Philippines
eklemetti | December 28, 2009
Lava flows from Mayon, taken December 23, 2009.
Volcano news over the holidays this year is still focused on Mayon in the Philippines. We're reaching almost a month since the volcano starting showing signs of a major eruption, but no "big one" yet. Lava flows, ash and block-and-ash flows are continuing to be issued from the new dome at the summit, but earthquakes are down some - which is leading to the problem that people are thinking the volcano is "safe". Many evacuees are returning home already, even with the threat-level at Mayon is unchanged.
This danger of people losing faith/not…
eklemetti | December 18, 2009Finals day for me, so I'll be grading grading grading ... but first, a little news:
The May 2009 eruption of West Mata. Image courtesy of NSF and NOAA.
I covered it in May, but the popular press is now all over the West Mata undersea eruption - mostly thanks to the media boost that AGU can give you. It is worth checking out the new articles on the eruption in the Lau Basin near the Marianas, mostly because of the nifty video of the eruption. In the video, you can clearly see both an explosive component of the eruption as gas "burps" out through a cooled carapace and a more effusive pillow…
eklemetti | December 17, 2009Looks like last night was busy, volcanically speaking. Eruptions readers noted that VAAC warning of ash from both Mayon (to 10,000 feet / 3.0 km) and Bezymianny (to 32,000 feet / 10 km) were issued {hat tip to Chance Metz for the updates}. Here is some more news on these ongoing events:
Mayon erupting in December 2009.
Mayon, Philippines
Evacuations are continuing near Mayon in the Philippines, some of them forcibly by the local authorities. PHIVOLCS is reporting that SO2 output from Mayon has jumped from ~750 tonnes/day to almost 2,800 tonnes/day over the last 24 hours and seimicity…
eklemetti | December 16, 2009
Lava on Mayon, December 2009, with Legazpi City in the foreground.
The mainstream media has picked up on the activity at Mayon - I've seen it splashed across CNN, FoxNews, ABC, BBC and others. Most of the coverage has been decent, however, I do worry when I see that people have found Eruptions using search terms like "Mayon supervolcano". I think that is when we worry that the made-for-TV word like "supervolcano" has gotten a little overused, when people worry every volcanic eruption might be a "supervolcano."
On to the update!
Explosions have continued unabated at Mayon, with the explosive…
eklemetti | December 15, 2009
The new dome erupting at Mayon in the Philippines on December 14-15, 2009.
It appears that the eruption that PHIVOLCS had been waiting for at Mayon has arrived, with new magma reaching the surface and spilling down the slopes of the volcano. Or, as CNN International put it:
The island nation's most active volcano after it oozed fiery lava and belched clouds of ash.
People do love the idea of fiery, oozing lava, don't they?
Anyway, PHIVOLCS has raised the alert status at Mayon to Level 3 (eruption in days to weeks). This new activity has prompted the evacuation of at least 47,000 people in…
eklemetti | December 14, 2009It's the last week of classes and it's also AGU (which I will be missing for the first time in 5 years). If you happen to be at the big meeting in SF and hear something you think we'd like to hear, feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment so we can live vicariously through you.
Pyroclastic flows at Sourfriere Hills, December 2009. Image courtesy of MVO.
Some news:
UPDATE 12:40PM 12/14/2009: Just to update the Mayon news from earlier today, PHIVOLC is reporting that lava has been spotting flowing from the main crater on Mayon. Sounds like the eruption we've been waiting for is…
eklemetti | November 13, 2009We've arrived at Friday. The local time is 8:45 A.M. Set your watches accordingly.
Batur, Indonesia
Some news!
More evacuations have been authorized near Mayon as the volcano continues to show signs of significant eruption. Activity has quieted some since Tuesday's explosion, but PHIVOLC still expresses concern that an eruption in impending within weeks. I'll also add a link to this story on Mayon, not because it has new news, but because it has quiet possibly the worst accompanying photo for this story I've seen so far. I mean, really, couldn't you have found some stock picture of Mayon…
eklemetti | November 11, 2009
Mayon volcano in Albay province, Philippines.
Yesterday, Mayon in the Philippines, which has been showing signs that it might be headed towards a significant eruption, produced an ash plume that reached as high as 3.5 km / 12,000 feet according to some reports. Evacuations of villages near the volcano have begun, while many other towns have been supplied with wireless announcement systems to help with evacuating if the volcano continues to show signs that it will experience a significant eruption.
Last week, there were reports that a new dome was forming at the summit of Mayon and if this…
eklemetti | November 10, 2009
Geologic and structural map showing the extent of the Campi Flegrei caldera on the north of the Bay of Naples, Italy. Image courtesy of INGV.
One of the writing assignments I always enjoyed in high school was the "compare and contrast". You could sit back and look for stylistic differences between writers and texts - potentially offering signs about the nature of the writers motivations.
I still find it fun - case in point, two article I read about the research drilling that is about to start at the Campei Flegrei in Italy. The Campei Flegrei is a large caldera system that most recently…
eklemetti | November 1, 2009All the news to start the week:
Galeras with a grey ash-and-steam plume behind Pasto, Colombia.
Well, after my article on Friday about Colombian volcanoes, Galeras must have decided it was left out. The volcano has been placed back at alert level Orange/II (eruption in days to weeks). An increase in seismicity and sulfur dioxide emissions (in spanish) prompted INGEOMINAS to put Galeras back on higher alert, but now the country has two volcanoes (Galeras and Huila) that could be erupting in the near future.
Back in the Philippines, there is new evidence that Mayon has a new dome forming at…
eklemetti | October 28, 2009I'll be giving a talk this afternoon here at Denison on rhyolite generation, so I might be a little brief this morning.
Undated image of Mayon in the Philippines.
The province of Albay in the Philippines is on alert for both a typhoon and a volcano (that country seems to be hit with that 300,000 may need to be ready to evacuate if the volcano continues to show signs that it might erupt - in fact, Mayon is producing ash as of this morning, albeit only one minor ash explosion.
Lava flows from Kilauea are drawing crowds as they inundate a road in Kalapana. There is a nice video link to the…
eklemetti | October 22, 2009I did an excellent job of forgetting my notes from GSA 2009, so no wrap up on the meeting until tomorrow, but we do have some new volcano news to digest:
The crater of El Reventador in Ecuador in an undated photo.
Ecuadorian officials have called for evacuations around El Reventador. The Ecuadorian Geophysics Institute says that the volcano's "activities were measured at a level considered high, with permanent seismic signals indicating explosions while the southern side of the volcano crater could be seen as incandescent.". Three provinces near the volcano were put on alert evacuated as a…
eklemetti | September 15, 2009
Mayon in the Philippines, taken in 2007
There has been a lot of waiting over the summer to see if Mayon in the Philippines was going to begin a new eruption sequence. This morning, the volcano had its first "eruption" since August 2008, producing a very small (~700 m / 2000 foot) ash-and-gas column that drifted to the southwest. PHIVOLCS reports that the plume had very minimal ash, but it is still worth noting. No new evacuations were called, but the 6-km "danger zone" and 7-8-km "extended danger zone" are still in effect.
Mayon is one of the most active volcanoes in the Philippines,…
eklemetti | September 4, 2009Lets get right to it!
"Manmade volcanoes": can they solve global warming?
It does indeed seem that something is happening beneath Kanlaon in the Philippines. PHIVOLCS reports that the volcano experienced 257 volcanic earthquakes from August 23 to September 1, well above the usually "background" level of ~20-30 a week. Most of this seismicity is centered on the northwest slope of the volcano, suggesting that if magma is moving, it is moving up under this side of the system. However, the seismicity doesn't necessarily have to be magma moving up to erupt. It could very easily be moving up in…
eklemetti | August 23, 2009Some brief notes before I dive headlong into the exciting world of faculty orientation!
A small steam plume coming from Turrialba in Costa Rica. Photo taken in August 2007.
There are some preliminary reports of the state of wildlife (and everything) around Kasatochi Island in the Aleutians from the US F&W and USGS team that headed to check out how the island has recovered since last year's eruption. The shoreline has been radically transformed by the ash and although some seabirds have made attempts to nest in the loose ash, it doesn't seem to have been very successful. However, not…
eklemetti | August 12, 2009Even the SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report seems a little light -- welcome to the dog days of summer!
Highlights from this week's report include:
"Thunderous sounds", incandescence and small plumes (hundreds of meters) with more frequent seismicity at Ibu in Indonesia.
A sharp increase in sulfur dioxide output was noted at Mayon in the Philippines on August 4 - from ~700-900 tonnes/day to almost 2,000 tonnes/day.
~3,000 meter/10,000 foot gas-and-ash plume from Bagana in Papua New Guinea - you can see it on this recent NASA Earth Observatory image.
Ash/gas plumes from Sakurajima in Japan rose to…
eklemetti | August 9, 2009Does anyone else feel like this has been a rather quiet summer, volcano-wise? Maybe I've been too preoccupied by my move to Ohio, but I feel like beyond a few relatively minor events (Shiveluch comes to mind), the volcano news has been pretty slow compared to the spring of this year. Go figure.
The sulfur dioxide plume from the 2008 eruption of Kasatochi spreading over the northern Pacific Ocean.
Anyway, a few tidbits to tide us over:
Over eighteen years after the eruption, Mt. Pinatubo is still causing fatalities from the copious amounts of tephra deposited during the 1991 event. Five…
eklemetti | July 17, 2009Some of the articles you might have missed this week ...
A lava flow from Kilauea breaks local traffic laws in the Royal Gardens subdivision, Hawai'i
The Mayon Watch continues in the Philippines. No eruption yet, but some of the local newspapers are printing stories talking about "odd animal behavior" and other local "myths" about predicting the volcano, such as the wells drying up. Now, this is not to say that these things might have some predictive value (especially changes in the water table near the volcano as it inflates/deflates), but so far there are no robust scientific studies that…
eklemetti | July 15, 2009Your weekly dose of volcanism from the USGS/Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program.
Highlights (not counting Mayon), include:
The activity at Mando Hararo in Ethiopia appears to be a fissure eruption. Ground observations saw a 4-5 kilometers / ~2.5-3 mile fissure with new predominantly 'a'a lava flows that were 2-3 m thick ... the fissure was lined with scoria ramparts 30-50 m high. They did not see any active lava, though.
As some Eruptions readers have pointed out from the OMI SO2 maps, Sarychev Peak (Russia) is still producing gas-and-steam (with some ash) plumes, mostly drifting off to the…
eklemetti | July 13, 2009
Mayon erupting in August 2004.
The increasing unrest at Mayon in the Philippines has prompted National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) to recommend the evacuation of over 75,000 people from around the volcano. This, however, will only happen if the activity at the volcano continues to increase. The volcano currently sits at Alert Level 2 (increasing unrest) and if it were to increase to Level 3 (increased tendency towards eruption), then the evacuations of the first ~1,800 families closest to the volcano would begin. Only if the volcano reached Alert Level 4 (hazardous eruption imminent…