- Seismicity Continues At Kilauea Summit, Southwest Fault System Big Island Video News
- History’s best-monitored caldera-forming eruption provides insights into how earthquakes begin Stanford University
- Scientists Provide More Details On Recent Kilauea Magma Intrusion Big Island Video News
- Photo and Video Chronology – Aerial and ground surveys of Kīlauea, response instrumentation | U.S. Geological Survey USGS (.gov)
- Magma moving in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park slows, decreasing likelihood of Kīlauea eruption Big Island Now
Tag Archives: kilauea
Scientists Provide More Details On Recent Kilauea Magma Intrusion – Big Island Video News
- Scientists Provide More Details On Recent Kilauea Magma Intrusion Big Island Video News
- Volcano Watch — Another intrusion southwest of Kīlauea’s summit | U.S. Geological Survey usgs.gov
- History’s best-monitored caldera-forming eruption provides insights into how earthquakes begin Stanford University
- Photo and Video Chronology – Aerial and ground surveys of Kīlauea, response instrumentation | U.S. Geological Survey usgs.gov
- Magma moving in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park slows, decreasing likelihood of Kīlauea eruption Big Island Now
Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano is erupting once again
CNN
—
Weeks after Hawaii’s Mauna Loa erupted for the first time in decades, neighboring volcano Kilauea is showing activity again after a brief pause, according to officials.
Kilauea – which had stopped erupting last month for the first time since September 2021 amid Mauna Loa’s own lava eruption and subsequent slowdown – had increased earthquake activity beneath its summit and recorded ground deformation on Thursday morning, officials said.
“Kilauea volcano is erupting,” the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and the US Geological Survey said on Thursday. A glow was detected in nearby webcam images, “indicating that the eruption has resumed within Halemaʻumaʻu crater in Kilauea’s summit caldera” at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, the agencies said.
Officials have elevated Kilauea’s volcano alert level to a “warning” status as well as updated its aviation color code from orange to red, the agencies said.
The warning status and red color code are the highest levels of alert, indicating hazardous eruption with significant emission of volcanic ash.
The eruption is occurring within a closed portion of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
“Therefore, high levels of volcanic gas are the primary hazard of concern, as this hazard can have far-reaching effects down-wind,” according to a status report from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. It also warns residents to avoid exposure to volcanic particles that could waft some distance from the eruption.
The National Park Service has posted an air quality alert on its website, warning that unhealthy levels of volcanic pollutants can occur. It includes charts with regular air quality readings, particularly relevant for those with pre-existing respiratory conditions.
Visitors to the national park may encounter a “minor hazard,” the status report says.
“Visitors to Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park should note that under southerly (non-trade) wind conditions, there is potential for a dusting of powdery to gritty ash composed of volcanic glass and rock fragments.”
The eruption is currently confined to the crater and poses “no threat to communities,” the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said on social media.
Kilauea’s eruption in 2018 was one of the most destructive in recent Hawaii history, forcing evacuations of surrounding neighborhoods and destroying hundreds of homes.
Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupts again, summit crater glows
HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii’s Kilauea began erupting inside its summit crater Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, less than one month after the volcano and its larger neighbor Mauna Loa stopped releasing lava.
The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory detected a glow in webcam images indicating Kilauea had begun erupting inside Halemaumau crater at the volcano’s summit caldera, the agency said.
Kilauea’s summit is inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and away from residential communities.
Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. It last erupted for 16 months starting in September 2021. For about two weeks starting Nov. 27, Hawaii had two volcanoes spewing lava side by side when Mauna Loa erupted for the first time in 38 years. Both volcanoes stopped erupting at about the same time.
Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey raised the alert level for Kilauea due to signs that magma was moving below the summit surface, an indication that the volcano might erupt.
The Source of The World’s Most Active Volcano Might Finally Be Pinpointed
The Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii is said to be the world’s most active volcano, and yet we still don’t really know how it was born.
New research suggests the original womb of magma lies more than 90 kilometers beneath the hotspot. While previous studies have found two shallow chambers of magma beneath Kīlauea, they weren’t big enough to explain all the liquid rock this volcano spews.
A larger chamber, about 11 kilometers deep (that’s 6.8 miles), was detected using seismic waves in 2014, and yet now it seems the original magma chamber lies even deeper.
A new analysis of broken fragments of ancient volcanic rock, dredged from the south-eastern flank of the Big Island, suggest Kīlauea was born from a pool of pyroclastic material close to 100 kilometers deep.
Sometime between 210,000 and 280,000 years ago, the Pacific tectonic plate shifted and a plume of magma rushed upwards into the sea. As the piping hot liquid cooled and solidified, it formed a large ‘shield’ that burst through the waves about 100,000 years ago.
So Kīlauea came to be, but the original rocks ejected from this hotspot are incredibly hard to find, buried as they are beneath numerous layers of newer lava. The igneous rock dredged up in the current study provides an unprecedented glimpse into the volcano’s deep and distant past.
Before, it was thought the Kīlauea volcano was created through solid rock partially melting from the heat of the hotspot.
The new research, however, finds no evidence to support that hypothesis. The rocks collected were found to contain a suite of rare earth elements that models suggest could only be formed in one specific way.
Instead of partial melting, it seems the Kīlauea volcano was originally formed through fractional crystallization. This term describes the creation of crystals in deep pools of magma, which do not react with residual melt later on.
“We explored the formation of these samples through experimental work, which involved melting synthetic rocks at high temperatures (> 1,100 ˚C) and pressures (> 3 GPa), and by using a new method for modeling their rare earth element concentrations,” explains lead author, geologist Laura Miller from Monash University in Australia.
“We found that the samples could only be formed by the crystallization and removal (fractional crystallization) of garnet.”
Garnet is a crystal that can form when magma is subject to high pressures and temperatures more than 90 kilometers beneath Earth’s crust. The fact its presence is required to explain the composition of rocks from Kīlauea suggests the original eruption came from similar depths.
Or possibly even deeper. Experiments show garnet can be crystallized at depths of up to 150 kilometers beneath Earth’s crust.
The original source of the Hawaiian islands may not be that deep, but the new findings suggest Kīlauea’s plumbing is not nearly as superficial as we once thought.
“This challenges the current viewpoint that fractional crystallization is solely a shallow process and suggests that the development of a deep (> 90 km) magma chamber is an important early stage in the birth of a Hawaiian volcano,” says Miller.
Other volcanoes elsewhere in the world, like Mount Vesuvius, also show crystal formation times that suggest there are “long-lived deep-seated” reservoirs of magma hiding beneath the surface. Yet Kīlauea’s original magma chamber seems to be much deeper than most.
Why that is remains a mystery for now.
The study was published in Nature Communications.