On July 4th, 2021, a massive explosion occurred in the Caspian Sea.
As this explosion rocked a section of Azerbaijan, a tall fireball could be seen reaching more
than 500 meters or 1,640 feet into the sky.
What had just occurred was not human caused, but rather a natural event due to an unusual
series of geological phenomena.
This explosion was related to the nation's vast oil and natural gas reserves.
Although rare, what had just occurred was an explosive eruption of a mud volcano called
Dashli Ada.
The Dashli Ada mud volcano is located in the western Caspian sea along the eastern land
border of Azerbaijan.
Specifically, it is located 85 kilometers south of the nation's capital, Baku.
This feature is one of more than 400 mud volcanoes spread across eastern Azerbaijan, comprising
a majority of all of the planet's known active mud volcanoes.
While the vast majority of these simply erupt mud onto the surface in an effusive manner,
a select few have been known to produce flames and on occasions, explosions.
First, some clarification.
Although Azerbaijan contains 2 active volcanoes, the nation's has not been the site of a true
volcanic eruption since 739 BCE.
Mud volcanoes are not included in this tally as mud volcanoes are not truly volcanoes.
Mud volcanoes in eastern Azerbaijan do not erupt any lava, and do not form via direct
interaction with a shallow body of magma.
With this being said, many of the world's mud volcanoes are related to volcanic activity.
As an example, at the Salton Buttes volcano in California, numerous mud pots exist due
to rising quantities of volcanic gasses which escape alongside small volumes of heated water
due to an at depth magma chamber.
Thus, these mud pots could technically be considered the water poor equivalent of hot
springs.
However, the mud volcanoes within Azerbaijan are different, as the heated gasses which
propel the eruptions are not volcanic in nature.
Rather, they are related to the presence of abundant oil and gas deposits in the vicinity.
At depth, groundwater interacts with hydrocarbons which due to a chemical reaction turns the
water acidic.
Next, geothermal energy heats the acidic water, causing it to travel upwards.
As it travels upwards through the crust, it dissolves layers of rock along the way, forming
mud.
Eventually, it reaches the surface, thus erupting as mud and emitting high levels of flammable
gasses.
The constructed mud volcanoes widely range in size, but they are by no means considered
to be small features.
As an example, look at the feature I have zoomed in on.
This individual mud volcano is an impressive 400 meters or 1,312 feet tall and 3,500 meters
or 11,483 feet wide, meaning that it is taller than many volcanic cinder cone vents!
From the top of its edifice, two active vents can be observed along with a flow of recently
erupted mud which travels downslope.
Although this feature is one of the larger mud volcanoes in the region, it is by no means
the widest or tallest in the country.
Some other nearby mud volcanoes are similarly large, having reached their size after erupting
mud intermittently for thousands and even perhaps tens of thousands of years.
Most of the time, these mud volcanoes peacefully emit natural gas, methane, and other hydrocarbons
into the atmosphere.
However, due to a number of factors, under very specific circumstances these deposits
when they interact with groundwater to form a mud volcano can spark.
This can theoretically occur for a number of reasons including possibly static electricity,
which then triggers a series of events somewhat similar to an oil well blowout, thus causing
an explosive eruption of gas from a mud volcano.
The mud volcano which erupted on July 4th 2021 had already explosively erupted several
times in the past.
In both 1920 and 1945, this mud volcano related island erupted, creating a towering fireball
and expanding the overall edifice.
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