As of July 1st, 2023, there are currently 43 volcanoes which are actively erupting around
the planet.
One of these erupting volcanoes is the Ebeko stratovolcano in Russia, which is located
7 kilometers west-northwest of the Kuril Island chain's 2nd largest city, Severo-Kurilsk.
Ebeko is one of Russia's most active volcanoes, frequently producing intermittent vulcanian
to phreatomagmatic explosions which eject quantities of ash into the air.
With this being said, here are this week's major volcano related news stories.
In Japan, a major earthquake swarm along with volcanic tremor occurred at the Meakandake
stratovolcano, marking its highest level of activity since 2018.
Meanwhile, in Colombia, after 89 days of being at a raised alert level of orange, the threat
of a large eruption being produced by the Nevado del Ruiz volcano largely passed in
my opinion, and as a result its alert level was lowered back to yellow.
And, in the Philippines, the Taal volcano erupted for the first time in a little more
than 6 months, sending a plume of ash and volcanic gasses into the sky.
This 250 meter high plume had a mostly white color, and was generated by two volcanic explosions
within Taal's central crater on Taal island.
The explosions occurred on June 29th at 12:54 pm local time, with the eruption ending a
mere 2 minutes later.
However, something was unusual about this brief either VEI 0 or VEI 1 eruption; it did
not directly involve any magma.
As, for perhaps the first time since Taal began somewhat frequently erupting following
its major January 2020 explosive eruption, the eruption was phreatic instead of phreatomagmatic.
What this means is the eruption was caused by at depth magma heating overlying rock.
The overlying rock then heated groundwater, which eventually flashed to steam, and exploded
in what is known as a phreatic eruption.
The only difference between this and a phreatomagmatic eruption is that the explosion in the case
of a phreatomagmatic eruption also ejects fragments of lava.
Thus, we can assume that magma is present underneath Taal at intermediate depths as
if it had instead been at shallow depths, fragments of lava would have been ejected
in this latest eruption.
While the sulfur dioxide emissions have seemingly dropped at Taal following this eruption, it
is unclear if this was related or unrelated to the eruption.
Regardless, in my opinion more phreatic or even possibly phreatomagmatic eruptions are
theoretically possible at Taal in the next few weeks.
In Japan, an energetic earthquake swarm struck the Mount Meakan stratovolcano on the island
of Hokkaido, which is the only historically active eruptive center within a much larger
caldera which includes the volcanic cones of Mount Oakan and Mount Akan-Fuji.
While this complex has not produced an eruption since 2008, on June 29th beginning at 3 pm
local time, 146 earthquakes struck underneath its most active crater known as Ponmachinesiri
Crater.
This occurred alongside two instances of volcanic tremor.
The following day, the earthquake swarm intermittently continued, with 105 quakes occurring.
However, on July 1st it appears that the earthquake swarm ended as only 4 earthquakes occurred.
All of this activity in my opinion was probably not indicative of magma movement but rather
of the movement of hydrothermal fluids, aka primarily water.
I say this because gas emissions at the volcano did not notably increase during the earthquake
swarm, which would be expected if magma was directly involved.
In Colombia, the nation's historically most destructive volcano known as Nevado del Ruiz
had been at a raised alert level of orange due to the perceived elevated potential for
a major eruption to occur.
Its alert level was initially raised from yellow to orange on March 31st of 2023 due
to an increase of thousands of seismic events each day, indicating the movement of a new
batch of magma.
Yet, even though this caused evacuations, it luckily did not result in a repeat major
eruption or large-scale melting of the volcano's glaciers which resulted in more than 25,000
casualties in a single 1985 eruption as that eruption created large scale lahars.
Although Nevado del Ruiz has been intermittently erupting throughout this entire period, seismic
activity, gas emissions, ash emissions, and thermal anomalies all decreased, with the
earthquakes that are now occurring not indicating magma movement.
As a result, Nevado del Ruiz's alert level was lowered from orange to yellow on June
27th of 2023.
Here is a quick list of all of the world's volcanoes which are currently erupting.
Additionally, here are some volcanoes showing signs of unrest which are not erupting as
of the recording of this video on July 1st of 2023.
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