Volcanoes Erupting All Over
- Thread starter Laura
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INVOLCAN: "One of our teams was able to film today a real lava 'tsunami'. Impressive speed and overflow of the lava channel"#LaPalma
| By Simon Hradecky, created Wednesday, Oct 13th 2021 14:00Z, last updated Friday, Oct 15th 2021 09:54Z |
A Ryanair Boeing 737-800, registration EI-ENP performing flight FR-8179 from Tenerife South,CI (Spain) to Brussels Charleroi (Belgium), was climbing through about 6000 feet out of Tenerife's runway 07 when the crew turned right to avoid an ash cloud initially continuing the climb. Over the Island of Gran Canaria the aircraft turned back onto course to the north. Climbing through FL220 the crew stopped the climb however and decided to declare emergency and return to Tenerife due to problems with both engines. The aircraft entered a hold at FL120 in the clear south of Fuerteventura Island and subsequently landed safely on Tenerife South's runway 07 about 2 hours after departure.
Passengers reported a lot of emergency services were awaiting the aircraft. Apparently both engines had ingested ashes of the volcano Cumbre Vieja on La Palma Island about 75nm northwest of Tenerife South Airport.
A replacement Boeing 737-800 registration EI-EGD reached Charleroi with a delay of 6.5 hours.
The occurrence aircraft is still on the ground in Tenerife about 42 hours after landing back.
On Oct 15th 2021 Ryanair stated: "This Ryanair flight from Tenerife South to Brussels Charleroi (11 Oct) diverted back to Tenerife South airport due to a minor technical issue. There was no encounter with volcanic ash. After landing normally, passengers were transferred to another aircraft which departed from Tenerife South at 00.11am local time to Brussels Charleroi."
Ash Cloud Advisory for Oct 11th 2021 afternoon (Graphics: VAAC Volcanic Ash Advisory Center):
Ash Cloud Advisory for Oct 11th 2021 afternoon (Graphics: VAAC Volcanic Ash Advisory Center):
I know life must continue but!! the eruption is ongoing 
then again authorities, in the last 2 years or so, have shown little consideration for the people.
Schools in the south of La Palma prepare for the return to classrooms with the volcano more active than ever
then again authorities, in the last 2 years or so, have shown little consideration for the people.Schools in the south of La Palma prepare for the return to classrooms with the volcano more active than ever
Popocatepetl volcano has erupted, spewing ash 5.8 kilometers into the sky.
By: VN - 15 Oct 2021
Published on Oct 15, 2021 (0:15)
Popocatépetl Volcano Volcanic Ash Advisory: NEW VA EM to 19000 ft (5800 m)
Popocatepetl volcano (Mexico) news and eruption updates
www.volcanodiscovery.com
Published on Oct 15, 2021 (0:15)
I don't think it has been mentioned, but the Canaries volcanic committee Pevolca said a couple of days ago:
At the beginning of the outbreaks, sulphur levels were between 6000-9000 tons per day. This changed a few days ago, when it went up to 17774 tons per day with no signs of letting off. This is also mentioned on the live feed from the volcano found here.
It was mentioned in another article that the sulphur levels once they come down to about 100 tons a day, is a sign that the volcano is getting close to ending.
At the beginning of the outbreaks, sulphur levels were between 6000-9000 tons per day. This changed a few days ago, when it went up to 17774 tons per day with no signs of letting off. This is also mentioned on the live feed from the volcano found here.
XPan
The Living Force
Cumbre Vieja Volcano
La Palma, Spain
19 Sep 2021 vs 14 Oct 2021
A stunning photo taken by abiansangil.com, demonstrating the vast changes of the main eruption cone (called Cabeza Volcano) at Cumbre Vieja, taken on first day of the eruption - 19 Sep 2021 - and then took another one from the same spot, showing the scene 3 weeks later, on 14 Oct 2021.
La Palma, Spain
19 Sep 2021 vs 14 Oct 2021
A stunning photo taken by abiansangil.com, demonstrating the vast changes of the main eruption cone (called Cabeza Volcano) at Cumbre Vieja, taken on first day of the eruption - 19 Sep 2021 - and then took another one from the same spot, showing the scene 3 weeks later, on 14 Oct 2021.
XPan
The Living Force
XPan
The Living Force
Cumbre Vieja Volcano
La Palma, Spain
15+16 Oct 2021
La Palma, Spain
15+16 Oct 2021
Source: by Manfred Betzwieser, lapalma1.net, 16 Oct 2021
New eruption mouth opened
To the southeast of the main cone, a new eruption mouth has opened, initially showing a large amount of water vapour emissions as well as ash and pyroclasts. A lot of white smoke, probably water vapour, was emitted during the opening phase. This could indicate the presence of an underground water pocket.
Thermographic image of Involcan showing the anomaly created by the new eruption mouth. Now it remains to be confirmed whether this is a lava flow or a pyroclastic fall. Both are bad, but only the day will bring certainty.
The meteorologists were wrong
The forecast was for wind in a westerly direction. During the night, a lot of ash and lapilli arrived on the east side of La Palma. Everything is covered with a black layer of ash and Mazo airport is closed. At the moment no efforts are being made to clean up the area as the fallout continues.
09.40 - Problem of an evacuee: In front of the Sombrero in the direction of Las Manchas are placed the Guardia Civil and the Protección Civil. The Guardia Civil is highly professional and psychologically trained, 24 hours on the spot.
The Protección Civil is the eye of the needle: the "protocol" dictates that the inhabitants of the area that is about to go down are only allowed to go to their property accompanied by the Protección Civil, and they are only allowed to stay there for 45 minutes to save what can be saved. And here's the thing: the Protección Civil only "works" from 10h30 to 17h00 - as a result, I was not "let in" yesterday at 17h00 and not this morning at 08h40 either. Yesterday evening the wrong information was given out that today access would be from 08h00.
The Guardia Civil tried to explain: the Protección guys work 10 hours a day and are volunteers, so they can't ask for more - I think it's an unparalleled scandal. The gentlemen of the Protección Civil behave not unlike a block warden (as you know it from reports as a late-born person).
There is a website, https://volcanoes.eurovolc.eu/#, operated by European institutions. They say:
For some volcanoes there is not much, just name and when it was last active, from others there are excellent pictures and detailed information, including different scenarios in case it erupts. The information for the latest eruption is in La Palma is not updated, so probably it is more helpful when trying to look into the past, or the future. The map is interactive. When you zoom in and click the spots with three letters, there is more information. Here is an example from one of the three letter spots, in this case TPV, Teide - Pico Veijo on Tenerife, located in the lower left corner of the map. When you click the arrows new information comes up.
Besides the one showed below, there are others located in various others, including those on Island. The ones in main land Spain and France have not been active for thousands of years.
For some volcanoes there is not much, just name and when it was last active, from others there are excellent pictures and detailed information, including different scenarios in case it erupts. The information for the latest eruption is in La Palma is not updated, so probably it is more helpful when trying to look into the past, or the future. The map is interactive. When you zoom in and click the spots with three letters, there is more information. Here is an example from one of the three letter spots, in this case TPV, Teide - Pico Veijo on Tenerife, located in the lower left corner of the map. When you click the arrows new information comes up.
2 days later and sulphur levels have come down quite a lot. They are down to 2882 tons/day SO2 as can be seen on the live feed from TV Canarias. I am not sure much can be said from those numbers as they are likely to fluctuate greatly depending on what is happening deep down below the surface.
There was a lava tsunami yesterday which can be seen on this link. In the article where the link is, the Director of PEVOLCA is saying:
The article further says:
Earthquake activity appears to have slowed down a little in overall activity. This is from the last 15 days as monitored by IGN:
Interesting interview.
Volcanoes Talking
Volcanoes Talking
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NOVA: Apparently Minakami decided not to pursue the B-type signal. Why not?
Chouet: I think the answer is complexity. The B-type event looked very complex compared to the A-type. The A-type had a very short signature with a very sharp first arrival, so it looked like you could actually locate these things. The B-type, on the other hand, had this slowly emerging signal, which made it impossible to locate. In many cases it also displayed a very complex, long-lasting signature. In essence, Minakami concluded that this was something that we couldn't really address. At the time it was true—you couldn't really unravel all that complexity.
I also was trying to put things together in my head, and I thought trying to classify signatures was a little bit like classifying flowers. There are many types of flowers so you classify all these things, and then you have a feeling for the complexity and richness of nature. And that's fine, but if you do that on many different volcanoes—and there are quite a few volcanoes that are active at any one time—you're going to find that there's a very rich variety of seismic signatures on volcanoes. So you end up writing pages and pages and pages of signatures and classification, and people look at this and say, "Well, this is hopeless, because you've just got too much richness to deal with."
Chouet's solution
NOVA: So how did you approach this problem?
Chouet: What I wanted to know was, what specific events may occur in a volcano that are a telltale sign that you are actually proceeding with pressurization and toward a possible eruption. To do that you have to understand what is going on. You have to be able to interpret that process, that evolution of the volcano. You have to interpret the signature.
“Suddenly you realize the volcano is speaking to you, and you understand the language.”
NOVA: You began trying to interpret those signals on Mt. St. Helens, right?
Chouet: Yes. Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980. It blew up and carved a huge crater and dispersed a lot of material all over the countryside, wiped out forests, killed people. During the summer of 1981, a colleague and I deployed a seismometer inside the crater, right next to the base of the lava dome that was growing in the crater. While we were there we recorded a lot of B-type events. Being so close to the lava dome, the events were easier to locate, and we saw that we had a collection of A-type events and B-type events, and among the B-type events we had these peculiar signatures.
NOVA: What was peculiar about them?
Chouet: It stared you in the face. Anyone seeing these wiggles on paper would say, "Wow, this is obviously different." I remembered from when I was still in engineering school what happens in hydroelectric plants in the pipelines that carry the water when you suddenly shut the valve controlling the jet of water hitting the turbine blades. If you stop the water flow very quickly it generates a very high pressure right there at the valve. That pressure pulse reverberates in the pipeline, going back and forth between both ends of the pipeline. Each time the pressure pulse arrives back at the valve, it hits the surface of the valve with a huge hammer blow. This is called the water hammer. The water hammer effect is well known in that field as a resonance effect in the pipeline.
NOVA: So these long-period events are like water hammers, telling you what's going on with the magma, the liquid rock?
Chouet: Yes. The long-period events are important because they reflect a process that involves the fluid. You care about the fluid. You want to know where the fluid is, what it's doing, how much pressure it's under, whether the pressure is going up or down. By looking at these long-period events, we have this direct window into the fluid.
Calling Redoubt
NOVA: Alaska's Redoubt volcano "spoke" to you just before it blew in December 1989. Can you tell me that story?
Chouet: One of my colleagues asked if I would pass by his lab. He and his colleagues had some interesting activity from a volcano in Alaska that they wanted me to look at. They said, "We're seeing an increasingly rapid occurrence of these types of events. We don't know what they are. They seem to be very similar from event to event."
I looked at their records, and I could see that it had started just a short while ago. By the time we were looking, this activity was building up to one event per minute. And it was obvious that all these events were long-period events. I said, "I think you have an eruption on your hands."
This came out the blue for them, so they were a little taken aback, thinking he's a little bit cocky, maybe he's joking or something. They went back to their business, and I went back to my office. The next morning I poked my head into the lab and asked them, "Well, has this volcano erupted yet?" And they said, "For all we know, no, but if you're so sure, why don't you call the scientist in charge?"
I went to my office and called Tom Miller, who was the scientist in charge at the Alaska Volcano Observatory in Anchorage. And Tom said, "I can't speak now because Redoubt is erupting!" I put the phone down and went to tell the guys in the lab, "Yeah, it's erupting right now." Suddenly I became part of the team. I had something to say that was of interest. They put me in the loop, and we started looking at the activity from there on.
Then on January 2, 1990, seismic activity changed from a linear increasing trend to very rapid acceleration. I told Tom Miller, "I think we're in a similar situation to where we were on December 14th, and we're going to have a major eruption on our hands within 24 hours or maybe two days from now." We went back and forth, because calling an eruption meant we would have to evacuate people. There was an oil terminal roughly 40 kilometers from Redoubt, and closing down the plant and evacuating people meant shutting down the operation, with the risk that the oil might freeze in the pipeline, so we needed to be sure of what we were saying.
Tom called these people from Anchorage, and they said, "Look, just a few hours ago we took a helicopter trip over that dome, and it's very quiet. Just a little wisp of steam coming out, it looks totally dead." We had to convince them that it wasn't as dead as they thought; underneath it was pressurizing.
I think the clincher was Tom faxing them a sheet of paper that showed the very rapid increase in long-period events. They realized something was shooting up to the sky and that maybe these people know what they're doing. So they evacuated the plant around 5 p.m. and at 7 p.m. the volcano blew up. They called Tom back and told him that they thought he was walking on water.
Making it universal
NOVA: How did that make you feel after so many years of working, monk-like, on developing this model?
Chouet: It's a wonderful feeling, because you feel that you understand the language now—that the volcano is talking to you and you understand what the volcano is saying. You can actually track the whole thing. Of course, we don't know everything about volcanoes. It's going to take a long time to get to the point where we're in a position to make very accurate forecasts of the state of a volcano. But this was a very nice first step and a great feeling.
NOVA: Why just a first step? Having made a successful prediction at Redoubt, couldn't you just apply that to all volcanoes?
Chouet: You've seen it for one volcano and that's it. That's one volcano. You have to show that there's some universality and that this process is applicable to other volcanoes as well. So you move to a different type of volcano and try to understand this different type of volcano using the same kind of model and see if it works. And you discover that you understand its language. But then you realize by looking at other volcanoes that there are still aspects of the language that you don't get, so they don't quite fit within the model.
NOVA: Why not?
Chouet: Because there's infinitely more richness in nature than one can imagine. You always try to break it down to the components and simplify. Then you realize that maybe you've simplified too much, so you add a bit of complexity to the model. You don't want to add too much because if your model has too many parameters and too much complexity then it becomes as complicated to understand as it is to understand nature to start with.
So you try to keep your model as simple as possible and see how much you can explain. But you have to keep modifying it to see if you can explain these other volcanoes that fall outside the range. It's a process of continuous feedback between observation and theory and modeling. I find it quite exciting when volcanoes cannot be explained by the model, because it means there's additional information that is buried in there from which one can learn more. If all the volcanoes follow the behavior predicted by the model, then I'm out of a job. But fortunately, nature's rich enough so we can always keep adding to this whole thing.
“Within 20 years we should be able to make forecasts of volcanic activity that are at least as accurate as weather forecasts.”
NOVA: Yet you have had success at other volcanoes, right?
Chouet: I feel that everyone comes around in this life blessed with some kind of gift: a gift of imagination, say, or a gift of artistic design. And you look at these people and say, "Wow, this is incredible what they did." Mozart made fantastic music, Rodin did fantastic sculptures, Einstein developed fantastic theories. What was great about these people is that they used this gift, and they left it for people to enjoy. I don't think they had to pretend that they were better than others. They were just excited by what they were doing, and they shared it with others.
I view what I do in a similar vein. I think that I have a gift which makes me a natural person to look at volcanoes and wonder about their inner workings. I'm blessed in that I've met people along the way who were very helpful in terms of providing the tools. I'm blessed with patience and persistence, because this is a long-term endeavor. I consider these to be gifts, and I would be remiss not to use them.
Dr. Mark Parrington's forecast from the Copernicus EMS of the sulphur dioxide spraying over Africa and northern, central and eastern Europe until Oct. 21st.
