Cracking Volcanoes

Another week, another cheeky self-promoting post. This time, I have published a new paper in Solid Earth   on my research on the eruption of Unzen volcano in Japan. The project involves a volcanic spine, thousands of volcanic earthquakes, and a whole medley of analytical tools. Interested? Read on... Incandescent glow seen on the newly forming lava dome at Unzen volcano in 1991. Pyroclastic density current deposits can be seen in the foreground. These currents, also known as pyroclastic flows, were derived from collapses of the highly unstable dome. Photo credit: Fumiaki Kobayashi Let's start from the beginning. Lava spines are a curious and spectacular formation found at volcanoes around the world. These plugs of lava are squeezed out of lava domes during eruptions, grinding as they go, and eventually reaching hundreds of metres in size. One such spine grew at Unzen volcano in Japan in 1994, and is the focus of the new paper. Extensive field and experimental investigatio...

When a cloud of hot dust is thrown high into the sky by a big mountain of hot rock, it can be a problem for air ships that fly people around. Right now, we use space machines and special computers to work out how high the hot dust cloud is and to guess where it will go. This way can take too long for people who fly the air ships around. In our paper, we show a really quick way of working out how high the hot dust is. When the big mountains of hot rock throw the hot dust into the sky, they make a sound that we cannot hear but our special machines can. We can use this sound to work out how fast the hot dust is being thrown into the sky. With this, and a special number machine, we can work out how far they will go into the sky. Using the sound from a real hot mountain that threw out hot dust in 2009, we show that our way can very quickly work out how high the hot dust will go. Our way of working out how high the hot dust goes will better help the people who fly air ships around, and help ...

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 time to dust the cobwebs off this blog! This post is a guest post from my friend and colleague Adrian, a fellow volcanology postgraduate here in the University of Liverpool. He is writing about his research on Unzen volcano in Japan, which was published last week. Enjoy!  My first paper, created in collaboration with Oliver and a host of co-authors from the University of Liverpool, Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and research institutions in Kochi, Nagasaki and Tsukuba, Japan, looks at the mechanics of a spine growth episode at Mt. Unzen volcano, Japan. Left: The 'Tower of Pelée' spine at Mt. Pelée, Martinique, 1902. Photo credit: unknown. Middle: The 'whaleback' spine at Mount St Helens in 2005. Photo credit: USGS, taken Feb 22 2005.  Right: The remnant of the spine at Mt. Unzen. Photo credit: Yan Lavallée.  Lava spines are a spectacular feature of some lava dome volcanoes. They appear as massive, cohesive blocks that pierce through the...