Volcanic activity world-wide 3 January 2013

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Source: Volcano Discovery, 1/03/13, By T

Santorini is a volcanic island that has been relatively calm since its last eruption in 1950. But, its caldera is awake again and rapidly deforming at levels never seen before. Georgia Tech Associate Professor Andrew Newman has studied Santorini since setting up more than 20 GPS stations on the island in 2006. “After decades of little activity, a series of earthquakes and deformation began within the Santorini caldera in January of 2011,” said Newman, whose research is published by Geophysical Research Letters. “Since then, our instruments on the northern part of the island have moved laterally between five and nine centimeters....

Santorini Volcano Caldera - archive photo. (happensingreece.com)

A new submarine volcanic eruption might have recently started off Turkey's west coast in the Marmaris Sea between the mainland and the Greek Island of Simi near Rhodes.
Scientists from Istanbul's Technical University announced that they have found evidence of 2 active vents at about 200 m water depth along a north-south trending fissure of 2.5-3 km length. Read more.

Earthquake activity at and near Santorini volcano has calmed down again after the brief pulse in quakes mostly along the Amorgos Graben to the NE at the end of December.

Earthquakes continue at El Hierro island under the eastern El Golfo area. The NE part of the island is experiencing uplift detected by GPS, which suggests that a magma intrusion at depth (so far) is the cause of the current swarm. Volcanic tremor is low.

We posted a detailed activity report about Stromboli volcano, including an annotated crater image showing the different active vents.

The lava flows continue to effuse from the Southern fissure of Plosky Tolbachik volcano in Kamchatka. KVERT reports a slightly increased volcanic tremor amplitude compared to the past days. In other words, the eruption might actually be far from ending.

Popocatépetl volcano in Mexico has (temporarily?) calmed down a lot: the number of steam and gas emissions decreased to only 8 recorded during 2-3 Jan, but glow is still being observed at night.

Pacaya volcano in Guatemala had an increased phase of fumarolic activity with a steam plume reaching 3,000 m altitude for a few hours yesterday. No other surface activity was noted, but INSIVUMEH is increasing its monitoring efforts on the volcano.

Fuego volcano produced 8 weak explosions with ash clouds reaching 3-400 m above the crater and accompanied by faint rumblings were observed during 2-3 Jan. The lava flow toward Taniluya canyon decreased to a length of only 300 meters.

The Santiaguito lava dome continued to feed its lava flows, one of which showed some advance noted today by INSIVUMEH.

Copahue volcano in Chile/ Argentina continues to emit a steam and gas plume, but no further explosions were recorded. SERNAGEOMIN keeps the alert level at yellow.

Tiny earthquakes continue to occur beneath Tongariro volcano in New Zealand, showing that the volcano, similar as its neighbors Ruapehu and White Island, is not completely quiet. GeoNet has not posted any alerts for its volcanoes recently, which probably means that no significant activity is expected soon.

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