The media reported that because of ash from the 1625m Dubbi volcano in Eritrea in northeastern Africa being blown 15 km up into the atmosphere, Hillary Clinton had to change her travel plans. So did dozens of other flights have to be cancelled.
Satellite photos now show huge clouds of ash blotting out the sky, see left, centre.
The volcano began erupting on Saturday evening – the first time since 1861, the German daily Bild reported here.
But as Der Spiegel reports, French scientists had misidentified the volcano. It wasn’t Dubbi after all. Der Spiegel writes:
The VAAC volcano monitoring center in south-France Toulouse, which monitors the air space over North Africa, made the volcano Dubbi responsible. But a closer assessment of the satellite photos now show: Not Dubbi, but the Nabro volcano exploded – for geologists that is sensational.
The 2200-meter high Nabro has not erupted since man can remember, it’s been asleep since at least 10,000 years.”
The instability of the magma in the region and the eruption are now so great that the eruption was associated with an earthquake that measured 5.7 on the Richter scale. Der Spiegel writes that VAAC experts were stunned that Nabro had erupted because they thought the volcano was inactive. The huge amounts of ash first obscured the real source (Nabro).
The region is collapsing rapidly
Geologists say that the Eritrea region of Africa is now crumbling rapidly, and soon will be taken over by the Red Sea. We wrote about this back in Jaunary here.
- The area between the dotted lines could be submerged – soon! (Photo source: Wikipedia.
The reason for the East African collapse is explained here in a Nature report titled: The protracted development of the continent–ocean transition in Afar
Nabro’s eruption coincides with the South American Puyehue eruption. The Caulle chain of volcanoes in the Chilean Andes 1600 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires has been spewing a huge amount of ash up to 10 kilometers into the atmosphere since Saturday.
Although none of these volcanoes is large enough to impact the climate on its own, yet together and considering how much tectonic instability now seems to be at play, climatic changes due to these tectonic forces of nature seem to be more in the works. Expect more eruptions soon.
The ash spewed out thus far certainly will not help those betting on more warming, especially in combination with the sleepy sun and the multidecadal ocean cycles.
Der Spiegel plays “objective” by saying “Scientists have identified the wrong volcano… only now have they admitted their error”. Say what? Scientists can err? I have never heard Der Spiegel doubt anything by the warmist scientists; they have belittled climategate and smeared skeptics where they could.
I think the geology guy at Der Spiegel is a sincere person; he only works for an entirely corrupt outfit.
It may also help that geology falls strictly under the heading of Science, not Politics, like AGW – the few pathetic attempts to link the Haiti earthquake to climate disruption were not launched by them. Of all the sciences concerned with Earth and space, geologists seem by far the most sceptical about AGW. (Alex Bojanowski, who wrote the piece for SPON, holds a diploma in geology.) On the other hand, this is from Spiegel Online – what matters is what ends up in the print edition next week – matters of science are either printed as the utterly trivial “Wissenschaft” snippets (no references at all, completely bland & nondescript), next to some sports news and idiotic (intellectual) fashions – or they end up as Politics – which says “Listen, Politicians, You Can Do Something About This” (and gain votes if you put it on your agenda) and “We Journalists Will Guide You: Listen to Us” (Der Spiegel was always about exerting political leverage). Thus it was even before the Waldsterben, Global Warming and the countless food scares for which Der Spiegel has become notorious.
Forgivable mistake, since Dubbi had gone off last in 1861 whereas Nabro had never been recorded as erupting. The had to get an advisory out as the ash was starting to get threatening. The earthquakes also didn’t help by being somewhat north of Nabro, so I thought myself it might be the start of a new cinder cone eruption (you can see quite a few cinder cones in the area). Next day the hi res MODIS Terra satellite though made it plain that it must be Nabro.
Not helped by the location either – one of the most sensitive and dangerous border areas in the world.
A big announcement from the American Astronomical Society regarding the current solar lull. Research from separate sources are tipping a solar decline into a Maunder Minimum type period.
This will have climatic impact however low solar activity has been linked (statistically) to an increase in geologic activity.
Two Mag 9 quakes in the last 10 years plus a seemingly flurry of extra volcanic activity may point to some correlation.
It will be interesting watching.
It may be possible that this eruption seemingly from a source with no historically evident activity could be related. Interestingly, Chaiten in Chile was another eruption from a volcano considered on the verge of extinction. (Chaiten is still ongoing years later).
If the horn of Africa were to part the red sea so to speak would be a disaster of epic proportions. But i will not look for it anytime soon as that has been said about California dropping into the sea also, as much as that would be an improvment to the world! Still glad to see a mistake corrected.
Volcanic action warming up
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/volcano-action-warming-up/
Low solar magnetic field effects earth magnetic field.
There is an observed relationship between periods of low solar magnetic activity, cold periods and an increase in quake and volcanic activity.
Besides Puyehue and Nagro we currently have Kizimen producing stratosphere penetrating eruptive activity and more in the pipeline.
These are interesting times.