Cracking Volcanoes

The past 15 months at Volcan de Colima in Mexico has seen a lot of change to the lava dome at the top of the volcano. In this post, I have gathered a chronological collection of images and videos to illustrate how much activity the volcano has experienced in that time. We begin in May 2014, with one of my own photos from a flight over the volcano. Here you can see a mostly intact dome with a very small collapse scar on the south flank. The south-east side of the summit lava dome at Colima in May 2014.  The volcano was also producing a small lava flow to the west, and experiencing several explosions a day. A small ash plume rises from the summit of the volcano in June 2014.  Now we jump forward to November 2014, when the volcano experienced pyroclastic flows accompanying a large explosion. A large explosion plume and a pyroclastic flow emanate from the volcano in November 2014. View from the south. Source: @MikeVolc In December, the number of daily e...

Or rather, what went  down  at Volcán de Colima ? Nearly two weeks ago the Mexican volcano experienced an intense phase of activity that prompted evacuations from local settlements and closed the nearby national airport. Now that the activity seems to have calmed down (relatively), I wanted to summarise what we know and discuss the possible implications it has for the future of the volcano. Incandescent rockfalls seen descending the flank of Volcan de Colima early on the 10th of July, not long before the first of the major pyroclastic flows later that day. Image credit: webcamsdemexico.com What happened? Here are the facts. Prior to the paroxysmal phase on the 10th of July, there was a lava dome rapidly growing inside the summit crater. Incandescent rockfalls from the overflowing dome (see above image) and frequent small explosions were a common sight. All of which was typical activity for a volcano which has been almost continuously erupting since November 1998 (with t...

It's now been a year since I started my PhD here at the University of Liverpool. To commemorate the occasion, I thought it would be great to list some interesting numbers related to all the things I have managed to do in that time. Here goes: Published 1 paper based on the work I did for my masters thesis at the University of Oxford. I'm delighted to finally have it published and very thankful for Tamsin Mather, David Pyle, Nick Varley, Patrick Smith and Emma Liu for all their help!  Attended 3 conferences: VMSG in Edinburgh in January, EGU in Vienna in April, and BGA right here in the University of Liverpool. Attended no less than   6   workshops: the workshops covered a wide range of topics (e.g. environmental geophysics, volcano deformation, magma, glasses and melts) and took me across Europe (e.g. Lake District, Iceland and Munich).  Started this very blog in April, and this is post number  6 . I have no plans to stop any time soon! Visited 7  ...

Volcan de Colima, looking north-west, with the active lava dome on the summit and Volcancito on the east flank (taken 3rd June 2014). Since my last blog post  I have been lucky enough to head out to Colima, Mexico, for fieldwork. The state boasts long pacific beaches, beautiful river gorges, friendly locals, delicious food, and one very big, very active volcano. Volcan de Colima has been erupting near-continuously since 1998 and is one of the volcanoes that I am investigating as part of my project (see my introduction to the volcanoes ). On a clear day, its hard to not notice the volcano which completely dominates the generally low-lying landscape around it; this is nicely shown by this photo  taken from the ISS last year. The latest phase of it's eruption has been going since January 2013, and is producing a new lava dome accompanied by many small pyroclastic flows, rockfalls, and explosions (over 4000 in total as of the start of May 2014). The lava dome at th...

For my first proper post on this blog, I thought I should follow up the post about my research  with some short introductions to the volcanoes that I'm studying. These volcanoes are: Volcán de Colima, Mt St Helens, Santiaguito, and Mt Unzen. Why have I chosen these volcanoes? One simple reason really, all of them have produced or are currently producing lava domes within the past 20 years. Instead of focusing on just one volcano or one eruption, I can compare and contrast my findings from multiple sources and hopefully gain a better understanding of the processes I'm looking at. Volcán de Colima View of Volcán de Colima from the north-west in August 2012. The large lava flow in the foreground was formed in 2004.  Volcán de Colima, located in mid-western Mexico is the most active volcano in North America and it is one of two volcanoes on this list that is erupting today. It has been erupting almost continuously since 1998, with the exception of an 18-month hiatus fr...