The Daily Volcano Quote: after Pelée, 1902 30 September 2010
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I looked towards the gray old volcano, whose summit was shrouded, but the lower slopes were sunlit and silent and powdery; the whole landscape is powdery, like old statuary with a dust coating that makes stronger the modeling of the city; mountain slope and cliff are bare, the verdure of the Carbet hillside ends abruptly along a sharp line, and there begins the new volcanic landscape, clean chiselled, rocky, weird, gray, uniform, without any color, without any motion except steam jets on Pelée’s slopes. 
Thomas Augustus Jaggar, ‘Field notes of a geologist in Martinique and St. Vincent’, Popular Science Monthly, August 1902, pp. 356-7. Thomas Jaggar (1871-1953), a great volcanologist and founder of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, shows himself to have an artist’s eye as he surveys the desolate landscape of Martinique’s capital St Pierre following the eruption of Mt Pelée in May 1902.
The Daily Volcano Quote: from Monday to Friday, a new eruption of volcanic verbiage each day.
Increased seismicity detected at Taal 30 September 2010
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The highly active Philippine volcano Taal, situated on the island of Luzon, had a restless summer this year: the alert level was raised by Phivolcs on 8 June 2010 following earthquake swarms and increased steam emissions (further detailed coverage from Eruptions here and here), and was then lowered again on 2 August when Taal appeared to calm down somewhat.
Phivolcs is now reporting a renewed increase in seismic activity at Taal, although observations at the Main Crater and New Eruption areas of the volcano ‘indicated no anomalous observations in the thermal and surface manifestations of both areas’. The alert level has not been changed and remains at Level 1, but the restrictions on approaching the volcano remain in place.
A Philippine news story on Taal also notes that Phivolcs has detected four tremors around Mayon in the last 24 hours.
References to volcano alert levels on this blog are not authoritative and are not necessarily up to date. You should always check with official sources for the latest alert levels.
News
Phivolcs notes increased seismic activities at Taal, Mayon – GMANews.TV, 30 September 2010
Information
Global Volcanism Program: Taal – summary information for Taal (0703-07=)
Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology – website for Phivolcs
SI/USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report, 22-28 September 2010 30 September 2010
Posted by admin in activity reports, Alaska, Caribbean, Chile, Cleveland, Dukono, Ecuador, eruptions, Hawaii, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, Japan, Kamchatka, Karangetang, Karymsky, Kilauea, Kliuchevskoi, Merapi, Piton de la Fournaise, Planchón-Peteroa, Reventador, Russia, Sakura-jima, Shiveluch, Sinabung, Soufrière Hills, Suwanose-jima, United States, Weekly Volcanic Activity Reports.Tags: Global Volcanism Program
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Here is the Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for 22-28 September 2010, published by the Global Volcanism Program and compiled by Sally Kuhn Kennert. Some highlights:
- Merapi: increased seismicity and inflation detected
- Piton de la Fournaise: significant increase in seismic activity – signs that eruption is imminent
- Reventador: three seismic events including episodes of tremor detected
Click on the map for a larger version (1280 x 898 pixels).
The Smithsonian Institution/United States Geological Survey Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for 22-28 September 2010 is now available on the Global Volcanism Program website. The following is a summary and not a substitute for the full report.
- The current report: Weekly Volcanic Activity Report.
- Previous reports: Weekly Reports Archive.
- The SI/USGS map of volcanoes discussed this week.
New activity/unrest: Karangetang [Api Siau] (Indonesia), Kliuchevskoi (Russia), Merapi (Indonesia), Piton de la Fournaise, Reunion Island | Planchón-Peteroa, Central Chile-Argentina border | Sinabung, Sumatra (Indonesia).
Ongoing activity: Cleveland (Alaska, USA), Dukono (Indonesia), Karymsky (Russia), Kilauea (Hawaii, USA), Reventador (Ecuador), Sakura-jima (Japan), Shiveluch (Russia), Soufrière Hills (Montserrat), Suwanose-jima (Japan).
Note: a.s.l. = ‘above sea level’.
The Daily Volcano Quote: the world ends in fire 29 September 2010
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Wherefore the Faithful being gathered from all the corners of the Earth, and carried up to Christ their Saviour, and joyning with his Legions of Light; there being then left in the Earth and in the inferiour Parts of the Aire none but obdurate Adherents to the dark Kingdome, which shall now be made more externally dark than ever, black pitchy clouds covering the whole face of the Sky, and making Night fall upon the Inhabitants of the World even at mid-day: in the midst of this sad, silent and louring aspect of the Heavens, He that in the flesh was heard and answered by Thunder, when he prayed, saying, Father, glorifie thy name shall by the same interest in the Eternall God cause such an universal Thunder and Lightning, that it shall rattle over all the quarters of the Earth, rain down burning Comets and falling Starres, and discharge such claps of unextinguishable fire, that it will do sure execution wherever it falls; so that the ground being excessively heated, those subterraneous Mines of combustible Matter will also take fire : which inflaming the inward exhalations of the Earth, will cause a terrible murmur under ground, so that the Earth will seem to thunder against the tearing and ratling of the Heavens, and all will be filled with sad remugient Echoes; Earthquakes and Eruptions of fire there will be every where, and whole Cities and Countries swallowed down by the vast gapings and wide divulsions of the ground. Nor shall the Sea be able to save the Earth from universal Conflagration, no more than the Fire could preserve her from that over-spreading Deluge; for this fiery Vengeance shall be so thirsty, that it shall drink deep of the very Sea; nor shall the water quench her devouring appetite but excite it. For such is the nature of some Fires, as history every where testifieth.
Henry More, An explanation of the grand mystery of godliness, or, A true and faithfull representation of the everlasting Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the onely begotten Son of God and sovereign over men and angels (Cambridge, 1660), p. 238. Henry More (1614-1687) was a theologian and philosopher who was clearly familiar with contemporary notions of the causes of volcanism (‘those subterraneous Mines of combustible Matter’), and appears to have expected that the world would end in some kind of enormous volcanic eruption. Note also the role of the sea in exciting rather than quenching the fires of this universal conflagration: it seems that there will be a significant phreatomagmatic element to the end of the world.
The Daily Volcano Quote: from Monday to Friday, a new eruption of volcanic verbiage each day.
Increased activity at Reventador 29 September 2010
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Ecuador’s Instituto Geofísico (IG) is reporting increased activity at Reventador, with an increase in seismicity from ‘low’ to ‘moderate’, episodes of tremor, and a number of small explosions having been observed.
In a special bulletin (PDF) issued yesterday, the IG reports that ‘three pulses of activity’ were recorded on the morning of 27 September: a pulse of harmonic tremor from 07:05 to 08:43 (all times are local), an episode of tremor for 30 minutes from 09:07 with higher amplitude than the first pulse, and which was associated with a grey plume of water vapour with a small amount of ash that rose 400-500 metres above the summit; and a third pulse which began at 09:49 and lasted for 17 minutes and produced a grey plume of water vapour with moderate ash content, which reached higher than 1 km above the summit. Washington VAAC has issued four ash advisories reporting ‘possible ash emissions’ from Reventador moving north-west from the volcano.
UPDATE. Erik has more information over at Eruptions: Increased activity at El Reventador in Ecuador.
News
Se incrementa actividad de volcán en Ecuador – El Nuevo Herald, 28 September 2010
Information
Global Volcanism Program: Reventador – summary information for Reventador (1502-01=)
Instituto Geofísico – Geophysical Institute of Ecuador
Out of the volcano: ‘Stranded’ magazine is now available 28 September 2010
Posted by admin in Eyjafjöll, Iceland, volcano art, volcano culture.Tags: Stranded Magazine
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Back in May we reported on Stranded magazine, one of the happier outcomes of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption and the travel chaos it caused. Well, it’s great to report that the magazine, put together through the efforts of people across the world who found themselves stranded by the volcano, is now available. In its 88 pages you’ll find (among other things):
- volcano cocktail recipes from around the globe
- a sense of history from a leading volcanologist
- an exclusive video image from a graffiti artist
- a horror story set inside the ash cloud by an acclaimed novelist
- 53 journalists and the head of the London Design Museum in 16-hour race to catch a boat.
Stranded can be purchased (at $18.95 plus shipping) as a physical magazine from MagCloud.com. A digital version will soon be available from Zinio.com. And very importantly, all proceeds from both editions go to the International Rescue Committee, a charity dedicated to helping people who are stranded in a more permanent way across the world.
You can find out more about Stranded by visiting the blog of Andrew Losowsky, whose inspired creation it is.
UPDATE 9 October 2010: the digital version of Stranded is now available (for $5.00, all to the International Rescue Committee) at Zinio.com.
The Daily Volcano Quote: San Salvador, 1917 28 September 2010
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The inhabited regions about the base of the volcano suffered partial destruction [in the earthquake that heralded the beginning of the eruption], the capital, San Salvador, being particularly unfortunate. Ninety per cent. of the homes were destroyed or rendered unfit for habitation … The outflow of the volcanic eruption, while abundant, caused comparatively little damage, since it was largely confined to uninhabited regions. Eight vents opened on the west side of the mountain, sweeping the slope with a stream of lava. A number of coffee plantations on the flanks of the stream were destroyed and, for a distance of two kilometres near Acajutla, the railroad was covered with lava to a depth of 30 feet. For the most part, the region affected is identical with that covered by the last great eruption occurring in 1674. It is said that in some places the old flow has been lifted bodily upon the new.
The San Salvador earthquake’, The Scientific Monthly, vol. 5, no. 2 (August 1917), pp. 191-2.
The Daily Volcano Quote: from Monday to Friday, a new eruption of volcanic verbiage each day.
San Salvador: living under the volcano 28 September 2010
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Dominating the landscape to the west of El Salvador’s capital of San Salvador is the massive volcano that shares the city’s name. San Salvador volcano last erupted in 1917, the beginning of the eruption being marked by an earthquake estimated to have been magnitude 5.6 which left up to 90% of the capital’s housing stock damaged or destroyed according to contemporary reports (see today’s Daily Volcano Quote). The 1917 eruption, the seat of which was El Boquerón, the main summit of San Salvador, lasted from June to November and produced extensive lava flows and ashfall, damaging crops and causing some fatalities in the surrounding region.
Today the city of San Salvador has a population estimated at 2.2 million and its suburbs encroach upon the lower slopes of San Salvador volcano. A fresh eruption of San Salvador on almost any scale would have serious consequences for the city of San Salvador. Even without any eruptive activity, the volcano’s unstable slopes pose a significant landslide hazard for the surrounding areas.
The authorities in El Salvador are very conscious of the hazard San Salvador poses. Yesterday the Salvadorean newspaper El Diario Co Latino reported that the Salvadorean environment ministry, the Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (MARN) has been working with geologists and non-governmental organizations from across the world to assess the potential threat of San Salvador and plan hazard mitigation and response strategies. Taking into account San Salvador’s 3000-year history of frequent activity, ‘The likelihood that a phenomenon such as that of 1917 will occur within the next 100 years is high, but it is not possible to give an exact time range’, says volcanologist Dolores Ferrés, author of the study Estratigrafía, geología y evolución del volcán de San Salvador: Aplicación en la evaluación de peligros volcánicos y su posible impacto, which was presented to the media at a congress held by MARN on 21 September.
Ferrés’s study is described in a news release from El Salvador’s Servicio Nacional de Estudios Territoriales (SNET) as ‘a breakthrough in the generation of knowledge about volcanic risk in the country and providing vital information to decision-makers in various sectors’. The intention is to carry out a comprehensive hazard assessment programme for San Salvador volcano and the surrounding area. ‘Although the volcano currently shows only very week activity (fumaroles in Cerro La Hoya and very sporadic volcanic-tectonic seismicity) it is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in Central America because of its proximity to large urban areas and its eruptive history’, is the SNET’s current verdict on San Salvador volcano.
News
Presentación Estudio volcán de San Salvador – SNET news release, 21 September 2010
Volcán de San Salvador: un gigante activo – Diario Co Latino, 27 September 2010
Information
Global Volcanism Program: San Salvador – summary information for San Salvador (1403-05=)
Volcano Hazards in the San Salvador Region – USGS report, 2001, available at the CVO website
The Daily Volcano Quote: prophecies of volcanic doom 27 September 2010
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It is September 12, 2001. The sky is a menacing iron grey, and has been so since the explosion several months ago. Snow lies two feet deep in Oxford Street, and on the frozen Thames heavily clad crowds jostle at stalls to barter for unidentifiable meat morsels to supplement their government rations. Ice has stopped production of North Sea oil, and few vehicles attempt to negotiate the snow-bound avenues. Across the planet tens of millions of people have already frozen to death, while billions starve as the harvests fail. A combination of the freezing conditions and civil strife has triggered the breakdown of society in many countries, and the global village has fragmented into a million isolated hamlets. This isn’t the aftermath of a nuclear war, nor the start of a new ice age, but the possible consequences of a long-overdue cataclysmic volcanic eruption on a scale never experienced by modern humans.
Bill McGuire, ‘The fire next time’, The Guardian, 12 September 1996, p. B2. As if the use of the phrase ‘long-overdue’ was not enough, this article actually ends with the words ‘living on borrowed time’.
The Daily Volcano Quote: from Monday to Friday, a new eruption of volcanic verbiage each day.
Stress change may provide clues to possible eruption locations 27 September 2010
Posted by admin in Africa, current research, Ethiopia, geoscience, volcano monitoring, volcanology.comments closed
It’s all rifts, dykes and magmatic intrusions at Nature Geoscience right now. Along with the paper by Pallister et al on the Saudi quake swarms of 2009, the journal is hosting advanced online publication of a paper on a recent episode of dyke emplacement in the Afar region of north-eastern Africa: ‘Stress transfer between thirteen successive dyke intrusions in Ethiopia‘, by Ian J. Hamling et al.
The study looks at the emplacement of thirteen magmatic dykes in north-eastern Ethiopia between 2006 and 2009. A rift zone produced by the spreading boundary between the African and Arabian plates runs through this region; most such rift zones are situated on the ocean floor, so this remote area provides a valuable opportunity to study the processes associated with spreading plate boundaries without getting one’s feet wet. A team led by Ian Hamling of Leeds University measured changes in ground tension associated with each successive dyke emplacement, and found that subsequent eruptions were most likely in locations where the tension had been increased. Although the initial level of stress along a rift zone that becomes active is unknown, measurements of stress transfer will reveal whether eruptions in one location cause compressive stress change (clamping) or tensile stress change (unclamping) elsewhere. New dyking would be expected in locations subject to unclamping – in other words, where the ground has been stretched and is under increased tension – and the study shows that such is indeed the case: ‘the mean percentage of opening in unclamped sections of the rift has been 70%, with seven of 12 dykes having over 75% of their opening in regions unclamped by the previous intrusion’. The study concludes: ’This result indicates that the stress change, induced by a new dyke, is a controlling factor on the location of future events and should therefore be incorporated into routine volcanic hazard monitoring’.
- Ian J. Hamling, Tim J. Wright, Eric Calais, Laura Bennati & Elias Lewi, ‘Stress transfer between thirteen successive dyke intrusions in Ethiopia’, Nature Geoscience, published online: 26 September 2010 | doi:10.1038/ngeo967 [abstract]
News
Pinpointing where volcanic eruptions could strike – EurekAlert, 26 September 2010
