Fast Friday Flotsam: Volcano updates a'plenty!

Leaving for Death Valley tomorrow – I’ll be sure to take some pictures of Ubehebe Crater and the volcano at the Mirage. This will likely be the last new post until about a week from now, but look for the Erta’Ale Volcano Profile, maybe a new Mystery Volcano Photo and I’ll leave a thread open for any new volcano news.

nColima in Mexico.

Eruptions reader Tim Stone sent me this image from Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi’s Twitpic feed – it is a stunner of the caldera on Jebel Marra in Sudan. The only known historical eruption for this volcano was ~2000 BC within the Deriba Caldera, but it has produced pyroclastic flows that travelled upwards of 30 km from the caldera.

There are a couple new pictures from Colima in Mexico posted on the Colima Volcano Database. The picture show the growing phases of the dome since 2008 and the new lava flow on western side of the volcano.

A number of Eruptions readers have mentioned an increase in activity at Costa Rica’s Turrialba. OVSICORI said that it appears clear that new magma (spanish) is moving into the volcano based on the current seismicity and gas emissions at the volcano. Turrialba experienced its first phreatic eruption in the last 100 years in January, but new magma has yet to be seen at the summit crater.

You can always count on great shots of volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula from the NASA Earth Observatory team, and this new image of Klyuchevskaya (Kliuchevskoi). It shows the new dark grey ash from the current eruption on the snow the lines the flanks on the volcano. Some of the recent eruptions of Kliuchevskoi have produced plumes upwards of 6 km / 20,000 feet.

Before I forget, here is this week’s Smithsonian/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report.

And for those of you not following the Eyjafjallajökull (Iceland) earthquake swarm thread, the swarm does continues to march on – the question still is, to what is it leading?