Earth news

Volcanoes Join Tropical Storms And Earthquakes Today

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Just as everyone is watching Dean devastate the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Basin, news of volcanoes show how easily we can slip from an over-heated planet to a cooler planet. This summer has been quite cool in the Northeast and Canada. Tonight will be 45 degrees here even as people are dying from the long heatwave in the Southeast. And there are more earthquakes in Japan. A busy time for old Mother Nature.

From AOL news:

Satellite images of Pavlof Volcano taken Thursday showed strong thermal readings, consistent with what the Alaska Volcano Observatory is calling a "vigorous eruption of lava" at the volcano about 590 miles southwest of Anchorage on the Alaska Peninsula.

The volcano is below the path of hundreds of daily international flight paths, and an explosive eruption could interrupt those operations, said Steve McNutt, a volcano seismologist with the observatory. Volcanic ash can enter an engine and make it seize up, he said.
*snip*
McNutt said seismic activity is high at the 8,262-foot volcano, with about one tremor recorded every minute. Lahars - mudslides caused when lava melts snow on the peak - have triggered some seismic activity, as well, he said.

The summer jet stream flows right over this volcano. We get really fabulous sunsets and even sunrises as well as cold summers and snowy winters if volcanoes pump out enogh fine dust high enough to enter the higher levels of the stratosphere. Right now, this particular volcano is right under the jet stream which is cutting off the plume so it can't go straight up. Here are some pictures from the United State Geological Survey:

Image Creator: Waythomas, Chris

Image courtesy of AVO/USGS.
Please cite the photographer and the Alaska Volcano Observatory / U.S. Geological Survey

This particular volcano is right next to a huge caldera from when a major volcano blew up and flew into the air and changed the climate so drastically, a number of life forms went extinct. Not the biggest and baddest of extinctions like the Great Permian but definitely, it made the climate unstable. The possibity of a caldera event haunts us. The Yellowstone plume, for example, has been extremely destructive for not just the Western US but for all living things. The Siberian Traps and the Deccan Traps nearly annihilated most life forms. The expectation is for this latest eruption to be fairly small but then, no one can really tell. More than once, a small eruption turned hyper-violent in the past such as the one in Oxaca twenty years ago.

From Alaska Edu:

Steady earthquake activity and flow events continue at Pavlof Volcano. Several discrete explosion earthquakes continue to be recorded. An AVO field party conducted an overflight of the volcano today and report that a vigorous eruption of lava at the volcano continues. While a primary hazard from this eruption is airborne ash, explosions producing ash do not seem to be significant at this time and any ash produced is likely staying below 15,000 ft above sea level. AVO is maintaining aviation color code ORANGE and volcanic activity alert level WATCH at this time.

If activity continues to increase in intensity, larger ash clouds that could affect aircraft may be produced. The most immediate ground hazard in the vicinity of the volcano includes light ash fall on nearby communities. Previous historical eruptions from Pavlof caused only a few millimeters (about 1/10th of an inch) of ash to fall on King Cove, Nelson Lagoon, Cold Bay, and Sand Point. Mudflows in drainages from the flanks of the volcano, and lava flows and avalanching of hot debris on the upper reaches of the volcano are also of concern in the uninhabited areas around the volcano. Satellite and seismic data and eyewitness observations suggest most of the surface lava activity is occurring on the southeast sector of the steep-sided volcano; this suggests that the Pacific Ocean side of the volcano is at most risk from avalanching hot debris.

The biggest bombs built by humans can't hold a candle to Mother Nature when she decides to drop meteorites, crash comets or blow away Yellowstone park. Like Yellowstone, the old caldera next to this volcano is very active with all sorts of hot vents and concentrated mineral pools and steam vents. People forget the Alaskan volanic chain is one of the most active volcanic regions on earth.

From the BBC:

A volcano erupted in the remote desert of northern Ethiopia, and two people were missing, the state-run news agency said.

The volcano spewed lava for about two hours Sunday in the Afar region, a spectacular yet barren expanse of volcanoes and ancient salt mines where bandits and rebels operate.

The Cradle of Humanity is also where the earth is subsiding and volcanoes are active. We have footprints of two humanoids in volcanic ash from half a million years ago. Humans seem to gravitate to where volcanoes are at work. It must be the fertility of such regions, at least, if the volcano doesn't blow up. All year long, there have been eruptions and sudden geological events in the Afar region.

From Wisconsin Geology. edu:

Since Pavlof is in a sparsely populated region (there are just a few towns within 50 kilometers), volcanologists were mainly concerned that the ash could destroy jet engines. That's quite a contrast to Popocatepetl, the king of the Mexico City skyline (on the odd clear day, that is). El Popo is continuously active these days, in terms of its gas emissions, earthquakes, and steam-ash eruptions.

Volcanoes in the Mexican volcano belt coexist with a zone of extremely heavy population.
Formally known as Popocatépetl, this giant, steep-sided volcanic cone is 55 kilometers east of Mexico City. After a 50 year quiet period, El Popo awoke in 1995 and has been percolating ever since. El Popo has erupted 17 times in the past 500 years or so, generally with something resembling the current combination of gas and ash, according to the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Follow this link for a 3D map and brief explanation of the recent activity and the plate tectonic setting of the Mexican volcanic belt.

I grew up around Mexican volcanoes. Observatories are built in mountains and many mountains are also near volcanic events so we did lots of mountain climbing around and about many volcanoes as my dad selected places for observatories. For example, the ones in Hawaii are built on volcanoes. The Mexican government worked with AURA to seek out places for observatories so we got to run around these mountains a good deal. One thing I discovered was the bird watching possibilities on these mountains took the breath away 50 years ago. I have no idea how it is today. If we set out a hummingbird feeding station, the most astonishingly colorful variety of tiny birds would show up in no time at all.

From Wisconsin Geology edu:

Arizona State University geologist Stanley Williams puts it this way: "Mount Popo is phenomenally active." The volcano, he says, is putting out as much as 8,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day, and since only three or four volcanoes around the world put out even 1,000 tons of the gas, "Popo's putting out 10 times more than a volcano that we consider a big deal."

Williams has tested a new remote sensor for carbon dioxide at Popo, and found in a preliminary measurement that the mountain is also putting out 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide per day, another astonishing measurement of the flow of magma perilously near the largest city in the world.

From a previous story here:

A reversal of tectonic plate motion between Acapulco and Mexico City in the last half of 2006 probably didn't ease seismic strain in the region or the specter of a major earthquake anticipated there in the coming decades, says a University of Colorado at Boulder professor.

Instead of creeping toward Mexico City at about one inch per year - the expected speed from plate tectonic theory - the region near Acapulco moved in the opposite direction for six months and sped up by four times, said CU-Boulder aerospace engineering Professor Kristine Larson.

Again and again, Mother Nature can outdow our worst efforts. Pouring CO2 and Sulfur Dioxide effortlessly, a thousand powerplants burning coal can't hold a candlestick to one massive volcanic eruption. The other day, I read a story about how the Cocos Plate has 'reversed direction'. This volcano is right at the far edge of this movement. The mysterious nature of this seeming flow backwards could be a sign that the crust below this huge volcano is bulging upwards while the other side of the landscape is tilting towards the Pacific side of Mexico? This could be a prelude to a mega-volcanic event. Humans have had to endure a number of these in the last 5 million years. These events are like evolutionary key holes: the survivors evolved rapidly to deal with deteriorating or desperate conditions. Note that Mexico City is, like Tokyo, for example or even Rome, is right up next to a major volcano. Heck, Seattle comes to mind, too! We are drawn to volcanoes.

In Manhattan, they have artificial vocanic events, like the steam pipe eruptions, since the last volcanoes here happened about 200 million years ago.

From Japan Times:

A series of relatively strong earthquakes with preliminary magnitudes of more than 4 rocked eastern Chiba Prefecture on Saturday, injuring one person, the Meteorological Agency reported.

A quake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8 hit the area at 4:14 a.m., followed by jolts with a preliminary magnitude of 4.6 at 1:36 p.m., 5.1 at 4:55 p.m. and 4.0 at 5:07 p.m., according to the agency.

Japan is, to put it mildly, not a very geologically stable place. Like Indonesia, Japan has all the elements: volcanic events, tsunamis and earthquakes as well as typhoons galore. No wonder China invented dragons and Japan invented Gozilla destroying Tokyo.

Then there is Hurricane Dean: it is scraping by Jamaica, thankfully, the eye isn't going dead-center. The Cayman Islands are being evacuated as all the rich people who use it as a tax haven and kennel for hedge funds and other exogamic organizations shirking taxes. I read at the BBC that some tourists in Mexico are complaing that their tour operators won't evacuate them. And that the hotels all over the place including the islands being hit right now, refuse to broadcast timely warnings. 100 years ago, Isben wrote a play called 'Public Enemy' which was about a doctor warning a resort that they had to evacute the hotels due to disease problems. They refused and in turn, defamed him. The tendency for everyone is to deny reality and continue to collect the money which is understandable but obviously morally wrong as well as murderous.

Let us hope everyone rides this terrible storm out in safety.

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Hurricane Dean Causes Earthquake

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Again, a hurricane comes and an earthquake happens! This isn't mere happenstance. Hurricane Dean, when it strengthened to a catagory 3 storm, swept over the smaller windward islands of the Caribbean and a 4.8 earthquake hit the very same Leeward Islands! Hurricane Dean is the first to trouble our shores this season. It is now causing inflation due to oil futures rising. If it isn't one storm, it is another, eh?

From Yahoo:

Hurricane Dean roared into the eastern Caribbean on Friday, tearing away roofs, flooding streets and causing at least three deaths on small islands as the powerful storm headed on a collision course with Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

The Atlantic season's first hurricane grew into a Category 3 storm with sustained winds of 125 mph after crossing over the warm waters of the Caribbean and forecasters warned it could grow into a monster tempest with 150 mph winds before steering next week into the Gulf of Mexico, with its 4,000 oil and gas platforms.

It is now actually a catagory 4 hurricane. I kept the older story to illustrate this business of hurricanes and typhoons causing the thinner crust of the ocean floor to flex or deform just enough to trigger an earthquake. The one in Japan as usual, came with a big storm with rotation and this also helped trigger a global banking crash just like the Kobe quake did 15 years earlier. The financial mess is still unwinding there due to the main energy source for many factories in northern Japan were damaged badly and it is a very costly repair since this nuclear power plant must be dismantled, it sits square smack dab on an earthquake fault.

Here is the list of earthquakes on the day the hurricane passed over these islands, from IRIS:

This map is from IRIS and if you compare it to the hurricane's path, it matches:

Here is a satellite photo of the the mega-typhoon hitting China right now:

From ABS-CBN news:

The weather bureau on Friday night said that typhoon Egay (international codename Sepat) continues to weaken but will still continue to bring occasional rains over Luzon and Visayas.

Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), in its 10:30 p.m. weather bulletin Friday, said Egay continues to move northwest toward the island nation of Taiwan at 17 kilometers per hour (kph).

PAGASA said Egay was spotted 180 kilometers north-northeast of Basco, Batanes or in the vicinity of Southern Taiwan. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 185 kph near the center, down from 205 kph as of 5 p.m., and gustiness of up to 220 kph.

Taiwan took the brunt. Over a hundred miners in China are trapped by flood waters...mining is by far, the most dangerous profession....all these Asian countries will have to recover form these storms and this will turn China even more inwards. The US, when we were hit by big storms, cried for help and the whole world, as usual, responded. I can only hope we return the favor, the whole planet seems to be convulsing again right now on the meteorologial as well as the geological level. And this is no coincidence: our planet's systems are interlocked in amazing ways.

From Xinhua:

China on Friday continued to order vessels to return to harbor and maritime workers to land, send warning messages and relocating people to safety as super typhoon Sepat approaches.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a circular on Friday, ordering Fujian, Guangdong and Zhejiang Provinces to prepare for the typhoon and disaster relief work. A working group of the ministry has gone to Fujian to guide and help local governments.

Will this pull China and Taiwan closer? The US must help more simply because if we don't, others will. And we just gave $30 billion to Israel's Jews (NOT the Muslims or Christians in Israel!) without strings. Hell, we just gave Countrywide, a probable criminal banking scam, $11 billion! The diplomatic possibilities of helping other natioins is obvious and we seem to be oblivious to this. Equador just got hammered by an epic earthquake this week and desperately needs help.

From Yahoo:

Hungry earthquake survivors ransacked a public market Friday, while other mobs looted a refrigerated trailer and blocked aid trucks, prompting Peru's president to appeal for calm. Aid finally arrived to the disaster zone after about 36 hours without much help.

With hopes diminishing of finding more survivors from Wednesday's devastating magnitude-8 quake, the death toll had reached at least 510. Another 1,500 people were injured, overwhelming the few hospitals in Peru's southern desert region.

Severe damage to the only highway to the hardest hit zone slowed trucks from Lima. But food, water, tents and blankets were finally arriving, and with Peruvian soldiers distributing aluminum caskets, the first mass funerals were being held.

How heartbreaking it all is. A helicopter bringing aid crashed and where is the US navy? Where are they? When we lost New Orleans they were all in the Gulf of Persia! And Asia! Patrolling the planet's richest regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Israel and Japan! We used to concentrate on North and South America but these places are now abandoned as our dying empire seeks to dominate Asia and Europe. This costly plan has many hidden costs one being, China is now preempting us in the rescue operations business in South America, for example. But they are being hammered too, by Mother Nature.

The typhoon lashing China is a classic killer storm and maybe it will trigger earthquakes. Not all storms do this but they do it often enough to require warnings of possible earthquakes associated with these mega-storms. And these storm/earthquake events cause economic mayhem. The US lost a major city due to a hurricane and our natural gas production was hard hit and the economic smash-up is ongoing, the US was in the middle of this goofy building boom due to cheap Federal Reserve interest rates and since that hurricane, rates have climbed along with inflation and now Hurricane Dean is going to rip through the Gulf of Mexico, one of the world's biggest bathtubs filled to the brim with hot water.

Fom CNN:

Hurricane Dean intensified Saturday as it muscled across the Caribbean and headed toward a dangerous rendezvous Sunday with Jamaica.

Forecasters fear Dean will be a destructive Category 5 monster packing 155 mph winds by then.

Even worse could be yet to come. By Monday, as Dean nears Cancun and other tourist areas along Mexico's eastern Yucatan coast, its sustained winds could be 160 mph, with gusts as high as 195 mph -- wreaking new havoc on an area heavily damaged just two years ago by Hurricane Wilma.

Up here in the Northeast, we have had a surprizingly cool late July into August. It feels like fall. Tonight, my mountain will drop to 45 degrees and some of the trees think it is fall and are turning their leaves red and gold! My little hummingbird friends who entertain me out on the deck all summer have all left, the last stragglers said goodbye last week. For some reason, strong Canadian winds have been sweeping south across us. I can't say why. I wonder if this will change now that the hurricanes are beginning. Usually, they sweep northwards after hitting the Gulf states.

This one will strike either the Yucatan or it could wobble north and hit the US. Wherever it goes, it will destroy oil rigs if it is a catagory 5+ monster and this will have many repercussions for a long time. With world oil prices at their highest, they will climb. No longer can Saudi Arabia make up the difference without oil prices climbing. Indeed, the whole point of our illegal invasion of Iraq was to seize the oil and contol OPEC by controlling one of the biggest Arab oil fields. The failure of this invasion to drop oil prices is obvious and the Hurricane Katrina/Hurricane Wilma mess deepened the economic crisis.

About the Yucatan: when they decided to built all those hotels there, I thought they were nuts. And they are nuts. Every two or three years, thousands of frightened tourists try to flee that death trap and quite a few are forced to huddle in the dark with the wind screaming and everything being torn up. Eventually, people will understand that Paradise can flip into Hell in an instant. For example, the very same resorts annihilated in an eyeblink along with thousands of tourists and hundreds of thousands of citizens, had less than 5 minutes warning!

It amuses me, how swiftly people forget catastrophes. This is why Galveston is still sitting there, waiting to be destroyed again and Miami Beach continues to flirt with complete annihilation and New Orleans can't be rebuilt the way it was. Global warming isn't about warm temperatures but rather, about melting ice and amount of sunlight. Recently, there has been this fight over whether it was warmer in 1933 during the Dust Bowl years or today. The CO2 production of the entire twentieth century has meant that any change in solar output means warming has a stronger effect. Every time a major volcano has a major erupton like Pitumbo in the Philippines, we get temporary cooling and these change the overall statistics but the warming is proven by the glacial melt going on with all the world's glaciers in all hemispheres and in Antarctica and the loss of sea ice in the Arctic.

Refuting this is impossible. And the mega-storm effect is very, very real. This huge hurricane forming in the Gulf will suck up a lot of energy because there have been no storms at all this season so as the earth shifts from the Solstice to the Equinox, violent storms will bloom. My parents have flown in planes all over the planet for nearly 70 years. They noticed by the early 1960's that if they flew in the spring or the fall, the nearer to the equinoxes they flew, the nastier their trips so they tried to schedule them to not coincide if they were flying cross country or overseas. I remember some very scary flights in violent storms in DC3s!

Are we ready for hurricanes? Is the super-secretive Lord Voldemort clone, Chertoff, running around in public, talking about how we must protect ourselves? And where is the National Guard, the bitter remants of that organization? Are they in the middle of a surge in Iraq or will they save people from the surge in a hurricane here at home? And why didn't the Democratic Party leaders impeach Bush by now?

Instead, more Americans will die. And our economy won't be saved by helicopters flown by Bernanke, either. We can't paper over all this with dollar bills printed up in secret. The Chinese are no longer holding our dollars as they pour in.

Instead, Mother Nature does what she has to do: she follows her own laws and they are unassailable and can't be papered over with magic money.

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Earthquakes In Central And South America

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Due to the economic mess, I have neglected talking about the most important thing of all: our planet earth, our home sweet home. A hurricane is plummeling Hawaii and just like with Japan last month, there is an earthquake along with a big tropical rotation! Also very strange news from Mexico: the Cocos plate is moving in the exact opposite direction it is being shoved. This is all connected with the long faultline that shows up in America as the San Andreas. This is an astonishing development and I think, the landmass of Mexico is sliding down towards the deep trench offshore because the entire complex is dropping?

From CNN:

An earthquake on Monday jolted the Big Island of Hawaii, which is already under a hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning.

The magnitude 5.3 temblor struck at 7:38 p.m. local time, about 25 miles south of Hilo, according to a preliminary report from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Some geologists have theorized that violent storms with intense rotation can trigger earthquakes and we saw this happen twice this summer. I would agree there might be a connection and this bears watching. The suggestion is, the low pressure concentrated over the center of these massive storms deforms the sea bed which is presumably thinner than the islands or continents by definition. Now that we have a lot of satellites watching things, it may be possible to prove a direct connection.

From Xinhua:

An vast offshore tectonic plate that has reversed course and is sliding backward has geologists worried that a devastating earthquake may strike Mexico City.

The tectonic plate had been sliding toward Mexico City at a rate of 1 inch per year, as recorded by Global Positioning System measuring stations near Acapulco and Guerrero, which is about 175 miles southwest of Mexico City. That movement was normal, as predicted by theories of how Earth's crustal plates should move.

At subduction zones, like this one, an oceanic plate usually slides beneath a continental plate, and now and then major temblors occur. Suddenly, in the latter half of 2006, the plate began moving the other way and quadrupled its speed, scientists announced today.

When I saw that news, I thought, 'This is impossible.' And I suspect the plate itself is not moving in the opposite direction but rather, the top of the landmass of Mexico is subsiding towards the trench that runs parallel to the Mexican landmass. This could be a signal that the sector where the Cocos plate is being shoved into the North American plate and the Caribbean plates is under such great pressure, there has been a major shift perhaps a folding of the lithosphere connected with all this, namely where the subduction zone is.

If we look at the maps here we can see from the lay of the land that this is a very complex intersection of more than two plates. The dotted yellow line is a line of active volcanos that line the collision zone between the North American plate and the plates being shoved under Mexico by the Pacific plate. Note that the North American plate is sliding the opposite direction as the Pacific plate. :This is a very violent region running from South America's tip all the way up to the end of the Aluetian islands off of Alaska.

Picture from a survey created by Dr. William A. Bowen UC:

A reversal of tectonic plate motion between Acapulco and Mexico City in the last half of 2006 probably didn't ease seismic strain in the region or the specter of a major earthquake anticipated there in the coming decades, says a University of Colorado at Boulder professor.

Instead of creeping toward Mexico City at about one inch per year - the expected speed from plate tectonic theory - the region near Acapulco moved in the opposite direction for six months and sped up by four times, said CU-Boulder aerospace engineering Professor Kristine Larson. The changes in motion were detected by analyzing data from GPS satellite receivers set up in Guerrero, Mexico, that were installed by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) under the direction of UNAM geophysicist Vladimir Kostoglodov and augmented by CU-Boulder.

This close up map showing how the zone under Mexico City, a depression in this chain of volcanic mountains, a place that has been subsiding for quite a while now, the surface landmass movement tracked by satellite has barely moved. As we travel westwards to Acapulco, Mexico, the movement of the land surface westwards accelerates and when we reach the oceanic trench, it is very prounounced. I would suspect the plate itself hasn't reveresed direction but rather, it signals an evolving collapse or opening of a gap that might suddenly express itself as a very violent, Mag 9+ earthquake/tsunami event.

Just as I was publishing this story, here comes a quake in the region I was talking about:

A earthquake of magnitude at least 7.5 has hit Peru, centred 160km (100 miles) from the capital, Lima, the US Geological Survey reports.
It hit near the town of Chincha Alta, and was only 18km (11 miles) below the earth's surface, the USGS said.

South America and Africa used to be joined back 200 million years ago. Many lifeforms today that dominate both continents arose in the great rift valley that widened slowly over the eons. When the greatest extinction of all, the Permian, happened, there was so little oxygen, only creature living in very deep valleys and rift zones survived and the one with the most survivors was this rift zone.

South America has moved to the west while Africa has moved northwards, creating the Alps, for example. The Mediterranean ocean is the remains of a much bigger sea. As South America shoves into the Pacific Plate, it rides over that plate as it rotates while it travels westwards and it is squeezing the Central American landmass which is why there is that goose-neck isthmus connecting North and South America, a recent geological event which happened during the last 45 million years. The invasion of North American predators wiped out many life forms in the Southern hemisphere.

The continent continues to jerk westards and rotate over the Pacific plate and this is causing a chain reaction up the entire coast and I will note that California has been shaking with 1-5 mag earthquake events with increasing frequency except for one sector of the San Andreas north of LA, east of Santa Barbara and south of the Bay Area. When this section releases its pent up energy, it will be very big.

The subsidence going on below the Gulf of California will affect the fault lines northwards if there is a major quake down there.

Now for some other earth news:

From the BBC:

The idea that the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has created a wildlife haven is not scientifically justified, a study says.

Recent studies said rare species had thrived despite raised radiation levels as a result of no human activity.

But scientists who assessed the 1986 disaster's impact on birds said the ecological effects were "considerably greater than previously assumed".

True, many growing things are recolonizing that deadly zone. But the mutation rate and the mortality rate are probably much higher due to the contamination. Interesting to see nature try to fill this void. It stands as a warning sign to us higher mammals. We don't want to cleanse the earth using nukes.

And, from NOAA, here is the latest hurricane coming our way. The Atlantic has been very quiet due to conditions in Africa.

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