And she did it again! The Sheepy Dalek bar is open!

/ March 1, 2013

Etna showed another paroxysm yesterday. Number 6 in 2013.
ScienzaObsoleta poinzed to a wonderfull video :

INGV Report
Schteve and me watched the LAVE cam during the following night

where lava could be seen glowing and moving!

Please check the photostream by Etnaboris a.k.a. Dr Boris Behncke on Flickr. His does not only have wonderful images but also writes detailed comments to his photos which describe the happenings very well.

Greg put his script, which he had explained in his post Capturing Timelapse Videos in Windows, Author Greg, February 13th to use and captured a timelapse of Etnas behavior yesterday. In the end one can clearly see a lava flow which, i am sure would have been missed without the timelapse.

Here some usefull Etna inks, because evn though they are in the crows nest and have been mentioned a few times before, people keep missing them.

Etna Tremor
Webcams:

Neither Kilgharra now Alan sent riddles. So i am sorry but it looks like there wont be any this weekend.

ghdrake commented the following:
Paluweh in Indonesia doing odd things:

Erik Klemetti had covered this volcano on its remote island on February 5th. on his blog eruptions.

Irpsit is watching  Thordarhyrna

Quote:” …And let us remember that Thordarhyrna is just next door to Laki, and it is at this spot where the chamber that erupted Laki is located.

Usually the mechanisms is this: Grimsvotn can feed eruptions at Thordarhyrna;and Thordarhyrna can feed eruptions at Laki. Often eruptions are moderate size, VEI2 to 4, but only rarely of the size of Laki. Last eruptions there were in 1887, 1903 and 1910. So its about time to expect a medium size explosive and lava eruption there.

Its also worth watching especially after the last eruption of Grimsvotn where tremor persisted long after the eruption was finished, and that points to the system being filled with new fresh magma, which probably intruded into the southwest towards Thordarhyrna and Laki. But I do not fear any eruption from Laki, just Thordarhyrna.

Thordarhyrna by the way (as is Laki) is considered a part of Grimsvotn.

And to complicate things further, Thordarhyrna is connected by a fault to Hamarinn. So like Gjálp (between Grimsvotn and Bardarbunga), this fault, where earthquakes occurred today, could mark a movement of magma from Hamarinn towards Thordarhyrna or vice-versa (less likely)

Worth watching since these last days there were many deep quakes under Bardarbunga and Grimsvotn and more shallow ones under Thordarhyrna. Just like a fissural intrusion would be predicted to occur.”

Iceland quakes: http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/

Spica

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79 thoughts on “And she did it again! The Sheepy Dalek bar is open!”

  1. I saw the Paluweh video yesterday on the Landslides blog and thought that the guys who filmed it were way, way to close to the dome. Don’t dome collapses turn into pyroclastic flows like it did at Unzen in 1993? Darwin Awards, anyone?

    Reply

    • Hi

      I do not know how far they were when filming, maybe they used a zoom. Or not. I think it is the same team who did some video where they were really close to a lava lake, so maybe they are daredevils. Dome collapses create pyroclastic flows and ashclouds. I was lucky enough to be in Guadeloupe in Feb 2010 when part of the Montserrat soufriere collapsed. It began in the afternoon with a very dark cloud. At the end of the day, ashes began to fall and the following morning there was a layer of ash over all the island (60 km from Montserrat roughly).
      you can check some pics.

      http://www.panoramio.com/user/4007767/tags/Ashfall

      it was weird, because it looked a bit like snow (in a tropical environment!), but the ashes left a gritty sensation in the eyes…

      Spica made some electronic microscope pics of the ash, they are probably in the treasury.

      Reply

    • Hi Agimarc,
      Re: the Paluweh video,
      It certainly looked risky to me.. but he may have been further away than it seemed…
      If I was gonna get that close I would try to stay: out of the valleys, out of the line of any obvious “bulges” and where I could dive into cover at a ninstants notice…
      I didn’t get the impression he was doing that, he seemed to be “underneath…”
      If that’s where the most rocks are falling, that’s likely where the bulge is…

      Reply

      • The Krafts have done really a lot in their time (alas to short) to do some vulgarization. In fact if you ask me to name volcanologists I would say Haroun Tazieff (his life is the stuff of a novel) and them.

        Reply

  2. And since it’s friday night a compliment rescued from the schpam dungeon:
    “Perfectly composed written content, thankyou for entropy.”
    It made me :chuckle:

    Reply

    • “Entropy is a mathematically-defined thermodynamic quantity that helps to account for the flow of energy through a thermodynamic process. Entropy was originally defined for a thermodynamically reversible process as:

      ΔS = ʃ(dQrev/T)

      where the uniform temperature (T) of a closed system is divided into an incremental reversible transfer of heat energy into that system (dQ). The above definition is sometimes called the macroscopic definition of entropy because it ignores that fact that matter is composed of molecules. In thermodynamics, entropy has been found to be more generally useful and it has several other reformulations. Entropy was discovered when it was noticed via mathematics to be a quantity that behaves as a function of state. Entropy is an extensive property, but it is often given as an intensive property of specific entropy as entropy per unit mass or entropy per mole.”

      Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

      Reply

  3. I don’t believe It! I missed another one! Thank you for the summary, Spica.

    Tolbachik is still erupting in Kamchatka. Any one got any information on the amount of lava and gas emission? They must be impressive by now. Are we in for a cooler summer 😕

    Reply

  5. i was just one hour outside observing some nice and bright northern lights. the most impressive was that they were very fast moving.ones despite that not that bright, more of the pulsating type, which is quite rare. There is a currently geomagnetic storm happening, albeit a minor one.

    Reply

  6. She will never see it… but many thanks to the UPS clerk who let me drop my outbound package off after hours!

    (I do a lot of shipping back and forth of parts, and this was one of those last minute “We got to have it now!” E-mails from another tech in the company.

    The smoothing part of the incident is that I was able to prepare the shipment and had the packaged labeled and paid for. All she had to do was scan it and toss it on the conveyor. I’ve waylaid drivers out in the field to do the same thing. “Hey! Can you take this?.” Having all the administrative stuff out of the way makes it possible.

    My only regret is that several people saw here at the counter and sort of rushed to the door while I was there. They had actually been closed for over an hour, so I don’t know how she dealt with that.

    The collapse structure in South Florida is now 100 feet deep.

    Nasty way to go. In a hole, cold, wet, with pieces of house and yard falling down on you. The thing has local authorities so spooked that they won’t put any equipment near it to effect a recovery. They don’t know how unstable the ground is. A 40,000 lb apparatus may just slip away into the unknown.

    Reply

  7. Totally OT: I am still totally blown away by yesterdays Deep Space Show in the museum ( my workplace). As an opening to the CEDIC ( Central European Deepsky Imaging Conference) Jukka-Pekka Metsävainio presented his images and explained them. In 3D!!!!

    We watched many different nebulae, supernove remanants and a galaxy in 3D. It ended with a 2D video in which J.P. moved around, zoomed in and out and turned it around, mostly the Bubble Nebula and some others so you had a 3D impression even if it was not 3D. And this to the music of the Da Vinci Code

    In this youtube video there is even a volcano involved a little bit so that this comment is not completely OT.

    Reply

    • Ooooooh! That was beautiful. Thank you Spica. The deep space Show sounded mind blowing too. I will never forget seeing a film called “The dream is Alive” all about the space program. It was in the Imax cinema at the bradford Museum of Photography. It was the nearest thing I will ever be to walking in space. It was amazing.

      Reply

  8. A Saturday morning ruminescence here….I was taken to see Journey to the centre of the earth when I was a mere snip of a girl. The elderly gentleman that took me was Edwin J Beer
    .http://chat1960vintage.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/fletcherising-d-fossils.html
    He was one of the group of men who discovered Rayon. He was a respected Geologist and chemist. I took my children to visit him when he was 106 years old and he strode round his garden telling them where each plant had come from and a little about his epic journeys hunting for minerals for the paint industry back when Rudyard Kipling was just starting to be published!
    Mr Beer encouraged my love of all things Stoney. His comments throughout this film alerted me not to trust as fact, all scientific bumpf that came out of Hollywood.
    If you have nothing better to do I suggest you watch this version of Journey to the centre of the earth and count up how many geological mistakes you can spot.
    To whet your appetites and to make up for no riddles this weekend how about watching the full version of this film ( to be found on you tube) and list all the geological horrors …
    I love the description of Iceland and Snaefeljokull….. :D.

    Reply

  9. Hi

    Earthquake animation for Iceland and for February 2013.
    Size of the dots is proportional to magnitude.
    Color of the dots is related to date (see left side of colorbar)
    Terrain elevation values are shown on the right side of colorbar.
    In the last part of the video a zoom is made on the Grimsvotn and Thordarhyma area.
    Data from IMO and NOAA.

    There were some earthquake below Thordarhyma, but it is not easy to see.
    HD is available.

    Reply

  17. http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/#view=map
    Three little quakes all within Torfajokull. There was a small series of quakes on 16th Feb 2013. I wonder if this is more magma coming up into this area. The last eruption was coincidental or possibly related, to a fissure Eruptions at Bardabunga in 1477. A little more detail about this Volcano and it’s definite non- relationship with Hekla can be found here on the link below. In fact it’s a very interesting paper as it suggests that any magma beneath hekla is probably below 14km in depth and that the samples taken during this study did not show a magma chamber beneath Torfajokull even though there is much geothermal activity which usually suggests a magma chamber relatively near the surface As ever in Iceland, the complexities of the volcanic systems there raises more questions than answers.
    http://www.academia.edu/868270/Seismic_constraints_on_magma_chambers_at_Hekla_and_Torfajokull_volcanoes_Iceland

    Reply

    • Torfajokull: there is a large and old subsidence caldera on it. So this (and the wide geothermal field within the caldera) both point to a large chamber underneath it.

      Second thing: Torfajokull in 10000 years has had at least something like 6 co-eruptions with Veidivotn (which supposedly belongs to Bárdarbunga volcano). Two since the Viking settlement.

      This cannot be a coincidence. The eruption usually starts in Torfajokull (explosively) and spreads pink rhyolite ash around. Then, a fissure opens at Veidivotn, which spreads large amounts of lava and black basalt ash. The tephra layers of Veidivotn eruptions reveal that bicolored ash layers, first rhyolite, then black basalt.

      So this points to the reverse of conventional wisdom: eruptions seem to start first at Torfajokull then Veidivotn (as if Torfajokull would be the source of magma). However both magma types are completely different, so this is still a big mystery.

      Conventional wisdom says magma comes deep within Bárdartbunga and intrudes southwest towards Veidivotn, and then reaches Torfajokull and triggers an eruption there (but of a different sort of rhyolite magma)

      There are other 2 volcanoes that also participate in this dead zone fissure eruptions (but different ones, more south of Veidivotn): Katla and Edlgjá, of which we know little, but have co-erupted in 934; and Grimsvotn,Thordarhyrna and Laki, which co-erupted in 1783, but there the eruption started first in Grimsvotn 1 month before Laki. It is unknown when Thordarhyrna started to erupt during that episode. It also erupted in 1902 in combination with Grimsvotn, again unknown pattern, but Laki did not erupted then.

      The problem is that we know little about the eruptive patterns of the dead zone (as well as those of Katla, Torfajokull and Bardarbunga and Thordarhyrna). even if several eruptions occurred there since the Viking settlement.

      Reply

      • Thank you Irpsit. You have put concisely the history of eruptions in The dead Zone. I think it is really very much an alive zone now!!

        Reply

  18. Hello everyone!
    Just back from a short professional visit to the University of Michigan, trying to recover from the cold and blizzard in the tropical heat of Rio.
    Still lots of work to do here, but trying to cope with the huge amount of volcanic news.
    So, Etna is now the star around here? Probably jealous from our paying too much attention on Tolbachik…
    I saw these news from Karkar volcano in Papua New Guinea at John Seach’s page: http://www.volcanolive.com/news.html
    Don’t know if already posted.
    Miss you guys.

    Reply

    • Hi Renato, nice to see you 🙂
      That sounds like a pretty big explosion, aviation code Red and 30,000 foot plume… The link is useful too, thanks.
      Etna has indeed been the star attraction, the videos collected in the posts are well worth a look…
      Stromboli also has been a bit more active than usual.

      Reply

    • Hi Renato- Uof M huh? Wife’s Alma Mater. She grew up in Michigan.
      She has stories of trips from class to class that bordered on
      Jack London tales…

      Reply

  19. Diana: I replied to your Torfajokull post, just a few comments ago.

    Today also a nice swarm near Tungnafellsjokull, conmtinuing the trend of increased earthquake activity over the entire northwest of Vatnajokull, along 6 main volcanoes: Tungnafellsjokull, Bardarbunga, Hamarinn, Grimsvotn, Thordarhyrna and Kverfjoll. And also increased earthquakes at Askja and Katla.

    Definitively increased hotspot activity.

    Reply

    • This is looking so interesting and to a certain extent I am making some sense of what is going on. I am so pleased you have confirmed my thoughts about these observations. It is good to put a name to what is happening… a Hotspot Blob rising….
      (I am but a mere amateur and only in the process of learning about Iceland’s volcanicity. Please do not take any comments as being predictive of an eruption.)

      Reply

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