Clipmarks | invictus's 'volcanoes' clips

Mass extinctions? Blame it on the ocean

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:19:31 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

In the course of hundreds of millions of years the world's oceans have expanded and contracted in response to the shifting of the Earth's tectonic plates and to changes in climate. There were periods of the planet's history when vast areas of the continents were flooded by shallow seas such as the shark and mosasaur infested seaway that neatly split North America during the age of the dinosaurs.

As those epicontinental seas drained, animals like mosasaurs and giant sharks went extinct, and conditions on the marine shelves where life exhibited its greatest diversity in the form of things like clams and snails changed as well.

Clip Source: www.nsf.gov

Ebb and flow of the sea is the primary cause of the world's mass extinctions over the past 500 million years

If you are curious about Earth's periodic mass extinction events such as the sudden demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, you might consider crashing asteroids and sky-darkening super volcanoes as culprits.

But a new study, published June 15, 2008, in the journal Nature, suggests that it is the ocean, and in particular the epic ebbs and flows of sea level and sediment over the course of geologic time, that is the primary cause of the world's periodic mass extinctions over the past 500 million years.

View a video interview with geoscientist Shanan Peters.

Tags: mass extinctions, geology, ocean, science

Ecuador's "Throat of Fire" begins erupting

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:53:08 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

Tungurahua, which means "Throat of Fire" in the native Quichua language, is 80 miles south of the capital, Quito. It last erupted in August 2006 and has been rumbling and belching rock, gas and ash since January.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

BANOS, Ecuador (Reuters) - Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano spewed lava and huge smoke clouds on Wednesday, showering villages with ash and rocks and forcing hundreds of residents to flee.

"It was a really big shake coming from the volcano and that forced civil defense to evacuate the population," said civil defense chief Roberto Rodriguez.

In 2006, streams of fast-moving molten rock enveloped several hamlets tucked in the volcano's folds, killing at least four people and forcing thousands to evacuate and lose their corn and potato crops.

In 1999, 17,000 people were forced to evacuate the town of Banos after loud explosions and hot gas blew from the volcano.

Volcanologists expect still stronger activity from Tungurahua, which is in the middle of an eruption cycle that began in 1999.

"This is an ongoing eruption and we still don't know the magnitude it could reach," said Hugo Yepes, the head of the country's Geophysics Institute.

Tags: volcanoes, ecuador, eruption

Ancient Antarctic eruption noted

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:24:30 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Data came from an airborne survey which made radar images

Scientists have found what they say is the first evidence of a volcanic eruption under the Antarctic ice sheet.

They believe the volcano erupted about 2,000 years ago, and would have burst through its ice covering, producing a burst of steam and rocky debris.

The British Antarctic Survey (Bas) scientists report their finding in the journal Nature Geoscience.

They say it could aid understanding of an ice mass which is likely to play a key role in climate change.

The researchers discovered the eruption's traces by analysing radar data collected during an airborne survey of the area in 2004/5.

Tags: volcanoes, antarctica, geology, science

Easter Island stone heads are dying

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 15:43:25 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.sfgate.com

Sloping slightly sideways on the grassy hills beneath the Ranu Raraku volcano, a giant stone head known as a moai shows the wear and tear of time on this triangular 64-square-mile island.

On the right side of the oblong rectangular face with male features, the rock is lighter in color and its long, carefully sculpted ear and nostril are clearly visible. But on the statue's left side, the sun and wind have eroded the nose, lip and ear.

"The moai are dying by natural causes," said archaeologist Sergio Rapu, a lifelong researcher of this isolated South Pacific island of hills and extinct volcanoes also known as Rapa Nui. "The prehistoric Rapa Nui people noted it would take 300 to 400 years for the statues to become completely eroded."

Tags: archaeology, easter island, rapa nui

Indonesian volcano critical, may erupt

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:23:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Indonesia's Mount Kelud volcano in East Java is in a critical phase and could erupt any time after being shaken by more than 1,000 tremors over the last two days, the country's top volcano expert said on Friday.

"Kelud is in a critical phase. It could erupt now," Surono, head of Indonesia's centre for Vulcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation, told Reuters by telephone from the capital Jakarta.

After the alert was first raised recently, more than 100,000 people were ordered to evacuate from around the volcano, 675 km (420 miles) east of the capital Jakarta but only 90 km (55 miles) southwest of Indonesia's second-largest city of Surabaya.

Indonesian officials were also closely monitoring three other volcanoes for increased activity.

Tags: volcanoes, mount kelud, indonesia, eruption

Volcano erupts on Red Sea island

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:52:47 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Lava spewed hundreds of metres into the air, witnesses said

Volcano erupting

A search for survivors is under way after a volcano erupted on a Yemeni island in the Red Sea, killing at least two people.

The western part of the tiny al-Tair island, used as a military base, collapsed following the eruption, the defence ministry said.

Two bodies were recovered from the sea and other soldiers are missing.

Yemeni coastguards requested the help of nearby Nato ships in the search and rescue operation.

"The lava is spewing hundreds of feet into the air, with the volcanic ash also 1,000 feet in the air."

Geologists say al-Tair, which lies on a major fault line, last saw a volcanic eruption in the late 19th Century.

Yemeni officials are linking the eruption to several small earthquakes which they say hit the island on Sunday morning.

Tags: volcanoes, yemeni, middle east

Indonesian quake could trigger volcanic activity

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:28:16 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

JAKARTA (AFP) - A powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake that shook Indonesia's main island of Java early Thursday, including the capital Jakarta, could trigger activity at some of the island's many volcanoes, experts said.

The undersea quake, centred about 110 kilometres (70 miles) east of the capital Jakarta and off the north coast of Java, occurred just after midnight (1700 GMT), rattling buildings and sending panicked residents onto the streets.

"We are closely monitoring Mount Ceremai and Mount Slamet," Surono, head of the energy ministry's Volcanology Centre told Elshinta radio, referring to two volcanoes on densely populated Java.

"If the pressure at the volcanoes is quite high, it may trigger volcanic activity," he said.

The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said the probability of such an event however was low.

Tags: volcanoes, indonesia, earthquake

The Earth fights back

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:40:43 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis

Unlike most apparently intractable problems, which have a tendency to go away when examined closely and analytically, the climate change predicament just seems to get bigger and scarier the more we learn about it.

periods in our planet's history when the climate was swinging about wildly, most notably during the last ice age, it appears that far more than the weather was affected

an increase in volcanic activity, earthquakes, giant submarine landslides and tsunamis

there was a close correlation between how quickly sea levels went up and down during the last ice age and the level of explosive activity at volcanoes in Italy and Greece

how can rising sea levels cause volcanoes to erupt?

answer lies in the enormous mass of the water pouring into the ocean basins

seems to be sufficient to load and bend the underlying crust.

Tags: science, earth, global warming, earthquakes, volcanooes

Breath Of A Volcano

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:46:00 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Science Daily — Indonesia’s Mount Gamkonora volcano is spewing hot ash and smoke into the air, as seen in this image taken by the MERIS instrument aboard ESA’s satellite Envisat, causing more than 8000 people to be evacuated amid fears of an imminent eruption, according to officials.

Officials raised the alert to the highest level on Tuesday after the volcano, located in the eastern province of North Maluku, started spitting out flaming material, indicating magma was approaching the crater’s surface making an eruption more likely, Saut Simatupang of Indonesia's Vulcanological Survey told Reuters news agency.

Tags: volcanoes, indonesia, esa, photography, envisat

Kamchatka Volcano Blows Its Top

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:09:54 GMT

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Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Kamchatka Volcano Blows Its Top

Science Daily — Klyuchevskoy (pronounced Kloo-shef-skoy), a stratovolcano located in the north central region of the Kamchatka Peninsula, is blasting ash up to 32,000 feet in the air, and has diverted air traffic headed toward the Far East. This is the largest eruption to occur in the North Pacific in a decade, and is providing students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks a unique opportunity to collaborate with scientists, as well as state and federal agencies.

Tags: volcanoes, kamchatka, eruption, geology, science

Why Supercontinents Self-Destruct

Thu, 17 May 2007 16:09:00 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Why Supercontinents Self-Destruct

Earth's mega-volcanic eruptions may be the direct result of mega continents getting in the way.

A new computer simulation that looks at how heat moves out from the center of our planet confirms the idea that the supercontinent Pangea could have acted like a thermal dam to that heat flow.

When the dam burst, Pangea experienced a gigantic, continent-melting flood of basalt lava that not only busted the place up, but likely vented enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and caused rapid global warming — all at the time of the dinosaurs' demise.

The big question, of course, is whether the big continental blanket and fewer ice cubes could build up enough heat to melt a lot of rock and split up Pangea. The computer simulation indicates it could.

If it's correct, then supercontinents are their own worst enemies — literally creating the conditions which lead to their own demise.

Tags: earth sciences, geology, pangea, volcanoes, continents, earth, science

Surprising Activity Discovered at Yellowstone Supervolcano

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 22:41:43 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

What the researchers think is happening, on a short-term basis at least, is that the bulging Yellowstone hotspot north of the Tetons is pushing against the north edge of Jackson Hole and jamming it against the mountains. (This is also causing the southwest part of the Yellowstone plateau, under the hotspot, to slide downhill at a rate of one-sixth of an inch each year.).

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Supervolcanoes can sleep for centuries or millennia before producing incredibly massive eruptions that can drop ash across an entire continent. One of the largest supervolcanoes in the world lies beneath Yellowstone National Park, which spans parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

Though the Yellowstone system is active and expected to eventually blow its top, scientists don’t think it will erupt any time soon.

Yet significant activity continues beneath the surface. And the activity has been increasing lately, scientists have discovered. In addition, the nearby Teton Range, in a total surprise, is getting shorter.

The findings, reported this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research—Solid Earth, suggest that a slow and gradual movement caused by a giant hotspot of molten rock beneath a volcano can shape a landscape more than sudden ground movements caused by the volcano’s frequent earthquakes.

Tags: volcanoes, geology, yellowstone, eruption, caldera, fault lines

Volcanic eruptions on Jupiter's moon

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:32:45 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Probe spies moon's volcanic plume

Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back images of a huge volcanic eruption on Jupiter's moon Io.

A massive dust plume, estimated to be 150 miles (240km) high, can be seen erupting from Io's Tvashtar volcano.

On Wednesday, the US probe flew by Jupiter, using the planet's gravity to boost its speed, reducing the travel time to its ultimate target of Pluto.

New Horizons also took photos of the icy moons Europa and Ganymede in the run-up to its encounter with Jupiter.

Turning its cameras to the giant planet itself, the spacecraft captured an image of Jupiter's little red spot, a nascent storm south of the famous great red spot.

Tags: astronomy, space, solar system, jupiter, io, planets, moons, volcanoes

Stromboli volcano sprang to life

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 03:18:51 GMT

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Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Lava-spewing volcano prompts state of emergency on Italian island

ROME (AFP) - A state of emergency was declared on Italy's tiny, windswept island of Stromboli Tuesday after its volcano sprang to life with the opening of two new lava-spewing faults, the civil guard said.

Stromboli, one of Europe's most active volcanos, had recently been placed under heightened surveillance after scientists registered higher readings.

The civilian guard said Tuesday that it had registered an "important increase" in volcanic activity.

It decided to put its emergency plan into action after discovering lava spewing from two new faults, adding that one of the lava streams had already reached the sea.

Tags: volcanoes, stromboli, italy, emergency

Poison gas cloud that killed 30,000 Britons (and it could happen again)

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 22:06:05 GMT

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Clip Source: news.independent.co.uk

Poison gas cloud that killed 30,000 Britons (and it could happen again)

By David Keys

Published: 14 January 2007

It sounds like the plot of a blockbuster film, but according to scientists, tens of thousands of people in this country face the threat of being poisoned by lethal gas - from volcanoes 600 miles away in Iceland.

Research by a British academic has demonstrated how a volcanic gas cloud emanating from an Icelandic volcano killed 30,000 Britons in a hitherto little-studied environmental disaster two centuries ago.

"People died in such vast numbers because the volcanic cloud exacerbated their respiratory illnesses," said Dr John Grattan, a senior lecturer at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, who has been studying the impact on Britain of the eruption of Iceland's Laki volcano in 1783.

"A similar eruption today would kill up to 100,000 people in this country because we now have a much larger population and a much bigger percentage of it is elderly and therefore more vulnerable," said Dr Grattan.

Tags: volcanoes, poisonous gas, britain