Volcanic Winter

The larger eruption I'm hearing was 0.94 cubic kilometers, combining with the earlier 0.40 cubic kilometers of the eruption on the 17th, this event is a clear VEI 5 overall and actually larger than St Helens in 1980, though that erupted 1.2 cubic kilometers in one sustained eruption.

Still, this is a very, very significant event. Usually one eruption per decade will reach VEI 5 levels.

And just to give a sense of how insane the VEI scale and explosive volcanism in general gets, assuming Ruang hits a minimal VEI 5 of 1 cubic kilometer (St Helens was 1.2 cubic kilometer, much of that erupted laterally), it would have to further erupt 10x more volume to reach a minimal VEI 6 (around what Hunga Tonga did, and a little less than Pinatubo).

From current levels (again assuming 1 cubic kilometer - a minimal VEI 5), it would have to erupt 100x more material to reach a VEI 7, 150x in the case of Tambora. 

To reach a ‘supereruption’ at VEI 8, it would need 1000x its current erupted volume. 

The Toba supereruption 75kya was 3500-5000x this hypothetical VEI 5 Ruang eruption. 

1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

It will depend how much was injected into the stratosphere. The earlier eruption produced about 0.5 terragrams of sulfur dioxide. About 5 terragrams reaching the stratosphere is required to have a significant short-term climate impact.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/152716/a-blanket-of-ash-from-ruang

I haven't seen any data on the most recent eruption, yet, but it should be posted here in coming days:

https://so2.gsfc.nasa.gov/measures.html

Note: The chart in the above link shows total sulfur dioxide emissions, not solely those that reached the stratosphere.

Absolutely Don. 
 

I see they revised the first blast up to half a Tg up from 0.3 from the initial estimate. I can’t overstate how impressive this entire sequence has been. The first blast was the destruction of the existing lava dome (think a plug of viscous magma that hardens into a dome shape blocking the conduit and helping to increase pressure in the system). It was notably intense transpiring only over a couple hours and outputting mid VEI 4 volume; that’s extremely impressive. 

Most volcanoes would then go quiet and enter a prolonged period of repose after such a blast. Instead, Ruang extruded another, even larger lava dome which hardened into another plug. The injection of fresh magma into the chambers below apparently never stopped, and Ruang built back up like a pressure cooker. This second blast was utterly spectacular, the amount of power behind blasts of that nature is bewildering. 

Like Grimsvotn in 2011, most VEI 4-5 plinian eruptions are only moderately intense and transpire over 12 or more hours. You have a generally sustained eruption column that may occasionally collapse into pyroclastic flows down the flanks of the system. 

Ruang just did everything all at once, twice!

6 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

how beautiful! where is this? ... near Bali?

Indonesia in the Sangihe islands, near North Sulawesi. 

Gunung Ruang

@snowman19
 

This eruption is even larger than the first, this is incredible. The first was a solid VEI 4 by itself with about .40 cubic kilometers of erupted material. Given this blast now is even larger, there really is a chance for a collective VEI 5 event here. 

These are incredible sequences of lava dome creation and destruction, like Shiveluch last year but even larger and more powerful.

On 4/22/2024 at 8:53 PM, Brian5671 said:

I wonder how many watch TWC now vs 30 yrs ago--has got to be 1/5 of what is used to be....

TWC was my childhood. I was a kid in its heyday. Honestly I probably credit it partially with my intense passion for earth science. 

59 minutes ago, TJW014 said:

Started off at 27. Radiational cooling doing its thing in the Pine Barrens. Probably get to around 60 before the inevitable sea breeze pushes in. Good to see the sun out again

Yup, we both have that chilly Pine Barrens night time microclimate. I’ve been amazed just how consistently chilly it gets down here on clear nights. Pretty sure we were right around 0-2 during one of those stronger Arctic pushes in the mid 2010’s, but it was before I had a reliable weather station on my property. 

I’m backed up to woods off 37 near the western border with Manchester / Lakehurst. Can be a pretty chilly little pocket, and slightly more elevated than the downtown area. I’m at about 60-70ft. 

Pine Barrens doin its thang, morning low of 28 today. Solid layer of frost on my windshield. 

https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/ruang/news/239570/Ruang-volcano-Sulawesi-Sangihe-Islands-Indonesia-eruption-plume-drifts-over-1000-km-currently-over-b.html

"GEMS measurements of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) from the eruption on April 18th show notable data gaps in areas with high SO₂ column amounts, likely due to clouds or ash. A very preliminary estimate suggests a total sulfur dioxide mass of approximately 0.3 teragrams (Tg)."

A preliminary estimate of the sulfur release suggests about 0.3 Tg's, which is about spot on for a VEI 4. Shouldn't be a major climate player unless these figures are way off. El Chichon did ~7 Tg's as lower end VEI 5, Pinatubo was more than double that. We know HTHH was huge but atypical with most of the sulfur ending up in the ocean, initial estimates put it about 0.4 Tg but I've seen it revised as high as 1-2 Tg's.

What makes this Ruang eruption interesting is actually in how fast/intense the main blast was, which was only over a period of a couple hours. The other precursor eruptions were much smaller so the main volume of the event was in the big boom.

Just my thoughts / speculation at this point.

6 hours ago, snowman19 said:

@Volcanic Winter @bluewave Just to add, there is some speculation that this eruption may reach a VEI 6. Wouldn’t that be unprecedented to have 2 VEI 6 eruptions this close together? I know Hunga Tonga was a 6….

IMHO that kind of speculation is very premature. As mentioned it can be deceiving in both directions. 

Smart people were calling HTHH a 3-4 a day after it happened thinking the entire column was steam (it wasn’t, 1.9 cubic kilometers of ash in it which is already well into VEI 5 territory). And hidden underwater was another 6-8 cubic kilometers of ignimbrite (massive pyroclastic flows from caldera collapse). 

Just IMO and I’m not caught up on this one yet. 

To answer your question it would be rare but not even historically without precedent. Six years before Tambora’s VEI 7 in 1815, there was a mystery eruption from a not fully identified volcano that was at least a VEI 6 in 1809. A six and a seven that close together is pretty mind boggling. And remember a 6 could be 10 cubic kilometers like Pinatubo or 99 cubic kilometers, basically a near 7. At VEI 6 level is when the scale sort of breaks in terms of perception. Things just start getting really ridiculous massive. 

6 hours ago, snowman19 said:

This *could* potentially have big stratospheric implications….major tropical volcanic eruption ongoing. If this thing pumps enough sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, it could conceivably have effects on next winter’s SPV and NAM (AO) state. This needs to be followed closely @Volcanic Winter…
 

Thank you Snowman, I’m just getting caught up on this. One of the few days I’m not being a compulsive volcano obsessive something significant happens. Hoping for the safety of everyone impacted by this, I believe there’s a few hundred living on that island?

I’ll post when I’m caught up with accurate info, I tend to avoid speculation. I also don’t like trying to analyze the size of an event while it’s occurring and before all the data is reviewed, it can be deceiving in both directions. 

I’m trying to verify column height, something to the level of a VEI 5 typically has no problem clearing 20km for a sustained period of time and I’m seeing this latest blast was about 17km based on sources I’m looking at now. Also unclear of the duration of that blast, which matters in terms of volume which is ultimately what determines VEI at this level.  The satellite imagery is impressive though, trying to verify. 

In terms of SO2 loading in the stratosphere, we want to see something similar to El Chichon’s ~7 Tg’s for detectable surface impacts. Probably at least 4-5+. 

On 4/8/2024 at 7:59 PM, Nibor said:

The path of totality goes across Hornstrandir one of Iceland's most remote national parks. You can only get to it by boat. In the early stages of planning a trip there in 2026 with some backpacking friends. 

Wow, enjoy!!! Hornstrandir is unbelievably gorgeous and looks like you’re in Middle Earth. We go in winter pretty exclusively so Hornstrandir hasn’t been an option for us, but it’s a very committed trip to be sure. Be safe and have the very best time, I’m jealous!

Partial shot, I actually like how the clouds enhance visibility in my iPhone lens. Wasn’t really able to be captured otherwise at 88-90%, whatever exactly the north half of Jersey was. Still very cool!

@LibertyBell

Did you know the Palisades are a local outcrop of one of the largest flood basalt eruptions in the past billion years? CAMP - Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, an enormous series of lava flow eruptions along the seams of Pangea when it first began to break apart. We actually have some interesting geology in the region apart from the boring sedimentary coastal plain. At one point the Appalachians were earth’s Himalayas of the distant past, now long eroded to a mere shadow of their former enormity. 

We know flood basalts are most common under large stretches of continental crust (especially when the continents are in a supercontinent configuration), often coinciding with the rifting episodes that ultimately split them apart. It’s why a hypothesized location for earth’s next flood basalt is the East African Rift, where Somalia is slowly being separated from continental Africa and most of Africa’s extant volcanism is currently located. The Virunga plateau is a large magma bulge, and there could be something of a proto-plume down there which would one day yield a major flood basalt episode. This is like hundreds of thousands to millions of years in the future though. 

There hasn’t been a flood basalt episode on earth since the Columbia River Basalts of the PNW ~16mya, which is the hypothesized birth of the Yellowstone plume which traces to the Yellowstone supervolcano today. 
 

There’s also a supposed growing magma body under parts of New England, and the Adirondacks are some odd magmatic uplift feature and could also be a small plume in its early stages. Who knows what the distant future could hold there, could be some major volcanic episodes if the inflation that made the mountains continues. 

I was not aware the Ramapo fault could harbor a mag 6+ risk:

https://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2235

That would have to be a ‘full margin rupture,’ or the majority of the length of the fault slipping at once. These ancient ‘inactive’ faults from past geological eras are tricky because they can be dormant for a very long time and suddenly awaken. Think the New Madrid quakes which were catastrophic, though we wouldn’t see anything reaching that level here. A 6-7 though would obviously be very damaging in this region. It’s interesting because we’re so far away from a plate boundary (hence the Ramapo is an ancient fault from the time of Pangea), it’s believed stress is slowly loaded on the fault by the mid Atlantic ridge under Iceland, all that distance from here. It makes total sense, it’s just not very obvious.  

My personal opinion is that we have no idea of the recurrence time, it could be thousands of years between those kind of full margin quakes at a slow fault like this, so it’s most likely not something we’d have to worry about in our lifetimes. 

Still, interesting.

9 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

Can we find a connection between these and heavy rainfalls that happened just prior?  August 2011 was a very rainy month.  We've been in a very rainy pattern now too.

I remember reading scientific papers linking heavy rainfalls and earthquakes-- is it a possibility?

I’m not super well versed in all that, the majority of what I study about earthquakes are in relation to volcanoes. 

I do think that sounds plausible, an over abundance of ground water saturating those deep inactive faults and possibly lubricating or shifting the mass balance enough to slip a bit? Sure, sounds plausible but I can’t really comment further. 

4 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

hell no this was a lot stronger than that

I remember the 5.8 from August 2011, this was MUCH stronger

That quake was in Virginia. We were much more proximal to this quake. 

Ascertaining the exact epicenter, magnitude, and depth is somewhat inexact and gets refined when data is reviewed after the fact. 

Nothing like starting your day with a lovely intraplate mag 4.8 quake. Shook Hillside pretty good! 

Lots of ancient buried and inactive faults around the fall line from when we were stapled into Pangea. They can occasionally still groan and shift enough to produce quakes like this, though they aren’t super common. Pretty cool!

Dropped all the way to 21F early this AM. 

On 3/20/2024 at 10:06 AM, Brian5671 said:

Embarrassing at this point...the twitter comments are hilarious....

“Ice age when?”

Reminds me - a couple years ago I stumbled across a climate change denial website, I think it was called ‘Electroverse.’ It was dedicated to talking about the impending ice age that’s happening any year now lol. Of course they were obsessed with the “Grand Solar Minima” that never materialized, and kept posting any cold temperature records from any specific town or village anywhere in the world on any given day. You know what they say, weather = climate right? Definitely. 

Good stuff, still waiting on my Ice Age. We know that’s my preferred climate configuration, but unfortunately I think the past two years went in roughly the exact diametric opposite direction. Wondering if that site’s still truckin’, I’d imagine they dropped the solar stuff given how spicy the sun has been, and probably focused on Asia this winter. 

28 this morning, still only 33F at my house. Impressive given the rest of this month. 

If tonight is clear and calm my house should go into the lower 20’s. 

https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/reykjanes/news/236843/Reykjanes-volcano-update-two-lava-branches-extend-in-W-and-SE-direction-western-lava-arm-flows-acros.html
 

Iceland cracked open again for a continuation of the fissure eruption near Grindavik. Some spectacular images from this event.

An Icelandic volcanologist predicts that the activity will ultimately start to lessen by July, and at that point we may see the activation of another system or even see it switch back to Fagradalsfjall.

@etudiant @LibertyBell

Add to that both Katla and Hekla are due for explosive eruptions any time now, and the monster Öræfajökull (Or-eye-fa-yo-koolt) showed activity / inflation beginning in the 2010’s (its last eruption was in the 1700’s and it theoretically could be nearing its next one). 

Katla is a bit more concerning as it has surpassed its normal length of dormancy (Katla is typically very regular with its frequent large VEI4-5 eruptions), which could point to a larger VEI 5 event forthcoming. Hekla may also be nearing a larger event, though unlikely to be larger than Katla. 

Öræfajökull is the explosive wildcard as this volcano at the southern axis of the Vatnajökull glacier is the largest explosive volcano in Iceland and contains the highest peak in the country on the rim of its glacier-capped massive caldera (Hvannadalshnúkur). It’s capable of anything from VEI 4 to 6 eruptions, and tends to only go large when it does erupt. That system waking up would be downright frightening. So much so, the volcano had a different name amongst the original Icelandic settlers prior to its borderline VEI 5-6 eruption in the 14th century, and after had its name changed to mean “wasteland.” 

14 hours ago, etudiant said:

Keflavik airport is at the end of the peninsula. If it gets isolated by these eruptions, it would be crippling for Iceland, tourism is a huge part of the economy.

Are there any contingency plans that have been prepared or are they confident that these eruptions will remain contained?

@LibertyBell

I mean, AFAIK they’re responsible for the first successful artificial structure based lava flow redirection in history. While the wall they built north of Grindavik was ultimately breached, it was moreso because a small fissure opened up inside of it which is something they’re not going to be able to control. Still what they did to divert the flow around town was mightily impressive considering the destructive force of lava. Those walls will not work in a faster, higher effusion rate eruption though as they’ll quickly be swamped.

Ultimately I think they were piloting these diversion structures to help protect important assets going forward. A few of the Reykjanes systems are pretty violent and did very large hrauns (lava fields) in the Middle Ages. Eldey and other systems near Keflavik have had phreatomagmatic (explosive) components in the past, including tephra fall over the location of Keflavik today. 

Going forward the risk is uncomfortably high, though unnervingly spread out over a long period going forward. The Reykjanes cycle in the Middle Ages was something like 300 years of on again off again activity throughout the various volcanoes on the peninsula, and evidence suggests a similar thing will start to (and already has) happen now. 

Hengill is a monster and could present a problem for Þingvellir and the Golden Circle tourism hub east of the capital. 

Unfortunately, despite incredible advances to predictive ability in the last few decades, this is still highly inexact and the protracted risk going forward to the capital region is substantial. 

21 hours ago, snowman19 said:

Going to be a rough 9 months coming up for him I guess lol

Anyway, everyone enjoy your weekend, gonna be off the grid for a few days, wedding festivities the next 2 days, starting with the rehearsal dinner tonight….

Congratulations Snowman! Wishing you and your significant other the best.