Latest Mount Pinatubo Stories
A University of Saskatchewan-led international research team has discovered that aerosols from relatively small volcanic eruptions can be boosted into the high atmosphere by weather systems such as monsoons, where they can affect global temperatures. The research appears in the July 6 issue of the journal Science. Adam Bourassa, from the U of S Institute of Space and Atmospheric Studies, led the research. He explains that until now it was thought that a massively energetic eruption was...
A modern recurrence of an extraordinary type of volcanic eruption in Iceland could inject large quantities of hazardous gases into North Atlantic and European flight corridors, potentially for months at a time, a new study suggests. Using computer simulations, researchers are investigating the likely atmospheric effects if a “flood lava” eruption took place in Iceland today. Flood lava eruptions, which stand out for the sheer amounts of lava and sulfurous gases they release and the way...
New research suggests that eruptions at some of Earth's largest volcanoes could be predicted decades before the event actually occurs, potentially making it easier for experts to monitor danger zones and conduct pre-emptive evacuations to keep residents out of harm's way. In one study, published Thursday in the journal Nature, scientists investigate "caldera-forming volcanic eruptions," or eruptions that discharge such massive amount of magma that it can create a large depression in the...
In his new book, ‘Deep-Sky Companions: The Secret Deep,’ Stephen James O'Meara presents 109 new objects for stargazers to observe. The Secret Deep contains many exceptional objects, including a planetary nebula whose last thermal pulse produced a circumstellar shell similar to the one expected in the final days of our Sun's life; a piece of the only supernova remnant known visible to the unaided eye; the flattest galaxy known; the largest edge-on galaxy in the heavens; the brightest...
Primary succession on the slopesUniversity of Guam ecologist Thomas Marler recently mobilized efforts to characterize the vegetation that has recovered following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines. "My interest was sparked by the paradox that this volcano's cataclysmic 1991 eruption was so powerful it changed global climate, yet after a full 15 years the biology of the recovering ecosystem had not been studied," said Marler.The void of research motivated the Guam ecologist...
No matter their size or shape, explosive volcanoes produce tremors at similar frequencies for minutes, days or weeks before they erupt. In the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Nature, researchers at Yale University and the University of British Columbia (UBC) describe a model that explains this strange phenomenon "“ and may help forecast deadly eruptions.When such volcanoes erupt they can shoot hot ash up to 40 kilometers into the atmosphere and cause devastating destruction when the ash column...
Scientists took samples in New Jersey for latest researchTwenty thousand years of massive volcanic eruptions doubled the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth's atmosphere 200 million years ago, according to research by Rutgers geologists published recently in the journal Science.Morgan Schaller, Jim Wright and Dennis Kent report that the level of atmospheric CO2 went from about 2,000 parts per million to 4,000 parts per million and then shrank back to pre-eruption levels over the next...
Defying models, some regions drier, others wetterScientists have long known that large volcanic explosions can affect the weather by spewing particles that block solar energy and cool the air. Some suspect that extended "volcanic winters" from gigantic blowups helped kill off dinosaurs and Neanderthals. In the summer following Indonesia's 1815 Tambora eruption, frost wrecked crops as far off as New England, and the 1991 blowout of the Philippines' Mount Pinatubo lowered average...
Pyrocumulonimbus is the fire-breathing dragon of clouds.A cumulonimbus without the "pyre" part is imposing enough -- a massive, anvil-shaped tower of power reaching five miles (8 km) high, hurling thunderbolts, wind and rain.Add smoke and fire to the mix and you have pyrocumulonimbus, an explosive storm cloud actually created by the smoke and heat from fire, and which can ravage tens of thousands of acres. And in the process, "pyroCb" storms funnel their smoke like a...
Volcanoes display the awesome power of Nature like few other events. Earlier this year, ash from an Icelandic volcano disrupted air travel throughout much of northern Europe. Yet this recent eruption pales next to the fury of Jupiter's moon Io, the most volcanic body in our solar system.Now that astronomers are finding rocky worlds orbiting distant stars, they're asking the next logical questions: Do any of those worlds have volcanoes? And if so, could we detect them? Work by theorists at the...
