… Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play …
by Steve Goddard
I remember May 18, 1980 like it was yesterday. I was skiing behind Taos Ski Valley in ten foot deep snow, up to the base of Wheeler Peak.
Current view of Taos Ski Valley
At the time, I was working as a volcano researcher for the US Government, studying the nature of explosive volcanic eruptions. When we got back to Taos, we turned on the TV and saw amazing pictures of Mt. St. Helens, which had literally blown it’s top.
Eastern Illinois University photographs
Mt. St. Helens had previously been a dependable source of snow and ice all summer, and the K2 ski team (including Phil Mahre) used to train up there in the summer. It no longer is tall enough for summer skiing.
The mechanism of the eruption is well understood, thanks to an amazing video reconstruction.
As the magma chamber rose up in the volcano (magma is less dense than rock) it did several things. First, it melted the snow and ice and turned the soil into mud. Second, it made the north slope of the volcano steeper and less stable. Third, groundwater from melted snow and ice seeped down into the magma chamber and added to the steam pressure. At 8:32 am, a large earthquake further liquified the soil on the north slope, and caused a massive mud slide. The weight of the overburden quickly became less than the steam pressure inside, and the volcano blew it’s top. A massive amount of ash and trees poured down into the Toutle River wiping out everything in it’s path.
Bridge on the Toutle washing downstream
A reminder that explosive volcanic eruptions dump a lot of steam, ash and gas into the atmosphere.
In June 1783 the Laki volcano close to Katla erupted for several months with clouds of poisonous gas that killed 9,000 people in Iceland. But the eruption also created a cold fog that spread across much of Europe and North America, in some places causing the coldest summer for 500 years as the Sun’s warmth was blotted out.
“The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena,” wrote the naturalist Gilbert White in Hampshire. “The country people look with a kind of superstitious awe at the red louring aspect of the sun thro’ the fog.” The climate across the northern hemisphere was sent into upheaval, even weakening the monsoon rains in Africa and India, leading to famine in Egypt and India.
A few days ago, the Met Office forecast that the ash cloud would move to the northeast out of British airspace by May 19th. Their forecast for May 18th (today) appears to have been very accurate.
Below is their current forecast for the next five days.
Will Katla erupt? What do readers think?
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I was fortunate to hear (feel?) the Mt. St. Helens eruption in Eugene, Or., 160 miles to the southwest, although I didn’t recognize it for what it was the instant it happened. It was just a big subsonic “whoomp” that made the front windows of our house vibrate.
It wasn’t until a bunch of us stopped at a store in McKenzie Bridge on our way back to town from a whitewater adventure on the McKenzie River that we learned that the volcano had let rip. There was a TV on in the store with pix of the eruption. We were agog.
A subsequent eruption some months later gave us a bit of grit, but that was about it.
The fact that St. Helens has repaired itself ecologically so quickly despite all the “experts'” hand-wringing at the time started me early down the skeptic’s road regarding all of today’s fashionable alarmism.
Thirty years ago, at the silver mine I worked at in southwestern Idaho, we had a betting pool as to which day Mount St Helens would cease huffing and puffing and just blow its top, big time, as some types of volcanoes have a habit of doing. The mine manager won the pool and then took the whole staff to dinner using his winnings.
Went out on the lawn and saw the billowing cloud of the eruption 30 years ago, today.
“Will Katla erupt?”
Eventually, yes. The thing that I think people should keep in mind is that volcanoes in Iceland can erupt for years much like volcanoes in Hawaii. This is a volcano over a mantle hot spot, like Hawaii but unlike Hawaii it is also at a rift. Iceland is fairly large and hasn’t existed very long (in geological time). I think something like 85% of all lava erupted on Earth in the past 500 years has been in Iceland.
Will Katla erupt?
We should be safe as long as we keep Hobbits bearing rings away from the area.
Glenn: May 18, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I’m wondering how you could have skied uphill in ten feet of snow behind a valley. But that would sure be something I would remember.
And it was uphill both ways, too.
“Flask says:
May 18, 2010 at 4:50 pm
DirkH
“I think Katla will erupt within a few months. There is this relationship between solar minima and earthquakes and volcano eruptions; we had a long solar minimum and Katla hasn’t erupted since 1918.”
I doubt there is a scientifically convincing relationship between solar minima and tectonic events. What could connect them?”
I don’t know but here’s a writeup from the chiefio:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/ecuador-volcanic-activity-report/
They are not. They are trying to map paths through the cloud and they are also raising the threshold for exposure. They have now raised it twice. The first is sensible and reasonable. The second is probably not, at least not to do it any more. What is likely to happen as a result is that they will raise it a third time, and that will be once too often.
The problem is that the effects of ash are dire, and cumulative. They probably did over react on the first announcements. But a little further down this path we’ll get to engine failure and forced landings. If you fly, or if you live under a flight path, you do not want to risk this.
The problem is nothing to do with models, and the problem has nothing to teach us about climate forecasts. The techniques used to forecast cloud movements are the same as those used to forecast the weather. If you look at the Met Office site, you will speedily realize that they cannot consistently forecast the weather over the UK one week ahead. In very settled periods they can be right on the next couple of days for a week at a time. Then a changeable period comes, and the forecast for a couple days out changes twice a day, so its just about useless.
Given this, they are sailing very close to the wind with the current flight permissions. You have fairly unpredictable movement of an ash cloud of varying height and density, coupled with unknown safety levels for exposure to ash. We must wait and see, but it looks from here like a recipe for a low probability, high payoff disaster.
Not a question of IF Katla will erupt, only when. According to John Seach it typically gets more active in late summer: http://www.volcanolive.com/katla.html . So I’d expect it to pop sometime around Sept. if it’s going to this year.
DirkH says:
May 18, 2010 at 2:59 pm
“There is this relationship between solar minima and earthquakes and volcano eruptions;”
Sometimes minima, sometimes maxima;
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS_old/maxmin.new
@ur momisugly El Gordo (18 May, 8:11 p.m.)
Lines 16-17 of the poem “Constantinople” by Lady Wortley Montague written in January 1718 compares the mild climate there to England:
“The Water Nymphs their silenced Urns deplore
Even Thames benumb’d a River now no more”.
If anyone doubts the wisdom of not flying into a cloud of volcanic ash the tale of a British Airways B747 which encountered an ash cloud 100nm south of Sumatra on 23 June 1982 should come as a salutary warning. At 37,000ft the aircraft lost power on all four engines almost simultaneously.
The story is here
C.W. Schoneveld says:
May 19, 2010 at 4:08 am
Are you sure you have the right year? On CET, Jan 1718 was 1.5C, there was no Frost Fair that year; http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1700_1749.htm
1716 drought maybe?
I doubt there is a scientifically convincing relationship between solar minima and tectonic events. What could connect them?”
I don’t know but here’s a writeup from the chiefio:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/ecuador-volcanic-activity-report/
And others find correlations between increased seismic activity and solar maxima.
http://stugood.org/forum/topic/88/solar-cycles-and-natural-phenomena
Given the solar cycle is only 11 years long and that the “duration” of min or max is arbitrary and subjective anyway (the above link also has lags to help out!) and further that no sensible physical mechanism is offered as to why increased/decreased solar activity would make any difference, you can draw your own conclusions.
Will Katla erupt? What do readers think?
—————————————————————————
Katla would probably be showing more signs if it was going to do anything soon… So no.
“David Chappell says:
May 19, 2010 at 4:15 am
If anyone doubts the wisdom of not flying into a cloud of volcanic ash the tale of a British Airways B747 which encountered an ash cloud 100nm south of Sumatra on 23 June 1982 should come as a salutary warning. At 37,000ft the aircraft lost power on all four engines almost simultaneously.”
NOBODY!!!!!! And I mean NOBODY, doubts the wisdom of flying through an ash CLOUD a la Sumatra. Ash clouds bad.
But I’ll repeat for the umpteenth time there is NO ash cloud over Europe. the skies are perfectly clear. The flights are banned from areas of slight traces suggested by a model and not backed up by observations. Give the thing a wide berth [300 miles] by all means but don’t you think 1000’s of miles is a bit too far? We are banning flights up to 5000 miles away from a relatively small eruption!
Don’t you get it? Without super computers, algorithms and modelling we would happily and harmlessly be flying about our business without any worries. And how do I know this? Because that’s what happened before our ‘detection’ sensitivity got so advanced. It’s called epidemiology – study of the population [in this case aircraft]. Expose thousands of jet aircraft historically [60 years] to TRACE ash and count the damage, incidents and crashes. Ooh – none!
cheers David
Yarmy says:
May 19, 2010 at 5:01 am
If you want to look for “strings”, as this a temperature forcing issue, try the 17yr cocronal hole cycle. Otherwise, notice how many large eruptions are preceded by very cold winters: http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
May 18, 2010 at 6:13 pm
What Mrs.Bailunas tells is that many people (the skeptics of that epoch) were accused of “weather cooking” and the “precautionary principle” was then applied, sending to the stake millions of people.This is precisely what now the Green Church is about to do if climate worsens. Beware!
Yarmy says:
During the Maunder Minimum the biggest volcanic eruption was recorded, that of the Huaynaputina:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huaynaputina
http://www.springerlink.com/content/327n25845w116338/
Katla Earthquake May Presage Next Volcanic Explosion
http://www.investingcontrarian.com/global/katla-earthquake-may-presage-next-volcanic-explosion/
Will Katla Erupt?
Yes – my computer models put the time of eruption in a window between 19th May 2010 and 16th of July 4573
If we dont stop anthropogenic deformations of the earths crust through mining activities causing internal magma cavitations – leading to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions it will be closer to the current date!
I need billions to do more research on this.
“J.Hansford says:
May 19, 2010 at 5:35 am
Will Katla erupt? What do readers think?
—————————————————————————
Katla would probably be showing more signs if it was going to do anything soon… So no”
Lets have a sweep. Put me down for Xmas 2010.
I admit to having a bit of ‘insider’ knowledge, literally, having spent a couple of weeks surveying the lava tubes under the Laki lava field. 🙂
cheers David
Curiousgeorge says:
May 19, 2010 at 2:22 am
Late September through October this year will be very warm, this will have the strongest effect on S.H. volcanoes as this is S.H spring time and there will be a larger temperature differential following the cooler August, equivalent to N.H February. That is not to say it will not affect N.H activity.
I was working as a Charter pilot and Fed Contractor in the Tri Cities. The cloud went right over the Richland, Wa area, but we didn’t get much ashfall but that wasn’t the case for the rest of the Columbia Basin. Or Yakima. Made Air Ops quite interesting for weeks lots of filter and oil changes, not much in the way of overt damage,at least to Piston engines, there was a Mitsubishi MU-2 operator that fried both engines, but that may have been due to his insistence of operations when there was visible ash in the air.
Flew lots of USGS Surveys and Battlle NW flights before and after the eruption…
Then many,many tourist flights..
July 22nd,1980 was worse for the Tri Cities in some ways….
I lived in a house in a pitch pine forest at the time, my brother (a geologist) lived in Colorado. He and coworkers collected Mt St Helen’s ashfall from their cars’ windshield, and he report that it was definitely new material in the ash, not just powdered mountainside.
When the ash made it to me, I went out and was excited to see some yellowish powder on my car’s windshield, then wondered why it wasn’t gray. A quick check with the nearest pine made it clear that pine pollen season had started….