Monday Musings: Submarine supervolcanoes(?), Iceland’s volcanic tourism, Redoubt settles down

Lots to do!

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nTourists flock to the Eyjafjallajökull-Fimmvörduháls in Iceland.

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• The media does love the term “supervolcano”, and a number of Eruptions readers sent me a link to the article on the dreaded submarine “supervolcanoes”. I would delve into this article from Live Science, but it sadly again does a dreadful job with a lot of this – remember, “supervolcano” is a made-up word by the BBC with no strict definition, so trying to say there are a dozen supervolcanoes worldwide is just silly. And why does it take multiple paragraphs and multiple mentions of “scientists” before they get a name? I mean, do we spend half an article on a baseball game referring to “players” before mentioning who was involved? Even the part that makes sense just feels like a jumble … ah well.

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• We’re all still watching the Icelandic eruption at Eyjafjallajökull-Fimmvörduháls – although reports from volcano watchers early today suggest the eruption is in hiatus UPDATE 12:30 PM EDT 4/12/10: Well, new reports have Einar Kjartansson of the Icelandic Met Office saying the eruption is winding down. The latest reports have more earthquakes near the active fissure, some close to the Eyjafjallajökull glacier. There is also a nice piece in ScienceDaily on NASA’s efforts to help monitor the eruption using satellites and AI – specifically on the EO-1 satellite, which caught a glimpse of the eruption as it began when it registered an unknown “hotspot” in Iceland. However, the big news in the eyes of the media is the tourist attraction that the eruption has become.

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• Just to follow up on the Redoubt news from last week: the seismicity at the summit has diminished greatly since it was noticed.

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• There is also some news from Hawai`i about a lava flow that is snaking its way towards the ocean. It has traveled a couple kilometers over the last week. The Pu`u O`o flow may rejoin the main flow field to its east soon, but there isn’t much pointing to any new ocean entry coming soon.