Prelude to a Catastrophe: "The Unusual Character of the Seismic Activity Became Clear"

By Dana Hunter | June 14, 2012

This is the trouble with beginnings: the beginning is often subtle, and unrecognizable at the time. It's only in retrospect that we can go back, look at sequences of events until we find a place to stab a finger down and say, "Here. Here is where it began. This is the time, the place, the event." Even then, it's usually only a beginning. There are many places to put the finger, many events to choose.

It began with earthquakes.

Mount St. Helens from Spirit Lake. Skamania County, Washington. August, 1975. Image courtesy Donal Mullineaux, USGS.

Mount St. Helens had always been more seismically noisy than her siblings. Studies in the early 1970s found two types of earthquake: typically "volcanic" quakes high on the mountain, and classically tectonic quakes a few kilometers beneath to the northeast and southwest. Further studies revealed the earthquakes with "volcanic" signatures to be glaciers grating down the mountain. None of this was unusual for an ice-covered volcano in a tectonically feisty area.

Read the rest of the story here:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta-stones/2012/06/14/prelude-to-a-catastrophe-the-unusual-character-of-the-seismic-activity-became-clear/

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Volcano of Fire Spews Lava and Ash in Guatemala
June 15, 2012

Fuego's eruption is currently hurling lava more than 1,500 feet into the air.

Guatemala's Fuego (fire) volcano spewed ash into the sky south of the capital on Sunday for the third time in less than a month.

The country's vulcanology institute said that three rivers of lava were also emerging from the crater and flowing down the sides of the mountain.

Fuego had previously sent pyroclastic flows of searing debris cascading down its slopes on May 19 and May 25.

Other than briefly being a hazard to aviation, the recent eruptions have not posed a threat to any nearby inhabited areas.

Guatemala has four active volcanoes that have caused catastrophic damage in the past.

The explosive eruption of Santa Maria in 1902 was one of the world's largest eruptions of the 20th century.

In 2010, a blast at Pacaya volcano coated the current capital, Guatemala City, in a thick layer of ash and rock.

This forced hundreds of families to evacuate and officials to temporarily close the international airport.

Photo: National Coordinator of Disaster Reduction

Source: http://www.earthweek.com/2012/ew120615/ew120615d.html

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Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano Spews Lava, As Seen From Space

OurAmazingPlanet Staff - Jun 14, 2012

The Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite snapped this photo on June 12. The red color indicates heat, either from liquid or recently hardened lava still hot enough to glow.
CREDIT: NASA

View full size image

Kilauea continues to earn its reputation as one of Earth's most active volcanoes.

Since January 1983, Kilauea has erupted continuously, coating much of the southeast coast of Hawaii's Big Island in fresh lava, which glows red in this satellite image.

The center of the eruption is Pu'u O'o — a crater southeast of Kilauea's summit. From here, the molten rock flows through lava tubes down Kilauea's steep slopes. The lava emerges on the pali (a Hawaiian word for cliff) and on the coastal plain, further down the mountainside.

The Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite snapped this photo on June 12 with its Advanced Land Imager, which measures infrared light. The red color indicates heat, either from liquid or recently hardened lava still hot enough to glow.

Earlier this month, fresh lava emerged at Pu'u O'o, then traveled through lava tubes downhill. The red hotspots show where molten rock has broken out of tubes near the coast, and the lava lake that fills Pu'u O'o.

Visitors are warned not to approach the lava; according to the U.S. Geological Survey, areas near vents could erupt or collapse without warning. Potentially lethal concentrations of sulfur dioxide gas may also be present within 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) downwind of vent areas like Pu'u O'o.

Kilauea's summit is currently emitting 600 tons per day of sulfur dioxide gas, and spewing small amounts of ash and Pele's hair, small threads of volcanic glass named after Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess.

http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/3040-kilauea-lava-satellite-image.html

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Mystery of the Missing 1258 A.D. Eruption Solved?

By Erik Klemetti
June 14, 2012 |

A view of the Rinjani caldera in Indonesia, a possible candidate for the missing 1257-8 eruption. Image by NeilsPhotography.

If you've been following the news out the AGU Chapman Meeting of Volcanoes & the Atmosphere meeting going on this week, you might have seen some interesting news about the missing 1258 A.D. eruption. I wrote about the eruption a few months back, speculating on some potential volcanoes that could be the culprit for this climate-altering event. However, trying to match a sulfate signal on the poles with a volcano somewhere on the planet is hard, so finding that "smoking gun" is a challenge to say the least.

However, Franck Lavigne from the Panthéon-Sorbonne University's Laboratory of Physical Geography in Meudon, France claimed to have solved the mystery. It isn't that simple, though. Lavigne will not reveal the site of the eruption until his study is published (it may or may not be submitted for peer review at this point). So, instead of sharing news of his discovery, he showed the data he used to "solve" the mystery … but never revealed what volcano it was! What harm could come from Lavigne revealing his location before the article is published, especially if he is willing to show data that supposedly correlates the sulfate and ash composition in the polar record with the terrestrial record of the mystery volcano? Overall, this is shocking behavior for a geologist at a large meeting such as this – people commonly discuss data and information that has not be published yet, so why Lavigne chose to do this is beyond me (unless you want to think theatrics are part of the rationale).

The consensus of people at the meeting (N.B., I am not at the meeting) is that the mystery volcano is in Indonesia. Lavigne wouldn't confirm or deny this assessment, but it got me thinking – what might a contender be for a caldera eruption in Indonesia during the 13th century. Indonesia is filled with volcanoes, and as I mentioned a few weeks back when I discussed a recent study by Salisbury and others (2012), we really don't have a lot of good ages for Indonesian eruptions prior to ~1800 A.D. However, one very likely candidate might be the ~6 x 8.5 km Rinjani caldera. Rinjani hosts a caldera that may have formed in the 13th century, so it not only fulfills the role of being a large eruption but also falls within the right century. We don't have any good ages for the caldera eruption beyond some charcoal dated at 1210-1260 A.D. However, with the evidence that Lavingne's volcano is in Indonesia and how little we know about the caldera eruption at Rinjani, it makes sense that Rinjani could be an excellent candidate for an eruption that could be matched with the polar sulfate and ash.

At this point, all we can do is wait for Lavigne's study to be published, but we might be able to narrow the search for the 1257-58 eruption to Indonesia – and even to a target caldera that might be the weapon of choice.

Image: The Rinjani caldera in Indonesia. Image by NeilsPhotography/Flickr in August 2008.

Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/mystery-of-the-missing-1258-a-d-eruption-solved/