Uitbarsting Etna

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18th eruption Etna this year
CATANIA, Italy – The Etna has intensified its activity today with fountains of lava and ash causing restrictions to air traffic. This eighteenth eruption this year has followed the Stromboli pattern as previous ones did and lasted just a couple of hours. The Crisis Unit at the Catania Fonatanrossa Airport met to assess potential consequences for flights and restricted air space until 16.30 without however affecting passenger flights

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Etna spuwt as en lava
CATANIA - De vulkaan Etna op Sicilië is donderdag opnieuw uitgebarsten. Lava stroomt richting de regio Valle del Bove, waar geen mensen wonen, en er hangt een aswolk tot een hoogte van 5000 meter. Dat meldden Italiaanse media.

De top van de Etna is op bijna 3300 meter en de vulkaan is daarmee de hoogste actieve vulkaan in Europa. De laatste uitbarsting had plaats in juli. Toen moest de luchthaven van Catania enige tijd worden gesloten

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CATANIA / ETNA
Eruption being the first eruption of Etna in 2012. The ash column projected from the crater reached 5 thousand meters high. The operational limitations of the airport of Catania Fontanarossa. A lava flow is moving toward the Valle del Bove. The lava is far from population centers: VIDEO - PICTURE
The crisis unit constantly monitors the winds to understand its evolution. New update to the Crisis Unit 14.

The strombolian activity of Etna has become intense around 22 PM on January 4. There were no earthquakes recorded by INGV in Catania, but only an increase of tremor. Declared "highly critical" in the area.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 13:48 schreef Coelho het volgende:
Heb een jaar geleden op de rand van de krater gestaan. Indrukwekkend ter plaatse en zeker ook met dit soort berichten. Het leert je des te meer hoe kwetsbaar wij zijn in vergelijking met de kracht van de natuur...

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 13:57 schreef bloodymary1 het volgende:

[..]

Mocht je helemaal tot de rand gaan dan? Ik ben dit jaar in juni geweest en we mochten maar tot 2300 meter. Zelfs met gids mocht je niet verder.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 14:14 schreef Coelho het volgende:

[..]

Ja, eerst met eigen vervoer naar de parkeerplaats bij dat oude ski-dorp (noordoosthelling), 1700m of zo. Daarna met Unimog vrachtwagens naar 3000m en van daar te voet verder naar de krater.

Leuk detail: mijn auto staat op de foto op google streetview op de parkeerplaats van de Etna.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 16:58 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
en nog eentje

Etna Paroxysm 05/01/2012 - kd produzione

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Update 20h15 GMT:
Tremor continues to rise (now at 13), from the webcam image, it seems a lava flow is starting to issue from the SE fracture.

All indicators point towards we are having the 2nd paroxysm in 2012 during the next hours!
The volcanic tremor is now steeply rising (at 8) and vigorous strombolian activity can be seen on the various webcams, possibly a lava flow has started as well.

While strombolian activity continues from the New SE crater of Etna volcano, volcanic tremor has started to rise, suggesting a new paroxysm could be in the making in the next hours, although it is still early to be certain.

The photo (up) from Boris Behncke was taken during the night of 7-8 February 2012, whe the continuing Strombolian activity of the New Southeast Crater on Etna was finally widely visible, after about one week of essentially bad weather.

Some explosions threw incandescent lava bombs outside the crater, although most were rather weak and all material fell back into the crater.

This is a view of one of the stronger explosions observed on the late evening of 7 February 2012, taken from Trecastagni village on the southeast flank of Etna. The activity continued, sometimes vigorously, sometimes more subdued, through the night and morning of 8 February.

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Update Tue 21 Feb 21:32
The tremor is still rising, and the signal looks very similar to the initial stages of most paroxysms during the past 13 months. Unless Etna is doing something quite different (which is very possible, too), it seems more and more as if the next eruption could happen very soon.

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Update Tue 21 Feb 22:57
Etna is unpredictable. Just after our previous update, the tremor signal (currently the only available indicator) dropped sharply to almost half its value. Probably, no "show" tonight!

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New tremor on southern slope of Etna
New earth tremor last night on the southern slope of Etna, in the same area where tremors had already been felt yesterday afternoon. This second seismic event was 2.5 on a Richter scale, like the one felt yesterday and was registered at 4:46 by the National institute of geophysics and volcanology, that pinpointed the epicentre 9.8 kilometres deep between the towns of Belpasso, Biancavilla, Caporotondo Etneo, Nicolosi Paterno', Santa Maria di Licodia and Ragalna. The volcano has originated small flows of lava and high smoke columns since the beginning of the year. . .

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Italy’s Etna kept up its frenetic pace of eruptions that started in January 2011 with yet another paroxysm, its fifth of 2012. This one had inkling that might be happen soon with signs on Friday, but the real show occurred overnight on Sunday (April 1) with an early morning eruption. This eruption followed 14 days since the last eruptive spell and lasted about 1.5 hours, producing the sorts of volcanic events we’ve come to expect from Etna: fire fountains, ash fall and lava flows. Dr. Boris Behncke posted some great images of the activity (see above) and Etna Walk also posted some great images and video as well. Eruptions readers caught a lot of the action via the webcams around Etna (see below). You can watch some of the timelapse of the activity put together by Eruptions reader Georaving that show the opening phases of strombolian explosions that give way to fire fountains and lava flows. Spectacular action all around!

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Update 13:36 UTC : Volcanic tremor is on the rise at this moment and an eruption has started. A lava flow is flowing down the slope. Click here for the best webcams. Follow the eruption today. Etna erupts regularly with short strong eruptions (paroxysms)

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Op vrijdag 13 april 2012 23:27 schreef thesiren.nl het volgende:
JA zeer spectaculair. Wat ik me afvroeg is de lava bij Etna soms heel dun dat je altijd van die prachtige sproeifonteinen hebt?

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April 23rd - Etna does it again
The 25th paroxysm of Etna's New SE crater is happening at the time of writing. It started around 16:00 hrs local time with week Strombolian explosions accompanied by a steeply increasing tremor. Now, explosions are becoming near-continuous and a lava flow is being emitted from the SE-running fissure of the cone and flowing into the Valle del Bove.

Eruzione Etna 24/04/2012 con pioggia di lapilli

Erupción de la noche del Etna, 23 24 de abril de 2012

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A swarm of earthquakes has started in the NW sector of the volcano. The largest quake was a felt M4.1 earthquake at 20 km depth.

Strombolian activity has resumed at the New SE crater as well. Tremor began rising on 20 November.

On the night of 21 November, incandescence was seen in Etna's New Southeast crater. Incandescence
was last observed from the crater in April 2012.

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Etna: new eruptive episode at the Bocca Nuova. On the evening of 28 January 2013, the Bocca Nuova - the largest of the summit craters of Etna - has been the site of a new episode of vigorous Strombolian activity. This episode was similar to, though slightly less intense than, the episodes of 16 and 18 January, but it was accompanied by weak Strombolian activity at the New Southeast Crater (NSEC).

During the preceding days, the summit craters had been degassing strongly, in particular the NSEC, where for a brief period on the evening of 27 January, weak incandescence was visible. The crater had last produced an episode of Strombolian activity on 22-23 January 2013 (see 23 January 2013 update). On the morning of 28 January, gas emission from the NSEC was often rhythmic and pulsating; at times the gas puffs appeared "dirty" because they contained modest amounts of fine pyroclastic material (Fig. 1 and 2). The degassing was not accompanied by any noise to be heard at a distance of a few kilometers.

Starting at 07:46 GMT (=local time -1) on 28 January, the eruptive vent located in the southeastern portion of the crater floor of the Bocca Nuova, produced small puffs of dark volcanic ash, which rarely rose more than 150-200 m above the crater rim (Fig. 1 and 2). Initially, these ash emissions were separated by intervals of 5-10 minutes, but later they became more and more frequent, with one emission every 1-3 minutes in the late forenoon. Some of the emissions were accompanied by loud rumbling noises well audible at Piano del Vescovo, about 7.7 km southeast of the Bocca Nuova. Ash emissions continued at least until 14:00 GMT, when weather conditions deteriorated and precluded any visual observations.

Shortly after 17:00 GMT, the visual surveillance cameras of the INGV-Osservatorio Etneo showed the beginning of mild Strombolian activity within the Bocca Nuova (Fig. 3, top frame). Contemporaneously, the volcanic tremor amplitude recorded in the summit area started to rise, accelerating notably around 19:00 GMT and reaching a peak shortly thereafter. During the same time interval, the Strombolian activity within the Bocca Nuova intensified, with jets of incandescent bombs and scoriae that often rose several tens of meters above the crater rim.

From 17:40 GMT onward, weak and discontinuous Strombolian activity was visible at the NSEC (Fig. 3, second and third frames). Some explosions launched incandescent bombs up to 30 m above the crater rim. This activity reached its greatest intensity between 19:00 and 19:30 GMT, and from 19:40 GMT rapidly diminished to be followed by the emission of a conspicuous column of white vapor, which continued during the whole night and through the following day of 19 January.

At the Bocca Nuova, however, the intracrater Strombolian activity - which was presumably accompanied by the emission of lava onto the crater floor - continued until about 00:15 GMT on 29 January. Starting around 21:50, the activity had shown signs of gradually diminishing and more and more discontinuous, even though some explosions between 22:00 and 23:00 GMT were particularly violent (Fig. 3, bottom frame). The diminution of the vigor of the eruptive activity was accompanied by a rapid decrease in the volcanic tremor amplitude.

As for the Bocca Nuova, this episode - the fourth from this crater during this month, after those of 10-15, 16 and 18 January - was rather similar to its predecessors. The peak values attained by the volcanic tremor amplitude were slightly lower than those of the 18 January episode, and significantly lower than those of the 16 January episode. The single source of the activity was once more the intracrater cone leaning against the southeastern base of the inner crater wall; unfortunately, the harsh weather conditions in the past few weeks have precluded any field visit to the crater rim aimed at observing the morphological changes caused by the recent activity.

A new element in the eruptive episode of 28 January 2013 is the Strombolian activity at the NSEC, which accompanied during the first two-and-a-half hours of the episode the Strombolian activity within the Bocca Nuova

This is indeed the first occurrence of simultaneous eruptive activity at two of Etna's summit craters since about 12 years; in contrast, during the period of summit activity of 1995-2001, it was rather normal to see contemporaneous activity at two, sometimes three and rarely all four of the summit craters. One particularly noteworthy event of this type was the sequence of paroxysmal episodes that occurred within a few hours on 4 September 1999: first a sub-Plinian explosive episode at the Voragine, followed by lava fountaining within the Bocca Nuova, and finally an episode of Strombolian activity at the (old) Southeast Crater, which culminated in the fracturing of its cone from the summit to the base.

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Mt Etna erupts again
Italy's Mount Etna sent lava and gas shooting toward the stars early this morning (Feb. 19), the first big eruption for the volcano in 2013.

The famous Sicilian volcano burst to life overnight, sending a fountain of fire into the air. The dramatic scene was captured in a video by Klaus Dorschfeldt, a videographer and webmaster at Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology

Mount Etna, one of the world's most active volcanoes, had emitted signs of an imminent paroxysm in recent weeks. On Jan. 22, lava and strong flashes in the volcano's New Southeast Crater were clearly visible from the Sicilian foothills; these often herald a new paroxysm: short, violent eruptive bursts.

Dorschfeldt said he knew Mount Etna's recent signals could precede new activity. "[I've] followed the activity of Etna for many years, and with time you learn to know it as if it were your friend," he said in an email interview. "Following it constantly [you] learn to be a keen observer and a minor change can lead to something important," he told OurAmazingPlanet.

The tallest volcano in Europe, Mount Etna is almost constantly spewing gas or lava. Its Bocca Nuova crater also erupted earlier this year, from Jan. 10 to Jan. 20. In 2011, Etna's violent bursts were spotted from space.

Etna - 19 Febbraio 2013 - KdEtna

Etna attività stomboliana dal Nuovo Cratere di sud-est (NCSE), 16-17 febbraio 2013

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Etna barst uit
Op Sicilië is de Etna op 24 uur tijd twee keer kortstondig uitgebarsten. De vulkaan spuwde een hoge fontein van as de lucht in. De vulkaanuitbarsting bracht ook een kleine lavastroom teweeg, die aan de oostkant in Valle del Bove ver van de eerste dorpen neerkwam.

Het was de eerste keer dit jaar dat de 3.350 hoge vulkaan uitbarstte. De nabijgelegen luchthaven van Catania, aan de noordoostkust van Sicilië, hoefde niet gesloten te worden. Vorig jaar waren er acht van dergelijke uitbarstingen van de Etna.

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Etna's activity last week was actually a warming up for the show on Saturday
Much of last week, we were focused on the activity at Italy’s Etna. The week ended with some lava flows creeping down the volcano and, for a day, things had settled down. Well, little did we know that Etna was actually just warming up. During the night of February 23 (Saturday), the volcano unleashed a remarkable explosive volley, producing lava fountains that toward 800 meters over the crater on the southeast slopes of the volcano. Video taken by Dr. Boris Behncke of the Osservatorio Etneo (above) shows just how powerful the eruption was, with the pulsing and roaring of the lava as it was explosively thrown from the vent near the new Southeast Crater.

Let’s try to put a 800 meter lava fountain into some perspective. 800 meters is ~2,624 feet. The height of the Empire State Building in New York is ~1,250 feet (roof height — add the tower and its ~1,454 feet). So, lava was fountaining from the crater on Etna as height as almost 2 Empire State Buildings on Saturday night (see image on top).

Now, the factors that go into the height of a lava fountain include the magma supply rate (how much magma is being fed into conduit to erupt), the gas content of the magma — the higher the gas content, the more explosive the eruption will be, and the geometry of the crater. This eruption of Etna likely had a high rate of magma supplied to the vent and relatively high gas content to produce such a lava fountain. However, it isn’t even close to the record for tall lava fountains. The record for historic (and confirmed) lava fountain height is the 1986 eruption of Izu-Oshima in Japan that topped out at ~1,600 meters. When Tarawera erupted in 1886, the lava fountains in that basaltic eruption were estimated to be as tall as 2,000 meters (2 kilometers)* — that’s ~6,561 feet or 5.25 Empire State Buildings worth of lava fountain. The eruption of Tarawera did not have any geologists to accurately measure the height of the fountain, so the 2,000 meters height is based on local people’s recollection of the eruption. However, 2,000 meters isn’t unreasonable based on the eruptive rate and gas content of the Tarawera basalt. To take it even higher, the lava fountains from the 1779 eruption of Vesuvius were thought to have reached 3 kilometers (9,800 feet)!

By Sunday morning, the new cone built by Saturday night’s (and earlier in the week) lava fountains was clearly visible — a dark, black cone of volcanic debris starkly contrasted against the white mountain snows (see below). It is remarkable to see how quickly these volcano features can grow during these periods of intense activity. Lava flows are still snaking down the volcano as well — so it seems like Etna’s February is still going strong.