Aerial bombing of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano was done in the past, widening the eruption crater to minimize high flying volcanic ash problems.
WUWT reader “magma control” writes in with this suggestion:
The USAF bombed the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa, in 1935 and 1942 to divert lava flows threatening Hilo, and again for testing in 1975-76 [1, 2].
As in Iceland magma flow and strong quakes around Bardarbunga volcano area continue and officials do not exclude a big eruption [3], we propose an immediate serious consideration of using bombing to widen the crater in case of an eruption, in order to prevent volcanic ash reaching high and causing too many problems in air-traffic (as from the same country in 2011) and climate.
There is literature support for the idea:
Modern aerial bombing has a substantial probability of success for diversion of lava from most expected types of eruptions on Mauna Loa’s Northeast Rift Zone, if Hilo is threatened and if Air Force assistance is requested… (Bulletin Volcanologique 1980, Volume 43, Issue 4, pp 727-741).”
Here is a photo from 1942, and the results in a study below:
REFERENCES
1. Diversion of lava flows by aerial bombing — lessons from Mauna Loa volcano, Hawaii J. P. Lockwood, F. A. Torgerson. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02600367 Bulletin Volcanologique 1980, Volume 43, Issue 4, pp 727-741
“Modern aerial bombing has a substantial probability of success for diversion of lava from most expected types of eruptions on Mauna Loa’s Northeast Rift Zone, if Hilo is threatened and if Air Force assistance is requested. The techniques discussed in this paper may be applicable to other areas of the world threatened by fluid lava flows in the future.”
2. Biplanes Bomb Hawaii Volcano 1935: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwX2Xn4OgA0
3. http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/articles/nr/2947
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Maybe a tomahawks missile would be more accurate.
Why is it Americans only response to something they clearly don’t understand is it either shoot it or bomb it?
you are right. But why bomb Mouna Loa? it is an effusive eruptive volcano and dust, if it forms, falls locally not high into the atmosphere. Barbarbunga is covered in think ice which is the problem.
Avoiding a new, devastating SIX VEI (as in 1477) eruption from the same place, is an international problem and US have some experience for all to consider. Iceland-UN-EU should have ALREADY declared their fatalism and humankind must demand OPEN DIALOGUE for ANY solution as the one proposed, that does NOT worsen condition (as it will take place AFTER an eventual eruption, with no-nuclear weapons), but may decrease substantially huge and world-wide volcanic clouding problems.
I don’t understand the Pentagon the Whitehouse the IPCC, WalMart, KFC, Muck-Donald’s ……so bomb them first.
john;
Yeah, think ice is dangerous; it’s very crafty and sneaky!
Too bad Red Adair isn’t around to cap it.
During WW2 American bombers succeded in diverting lava from Mt. Vesuvius that was threatening Naples.
Experience is always needed! The proposal here says: “widen the crater in case of an eruption”, that means bombing will NOT cause any eruption, tactical weapons will NOT worsen any condition, instead widening an exit hole decreases speed flow, thus we will NOT face the results of another air-traffic chaos, taking also into account that Bardarbunga gave in 1477 a very strong SIX VEI eruption, adding to the longitude of the Little Ice-age!…
Disastrous volcanism is avertable now!
“Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks”. Gifford H. Miller et al, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L02708, 2012 http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011GL050168.shtml
SOME Little Ice-Age eruptions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Quaternary_volcanic_eruptions#Holocene_eruptions
Yes lava was diverted, onto several villages, and the eruption continued as before.
Hawaii and Iceland are two quite different types of volcanic fields. What works for Mauna Loa may well not work too well in Iceland. The Hawaii volcanoes form over a hotspot in the oceanic crust and are usually quite round in their crates. Even a cursory glance at icelands volcanoes will tell you that they adopt a linear form associated with the separating mid-atlantic ridge.I suspect that bombing them would be useless because they appear to eject magma through rifts in the earths crust so there is no means of making the crater collapse through bombing. Just a thought.
Iceland is a combination of both.
Also an Islandic hotspot. The island has two types of volcanicity and many lava types. The iceland volcanoes tend to be violent because of the ice covering, giving Plinnian eruptions, but some are effusice. Barbarbunga is a stratocone under an ice sheet.
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Nuke it from orbit – it’s the only way to be sure.
Bárðarbunga volcano is not going to erupt. I’ve seen these predictions over the last 20+ years, and they never seem to erupt. An exception is Mount St. Helens in WA state. But there were indications of a bulge forming in addition to the multiple earthquakes.
Erm, Jon reports that it’s already started-
http://www.jonfr.com/volcano/?p=4856
There’s a link in the post to a probably-overloaded webcam…
There is an incredibly massive system involved here – no telling if the whole fissure will go or not, but just saying “It won’t erupt” is not what a lot of experts are saying now…
Link to webcam:
http://www.livefromiceland.is/webcams/bardarbunga
This has my vote for most entertaining comment.
Good call…
Where do we find sacrificial Virgins to conscript?
http://grooveshark.com/#!/album/Tame+The+Volcano+Disc+1/6389178
Good luck in Iceland.
We’ll just use the middle class instead. There’s a lot more of ’em than virgins.
Better to use “billionaires” … they’re as rare as virgins and the volcano will appreciate the effort.
Virgins are scarce because of the action in Gaza.
It won’t help the actual eruption, but Iceland stopped the advance of lava that was about to finish off a town by spraying sea water on it, see http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/of97-724/
They should definitely bomb it. At night.
With some Led Zeppelin playing over really big speakers.
And lasers. There should be lasers.
And volume control cranked up to eleven.
The problem here is the 400m of ice on top of the crater…
Thermite
That would be 700 metres of ice
More Thermite, then!
(y)
What a totally awesome story. I had no idea that this had been tried. Definitely reposting this! (and a little of advertising of this site never hurts!).
I wouldn’t try that with sleeping Yellowstone.
Don’t even THINK about it! I live in Wyoming. 🙂
To get deep enough, with enough power to blow a big enough hole in the dirt and rocks abpve the (potential location of the) magma bubble underground, you’d need one of the 22,000 lb Grand Slam weapons.
Not that I’d recommend blowing the volcano at all. You’re pretending you’re able to precisely “solve” a future problem that may not occur at all by randomly trying to “make it better” ????
In the case of Hawaii, it is more an attempt to disrupt and reroute lava tubes rather than stopping the eruption. It is just a matter of subtly (with really big bombs) changing path and flow characteristics. It probably wouldn’t help in Iceland, but it is true that if we were able to widen the eruption fissures, we may be able to decrease the nozzle effect that ejects matter into the flight routes. The problem is how big of an explosion would be needed and where? Rifts are a different animal then lava tubes. There is no empirical evidence to guide the decisions, but my quick back of the envelop says a tactical nuclear weapon might have enough energy to crack it enough to see some effect. Who wants to live downwind of that experiment? (not I, which is my indicator to not try it.)
It’s called “The Precautionary Principle”.
It would appear that the magma is heading north, deep underground, through a dike at a rate of 4km/day, as indicated by the progression of seismic activity. If it comes to the surface (big if), it will probably be via another system (the Askja system), not covered by a glacier and therefore probably less of an ash and consequent aviation issue.
RACookPE1978
August 27, 2014 at 8:20 pm
Grand Slam has been superseded by a bigger, precision guided bomb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator
True, true.
But those “precise-guided” bunker-buster type weapons are not needed here. Here, the proposal is move large numbers of tons of earth. The layered concrete and steel above command bunkers is not present, and the thin (small diameter) shaped charge warheads needed to get a blast “into” underground bunkers is not desired when blasting big holes in the rock above a volcano.
And the even larger surface-blasting fuel-air explosives put the energy above ground.
But I don’t think this is a good idea in the first place.
Besides the dike vs crater difference, there’s the question of volume; Bardarbunga has been known to send out several cubic km of lava/ejecta, so I doubt that a bomb is going to blow a big enough hole to make a significant difference.
And bombing it now is a worse idea, because you’re likely to cause a much more confined eruption.
I noticed last night that Hawaii is watching an area now for possible development of lava flows.
Here’s the Best Hollywood can still do:
On a more pertinent note.
I think things are going to get pretty interesting at Bárðarbunga during the Saturday-Monday. Tides have been pretty slack the first half of the week. They get pretty rocking this weekend to Monday-Tuesday. If Bárðarbunga doesn’t go by Tuesday, it likely won’t at all.
see:
http://www.windfinder.com/tide/hornafjordur_airport_hofn
***better bomb it now, cos it won’t make any difference later!
28 Aug: Sydney Morning Herald: Peter Hannam: Temperature hiatus periods to become a ‘thing of the past’ as emissions soar
The momentum of global warming caused by the build-up of greenhouse gases is likely to overwhelm natural cooling processes within decades, according to research by the University of NSW…
However, such “hiatuses” are increasingly unlikely if carbon emissions continue on their present trajectory, and will be “a thing of the past” by the century’s end, according to a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters.
“From about 2030, it’s highly unlikely that we will get one of these cooling decades,” said Nicola Maher, a UNSW PhD-candidate and lead author of the paper. “When it does cool, it will not be enough to overcome the warming.”…
The researchers used about 30 models to simulate different events, including volcanic eruptions of the size of Krakatau, the Indonesian island that erupted in 1883 with an explosion so loud it was heard almost 5000 kilometres away…
***By 2100, assuming greenhouse emissions continue to build at the present rate, “even a big volcano like Krakatau is very unlikely to cause a hiatus”, Ms Maher said…
The threats posed by global warming were also raised by the World Bank on Wednesday.
Rachel Kyte, a vice-president of the bank and its special envoy for climate change, told a Canberra meeting the world is headed “down a dangerous path” with disruption of the food system possible as nations struggle to feed themselves…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/temperature-hiatus-periods-to-become-a-thing-of-the-past-as-emissions-soar-20140827-1091p3.html
The banking system is headed down a dangerous path with the disruption of its victims unable to render any more cash.
Not being in the academic mill-stream, I do find myself a little puzzled by PhD students as lead authors on papers that seem to have little direct relevance to their thesis project. Ms Maher’s CV here
Off topic yet again.
Sadly NATO seems to be obsessed with giving people bombs and then giving the same people bombs lately, so I doubt there’s much to spare.
Editorial criticism: please get rid of the Times New Roman serif-heavy font. That’s designed for easy reading on physical paper and gives everyone a headache if they have to read it on a screen. You had Helvetica or similar for a couple of days and it was much easier on the eye.
A font with serifs that is easier to read than TNR is Georgia. I’ve read that it is as universally recognized by devices as TNR.
I’ve found the site significantly easier to read in the new format. Please keep serifs either way. I keep the brightness on my monitors turned down so that it’s more like reading paper and less like reading a TV, though — might be useful tip for others in meantime.
Don’t bomb, use lawyers. File suit for damages against the earth and demand the award in fossil fuels.
If the volcano is bombed, liability lawyers will be killing each other to get a piece of the action. 🙂
Lawyers killing each other? Mmmmmmm, Lawyers killing each other.
what happens if we bomb it WITH liability lawyers?
will time cease to exist?
dmacleo:
I don’t know about time ceasing to exist, but they say that when you are having fun, time does slow down.
Actually it’s the Theory of Relativity: When you’re with your relatives, time slows down. If you get enough relatives together, time actually stops (especially if Mothers-in-law are involved)