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A young volcanic island has been growing in the western Pacific Ocean since 2013. Since mid-June 2020, it has been going through a vigorous growth spurt. According to reports and aerial photographs from the Japan Coast Guard, activity at the volcano appeared to pick up in late May, spewing ash and lava with more vigor than in previous months. On July 3, the volcanic plume rose as high as 4700 meters (15,400 feet) above sea level; the next day, ash was detected as high as 8300 meters (27,200 feet), the highest altitude a plume has risen since the volcano poked...

On the morning of May 18, 1980, an earthquake shook Mt. St. Helens and the mountain's north face collapsed in one of the largest debris avalanches ever recorded. The slide uncorked the volcano, baring magma that exploded with 500 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb in the most destructive eruption in U.S. history. The cataclysmic chain of events killed 57 people and thousands of animals, took out 250 homes, 47 bridges and 185 miles of highway, clogged rivers with sediment, flooded valleys and blocked the Columbia River shipping channel. Forty years later, the destruction may not be over. The...

The interstellar object (alternatively a comet or an asteroid) that killed the dinosaurs when it slammed into Earth didn't work alone. Researchers have shown previously that its after-effects, such as tidal waves and earthquakes, played an important role in the mass extinctions of three-fourths of plant and animal life. Now, new research suggests that one of the most important factors was the soot-rich smoke from fires sparked by the collision. Clay Tabor, a geoscientist at the University of Connecticut, and his colleagues studied soot, sulfates and dust to see how each type of particle may have contributed to the cataclysm....

A volcano in southwestern Japan erupted Saturday, the Meteorological Agency said, but there were no immediate reports of injuries. Rocks were thrown about 300 meters from the crater of Mount Shintake on Kuchinoerabu Island in Kagoshima Prefecture following the eruption around 3:05 p.m., the agency said, adding it had not confirmed any pyroclastic flow. No evacuation order was issued. As of the end of last month, 100 people were registered as residents on the island, which is about 36 square kilometers (nearly 14 square miles) in size. It was the first eruption on the island since Feb. 2 last year....

There certainly hasn't been a lack of seismic activity so far in 2020. Just a few days ago, I wrote about the horrific earthquake swarm that Puerto Rico is currently experiencing. More than 1,000 earthquakes have rattled Puerto Rico so far, and as you will see below, it was just hit by another very large earthquake. But right now volcanic eruptions have taken center stage. In particular, a massive eruption in the Philippines is making headlines all over the world, but what most people don't realize is that several other volcanoes have also blown their tops in spectacular fashion within...

Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago... The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time. The team has concluded that many forms of life survived the super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks. According to the team, a potentially ground-breaking implication of the new work is that the species responsible for making the stone tools in India was Homo...

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA—The massive Toba volcanic eruption on the island of Sumatra about 74,000 years ago did not cause a six-year-long "volcanic winter" in East Africa and thereby cause the human population in the region to plummet, according to new University of Arizona-led research. The new findings disagree with the Toba catastrophe hypothesis, which says the eruption and its aftermath caused drastic, multi-year cooling and severe ecological disruption in East Africa. "This is the first research that provides direct evidence for the effects of the Toba eruption on vegetation just before and just after the eruption," said lead author Chad...

"We found the very first evidence for archaeological assemblages in association with the Toba ash", says Petraglia. "We found Middle Palaeolithic assemblages below and above the ash indicating the technologies being used at the time of the event. When the stone tool assemblages were analyzed from contexts above and below the ash, we found that they were very similar........We therefore concluded that the Middle Palaeolithic hominins survived the eruption and there was population continuity. This is not what would have been expected based on general theories that the Toba super-eruption decimated populations." Moreover, similar findings published by Christine Lane, et...

...a team of archaeologists excavating in India then claimed to have found evidence that modern humans were there before the eruption possibly as early as 120,000 years ago, much earlier than Europe or the Near East were colonised. These findings, based on the discovery of stone tools below a layer of Toba ash, were published in Science in 2007. Now Professor Richards working principally with the archaeologist Professor Sir Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, with a team including Huddersfield University s Dr Martin Carr and colleagues from York and Porto has published his...

The idea that humans nearly became extinct 75,000 ago because of a super-volcano eruption is not supported by new data from Africa, scientists say. In the past, it has been proposed that the so-called Toba event plunged the world into a volcanic winter, killing animal and plant life and squeezing our species to a few thousand individuals. An Oxford University-led team examined ancient sediments in Lake Malawi for traces of this climate catastrophe. It could find none... Researchers estimate some 2,000-3,000 cubic kilometres of rock and ash were thrown from the volcano when it blew its top on what is...

Super-eruption: no problem?Tools found before and after a massive eruption hint at a hardy population. Katharine Sanderson Massive eruptions make it tough for life living under the ash cloud. A stash of ancient tools in India hints that life carried on as usual for humans living in the fall-out of a massive volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago. Michael Petraglia, from the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues found the stone tools at a site called Jwalapuram, in Andhra Pradesh, southern India, above and below a thick layer of ash from the eruption of the Toba volcano in Indonesia —...

The activity at the small island volcano itself seems to have decreased a lot or even ceased - there are no more new ash alerts issued that mention new emissions at the volcano itself, and no significant heat signals can be found. However, VAAC Anchorage continues to alert about the possible remaining ash clouds from the main phase of the eruption during 21-22 June. On the other hand, most of this ash must by now have been dispersed sufficiently to fall below direct detection by satellite-based sensors. What is still clearly being detected is the significant SO2 gas plume: in...

YELLOWSTONE volcano could be about to erupt and challenge humanity’s existence as a spate of mini-quakes have been felt around the fearsome caldera. During the month of April, a total of 63 earthquakes struck around the Wyoming based supervolcano. All of the tremors were relatively small, with the largest registering at 2.6 on the Richter scale, hitting on April 29. But experts have warned that it is not necessarily about the strength of an earthquake around a volcano, but more the quantity of them. Some scientists believe that tremors around a volcano could be a sign that it might blow....

Full Header: Geologists discover a new hotspot in Yellowstone supervolcano that's killing off trees in a patch of warm land the size of FOUR soccer fields A new thermal area has popped up in Yellowstone National Park, in yet another sign of the ever-changing magma activity beneath the surface. Satellite images have revealed an expanse of about eight acres – or the equivalent of four soccer fields – where the ground is warmer than its surroundings, causing the trees and vegetation in that patch to die off. While scientists have only just confirmed its existence, the United State Geological Survey...

The Italian name for the caldera — Campi Flegrei, or “burning fields”— is apt. The 7.5-mile-wide cauldron is the collapsed top of an ancient volcano, formed when the magma within finally blew. Though half of it is obscured beneath the crystal blue waters of the Mediterranean, the other half is studded with cinder cones and calderas from smaller eruptions. And the whole area seethes with hydrothermal activity: Sulfuric acid spews from active fumaroles; geysers spout water and steam and the ground froths with boiling mud; and earthquake swarms shudder through the region, 125 miles south of Rome. And things seem...

Researchers have securely dated a prehistoric human stone tool industry that is thought to have been used by early modern humans, or possibly late Neanderthals, around the time when early modern humans were beginning to emerge in Europe, arguably sometime between 40,000 to 50,000 years B.P... The Uluzzian, a prehistoric stone tool techno-tradition represented by lithic artifacts unearthed by archaeologists at cave locations primarily in Italy and Greece, has been a central contender as a possible "transitional" industry between the typical stone tool types (the Mousterian) used by late European Neanderthals and those (Aurignacian, Châtelperronian) of the earliest modern human...

The ground on the western edges of Naples, Italy is rising, spurring worries of a possible volcanic eruption, but scientists now think they know exactly what is causing the uplift and may be able to better predict any potential eruption. Using GPS measurements, a group of scientists at the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology in Italy monitored the ground’s motions for several years, and based on the patterns they observed, they believe the uplifting is caused by magma intruding from a shallow chamber. The rising motions of the ground reached a peak rate of about three feet per year...

The Neanderthals were a hardy species that lived through multiple ice ages and would have been familiar with volcanoes and other natural calamities. But the eruptions 40,000 years ago were unlike anything Neanderthals had faced before, Cleghorn and company say. For one thing, all the volcanoes apparently erupted around the same time. And one of those blasts, the Campanian Ignimbrite, is thought to have been the most powerful eruption in Europe in the last 200,000 years... The researchers acknowledge that there are gaps in the volcanoes theory. For instance, the time line needs to be better defined -- did...

An Italian couple and their 11-year-old son died in a freak accident on Tuesday when they fell into a 10ft-deep hole that suddenly opened up in a highly active volcanic area near Naples. Police said the child strayed beyond safety barriers and was swallowed up by the pit, plunging into boiling hot mud at the Solfatara Crater in Pozzuoli, part of a huge volcanic area known as the Campi Flegrei or Phlegrean Fields. His father, 45, reportedly rushed to his rescue but also fell into the sink-hole. The boy’s mother, 42, then went to their aid, but she too was...

When Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the Italian city of Pompeii in ash, killing 2,000 people, it was regarded as one of the most catastrophic natural disasters and is still studied heavily today. By comparison, a nearby supervolcano called Campi Flegrei, which means “burning fields,” would put the lives of 500,000 Italians at risk and cause damage that would extend to the surrounding nations.