Volcano watch 2011

I think there are some tremor-graphics here that shoot a little up, but witch one i have to look???

hraun.vedur.is...

And here there are some squares that don't work??? Why is that?

hraun.vedur.is...

Mountain Baekdu, a dormant volcano on the border between North Korea and China, is showing signs of a possible eruption in the near future, experts warned Tuesday.

"Baekdu could erupt anytime soon," said geologist Yoon Sung-hyo at Pusan National University, who has monitored the nation's highest mountain (2,744 meters) for any changes. "A variety of indicators are backing this scenario. The thing we should try to predict is when. It's clear it's imminent."

www.koreatimes.co.kr...

reply to post by crazydaisy


Thanks very much for posting this. It is a beautiful area.

Add it to the batch for 2012

Edit: I knew I recognised the picture, but the name was wrong. The lake, which I love both the picture and name of is called in English

Heaven Lake

Here is a larger image


Article about the lake (Wiki)

Here is the Wiki article about the mountain

Heaven Lake is very beautiful!!

Originally posted by ni91ck
I think there are some tremor-graphics here that shoot a little up, but witch one i have to look???

hraun.vedur.is...

And here there are some squares that don't work??? Why is that?

hraun.vedur.is...

I can clarify that there has been bad weather from 09/02 - 12/02. that problebly caused those spikes winds upto 60m per sec.

And the squares seem to be only down in the English version which is odd, but they are working in the Icelandic version. Veður.is

reply to post by punterdeb


We have been talking about that in this thread. Geoligist worry about kistufell. Grímsvötn.

reply to post by Spacedman13

And the squares seem to be only down in the English version which is odd, but they are working in the Icelandic version.

Always been the case since I have been watching them. I did email them once. Probably a waste of time!

I noted which ones do not work on my links. See signature and go to seismographs >Europe > Iceland

And now GERMANY...

Didn't know Germany had a few big volcanos under their feet..

Is Germany’s super-volcano awakening? We think so…

The scene of Germany’s famous Laacher See lake looks picturesque and serene but underneath the calm surface of the waters lies a potential killer that could devastate a good portion of Europe. The last time the Laacher See super-volcano erupted 12,000 years ago, it deposited ash across much of Europe. On July 30, 2010, a 5.6 earthquake struck the region and that likely signaled an awakening of the giant sleeping caldera. That Laacher See is a potentially active volcano has been proven by seismic activities and heavy thermal anomalies under the lake. Carbon dioxide gas from magma still bubbles up at the southeastern shore, and scientists believe that a new eruption could happen at any time. Today the region near Koblenz was shaken by a swarm of 7 earthquakes beginning with a 4.5 magnitude quake which erupted at a depth of 6 km.

More doom!

reply to post by Vitchilo


Gee thanks Vitch. I just spent time calming Shenon down who lives in the area and you go and post this!!

By the way it IS NOT a supervolcano. It is a tiddler. Super volcanoes start at 1000 cu km of tephra. This one only spat out 16.

That site is a bit too DOoooooOM for my liking!!

reply to post by PuterMan


Yeah I don't know about the credibility of that website... but I would think it's not really good... since it's too doomish...

Anyway, you're right about the Laacher volcano... from wiki :

The caldera was formed after the colossal Laacher See eruption dated to 12,900 years ago[1][2][3]. The remaining crust collapsed into the empty magma chamber below, probably two or three days after the eruption.[4] An estimated 6 km³ of magma was erupted,[5] producing around 16 km³ of tephra.[6] This massive eruption thus had a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 6, and was larger than the colossal 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo (Philippines) which also had a VEI of 6 (10 km³ of tephra erupted).

So basically... about 60% bigger than the Pinatubo eruption... so not really big... but the thing is, this volcano is on land... where there's lots of people... so it would be way worse economically than the Pinatubo if it were to erupt.

And now Hawaii?
Lava lake at Kilauea’s Halemaumau crater in Hawaii rising

The lava lake at Kilauea’s Halemaumau crater has been rising gradually in the last few months. Volcanologists don’t know what the significance of the rise is. It’s possible that the lava could spill out of the pit and on to the crater floor, though this might take months to happen. The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported the observatory’s seismologists are also watching an increased number of earthquakes in the upper east rift zone. Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory scientist-in-charge Jim Kauahikaua says the increase in seismicity somewhat resembled the prelude to a brief June 2007 eruption in a remote section of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

That one is almost always erupting so...

reply to post by Vitchilo


yeah i checked the site that you linked it to and i agree with you but its only been 12,000 years since the last major eurption so what are the odds of it going off again in our lifetimes?


rather slim i would like to think .

reply to post by alysha.angel


Add some fracking, and drilling (of all sorts)(and don't forget those pesky hydrotherma plants, some solar energy, etal and let's us see what we get! Triple dog dare you!

reply to post by Vitchilo


I dont think its anything to worry about for now. Gonna keep watch though.

reply to post by Vitchilo


Kilauea's lava pit has been rising for some time now. As you say it is on the always erupting list so not too much to worry about yet.

According to Mr Lee don't forget it was to erupt in November and the lava was going to run up hill and swamp Hilo town by the end of December. Maybe he meant 2011 instead of 2010. It always was a moveable date!

Seems like the Nyiragongo could erupt again,the Lava has pushed upwards quite rapidly lately:

Spiegel - German

Recent Photos and some from the "Eruption" 2002:

Spiegel - German

May be I can post the following link here too.
It's a study made, couple of years ago, of the Eifel Hotspot.
Quite technical but a lot of interresting information can be found in this paper.

Also the Laacher See "belongs" to that hotspot

pangea.stanford.edu...

Originally posted by Nidwin
May be I can post the following link here too.
It's a study made, couple of years ago, of the Eifel Hotspot.
Quite technical but a lot of interresting information can be found in this paper.

Also the Laacher See "belongs" to that hotspot

pangea.stanford.edu...

Thanks for that. I tried to read it,but...meh,to complicated. PuterMan?

reutersFebruary 17, 2011 – JAPAN – More than 2,500 people living near a volcano that has been spewing ash in southern Japan were advised to evacuate their homes Thursday after heavy rain threatened mudslides of accumulated ash, a local official said. Shinmoedake began erupting in late January, in its biggest activity in some 300 years. The volcanic activity has disrupted airline flights and blanketed nearby vegetable farms with ash, but there have been no reports of serious injury or deaths. The Japan Meteorological Agency expected rainfall of more than 4 mm (0.16 inch) per hour to last until Thursday night, an amount that the local government said could cause mudslides. The official, in the city of Miyakonojo, said 63 people had moved to evacuation centers by midday. The town of Takaharu, located at the foot of 1,421 meter (4,662 ft) mountain on the southern island of Kyushu, also advised about 250 residents and a business to prepare for evacuation in case it was necessary. -Reuters

reply to post by Shenon


Hi Shenon,

The first part of that is saying that there is a hotspot in the Eiffel region but they are not sure why it is there as there is no evidence to suggest a hotspot moving as for example in Yellowstone or Hawaii. There is uplift in that area or 0.4 to 1 mm per annum which could be due to faulting or the hot spot. They are saying the hotspot because the rifting is not consistent throughout the whole area.

They seem to have two different results from studies that give different sizes of plume but they have not spoken about any resolution of that, only that it proves the 'plume' or 'hotspot' exists.

Receiver functions also provide evidence for a low velocity body with 1 per cent partial melt 60–90 km beneath the Eifel (Budweg 2003).

This is a very low melt figure, which is good. That is also pretty deep which is good. Yellowstone is I believe around 10% or more and only about 15km deep. So this is not really going anywhere.

In simple terms by the end of the third page they have a problem as several things don't match up, but undeterred they press on. By the way the shear waves they are talking about are what you will normally see referred to on ATS as S-waves

They placed 158 seismos for a 7 month study but basically got very little data from them.

Because the permanent stations surround the Eifel region, and because we lack sufficient Eifel data to test more complex models, we extrapolate this single-layer model approach to the treatment of splitting across the Eifel Network.

This is science speak for "We did not have enough data so we fiddled it." (They are scientists after all). This splitting by the way is due to S waves encountering changes in materials. That is about the simplest way to explain it. Thes changes may be because of faults, folds, plumes etc. The azimuth is the angle of the incoming S waves in the phases, i.e. the same thing as the phase data you can see from USGS on any large earthquake.

Many of the phases we analysed did not demonstrate reliable apparent splitting, and yielded unconstrained measurements.

They had a few problems!

I admit to skipping the maths in the next part - I will never be a geologists as that just makes my eyes glaze over!

Next they chose a 'model' for Hawaii and attempted to fit the Eiffel data to that model of an hypothesised plume. (Don't ask me I am only reading it!!)

The Eifel PAF model predicts 61 per cent of the φ variation from a single-azimuth model (Figs 9 and 10). The Eifel stations that show rapid splitting variations could be considered as outliers, and part of the source of the 39 per cent misfit.

By what is usually known as fiddle-farting they managed to get a 61% best fit

Although our PAF model explains the majority of our splitting data, and is consistent with many other geological and geophysical data, there are issues that need to be addressed if a fixed upwelling exists beneath the Eifel hotspot, the most obvious being the lack of an observed hotspot track with an age progression, which would be
expected for a moving plate.

Well I suppose 61% is a majority, but with all the other problems I personally don't think this study is very conclusive as far as a hotspot goes, especially since there are many studies that suggest plumes do not in fact exist and that the model of plates moving over hotspots is a fallacy.

Either way I would say this was not particularly conclusive.

The good news from your point of view is that the final conclusion states:

The ∼300-m Rhenish Massif topographic swell and the tomographic anomalies suggest that the Eifel upwelling is quite slow, and has a low excess temperature, which explains the absence of major volcanism associated with the hotspot.

reply to post by PuterMan


Yup,thanks. So nothing to worry about it seems.