Breaking News: Volcanoes

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New UBC research shows that climate change may impede the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions.

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A paper in Nature Communications confirms a major feature in the formation of large igneous provinces — massive worldwide volcanic eruptions that created incredibly high volumes of lava and triggered environmental catastrophes and mass extinctions from 170 to 90 million years ago.

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Scientists have developed a method to estimate weakness in the Earth’s outer layers which will help explain and predict volcanic activity and earthquakes.

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Ahuna Mons is a volcano that rises 13,000 feet high and spreads 11 miles wide at its base. This would be impressive for a volcano on Earth. But Ahuna Mons stands on Ceres, a dwarf planet less than 600 miles wide that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Even stranger, Ahuna Mons isn't built from lava the way terrestrial volcanoes are -- it's built from ice.

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Effective warnings are a growing need as expanding global populations confront a wide range of hazards, such as a hurricane, wildfire, toxic chemical spill or any other environmental hazard threatens safety.

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A new study carried out on the floor of Pacific Ocean provides the most detailed view yet of how the earth's mantle flows beneath the ocean's tectonic plates. The findings, published in the journal Nature, appear to upend a common belief that the strongest deformation in the mantle is controlled by large-scale movement of the plates. Instead, the highest resolution imaging yet reveals smaller-scale processes at work that have more powerful effects.

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The lava-making operation — one of the largest in the world — will provide a rare, close-up view of the interplay between molten rock and water, an interaction that can enhance the explosive potential of volcanoes.

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Geophysical monitoring of the ground above active supervolcanoes shows that it rises and falls as magma moves beneath the surface of the Earth. Silica-rich magmas like those in the Yellowstone region and along the western margin of North and South America can erupt violently and explosively, throwing vast quantities of ash into the air, followed by slower flows of glassy, viscous magma.

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A Nagoya University researcher and his leading international research group discovered a Great Platform built with different kinds of stone at the archeological site of San Andrés, El Salvador, and challenged the prevailing theory regarding the sociocultural development of Southeastern Maya frontier.

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Study suggests that powerful volcanic blasts occur due in part to how light vapor bubbles migrate and accumulate in some parts of shallow volcanic chambers. Researchers say these bubbles maneuver their way through crystal filled magma until they settle in these open-spaced reservoirs – areas without many crystals – and build up the necessary energy for an impending eruption.

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The best way to figure out how something is made is to take it apart and put it back together again. That is what Jessica Larsen and her students do at the Geophysical Institute’s Petrology Lab in order to understand active volcanoes in Alaska.

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New research in Nature Communications sheds light on what happens when a supervolcano erupts. The study combines recent lab tests with vintage field data — some of it captured in colorful Kodachrome slides — to provide insight on how rivers of hot ash and gas travel huge distances in supereruptions.

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Understanding the complex geological processes that form supervolcanoes could ultimately help geologists determine what triggers their eruptions. A new study using an advanced computer model casts doubt on previously held theories about the Yellowstone supervolcano’s origins, adding to the mystery of Yellowstone’s formation.

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Around 720-640 million years ago, much of the Earth’s surface was covered in ice during a glaciation that lasted millions of years. Explosive underwater volcanoes were a major feature of this ‘Snowball Earth’, according to new research led by the University of Southampton.

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Scientists from the University of Southampton have uncovered evidence of a previously unknown large volcanic eruption in the Caribbean Sea.

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A team of University of Oregon scientists is home after a month-long cruise in the eastern Mediterranean, but this was no vacation. The focus was the plumbing system of magma underneath the island of Santorini, formed by the largest supervolcanic eruption in the past 10,000 years.

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Precise reconstruction of regional climate changes in the past.

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Reconstructing the magnitude of past volcanic eruptions is important in informing predictions about future eruptions and hazards. This is difficult to accomplish from records on land -- old eruptions are often eroded away, buried beneath later eruptions, or obscured by vegetation and soil. Most volcanoes are close to the oceans, so much of the erupted material falls into seawater and accumulates on the seafloor.

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A new "geospeedometer" that can measure the amount of time between the formation of an explosive magma melt and an eruption confirms that the process took less than 500 years in several ancient super-eruptions.

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The first simulation of the individual crystals in volcanic mush, a mix of liquid magma and solid crystals, shows the mixing to help understand pressure buildup deep inside a volcano.