Volcanos

Roundup of Global Volcanic Activity:

El Hierro (Canary Islands, Spain): Small clusters of earthquakes continue to occur in two areas, at 10-20 km depth, one located beneath the central area of the island and the second under an area off the western tip. Overall, seismic activity has remained low and shows a decreasing trend over the past months.

Tolbachik (Kamchatka): Tremor and lava effusion from the southern vent of Tolbachik Dol have remained stable. KVERT reports no changes in activity. The same goes for the currently other 5 volcanoes on yellow/orange alert in Kamchatka: Shiveluch and Kizimen (moderate seismic activity) and probably Bezymianny (no seismic data due to Tolbachik) continue to effuse lava domes, Karymsky (no data for technical reasons) has likely some small intermittent strombolian-vulcanian explosions and Gorely continues to be loud with tremor caused by hydrothermal and degassing activity.

Chirpoi (Kurile Islands, Russia): A hot spot persists at the summit of the volcano, suggesting that some sort of activity is present.

Sakurajima (Kyushu, Japan): The volcano remains in a state of elevated activity with frequent ash explosions, although the intensity has decreased a bit compared to some days ago.

Lokon-Empung (North Sulawesi, Indonesia): No recent explosions were reported (which does not mean that there were none), but at least no significant ones have occurred recently. At the moment. the volcano can be seen emitting a plume of steam and bluish gas (SO2), which suggests that fresh magma is present near the surface.

Veniaminof (Alaska Peninsula, USA): Activity has not changed much, AVO reported, and consists of lava effusion from the intra-caldera vent and minor explosive activity (if any). However, there is a slowly increasing trend, judging from seismic data (continuous tremor and increasing thermal hot spot visible on MODIS data).

Popocatépetl (Central Mexico): Activity, both external and internal, has significantly calmed down during the pasts day. The volcano is now back to emit a steam/gas plume with more vigorous emissions and weak explosions of mainly steam and gas with minor amounts of ash at rates of 1-2 times an hour. A large explosion took place at 03:10 local time on 12 July (08:10 UTC). Incandescent bombs were ejected to considerable distances and rolled down to distances of 4 km (!) from the crater and ignited small bush fires on the slopes, in particular on the eastern slope of the volcano.

Fuego (Guatemala): Explosive activity has been weak (only few and small strombolian explosions with ash plumes up to 200-400 m height and incandescent material rising 100 m), but another lava flow has started on the upper southern flank. On 12 July morning, it was about 150 m long towards the Taniluyá canyon.

Telica (Nicaragua): The earthquake swarm continues with decreasing frequency but increasing magnitudes (but still small ones) of quakes. INETER has no reports about it - apparently, this seismic activity is common at Telica and not a sign of a likely eruption.

Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia): Starting from 11:43 local time on 11 July, a weak pulse of tremor accompanied by small ash emissions was reported by the Manizales observatory. The ash plumes rose to about 600 m.