Today’s Science and Technology Post
The eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano in 2018 was one of the most destructive in this volcano’s recorded history. Why this happened has remained a mystery until a paper published recently in Nature suggests that rainfall could have been the culprit. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
In the interests of providing a more diverse and hopefully interesting product to the TAH crew, we’ve come up with several new venues to post. Science and Technology is one.
Surprising Trigger Identified for Explosive Eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano
TOPICS:European Space Agency Geophysics Volcano Weather
The notion that rain could lead to a volcanic eruption may seem strange, but scientists from the University of Miami in the USA, have used information from satellites, including the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, to discover that a period of heavy rainfall may have triggered the four month-long eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano in 2018.
Producing about 320,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of lava that reshaped the landscape, destroyed hundreds of homes, and caused the collapse of the summit caldera, the 2018 eruption was one of the most destructive in Kilauea’s recorded history.
A paper published recently in Nature proposes a new model to explain why this eruption happened. The authors, Jamie Farquharson and Falk Amelung from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science, suggest that heavy rainfall may have been the culprit.
In the months before the eruption, Hawaii was inundated by an unusually prolonged period of heavy, and at times extreme, rainfall.
The rainwater would have found its way through the pores of the volcanic rock and increased the pressure within – decreasing the rigidity of the rock and allowing magma to rise to the surface.
Falk Amelung said, “We knew that changes in the water content in the Earth’s subsurface can trigger earthquakes and landslides. Now we know that it can also trigger volcanic eruptions. Under pressure from magma, wet rock breaks easier than dry rock. It is as simple as that.”
Using a combination of ground-based and satellite measurements of rainfall, Farquharson and Amelung modeled the fluid pressure within the volcano’s edifice over time – a factor that can directly influence the tendency for mechanical failure in the ground, ultimately driving volcanic activity.
Pre-eruption ground deformation around Kilauea Volcano (red triangle) in Hawaii. Credit: J. Farquharson/F. AmelungThis is not an entirely new theory, but it was previously thought that this could only happen at shallow depths. Here, the scientists conclude that the rain increased pore pressure deep down – at depths of up to 3 km.
The team’s results highlight that fluid pressure was at its highest in almost half a century immediately prior to the eruption, which they propose facilitated magma movement beneath the volcano. Their hypothesis also explains why there was relatively little widespread uplift around the volcano in the months prior.
“We would normally see the ground inflate, or ‘uplift’ before an eruption as the magma chamber swells. We used radar information from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission to see that the amount of inflation was low.
“This lack of substantial inflation suggests that the intrusion–eruption could not only have been triggered by an influx of fresh magma from depth, but that it was caused by a weakening of the rift zone. The six-day repeat observations from the Sentinel-1 mission were key to our research.
Well well. Lava from rainwater. Read the rest of the article here: SciTech Daily
Category: Science and Technology
If rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper and paper beats rock, where does this mean water beats lava? And what does lava beat?
Lava beats ice floe, “penguin”man000.
Lava beats dirty hands.
Great soap.
Sounds reasonable and well reasoned.
I feel better educated, and time well spent, for having read this.
They’re not screaming “GLOBULL WORMING!!!”
To TAH Admin, Thank You.
Interestingly, they using a model (like climate scientists), data from NOAA (like climate scientists), and their theory can’t be experimentally validated, instead relying on statistical validation, .. much like climate models.
Might I suggest reading some actual research articles about climate models instead of what the politicians say? You might, believe it or not, say, “Sounds reasonable and well reasoned. I feel better educated, and time well spent, for having read this.”
Just an idea. We shouldn’t let politics dictate what science we find valid or not.
LC, sadly I had to read quite a few research papers on climate change in college. The models they use contain data that validate their biases, and that’s why their models are consistently wrong.
LC, as long as there is money involved, politicians will stick their oars into just about anything.
Whoda thunk? Well, not Sheldon Cooper, to him geology is not science. I learned something from this and an explanation of why the damn thing wouldn’t quit erupting. The talking heads couldn’t do that in ’18.
Flip side of all this is I have experienced the inward pressure causing the magma to erupt to the surface and loss of rigidity of the rock.
Was a cigarette required afterwards?
😉 😉 😉
TMI!!!
Something like that happened to me, but it involved my bathroom plumbing, and there was no explanation for a Pic ‘n’ Save card floating up through the drain.
We all know the real reason for such a violent Kilauea eruption in 2018 was because Madame Pele wasn’t getting enough nooky from her secret lover the Shark God. Come on y’all, let’s get with the program here…
Madame Pele must like guys from the University of Comeoniwannaleiu…
Plenty of warm water being released into the ocean:
https://www.livescience.com/hundreds-hydrothermal-vents.html
SO IT wasn’t glowbull wormening and it wasn’t Trump’s fault either, who woulda thought that?
API, I’m just happy to post up about something other than COVID-19.
The eruption will be blamed on climate change (“Extreeeme rain!!!) in 3…2…1….
You callous, unfeeling rubes in your SUVs, you, yes you, caused this eruption and caused all this destruction.
For the record, I do not own an SUV.
I do have two Jeeps and MRS D has an H3.
Therefore, this shit ain’t my fault.
Hey! NOWHERE did it state that its not the Bad Orange Man’s fault …
All Trump’s fault. It’s -red-, and
MAGMA!
(Grin)
If you never been, I *highly* recommend. It was the most surreal and terrifying experience in my life (and I’ve been to combat twice!).
I saw Pele’s hair fall from the sky in Brillo pad type chunks that blew down the road, mountainous rock heaves the size of houses, pitch black like you’ve never seen (lava rock is black, that sparkles when you hit it with a light), crawling over freshly minted Earth into the edge of nothing…
I took a tactical pause on the way to Pu’u ‘Ō’ō (the active vent at the time) to gain my bearings and wait on the ex. My headlamp had the red lens filter on and I had gotten used to it hitting the sulphur vents and glowing red because the yellowish-white residue left on the fissures as the rock cooled and released the gas, cracking the rock in large jagged rifts. I yell at the then-missus to ‘carry her ass’ and I shut the light off to give a look-see toward the point of origin of the field. As the light goes off and I look up the hill I realize my ankles are warm, I look down…. red light is coming up from underneath me. I yell for her to stop in my Infantry Sergeant voice, as I slowly turn around and try to retrace my steps.
We start heading straight up hill versus a more direct route, about 150 meters from my little ‘hot ankles freakout’ there was a sky lighted vent, full of lava.
Yep, I was stranding ON a lava tube.
She’s a weird animal, the volcano. I don’t know why she do what she do, but something saved me from being past-tensed that day.
A little rain move her to action, doubt it. She just wanted to destroy something beautiful so as to make something beautiful is all.
Oh, and if you do go bring water, a face mask and cotton balls.
Water, it’s hot and there ain’t no 7-11s.
The face mask, well, the cotton balls are for your ears, to keep out all the raining volcanic grit that’ll build up in them. I had black crap coming out for a month, thought I’d never hear again outta one ear.
Now the face mask is self explanatory.
Regular fire is nasty enough. I think I’ll keep my distance from God’s forge, thank you very much!
That being said, Mt. Lassen is considered higher-risk than most, at least in the continental United States. USGS has some estimates available online concerning the scale of eruption it’s capable of, and suffice it to say I’m glad I’m on the opposite end of the state, and I hope I’m long retired before it happens. That’s a strike team assignment I really don’t want!
Shield volcanoes like Kilauea are certainly dangerous and destructive, but lava domes like Lassen and stratovolcanoes like St Helens or Vesuvius are capable of much more cataclysmic activity. I’d just as soon not screw around with any of them!
Amen!
Couple years back my brother said he was going to climb Mt Rainier, I told him to make sure his Will was filled out. -blank stare-
We’re temporary lessees to this Earth and best damn well respect her!
Stay cool, Brother.
Volcanos by National Geographic:
Makes sense. At sea level atmospheric pressure, one cubic foot of water will boil into 1700 cubic feet of steam. The amount of energy involved when groundwater seeps into magma has to be insane.
NAS Sigonella, Sicily, about 10 clicks south of Europe’s most active volcano, Mt. Etna. After a long day when darkness fell, we would grab rum and cokes, sit on a picnic bench and watch Etna kick up her heels, lava flowing and Buffet on the boom box. Impressive. These became known as, of course, Jimmy Buffet Ops.
I remember my ship being diverted to provide assistance to the local government when Mount Etna was having one of its issues.
During another Mediterranean deployment, I got to see Mount Vesuvius. The tour took us to the top. Managed to see the crater and the instruments used to monitor the volcano. This was right after a walk though of Pompeii’s ruins.
The earth’s solid crust is no more than twenty miles thick, in a few places, and as little as three miles thick in the middle of sea bottom areas.
Almost all the rest is at least hot enough to be “plastic”. The inner core is compressed into solid by enormous pressure.
The whole structure resembles a slow rolling boil, slow-moving in currents that shift around chunks of solid crust.
That movement of the outer liquid iron core and it’s solid interior, relative to the solar magnetic field, produces earth’s magnetic field, which shields the earth from the blast of the solar wind, which would otherwise strip away our atmosphere. The unshielded radiation flux would fry us long before we suffocated.
The heat at the core is theorized to be partly due to accumulation of radioactive materials. In the slow melt of everything, they sink inwards and form a natural reactor, keeping that dynamo running. The interactions of Sun and earth magnetic fields may also contribute. Tidal stresses due to earth-noon-sun gravity also may contribute. The rest is leftover heat from the accretion of the earth’s original mass 4.5 billion years ago.
The moon and Mars cooled off fast, their cores went solid, and they lost their magnetic fields. Olympus Mons on Mars is the remains of a Kilauea type shield volcano, the last major geologic activity of the last dregs of Martian core heat. Its peak is over 13 miles above the surrounding terrain, much taller than Everest or Kilauea.
We are tiny specks of life-stuff, riding beautifully greened rafts of floating rock on a giant ball of churning magma, in the blast zone of a sustained thermonuclear explosion.
How is life -not- miraculous?
It is a miracle, indeed.
Yet,..,it’s possible to have a beautiful house, a perfect house that you’ve always dreamt of and next door neighbors that make it a living hell.
The dirty wars in South America used a volcano
to “disappear” political prisoners and others.
No high tech needed other than an aircraft.
Sickening thing to be sure but no different than
Arnold tossing that hi tech Cyborg into the smelter.