Lava from Mount Kilauea in Hawaii is flowing into the Pacific ocean. Reuters reports that lava from the Kilauea volcano began flowing into the Pacific ocean on March 6th. It is one of the most active volcanoes in the world continued to erupt. Reuters says Kilauea has erupted 34 times since 1952. The USGS has a special page about Mount Kilauea here. Below is a video from Reuters showing the recent lava flow and an embedded map from Google showing Mount Kilauea's location.
Seattle's KING5.com is reporting that some strange mystery dust in the form of an "ash-like powder" has been coating the vehicles and homes of Pugent Sound residents.
"We've never seen anything like this," said David Creed.
About 30 miles away, residents in Lake Marcel north of Carnation awoke Sunday to the fine powder blanketing the neighborhood.
"Living out here in 40 years, I've never seen anything like it," said Beth Marcey.
"Kind of volcanic. It reminded me of when Mount St. Helens blew," said Bey Braun.
Above all, it has everyone scratching their heads.
So what is it tree pollen? A very thin layer of Volcanic ash? Pugent Sound residents want to know. KING5's article also has a link to a video from KING5 that provides a much better look at the dust.
An ABC News story has brought back the caldera scare.
Just 20 miles beneath the earth's surface lies a pressurized ocean of molten rock looking for a way out. And a massive release of that molten rock would create a supervolcano - arguably the largest natural disaster humanity would ever face.
Unlike regular volcanoes, which are shaped like mammoth cones, supervolcanoes spring from massive canyons - calderas - that measure hundreds of miles across. Underneath their surface is a vast lake of lava. When the underground liquid rock - magma - bursts forth to the surface, a series of violent, massive explosions could occur in a wide-ranging eruption that could last several days. It would incinerate anyone within a hundred miles, and layers of ash would blanket much of the earth.
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The ash cloud would become so thick it could cover the sun, causing global temperatures to plummet.
Scientists say such an event wiped out almost the world's entire population 74,000 years ago, when a supervolcano erupted in Toba, near the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Only a few thousand people survived.
The threat of a caldera exploding or a supervolcanic eruption is very real but it is nothing new. The threat resurfaces every now and then in news articles. With our current technology there is not much we can do to prevent a caldera. Yellowstone National Park contains a caldera which is explained in this article provided by the park's website. A list of other calderas can be found here. The USGS also has a Caldera page.
The AP reports that a 300 feet tall slab of rock is pushing itself out of Mount St. Helens at the rate of 4 to 5 feet per day. Larger photographs can be seen on the AP/CNN story page -- scroll down to where it says "Gallery: Rising from the volcano."
Mount St. Helens, located in the Cascades of Washington, has been quietly erupting since a flurry of tiny earthquakes began in late September 2004. Scientists initially mistook the quakes as rainwater seeping into the hot interior of the older lava dome.
But it soon became clear that magma was on the move, confirmed by the emergence of fire-red lava between the old lava dome and the south crater rim a few weeks after the seismic activity began.
The volcano has continued pumping out lava ever since. Eventually, scientists expect the volcano will rebuild its conical peak that was obliterated in the May 18, 1980 eruption that left 57 people dead.
The current growth of the new lava dome has been accompanied by low seismicity rates, low emissions of steam and volcanic gases and minor production of ash, the USGS said.
USGS geologist Tom Pierson told the AP that "given the way things are going now, there's no hint of any sort of catastrophic eruptions." He also told the AP that this could change at any time. You can keep an eye on the situation with the Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam.
Spiegel has a very interesting article that lots of science blogs and the mainstream media are discussing. You can see some of the blogs that are linking to the
news story here. The Spiegel article talks about how a new ocean is forming in the Afar Triangle near the Horn of Africa.
Geologist Dereje Ayalew and his colleagues from Addis Ababa University were amazed -- and frightened. They had only just stepped out of their helicopter onto the desert plains of central Ethiopia when the ground began to shake under their feet. The pilot shouted for the scientists to get back to the helicopter. And then it happened: the Earth split open. Crevices began racing toward the researchers like a zipper opening up. After a few seconds, the ground stopped moving, and after they had recovered from their shock, Ayalew and his colleagues realized they had just witnessed history. For the first time ever, human beings were able to witness the first stages in the birth of an ocean.
Normally changes to our geological environment take place almost imperceptibly. A life time is too short to see rivers changing course, mountains rising skywards or valleys opening up. In north-eastern Africa's Afar Triangle, though, recent months have seen hundreds of crevices splitting the desert floor and the ground has slumped by as much as 100 meters (328 feet). At the same time, scientists have observed magma rising from deep below as it begins to form what will eventually become a basalt ocean floor. Geologically speaking, it won't be long until the Red Sea floods the region. The ocean that will then be born will split Africa apart.
The Afar Triangle, which cuts across Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, is the largest construction site on the planet. Three tectonic plates meet there with the African and Arabian plates drifting apart along two separate fault lines by one centimeter a year. A team of scientists working with Christophe Vigny of the Paris Laboratory of Geology reported on the phenomenon in a 2006 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research. While the two plates move apart, the ground sinks to make room for the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The scientists believe basalt magma discoveries indicate the formation of a new ocean floor.
Basalt magma has risen into some of the crevices. For the moment, Ayalew explains, the lava seems not to be rising further. A number of recent eruptions, though, have left layers of new basalt lava on the Earth's surface. And it's the exact same kind of lava that spews out of volcanic ridges deep under the ocean -- a process which slowly pushes older lava sediments away on either side. The process has only just begun in the Afar Triangle -- and scientists for the first time can witness the birth of a new ocean floor.
The article also says that Africa will eventually lose its horn in a slow process that will take about 10 million years according to geophysicists.
An old Indonesian civilization called Tambora has been discovered underneath volcanic ash from a volcano that wiped out the population of 100,000. The BBC reports that scientists believe the people, buildings and its culture may be preserved like Pompeii after it was buried by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815.
Scientists say bronze bowls, ceramic pots and other recovered artefacts shed light on an old Indonesian culture.
"There's potential that Tambora could be the Pompeii of the East, and it could be of great cultural interest," said Professor Haraldur Sigurdsson, of the University of Rhode Island, US, who has been researching the area for 20 years.
"All the people, their houses and culture are still encapsulated there as they were in 1815. It's important that we keep that capsule intact and open it very carefully."
It truly sounds like an amazing find and it will be interesting to see what is found there when the city is dug out. Unfortunately, an event like this could happen again. Naples, a city with 3 million people, is at risk if Vesuvius erupts again according to a recent Reuters news story.
The preserved footprints and abandoned homes of villagers who fled a giant eruption of Mount Vesuvius 3,800 years ago show the volcano could destroy modern-day Naples with little warning, Italian and U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
The eruption buried entire villages as far as 15 miles (25 kilometres) from the volcano, cooking people as they tried to escape and dumping several feet (metres) of ash and mud.
New excavations show far more extensive damage than that found at the more famous site of Pompeii, buried in A.D. 79.
The problem for humans is that some places that are very attractive and comfortable places to live often carry the greatest risk from volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc.
Vulcanologists are closely monitoring a Pacific underwater volcano to see
if it will erupt. The volcano is located underneath a lake and is creating massive amounts of steam on Ambae Island. CNN reports that villagers have evacuated from Mount Manaro close the volcano and will be evacuated if an eruption does occur. A volcanologist told CNN that so far there are no signs of an imminent eruption.
If a large eruption was about to occur "we would see large scale deformation at the summit ... the (lake) water level rising ... ground cracking, high temperatures ... and we've not seen anything like that at all," he said.
The most likely scenario was that the volcano would continue "like it is for some days or weeks," he added.
Scott, from New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, added the eruption at its current intensity was unlikely to cause a lahar -- a devastating river of mud -- by forcing up the level of the crater's Lake Vui, whose waters in recent days have been churned up from a picturesque aqua blue color to a muddy gray-brown.
Displaced villagers sat in the shade of trees looking up at the 3,000 meter (10,000-foot) plume as they waited to hear if they will be allowed home or forced to evacuate the island.
Ambae Island part of a group of 83 islands called Vanuatu, which is located in the South West Pacific. Vanuatu Online describes the active volcanoes found on the islands.
Like all islands in the Pacific Rim of Fire, the archipelago lies between two side of a fault in the earth's crust which rub against each other and cause volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that can, on some occassions, be particulary impressive. The Vanuatu archipelago has countless craters of extinct and active volcanoes.
LiveScience.com has published a list of the top ten natural disaster threats which include earthquakes, hurricanes, asteroids, tsunamis, heat waves and volcanos.
Recently we have been unfortunate enough to witness several of these disasters. The recent onslaught of hurricanes, the massive earthquake in Pakistan that has killed over 70,000, last year's deadly tsunami and Europe's heat wave in 2003 that killed tens of thousands of people.
The U.S. Geological Survey is still uncertain what is causing the lake-sized bulge in Oregon that has been expanding since 1997. The Associated Press says the USG suspects a pool of magma is behind the bulge. It could possibly be a new volcano.
They say it probably began growing in 1997 and has been rising ever since at a rate of about 1.4 inches a year. It was first observed from space using a relatively new imaging technology known as radar interferometry that can measure changes in the Earth's surface.
The likely cause of the bulge is a pool of magma that, according to Deschutes National Forest geologist Larry Chitwood, is equal in size to a lake 1 mile across and 65 feet deep.
The magma lake is rising 10 feet each year, under tremendous pressure, and it deforms the Earth's surface as it expands, causing the bulge.
Other causes could be anything from the birth of a new volcano - a fourth Sister in the making - to a routine and anticlimactic pooling of liquid rock, researchers say.
Deschutes National Forest geologist Larry Chitwood told the AP that the good news is that if it is a volcano it should not affect any major population areas. That's welcomed news considering we have had one disaster this year already. For more information, Slashdot has a discussion of the Oregon bulge.
LiveScience.com has an article by Sam Hughes that lists the top ten ways the Earth could be destroyed. Sam Hughes says that destroying Earth is very difficult but he lists several ways that could make it happen. Some of them include being sucked in a microscopic black hole, being eaten by von Neumann machines and being sent on a collision course with the Sun. The article can also be found here on Sam Hughes'
website.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has released the first ever comprehensive and systematic review of the 169 U.S. volcanoes and established a framework for a National Volcano Early Warning System (NVEWS) which calls for a 24-hour seven-day-a-week Volcano Watch Office and enhanced instrumentation and monitoring at targeted volcanoes. The Yellowstone caldera is one of those
listed as high risk for an explosion by the USGS according to an Associated
Press story on the report:
Yellowstone ranks 21st most dangerous of the 169 volcano centers in the United
States, according to the Geological Survey's first-ever comprehensive review
of the nation's volcanoes.
Kilauea in Hawaii received the highest overall threat score followed by Mount
St. Helens and Mount Rainier in Washington, Mount Hood in Oregon and Mount
Shasta in California. Kilauea has been erupting since 1983. Mount St.
Helens, which erupted catastrophically in 1980, began venting again in 2004.
According to the USGS report, since 1980, 45 eruptions and 15 cases of
notable volcanic unrest have occurred at 33 U.S. volcanoes. About half of
the most threatening U.S. volcanoes are monitored at a basic level and a
few are well monitored with a suite of modern instruments. However, the
report cautions, monitoring capabilities at many hazardous volcanoes are
sparse or antiquated, and some hazardous volcanoes have no ground-based
monitoring whatsoever. This poses a threat to people on the ground and in
the air. Flying into an ash cloud can cripple a jet aircraft in flight.
Tens of thousands of people fly over U.S. volcanic regions every day.
The BBC reports that scientists are recommending an emergency management taskforce be established in case there is a massive volcanic eruption somewhere on Earth known as a super-eruption. The warning coincides with a new BBC TV drama, called Supervolcano, that depicts a fictional super-eruption at Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, US. Geologists say this is more than just a risk. It is really going to happen someday. "We don't want to be sensationalist about this, but it's going to happen. We just can't say exactly when," Open University Geology Professor Stephen Self told the BBC. Scientists so far can not predict exactly when or where such a massive explosion might occur, but one possible spot is Yellowstone. This geological hot spot, which is also known as a caldera, is the largest volcanic system in North America. The producers of the film had this to say about Yellowstone, "It was an obvious choice for the programme makers as the site of their super-eruption because of its location on a highly populated continent and because it has already had three of these events, which have occurred roughly 600,000 years apart from each other." Let's hope we don't see a fourth eruption anytime soon. Wikipedia has more on the Yellowstone Caldera.
Seattle's KING5.com is 
The AP reports that a 300 feet tall slab of rock is pushing itself out of Mount St. Helens at the rate of 4 to 5 feet per day. Larger photographs can be seen on the AP/CNN 