates as ‘devastation hill’.
      The problem is that it could also translate as ‘lethal hill, murder hill, slaughter hill, massacre hill, annihilation hill, lay waste hill… Pretty much every violent action roughly translates to luku according to the online dictionary I am using. Obviously not all of those are as accurate, unless you are talking about trees…

    • Quite the low frequency component to these quakes along with an increase in low frequency noise in between.

      • Remember that an impulse contains all frequencies. A strong impulse will therefore be visible across the entire spectrum. These large quakes are always visible in the low frequency plots. The increased noise in between is interesting however.

        In the last couple of weeks there has been more low frequency noise than usual in the drumplots close to Bárðarbunga. I have been wondering if they were related to melt water movements, but that kind of signal is usually only visible in the highpass plots.

    • Somewhat more shallow than the adjustment quakes use to be? Something else? Steam explosions from melt water?

  24. my only regret for this site is no ‘like’ buttons…… some comments deserve a ‘like’ but i just don’t want to take up running space to say i like the refrigerator sized mesurements comment, Thomas and i have nothing to add to the science of cooling a beer. Carry On. Best!motsfo

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