Remote. Cold. Rugged. Those three adjectives capture the essence of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Another word—perhaps more applicable than anywhere else on Earth—is “fiery.”
Of the roughly 1,550 volcanoes that have erupted in the recent geologic past, 113 are found on Kamchatka. Forty Kamchatkan volcanoes are “active,” either erupting now or capable of erupting on short notice. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured activity at five of them during a single satellite pass on April 14, 2014.
Imagery follows.
From geographic north to south (and top to bottom on this page), the volcanoes are Shiveluch, Klyuchevskaya, Bezymianny, Kizimen, and Karymsky. The tallest of the group is Klyuchevskaya, a stratovolcano with a steep, symmetrical cone that reaches 4,750 meters (15,580 feet) above sea level. The most active is Karymsky, a 1,536-meter (5,039-foot) peak that has erupted regularly since 1996.
Plate tectonics is responsible for the many volcanoes on Kamchatka Peninsula. The Pacific Plate is slowly colliding with and sliding beneath the Okhotsk Plate. As rock from the Pacific Plate descends and encounters higher pressures and temperatures, it melts into magma. Over time, magma accumulates and migrates up toward the surface, causing volcanic eruptions.
Long before the discovery of plate tectonics, Kamchatka’s many volcanoes and eruptions were woven into a rich tapestry of myths and creation stories. According to Koryak folklore, the raven-like deity Kutkh created Kamchatka by dropping a giant feather on the Pacific Ocean. Each of the first generation of men became one of Kamchatka’s mountains at death; many of these mountains became volcanic because the men’s hearts burned so passionately for a beautiful woman that Kutkh had also created near the beginning of time.
In 2013, another NASA satellite collected imagery of Shiveluch, Bezymianny, Tolbachik, and Kizimen.
Story from NASA’s Earth Observatory
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References and Related Reading
- Earth Observatory Activity at Kliuchevskoi.
- Earth Observatory Kamchatka Volcanoes.
- Global Volcanism Program Kamchatka and Mainland Asia. Accessed April 15, 2014.
- Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team Kamchatka and the Norther Kuriles Volcanoes. Accessed April 15, 2014.
- PBS The Ring of Fire. Accessed April 15, 2014.
- Volcano World Volcano Folklore: Russia. Accessed April 15, 2014.
Has anyone blamed this on global warming yet? I’m sure they will sooner or later.
Amazing.
And a colleague and his wife are going on holiday there shortly.
I hope he takes his asbestos undies.
God must be mad at Putin..
Oops – make that “I hope both of them take etc..”
I think the creation gods are mad at Russia … ;(
Sigh … ngsnowfan got there first 🙁
Keith A. Nonemaker says:
April 16, 2014 at 10:23 am
Has anyone blamed this on global warming yet? I’m sure they will sooner or later.
————————————————————————————————————————
Here you go – This is my hypothesis linking global warming to volcanoes.
The increased CO2 in the atmosphere is causing the solar radiation to focus on certain spots, creating hot spots which are hot enough to melt through the Earth’s crust and allow the magma to come to the surface – just like using a magnifying glass to burn a hole through paper.
N.B. It’s just as crazy as some of the other hypotheses linked to CAGW.
“Capable of erupting on short notice” that’s the Russians for you, always ready 😉
Here you go for another global warming hypothesis: Melting glaciers remove weight from the earth’s crust, leading to readjustment of the underlying rock and more volcanic eruptions (Can’t really take credit for this — believe someone was hypothesizing about this sort of connection when that icelandic volcano erupted a few years back or maybe it was in connection with the big Chilean earth quake.)
The series “Wild Russia” did an episode on the animals of Kamchatka. One part was of a bear that got caught in a mud flow from an erupting volcano. The bears used the hot pools to sit in over during the winter. The film crew was able to get before and after of the volcanic activity. The bear did get out of the mud after much hard work.
http://www.locatetv.com/tv/wild-russia/6395728
The Kamchatka episode is on the 22 April.
What I like most about this global-warming-volcano hypothesis is how easily it’s turned around: Global cooling leads to growth of glaciers and more weight on the earth’s crust, leading to readjustment of the underlying rock and then more volcanic eruptions. So the climatologists get grants with every big volcanic eruption whether the climate is warming or cooling — I guess they’re only out of luck if the temperature hangs steady, like it has for the last decade and a half or so.
Keith A. Nonemaker says:
“Has anyone blamed this on global warming yet? I’m sure they will sooner or later.”
Of course, if its bad, it must somehow be caused by the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere of 1/00th of 1%, regardless of the absense of any logic, scientific proof, etc.
;>P
The liberal AGW leaders now have to come up with some formulated preconclusion AGW liinked study to give a basis for another tax to charge the people to research how to sequester CO2 in order to stop volcanoes from erupting in a remote area of frozen tundra in Russia.
No, call this cooling held in reserve until it’s called up from the farm team to the big leagues excuse list for lack of warming.
Hmmmn.
Volcanoes are local phenomenon. Very local indeed if you want to consider “weight” on the local crust being changed.
So, what is the actual change in weight of the actual (before and after) glacier mass on THESE particular 5 volcanoes? When did they last erupt, and what is their eruption pattern over the past 1000 years?
For example – the active volcanoes of the Cascade Range erupt regularly – so one going off as Mt St Helens did recently is not unusual! Several others are “due” and “overdue” . Only a very, very few are extinct. Earthquakes along the St Andreas fault are considered “overdue” in several places – does global warming affect those if the southern CA area slides north 5 to 10 feet soon?
Does this explain “The Pause”? Im sure it will sooner or later.
If el Niño is a dud we’ll know who to blame
Trenberth’s taunting demon: A major El Chichón-scale eruption this summer, further suppressing the temperature records, could put a serious kibosh on any ElNino warming.
“ALL-CLEAR IN THE STRATOSPHERE”
http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=19&month=12&year=2010
“This is timely and important because the state of the stratosphere affects climate; a clear stratosphere “lets the sunshine in” to warm the Earth below. At a 2008 SORCE conference Keen reported that “The lunar eclipse record indicates a clear stratosphere over the past decade, and that this has contributed about 0.2 degrees to recent warming.”
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=16&month=04&year=2014
“TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE: On April 15th, all of the sunrises and sunsets on Earth got together and painted the Moon red. In other words, there was a total lunar eclipse. “The Moon turned a coppery orange during mid-totality,” says Steve Engleman who sends this picture Richardson, Texas:”
That fifth volcano, Karymsky, leaves an impressive shadow of soot on the snow, down-wind. It would be interesting (and inexpensive) to use the satellite to watch that site, to see if the snow melts more swiftly there.
D Cohen writes: “What I like most about this global-warming-volcano hypothesis is how easily it’s turned around: Global cooling leads to growth of glaciers and more weight on the earth’s crust, leading to readjustment of the underlying rock and then more volcanic eruptions. So the climatologists get grants with every big volcanic eruption whether the climate is warming or cooling…”
I give my students an easy-to-remember pseudo-science filter: The layman or non-expert is able to recognize “junk science” when the purveyor of the claim argues that all conceivable observations are consistent with a hypothesis, as it’s predictions are non-falsifiable then that hypothesis is junk.
Well my hometown has; or had some 60 volcanoes, inside the greater City area. We think none of them are active.
Some of them have been dug up, or more accurately torn down to make gravel for roads; But they are all small ones.
Five good size ones at once is not to sneeze at.
It’s not just the volcanos. There has been a remarkable amount of seismic activity since the first of April. There as been a Mag 8 quake in chile, at least 3 Mag 7 quakes and several Mag 6’s. All in a two week period. It seems the ring of fire wants to live up to it’s name.
There is some evidence that the winter Kamchatka volcano eruptions are cause of the Sudden Stratospheric Warming.
Yea, and all the black soot completely ruining the snow and ice. It’s terrible.
We have to shut down our economies, stop eating meat and get rid of all those plastic.
The end is near.
Interesting. A map of where this peninsula is would be a good addition.
If you follow the Aloutian island chain out [from] Alaska you get there. The peninsula ends another island chain running down to Japan. The main body of land seems to be about 55N.