Watch: Italy's Mount Etna erupts with spectacular natural fireworks
Woah!
PETER DOCKRILL, Science Alert, 4 December 2015
Europe’s tallest active volcano, Mount Etna, has erupted in spectacular fashion, filling the sky above Sicily with flame,
lightning, and a gigantic ash cloud. Mount Etna has been mostly quiet for two years, but after intensifying volcanic
activity in recent weeks, things came to a head with the dramatic eruption you can see in the video above.
The footage, shot by Sicilian photographer Marco Restivo, captures what it looked like when Mount Etna’s Voragine
crater let loose. According to Italy’s National Institute of Public Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), this was a short
but very violent eruption, ranking among the most violent Etna has seen in the past two decades.
Occurring between 2:20am and 3:10am UTC, the eruption saw a sustained lava fountain reach heights of over 1
kilometre, although some jets of hot material made it as high as 3 km above the summit of the volcano. The large
volcano boasts five craters in total and is estimated to have been active for some 2.5 million years.
Ash fell onto the nearby villages Linguaglossa, Francavilla di Sicilia, Milazzo, Messina, and Reggio Calabria, and resulted
in the closure of at least one airport.
What’s most remarkable about the footage of the eruption is how well it captures what’s called a 'dirty
thunderstorm', a weather phenomenon that results in the production of lighting in a volcanic plume.
The phenomenon was also witnessed when Chile's Cabulco volcano erupted for the first time in 43 years earlier this
year, producing a breathtaking display of lightning and lava.
As ScienceAlert's Bec Crew explains, the phenomenon doesn’t just result in amazing light shows that next to nobody
gets to see in the flesh – it also generates a freakish natural by-product: perfectly spherical glass balls:
It's thought that the glass fragments are caused when massive ash clouds are spewed forth from the mouth of a
volcano, and as the individual ash particles make contact and rub against each other, they produce enough static
electricity to convert into bursts of lightning.
This lightning could be the key to creating the spheres … because they heat the air within the ash clouds to
temperatures of around 30,000 degrees Celsius (54,000 degrees Fahrenheit), within mere millionths of a second. This
melts the glass particles into a molten liquid, and as these liquid droplets are plummeting through the air, they cool
into little orb shapes.
Mount Etna's fireworks aren’t the only volcanic show in town this week either. We've also seen Nicaragua’s
Momotombo volcano explode with fury – and it hadn't erupted in over a century.
http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-italy-s-mount-etna-erupts-with-spectacular-natural-fireworks
Also go to:
The Eruption of Mount St. Helens, 35 Years Ago - The Atlantic, where there are descriptions and pictures of the Mount
Saint Helens eruption
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/05/the-eruption-of-mount-st-helens-35-years-ago/393557/The Deadliest
Volcanic Eruptions
Answer the questions in a short paragraph – use your imagination, not word for word
information taken from the internet :
1) What must it be like to live in the shadow of a live volcano?
2) What must it have been like to be in Linguaglossa last Thursday? What would people
have seen?
For your interest:
The following table lists the deadliest volcanic eruptions in the world on record according to name, year, number of
deaths, and major cause of deaths. In 1812, Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted causing 92,000 deaths.
Volcano
Year
Deaths
Major cause of deaths
Tambora, Indonesia
1815
92000 Starvation
Krakatau, Indonesia
1883
36417 Tsunami
Mount Pelee, Martinique
1902
29025
Ruiz, Colombia
1985
25000 Mudflows
Unzen, Japan
1792
14300 Volcano collapse, tsunami
Laki, Iceland
1783
9350 Starvation
Kelut, Indonesia
1919
5110 Mudflows
Galunggung, Indonesia
1882
4011 Mudflows
Vesuvius, Italy
1631
3500 Mudflows, lava flows
Vesuvius, Italy
79
Ash flows
3360 Ash flows, falls
Papandayan, Indonesia
1772
2957 Ash flows
Lamington, Papua New Guinea
1951
2942 Ash flows
El Chichon, Mexico
1982
2000 Ash flows
Soufriere, St. Vincent
1902
1680 Ash flows
Oshima, Japan
1741
1475 Tsunami
Asama, Japan
1783
1377 Ash flows, mudflows
Taal, Philippines
1911
1335 Ash flows
Mayon, Philippines
1814
1200 Mudflows
Agung, Indonesia
1963
1184 Ash flows
Cotopaxi, Ecuador
1877
1000 Mudflows
Pinatubo, Philippines
1991
800 Disease
Komagatake, Japan
1640
700 Tsunami
Hibok-Hibok, Philippines
1951
500 Ash flows
ash fall = a rain of airborne ash resulting from a volcanic eruption, and the deposit produced by such an event
ash flow = an avalanche of volcanic ash