Volcano Villarrica in southern Chile erupted in the early hours of Tuesday, sending a plume of ash and lava high into the sky, and forcing the evacuation of nearby communities.

The volcano, located near the popular tourist resort of Pucon around 750 km (460 miles) south of the capital Santiago, is one of South America's most active. It last erupted in 2000.

A column of ash and rock particles shot up to 3 km (nearly 2 miles) into the sky overnight. Although the initial violent eruption was short-lived, intermittent clouds of steam and gas continue to issue from the volcano.

A major lava flow is not expected, said Luis Lara, head of national geological service Sernageomin on Tuesday morning, but that could change.

"After an eruptive pulse, which was pretty intense but very short at 3 am, the volcanic system remains unstable and it is possible that something similar could occur again in the next few hours," he said.

Some 3,385 people had been evacuated as a preventative measure, said Interior Minister Rodrigo Penailillo. There were no reports of any injuries.

Mexico's Colima volcano is playing to the camera. Known locally as the Volcán Fuego or Volcano of Fire, Colima's recent activity is being captured on video and time-lapse photography as well as during monitoring flights around the area.

The latest blast, featured in this BBC clip, shows a huge ash column climbing over a mile into the sky. Blankets of ash covered villages as much as 15 miles away, but there was no structural damage.

New data show strikingly regular patterns, from weeks to eons

From The Earth Institute at Columbia University:

Vast ranges of volcanoes hidden under the oceans are presumed by scientists to be the gentle giants of the planet, oozing lava at slow, steady rates along mid-ocean ridges. But a new study shows that they flare up on strikingly regular cycles, ranging from two weeks to 100,000 years - and, that they erupt almost exclusively during the first six months of each year. The pulses - apparently tied to short- and long-term changes in earth's orbit, and to sea levels - may help trigger natural climate swings. Scientists have already speculated that volcanic cycles on land emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide might influence climate; but up to now there was no evidence from submarine volcanoes. The findings suggest that models of earth's natural climate dynamics, and by extension human-influenced climate change, may have to be adjusted. The study appears this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.


"People have ignored seafloor volcanoes on the idea that their influence is small - but that's because they are assumed to be in a steady state, which they're not," said the study's author, marine geophysicist Maya Tolstoy of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "They respond to both very large forces, and to very small ones, and that tells us that we need to look at them much more closely." A related study by a separate team this week in the journal Science bolsters Tolstoy's case by showing similar long-term patterns of submarine volcanism in an Antarctic region Tolstoy did not study.

Volcanically active mid-ocean ridges crisscross earth's seafloors like stitching on a baseball, stretching some 37,000 miles. They are the growing edges of giant tectonic plates; as lavas push out, they form new areas of seafloor, which comprise some 80 percent of the planet's crust. Conventional wisdom holds that they erupt at a fairly constant rate - but Tolstoy finds that the ridges are actually now in a languid phase. Even at that, they produce maybe eight times more lava annually than land volcanoes. Due to the chemistry of their magmas, the carbon dioxide they are thought to emit is currently about the same as, or perhaps a little less than, from land volcanoes - about 88 million metric tons a year. But were the undersea chains to stir even a little bit more, their CO2 output would shoot up, says Tolstoy.

A huge ash column exploded into the sky from one of Central America's most dangerous volcanoes on Wednesday, reaching airplane-level heights of the atmosphere.

Mexico's Colima volcano played host to a "strong vulcanian-type explosion" at 9:15 a.m. local time on Wednesday. The mountain belched an ash column more than 4 km above the summit, with volcanic matter rising to 29,000 ft (9 km). The resulting ash flow eventually drifted to the northeast, Volcano Discovery reported.

A webcam focused on the active stratovolcano captured the powerful blast.


A small pyroclastic flow that descended the steep slope of the volcano was generated during the explosion.

The Protección Civil (Civil Protection) said there is not a forecast of ash falling in the region, which is located in southwestern Mexico, according to Mashable. The volcano, which is also known as the 'Volcano of Fire,' straddles the states of Colima and Jalisco.

The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports an active breakout of the Kilauea Volcano lava flow that began June 27 advanced about 120 yards toward Highway 130. An update Saturday from the Hawaii County Civil Defense said the original flow front and south margin breakout remain stalled. However, a breakout along the north side of the flow remains active and has advanced down slope below an area near the stalled front. The leading edge of the breakout was 0.4 miles from Highway 130 and west of the Pahoa police and fire stations. The Civil Defense agency says dry weather is likely to keep brush fires a concern.

Source: Fox 8

Tonga underwater volcano creates new island:

A Tongan volcano has created a substantial new island since it began erupting last month, spewing out huge volumes of rock and dense ash that has killed nearby vegetation, officials said on Friday. The volcano, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of the South Pacific nation's capital Nuku'alofa, rumbled to life on December 20 for the first time in five years, the Lands and Natural Resources Ministry said. It said the volcano was erupting from two vents, one on the uninhabited island of Hunga Ha'apai and the other underwater about 100 meters (328 feet) offshore.

The ministry said experts took a boat trip to view the eruption on Thursday and confirmed it had transformed the local landscape. "The new island is more than one kilometer (0.6 mile) wide, two kilometers (1.2 miles) long and about 100 meters (328 feet) high," it said in a statement. "During our observations the volcano was erupting about every five minutes to a height of about 400 meters (1,312 feet), accompanied by some large rocks... as the ash is very wet, most is being deposited close to the vent, building up the new island."

It said ash and acidic rain was deluging an area 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) around the volcano, adding: "Leaves on trees on Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai have died, probably caused by volcanic ash and gases." A number of international flights were cancelled earlier this week amid concerns about the volcano's ash plume but they resumed on Wednesday, with authorities saying debris from the eruption was not being thrown high into the atmosphere. "Tonga, which is almost 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) northeast of New Zealand, lies on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," where continental plates collide causing frequent volcanic and seismic activity.

Source: Discovery News

Nuku'Alofa, Tonga -- A Tongan volcano has created a substantial new island since it began erupting last month, spewing out huge volumes of rock and dense ash that has killed nearby vegetation, officials said Friday.

The volcano, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the South Pacific nation's capital Nuku'alofa, rumbled to life on Dec. 20 for the first time in five years, the Lands and Natural Resources Ministry said.

It said the volcano was erupting from two vents, one on the uninhabited island of Hunga Ha'apai and the other underwater about 100 meters offshore.

The ministry said experts took a boat trip to view the eruption on Thursday and confirmed it had transformed the local landscape.

An underwater volcano off Tonga was spewing ash high into the air on Tuesday, causing several carriers to suspend air travel to the South Pacific island nation and turning the surrounding ocean blood red, residents and officials said.

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai underwater volcano, located about 65 km (40 miles) north of the capital Nuku‛alofa, was sending volcanic ash up to 4,500 meters (14,765 feet) into the air, the Wellington Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC) said.

The volcano, which first erupted in 2009, had been rumbling in recent weeks before exploding violently in the past few days, The New Zealand Herald newspaper reported.

An Air New Zealand flight between Auckland and Nuku‛alofa on Monday was diverted to Samoa and later returned to New Zealand because of the volcano, the airline said in a statement.

The increase in the emissions of ashes from Colombia's volcano Nevado del Ruiz prompted today the closure of nearby La Nubia airport to prevent traffic congestion to and from the terminal. According to Director of the Volcano Observatory of Manizales, Gloria Cortes, the communities near the crater, the most watched over in Colombia, remain on alert because of this increase in its activity.

The measure to suspend operations in the terminal was adopted to prevent any air accident because the ashes might interfere with the good functioning of plane turbines. Besides, the volcano, located between the central departments of Caldas and Tolima, continue emitting sulfure dioxide, though for the time being the situation is not serious, said Cortes as quoted by El Espectador newspaper.

Located 220 km west of Bogota, is part of the volcanic strip of Los Andes, also including another 74 similar structures. Its first eruptions occurred 1.8 million years ago, in the early Pleistocene, but the most lethal explosion was registered in November, 1985, when an enormous lahar (mud and debris flow) buried the small town of Armero, in Tolima, in Lagunilla valley, where only one fourth of its 28,000 inhabitants managed to survive in the absence of early warnings or predictions. Chinchina town also suffered the impact of the phenomenon, losing nearly 2,000 inhabitants. - Prensa Latina

The volcano erupted this morning at 02:45 local time with a strong explosion from the summit lava dome. It sent an 6 km tall ash column to approx. 26,000 ft (8,5 km) altitude. The eruption followed an increase in seismic activity in December, when so-called "drumbeat" earthquakes appeared - a type of volcanic tremor typically associated with movements of viscous magma at shallow depths,- in this case new lava rising beneath the existing lava dome (in place since 1991). As a consequence, the alert status of the volcano had been raised to the second highest level "Siaga" (3 on a scale of 1-4, alert).

Today's explosion caused parts of the summit dome that occupies the crater, open to the western flank, to collapse and produce a glowing avalanche that traveled approx. 2000 m, remaining within the volcano's caldera. It seems that no pyroclastic flow (which could sweep over the caldera walls and into inhabited areas below) occurred. No damage to people or infrastructure was reported. Continued glow from the summit dome after the explosion suggests that magma has and continues to arrive now there. - Volcano Discovery

Skaftafell - Just north of here, on the far side of the impenetrable Vatnajokull ice sheet, lava is spewing from a crack in the earth on the flanks of Bardarbunga, one of Iceland's largest volcanoes. By volcanologists' standards, it is a peaceful eruption, the lava merely spreading across the landscape as gases bubble out of it. For now, those gases - especially sulfur dioxide, which can cause respiratory and other problems - are the main concern, prompting health advisories in the capital, Reykjavik, 150 miles to the west, and elsewhere around the country.

But sometime soon, the top of Bardarbunga, which lies under as much as half a mile of ice, may erupt explosively. That could send plumes of gritty ash into the sky that could shut down air travel across Europe because of the damage the ash can do to jet engines. And it could unleash a torrent of glacial meltwater that could wipe out the only road connecting southern Iceland to the capital. All of that could happen. Then again, it may not.

Such are the mysteries of volcanoes that more than four months after Bardarbunga began erupting, scientists here are still debating what will happen next. The truth is, no one really knows. Volcanic eruptions are among the Earth's most cataclysmic events, and understanding how and when they happen can be crucial to saving lives and reducing damage to infrastructure and other property.