Death toll of powerful earthquake in Haiti soars to 1,297
Source: AP
By EVENS SANON and MARK STEVENSON
LES CAYES, Haiti (AP) — The death toll from a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Haiti climbed to 1,297 on Sunday, a day after the powerful temblor turned thousands of structures into rubble and set off franctic rescue efforts ahead of a potential deluge from an approaching storm.
Saturday’s earthquake also left at least 5,700 people injured in the Caribbean nation, with thousands more displaced from their destroyed or damaged homes. Survivors in some areas were forced to wait out in the open amid oppressive heat for help from overloaded hospitals.
The devastation could soon worsen with the coming of Tropical Depression Grace, which is predicted to reach Haiti on Monday night. The U.S. National Hurricane Center warned that although Grace had weakened from tropical storm strength Sunday, it still posed a threat to bring heavy rain, flooding and landslides.
The earthquake struck the southwestern part of the hemisphere’s poorest nation, almost razing some towns and triggering landslides that hampered rescue efforts in a country already struggling with the coronavirus pandemic, a presidential assassination and a wave of gang violence.
Mount Etna is 100 feet taller than it was 6 months ago
4 days ago
Mount Etna, Europe's tallest and most active volcano, has erupted so much in the past six months, it has grown about 100 feet (30 meters) in height, satellite images reveal.
The youngest and most active of Etna's four summit craters — the southeastern crater — is now the tallest part of the volcano, towering 11,013 feet (3,357 m) above sea level, the tallest it has been in recorded history, according to the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), located at the foot of Mount Etna in Catania, Sicily.
This sudden growth spurt is the result of about 50 eruptions at the southeastern crater since Feb. 16, 2021, which have led to a "conspicuous transformation of the shape of the volcano," the INGV reported in a translated statement released Aug. 10. Scientists discovered the explosive growth while analyzing images taken by the Earth-imaging Pléiades satellites on July 13 and July 25. The data have an uncertainty of about 10 feet (3 m), the INGV noted.
In fact, the southeastern crater is now taller than its "big brother," the northeastern crater, the tallest peak on Etna for the past 40 years.
After the northeastern crater erupted in 1980 and 1981, it reached a maximum height of 10,990 feet (3,350 m). But that height decreased over the years as the crater's edges collapsed. As of the summer of 2018, the northeastern crater measured 10,912 feet (3,326 m) tall.
4.3 magnitude earthquake hits Carson area, shakes SoCal
Source: abc7 Los Angeles
CARSON, Calif. (KABC) -- A 4.3 magnitude earthquake struck in the Carson area Friday night, with shaking felt throughout the Los Angeles region.
Reports of shaking were felt in the San Fernando Valley, Antelope Valley, Ventura County, Orange County and possibly as far south as San Diego, according to the USGS.
The quake hit near the Carson area at 7:58 p.m. at a depth of about 9 miles. It was originally estimated at 4.4 and then downgraded to 4.3
Volcano Erupts on La Palma Island
Source: The Jerusalem Post
A volcano erupted on the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma on Sunday, sending fountains of lava and a plume of smoke and ash into the air from the Cumbre Vieja national park in the south of the island.
Authorities had already begun evacuating the infirm and some farm animals from the surrounding villages before the eruption, which took place on a wooded slope in the Cabeza de Vaca area at 3:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), according to the islands' government.
Immediately after the eruption, the municipality urged residents in a statement to "exercise extreme caution," and stay away from the area and off the roads.
The population of nearby villages was told to go to one of five centers to be evacuated, and soldiers were deployed to help.
Hawaii's Kilauea volcano erupts, lava fountains form in park
Source: AP
HONOLULU (AP) — One of the most active volcanos on Earth is erupting on Hawaii’s Big Island.
Officials with the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed Wednesday that an eruption has begun in Kilauea volcano’s Halemaumau crater at the volcano’s summit.
Webcam footage of the crater showed lava fountains covering the floor of the crater and billowing clouds of volcanic gas were rising into the air. The same area has been home to a large lava lake at various times throughout the volcano’s eruptive past.
The eruption is not in an area with homes and is entirely contained within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
(Science Alert) A huge seismic event that started in May of 2018 and was felt across the entire globe has officially given birth to a new underwater volcano.
Off the eastern coast of the island of Mayotte, a gigantic new feature rises 820 meters (2,690 feet) from the seafloor, a prominence that hadn't been there prior to an earthquake that rocked the island in May 2018.
"This is the largest active submarine eruption ever documented," the researchers wrote in their paper.
The new feature, thought to be part of a tectonic structure between the East African and Madagascar rifts, is helping scientists understand deep Earth processes about which we know relatively little.
(The Asahi Shimbun) A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.1 jolted Tokyo and surrounding areas late on Thursday, stopping train lines and causing sporadic power cuts, but there were no reports of major damage, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK said.
The tremor, at 10:41 p.m., registered upper 5 on Japan’s intensity scale of 7, a level that could cause some damage to buildings and power cuts, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The quake had an epicenter in Chiba Prefecture, to the east of the capital Tokyo. There was no danger of a tsunami from the quake, according to NHK.
The government set up an emergency response task force.
NHK showed new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida rushing back to his office. He told reporters he had instructed the task force to “find out about the latest situation, coordinate with local authorities on rescuing the victims of the disaster,” and to provide information to the public in a speedy manner.
(The Asahi Shimbun) The Oct. 7 earthquake was the strongest felt in Tokyo in a decade, but it will pale in comparison to the one that has long been predicted to devastate the capital.
Seismologists and other experts are now trying to determine if the latest quake is tectonically connected to the future “Big One.”
“The earthquake anticipated by the government’s Cabinet Office would have a rather shallow focus, but the latest one’s focus was deeper and smaller in magnitude,” the Meteorological Agency said at a news conference early on Oct. 8.
The Oct. 7 quake had a magnitude of 5.9. The future one is expected to be of magnitude 7 or larger.
Each whole number on the magnitude scale represents a tenfold increase in the measured amplitude and a 32-fold rise in energy release.
(Honolulu Star Adviser via Yahoo) Oct. 15—There is no tsunami threat to Hawaii following a 6.4-magnitude earthquake near the Solomon Islands this afternoon.
The earthquake occurred at 4 :45 p.m. Hawaii time.
(Futurity) New research suggests high water content in magma can significantly reduce the risk that a volcano will explode.
Two questions have long troubled volcanologists: When exactly will a volcano erupt next? And how will that eruption unfold? Will the lava flow down the mountain as a viscous paste, or will the volcano explosively drive a cloud of ash kilometers up into the atmosphere?
The first question of “when” can now be answered relatively precisely, explains Olivier Bachmann, professor of magmatic petrology at ETH Zurich. He points to monitoring data from the Canary Island of La Palma, where the Cumbre Vieja volcano recently emitted a lava flow that poured down to the sea. Using seismic data, the experts were able to track the rise of the lava in real time and predict the eruption to within a few days.
WATER IN MAGMA
The “how,” on the other hand, is still a major headache for volcanologists. Volcanoes on islands such as La Palma or Hawaii are known to be unlikely to produce huge explosions. But this question is much more difficult to answer for the large volcanoes located along subduction zones, such as those found in the Andes, on the US West Coast, in Japan, Indonesia, or in Italy and Greece. This is because all these volcanoes can erupt in many different ways, with no way to predict which will occur.
(Futurity) New research clarifies monogenetic volcanoes, a type of volcanic hazard that can pose important dangers despite its short lifespan.
These volcanoes erupt for a period that might last for days, years, or decades. Then, they go dark and die. (Monogenetic means “one life”).
The landscape of the southwestern United States is heavily scarred by past eruptions of such volcanoes, and a new study marks a step toward understanding future risks for the region.
The research, which appears in the journal Geosphere, provides a broad overview of what we know—and don’t know—about this type of volcanism in the US Southwest over the past 2.58 million years, a geologic period known as the Quaternary.
During this time, more than 1,800 monogenetic volcanoes erupted in the region, according to a count covering Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and parts of California’s eastern edge. Add in the Pinacate volcanic field, located mostly in the Mexican state of Sonora, bordering Arizona, and the number goes up to over 2,200, scientists say. (The volcanoes included are ones whose ages are estimated to be in the range of the Quaternary, but many have not been precisely dated.)
Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) Mount Semeru, a volcano on Indonesia's East Java Province, erupted on Saturday, spewing a column of smoke and ash while displacing thousands from the area, authorities said.
The eruption has killed at least one person and wounded 41 others, Indah Masdar, deputy head of Lumajang District, said in a press conference held in Jakarta.
Budi Santosa, Head of Disaster Management of East Java Province, said earlier on Saturday that two sub districts had been "badly affected" by the volcano's eruption.
Volcanic ash, the smell of sulfur was reported around 3 p.m. local time (3 a.m ET), the Mount Semeru Volcano Observation Post reported. It added that hot ash clouds were falling towards an East Java village, Sapitarang, in Pronojiwo District.
(ETH Zurich via Eureka Alert) The evolution of our Earth is the story of its cooling: 4.5 billion years ago, extreme temperatures prevailed on the surface of the young Earth, and it was covered by a deep ocean of magma. Over millions of years, the planet’s surface cooled to form a brittle crust. However, the enormous thermal energy emanating from the Earth’s interior set dynamic processes in motion, such as mantle convection, plate tectonics and volcanism.
Still unanswered, though, are the questions of how fast the Earth cooled and how long it might take for this ongoing cooling to bring the aforementioned heat-driven processes to a halt.
One possible answer may lie in the thermal conductivity of the minerals that form the boundary between the Earth’s core and mantle.
This boundary layer is relevant because it is here that the viscous rock of the Earth’s mantle is in direct contact with the hot iron-nickel melt of the planet’s outer core. The temperature gradient between the two layers is very steep, so there is potentially a lot of heat flowing here. The boundary layer is formed mainly of the mineral bridgmanite. However, researchers have a hard time estimating how much heat this mineral conducts from the Earth’s core to the mantle because experimental verification is very difficult.
Now, ETH Professor Motohiko Murakami and his colleagues from Carnegie Institution for Sciencehave developed a sophisticated measuring system that enables them to measure the thermal conductivity of bridgmanite in the laboratory, under the pressure and temperature conditions that prevail inside the Earth. For the measurements, they used a recently developed optical absorption measurement system in a diamond unit heated with a pulsed laser.
Nah, that's just Goku landing a fist on Freeza's face. Nothing to see here.
On a serious note, that amount of ash being spewed high into the atmosphere makes it likely we will experience temporary climate cooling at certain parts of the world in the short term.
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
