The lava dome during the extrusion phase and in the lower right corner one can see the walkway. Photograph by Tom Pfeiffer (VolcanoDiscovery)
Today, 10 Feb 2014 PVMBG (Pusat Vulkanologi dan Mitigasi Bencana Geologi) raised the alert status of Kelud mountain (Kelut, Gunung Kelud) to level III (of IV) from yellow alert (waspada) to orange alert (siaga). Gunung Kelud is a 1,731 m high stratovolcano located in East Java in Indonesia. Like many Indonesian volcanoes and others on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Kelud is known for large explosive eruptions up to VEI 5 throughout its history (Wikipedia), about 30 times since the 13th century. The latest eruptions were in 1901, 1919 (killing 5000), 1951, 1966, 1990 and in 2007/2008. An estimated 135,000 people live within a 10 km radius around the crater.
Badan Geologi hosts a webcam.
Aster visible near infrared (VNIR) image of Kelud from 17 Aug 2003. Water appears blue, vegetation red, ground with no vegetation, e.g. urban areas, appears white to green to brown. Source https://gbank.gsj.jp/vsidb/image/Kelut/bestvnir.html.
On this image the lava dome can be seen that grew within the crater lake, Carl wrote about it´s purposeful drainage last July.
Conclusion
PVMBG report. VB, shallow volcanic earthquakes, indicating migration of magma through a shallow conduit. VA, volcano-tectonic earthquakes, indicating magma supply.
Gunung Kelud is known for its deadly and explosive eruptions. At least 1 VEI-5 is known and a further minimum of 6 VEI-4 eruptions have occured at the volcano. After the volcano killed more than 5000 people the volcano was rebuilt by humans to lower the risk of lahars and pyroclastic flows. This has been done twice and that meant that a very small crater lake existed as Gunung started to quietly extrude a lava dome inside the crater.
The lava dome quickly emptied out the remnant crater lake. Normally the crater lake would by now have flooded repeatedly and as such the active mitigation has been an un-precedented success this time around since no floods or lahars has happened.
As seen in the image above the amount of shallow volcanic earthquakes have increased dramatically during the last few days, a probable sign of new magma moving upwards in the system.
Keluds activity has sofar limited itself to the peacefull and very beautifull extrusion of the lavadome, but this is unlikely to continue if new magma is arriving from depth. And since the volcano has a highly explosive history it is likely that it will suffer an explosive eruption in the end. If that happens it is likely to be in the range of a VEI-3 or a VEI-4. Smaller is unlikely since the activity is centered at the central part of the crater, and bigger is also unlikely judging from the current level of activity.
CARL & CRYPHIA
VolcanoCafé 
Wow! Thanks Chryphia and Carl for the headlines! And the images are amazing! As if they were in 3D!
That’s one heck of a lava dome. I guess it would be a pretty big blast if it ends up getting blown apart.
Very interesting story, but please credit the indeed amazingly beautiful top picture of the growing lava dome (photograph of Tom Pfeiffer/www.VolcanoDiscovery.com)
No problem, did not know it was Toms picture.
Does the size of the lava dome affect the size of the blast? For example: The larger the lava dome, the larger the blast?
It has grown far more than on the image above. Now it is almost as high as the crater edge.
It is hard to answer if it means a bigger blast since there is very little record about dome growth and explosive size at Kelud.
Personally I do not believe it will influence the final eruption (if it happens). It might though mean that a large pyroclastic flow will roll over the side of the crater as the initial explosion happen (if it happens).
Ah, okay.
Wouldn’t a larger dome = larger plug?
The difference between a brittle plug and hard old rock is..?
The explosion would be the same anyhow. Only difference I guess is that there is greater risk of a PF.
Should the heavy earthquake swarms at the volcano continue it seems reasonable that an eruption shall occur.
Here is a cloudy peek into Kelud´s crater from the Badan Geologi webcam:
http://www.vsi.esdm.go.id/cam_detail.php?id=14
That cam will take exactly one spectacular image before going to the annointed Heaven of Dutifull Webcams when the eruption start.
Would be too bad, it is only 2 days old…
http://beritajatim.com/peristiwa/197859/pasang_cctv_di_kelud,_pvmbg_akui_terkendala_kabut_tebal.html#.Uvll9fl5MrU
Might lose the connection so we might get the image.
* or might not get the image
When Kelud erupted in 1990 all equipment was destroyed in the initial blast. Even a hardened seismometer was blasted to pieces well outside the crater.
So, I think we will get one glorious image and then good night 🙂
Etna is looking colourful tonight 😉
Source: http://www.ct.ingv.it/en/webcam-etna-en.html
That is a pretty thermal image!
An earlier stream from Benito Morabito shows intense strombolian activity.
That’s actually old footage (of 26 October 2013). The current activity is much weaker.
Oh, thanks for the correction. The description was “Streamed live on Feb 10, 2014”, but you certainly know better. 🙂
Yeah, I am really sorry sometimes when I need to correct something posted on the web and described as something it is not. I just don’t get why there are so many folks out there who put all sorts of images and video on the web – mostly stolen from some web site – and say “this is the event of today in this place” but in reality the photos or videos are of some older date and/or somewhere else.
Boris, do not be sorry, we really want to be corrected when we find something that is wrong.
There is so many good “right” things out there to keep us happy that we do not need the wrong things 🙂
You are right, hunting down original versions of videos or photos sometimes is annoying and very time consuming. In this case I was unsuspicious, but should have looked further down the playlist of the author to see it was a reproduction of his own work labelled “video etna dimenticato 26 ottobre 2013 ore 7,00”. 🙂
That is one interesting volcano mitigation idea…Drain the lake…
Still on line BTW in clinch with provider…
Not at the coffee shop yet..
They did way back when in Italy in a caldera lake. The drain is right under the Popes ass (literally). Or in other words the drain empties out below Castel Gandolfo (The Popes vacation home).
Here is a bit on the area: I and Wife want to see “April in Italy” (and rent a Fiat 500-prefrably an
Abarth to drive.)
http://www.italyheaven.co.uk/lazio/castelliromani.html
I saw the photo of the lake and it screams “CALDERA!!!”…
Hi TGMcCoy, Here’s wikipedia on Lake Albano:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Albano
Two overlapping craters is their verdict, there’s a ridge in the lake which is only 70m below the surface dividing the two. Very obviously a volcanic feature when you look at the pictures.
If memory serves water has discharged on 3 separate occations through the tunnel without any explanation from rain or other weather conditions. This is not counting the original over-flow that caused the construction of the tunnel. So it is quite possible that the crater floors are rising with inflation now and then.
I guess that Boris has more information on this.
I did some research on this a while back. I’m pretty sure Colli Albani had a VEI-7 basaltic eruption a long time ago. It’s quite an interesting volcanic system needless to say.
That’s a pretty mean looking plug right there. I like the mitigation technique of draining the lake to prevent lahars
Looks like their are some Earthquakes going on at Landmannalaugar. That’s not to far from Torfajokull. They aren’t completely confirmed.
Interesting
Not really Mike as they are in the area of the old, solidified and considered solidified beyond the point where it can be remobilised 4½ km diameter magma chamber. Had they been in the SE area, the area of greatest activity, they would have been more interesting. Of course I cannot now locate the very recent paper where inSAR measurements were used to map the magma reservoirs of several Icelandic volcanoes, but here’s another one on Torfajökull.
Click to access UNU-GTP-SC-10-1103.pdf
Torfajökull is interesting since it has both areas that are “dead” like the area you are talking about, and other areas that are highly alive. On a line transecting Torfajökulls center towards Veidivötn has an active reservoir, and there is also one in the direction of Hekla.
Torfajökull seems to be a fairly interesting volcano in so many ways. Problem is that she is hard to read and she can have both magmatic earthquakes and shrinking ones in the same little swarm.
In other words Torfajökull is the ultimate tease – geologically speaking
There are more extreme teases out there 🙂
Are you still mad at Hekla for making you look like a tin-foiler? ;-P
Not really. Both times I was in agreement with IMO… And I think that few people would say that IMO are tin-foilers 😉
I actually find it quite fun that it is only Hekla I have missed on. I am still patting my back on Grimsvötn and El Hierro so I am not sad 🙂
Here I admit Hekla has fooled me sveral times. Next time I plan get better of her ….
Hekla is a terrible tease…
Yepp, top class Lady 🙂
Good morning all!
And Good Morning Etna – an animation from cam 1 of guide-etna.com/webcam/#
Also, I have added Kelut to my collection on
http://volcams.malinpebbles.com/pubweb/Indonesia.htm
and the newly working Etna Walk camera to the Etna page.
Enjoy watching!
Beautiful pictures. And what a thick, brown ash this morning! Does that have a special meaning?
Hey, I caught the landslide? Of course I did not know at the time, am as proud as a herring! 😀
Boris once explained, that brown ash is pulverized old lava, ripped by some poweful event from below the surface.
YES you did!! 🙂
The alert status of Kelud appears to have been reduced down to yellow (II) now. No report yet for the reason.
http://www.bgl.esdm.go.id/
Edit: Weird, there seem to be two slightly different lists on the official websites, this one still has Kelud on orange alert.
http://pvmbg.bgl.esdm.go.id/
I can answer that one… PVMBG state organisation, BGL local organisation.
PVMBG is the state scientific mitigation authority, think USGS here. BGL is the state Civil Defense Authority. I do not really like that both of them are putting out Alert Levels, that can really confuse things and increase risk for the locals.
No, the state of alert has not been reduced. The first table is not updated. Currently, authorities are preparing evacuation zones : http://www.republika.co.id/berita/nasional/jawa-timur/14/02/11/n0ttwn-kediri-siapkan-78-titik-pengungsi-jika-gunung-kelud-meletus
Thank you for the clarification Shérine. Still not good that there are two sources for the alerts and that the local authority is not updating them. Such things can confuse people a lot with some people reading the higher alert, and other people going by the other. Confusion is the greatest risk in risk management… 🙂
Interesting paper from 2009 describing the sequence of events leading to the 2007 dome building at Kelud:
Click to access jurnal20090401.pdf
Good paper that explains the difference between the different earthquake types that are listed in the PVBMG-reports.
Hi all
Kelud looks interesting indeed. I’m in Singapore for a week with very weird weather – a grey cast most days and the locals are blaming it all on Sinabung. Looking at the VAACs I’m not sure that is the case, but that’s what all the taxi drivers are saying, and you never argue with a cabbie!
Still very nice and hot and dry though – my nearest town back home is slowing disappearing under the Thames.
Definitly not Sinabung, most likely it is that the entire northern hemisphere is out of whack and it is spreading that far now. After all we have a heatwave in Luleå (Sweden) and Lurking is out throwing snowballs… So why should Singapore get away from the fun
After St. Helens I was riding with an old Alaska Sourdough across the channel from Ketchican airport to the city proper this was late June and a nice swell was going rolling the ferry. He called the conditions. “Volcano Weather.”
+7C and sunny/broken clouds in NE Oregon rain-lots of it forecast. Also a nice “snow eater’
Chinook…Not near as bad as this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_flood_of_1964 did get to see the last Steam powered Pile
driver on the UP railroad work though, to rebuild a local bridge…
As Boris reported on Facebook, INGV has already published a report about the Etna event this morning at http://www.ct.ingv.it/it/component/content/article/11-notizie/news/974 (Italian, but google translate copes rather good with the text). – Also see Granyias animation above.
A small landslide of hot, unstable material took place below the eastern slope of the New Southeast Crater (NSEC). A timelapse of the event with pictures from the thermal cam at Monte Cagliato (EMCT) on the INGV – Osservatorio Etneo Youtube channel:
Etna doing post-modern deconstructing? Interesting 🙂
Wonder if the cone has reached its maximum size now, as its eastern slope starts to suffer from instability.
I am really curious… I guess Boris will swing by and enlighten us. (hope so)
If all of us ask really really nicely perhaps we could even get a post about Etna and her recent behaviour. I know I am drooling for one 🙂
It is worth a try. Please, Boris! 🙂
I’d like to see one, too. Please, Boris?
I’ll try my best as soon as possible 😉
thanks
IMO Icelandic EQ charts froze at 15:40 hrs (7some appears coming bak as I write).
Tech glitch most likely.
http://www.vedur.is/skjalftar-og-eldgos/jardskjalftar#view=map
English version is running http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/
And backup is running. So say we are not prepared! Of sorts.
NO laws in Iceland ALLOW for us to recieve assistance from abroad *in case we needed it*
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/index.html
I noticed that too. I wonder if any earthquakes happened while the Tech glitch occurred. Swarms seem to be lowering at the moment.
Even if one occured the data is not lost. Please do not that this glitch only affected the public servers.
Could the dome at Kelud also be a plug?
Could be, according to paper linked above the plug is remnants of degassed magma from the 1990 eruption. And the recent activity is believed to be new magma that has arrived under it.
Interesting, that makes sense then as to why it never realistically entered a full eruption in 2007.
They did extensive testing of the lava that came out. Good work really that they presented in the paper. It is so sad that we rarely see Indonesian work written in english on volcanoes and volcanism, if that paper is representative of there work it is just as kick-ass as I have always believed it to be 🙂
Inspite it being no more than a lava flow, Etna does look impressive with all the ash and steam clouds lit up:
Animation from http://www.lave-volcans.com/intro_webcams.html
A little OT, but does anyone have a general idea of what to expect when the cryptodome underneath Goðabunga reaches the surface? Are we talking phreatic activity or a slow melt until it breaches the glacier above?
Been trying to find something out there and am not sure if the same mechanics apply for that thick of an ice sheet as applies to snow-capped volcanoes
If and when it breaches you can most likely think of it as something like a normal eruption from Grimsvötn, or perhaps more like Eyjafjallajökull. The eruption will be influenced by the ice-sheet and become more explosive. Question is how evolved the magma has become in the 15 years that has gone since the emplacement started. So far 3 emplacements and no boom. My guess is that it will take a couple of more intrusions before anything can happen since the rock is so plyable.
Well I saw in Sturkell et al “Katla & Eyjafjallajökull” that Godabunga’s seismicity matched that of Indonesian volcanoes, and they also hypothesized that the cryptodome would be silicic like all the outcrops immediately outside or close to the rim of Katla’s caldera. So I’ve wondered what difference that could make when compared to other historic Icelandic sub-glacial eruptions.
I have a big problem with that specific paper of Sturkell. He seems to have missed that the intrusion started in 1998 per data from IMO, he also has missed that the earthquakes form a stack formation leading down in the same direction as the deep feeder of Eyjafjallajökul (Lurking did a Grade A plot that showed it).
So, it has been seated there for to short a time to get really silicic, and also he missed that it is not even a part of Katla in any form. It is most likely a separate entity or more related to Eyjafjallajökull. There is even a slight possibility that Fimmvörduhals was the first eruption of the Godabunga magma, but that is highly speculative and there is no data supporting it.
He is though correct about the earthquakes being very much alike the earthquakes in Indonesia, but that is probably more due to the ground temperature being very high in the area and that makes the earthquakes more prone to look like type B.
Thanks for the input. Have been to busy with school to research in earnest and haven’t seen anything more recent than that particular paper.
Carl, how do you know that the intrusions began in 1998? What’s to say that intrusions weren’t taking place in 1500 a.d? Can you really be that sure about something like this when there hasn’t been any equipment to record whether there has been intrusions there until modern times?
Good one!
Of course I can’t be entirely sure. It could well have been one before.
But there are a few things that point to it not being the case. The first one is the the mass of earthquakes. Godabunga has suffered 10 times the energy release of both Katla and Eyjafjallajökull during the same period. And that indicates a raw system. Remember that Eyjafjallajökull had not erupted for 130ish years when it blew so the system was pretty clogged up.
There is also a progression of sharp breaking type A quakes going upwards from depth as the intrusion moved up. And then a bulk of them at the dyke depth as the intrusion started to crack rock and form a magma reservoir. If there had been previous intrusions the deep feeder tube would have been there allready and we should not see a clear trace of it.
I think it started then, but I am far from sure.
One small side effect that I have read about with fractionation. The more that it does, the less volume is available for the magma, so chamber pressure could increase. Once that pressure exceeds the hoop stress that the surrounding walls can withstand, you get dike propagation.
Katla and Eyjafjallajökull are central volcanoes. IF, and presently it’s a big if, Godabunga erupts it too will fill the criteria for a central volcano pretty quickly. Lurking’s plot was part of my Katla-series, here it is:
https://volcanocafe.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/lurking-myr1.png
As can be seen, Godabunga has its own feeder system.
Thank you for posting the evidence that Sturkell did not have when he wrote the paper.
As everyone can see the feeder system formed during the period 1998 – 2009ish…
Oh wow, what a great plot. Thanks both to Lurking and Milord.
And this shows so well how you can never have too much data at hand
More info from the top of my head: Godabunga is not so much a cryptodome as a vertical sill some 2 x 3 km but only 100 – 200 m thick.
Etna is still putting on a show. Is this lava near any habitation?
Hi Karen, this view is from Catania, abt. 30 km to the south of it. Afaik, the lava flows stop in the Valle del Bove, where there is no village all too near.
And I think it looks much more then there is, because the lava flow lights up big wads of cloud around it.
Yellowstone just had a 3.5 quake. Oh lord, the doomsdayers are gonna be all over it.
We may or may not notice from the cacophony that is normal from that sector of the finger pulling society.
OH MY GOD WE ARE not GOING TO DIE!!!
LOL!
you are a bid far away for that
The funny thing is that a while ago there was a 5.2M in the middle of Tondano and not a single doomsayer noticed it. I think they should get a grip on themselves and start screaming at every quake in every supervolcano. Oh… there was a 4.1M in Atitlán a few weeks ago…
In reallity there would have been more merrit for the tinfoilers to gape and gawk at those two earthquakes since those two supervolcanoes are actually active.
I would guess most people in geosciences aren’t even aware of Tondano’s existance. I definitely wouldn’t expect doomsdayers to know a thing about it.
But yes, there are many supervolcanoes, most of which are much more active than Yellowstone.
Based on the Caldera size, it was probably good for about 942 km² DRE over it’s formation lifespan.
The Somma volcano that grew up inside of it probably did about 14 km² when the Pangolombian caldera formed from it’s collapse. (5 x 3.5 km)
The interesting thing with Tondano is that it did it in one go. So it was a VEI-8 event. Pangolombian had a rather nice edifice and also created an outer Graben so I would not be surprised if it was a small VEI-7.
Tondano is really massive, and it is also the most active VEI-8 volcano on the planet.
And still nobody cares about the volcano, it is actually amazing.
To the asshole who left the nozzle locked in the on position and in the storage slot on the pump at the gas station yesterday, YOU FAIL.
No, I did not set up my transaction and turn the pump on before making sure that it was safe to do so. So, go find some where else to get your jollies.
BTW… Karma will get you. It always does. I hope your ready for that because you rarely see it coming.
Meanwhile, in Pritchard Alabama. A police officer confronted a man wearing a hood, that was lurking around behind the police station. After being confronted, the man appeared to reach for a weapon, the officer fired two rounds at him from inside the patrol car, he then exited the vehicle and fired two more rounds. The suspicious man fled, and no one was hit by the gunfire.
Yesterday, the news reported that an off duty Pritchard officer stopped at a convenience store and noticed that the clerk was acting oddly at the end of the counter. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that someone was holding a gun on her. He walked out to the car and retrieved his side arm and badge, walked back inside and arrested the perpetrator.
“Meanwhile, in Pritchard Alabama. A police officer confronted a man wearing a hood, that was Lurking around behind the police station.”
Prithee tell us what you were doing behind the police station, and why you had a hood?
Hmmm, trying to impose karma on the guy who messed up the gas nozzle? I’m sure he can come up with a better respose, tho. 🙂
Karma can not be imposed. It operates of it’s own free will. That’s why it can be so brutal.
I’ve seen karma go many many years before catching up with someone. The most poignant was Willie Jr who wound up “drinking” antifreeze on the day of his sentencing.
That’s really interesting thing for someone in the mortuary business to do. It’s not like he is totally oblivious to the effects on the human body. It has that same odd feeling as the guy that committed suicide by shooting himself with a nail-gun… seven times.
To shoot yourself to death with a nail gun shows an admirable level of determination.
Brilliantly clear views of Kelud today. I wonder how the eruption will start (if it does and it kind of looks like it will). Will it be like that video of Santiaguito with fumaroles suddenly appearing in ring fractures around the base of the dome or will the dome firstly begin to rise or will it all be too fast to see anything (the most likely!).. or will I be in the kitchen making dinner?
Easy. You’ll be in the kitchen making dinner. That’s the way it works. Statistically speaking, it’s also the most likely… that is, unless you adopt some modification to your behavior that makes the dog wonder whats wrong with you.
Mine has taken to laying flat at the door, head on the ground, peering forlornly up at me with sad eyes in the off chance that I will get up and throw the ball so he can chase it. He’s gotten to the point where he understands and follows the directive to “drop it.” So that I can take it and throw it again. I think it’s the Lab in him that lets him be calm enough to understand that concept.
But at 4 am, when one of the other dogs gets trapped in the bathtub (of it’s own accord) and rattles the shower door, he sounded as if he was going to literally eat whatever it was that rousted him from his sleep. It was so sudden that I was scrambling for a weapon… then I realized that he hadn’t alerted on anything that was a real threat, and I put the stick down. Why I picked a stick is beyond me. Must be a primal thing.
(However, I was always taught to meet force with just enough force to overcome the threat. Anything else will land you at trial.)
Well, I just went to the kitchen, but it didn’t work. Either that or the webcam has frozen.
Kelud normally has short and brutal eruptions so expect something like the first hours of Grimsvötn 2011.
I think if we are lucky we will get one image of the entire center of the crater moving upwards and the next image will be nothing since the cam is airborne.
… so the second image could be of the ISS?
Yeah, I would imagine especially after the failed 2007 eruption, we should get a VEI-4 if it doesn’t fail to erupt again this time. 2014 certainly has been an exciting year for volcanoes so far (especially with comparison to 2013).
2007 seems to be a bit of an oddity. It is not really a failed eruption, it is more like an afterbirth from the previous eruption. I would say that it is likely that the eruption will start.
Peculiar illusion near Kelud: The mysterious road.
There was a program about it a few years ago where some guy debunked it.
It is an optical illusion, which was quite visible when he got at it with a tiltmeter and leveling tools.
there is a bid of road in Australia, I said yyah, but went there to have a go, it is weird one drives down the mountain puts in neutral and the car goes back up, figure that one
So here’s the full report (in English) on the 11 February 2014 “hot avalanche” or “pyroclastic density current” at Etna’s New Southeast Crater, fresh from the INGV-Osservatorio Etneo, written and posted online by yours truly.
http://www.ct.ingv.it/en/component/content/article/11-notizie/news/975
From the point of the photographer of the pyroclastic flow in photo 1 it looks as if the edge of the Valle de Bove caught the flow, but as you wrote, it tapered out on flat terrain. Still very impressive!
Thank you Boris. A nice, clear, report. People should be aware of the dangers that even a “kind” volcano like Etna can get angry and dangerous at times. I wonder if people are aware of the dangers that Valle del Bove poses to visitors who might think that lavaflows are the only threats to be avoided by browsing at the spot. Congrats for the great photos and videos and the feedback on former events! 🙂
Great, thanks a lot!
If I interpret this table correctly the number of shallow volcanic earthquakes (VB, Vulkanik dangkal) at Kelud has doubled from 10 to 11 Feb.
http://kedirikab.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1369&catid=163&Itemid=937&lang=en
Over 63,000 people from 4 Kediri districts may have to be evacuated:
http://kedirikab.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1373%3Aperkiraan-data-pengungsi-dan-tempat-evakuasi&catid=164%3Aliputan-kelud&Itemid=936&lang=en
Up to 70,000 people from 5 Blitar districts:
http://www.blitarkab.go.id/?p=10511
And an unknown number of several vilages belonging to Malang.
These are more than four times the number of potentially displaced people than at Sinabung. It would be a huge effort. 😦
Unfortunately shallow volcanic earthquakes are still on the rise today:
Table from: http://bpbd.jatimprov.go.id/v1/index.php/berita
Oh, my! This is an announced disaster! Bad news indeed. Thanks for sharing, chryphia!
True, but a helluva lot better than getting hit by a pyroclastic flow.
One should also remember that this is a potential VEI-4 volcano that normally does a VEI-4 in a few hours. Kelud is well known for it’s hours short explosive eruptions. Think Eyjafjallajökull done in 5 hours with pyroclastic flows and you get the picture…
Kelud is not a nice volcano. The historical killer has been lahars and that threat is now removed.
Stupid OT question: But why do cinder cones only erupt once in their life time? What is the story behind that?
They are normally created on fissures and as the fissure closes they loose their magmatic conduit, think Laki here.
Ah okay. Thanks!
W have one very nice cinder cone on top of the second tallest mountain in the local blue mountain range. It is about 5000 years old. it sets at the about 1500M level plateau-on top of
a very thick layer of Basalt. that is Mount Emily… It has no name and very little research
has been done…I’d love to know what prompted the fissure to open up there…
It’s not always the case but generally true and really perplexing. My guess is that it is due to a combination of the size of the batch fresh magma arriving from the mantle boundary and the nature of the fissures that lead it to the surface. Once the supply is exhausted these feeder systems go back to sleep and cool down to such a degree that any new batch finds it easier to pop up some place else with its own feeder system. The Auckland field is full of monogenetic cones but the latest research on Rangitoto(the biggest cone by far in the field) suggests it was actually active over several hundred years.
doh.. once again beaten to the bush by Carl. 😉
I guess that should be pipped at the post. Malapropism is my middle name. Something I have in common with George Bush.
I hereby swear that I have never had sex with that Bush.
(I just recognized that I am becoming old. There is an entire generation out there that won’t get the reference)
I must be getting old too. I got it immediately and did a lol
I get it….
Bit of background. Embattled (and horny) US President Clinton appeared on National TV, looked the camera square in the eye and told the entire viewing public that very thing. Except the bush in question was an intern.
Later, a stained blue dress showed up that tended to infer that said president had told a flat out lie… to the entire nation.
Rather than pounce on the glaring evidence of lying, the press lauded his skill of lying. How he could pull off such an eloquent appeal and not show any glimpse of remorse or nervousness at lying to the nation “square in the face.” Meanwhile, the investigator assigned to investigate the affair was denigrated and labeled a pervert by the press. (And he had never placed Clinton’s Cigar in such an unorthodox orifice. No, not an allusion… an actual cigar.)
Here is the wild part. Despite the Press’s obvious slant in it’s reporting, you get Godwin’s law thrown in your face if you make the obvious connection with J. Goebbels’s press skills. Sorry, if it fits, it fits, and no amount of teeth gnashing will change that.
You are correct, take for instance Eldgigur in Iceland, it has erupted 3 times.
I think though that the repeat cinder coners really is in a class of it’s own and should be classed as Cinder Volcanoes. Because if they can erupt through the same vent over hundreds or thousands of years they must have a permanent magmatic system and not a fissure that closes after the eruption.
For those who have missed my musings on the Grimsvötn Volcanic Line. Grimsvötn is the northernmost of a line of permanent volcanoes that follows the fissure swarm. Grimsvötn, Háabunga, Thordharhyrna, Geirvörtur, Hágöngur and Eldgigur are all on the line and have all erupted several times and all of them after de-glaciation. As such it is one of the premiere volcanic features on the planet.
China has been hit by a large earthuake a few hours ago that is visible on the IMO Hekla strainmeters.
The earthquake took place in the compression zone behind the Xinjiang craton. The Xinjiang craton is being pushed northwards as the Himalayas go upward and is home to the largest of the chinese earthquakes at its northern end. The area is low on population. But heavy in mining industry, so it is quite possible that the Chinese mining industry was knocked out by the 6.9M earthquake. It is no far stretch to believe that once again there are thousands of chinese miners stuck in mines.
http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=359241
Here is the Earthquake Report page on this one.
http://earthquake-report.com/2014/02/12/very-strong-earthquake-southern-xinjiang-china-on-february-12-2014/
CEIC, the seismological agency of the Chinese government is reporting a Magnitude of 7.3 at a depth of 12 km. So far, no fatalities have been reported, but some houses collapsed and some cattle have been killed.
One thing to know, the chinese have a big tradition of not giving out details of dead miners.
The area is sparsely populated except for herders who lives in simple houses or huts, so they have most likely survived. But the miners and the mining towns? Other story completely.
I am going to keep an eye on the ore prices in the next couple of weeks. There should be a visibile anomaly as the prices go up for a while.
ER on the earthquake in Xinjiang
Update 17:15 UTC : 23 houses collapsed, 861 damaged, 386 collapsed barns and 178 animals killed. (No casualties or injuries reported)
Iceland looks nearly dead of earthquakes at the moment
Apparantly a storm and that usually masks smaller earthquakes in the noise.
Curious, and slightly off topic. But has there been any data compiled regarding climatic effects from the Icelandic fissure eruptions that weren’t the Laki eruption?
I know that Laki was far from the largest of these rifting fissure eruptions, and from what we know about :Laki, there was a fairly significant climatic effect that caused notable famines & dry fogs in europe. But what about the Eldgja fissure eruption?
I only ask because I can’t ever remember seeing anything brought up of significance about the earlier (and larger) fissure eruptions that occurred, yet there is a ton of data about Laki (mostly due to it being more recent). I also don’t remember seeing any big spikes concurrent with the big eruptions outside Laki in the SO2 graphs that have been provided on here.
You are quite correct. There has been very little work done on the Eldgjá eruption and the ones previous to that one. I do not doubt that you could find correlations between the largest of them and bad summers if one looked close enough, but it is work that has not so far been done.
There is though the small matter with Laki that the air-currents at the time of the eruption was unusually perfect to hammer Europe.
As you know, I have a pet theory that a longer duration effect on the junge layer is possible from carbonyl sulfide. While the SO2 spikes to the the stratosphere will convert to sulfate and sediment out over about 40 to 50 months. The Carbonyl Sulfide could act as an additional source of sulfur to prolong the duration of an intensified junge layer as it gets wafts to the border of the stratosphere. How much is produced as a percentage of SO2 I don’t know, and how well it can transit the tropopause with out a driving force is the other unknown.
OT… Seriously OT…
All is as it should be… Unless you are a fan of Czeckian ice-hockey. Sadly they were in the way on our road to get to the Finns. I feel for them, beginning of the second quarter and they are under 4-0. Please do note that the Czeck are good at hockey.
Okay, 4-0 and counting is almost an eruption of goals so perhaps not that OT 😉
Edit: 4-2, Czecks are not bad..
More edit…
The face of terror…
The man who scares the men who scares the entire country of Finland.
Do you really want to meet him in a dark back alley?
Gold medal as assistant coach at the 1992 World Championships.
Silver medal as assistant coach at the 1993 and 1995 World Championships.
Bronze medal as assistant coach at the 1994 World Championships.
Olympic gold as assistant coach in 1994.
Elitserien playoff winner as head coach for HV71 in 2004.
Swedish Coach of the Year in 2004.
Silver medal as head coach at the 2008 and 2009 U20 World Championships
Bronze medal as head coach at the 2010 U20 World Championships
Elitserien silver medal as player in 1978
Silver medal as head coach at the 2011 World Championships
Gold medal as head coach at the 2013 World Championships
Yepp, the face of the man who is the current item of Nightmares in Switzerland. They know but to well the feeling of what happens when he smiles. The Swizz are the next to be mangled on the road to the Finns.
Does he have a name? Or is he the nameless horror?
Pär Mårts is the name of the Horror 🙂
Hm… to me he looks rather like a man who would play parcheesi (ludo) with the kids… 😀
http://tinyurl.com/ldtrwd5
From ER:
Spasmodic tremor (fluid movement) has become more frequent during the past 24 hours at Mammoth Mountain volcano (CA) (station MMP). Dilatometers also show changes associated with the activity during the same period. Several pulse-like periods of extension across the volcano have occurred since the first of the month, associated with increases in seismic activity. Also very shallow earthquakes have appeared immediately west of the edifice overnight.
Sounds like ER has copied parts of the USGS report.
In reality we are talking about normal changes in an active volcano. No risk so far of an eruption at Mammoth.
As have been noted previously. If this had happened at Mono Lake I would have been more worried.
Re: Souffriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat
I don’t know if it was due to website reconstruction or if it was just me not searching enough, anyway I did not see any updates on Souffriere Hills volcano since July 2013. Now I have found their new website with many reports, too much to read all in one go 🙂
I have been especially glad to find this highly interesting report for the year Oct. 2012 – Oct. 2013. It is very long, but one could skip some parts in the middle on administrative matters (don’t skip the appendices). There has not been much to report on volcanic activity, but other interesting aspects were:
– how exactly the risk of getting into danger, when staying in the different danger zones, is calculated
– results of various sea ground research expeditions around Montserrat incl. Nautilus
– “Doppelganger” workshop, i.e. comparing the behaviour of similar volcanoes in the world with SHV
Click to access SAC18-Full.pdf
All news and weekly reports can be found soonest on the MVO fb page (also accessible for non-fb-members):
https://www.facebook.com/mvoms?ref=stream&hc_location=stream
Addendum: So far, all the previous content is still on the old website, yet with the former links being obsolete. To access, you need to replace ‘mvo.ms’ with ‘208.90.113.192’ (I’m sure this is only a temporary state of affairs, we’ll see how it goes on).
Thus, the link in Bobbi’s article to the eruption chronology (was
http://www.mvo.ms/about-volcanoes/soufriere-hills-volcano/chronology-of-current-eruption ) is now
http://208.90.113.192/about-volcanoes/soufriere-hills-volcano/chronology-of-current-eruption
and the webcam is now at
http://208.90.113.192/science/monitoring/171-volcano-live/1718-live-cam-from-garibaldi-hill
Thank you, Granyia, for the new links. I hadn’t been on the website for a while. I really enjoyed the children’s volcano poems on the facebook page. I haven’t read the assessment of the hazards yet, but I downloaded it for reading later.
yup Granyia. I had noticed that all the new info was on the “buttockgoatee” (fesse bouc in french, same prononciation)
this post is interesting
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152160085443958.1073741858.105425683957&type=1
OT, this is for Lurking, it’s his turf. He’ll need some gloves and a scarf….
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=83115&src=nha
Don’t think it’s gonna make it this far south. From Meridian MS to Birmingham AL seems to be about the border of it.
Drenching cold rain? Yeah, plenty of that. Mobil seems to think they may get snow flurrys as the Low forms and does the cold air pulls in along the rear of it when it heads off to the NE.
Karma, Karma, Karma….
Mayor Ray Nagin, who did not order these buses into operation to get people out of New Orleans prior to Katrina, but eagerly took to the TV to bemoan the plight of the trapped people whom HE had left to their own means…
Has just been convicted.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/former-new-orleans-mayor-ray-nagin-guilty-corruption-n28666
Which puts him in good company…
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/05/us.rep.trial/
20 years ! Ok what he did is not well….but there you see a basically different way of seeing life. If he were french (or in most european countries for that matter, we’re not that much more corrupt even if we have had/will have some scandals too) he would not get as much.
Just for a comparison, look at our very own Serge Dassault (yes the one who owned the company which manufactures the famous french plane Rafale (sole customer is the french republic) – he’s 69th on the Forbes ranking.
He’s suspected of having paid a few millions € in bribes to get his successor (chosen by him) elected. Ok he paid, not took some money.
Well he’ll probably get away with a pat on the hand.
In all likelihood, they will wind up at a minimum security facility. We have a federal minimum security facility over at Saufley Field. During the summer, you can see these guys mowing the grass at some of the bases in the area. When I first reported for school here, I had to mow the grass as my work detail while I was waiting in holding company waiting for my class to form up. (in other words, for all the attendees to report to the base). A couple of years later, that job was taken over by the Federal inmates.
The difference? They get these really nice “climb up on top of” riding mowers… we had the Briggs and Stratton units that you stood or sat on a little two wheeled trolly in back that was towed along by the cutter. You haven’t seen sweat until you do that all day in the Florida Sun. (and yes, it could have been worse, so I am not complaining).
I love Briggs & Stratton units, they are tough and take long hours without breaking down
4 cly self propelled
Don’t forget this one.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/12/07/rod-blagojevich-sentenced-to-14-years-in-prison/
‘ I got this thing, and it’s golden! ‘
Maybe they gave him a “golden” toilet. A can of spray paint is cheap.
I actually was introduced to him by someone I won’t name when he was running for governor. We had a brief chat and he was very polite and cordial. You just never know.
Just got finished watching the Nordic Combined. The really entertaining bit was listening to the commenter. He was listing the problems that a specific contestant would have if he tried to take the lead and get away from the pack. The commentator stated that one of the problems would be that “he would have to break wind” if he did it. Meaning that he would loose any drafting effect that staying in the pack afforded him.
Break wind…. that’s also an expression for farting. Now, I guess there could be a tactical advantage if you lead the pack and did that, provided that you had consumed a particularly odoriferous meal beforehand.
Another snicker was the shock that the commenter had was that the German who was trailing behind the Japanese competitor as they were approaching the final sprint section, had pulled off a pass and won. Per the commenter, the “body language” that he saw indicated that the German was tapped out and didn’t have a good sprint left in him.
Well, evidently he did.
What I saw was that the German was matching him stride for stride. How that means he’s tapped out is beyond me. They are not known for saying “screw it, I’m done.”
I don’t really know what was going on in the trailing pack, but Mr. commenter did state that one thing that you didn’t want to see was a Norwegian with a pair of skis on your tail and coming at ya.
And what is Etna doing all night? Trying to look beautiful!
Which is not an easy thing to do as clouds are constantly sabotaging her efforts – and often win.
And our bad boys in Kamchatka? Zwei stecken unter einer Decke!
(Two are tucked in under one blanket = they’re in cahoots together)
That Icelandic gale is over and IMO have caught up on all of the earthuakes.
New tasty post is up!
https://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/the-volcanic-caramel-of-nishinoshima/
gunung kelud or kelud mounted errupted on thursday …
Thank you panggawa! Please see the ongoing discussion in the comments of the next post:
https://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/the-volcanic-caramel-of-nishinoshima/
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