Io, moon of Jespiter Jupiter, is famously volcanically active. It has more than 400 active volcanoes, over an area the size of Asia. Some of the volcanic mountains are taller than Mount Everest. The sulphur deposits have painted Io into 50 shades of yellow. But Io is only one of the 4 major moons of…
I take it where I left it in my last post. Using volcanic signals (mainly sulfate spikes) in the Greenland and Antarctica ice cores, I listed the most powerful explosive eruptions between the years 1500 and 1900: Largest explosive eruptions, from 1900 to 1500 AD. Many of these eruptions have written records, so it was…
Today is 270 years since the destruction of Lisbon. The earthquake of All Saints day 1755 in Lisbon changed a nation and is still remembered across the continent. Hence a republication of our 2016 post on this event. A few words on the effect on Scotland have been aded to the original. At one time,…
A fun question: which are the southernmost, most equatorial and northernmost volcanoes in the world? We need to add two provisos here, otherwise this question is impossible to answer: the volcano should be on land (sub-aerial, not sub-marine), and it should not be extinct but be known to have erupted. I’ll give you a few…
After the recent developments of Iwo-Jima volcano, I’ve grown interested in whether submarine calderas are capable, or not, of producing substantial stratospheric sulfur injections, also in the effects and frequency of these injections, and eventually, as one thing led to another, in the identity of the eruptions behind them. Large volcanic explosions emit vast amounts…
The Earth is full of riches. Once people discovered the importance of metals, they quickly found out where to get them from. The first mined metal may have been copper. When mixed with tin, this formed bronze, malleable but strong. Mines were dug and spoils extracted. Copper could be found in many places, but it…
Introduction (Albert) Iwo Jima is famous. The battle between the US and Japanese forces are well remembered – by both sides. Before the war, about 1000 people lived here. After the war, none. There is a military base only. The beaches are filled with rusting hulks of ships, sunk in the long battle. And that…
We recently published a post on the Zuidwal volcano, found buried in the Netherlands and becoming a google sensation – google is still working on removing all the made-up images. But in spite of google, there is a real story behind this volcano. It is the story of the North Sea, the sea that could…
Figuring out the eruption history of Afar volcanoes is taking longer than I expected, so in the meantime, I will have to post about other topics. And lately, one that has been present in my volcano discussions, here and elsewhere, has been about caldera volcanoes. It’s nothing new that calderas generate all sorts of admiration…
The only truly dead volcanoes are the ones whose existence we have forgotten about. The Netherlands is not known for its volcanoes. There is a volcano with a Dutch name: Beerenberg, an impressive stratovolcano on Jan Mayen, but the volcano itself is in fact Norwegian (another nation not known for its volcanoes). But dig down…
Over the past 6 years I’ve watched Chiles-Cerro Negro go through 4 different phases of unrest. Like a toxic lover, no matter how much I try, I can’t shake this volcano. I honestly thought I was going somewhere with Grimsvotn and Iwo-Jima but no. Grimsvotn is stable in the sense that nothing has really changed…
A repost from 2016, written by Henrik and part of our series on volcanoes of the American west. There is enough there to make any nation proud! This follows on from the post on Mount Shasta and on Tehama. The more you read about volcanism in North America, the more confused you become by the…
It came as a shock – quite literally. It shouldn’t have, because a recent paper had predicted that the area was preparing for a large earthquake. On 29 July, at 23:25 UTC, the 5th largest earthquake from modern measurements hit the Kamchatka peninsula with a reported magnitude of M8.8. (It is listed as occuring on…
On 15 July, a video of an explosive eruption of Erta Ale (Afar Region, Ethiopia) volcano was briefly discussed in the comment section. It was a small ash plume emerging from the summit of the Ethiopian lava lake volcano. It was an unusual development, and some of us had already commented on the possibility that…
A repost on the region of Lassen Peak in California, originally written by Henrik in 2013 This article began as a regular piece on Lassen Peak but quickly expanded as I discovered how complex the geology and history of the Lassen Volcanic Complex was. Unlike nearby Shasta, Lassen Peak is but a dacite lava dome, one…
