Tag Archives: 2012

Apocalypsathon; Post 21/12/12 Appeal…

I think Tyler Mannison found this one...

I think Tyler Mannison found this one…

Send your urgent and much needed donations for those poor unfortunate endotheworlders who were not wiped out (they must be devastated) to schteve’sschwissbanking.ch

Please spare a thought and a dime for those not raptured up to heaven in the recent non- apocalypse; give generously, it’s nearly christmas after all…

since this didn't happen everywhere all at once...

Since this didn’t happen everywhere all at once…

I intend to set up a refuge high in the hills of La Gomera with a nice piece of (terraced) land and a look out tower; we’ll charge post 2012ers top- whack to come and contemplate… Me n’ Lizzie will be there most of the year looking after the goats and generally taking care of the place (and going for long walks and jaunts to El Hierro and stuff.) So once again Volcanocafers please dig deep for this very worthy cause…

Somewhere like this, Pico del Teide is in the distance...

Somewhere like this, Pico del Teide is in the distance…

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/La_Gomera_1.jpg/1280px-La_Gomera_1.jpg

But seriously, and since we are still here; a genuine appeal (and some of my highlights):

This rather special place was started by Carl and Ursula after a group Volcanoholics decided they wanted their own place with their own rules… Those that wanted to go multidisciniplary, collaborative and friendly came here and (boy!) the discussion was, and still is, far ranging… The Welcome page and blog rules are here:

http://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/volcano-cafe/

The average post rate is ~ one every 3 days, (that includes before and after Carl statistics…) some volcanoblogs manage more, but usually these are brief updates. What we get here are crafted pieces, made by amateurs in their spare time…

The hit rate is around ~150 visits per hour; this doesn’t include dragon visits…

I won’t lie to you; a blogpost can be quite a bit of work, depending on your skills… Carl once mentioned that he could write a 1200 word opera review in 20 minutes, and Geolurking seems to be able to get something revolutionary on tectonics done in only slightly more time…

Birgit deserves her own paragraph; she can research, compile, edit, post and get an intelligent layman up to speed on a particular subject in less time than it takes a crocodile to swallow an unwary victim!!!

Me? I’m at the other end of the scale; maybe 20 hours work on Teneguia Technicalities and Context, but that did include editing with wordpress which was a first for me… Don’t let me scare you, I can be quite ambitious…

I am asking everyone to keep the posts coming; think of it as an extended comment and you will do fine…

This one's for our resident geologist...

This one’s for our resident geologist… The little engine that could x

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Snowdon_Mountain_Railway_No_6.jpg/1280px-Snowdon_Mountain_Railway_No_6.jpg

Visits to volcanoes “a la Ukviggen” are always popular; (Mount Snowdon anyone? The narrow gauge, rack and pinion railway is the only one of it’s kind in the UK.) as are summaries of your favorites; (Karenz on Sakurajima is a very good example.) and memories of eruptions that were special to you; (Bobbi’s piece on Redoubt is a classic, and don’t forget Newby’s uncle on Erebus.)

Ascending eruption cloud from Redoubt Volcano as viewed to the west from the Kenai Peninsula April 21, 1990 (R. Clucas)

Ascending eruption cloud from Redoubt Volcano as viewed to the west from the Kenai Peninsula April 21, 1990 (R. Clucas)

For the more ambitious how about an original piece of research? (Irpsit wrote a fascinating series about a big hole!!!) Controversial stuff is great, got an alternate theory? (Peter Cobbold on El Hierro is excellent.) What about something inter- disciplinary? (Diana Barnes on Scheeps helping to revive volcanic badlands is wonderful!) Technicalities more your bag? (Wagabond on marine seimic sounding; great insights.) Plotters, hows about “beefing up” a special plot? (Plotting for Beginners 2 may get done one day, but feel free to jump in!!!)

One of Birgit's SEM images of material from El Hierro

One of Birgit’s awesome SEM images of material from El Hierro…

If none of these inspire how about something outrageously off topic for the Scheeepy Dalek?

Nothing is like the smell of a Motorcade in Depresneyville in the morning. Remember that when people shoot at you, they just wish to greet you welcome to Ukraine.

Nothing is like the smell of a Motorcade in Depresneyville in the morning. Remember that when people shoot at you, they just wish to greet you welcome to Ukraine.

So please, go and do yr research, track down the info on yr chosen subject and write something up… Include the standard Volcanocafe disclaimer and a reasonable list of references; and you’re done…

Posts are best submitted as plain text word documents; attached to an email. Pictures should be separately/ individually attached; most formats are fine but please no psd, crw or nef (they are too big and probably not supported by WP either; they need to be converted first). Jpg, gif, png, tiff are commonly supported formats and will do well.

However; when I asked Sissel about this, she said: “Just send it, I will edit what is neccessary!” (another inspirational blogger; remember The Little Prince?)

Have you ever made a comment that you (later) wished you’d saved for a guestpost? Then we want to hear from you; (give us as much detail as possible: approx dates, subject, etc. and we will go digging) dragons can search all 70,000 comments and extract that moment of inspiration…

My top tip (I know it’s environmentally unfriendly) is to print out the papers that you are really interested in; the references for yr article; that kinda thing…

Posts and comments are the lifeblood of the blog, there are (almost) no stupid questions or statements.

So there you have it, no more excuses for not handing in your homework!!!

With Love and Respect,

Schteve x

Links to inspirational articles:

Dead horse

The 2012 Super-moon. The largest full moon in 18 years. And no, it did not cause any large earthquakes either.

What exactly does that mean? Well, having a dead horse, in more modern navy slang, is having a debt that comes out of your pay to cover short term loan that the paymaster gave to you. It’s money you don’t see until it’s paid off. There’s nothing wrong with it, you should always pay your debts, but that is just a term that is applied to it. It comes from older nautical days when sailing was prevalent. If your ship was becalmed for extensive periods, odds are, you would run out of feed any livestock that you were transporting. The last thing you want laying around while you are stuck waiting for the wind… are dead horses. I’ve been around the stench of decaying animal copses (MV Livestock Express in the Red Sea) and it is not a pleasant aroma. (the Livestock Express had about 300 sheep stacked in one corner and couldn’t dump them due to environmental regulations)

Yeah, it’s an obtuse approach to the meat of this, but it is related… sort of.

The Horse latitudes are between about 30 and 35 degrees latitude. It’s pretty close to the boundary that I used in this chart.

Image by GeoLurking.

In case you missed it, this is one of the follow up charts that I used down in the discussion in the Moonie post. And, since I’m beating a dead horse, I felt the intro was appropriate.

That chart is a plot of the major plate boundaries between 30°N and °N and 30°S. It’s also the region traversed by the apparent sub Lunar and sub Solar points. That means that they both pass directly over head in this region at some point during the year. (plus about 5° of slop just to make it even)

Edward Lane at April 22, 2012 at 14:54 brought up a good point that spurred me back into thinking about the forces at work on the different ends of the plate boundaries. As many of you remember, I mentioned that if there were an effect, that there should be a physical explanation for it… at least an idea of a mechanism. Something that could be examined to see what the merits of the parent idea were. (Solar/Lunar influence).

Simplifying that plot into something that we can sort of measure, you get this:

Image by GeoLurking.

This is the angular measure of the extents of the plates in longitude as measured from the center of the Earth. The vertical boundaries are misleading, they actually get closer to each other the further from the equator they go. But for getting a general idea of their size, this works.

Now, since the Moon is pretty close, and it’s generally the most touted astronomical body that influences seismic activity, let’s look at what it’s effects might be.

Gravitational acceleration on the surface of the Earth is 9.8 m/s per second. This can also be expressed as N/kg of force. (9.8 N/kg). What is the comparable acceleration effect of the Moon on an object on the Earth? Roughly 0.00003319 m/s² towards the Moon.

How about the variation from one end of a plate to another, allowing for the extra distance from the Moon? Well, for a 30° plate, from directly under the Moon to the end furthest away… 0.00000015 m/s² less.

Here it is in graphic form:

Image by GeoLurking.

Referring back to the rectangular boxes on the plates… the largest extent was about 114°. That plate has an acceleration difference from the Moon of about 0.00000150 m/s², or ten times greater than the 30° plate.

Either way, that variation in force from the moon is still about 0.0000153% that of the gravitational force from the Earth.

This also explains why the researchers who have found a Lunar effect on some already seismically active areas have such a hard time extracting that signal, it is excruciatingly small.

GeoLurking

Distant earthquakes and volcanoes

Photograph by NASA. Grimsvötn 2011 eruption seen from Space.

The world is filled with people believing that large earthquakes cause volcanoes to erupt far far away. Lately we have had quite a few very large earthquakes that all where above 8 in magnitudes and two that was on the mega-colossal scale (Tohoku and Boxing-day earthquakes).

Here is the list since 2000:

2001: June 23 Peru (8.4)

2003: September 25 Hokkaido Japan (8.3)

2004: December 23 Macquery Islands New Zealand (8.1), December 26 Sumatra Indonesia (9.1 Boxing day earthquake)

2005: March 28 Nias Indonesia (8.6)

2006: May 3 Tonga (8.0), November 15 Kuril Islands Russia (8.3)

2007: January 13 Kuril Islands Russia (8.1), April 1 Solomon Islands (8.1), August 15 Chincha Alta Peru (8.0), September 12 Sumatra Indonesia (8.5)

2009: September 29 Samoa Islands (8.1)

2010: February 27 Maule Chile (8.8)

2011: March 11 Japan (9.0 Tohoku)

2012: April 12 Sumatra Indonesia (8.5), April 12 Sumatra Indonesia (8.2)

Good, now we have raw data. Among these are 6 out of the 11 strongest earthquakes recorded by man. One of the earthquakes was the third largest earthquake ever recorded. If something could rock the boat it would be one of these ones. Oh, and before you go off on the “there are more earthquakes now than before train”, no it s not. It is just that we have far more seismometers available now.

Photograph by M. Rietze. Stunning image of Eyjafjallajökull 2010.

What do we need now? Well, a couple of smoking close to eruption volcanoes would be good. Iceland is bound to have a couple. So let us check for the usual suspects. We had 3 eruptions happening (2 Grimsvötn and 1 Eyjafjallajökull). On top of that we have Hekla who is achingly close to erupting since 2007; Hekla is most likely the closest volcano on the planet to tipping over into an eruption. And for fun, let us throw in Etna; she is always up for a show.

Let us start with Grimsvötn, the penultimate bad-boy of Iceland. Grimsvötn has had more eruptions than any volcano during the last 300 years, and also the world’s largest fissure eruption during the same time period. We should find something there should we not?

2004 November 1? Nope, nothing happened then. 2011 May 21 (Grimsvötns largest eruption in a century). Nothing spectacular happening on that date.

Now you are going, Eyjafjallajökull, she disturbed airline traffic and was a messy bastard, surely that one was caused by an earthquake? 2010 March 17 (Fimmvörduhals-eruption) and April 14 (Eyjafjallajökull crater eruption). Well, I am sorry but nothing happened then.

Photograph by Nasa. Etna in full swing.

Let us now go for Etna, she is having loads of small eruptions during this time-period, so statistically at least one should coincide with a large earthquake. Let us check. I am not going to write a long list of the eruptions, I will just write down those that occurred that coincides with an actual earthquake. And once again it shows that no major eruption coincides with an Earthquake. If we then go into the last eruption of Etna that started in August 2010 and is still ongoing we find that Etna had series of small eruptions called Paroxysms. These happen about monthly so one of them would surely be a jackpot.

Lo and behold! We have a match! After 10 days of being quiet Etna had a paroxysm in the morning of the 12th of April. Thank the Gods, we have proven that Earthquakes causes Eruptions!

Or did we really? No we did not. Etna is a very predictable volcano, and Dr. Boris Behncke had already warned about the eruption coming 36 hours before the earthquake. Hm, so the volcano was already going to erupt. In reality the eruption was actually not coupled that well with the earthquake, there was 4 hours in between them.

Image by Icelandic Met Office. Here you can see the effect of the initial 8.5M Sumatra quake. The sinusoidal effect on the plot is earth-tides. The amount of energy shown for the quake is 10 000 times less than during the 2000 eruption of Hekla.

Well then Hekla, the most trigger happy volcano on the Planet. Locked and loaded to go off since at least 2007, one would think that nasty mess of a volcano would do something. Well she did, she shivered as jolly pudding. Here you can see both the 8.5 and the 8.2 earthquakes. It is a nice image, it shows that there is enough lava down there to actually shiver like a pudding, otherwise it proves nothing. The last eruption produced a motion 10 000 times larger. So, if the volcano closest to a large eruption on the planet did nothing more than behaves like Jell-O I would say that this matter is over with.

An Earthquake cannot cause an eruption in a far off volcano. Get over it.

Bonus volcano, Mount Merapi! We should not be euro-centric.  Guess what, there were no earthquake then either.

Merapi at work.

Why?

It is actually quite simple, the waves generated are filtered by the vast mass of earth, when the waves from the earthquake finally arrives only the most low in frequency are left, and they span a lot of area, we are talking about waves that are 100s of meters wide up to kilometers wide. They do not cause a kick in the ass of the magma causing it to de-gas, instead it gently sloshes it a bit. Like the difference of dropping a beer-can on the floor and opening it, and gently pulling the tap and pouring it after having turned the can gently upside down a few times.

If you do not believe me about the filtering try this experiment. Put on your favorite recording on your loudspeakers. Tape a piece of cardboard over the tweeters, listen. You should now hear that the high frequencies are muted. Now repeat the same thing over the bas. Not much happening right? Now, let us have fun, put in some earplugs before doing this. Now go and crank up the volume and take a look at the cardboard. It should by now be pulsing with the base pretty visible. Gosh darn it; same does the earth do to the earthquake waves.

The gently rocking motion of a teleseism (distant earthquake) is quite reminding of the gentle slow-moving earth-tides. And they do not cause eruptions either (nor earthquakes), but that is another bedtime story for another evening.

Earthquake on Earthquake

The same principle also goes for Earthquakes. A distant Earthquake is not going to cause a distant fault-line to rupture. Why? Well again the waveforms are so large that they move all of the fault-line at the same time in a slow and equal movement. Think here about going for a massage and compare it to being hit a few times by a boxer. The massage does not really hurt you, but the boxer will.

In this case the boxer was the blow of 8.5 at Sumatra, it damaged a close by fault-line causing the following 8.2 Earthquake. So I am sad to say that physics do not allow teleseisms to set off series of large earthquakes all over the planet. Get over it 2012ers.

CARL

Photograph by Eggert Nordahl. All copyrights reserved. For usage contact Volcanocafé. This beautifull picture shows Hekla in the late evening a few days ago.