A fresh eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Merapi volcano on Thursday
sent a plume of ash over 20,000 feet into the air over Central Java.
Clara Prima/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/fresh-eruptions-of-indonesian-volcano/?partner=rss&emc=rss wrote:
Fresh Eruptions of Indonesian Volcano
New York Times, November 4, 2010, By ROBERT MACKEY
<<Indonesia’s Mount Merapi volcano erupted again late on Thursday, just hours after six more people were killed by a spectacular early-morning eruption. The Associated Press reports that after the latest explosion, at about 11:30 p.m. local time: “Thousands of villagers and refugees in emergency shelters were loaded into trucks and taken to stadiums in cities far from Mount Merapi. Others, covered in soot, jumped onto motorcycles and into cars.” There were no immediate reports of casualties, but my colleague Aubrey Belford, who is on the scene, writes to say that the latest evacuation was “pretty chaotic.” Earlier in the day, The Jakarta Globe reported that the volcano, which had been “erupting and spewing heat clouds continuously since Wednesday morning … unleashed its most extreme volcanic activity yet on Thursday.” The newspaper added that Indonesian geologists called Thursday’s eruption at 5:55 a.m. “five times stronger that the initial eruption on Oct. 26.” After the day’s first eruption, an exclusion zone around the mountain was extended to 12 miles and the country’s president authorized the use of force to move residents from harm’s way.>>
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=46812 wrote:
The steep-sided, cone-shaped Mount Merapi volcano is both boon and curse to the people of Indonesia. Volcanic ash from its frequent eruptions makes the soil fertile enough to support a large population. It is also one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes, posing a constant threat to tens of thousands of people who live in its shadow. On October 26, 2010, the volcano once again turned destructive, unleashing a series of eruptions that had killed at least 44 people and forced 75,000 people from their homes, said CNN on November 4.
The mountain has been shrouded in clouds throughout the eruption, but on October 30 the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the thermal signature of hot ash and rock and a glowing lava dome. The thermal data is overlaid on a three-dimensional map of the volcano to show the approximate location of the flow. The three-dimensional data is from a global topographic model created using ASTER stereo observations.
The Center of Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation reported that two pyroclastic flows moved down the volcano on October 30. A pyroclastic flow is an avalanche of extremely hot gas, ash, and rock that tears down the side of a volcano at high speeds. ASTER imaged one of those flows.
Merapi shows no signs of slowing. After several days of eruptive episodes, the volcano began an eruption on November 3 that was five times more intense than on October 26 and lasted more than 24 hours. It is the most violent eruption at the volcano since the 1870s, said local geologists.>>