Cracking Volcanoes

Hello everyone! I hope you're all having a nice New Years Eve as you read this. Last month, I heard that Google had updated its Earth Engine Timelapse tool to include Landsat images right up to 2016. If you haven't heard of Earth Engine , it's an incredible platform developed for the analysis of geospatial datasets. The Timelapse feature on the website means you can watch how the Earth has changed over 30 years. This includes watching cities expanding, lakes and glaciers shrinking, or, as I will show in this post, how volcanoes can come to life and shape our planet. So for this post, I have browsed through the Timelapse tool to bring you some of the best examples of volcanic activity that you can see. A lot of credit should also go to David Pyle, who produced a similar post way back in 2013 . Enjoy! Note to mobile users: Unfortunately the Earth Engine Timelapse feature has not yet been optimised for mobile browsers. I highly recommend you read this post on a desktop b...

A selection of the large eruptions that Santiaguito has produced in 2016. Left: 11 April (Source: INSIVUMEH ). Middle: 19 May (Source: INSIVUMEH ). Right: 17 June (Source:  Stereo100Noticias ). Last week Anthony Lamur and I were back in Guatemala to collect more observations from Santiaguito volcano . The fieldwork was prompted by the occurrence of several very large eruptions at the volcano in 2016 (like those in the image above), a departure from the regular but relatively small explosions that are typical of the place. What we wanted to know was what mechanism is driving the much larger explosions? Our campsite on Santa Maria on the morning of June 13th. The shadow of Santa Maria (3,772 m high) stretches far into the distance.  Our task for the trip was simple: we would camp on Santa Maria and watch Santiaguito for a few days with optical and thermal cameras to record any explosions. We also deployed a temporary acoustic microphone to record the infrasound prod...

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...