Moquegua: Ubinas volcano explodes, spreads ashes over nearby village
18 Hours ago
By Hillary Ojeda
The Ubinas volcano erupted early this morning, sprinkling ashes over villages only minutes later.
The Ubinas volcano erupted this morning at 4:24 a.m. (Photo: Perú21/USI)
Nearly on the anniversary of the evacuation of 28 thousand camelids from its pastures, the Ubinas volcano erupts once again.
The Ubinas volcano of the Moquegua region erupted this morning at 4:24 a.m. causing a layer of ash to fall over nearby villages minutes later, according to Perú21.
On March 31, 2014, the volcano's eruption caused Querapi residents to be evacuated as it sits just five kilometers from the volcano. Days later on April 21, Peru ordered the evacuation of the camelid animals, as the volcano posed a threat following further activity.
Today the Ubinas volcano erupted after about four months of calm. The National Service of Meteorology and Hydrology of Peru (SENAMHI) calculated that the 2.5 km column of ash above the crater could reach more than 15 kilometers to the southeast.
Escacha and Ubinas Valley therefore will be receiving a layer of ash on their homes, cars, sidewalks, and buidlings today following the eruption.
Scientific institutions advise that the local populations protect themselves with masks and goggles and to protect water resources and food to prevent contamination.
For about 40 years the volcano had been inactive, until 2006 when it began to register more activity. Since then, seismic activity, small eruptions, rocks and ash spewing from its crater have been a common occurrence.
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Weatherwatch: Glass globes blown by lightning
David Hambling
Wednesday 8 April 2015
The Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted in April 2010, emitting a cloud of volcanic ash which grounded air traffic across Europe for six days. Five years later, researchers led by Kimberly Genareau, of the University of Alabama. have written, that, among the volcanic debris, were glass spherules (small spheres) measuring less than a 10th of a millimetre across, which had been created by lightning.
In their paper published in Geology, the team describe how lightning melts ash particles inside the volcanic plume. Molten ash forms a ball like a raindrop before re-solidifying as a glass spherule. The team confirmed this theory by comparing natural spherules with ones created artificially in high-voltage experiments. The quantity of spherules, which made up about 5% of the debris sampled, showed how much electrical activity there was around the volcanoe.
"We hypothesize that the ash would need to be very close, likely within the discharge channel, to be affected," Genareau said.
Intense lightning can occur inside a volcanic plume when the ash particles become charged by friction as they are driven upwards by the heat. There are also electrical discharges around the mouth of a volcano during an eruption, which are less well understood.
This is the first time that these glass spherules have been studied, and they may provide a novel way of investigating volcanic lightning after the event. The number and size of spherules in debris can show indirectly the amount of lightning in an eruption that occurred many years ago even if nobody witnessed it.
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