Residents in a sleepy Mexican town fear that a new volcano is bubbling under the ground after an eruption of gas and smoke emerged from a field, local media has reported.
According to reports, cracks have appeared on the ground in Pueblo Viejo in the southern state of Michoacan, with temperatures of some 250 deg C registered in the subsoil.
Local residents gathered at the site with preliminary investigations revealing that the cause of the eruption was geothermal activity from an underground swamp.
Following a swarm of over 1100 earthquakes recorded in the Yellowstone caldera over the past month, prompting scientists to voice concerns about a dormant Yellowstone "Supervolcano" slowly waking up, overnight these concerns escalated after a strong M5.8 earthquake hit western Montana early on Thursday morning - the strongest quake to hit the area in the past 20 years - the U.S. Geological Survey reported, with Reuters adding that the tremor was felt hundreds of miles away, from Missoula to Billings and some surrounding states.
The quake appears to be the largest to hit Montana since a slightly weaker M5.6 struck outside of Dillon a dozen years ago. By comparison, the state's largest quake which struck the West Yellowstone region 58-years ago was 7.2 magnitude.
Mexico's Popocetepetl volcano erupted early Sunday (2 July) morning, sending a column of smoke and ash soaring into the sky, the National Disaster Prevention Center announced. Officials said there were 136 low-intensity exhalations from the volcano recorded.
Ash fallout was reported in several towns in Mexico State, including Ozumba, Amecameca, Tlalmanalco, Chalco, Ayapango, Tenango del Aire and San Pedro Nexapa, El Sol de Mexico reported. Luis Felipe Puente, the national coordinator of Civil Protection, said the eruption had sent a column 2 kilometres (1.2miles) into the sky.
The volcano's opening was glowing at night as it erupted, El Sol de Mexico reported.
During the day, the volcano continued to erupt, sending smoke and ash in a northeastern direction. Three eruptions were recorded with a moderate amount of ash pushed northeast of the volcano. According to El Universal, Puente also shared recommendations in light of ash fallout from the eruption.
A rescue helicopter has crashed as it went to help evacuate residents near an active volcano in Indonesia.
All eight people on board were killed and at least 10 on the ground were injured when the Sileri Crater at Dieng Plateau spewed cold lava, mud and ash as high as 164 feet into the sky when it erupted on Sunday.
The aircraft went down about three minutes before arriving at the popular tourist area.
It reportedly hit a cliff on Butak Mountain in the Temanggung district of Central Java province.
Brigadier General Ivan Tito, director of operation and training at the search agency, said the victims were four navy officers and four rescuers.
He said the Indonesian-made Dauphin AS365 helicopter was airworthy.
The sudden eruption occurred while about 17 visitors were around the crater.
An international group of researchers has dated a large volcanic eruption in Iceland to within a few months. The eruption, which is the oldest volcanic eruption to be precisely dated at high northern latitudes, occurred shortly before the first permanent human settlements were established, when parts of the now mostly treeless island were still covered with forest.
The team, which included volcanologists, climatologists, geographers and historians among others, used a combination of scientific and historical evidence to pinpoint the eruption date of the Katla volcano between late 822 CE and early 823 CE, decades before the earliest settlers arrived. Their results are reported in the journal Geology.
In a similar way to how fossils can be used to understand the development and evolution of life on Earth, different types of environmental evidence can be used to understand what the Earth's climate was like in the past and why. The 'fingerprints' contained in tree rings and ice cores help scientists to estimate past climatic conditions and extend our understanding of the interaction between humans and the environment hundreds and thousands of years back in time.
Sadie Whitelocks Daily Mail Thu, 29 Jun 2017 17:48 UTC
For more than a month an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean spewed ash and magma to the surface, and high into the air. This build-up created a new island, just off the coast of Tonga, in a region known as the Ring of Fire
These newly-formed islands emerging from plumes of smoke and bubbling magma reveal how the earth's surface is constantly changing.
Over the past decade, several significant land masses have been confirmed, most recently a sandbar off the coast of North Carolina nicknamed Shelly Island.
Scroll down for some of the newest places making their marks on the map, with many more set to be discovered...
A 14-minute eruption by an Alaska volcano sent an ash cloud to 30,000 feet (9,100 metres) in the Aleutian Islands. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says Bogoslof (BOH-gohs-lawf) Volcano erupted at 3:17 a.m. Tuesday.
Ash clouds above 20,000 feet (6,100 metres) can harm airliners flying between Asia and North America. The observatory raised the aviation alert code to "warning" level, the highest level.
Winds were blowing to the northeast, which would push a cloud into the Bering Sea. The observatory says the cloud was not expected to drop ash on Aleutian communities or the mainland.
Over 800 earthquakes have now been recorded at Yellowstone supervolcano over the last two weeks, with the ongoing swarm taking place on the western edge of the National Park. But there is virtually no risk of the volcano erupting, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) currently lists the volcano alert level as normal and the aviation color, which lists the potential risk to fights, is at green.
The current earthquake swarm began on June 12. A week later, the USGS put out a statement to say that 464 earthquakes had been recorded, with the largest being magnitude 4.4 "This is the highest number of earthquakes at Yellowstone within a single week in the past five years," it said.
At the time, a spokesperson for the USGS told Newsweekappeared to be "slowly winding down," adding that "no other geological activity has been detected." However, in a newly released statement about the ongoing swarm, seismologists from the University of Utah said 878 events have now been recorded at Yellowstone National Park.
After a calmer period of approx. 10 days, another significant and quite large explosive eruption occurred at the volcano earlier today (yesterday afternoon local time).
The main pulse of the eruption which lasted about 10 minutes began at 00:49 UTC (16:49 local time) this morning and generated an ash and steam plume that quickly rose to 36,000 ft (12 km) altitude as pilots reported that were en route in the area and saw the cloud.
The ash plume moved east, passing over Akutan and the North Pacific Ocean before dissipating. No ash falls were reported from ground locations.
After the main explosion, 4 additional minor events occurred at 3:18-3:24 UTC, 4:13-4:21 UTC, 5:04-5:12 and 5:52-5:55 UTC. Due to cloud cover, there were no direct observations, meaning that the additional ash plumes did not reach more than 28-30,000 ft altitude.
The Aviation Color Code of Bogoslof was raised to RED. The volcano observatory (AVO) mentions that the "volcano remains at a heightened state of unrest and in an unpredictable condition. Additional explosions producing high-altitude volcanic clouds could occur at any time."
The National University's Volcanology and Seismology Research Institute (OVSICORI), reported an eruption at the Rincón de la Vieja Volcano in Guanacaste at 2:56 p.m. this Friday, June 23, where the column reached 2000 meters above the crater and 3,916 meters above sea level, (12844.48 ft).
According to the report by OVSICORI, the eruption registered is phreatomagmatic, which means it results from the interaction between magma and water. This type of eruptions usually contains juvenile magmatic clasts.
The activity was short, only lasting one minute, There are no reports of ash-fall for the time being, but the explosive and violent eruption caused once again a small pyroclastic flow, meaning a current of hot gas and volcanic matter such as rocks that heads down the north slope of the volcano forming a lahar. The lahars that form as a product of eruptions in this volcano usually affect the rivers Pénjamo, Azul and Quebrada Sufrosa.
Volcanologists recommend staying away from these rivers since the water level can increase suddenly.
Comment: SOTT Exclusive: The growing threat of underground fires and explosions