As of October 9th, 2022, there are 49 volcanoes actively erupting around the planet.
One of these erupting volcanoes is the spectacular Mount Erebus in Antarctica, which has been
continuously erupting since 1972.
Its latest eruption has been characterized by a series of primarily strombolian explosions,
which on occasion eject bombs of phonolite lava beyond the crater rim.
Since these fragments erode quite easily, they leave behind groups of fascinating anorthoclase
crystals, which can be up to 6 inches in length.
I want to give a special thanks to A. Eschenbacher, a subscriber of mine who sent me a wonderful
assortment of these hard to come by crystals in addition to some photos of this isolated
volcano.
With this being said, here are this week's major volcano related news stories.
Although this was largely glossed over due to stories at other volcanoes, the Taal volcano
produced a new phreatic eruption.
Meanwhile, also in the Philippines, the Bulusan volcano produced a sudden swarm of earthquakes
after several months of little activity, causing Phivolcs to post a special alert regarding
the volcano.
And, in Hawaii, the summit area of the towering Mauna Loa volcano was closed off in response
to elevated seismic activity.
For context, Mauna Loa is a truly massive shield volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii
which encompasses 51% of the island's landmass.
During the last 3,000 years, this volcano has erupted an average of once every 6 years.
This pattern has largely remained during the last 200 years with one notable exception.
Since 1984, Mauna Loa has not erupted, marking a period of 38 years without lava flowing
onto the surface, marking its longest period without an eruption in the last 200 years.
However, since early July of 2019, Mauna Loa has been at a raised alert level due to consistent
ground deformation and the rate of earthquakes being consistently above background levels.
However, beginning on September 20th, a sudden uptick in earthquakes occurred, whereas beforehand
5 to 20 daily earthquakes occurred and after between 40 and 110 daily earthquakes occurred.
Many of these earthquakes occurred at shallow depths of less than 5 kilometers which hints
at a magmatic origin, and occurred in combination with a change in tiltmeter sensor readings
on the volcano.
There was an increasing trend shown via the tiltmeters beginning on September 15th, a
stronger increase on the 23rd, and another notable increase late on September 30th.
Although an eruption is not imminent, Mauna Loa has the potential to only show signs that
an eruption is about to occur a few hours before an eruption begins.
The ongoing earthquake swarm is unusual, but the last two times a swarm of comparable magnitude
to what is currently ongoing occurred, they both did not result in a new volcanic eruption.
In the Philippines, the Taal volcano seems to produce periods of frequent eruptions during
a brief timespan of 2 to 12 years followed by several decades of little activity or inactivity.
We are currently in the midst of one such eruptive period which began at Taal in 2020.
Eruptions since February of 2020 have been universally what is known as a phreatomagmatic
eruption, consisting of shallow magma interacting with the volcano's shallow lake water, which
generates a series of explosions.
While this can generate prolonged episodes of volcanic activity that last hours to days,
recent activity at Taal has largely consisted of isolated bursts during days where the level
of earthquakes and sulfur dioxide emissions are above normal.
One such phreatomagmatic burst occurred between October 5th and 6th, which lasted for 3 minutes.
Since this small eruption, earthquake activity and sulfur dioxide gas emissions have dropped.
Also in the Philippines, the Bulusan volcano produced an unexpected earthquake swarm between
5 AM on October 6th and 3 PM on October 7th.
This minor swarm consisted of 29 earthquakes, which is unusual considering that this volcano
has not produced much of any kind of activity since its last eruption ended on June 12th.
This means that there is a heightened chance of another phreatic eruption occurring at
this volcano for the short term future.
Here is a quick list of every volcano which is currently erupting.
You might have noticed that I am now sorting these volcanoes by which of the 7 continents
they are on.
Also, here are some volcanoes showing signs of unrest which are not erupting but could
erupt in the near future.
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