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Volcanos / Volcanoes

Day 22 and the flow of lava hasn't stopped.
It started a new flow in a different direction which has wiped out more banana plantations, and has also reached the sea, so that is now also creating some prime seafront development areas (I'm joking!).
Multiple earthquakes continue to shake the area.
 
Sharon Hill said:
That does not sound promising at all. First, catching and then flying? By drone? They have such little lifting power. :eek:
Click to expand...
Yes, seems unlikely doesn’t it? You can’t imagine an untrained dog willingly staying still enough to be picked up in a net..

The video shows the size of the drone they’re intending to use. The man says if it doesn’t work they’ll go in themselves but doesn’t elaborate on this.
 
Update on the dogs. This just got a bit weird.

Drone operators were preparing to launch a daring rescue mission to carry several dogs out of a volcano's lava zone when they realized something had changed: All of the dogs were already gone.

It was apparently the work of a group of mysterious rescuers who left a spray-painted banner reading, "The dogs are fine." The message was signed "A Team."
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/21/1048003713/a-team-dogs-rescue-volcano-lava-la-palma-spain

It looks like someone walked in and rescued them. But it's a mystery and it's not clear if they're OK.
 
I'll believe the dogs are fine when there's more evidence than graffiti.
 
Good on whoever did it. The report says:

Footage in the anonymous video was shot by a drone. Leales said it suspects that the unknown rescuers might have used a drone's thermal imaging to determine a relatively "cold" path through the lava field.
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Day 51 on La Palma and the activity has been at a lower level for the past few days. But it still rumbles on.
 

At least 13 dead after Indonesia's Mount Semeru volcano erupts​


At least 13 people are dead and thousands are displaced after Mount Semeru, a volcano in Indonesia's East Java province, erupted on Saturday, authorities said.


Indonesia's National Board for Disaster Management (BNPB) said in a statement Sunday the eruption had wounded 98 others, including two pregnant women, after it covered villages with ash and left people to run from billowing clouds of debris.

At least 300 families were evacuated following the eruption.

One rescue volunteer in Indonesia's Lumajang district told CNN Sunday that he and his team evacuated the bodies of six miners from a river in Curah Kobokan village, where they were mining sand in the river bank.

Some of the miners were still inside their trucks, while others were discovered laying on the ground near the trucks, said 32-year-old volunteer Muhammad Firman Adiguna Effasa. It is unclear if those six deaths are part of the 13 deaths that authorities announced earlier.

He added he was worried that more miners or other victims could be still out there but won't survive because the lava flood was so intense.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/04/asia/indonesia-mount-semeru-eruption-intl/index.html

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:

At least 13 dead after Indonesia's Mount Semeru volcano erupts​


[...]

Some of the miners were still inside their trucks, while others were discovered laying on the ground near the trucks, said 32-year-old volunteer Muhammad Firman Adiguna Effasa. It is unclear if those six deaths are part of the 13 deaths that authorities announced earlier.

He added he was worried that more miners or other victims could be still out there but won't survive because the lava flood was so intense.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/04/asia/indonesia-mount-semeru-eruption-intl/index.html
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"Lava" was the the wrong word used by the translator (probably). You can usually outrun that. Steaming hot clouds of ash, pumice, and gases, you can't.
 
I'm not sure what happened there - I'm guessing 'pyroclastic flow', but equally, what with the rain, it could have been a 'mudslide' of wet ash that flowed down over the village.
 
IIRC there were reports that the big cloud of ash happened around the same time as heavy rain.
 
Hmmm. I'm not buying all of this.

Heavy rain triggered Indonesia's volcano eruption. This could happen more.​

Days of heavy rain had gradually eroded Semeru's lava dome, a mound of hardened lava that acts like a volcano's plug, which partially collapsed.
It was this "dome avalanche" that Indonesian volcanologists believe triggered the eruption, according to the country's geological chief, Eko Budi Lelono, from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/asia/indonesia-mount-semeru-volcano-eruption-cimate-intl/index.html

It was not a big eruption, really, but it's hard to accept that rain eroded enough of the dome that the pressure let loose. It's more like the pressure was already building and the rain made it happen a bit sooner.
 
Possibly the heavy rain filtered through to the layers below where it eventually became steam and did the eruptive thing?
Does that sound like a theory that could apply?
 
Trevp666 said:
Possibly the heavy rain filtered through to the layers below where it eventually became steam and did the eruptive thing?
Does that sound like a theory that could apply?
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Yep. It's certainly possible. Water contact with magma causes phreatic explosions. The steam-driven blasts can be the cause of MAJOR blasts. It's possible that even Krakatoa was a phreatomagmatic eruption as sea water came into contact with the magma chamber. But the rain thing is not groundwater or seawater that can flood in. Rain takes a while to accumulate. And, while it seems it could trigger more smaller eruptions, I'm not sure this is going be a significant factor in the increase in volcanic eruptions.
 
Here's why the Tonga volcanic explosion in January 2022 was so violent. It was the introduction of water ... It's always the water ...

Fun Fact: When the intense atmospheric electrical activity associated with the eruption was in its peak hour it represented 80% of all lightning occurring on earth during that period.
This Could Be Why The Massive Volcanic Eruption in Tonga Was So Explosive

By any measure you want to use, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption in January 2022 was a massive eruption.

It produced a swirling plume of gas, dust and ash that reached 58 kilometers (36 miles) into the sky, atmospheric waves that traveled around the globe several times, and tsunamis in the Caribbean on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

A newly published study now suggests why the scale of this volcanic blast was so huge: a smaller eruption the day before, priming the volcano for a bigger explosion by sinking its main vent under the surface of the ocean.

That meant molten rock was spewing out straight into seawater, vaporizing it along the way and intensifying the eruption. ...

Combined with ice crystals in the upper atmosphere, the roiling cloud of material built static charges that drove a dramatic period of lightning. The frenzy of electrical activity was so intense, in fact, it represented 80 percent of Earth's lightning strikes in its most active hour.

"We really just set out to try to understand what happened," says volcanologist Melissa Scruggs from the University of California, Santa Barbara. ...

Scruggs and her colleagues think that almost 2 cubic kilometers (0.48 cubic miles) of material – weighing about 2,900 teragrams or 2.9 thousand million metric tons – was sent half way to space, causing violent ripple effects that were felt around the world.

The first two hours of the eruption were particularly violent, the researchers discovered, with the event starting at 5.02pm local time. After about 12 hours, activity at the site faded. It's the largest eruption we've seen since the 1991 blast from Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, the researchers say. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/this-c...tonga-hunga-ha-apai-eruption-was-so-explosive
 

New Zealand's Mount Ruapehu shows increased volcanic activity​


The temperature at New Zealand's crater lake Te Wai a-moe has risen about 35 degrees Fahrenheit over the past three days, highlighting continued unrest on Mount Ruapehu and concerning experts about its ongoing volcanic tremors, experts said Monday.

Geoff Kilgour said Mount Ruapehu has shown its strongest volcanic activity "in two decades" with volcanic alert levels remaining at 2. Volcano eruptions are much more likely at Level 2 in than Level 1.

"Over the last week, the level of volcanic tremor has varied, with bursts of strong tremor interspersed by short, periods of weaker tremor," Kilgour said, according to the New Zealand Herald.

"This represents a change in character in the tremor, and the driving processes remain unclear."

Staffers from GNS Science, New Zealand's leading geoscience and isotope research service, have noticed an increased frequency of aerial gas measurements in sampling and a gas measurement flight last week.

"Mount Ruapehu is an active volcano and has the potential to erupt with little or no warning when in a state of elevated volcanic unrest," Kilgour said. "Volcanic Alert Level 2 indicates the primary hazards are those expected during volcanic unrest; steam discharge, volcanic gas, earthquakes, landslides and hydrothermal activity."

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2022/05/02/New-Zealand-Mount-Ruapehu/4261651497346/

maximus otter
 
Geldingadalir Volcano on Iceland has started to erupt.


 
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