Posted on 11/19/2008 6:44:11 AM PST by cogitator
The article link goes to the article with the comparative images from space. The image below is the full-size picture at quarter-size; click for full-size. At some point in the future I'm sure there will be an expedition to get pictures on the ground, but this is a pretty inhospitable location.
The new lava flow is the very dark area spreading northward from the white volcanic peak (Dalaffilla). The article has a labeled image showing where the apparent eruptive fissure was located.
ping!!!
Good stuff, thanks for the ping!
Well, despite my position on the globull warming hoax, I still love geology and all its manifestations, and this was a heck of a manifestation.
I still want to respond to you about that later, and I'll keep it civil.
What town/country is this?
Quick, Get Obama to go there and tell the volcano to stop polluting the atmosphere and warming the earth!
I like to keep the two separate, spillover sucks.
While I disagree with you on one front, I have no problem sharing the stuff we both clearly enjoy in complete peace. One of my best friends is a hardcore liberal. We bitterly disagree on one front, yet our enjoyment of fishing overrides the other crap.
Btw, I like how you agree it’s a hoax. :)
From the link:
In Ethiopia’s Afar region—where three tectonic plates wrench themselves apart deep underground—molten rock often bubbles up to the surface, sustaining a network of volcanoes and volcanic fissures. On November 5, 2008, reports emerged about new volcanic activity in this region, including a fresh lava flow.
The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured images before and after the eruption. The bottom image shows the area on February 5, 2006. The top image shows the same area on November 16, 2008, less than two weeks after the reported lava flow. These images are made from a combination of visible and near-infrared light. In both images, the Dalaffilla summit appears ghostly white, thanks to a rock composition that differs from those in the surrounding area. Old lava flows appear in varying shades of purple-brown. The fresh lava flow produced in early 2008 appears much darker than most of the rest of the landscape.
Due to the remote location and abundance of volcanoes, the exact source of the new lava flow is not immediately obvious from satellite images. The lava erupted from somewhere in the Erta Ale Range, a volcanic field that derives its name from the Erta Ale Volcano. Other active volcanoes in the region include Dalaffilla and Alu. The lava appears to have erupted from fissures between these volcanoes. Hotspots of volcanic activity lingered in this region in mid-November 2008.
Dalaffilla Volcano is a stratovolcano composed of alternating layers of hardened lava, solidified ash, and rocks ejected by previous eruptions. It is a relatively small volcano, but its steep slopes rise some 300 meters (985 feet) above the surrounding lava field. Alu is a linear fissure vent through which lava can erupt.
Geologists, in my experience, are the only sensible ones amongst the whole earth scientists lot. They understand the mechnanisms of change on Earth, and the enormous time frames required to effect that change. Notwithstanding the new found appreciation for the role of castastrophic events in Earth’s history, geologists are the least likely to join in the global warming cult ghost dancing.
Afar Triangle region of Ethiopia; volcanic, hot, desolate, uninhabited...
Actually, this event released a pretty big sulfur dioxide cloud, which would cool the Earth if it reached the stratosphere, but because this wasn't an explosive eruption, the cloud was at low altitude and has dissipated and been washed out of the atmosphere.
There's good coverage at the blog below, including some real-time images of the eruption cloud, and an SO2 image of how it spread.
Can be distracting...
> It sure would have been amazing to get pictures of this as it happened. But nobody lives anywhere near there.
So I guess we’ll have to get pictures of it from Afar?
Hey, someone was bound to say it.
We’ve been watching a TV series called “On the Volcanoes of the World”, about a French vulcanologist taking folks on expeditions to several volcanoes. He took them to Erta Ale on one of the episodes we recently saw. The pictures were just astounding!
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