Volcanos

Roundup of Global Volcanic Activity:

Stromboli (Eolian Islands, Italy): Yesterday evening's lava flow has once again been very short-lived. Activity (effusion rate) sharply dropped late in the evening and today, only very small amounts of lava are still overspilling from the NE crater rim. Tremor and rockfall signals are much weaker as well. A strong increase of activity occurred this afternoon. A relatively large, sustained lava flow has started to erupt from the breached NE cone and descend the Sciara del Fuoco. The process is accompanied by ongoing strong strombolian eruptions, mainly from the same NE vent, and strong continuous tremor.

Etna (Sicily, Italy): This time, Etna is taking it really slowly to build up to the presumed next lava fountaining phase from the New SE crater (paroxysm). Tremor keeps rising, and strombolian explosions slowly increase from the summit vent of the cone. Strombolian activity at the New SE crater is intensifying and volcanic tremor is now steeply rising. The 10th paroxysm seems to be about to start.

El Hierro (Canary Islands, Spain): A relatively strong earthquake of magnitude 4.1 occurred at 5:26 GMT this afternoon, west of the island at 19 km depth. So far, it has been an isolated event.

Tolbachik (Kamchatka): The eruption continues with little changes. Strong seismicity of the volcano, although slowly declining, is being registered and accompanies ongoing effusion of lava flows and strong degassing from the southern fissure. No changes in seismic-visual activity have been reported for the other volcanoes currently active in Kamchata (Kizimen, Sheveluch, Bezymianny: actively growing lava domes associated with occasional avalanches and explosions, Karymski: occasional strombolian-vulcanian explosions, Gorely: strong degassing/hydrothermal activity).

Lascar (Northern Chile, Bolivia and Argentina): Chilean volcanologists were able to make make a helicopter overfly the day before yesterday and could not find evidence of recent lava in the summit crater. However, as the likely source of the recently observed incandescence, very hot gas emissions were observed. The airborne temperature measurements gave maximum values of 600° C for the gasses, and SERNAGEOMIN thinks that the presence of magma at shallow depth is causing it. The alert level remains at yellow.