“As I have said so many times, God doesn’t play dice with the world.” — Einstein.
Since our last topic auto closed, this is provided as an interim post to keep the comments open for your use. Sorry if it seems a bit sparse. (GL)
As some of you know, I am a fan of Nicholas Taleb. He is the author of “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” (2007). Mostly in jest, I have occasionally kicked around the idea of a ‘Black Swan Volcano,’ mainly from the point of view that in order to really ruin your day (on a humanity scale), it’s going to take more than a simple decline in solar activity to mess things up. All of the previous wild excursions in temperature, though they generally coincide with low solar activity, are punctuated by some sort of volcanic activity. The current decline in solar activity has been called out as very similar to the start of the Dalton minima and naturally, those that tend to do so, have been off beating on that drum. One can only guess at the level of noise that we would get if it were a Maunder Minimum scale event. Some solar physicists, such as Dr. Leif Svalgaard, think that the tally of sunspot activity is flawed and that the levels that denote “Grand Minima” or “Grand Maxima” are a bit skewed due to the criteria and methods that the official observers used when making the tallies. Even I.G. Usoskin (University of Oulu, Finland) has joined in on Dr. Svalgaard’s working groups that are trying to resolve those inaccuracies in order to get a research quality count. Usoskin is the primary author of “Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: New observational constraints” Usoskin et al (2007)
Okay, that’s a bit of background. You will likely get into a heated argument should you adopt the Grand Minima banner and start waving it about in peoples faces.
So, onward to that pet idea I’ve been kicking around. Unfortunate Coincidental Volcanoes popping up as ruiniers to an ordinarily pleasant climate. By Taleb’s definition of BlackSwans, you don’t see it coming. It’s buried in the statistical improbability and even if some wild arsed loon saw it coming, no one would believe them. The Stats would indicate otherwise.
Last Year, Kelud exploded, and did so in style. My initial interpretation of the VAAC reports were that it didn’t make it to the tropopause. It’s a safe assumption on my part since VAAC’s are mainly interested in keeping aircraft away from the plumes. They would most likely tend to over alert. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that someone posted a satellite view of the plume along with a LIDAR trace that showed that Kelud had easily made it to the stratosphere… that LIDAR trace even seemed to show that part of it reached as high as 30 km.
No matter how you look at it, that is way up there. Okay, so maybe Kelud is in the running for the mythical Black Swan status. It really depends on how much SO2 was lofted. I don’t have a really good way to estimate that, but I can show you a few other volcanoes and let you determine what could be coming done the pike.
Nasa keeps track of the stratospheric aerosol layer for their climate models. (the veracity of those models is left up to the reader). You can find ascii text data for the volcanic forcing of those models here. Taking that, and an output of VEI 4+ eruptions, you can get a view of some of the culprits.
As you can see, the monster eruptions tend to have the most effect. But, notice how puny Novarupta is compared to Pinatubo and Krakatau. This is going to be due to where it erupted and what it erupted. At a higher latitude, Novarupta had easier access to the stratosphere, and all tropical systems tend to have a higher level of water vapor entrained into the column. (causes early leaching of SO2) This should work to Novarupta’s advantage. Yet it didn’t. Sulfur is the 16th most abundant element in Earth’s crust, being more prevalent than Chlorine (usually found in salt NaCl). As far as I know, how much sulfur was in Kelud’s column has yet to be published. But sulfur collecting is a pretty common way to augment income in some locales.
VolcanoCafé 
Side note: That Tau Line data has still not been updated past 2012.
🙂 Some life on VC still… thank you GeoL. Mmm. Black Swans, huh? There are a few in my family… 🙂
Thank you GL – interesting article!
Good one GL – saw an article in an online paper about that digging in history now (well after I get done with this 1/2 chord of wood.) :-0
Thanks GeoLurking. I’ve just been reading about the effect on climate of volcanic dust – and how tropical volcanoes are much more dangerous globally if the plumes punch through to the highest atmosphere. Very interesting indeed.
I don’t have a link to it, but a few years ago I ran across a paper presenting the idea that tropical eruptions are weakened in the SO2 load of the plume as it has to contend with higher humidity leaching the SO2 from the column as it moves skyward.
Some of the images of the Puyehe Cordon Calle eruption illustrate this as the local clouds are visibly being drawn into the column. This one has served as a wallpaper on my phone ever since it was published.
Wow…. And now it’s my wallpaper as well. Thx!
Totally cool pix.com is totally cool. It’s among my collections of pictures now. Thx! 🙂
Some wallpaper!!
There was a verified 4.0 “4 hours ago” (as I write this) at 0.9km. I’m not one to plot exact location; I’ll leave that to others.
Ok, off topic, but here is a video released today of the failed SpaceX attempted landing of the first stage rocket on the barge:
It’s just a matter of time. They have already demonstrated the ability to do a tail-first landing under powered decent. → Grasshopper and here.
Any word from Carl recently? Did he fall into a lava lake? From what I remember he was going to Guatemala for a 15-day trip back in late November. I have not noticed posts from him since about that time.
Carl has suffered a bereavement.
A Very timely topic, this one..considering that we are just about three months away from the 200th anniversary of Tambora
I am dubious of the theory that the lower solar activity caused lower temperatures in the Maunder minimum. In science, the chance that a correlation is accidental needs to be below 1% before a hypothesis is accepted. The significance of the relation between temperature and solar activity is nowhere near this. There is a high chance that the Maunder minimum occured during a cold time just by accident. The case that major (tropical) volcanoes affect climate for 1-2 years is much stronger. (Tropical volcanoes work better because the sulphur can spread over both hemispheres, and far north and south. Emissions from volcanoes at high latitudes stay close to the poles.)
I appreciate the clarity check. I have gone through the CET (central england temperature) and had little success in seeing anything worth taking a longer look at it. So far I have attributed my failure to see anything to a lack of skill. That the Sun is the source of Earth’s heat is pretty much a given, but long term records like the CET don’t show much of anything that can be related to the known Solar gymnastics. (11 year cycle) One would think that it would stand out quite well.
The 11 year cycle does not show up in temperature records. CET is too small a region to look at: you get a lot more noise when looking at a small area. (On the other hand, some local effects can be significant so it becomes a battle between higher noise and a possible signal). To see the little ice age well. again a larger area for averaging is better. But it affected different continents differently (or at different times). I think it is not yet know whether the little ice age was a worldwide phenomenon. Unlike the current warming.
Sort of reminds me of the thrashing I took from Jack@Finland regarding signals climbing out of the noise floor before being worth looking at. (played a major part in the background work of the Moon and Moonie article posted here)
Specific criticism is always welcome 😀
Tugnafell new earthquake
Earthqakes south and west of Hekla
That Hekla area quake is not very far from where the quakes for the 2000 eruption began.
Well Iceland is rather unstable at the moment. Askja, Bardabunga(ongoing),Hekla, Hederbried and Tungnafell
just spotted this new volcanic island formation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunga_Tonga#2014-2015_eruption
They were talking about reopening the airport at Tonga but seemed to have changed their mind.
https://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/26008500/flights-delayed-again-by-tonga-eruption/
“But the volcano has now started again, so a planned service for this evening is now on hold until at least eight tomorrow morning.”
Friday
16.01.2015 12:26:15 64.680 -17.517 17.3 km 1.3 99.0 4.4 km N of Bárðarbunga
Source IMO
Isn’t that very deep?
Thank you Lurking. Interesting article. Also thank you Albert for additional information and thinking. Out of interest and reading about the suggestion of particles in the atmosphere and maybe stratosphere…how much effect do very large and protracted bush or forest fires have on weather?
I am asking because back in 1950 I remember seeing an electric blue Moon and sun. It was rather frightening and people were stopping their cars and getting out to stare at the sun. That night the moon was the same, if not more vivid electric blue. This was due (I was told) to huge bush fires in Canada I think it was. I was only six then but the effect of the colour of the moon and sun impressed me so much and I have never seen this since.
There must have been a huge amount of ash in the atmosphere to cause this. Also is this the reason for the saying “Once in a blue moon”? I seem to remember the weather was actually dry (unusual for the UK!!) and no weird stuff happening to rainfall or temperature.
I found this article written at the time and I wondered if anyone now can shed more light (excuse the pun) on what might have happened on or around that day. Could there have been a volcanic eruption somewhere remote that may have caused it?
http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/13th-october-1950/6/blue-moons
I have, on occasion, been mesmerized by the purple sunsets around here. Going west after a days work tends to make you notice them. Knowing what that hue of purple could mean, I have at times wondered if there was a volcano somewhere that I had missed. Usually, when I drive into the sickly sweet smelling aroma of cypress, I know it’s a controlled burn going on somewhere.
This week while traveling down SR-20, I noticed flashing lights about a mile ahead of me. I couldn’t tell if they were amber or red. Red would be bad as it would have meant emergency vehicles possibly working an accident that could mean the road was blocked. Amber would just be a tow truck helping a disabled vehicle. (but with road blockage less likely). After awhile, I got to where the lights had been and found nothing, then I crested a hill and saw that they were now about two miles ahead of me. Later, I found the source of the lights, an ambulance responding to a woods fire behind a house trailer in Bruce. Walton Co Fire had two pumpers pulled up in the front yard and had hoses strung out through the brush, chancing it. I mentioned it to my point of contact down in Panama City, and he noted that yes, Forestry did have a crew up there working on it. Walton Co Fire had evidently gotten smart and called them right away. They are much better equipped to deal with something of that sort. (They will just pull up with a tractor and plow a break around it.) It beats the hell out of dragging hose-lines out into the brush. (been there done that, it blows)
And for Diana, Bruce is roughly here → 30.471346°N 85.959183°W
There’s not much there. Headed east you cross the Choctawhatchee river just north of Cowford and wind up in a place called “Ebro.” There they have a dog track and a beer distributor. However, Bruce is the site of one of the Admin offices for the Poarch Creek Tribe.
I had a quick drive down the road and found a nice looking little diner in Bruce 😀 Stopped for coffee # 2 there 😀
I wonder who the original Bruce was? A settler?
I do like these Google earth trips 😀
What sort of trees make up the woodlands there? I couldn’t identify them.
Pine, and Water-Oak mostly. Live Oak, Cypress and Bay with an occasional Sweet Gum are also prevelent. Maybe a random Poplar. Standard bottom land stuff.
I’ll have to look these up 🙂 Water oak and Sweet Gum are new ones for me. 🙂 It’s a pity my son has moved from London. I used to spend time in Kew Gardens and they have trees from all over the world there. I could have found living examples 🙂 It is better for the grandchildren to be by the sea side and not in the city though….But I do miss the Art galleries and Museums of London when I go down to visit.
Both of those are varieties as related to me by my Mom, so there may be a difference in what the actual name is. Those are the names that she knew them as.
I can tell you that on Hwy 98 just west of Gulf Breeze, is a “Naval Live Oak reservation”. Essentially a collections of trees that are forbidden to cut and off limits for development. These trees were set aside for ship construction in years past. (Days of Sail). When Hurricane Ivan tore through here and messed things up, many approached the Navy wishing permission to salvage the fallen limbs and trees. The USN flat out told them “no,” Then sent in a crew of shipwright experts to recover any material that would be useful in the maintenance of the USS Constitution should the need arise. Being a late 1700’s era sailing vessel (Launched in 1797), having a ready supply of repair parts is a benefit. In ships of that era, the wood structure of the limbs and how it interfaced with the trunk was taken into account in making joining pieces for beams and spars when they fabricated it.
That would’ve been something to see a literal blue moon, not to mention a blue sun too. I didn’t see it. 5 years before my time. 🙂 The phrase “once in a blue moon” is having 2 full moons in 1 month.
Also I enjoyed the article.
Wow! I know about a blue sun but have never talked to someone who saw one. The event you refer to was in 26-30 eptember 19050, when smoke from the Alberta fires reached Europe. I have read an article about the indigo sun seen in Edinburgh on the 26th. There was a deep depression moving over the UK just before (it was a very wet month) which brought the smoke across the Atlantic, followed by high pressure which brought out the sun.
You need particles of a particular size to get this effect. The particles should be very uniform in size – it you mix in particles of another size the effect is lost. It does not have to be smoke: dust storms from the loess in China have been known to give a blue sun. It must be a very strange sight!
Sounds like I have some interesting reading to do, to find out more! Perhaps I should write up something on it.
Smoke does not normally last log enough to affect climate but it does affect weather, and quite strongly. The annual fires in southeast Asia have a significant effect over a large area. Worldwide there was a large reduction (>10%) of the strength of sunlight from 1950 to 1990, probably due to human pollution. It has reversed a bit since 1990 or 2000 (Pinatubo messed up the measurements during the 1990’s).
In the UK (and the north atlantic) about 10% of cloud cover is due to aircraft, so you can imagine that 100 yr ago the sky would have been brighter than it is now. This should have caused some global cooling, but it has been countered by the much larger effect of global warming..
More on this blue sun: I have done a lot of reading today, in some very old reports. Krakatoa caused blue and green suns to be seen around the tropics, lasting about a month. The blue sun (and moon) seems to have come first, traveling along the tropics westwards, around the world in 13 days and than a second time circling the world. Green suns were seen first from the Indian ocean but later across the tropics: this was the most widely seen colour. A silvery sun was also seen but only in a narrow strip along the equator. This was the same area where most of the dust occured. One report describes how the sun had a green colour when rising, turning blue above 10 degrees, in order of ‘beautiful blue, brilliant blue (as burning sulphur) and finally pale blue near the zenith. None of this was seen away from the tropics. I never knew this.
Older books do claim that the expression ‘once in a blue moon’ originally came from this phenomenon. It was only later it was given the meaning of a second full moon in a calendar month.
I remember once when driving somewhere on a deserted island (I think it was Australia), that I saw a rainbow close to sunset. I stopped to watch. The rainbow turned entirely red (as did the sun) but remained visible after sunset. It detached from the horizon and floated higher in the sky (where the raindrops still has sunlight, even though the sun had set for me). After 10 minutes or so it had faded beyond visibility so I drove on.
“For out of old feldes, as men seith
Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere
And out of olde bokes, in good feith
Cometh al this newe science that men lere”
(Chaucer: I found this quote in one of those old papers!)
Thanks for this! Do you have any more of those fascinating memories?
“when driving somewhere on a deserted island (I think it was Australia)” — love it!
In New Zealand we often get smoke from Australian bush fires crossing the Tasman. Usually this is noticeable as an orange -yellow haze, occasionally with a burnt wood smell.Extra red at sunset as well, of course. I don’t recall noticing any other colours.
Hi everyone 🙂 I was watching the Yellowstone streaming cam and this is what I caught. Can someone tell me what it is? It starts at around 54 seconds and happens several times
Hopefully? Some yahoo with a camera. Spookily? Maybe a triboluminescence or piezoluminescence, but I would think that some sort of seismic activity would be present also.
Phosphine gas could do it, but generally it happens in methane rich environments (decaying matter) and could result in a fire. Phosphine spontaneously reacts in air and ignites. For now, I’m gonna lean towards the phosphine explanation… or a surreptitious tourist.
Some of those other related vids are definately someone with a flashlight. (aka “torch” for some of you). One caption for one was that it wasn’t a rangers headlamp… okay. Who said it has to be a ranger? I have two separate headlamps that I use, depending on which one I can find. My favorite is the ultra bright single LED one that can cast a beam almost as good as a comparable mini-maglight. The other one (my backup unit) even features a red LED capability which is quite handy for not killing your night vision.
Minute 1:08s small steam and 1:10s I think is a small explosion of gas like Geolurking said, isa big light! What do you think?
After watching that video again, and comparing it to the daytime view, I’m pretty sure the light was from Old Faithful….here is another video (not mine) that seems to start around that geyser. The one where the lights form a circle is moving to fast to be a person….car lights?
This one below this comment looks to be Old Faithful….except there is red and orange smoke instead of the usual white….It’s pretty long, so start watching after 3 minutes.
NOW…..where did I put that tinfoil hat? 😦
99% sure it’s flashlight (torch) – ran it through a video editor from by frame. Does not appear to be an explosion, or a camera flash.
LOL….yes, the comments on youtube can be very entertaining 😉 My first thought was lightning…but I just wanted to ask people here what they think it is. After I uploaded to youtube, I saw all the others , so apparently it is fairly common. Did you seethe one saying it’s ALIENS? 😀 The ignorance on youtube amazes me!
Yeah, that one was pretty fun.
Aliens have their monthly meeting there and are scouting Holuhraun. Once the eruption stops, they will build a club room in the lava tunnels.
😀 You mean all those little lights we see on the Bardy cam aren’t scientists or technicians at all? No wonder Bardy cam 2 isn’t working the aliens don’t want us to see them at work or play :D,
Has anyone thought of the possibility that Graboids have a natural luminescence as they live in dark conditions?
OMG!!!!! 😮 Soon they will start using the webcams to feed us subliminal messages….and so it begins! 😛
Haaaa Haaaa Good one Hen! 😀 I think I have 2 more from the same night and one very bright and larger than this one.
🙂
There’s white stuff falling from the sky and settling a little this morning. One year old Poppy, our youngest Lurcher had such a shock! She raced round barking at it and of course, her answer to anything new is…try to eat it!
. I feel like hibernating but have spent the early morning preparing for taking the final exam/Quiz in the Coursera Course I have been studying these last few weeks. It’s been a struggle for me as the maths , seemingly endless plots and physics have challenged my poor little blonde brain. Has anyone else out there managed to get this far with this course on Eruptive Materials?
I know Lurking and Albert and others would find it probably quite easy and understandable, but I have found even the terminology needed me to side track and teach myself new concepts and physical laws.
However I will try my best to get over 50%……At least if I don’t, I have tried and am thankful that my future career is not dependent on this. 😀
If my reincarnation happens, I hope all this study is remembered and I end up at last as a half decent geologist. I’d hate to start all over again in my new life. 😀
Another great mystery of life…….Why do I put myself through exam stress when I have absolutely no need? Maybe I am returning to my second childhood and have just got down to my early twenties again. If this is what happens I am not looking forward to the acne and angst of my teenage years again 😀 😀
This thought needs coffee #3 to get me over it!
I enrolled in the Course but got to around week 5 when realizing I would never get the maths and physics right. I am impressed with those acing these courses. Good luck on the test!
I got to the end of the course, just about. I absolutely amazed myself by passing the exam – I really didn’t think I’d have a hope! It all got very technical and I haven’t done chemistry or physics for 3 decades…..
Wow! Albert 🙂 Thank you so much for all that information.
It’s funny I was only having a discussion with my husband yesterday about my memories. He says he can’t remember much about his childhood and yet I have very clear memories of the above event and other much more mundane stuff. Maybe being a somewhat solitary country child had something to do with my observations. I must have only been just 4 years old but I remember very clearly walking through a snow tunnel in 1947. There was a long drive down to my Father’s market garden. There were farm buildings on one side and a row of Cypress trees on the other. The snow had drifted so deep that The men had to dig a tunnel through. I just remember looking up and seeing that ice blue colour through the frozen snow. I also remember looking at some mini icebergs on the sea edge. We lived in Burnham on sea in Somerset then.
I remember seeing a water Spout too 😀 Not in 1947 , I have no idea the date but it travelled up the coast up the Bristol Channel :D. Then I saw the Aurora Borealis when I was 12. That was when we lived in Devon. Now I live just North of Manchester, England , and have never seen them up here in the North :D.
I KNEW all the airplanes we have had some effect on the atmosphere. The skies here are full of vapour trails now because of Manchester Airport. Also light pollution from the urban sprawl messes up night sky viewing. I loved going to Anglesey Camping when we could sit out and watch the stars shining so clearly in the clean air. Even up on top of the Moors the light pollution dulls the skies Manchester on one side and Bradford/ Leeds on the other. Here at home I just switch on the lovely App I have on my Kindle that shows the constellations I SHOULD be seeing. 😦 I think the clearest Skies I have ever seen were from the deck of the MV Golfito in mid Atlantic 😀 There wasn’t much to do on that Voyage apart from eat and sit on the deck, and at sunset, cocktail glass in hand, waiting to see if we could see the fabled “Green flash” as the sun went down. We never saw it!
http://www.livescience.com/26376-green-flash.html
Enough of Reminiscences and ruminations..I need coffee #2
A friend managed to get a photo of the green flash. Must dig out old stuff to find it again. He passed away soon after, but he had tried for years and years to see it / photograph it. An extraordinary man / email friend I met with his assistant and son only on one weekend when he was here to give some lectures. I miss his erudite and witty comments on all and sundry. He made maths easy. We met because I was looking up the history of a yarmulke…
Seen it several times, never tried to photograph it through.
Manchester is awful for aurora. The skies are way too bright. Bright aurora this far south is infrequent but should happen most decades. But to see them you would need to get away from the city lights. Iceland would do.. I have seen the green flash a few times but never in the UK.
I was at sea, way out there, each time.
Safety note. Don’t even sling-shot an old instamatic flash cube up into the main beam of a long range air search radar at night. It can scare the shit out of the aft lookout.
OH! Well done! You clever thing! Isn’t it all just so technical ? 😦 It’s not just the maths & Physics that’s hard but my memory has never been very good . Ah well 🙂 I’ll give it a go tomorrow morning, very early, when I know that nobody will come to the door or phone to distract me :D. I promise to let you know if I pass or not too 🙂
Hi Diana! I cross my fingers for you to pass, and I’m sure you will get much more than 50%! I have quietly sneaked out at the end of December when the backlog became so big and I still had no quiet times to sit down and learn, that I thougt I won’t manage this time. Hopefully, they will repeat the course, I think the demand had been huge.
Hi Diana
Hope you pass. From what I remember the test is not as technical as the courses.
Congratulations, you must be on cloud 9, happy news 😀
For Peregrin!
Torfajokull shakin 🙂
Little cluster of quakes near Landmannalaugar.:
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/
Just West of Laugahraun and Brennisteinsalda, in the vicinity of Vodugil, for those who know the Torfajökull/Landmannalaugar area.
“Three eruptions are fairly well known: in AD 1477, AD 871 and around 150 BC… The chain of events has been the same in all these eruptions. They began with the opening of a long eruptive fissure in the BB volcanic tract and fissure swarm, where a considerable amount of tholeiitic basalt erupted. The fissure then extended into the Torfajökull area and started a rhyolite eruption there” (Ólafur Örn Haraldsson, “Fjallabak Nature Reserve” (2011), p. 22).
Well, well! Where’s Irpsit when you need him?!
Question for those that know more…
Yesterday, today and also tomorrow see renewed high values of SO2.
Does that mean that new fresh magma is coming up? With high gas content…. from deeper sources maybe?
Thank you for your answers and thoughts…
🙂
Eh.. maybe. Could also mean that the show is about over. About a week or so AFTER Grimsvotn’s last eruption there was a massive SO2 plume.
After?? Hows that possible?
I thought the gases are dissolved in the magma, getting free as it nears (or is at) the surface.
That was also the reason of my question – change of gas content = different composition of magma = different source
But maybe thats too simple….
And the real answer will probably be: we don’t know…..
(Thanks for answering 🙂 )
Well, what I was told when I pointed it out was that it was the gas from the magma in the eruption that was finally making it to the surface after it settled. In other words, it had been released but didn’t percolate up through the rock until after the eruption.
It was a pretty spectacular plume on the OMI plots. It drifted off to the North East and never really affected anybody.
Thank you for your patient answers, GeoLurking
🙂
Hello folks,
The view on Mila Bardabunga1 has been changed slightly, zoomed out I think, as we can now see the NW and SE edges of the flow.
It would be good to get the MOGT cams on Vadalda working again so we can see what is going on at the bottom of the hill and in the river bed.
Oh, thanks for posting, Colin. Something’s wrong with my computer and I haven’t been able to see anything on the cams for weeks and weeks. I miss that lovely sight that used to start every morning and end every evening!
Can you watch Youtube? Any video?
no
http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/installation-problems-flash-player-windows.html
Did you try this?
I forgot, you might have 2 Adobes installed, that was one of my problems, Adobe wanted to reinstall 2 but that would create my video problem again, I had to say no every 5 minutes for 3 days.
They have different names
Thanks. Wonder whether you mean Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader? different things, for different purposes. I have no choice, I am going to have to spend more time on figuring this out.
Thank you, I will look into it. I have had problems ever since a particular update of Flash Player, and I’ve tried lots of things, including de- and re-installing it, and installing an updated version, but not that—yet. In the process, I discovered that my phone company was giving me 2/3 of the internet speed I was paying for, and for awhile I thought that was the problem, but that got fixed and I still can’t see video.
I let it download again, so I now have the #16 Active X, and #16 NPAPI versions of Flashplayer, then I can not watch video on CNN, if I uninstall the Active X, I can watch CNN on IE only, I am running 2 computers and the other one quit 3d Bulge, only says “loading data.
Keep trying and try different web browsers, it is nice to wake up to Barda.
You don’t need either one to watch Youtube
maybe it is your computer?
One is for IE and one is for Firefox
um, wouldn’t that be the NW and SW edges?
I would describe the SW edge as just to the left and behind the eruption
Hello, I’m not an expert in vulcanology. Therefore you may wish to ignore this comment.
I was wondering if you have studied a possible link between glaciations, sea level change, and volcano activity? I have supervised personnel who were developing coupled geomechanics models, and recently I had a brief exchange with climatologists about this potential linkage.
However, I think they lacked the expertise to visualize the potential links, and I was dismissed as a crank. Are you interested in the subject?
well there is a small amount of isostatic rebound at the moment due to the interglacial period we’re in, and that will have also been matched by a sea level rise, but that will have just altered the up/down motion of the various plates , but is unlikely I think to have affected the horizontal motion of those plates, and therefore little/no impact on the rate/size of volcanic eruptions in my (non expert) opinion
Ice age glaciers may have had an effect: they were kilometers thick, adding insulation and weight. There were quite a few eruptions after the ice melted in regions which are not, or less, volcanically active now. The ‘snowball Earth’ (twice the Earth was covered in glaciers down to the tropics) were ended by severe global warming caused by volcanic emissions. And in times of extensive rifting, when mid-ocean ridges (MARs) are active in many regions, the fact that MARs are lifted up by several kilometers above the normal ocean floor causes sea level to rise by quite a lot. But I don’t think sea level itself affects volcanic activity.
I’m with Albert on this one. About the only thing seawater adds to the issue is whether the subducting plates have been hydrated or not. At depth, the water tends to lower the melt temperature, and you get island arc volcanoes above the 110 to 125 km subducted plate depth.
I hadn’t considered the subduction of sea water, which causes the volcanic arcs. Yes, this will relate volcanic activity to the amount of worldwide subduction. On geological time scales.
No, I think you’re right on target. Subduction is more a function of plate density than the overlying water. The further the oceanic plate material is from the spreading center, the cooler and denser it is. That puts the subduction zones where they are at in relation to the crustal plate material.
Related (sort of) is the deeper Ringwoodite dehydration melt where the OH radical is stripped from the molecular structure of the mineral. I think this is down around 670 km or so. There was a recent paper about it.
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6189/1265?related-urls=yes&legid=sci;344/6189/1265
Note to all: Linking to the front end of a science journal such as this is perfectly acceptable. It’s when you link to a non-public paper in such a way as to circumvent their publisher that is becomes an issue.
Some plots of the geologic setting around Taal are available in my Sleeperfish article.
Back on topic: I don’t know of any specific examples of volcanoes being fed from this melt zone, though I haven’t Really looked very hard to find any. Taal may be an example, sitting over top of an almost vertically oriented subducting plate, but I’m not sure. IF it is, that would go a long way to explain Taal’s ranking as the second most active Philippine volcano, having two sources of melt to feed it. The short version is that it is a very confusing collection of geologic processes all happening in pretty much the same place, the Philippine Mobile Belt.
I wish I had known all of this back before I went to Subic Bay… but, at that age, I probably wouldn’t have cared anyway.
Here’s a suggestion on the sea-level vs volcanic activity debate. Submarine volcanoes generally get ‘stuck’ at about 30-40m below the ocean surface. (limit of wave action?) Eruptions regularly build up tuff cones above the sea, but tuff cones are not exactly tough cones and are quickly reduced to shoals. (Falcon, Kavachi, etc). Unless the eruption continues long enough (Surtsey) or are frequent enough (Anak Krakatau) to produce substantial lava effusion the volcano will stay submarine – and how many eruptions last for years?
Now, if sea level drops, temporarily, because water is locked up in continental icecaps, some of these submarine volcanoes will become subaerial; by the time sea level rises again they will have a substantial island, resistent enough by this time to maintain itself and continue growing. I wonder how many island volcanoes of the present got their start in life (figuratively speaking) during the last glacial advance?
Thats not a bad line of thought at all. There is probably something to it.
I’ll go along with that Michael. It makes sense. I’m thinking Azores here.
Remember that most Volcanic activity comes from either subduction or rifting of tectonic plates, then there are possibly mantle plumes.The huge downward pressures of the ice sheets may well have prevented eruptions in the northern & Southern MAR . Think of the effect of the ice sheet on Bardarbunga and Grimsvotn. those sheets of ice are very light compared to the huge glaciers of the ice ages.
I would also like to look more closely at the many volcanic Islands in the southern MAR area. It may be that their geological histories may show some correlation between the ice ages and growth (or erosion) It may well be interesting to look at submarine volcanic systems too.
So much to research, so little time 😦 Maybe there is a student out there wanting a project :D….let us know 🙂
this string of islands has a pretty well-studied geologic history. I wonder how the growth/subsistance of the now-submerged islands correlate with the ice ages?
There is a small mention here if you wade through. It’s quite a good geological summary.
http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~kenhon/GEOL205/Chain/default.htm
Hi all webcam lovers! Finally… a new wonderful webcam of Fuego de Colima is available! http://www.webcamsdemexico.com/webcam-volcan-de-colima.html
It is night at the moment, but here is one from today’s timelapse:
Gorgeous! Thank you!
Completely OT, yet I promised Kat an update. As I’ve told you before, I’ve been I’ll for the past four months. Finally I’ve been diagnosed with Chikungunya. Strangly enough I’m really happy with it. I mean with the fact they’ve managed to figure out what was wrong with me.
I will get better, although it might take a couple of months to years, I will get better.
Does anyone here has had any experience with ChickV ( Chikunguna)?
All information is highly appreciated.
Oh Tsunami, I’m sorry to hear that! But I thought you live in the UK (wrong?), have you been on holiday in a tropical country last year? I know nothing about this illness, but Wikipedia has a good article and a host of references and further reading. Hope you get better very soon!
Thank you Granyia!
My commiserations Tsunami. I do hope you get better very soon. I haven’t had ChickV but I did get Dengue fever when I lived in Jamaica and your ailment sounds similar and something not be recommended. Delirium, high fever, and the pain in joints excruciating.
This virus also is carried by mosquitoes.
Like all diseases caused by viruses there isn’t much anyone can do except ride it out. There are no quick cures. Antibiotics are useless..
The resulting weakness can last for weeks and months.
Just treat yourself gently Tsunami and eat and sleep well.
Thank you Diana, that’s very kind. My wife had Dengue some two decades ago. Exactly as you describe it. It sounded more aweful than my Malaria Tropica experience.
So far, my joints have been my worst concern, luckily. Chik V is Dengue’s “cousin”, indeed. But it’s that annoying cousin that always leaves last, ha ha. Chik V can last for years unfortunately ( I’ve past the weeks/2 months parameter by now).
It is what it is. Just take it day by day.
Thank you for kind words! That always helps!
Oh man, so sorry to hear that. I was reading up about that virus recently. Thankfully, I have no experience with it, I’m sorry you do. Life is sure not boring, is it, it just seems to be one thing after another.
Hi, the place I work at deals with Chikungunya samples. Here’s our webpage:
https://www.gov.uk/chikungunya
My mother had Dengue fever and said it was worse than Malaria. Chikungunya is on the increase apparently.
More of the unnerving. A cluster on the north ring fault structure of torfajokull… that’s on the S/W end of the dead zone. Might bear watching.
I quite agree.
See the posts at and before 21.02, on 17th Jan. (And Vodugil is a typo: Vondugil.) A sample of three is not much, but…
OK, so finally I had to look up Torfajokull—oh, way down there! Interesting . . .
And slightly worrying too, in light of the history of Bb related eruptions there.
Mila1 is looking cold and clear today. Lots of steaming from where the lava is approaching the river junction.
And apparently some recent vehicle borne visitors, I think the people that fiddled with the zoom on Mila1 the other night were on snowmobiles, but missed getting a screen shot of them. Lets hope that they get the MOGT cams working so that we can see what is occurring down in the river area. As it is a nice clear day maybe we will get to see some overflight pictures (we can but hope)
The cams on Kverkfjoll have cleared up or been cleaned.
splendid, thanks!
Men at work on Mila1 currently. Anyone ready for a screenshot?
hope they clean that lump of snow? off the lens
What is the man on the right working on? Something is in view, but I cannot work out what it is.
I thought that was his snowmobile
Aha! I can make out the marks of the runners in the snow now (viewing on new phone) 🙂
They’ve just ridden off on two snowmobiles.
Apologies if posted already, but I hadn’t seen it.
Landsat image from 16th January.
Very nice. Thank You!
Helped to build a radiator panel for the EO-1 satellite. Good to see it still doing well. Interesting to see the breakout of the lava in the upper right of the image. Flows a long ways down the tubes.
A nice earthquake cluster NNE of Bardarbunga is on-going. There tend to be several groups located very close together. Mopshell would make a competition of out them. Note that in most cases the group starts deep and works its way up.
18.01.2015 16:02:12 64.659 -17.422 0.1 km 3.9 99.0 5.4 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
18.01.2015 14:46:12 64.661 -17.425 4.4 km 3.8 99.0 5.4 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
18.01.2015 09:44:58 64.667 -17.430 8.2 km 3.8 99.0 5.5 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
17.01.2015 20:26:03 64.664 -17.426 4.0 km 3.3 99.0 5.5 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
17.01.2015 13:42:03 64.664 -17.426 8.2 km 3.9 99.0 5.5 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
17.01.2015 03:39:24 64.666 -17.430 7.0 km 3.2 99.0 5.4 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
16.01.2015 16:55:08 64.666 -17.433 8.3 km 3.9 99.0 5.3 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
16.01.2015 07:23:00 64.667 -17.434 8.4 km 3.9 99.0 5.3 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
18.01.2015 07:21:42 64.655 -17.446 10.1 km 4.0 99.0 4.2 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
17.01.2015 04:07:52 64.661 -17.436 9.8 km 4.4 99.0 4.9 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
16.01.2015 23:00:05 64.665 -17.441 2.2 km 3.8 99.0 4.9 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
17.01.2015 03:41:15 64.655 -17.467 3.1 km 4.0 99.0 3.3 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
16.01.2015 18:53:44 64.665 -17.414 7.1 km 4.3 99.0 6.1 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
16.01.2015 17:43:53 64.662 -17.367 0.9 km 4.0 99.0 8.0 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
16.01.2015 17:38:19 64.667 -17.384 7.5 km 4.5 99.0 7.4 km ENE of Bárðarbunga
Sharknadoes moving up for a kill?
What’s up with Mopshell, anyway?
That’s pretty vague.
It is, sorry. Should have said, “Haven’t seen a post from Mopshell for awhile, how is she?”
Good evening from Holuhraun. It looks warmer than it is here in North west England :D. So lovely to see BB2 again 😀
Geological problems with waterfront tunnel in Seattle: if anyone is interested, I replied to a thread a few days back, with some more info from a Seattleite’s point of view—-unfortunately I posted about 4 am Iceland time, so I suspect noone say it. Or, noone was interested.
I’m interested, but aside from the TBM being stuck and the whole idea being a bit bad (blatheringly stupid) from a seismic point of view… what’s to add?
Aside from that, I plan on doing my own stupid thing around Midnight local. I’m going to travel to Jackson Volcano in order to retrieve the contents of a Safe Deposit Box. It’s about a 5 hour drive and I plan on being there for the morning and head back home. The volcano isn’t that thrilling… it’s buried under a few thousand feet of sediment and hasn’t done much in 70 million years. The tricky part is getting there and back without a traffic citation.
Traffic citation—why? Is it offlimits?
MIssissippi Highway Patrol is known to play hide and seek and tends to go after really small increments from the posted limit, plus the local city PDs along the way use the highway as a source of revenue. If you can avoid that, the only real hazard are the random log trucks and farm equipment… and deer/hogs. On the plus side, Hwy98 has been much improved since I used to drive it. At that time, it carried the moniker “Bloody 98.” Also, Wilmer Alabama lost their incorporation and is now unincorporated. Seems they wrote one too many speeding tickets and pissed off someone at the state capital. They used to be quite horrible with their speed limit changes. 55, 35, 40, 20, 55 etc… in about 3 miles of travel.
Many years ago, while making this trip, I was stopped at a traffic check point by MHP who were actually looking for DUIs in the crowd going to a “mud bog” event nearby. The officer checked my license, registration, and insurance, handed me back my license and bid me a good evening. When I got to my destination, I went to put my license back in my wallet and discovered that he had given me the wrong license. I contacted the county seat and explained the problem, they said that I could drop by there and pick up my license. When I did, it had a citation for expired tags to go along with it. I pointed to the back of my truck and asked the clerk if that looked like an expired tag. They had to get the patrolman to come to the county seat to resolve the issue. He tore up the citation and dropped the other person’s license that he had given me into an envelope in order to mail it to it’s owner. Despite the troubles I had, I can just see this 18 year old kid explaining to his dad about having his license confiscated by the highway patrol, only to have it show up in the mail the next day or so.
The lucky part for me was that this all happened in the same county where my destination was at so it was all local driving for me. If my destination had been much further up the road, it would have turned into a real pain in the arse.
Stuff like this is why my paranoia hackles go up when I travel to that state, even though I’m from there. Fortunately, I still have places there that I can stay at should I get delayed.
I strongly suggest you purchase a 70$US 7″ chinese satnav.
It will warn you if speeding, well worth the small outlay.
It will also direct you, which greatly reduces the stress of self navigation, even on routes you know quite well. (eg Its quite easy to miss junctions on busy UK motorways, with views of all signs blocked by trucks on the inside lane).
Since I first bought one, many years ago, many people have followed my recommendation.
PS Good skin is dmka-megaduck99 (realy).
I’ve got a question for the mathematically-inclined who have too much time on their hands.
I have problems with seasonal affective disorder (I get more depressed in the winter). It occurred to me to wonder how the amount of sun I will get in Iceland compares to what I get at home. (The problem is academic, as the simple fact of being in Iceland will work to increase my mood. Travel, exhaustion and children will work to decrease it. I highly doubt the sun will have much influence over all of that.)
Parameters:
I live in Austin, TX.
I usually notice a lower mood around mid-September.
We will fly to Iceland around July 1st (and will be there about 17 days.).
In Austin, I am outside as little as possible in the summer. The vast majority of my sun exposure is through our large windows and from the driver’s seat of my car. (Note that the curtains in the rooms I am in during the daytime do not block out all light.)
In Iceland, I expect I will be either in a vehicle with windows or outside a great deal of the time.
(A small few of you may remember that my husband is a mathematician. He did not volunteer to try to solve this problem, but he did think it an interesting question 🙂 )
Any takers?
🙂
That’s a nice one, Leslie. Although I must warn you..I’m no academic 🙂
Austin Texas is situated at N30. In july you would have approximately an average of 14 hours of daylight per day during the lenght of your stay.
In Iceland you would have an average of 20 hours a day during your trip.
So in absolute hours, assuming that sunlight should positively influence your mood, it’s true that a trip to Iceland would be good.
However…other variables like jetlag and insomnia due to only 4 hours of darkness will have a definite effect on your mood as well, as you already stated yourselve.
I’m a commercial airline pilot and know a thing or two about these variables after more than 20 years of flying.. enough to say they really can weigh in…but I’ve never been to Iceland and I think that being in this magnificant country will outweigh all disadvantages 🙂
You’ll get 6 more hours to explore Iceland than you would have gotten in Austin.
I’d say, mathmattically speaking, we’ve got a winner 🙂
What about the difference caused by the angle of the sun? Shouldn’t that play a part somehow?
Good point, if you assume that solar energy is controlling your mood and not just daylight presence.
In Austin you would have 13.6 hrs of “effective” sun, against 13.4 hours in Iceland.
Effective sun meaning perpendicular sunrays.
But that all changes when you spend more time on glaciers of course as the solar energy increases by altitude 🙂
Personally, I think hours of sunlight is controlling over solar energy amount.
What do you think?
I don’t know. Cloudy days can decrease mood, but is that from decreasing the number of hours of sun or from decreasing the solar energy received? I don’t know how the SAD thing relates to the blue-light thing, but I suspect it does, in which case “the sun” is a stand-in for “blue skies”?
You know, as recently as 5 years ago I was claiming that I am not a naturally curious person. I wonder why I thought that? 😀
😀
Orange Juice. Large amounts. I would also recommend Grapefruit juice since it’s my favorite, but it tends to mess with the enzymes that remove foreign chemicals from the body and can enhance or degrade the effectiveness of medications. Because of that, I have been grapefruit juice free for quite some time (since the stroke) and have had to make do with Orange Juice.
Since my circadian rhythm is about as predictable as an astable multivibrator, I use a blindfold when I sleep. I also take Melatonin at bed time. I blame midwatches during military service as part of the reason for my problems. I just picked up the knack of “going with the grind” in order to stay alert. The downside is that a poor wake-sleep cycle can contribute to high blood pressure.
I hadn’t heard of orange juice being helpful. I’ll look into that. My circadian rhythm proves that I am an alien, as I tend to want to be awake 1/2 hour later each week. I’m going to have a VERY hard time adjusting to the time difference if I can’t pull my bedtime back — right now I get into bed at close to 4 am US central ( = 10 am UTC). … Actually, I’m so far off that I really should do the stay-awake-longer and work myself around the clock forward thing. I tried melatonin for the 1st time last night. It shouldn’t have worked on my first night, but it did. It was good. I’ll do it again. Another thing that would help is eliminating all blue light when it is time to get sleepy, but who can turn off the computer when you are in that late night computer-zombie state?
For me, it improves the mood.
For road trips, I usually have a pot of coffee and two B complex capsules. By the time the coffee wears off, the B-12 acts as an alertness enhancer. It may be just a placebo effect, but seems to work for me.
I’m having to defer my run to Jackson due to the needed possession of a key. It’s somewhere in my desk because I purposefully put it there in order to keep track of it. Now all I have to do is find it. So far all I have found are a set of reference weights for my digital scale and for some reason, memory sticks that I had forgotten that I have.
Also a plus, I found my smaller hunting knife. I had worried about where it had run off to and was stuck using my somewhat antiquated large Buck knife. It’s handy for filleting large cardboard, which is what I used to use it for back when I worked in a warehouse. At one time I had a mirrored edge on it that was pretty much “machined” into it by hand. My supervisors had relegated me to the warehouse only since it tended to alarm the customers. In hindsight, I can understand why. It’s a pretty formidable looking blade. I got the smaller one recently so that I wouldn’t have to use that huge pig-sticker.
(Note, no, I don’t use the main edge for cardboard, I flip it over and use the swadge edge.) Doing otherwise and you will spend the rest of your time sharpening your knife as it will always be dull.
“eliminating all blue light when it is time to get sleepy”
I’ve read this before. It sort of makes peering at your phone before turning in a bit problematic if you want to go to sleep.
Consider melanin tablets, available over the counter in US, restricted in EU.
Leslie, I have tried the way forward, it doesn’t work. You’re fighting against the clock all the time, but at some stage you are back to square one.
I’ve a friend who did the forward thing with her daughter, and daughter was back to bad bedtimes very quickly. They did 2 hours more each day, which seems faster than usually recommended. I think I’d have to try to stop the “add 2 hours” when my bedtime was 6 pm so that the momentum might be at a reasonably flat curve by the time my bedtime was 10 pm. That, of course, depends on adequate friction and if there was adequate friction it wouldn’t be so easy for me to have let my bedtime slip to being so late!
Cod liver oil seems to be best for winter, at least for me. It keeps away the colds as well.
maybe try something like this http://www.instructables.com/id/Six-Days-a-Week/
I discovered my SAD after our 30th anniversary cruise to Iceland and Norway. We went in August and the day length was about 20 hours. On return to the UK, I was buzzing, productive and alert, feeling as if I was 30 years younger. I discussed this with my GP and got a Lumie light lamp as the only way to prove a diagnosis is a reaction to more light in winter. I use it religiously every morning from October to March. The last 2 years my symptoms have improved dramatically.
I joked to my OH that we should holiday in Iceland in summer, and New Zealand in the winter :-p
Depends what you are after! If it is hours of sunlight, Iceland in July beats Texas hands down. If it is insolation (amount of solar energy each day), that is 50% higher in Texas in July, mainly because the Sun is much higher in the sky and the energy is measured per horizontal square meter. However, you may not want to be horizontal all day (Iceland is perhaps not recommended for beach holidays). If you go for the upright position, you will get more solar energy per square meter of skin in Iceland. The best angle to take is in between: look at what angle freestanding solar panels have and adopt that. Uncomfortable though. If it is light levels, Austin again wins, by the above 50%, at least averaged over 24 hours. Clouds, rain, volcanoes, etc, can all affect how much sunlight you get. But I think you’ll be too excited to notice.
You will be exhausted, not enough darkness, obviously not a mathematician here.
Did you read up on the Sulphur smell in the water, the boys need to be prepared, if you travel around you will probably encounter some.
I take naps = I often sleep when it isn’t dark, although I agree it is hard to feel fully rested when the lights have been on all night. We’ll bring eye shades, but I haven’t tried sleeping all night with them on.
How can one prepare for sulfur smell in the water? (Other than simply knowing that it will be an issue that must be got past.) … I’m thinking the boys will return from Iceland with some extreme knowledge of what life outside of the US can be like, and what life might have been like for many of our ancestors. I think my 13-year-old is starting to wish he could be older and snottier and say “No, I won’t go.” But he is smart enough to know that the experience will be very good for him. The younger is excited about a) getting a passport, b) sleeping on an airplane and c) possibly getting to wear a gas mask.
Although I’ve got a semi-list of places I hope we can see, I’ve still made basically no decisions about where we will be when and how to get there. I’m including in the many possibilities getting an airpass and doing guided day trips (or, if there are no difficult roads, renting a car locally and going on our own.)
I so wish we had more than 17 days, but my elder son is starting high school and he is a talented musician, which means (in the US) he has to do marching band. Marching band in general is great, but around here it means FOUR WEEKS of band camp before the start of school. (8 hours a day in the hot Texas sun doing drills and learning the routines.) He’s supposed to show up with his music memorized. That will be pretty much impossible. I’m worried about how quickly he’ll get over the jet lag and whether he’ll be able to recognize the different body signals of jet lag vs dehydration. I’m being a mom though. I know he’ll have time to get over the jet lag. What he won’t have time for is to acclimate to the weather. All the parents have been told how essential it is that we have our kids exercise outdoors before the camp starts because every year kids get sick to the stomachs because of the heat. I think it is inhumane to require this! But he has to. He is thinking about becoming a professional musician. He has to do it.
Two words. “Blue Lagoon.”
I did the marching band bit in high school. Even though I can’t play a thing anymore, band does offer a greater appreciation for musical structure.
Evidently that marching bit never really got out of my system. While in Service School Command for Basic Electronics, I was a member of the rifle drill team. Even got to march in the Indianapolis parade one year. One maneuver, had the rifles set butt first on the ground and passed in a standing postion to the following person while in step. While this was going on, the rear rank would hurl their weapon over the rank in front of them with the next rank up catching. I nearly died laughing when one guy beaned the one in front of him with the rifle. Knocked his helmet right off. 😀 The rifle bounced right back into the rear guys arms.
One of the big differences between USA and UK……In the UK a lack of marching bands 😀 You do them so well over there.
Yeah, but you guys have all the tattoos.
Granted, these guys are Swiss, but the Military Tattoo is a UK tradition. Many of our marching bands/groups, unless they are military, are doing good if they are not stepping on each other.
And of course, there are exceptions… such as the USC Trojans. Fleetwood Mac did some work with them for a video. Note: towards the end it sounds a bit funky because the camera is near the trombone section. You miss part of the song done by the other instruments. Having been a trombone player, I learned some really messed up parts of songs… just the bass section. To this day I have tone snippets of some songs stuck in my head that don’t match any known song that I consciously know.
I love that Fleetwood mac clip….one of my favs.
For you younger readers some clarity here.
I think Lurking is referring to MILITARY tattoos not the Fink Ink Body art thingies….. Here is the ultimate in Military marching bands/Tattoos. The Scots do this so well. Stuff to make pulses race and feet tap. (I particularly love watching those drummers twiddling their drum sticks around 😀 fascinating 😀 :D)
Thank you, GL for the top secret corps video. I was mesmerized.
The U.S. has drum & bugle corps. I think I like a good tattoo / drum & bugle better than a marching band. It must be in my blood. I can’t drum worth a hoot but my uncle started on snare before he was 6. Marched in so many Scottish bands — he lived in Alaska and yes, they’ve got Scottish bands there. He was drum major at UC Berkeley (he went 8 years; 4 as snare and 4 as bass drum). Marched in the Rose Bowl parade twice. The most amazing thing I learned about him was that when he went to audition at UC Berkeley, he had to admit to them that he couldn’t read music. But then how did he know what to do? He “read sticks”. What “reading sticks” means wasn’t in the interview, but the only thing I can think of was that he looked at the guy next to him and did what he did. On snare!
The USC band … well, some of them wouldn’t be allowed in my son’s high school band. They are WAY too “must be perfect” there. But he knows how to move his instrument (euphonium) on fun songs. The teachers build the fun moves into the songs they play for games.
Hey calm down!
If you get stressed up then this will transfer to the kids. Iceland is a modern society way ahead of most parts of the US. You are not even going to the third world in the 20th century. Iceland is almost certainly safer than anywhere is the US.
We took our kids, from age of 1, to wild parts of greece (were wild then), then india, bali, thailand, kenya (safari), turkey, malasia etc. Stuffed them full of innoculations, made up our deet-skin-so-soft and went. Absolutely no problem. Bro-in-law works as third world agricultural consultant, where his kids went would scare your socks off, but no problem.
Allow the first full day to do NOTHING (wander near hotel aimlessly is good), and try very hard to wake-sleep at local times.
Its no big deal, much the same as east-west coast US. Heck …. EH?
They are on GMT???
What are the working hours in iceland?? They seem to be on doublesummertime!
Anyway, don’t worry, it will be a great adventure for them in a VERY VERY place (if a tad expensive).
Dunno… I’ve been to some pretty seedy/unsavory places on the East-West coast of the US. Even have a few places here that I would not approach day or night. In fact, in the not so distant past, local EMS received a directive to not enter one housing complex until the local sheriffs department had a unit ready to escort them in. I personally knew one of the paramedics that was on the call that precipitated that. Some dude showed up with a shotgun to greet the ambulance and the driver hit the gas and left. That little stunt caused everyone living there to now have a delayed response from emergency services.
So.. comparing to the safety and security of the US isn’t really the best analogy.
Well said, especially about doing nothing much on the first full day! Reykjavik is an interesting place to mooch around in, too. Next time I go, I must make a concerted effort to discover how many books shops it has per capita.
LESLIE, the smell of sulphur in the water: it’s a reminder of the fact that you are actually there, in ICELAND! Wahey! The smell is just an (exotic) fact of life in one of the most fascinating countries it’s possible for a volcanoholic to visit.
Daylight: I’ve never found it a problem after the first night or so. Bear in mind that you may be unlucky and not see the sun at all, the whole time you are there.
I hope you noticed my reply to your earlier set of questions.
erratum:
Anyway, don’t worry, it will be a great adventure for them in a VERY VERY **SAFE** place (if a tad expensive).
Thanks for your input, farmeroz. I’m not sure what I said that gave you the impression that I am worried about safety, other than perhaps saying my boys might get a better understanding of how their ancestors might have lived. Not in Reykjavic, of course, but in the rural areas. We don’t have much in the way of family farms around here, and their ancestors weren’t from anyway warmer than south Germany. The fact is that we live in a nice upper-class neighborhood and other than schoolwork their most difficult chore is to carry their heavy laundry hamper to the laundry room. My goal in this area isn’t to show them poverty, but to have them start to realize how privileged their life is.
Truthfully, I am indeed worried about safety, but not from the standpoint of Icelandic people and possessions. My youngest is very impulsive and has an automatic response of “if mom tells me not to do something, then I must do it.” I am very reluctant to take him places where if he decided to run (from pure excitement) he might fall into a crevice. In fact, my mom-worries might be less if I buy a child-leash for him. … It is his impulsiveness that has prevented us from doing much travelling so far. … It would be great if this trip helps him to mature, but I won’t bet on it.
So yes, I worry. Now is the time for me to worry, as I look for what will influence my family’s enjoyment (or lack thereof) of the trip. I don’t want to book things / finalize plans with large “how will we handle ____” questions still looming. That is the type of people we are.
I wasn’t raised like this. After my parents divorced my father took us on 3 large summer trips (the Caribbean, the Grand Canyon, and Alaska) All of them involved hitchhiking because he hated renting cars. He didn’t make plans for where we would stay when we got to Point Barrow in Alaska. Once there, he decided the hotel was far too expensive especially because it didn’t have indoor facilities, so we camped on the shore of the Arctic Ocean. Only he and my sister had sleeping bags rated for the weather. My brother and I were freezing. He didn’t know how we would use the restroom or get any food. Things were fun, sort of, but I think I would have enjoyed the trip more if he’d though ahead and purchased a better sleeping bag for me. (We used the facilities at the NARL – Navy Army Research Lab?. We also got breakfast there — donuts! Now THAT was a good part of the trip. 🙂 )
Imagine a city of 320,000 people. It has a major tourist industry, a thriving literary culture going back 10 centuries including a Nobel prize winner and several major classics foundational to European literary culture, reads more books per head than anywhere else in the world, has produced several major pop groups, operates several newspapers and TV stations, runs several airlines, is a centre of major university research departments, makes its contribution to the security of a continent, is highly innovative in its resourcing of energy, and most citizens speak at least one foreign language confidently. You’ve just imagined Iceland.
“My goal in this area isn’t to show them poverty, but to have them start to realize how privileged their life is.”
Were you really thinking of Iceland?
Not in the city. Maybe I am unique. But when I am in a built-up area it is hard for me to imagine what it was like when it wasn’t built-up. It wasn’t until I worked at an archeology dig that I gained an appreciation for what it meant to use one’s body in productive labor all day. (It felt great). … I’m rarely unable to describe what is in my head, but this is clearly one of those times. … To me, it is being able to feel the distances between spots of civilizations and the farms, and to absorb that those distances are not easily traversed in the family car along paved highways…. What they never get is the spaces between. … It is about seeing sheep and then eating mutton that night. It is in having a limited menu (I remember my father’s awe at their being fresh apples in the cafeteria when we were in Prudhoe Bay — and that our adopted hosts bought one for us.) It is in thinking about what it must have taken to gain and maintain a foothold in the land. … We live in a metropolis of over 1 million people. They have vacationed on the outer banks of North Carolina and in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, but have never been more than maybe an hour’s drive from fast food and grocery stores. … It is in thinking about what could motivate people to live in areas where natural “disasters” are commonplace … Will they consciously think any of these things? Unlikely. But it will affect their ability to understand.
Please don’t think that I have the impression that Iceland is a 3rd world nation. In fact, I hesitate to call it 1st world because that would put them in the same category as the U.S. and they are far better than we are in many things.
My husband and I both very much look forward to learning more of the culture in the coming months and when we are there. How can I not be in awe of a culture that produces this?
that was almost a description of cardiff too 🙂
I’m not sure Iceland is the place to take them if you want to show them how privileged they are. Africa, SE Asia, South America, or Mississippi might be better.
ROFLOL!!! → “Mississippi”
It’s actually not a bad state, but it has some pretty hosed up people here and there. Many of them amassed in Jackson. Get away from there and the quality of people goes up several orders of magnitude, and you can actually find people with integrity.
One of the States advertising mottos is “Best kept secret of the South”
From experience, if you have seen the green of Ireland, you’ve pretty much seen Mississippi. The similarity was striking. Think of it as Ireland with hellishly hot and humid weather. Oh, and some of the counties are still dry, so you may wish to grab a beer somewhere else.
Hmmm…. poverty.
I have a problem with this as stated by rich westerners. Now I’m not talking about slums where nobody works and everyone is starving, I haven’t been to any of those.
I have been to india, asia and rural mexico etc.
People here are poor, really poor (rural Cambodia was the worst). Generally you wouldn’t know unless you got into the villages. People are well clothed (may be their only clothes, but they are always amazingly clean) and actually pretty cheerful (even doing backbreaking work planting rice, for example). everybody seems to be working (probably all daylight hours). If you have a driver and spend a few minutes talking to someone (winnowing rice by the roadside for example) you get a perfectly sensible equal conversation about who owns the rice, where it came from how much people are paid etc etc. They seem to enjoy a chat, perhaps breaking up the day and something to recount (as I am) later.
What these people need is a chance to increase their earnings, which they will take given the opportunity. How you avoid slave-labour style factories I’m not sure, but thats the problem. The problem lies with the unempowered poor against the government (rich) classes. Sadly the puritan ethic of many british victorian factory owners (Cadbury etc etc) who aimed to help their workers, and probably kicked of ‘worker rights’ in the UK, seems to be completely absent.
But unless you know, you won’t see abject poverty outside cities (and probably generally even then). Hmm, maybe outside western hotels and tourist sites, good places to beg, wouldn’t you say?
OK, so that’s pretty wild indeed.
You aren’t going to see poverty in Iceland although it may be less possession-oriented than some in the US (and other parts of europe). They whole thing will be mega-organised, I’m sure.
Although I am a farmer its not a terribly conventional farm (my cowman used a computer in 1979, and did until he retired etc) so my kids went to school with everyone else (2 supermarkets within 3 miles!). They were the only farmers kids in the class, village in fact.
On to your kids. Here a small rant. My daughter (grown up) had many doctor friends at uni who started dealing with pathogens and toxins there. They were, despite protective stuff we never had and wouldn’t have bothered with, hugely dangerous because they had never been exposed to small dangers in their youth, they had become pathologically hazardous we had similar problems with farm students. The reason (and it extends throughout society) is the fear of children getting harmed, forgetting that that’s just when you DO need to be harmed. You need cuts and grazes, you need to drop stuff on your foot, get a burn or two, fall off a wall, hit your fingers with a hammer etc. That way when you are grown up and assessing really dangerous things (driving a car, fires, building sites etc) you know how to SEE, assess and minimise risk.
So, sadly, you need to let your little ones go and fall into a few holes (pick small ones first) burn themselves playing with fire and so on. Its natural, human kids have been doing this for 1M years. It wouldn’t surprise me its inbuilt to probe the boundaries of what is safe and what hurts, that would make sense. They will soon control their own behaviour (and perhaps listen to adults more).
It’s your job to let them take risks in a safe-enough environment to learn with only superficial harm.
Otherwise they might learn the first time when grown up, possibly in a life-threatening manner.
The world is never safe, we have to teach our kids how to safely live in it.
Oz: who aged 6 played with friends in bomb sites, lighting fires and making play houses with bricks and broken beams. My kids didn’t manage quite as potentially hazardous stuff as this but managed to collect plenty of scrapes, cuts and bruises over their childhood.
end of rant.
Leslie, may I just say about the sulphur smell – it may be obvious when you first smell it, but your nose kind of adjusts & you don’t notice it after a little while, much like when you first put on some perfume. I’ve never been lucky enough to go to Iceland but have spent some time in Turkey, parts of which smell like a lorry-load of rotten eggs at first sniff, but are still wonderful & amazing to explore. And the smell of oil that pervades Oklahoma made me gasp when I first got off the plane, or ran a tap at our host’s house, but I didn’t notice it after the first day. I had three of my kids with me & they were fine too.
You cant just turn up at hotels anywhere in Iceland in July and expect to find a bed for the night. They book up fully months ahead. Sleeping bag accomodation might be possible. Iceland tourism has short season so hotle rooms are limited.
Plan the route ahead and book – now.
Peter, again no worries! It was my father who did that sort of thing. Not me. I’m working hard to get things finalized — accommodations, day-trips, etc. ASAP.
Is Bard erupting? Please forgive me if it isn’t, but on almost all the Mila cams, it’s red sky and cameras shaking like crazy.
If history is any indicator, when Bard goes, there will be little room for questioning that fact.
No red or excessive shaking at the moment on Mila 1. Mila 2 is shaking but not more than usual for a high wind.
I find Torfajokull to be one off the more odd looking Volcanoes in Iceland
ExtremeIceland tours is banking on being allowed into Askja and further.
https://www.extremeiceland.is/en/sightseeing-tours/overnight-tours/volcanoes/extreme-planet
The owner, Bjorn Hroarsson, is a geologist. He doesn’t think the eruption will last into the summer.
My personal opinion is that he is being a tour operator first and geologist second. Or, in other words, I hope that he has biased wishful thinking.
We aren’t up for a 3-day sleeping bag tour. But if the area *is* open, I hope I can manage to figure out how to get closer than the ring road.
Speaking of, I was looking into Möðrudalur. I emailed them but haven’t heard back. My 1st question was whether they were “open” for tourists. I would think they would be. … Another question I had was whether 901 is drivable with a “normal” rental car.
Yet another question for y’all (that is SUCH a convenient word!): I think seeing (some of the) Laki (vents) would be neat — especially if I cannot get near Nornahraun. But it seems like that is a lot of travel. What other fissure eruptions could give me a greater understanding of what Norna is doing / might become?
Oh, gosh, one more. I know that the “official” bridge between two continents is near Reykjavik. But I’ve come to think of the area of current activity as where the two continents are “joined” (or, trying not to be joined.) Is there an accessible place where one can feel between the continents in the east? I hadn’t thought about it before, but looking at the map it seems that Jokulsa a Fjollum basically follows the MAR. So maybe just driving over it would do the trick. No official certificate for doing that, though.
– We aren’t up for a 3-day sleeping bag tour. But if the area *is* open, I hope I can manage to figure out how to get closer than the ring road.
I wonder whether you are just telling yourself that you aren’t up for a sleeping bag trip. If you really do want to get to Vadalda, it’ll be a long drive there and back in a day (if you can find a tour that’ll do that), and you’ll have a better time if you have a day or so at Dreki (or another hut) to explore.
– Another question I had was whether 901 is drivable with a “normal” rental car.
As a general rule, any road number that isn’t prefixed by F should be drivable in a low-clearance 2WD. Some F routes can be very challenging, even for experienced 4WD drivers.
– I think seeing (some of the) Laki (vents) would be neat — especially if I cannot get near Nornahraun. But it seems like that is a lot of travel. What other fissure eruptions could give me a greater understanding of what Norna is doing / might become?
Yes, unless you take a hire vehicle, a lot of travel on buses is required to get to most places that are a bit off the beaten track in Iceland. The area around Krafla and Namaskarð is good, and accessible.
– I know that the “official” bridge between two continents is near Reykjavik. But I’ve come to think of the area of current activity as where the two continents are “joined” (or, trying not to be joined.)
The Bridge Between Two Continents is just another chasm in the ground with a (needless) bridge over it, it is conveniently on a tourist route to and from the Blue Lagoon. As you say, the MAR is evident in many places in Iceland and for my money, Thingvellir is much more interesting.
I would agree about sleeping bags. You have gone all this way and I’m sure you will survive one night (hey in a HUT too), you may even really enjoy it but either way it will be memorable, and probably still remembered (and recounted) decades later.
If you are the hyper-hygenic sort of american, try to live in a slightly less antiseptic environment.
It will be good for any allergies your family may have (if any).
Remember a peck of dirt is two gallonsworth!
I would agree about dirt! Or, more precisely, my medical wife would.
The huts book up a year or so ahead, fully.
Sleeping bag accommodation is often in schools closed to pupils for the summer.
http://www.roughguides.com/destinations/europe/iceland/accommodation/
No fears there, Peter. I’m looking at going on a tour with ExtremeIceland. I assume they have spots at the hut or they wouldn’t be able to offer the tour.
Thank you so much for the virtual slap about the sleeping-bag trip! I needed it. And yes, I have read (and saved) your responses to my previous questions. The hut we’d be staying at is Nyidalur. There is only one such trip offered during our time there and it is now very high on my list of things to consider.
Honestly, my biggest fear is nausea. I don’t want to be either too nauseous or too zoned out from anti-nausea meds to be able to enjoy the trip. I’ve told this to the tour operator, but I also want to ask for y’alls opinions and strategies …
Thanks to all of you for offering such wonderful advice and encouragement!
Whats the nausea from?
Iceland isn’t high, no altitude sickness at all.
Being a passenger bouncing in a 4WD over very rough terrain for hours …
I’m not sure the tour operators would be keen on that either. From time to time, maybe, but I imagine they have road graders like other places in the world.
The F “roads” can get quite rough.
A stop at Nýidalur en route to the north (or the south) would be tremendous. It’s amongst the most desolate spots I’ve ever been to. If you can, go and have a look at the fissures associated with Tungnafell earth movements. And the hill a few Kms south of the hut (Mjóháls) has fantastic views from the summit. There isn’t a path up it but there are marker posts most of the way, and the warden at the hut will be able to tell you more.
About the only thing that I would not advocate, is a trip to the top of Hekla. Based on the seismic run-up to the 2000 eruption, I don’t think it’s a volcano that can be relied upon to give you a warning.
The quakes did not cross into the realm of human perception until about 15 minutes before it erupted. And if you are herding kids, it could be quite a catastrophe. I think one of our Icelandic commentors noted that you could conceivably get off the the summit in short order, you would have to be pretty focused on the task and do so with little distraction.
Well I am a SAD sufferer too Leslie. I only found out by accident. It just explained my desire to hibernate ;My manic desire to sit by a fire and crochet that starts around October; The feeling of energy loss and at times tearful sadness that starts as the days get shorter. I just live with it and find it rather interesting . I also do things outside as often as possible when the sun shines in the winter and I revel in the feeling of happiness it gives me. Then there is that wonderful realisation that it is still light at 4.30 pm and the days are getting longer 🙂 😀
I have learned to be rather phlegmatic about life in general . Maybe this is just old age but it cuts down on stress. This also applied to raising two families. I realise now ,more than ever, that the kids will survive and do their own thing however much I worry, mother and fuss.. I have very happy memories though of the days when the kids really did need all that motherly angst and I know I did my best .
Well my stress levels actually rose last night and this morning. having finished the Eruptions Material Course Icwas gearing up to the final exam. I actually kept waking up and was anxious. This was silly as I was doing the course for “Fun”.
It wasn’t!!!
It was hard. It was full of maths and physics. I still don’t really understand some of it. I wanted to pack it in as I was getting annoyed with my lack of understanding.
I took the exam this morning whilst it was quiet and I knew nobody would be phoning, calling or demanding and the dogs were still asleep.
I panicked. The same nasty sick feeling happened as my mind went blank. The years dropped away and I was in those exam rooms in my past.
Thank goodness I was on coffee # 1. I used relaxation techniques to help remind myself of Viscosity, Shear, Thermal capacity, Glass transition and all the other magmatic stuff I have been trying to understand……
Most importantly I began to have faith in my own ability.
I passed with a grade of 71.67% 😀
Yayyyyyyy! I can do physics 😀 😀 :D…….. But I still can’t remember the formula for the Maxwell Relationships :D………But does it really matter?
It’s a bit after the fact, but this is what I told my students prior to a test.
“Read the question, read the whole question, don’t read anything into the question” Answer it if you can, if you can’t, go to the next question and answer what you can. It might clue you in on a question that you already skipped. If at all possible, don’t second guess yourself, usually your first answer is the best answer.
Since I was teaching DC Circuit theory, it generally worked quite well. The tests usually involved solving for all the circuit parameters in a series-parallel circuit. (voltage drops, component current etc) It got hairy when they got into AC circuit theory. There you get to play with imaginary current. 😀 (reactive circuits) But, you get to play with the Pythagorean equation and learn neat memory aids like “ELI the ICE man” (voltage leads current in an inductive circuit, current leads voltage in a capacitive circuit.)
This stuff is way simpler than Maxwell’s stuff.
Indeed, YAY! I did sort of the opposite-but-the-same when I was at university. I’d been going to cram for my physics exam (2nd semester for science majors). But I got invited to a party — and I went! (Who has parties during finals? It must have been the last day of them). I’d also missed some crucial days of class. I knew it was wrong of me. I knew that if I did badly my grade could easily drop to a C, as going into it I had a low B. But on the way to the exam, I managed to put all of the “I didn’t do …” out of my mind and instead I told myself “I am smart. I am smart enough to do this. I can figure out what I need to.” And you know what? I ended the semester with a high B in the class!
(I didn’t, however, rely on that technique for later classes. I knew it was very likely a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.)
Congratulations! 🙂
Congratulations on passing that course. It’s not an easy one is it. I took it last year.
Congratulations Diana – I’m glad all your hard work paid off!
Congratulations, Diana!!! 🙂
Félicitations Diana ! I’m really happy to see you succeeded !
Congratulations Diana! 😀 You just outscored me and all the others who didn’t even start by 100% !
Morning folks,
Mila1 has been zoomed in again, which is a little disappointing as we cannot see the extremities of the lava field. Especially as the Nic-air and MOGT cams are not working at the moment.
Enjoy it while it lasts. Haraldur says it’s nearly over. http://www.visir.is/volcanoist-has-calculated-when-the-eruption-will-end/article/2015150119013
Hi,
Just found this
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B7tILZIIQAEzRl3.jpg:large
The comment attached says it was taken on the 17th, and on the 18th the sign was buried by the lava.
Trying again to get the post
I quite like this one
Re Torfajökull earthquakes, IMO states:
“This morning (17 Jan) a series of earthquakes is occurring at the Torfajökull area, 2-3 km west of Landmannalaugar. The largest was an M2.5 at 10:28 but a dozen in total. These earthquakes are of shallow origin and are probably caused by geothermal activity in the area.”
Oops…
Lizard Squad DDoS-for-hire service hacked – users’ details revealed
“Astonishingly, it appears that the Lizard Squad failed to encrypt its database of registered users – but instead stored details of their usernames and passwords in plaintext.”
For the less informed: These are the ankle biters that were trying to ride on the heels of the notoriety of Anonymous.
And even further out there, are the State Level actors.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/nsa-secretly-hijacked-existing-malware-to-spy-on-n-korea-others/
Birds of a feather….
GCHQ captured emails of journalists from top international media
“A 66-year old British Rock star Geoffrey ‘Jake’ Commander, who is the guitarist of Electric Light Band Orchestra (ELO), has been jailed for 10 days at the US jail after found guilty of joining the well-known online hacktivist “Anonymous” and taking his part with the popular Operation Payback campaign, which have brought down numerous financial websites.
This chain of events started December 10, 2010 when he was online at his home and entered Anonymous Chatroom and found himself one of the other 1000 hacktivists there too. Then he clicked “LOIC” tool, which is a stress test tool used by hackers to send huge amount of web traffic to targeted sites, which will result to server crash popularly known as DDoS Attack.
The said attack was against the US financial institutions; ‘Jake’ Commander clicked on the links and said in court he considered it as protest. After clicking a link, his computer targeted MasterCard’s website. MasterCard reported later that they had recorded $1 million loss because of the DDoS attack. Commander was alleged to be a part of the Operation Payback for over 3 hours.”
http://www.hackersnewsbulletin.com/2015/01/66-year-old-british-rock-guitarist-jailed-joining-anonymous-hacking-attack.html
As this eruption starts to enter into the latter phases of it’s presumed eruption (assuming this will end in the next 2-3 months), it’ll be interesting to keep an eye on the caldera. It’s a bit befuddling to me, but for whatever reason, calderas like to rupture and collapse right at the end of the actual eruption in shield volcanoes. From what we know of the 1800’s Askja eruption, this is precisely what happened there. Similarly, many other volcanoes have experienced caldera collapse / rupturing after an actual eruption ends. I think at this point in time, the likelihood of an actual eruption from the primary caldera is still fairly unlikely, but it can’t be ruled out, and the “end stage” collapse certainly has at least some historical elements that are noteworthy.
Hi all, here a timelapse from the 18th and 19th of January. I made a big cut in the night though. There’s no music this time.
(btw not too fond of forcing to register with one of those 4 options)
Thank You very much, 😀
Very nice compilation!
Thanks, virtual. Interesting that the steam action at the near-by river junction was very active then seemed to stop.
Thanks Virtual. I always like these videos for when I had to be some where else. 🙂
For those who want a volcano to be always close-at-hand ……
Fully OT.
For Diana (who has an interest in biology).
“Fun with math, or the case for the rocket dogs.”
In a recent paper “Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth’s magnetic field” Hart et al (2013) Frontiers in Zoology 2013, 10:80
From the abstract: ” We measured the direction of the body axis in 70 dogs of 37 breeds during defecation (1,893 observations) and urination (5,582 observations) over a two-year period.”
Two years = 730 days.
1893 observations over 70 dogs works out to 27.04 events per dog, on average.
730/27.04 = 26.99418912 (26 days, 23 hours) between events.
I fear that either the dogs of the study would have expired, or had been prone to explosive events with that long of a repose time in their activity…
Note: This is just fiddling with the numbers for entertainment. In all likelihood, the dogs weren’t jetting around the pen on rocket plumes of fecal matter. There were probably breaks in the observation periods as the data was collated and worked on.
The actual paper: http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/pdf/1742-9994-10-80.pdf
This paper has actually led me to ask really bizzare questions of my wife when she lets the dogs out such as: “Which way were they pointing?” The Pekingese is quite odd. He will do 5 to 8 rotations or more before he settles down and does his thing. The large dog apparently is shy, and goes back behind a bush in the back corner of the yard. Considering the typical size of his deposit, that is much appreciated on my part.
it’s been found that cattle preferentially align themselves with the magnetic field as well.
I guess now my neighbor is going to wonder why I’m watching his cattle. 😀
Morning all! A rare clear view at the Aso volacano crater webcam made me compare it with my clear day screenshot I had taken in October. What huge amounts of ash must have been deposited in the surrounding areas of the volcano!
(http://volcams.malinpebbles.com/pubweb/Japan3.htm)
And a Beautiful-morning /edit: err… afternoon/ picture of erupting Klyuchevsky. Note the big cloud disk over it.
(http://volcams.malinpebbles.com/pubweb/Kamchatka.htm)
Earth has breathed out a new layer. Incredible planet. Thank you for posting it.
Beautiful