Tag Archives: Volcano

Volcanic explosion on Mount Etna injures 10 people

FILE PHOTO A tourist stands in front of Italy's Mount Etna, Europe's tallest and most active volcano, as it spews lava during an eruption on the southern island of Sicily, Italy February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Antonio Parrinello/File photo

ROME (Reuters) – Ten people were injured in an eruption on Mount Etna on Thursday when magma flowing into snow caused a violent explosion that sent stones and rocks flying into the air, emergency services said.

Amongst those hurt near the summit of Etna on the island of Sicily were members of a television crew filming for the BBC.

“Running down a mountain pelted by rocks, dodging burning boulders and boiling steam – not an experience I ever ever want to repeat,” the BBC’s science correspondent Rebecca Morelle wrote on Twitter.

“BBC team all ok – some cuts/ bruises and burns. Very shaken though – it was extremely scary,” she said.

Italian officials said six people had to be taken to hospital, but none were in a serious condition.

Etna is Europe’s most active volcano. After a quiet couple of years it burst into action in February with repeated explosive eruptions that sent orange plumes of lava into the air.

Thursday’s explosion was the result of a so-called phreatomagmatic eruption, caused by magma hitting water — in this case snow.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; editing by Richard Lough)

Alert level raised for Alaska volcano after explosion detected

Cleveland Volcano in Alaska

By Dan Whitcomb

(Reuters) – Scientists raised the alert level for a remote Aleutian volcano on Monday after an explosion was detected on the mountain and heard by residents of a tiny village some 45 miles (72 km) away, a monitoring website said.

Cleveland Volcano, a 5,676-foot (1,730-metre) peak on the uninhabited Chuginadak Island, about 940 miles (1,504 km) southwest of Anchorage, was raised to orange from yellow by the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The orange code, the second-highest on the scale, is issued when a volcano is “exhibiting heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption,” according to the observatory. A red code is issued when an eruption is imminent or under way.

The observatory said that an explosion was detected on Cleveland by both infrasound and seismic data and heard by residents of Nikolski, a settlement of less than 50 people on Umnak Island about 45 miles (72 km) to the east.

Infrasound instruments measure air pressure around the volcano.

Scientists said that cloudy weather obscured Cleveland’s peak in satellite images but that no evidence of an eruption cloud had been detected at a height of 28,000 feet (8,534.4 meters).

Previous explosions have spewed ash emissions, according to the observatory.

The volcano, named after U.S. President Grover Cleveland, is one of the most active of Alaska’s scores of volcanoes and its ash cloud could pose a threat to aircraft when it erupts.

It forms the western portion of Chuginadak Island and has been intermittently producing small lava flows and explosions since 2001, the observatory said.

Chuginadak Island is part of Alaska’s Aleutian archipelago, a geologically active chain of volcanic islands that is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire and is very prone to earthquakes.

Earlier this year Mount Pavlof on the Alaska Peninsula erupted with little advanced warning, spewing an ash cloud up to 20,000 feet (6,096 meters) high that prompted aviation warnings across the region.

Pavlof is currently at yellow on the alert scale, meaning that it is “exhibiting signs of elevated unrest” but not erupting, according to the observatory.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory is a joint program of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the State of Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Sandra Maler)

New Zealand warns hikers away from ‘Lord of the Rings’ volcano

A tourist takes pictures of Mount Ruapehu as it erupts on June 18, 1996 in Tongariro National Park on the central North Island of New Zealand

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – New Zealand has warned hikers and climbers to steer clear of a volcano in a national park whose jagged volcanic rock formations and eerie barren landscapes featured in “The Lord of The Rings” movies.

Quake and volcano monitoring service GNS Science raised the alert for Mount Ruapehu, in the North Island’s Tongariro National Park, which last erupted in 2007.

“There are more signs of life at the volcano,” said Volcanologist Brad Scott.

The Department of Conservation warned trekkers to stay out of the Summit Hazard Zone, within two km of the center of Crater Lake.

“Recent visits to the volcano have confirmed an increase in the output of volcanic gas,” GNS Science said.

The temperature of the lake has risen from 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) to 46 degrees Celsius (115 F)since mid-April. The volcanic alert level has been lifted to “heightened unrest” from “moderate”.

Each year, thousands of people trek the so-called Tongariro Crossing, a 20-km (12-mile) alpine crossing that passes all three volcanoes in the area.

The landscape formed the backdrop for Mordor’s hissing wasteland in Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

(Reporting by Rebecca Howard; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Massive volcanic eruption in Alaska causes flight diversions

Alaska Volcano

(Reuters) – A volcano on the Alaska Peninsula erupted with little advanced warning over the weekend, spewing an ash cloud up to 20,000 feet (6,096 meters) high that prompted aviation warnings across the region, scientists said on Monday.

Mount Pavlof, one of the most active volcanoes on the peninsula, began erupting shortly after 4:00 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time on Sunday, said Jessica Larsen, coordinating scientist with the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute.

“Pavlof is known to us for having a pretty quick onset to eruptions, it doesn’t always give us long precursory signals,” Larsen said.

“If you look at some of the seismic data that we have, the intensity really ramped up pretty fast. It was quite abrupt,” she said.

Photos on the Alaska Volcano Observatory website showed the plume towering over the icy slopes of Mount Pavlof and drifting to the northwest.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a “red” aviation alert in response to the 20,000-foot-high ash cloud, which required that flights to be re-routed. The alert could affect local and regional air traffic, as well polar routes and cargo flights from Anchorage.

Larsen said the eruption did not pose any immediate danger to nearby communities on the peninsula, which were monitoring the ash fall. The closest residential area is Cold Bay, located 37 miles (60 km) southwest of Pavlof.

There have been more than 40 eruptions from Pavlof, including between May and November of 2014, when ash plumes also triggered aviation warnings. Such events can last weeks or months.

“This 20,000-foot ash cloud is not unusual for Pavlof at all,” Larsen said, adding that the highest recorded plume from the volcano was 49,000 feet.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Perry Stone issues prophetic alert about volcanic activity

A recent prophetic alert from evangelist Perry Stone has drawn the attention of Charisma News.

Charisma’s article covers Stone’s reaction to recent scientific reports about volcanic activity, and how he believes they are connected to Biblical last-day prophecies that are outlined in Joel 2.

The Charisma report cites a posting that appears on the Facebook page of Stone’s ministry.

If you want to read the full article about Stone’s prophetic alert, visit Charisma News.

Volcanic Eruptions Reduce Flow of Major Rivers

Scientists have found that volcanic eruptions affect the flow of the world’s major rivers.

New research from the University of Edinburgh shows that aerosol particles ejected into the air following volcanic eruptions don’t just contaminate the atmosphere, they can often trigger rainfall shortages that ultimately affect river systems worldwide.

In the first study of its kind, University of Edinburgh scientists Carley Iles and Gabriele Hegerl compared annual water flow in 50 rivers around the world with the timing of major volcanic eruptions, notably Agug in 1963, El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991.

For some rivers, records went back into the 19th century, making it possible to take into account earlier eruptions too.

They discovered that a year or two after these volcanoes hurled massive amounts of debris into the upper atmosphere they created a partial sunscreen and the flows of tropical rivers decreased.

On the contrary, river flow increased in some regions, including the U.S. southwest and parts of South America. Researchers linked this to the disruption of atmospheric circulation patterns.

Dr. Carley Iles, from the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. “Our findings reveal the indirect effect that volcanoes can have on rivers, and could be very valuable in the event of a major volcanic eruption in future,”

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, cautioned against so-called geo-engineering schemes that have been proposed as an answer for cooling down an overheated planet or global warming.

“As well as affecting river flow and rainfall, volcanic eruptions have a cooling effect on climate,” Dr Iles said.

“All of these impacts come about because volcanoes inject particles — sulfate aerosols — high up into the atmosphere, and these spread out and reflect sunlight back out into space.”

World’s Longest Continental Volcano Chain Discovered

The world’s longest chain of volcanoes on a single continent has been discovered in Australia.

The 1,240 miles long chain spans most of eastern Australia from the north at the edge of the Great Barrier Reef to the island of Tasmania in the south.

“We realized that the same hotspot had caused volcanoes in the Whitsundays and the central Victoria region, and also some rare features in New South Wales, roughly halfway between them,” said Dr. Rhodri Daviesfrom the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences.

“The track is nearly three times the length of the famous Yellowstone hotspot track on the North American continent.”

The scientists used satellite images and NASA topography models which allowed them to discover how material usually found in a volcanic center tracked across the nation.  The team then visited new sites for potential new volcanoes to confirm their findings.

“This technique has already helped to uncover a lot more volcanoes in the area,” lead researcher and graduate student Julie Boyce told Live Science in an email. “As part of my ongoing research, I have found another 20 probable small eruption centers. I haven’t driven out to visit most of them yet, though.”

The scientist admitted that there have been no eruptions in the last 5,500 years but still consider the area an “active region” because of emissions of carbon dioxide indicating magma trying to come to the surface.

Japan’s Mount Aso Erupts Without Warning

One of the world’s largest volcanos erupted without warning Monday morning.

Mount Aso, on the Japanese island of Kyushu, exploded without any warning tremors and is sending a plume of ash and smoke over a mile into the sky.

A group of 30 tourists who were near the crater at the time of the blast were safely recovered by police.

The Japanese Meteorological Agency raised the alert level for one of the mountain’s peaks to level 3 on a 5 level scale, meaning that the public should avoid the mountain out of fear of hot rocks shooting from the plume.

The volcano, located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, has produced more explosive eruptions than any other volcano in the world.  The caldera of the mountain is 12 miles in diameter and has smaller active peaks in the middle.

A 2.5 mile exclusion zone is now in effect around the mountain.  The area includes restaurants and museums but no residential homes.  All flights from nearby Kumanoto Airport have been cancelled or re-routed.

Kick ‘em Jenny Putting Ships at Risk

An underwater volcano off the Granada coast is causing a threat to the shipping industry for the island.

Kick ‘em Jenny is off the country’s northern coast.  The threat level of the volcano currently sits at yellow after spending the weekend at the higher orange level.  The yellow threat level means that an eruption of the underwater volcano is possible and that ships should avoid the area of the volcano by a minimum of 1.5 kilometers.

The volcano, despite being 600 feet below the ocean surface, is a threat because a burst of gasses from the volcano could instantly sink a ship in the waters above.  The process, called “degassing”, would make ships suddenly lose their buoyancy and sink.

Plus, hot rocks can shoot out of the water like missiles and endanger other ships in the region.  It could also cause a tsunami depending on the strength of the eruption.

The volcano has erupted a dozen times since being discovered in 1939.  The last major eruption was in 2001.  The volcano is blamed for Grenada’s worst maritime disaster when 60 people died after a ship went right into the ocean over the volcano.

The volcano has been causing hundreds of small earthquakes over the last few weeks.  At one point on Thursday, over 150 quakes were recorded in four-hour period around the volcano.