Eideard

Until now it was thought that once a volcano’s magma chamber had cooled down it remained dormant for centuries before it could be remobilized by fresh magma. A theoretical model developed by Alain Burgisser of the Orléans Institute of Earth Sciences…together with a US researcher , was tested on two major eruptions and completely overturned this hypothesis: the reawakening of a chamber could take place in just a few months. This research should lead to a reassessment of the dangerousness of some dormant volcanoes.

A magma chamber is a large reservoir of molten rock (magma) located several kilometers beneath a volcano, which it feeds with magma. But what happens to the magma chamber when the volcano is not erupting? According to volcanologists, it cools down to an extremely viscous mush until fresh magma from deep inside Earth ‘reawakens’ it, in other words fluidizes it by heating it through thermal contact. The large size of magma chambers (ranging from a few tenths to a few hundred cubic kilometers) explains why, according to this theory, it takes several hundred or even thousand years for the heat to spread to the whole reservoir, awakening the volcano from its dormant state.

However, according to the mathematical model developed by Burgisser and his US colleague…depending on the size of the chamber and the viscosity of the magma it contains, a few months may be sufficient to rekindle its activity…

This research is likely to encourage the volcanology community to take a closer look at the physical parameters of magma chambers. By determining these parameters, it may one day be possible to use this new model to estimate the time lapse between the initial tremors of a volcano and its eruption.

Why “cripes”? Because every day whilst out and about in our back meadow, I’m looking across the Cieneguilla Valley at a supposedly extinct volcano. A quarter-mile from my home.

Geologists drilling an exploratory geothermal well in 2009 in the Krafla volcano in Iceland encountered a problem they were simply unprepared for: magma (molten rock or lava underground) which flowed unexpectedly into the well at 2.1 kilometers depth, forcing the researchers to terminate the drilling…

Currently, a third of the electric power and 95 percent of home heating in Iceland is produced from steam and hot water that occurs naturally in volcanic rocks.

“The economics of generating electric power from such geothermal steam improves the higher its temperature and pressure,” Wilfred Elders explained. “As you drill deeper into a hot zone the temperature and pressure rise, so it should be possible to reach an environment where a denser fluid with very high heat content, but also with unusually low viscosity occurs, so-called ‘supercritical water.’ Although such supercritical water is used in large coal-fired electric power plants, no one had tried to use supercritical water that should occur naturally in the deeper zones of geothermal areas…”

Elders and his team studied the well within the Krafla caldera as part of the Iceland Deep Drilling Project, an industry-government consortium, to test whether geothermal fluids at supercritical pressures and temperatures could be exploited as sources of power…

“When the well was tested, high pressure dry steam flowed to the surface with a temperature of 400 Celsius or 750 Fahrenheit, coming from a depth shallower than the magma,” Elders said. “We estimated that this steam could generate 25 megawatts of electricity if passed through a suitable turbine, which is enough electricity to power 25,000 to 30,000 homes. What makes this well an attractive source of energy is that typical high-temperature geothermal wells produce only 5 to 8 megawatts of electricity from 300 Celsius or 570 Fahrenheit wet steam.”

Elders believes it should be possible to find reasonably shallow bodies of magma, elsewhere in Iceland and the world, wherever young volcanic rocks occur.

Hmmm. A significant portion of the Rio Grande Valley is a volcanic rift. The youngest areas of volcanic activity are less than 6,000 years old.

Maybe they could slip a wee bit of their ever-increasing budget into something with this kind of environmental potential, eh?

A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin’s best-kept secret.

Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice. Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical “cloud forest”.

What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem…

The tiny tropical island of Ascension is not easy to find. It is incredibly remote, located 1,600km from the coast of Africa and 2,250km from South America…

Back in 1836, the young Charles Darwin was coming to the end of his five-year mission to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no naturalist had gone before.

Aboard HMS Beagle, he called in at Ascension. En route from another remote volcanic island, St Helena, Darwin wasn’t expecting much.

“We know we live on a rock, but the poor people of Ascension live on a cinder,” the residents of St Helena had joked before his departure…

Amid this wild desolation, Darwin began to hatch a plot.

Out of the ashes of the volcano, he would create a green oasis – a “Little England”.

RTFA and have a glimpse of how Darwin and his close friend Joseph Hooker began the task of terra-forming this little cinder of an active volcanic island into a tropical paradise.

Reflect upon what is needed, what must be done in similar vein to recapture much of the life and beauty of this planet – already sacrificed to profit and greed. Good sense, science and economic success needn’t be mutually exclusive – especially in an age where greater knowledge allows us greater opportunities for combinations of all of the above.

This photo could hardly impress anyone who lived somewhere with humidity. Har.

But, our typical summertime humidity runs around 15 to 25% even during the monsoon season. We get a small amount of monsoon rain before moisture streams from the South dry out completely in the uplift of the Southern Rockies.

Last night we had what NOAA euphemistically calls a “trace” of rain. But, on my first walk along the fenceline with Rally I could see enough moisture had collected in a depression on the East-facing shoulder of the ancient volcano immediately across the valley of La Cieneguilla – to start a breath of mist rising.

I waited for the sunrise to reach the volcano and recorded the moment.

The empty airport control tower at Newcastle airport last night, with the red volcanic ash sky in the background.

Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was in Washington DC this week attending the Nuclear Security Summit 2010, and is now in NYC.

He may have plenty of time to explore the iPad, since his flight home — along with hundreds of others bound for Europe — has been cancelled due to the Icelandic volcano explosion. He told the Dagbladet newspaper that he’s working remotely after an extended airport wait. The newspaper’s headline translates as “Jens manages the land with iPad from New York.”

Har!

Thanks, TUAW and Nils

Click on photo to watch video – Have bandwidth? Choose Play HD!

Yup. This is the kind of research Republicans like Bobby Jindal whine about.

Daylife/Getty Images

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Friday the U.S. government will spend $15.2 million to modernize equipment for monitoring U.S. volcanoes and improve warning systems.

The United States and its territories have 169 active volcanoes, and 54 of them need improved monitoring so scientists can warn the public about explosive disruptions, alert aircraft to ash clouds and inform communities of falling ash, lava and mud flows, Salazar said.

He pointed out that the March 22 eruption of the Mount Redoubt volcano, 106 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, showed the need for adequate monitoring. When the Redoubt volcano erupted 19 years ago, a Boeing 747 passenger airliner flew into its ash cloud and nearly crashed…

Salazar said $29.4 million will also be spent to double the number of seismic stations that monitor earthquakes across the country to 1,600.

All my California buds are 100% in favor of keeping a weather eye out for the “Big One”. And though it may seem silly to my average geological-time-challenged neighbor, the time passed since the last volcano erupted in my neck of the prairie is only measured in 4 figures. That ain’t anything.

Daylife/AP Photo

So far airline passengers are experiencing the biggest troubles thanks to Mount Redoubt’s eruption.

Although Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport remains open, Alaska Airlines had to re-route five flights inbound for Anchorage — two coming from Seattle, two from Hawaii and one from Nome.

Later Alaska canceled 19 flights “destined to Anchorage and flights out of Anchorage to Bethel, Deadhorse, Kodiak, Nome,
Kotzebue, and Barrow…”

Airline officials say they just aren’t going to take any chances.

Good thing they don’t listen to Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal.

Thanks, Justin