Guest Thinkers — September 1, 2010

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report for 8/5-11/2009

The weekly Smithsonian / USGS Volcano Report brings us news from Indonesia, Philippines, Russia and more.

Even the SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report seems a little light — welcome to the dog days of summer!

Highlights from this week’s report include:

“Thunderous sounds”, incandescence and small plumes (hundreds of meters) with more frequent seismicity at Ibu in Indonesia.

A sharp increase in sulfur dioxide output was noted at Mayon in the Philippines on August 4 – from ~700-900 tonnes/day to almost 2,000 tonnes/day.

~3,000 meter/10,000 foot gas-and-ash plume from Bagana in Papua New Guinea – you can see it on this recent NASA Earth Observatory image.

Ash/gas plumes from Sakurajima in Japan rose to ~2-4 km / 6,000-13,000 feet and were accompanied by explosions.

Shiveluch in Kamchatka continues to produce 4-8 km / 13,000-25,000 foot ash plumes related to the dome emplacement/collapse that has been ongoing for the summer. The thermal anomaly at the summit continues to grow, indicating that new lava is causes the dome to grow significantly.