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Mar 19, 2009 11:10 AM | 8
An undersea volcano in the South Pacific is spewing stunning columns of smoke, steam and ash thousands of feet into the air.
The eruption began Monday after a series of earthquakes near Tonga, a 170-island archipelago between Australia and Tahiti, residents told the Associated Press. There were magnitude-5.0 quakes there Sunday night and Monday afternoon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Though the Wellington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) issued an advisory for the area, the plume isn’t endangering* island residents and so far hasn’t hurt fish or other animals, according to the AP.
Yesterday a plume rose to between 15,000 and 25,000 feet (4.6 to 7.6 kilometers), the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program reported. "It's a very significant eruption, on quite a large scale," Tonga's chief geologist, Kelepi Maf, told the Times of London. This is not unusual for this area and we expect this to happen here at any time."
It’s unclear whether the earthquakes are linked to the eruption. Sally Kuhn Sennert, who writes the weekly volcano report for the Smithsonian, didn’t immediately return a call and email for comment.
But Simon Turner, a geochemist at Macquarie University in Sydney, told the Times that the quakes and volcano eruption probably aren’t linked. "If this eruption was caused by the earthquake, it would mean magma coming 110 kilometers (68 miles) to the surface in a few days," Turner told the newspaper. "I think that would be fairly unlikely."
Tonga is part of the ''ring of fire,” an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones in the Pacific. We’ve got more on what causes a volcano to erupt and the ring of fire.
*Updated at 3:40 p.m. to correct typo from engendered to endangered.
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8 Comments
Add CommentFrom an amateur...don't earthquakes and volcanic eruptions usually go hand in hand?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was very interested to hear about this eruption, because I was in Tonga last August and photographed a couple of volcanos, Togua and Kao, off the Ha'apai group of islands. See my photos @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pkoen/2838200427/ .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would have been interesting to see if all the sea creatures in the vicinity knew that something was about to happen & left the area until things calmed down.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRemember what Harry trueman said about Mt St Helens..I aint about to leave. That mountain is more scared of me than I am of it.. Today he sleeps peaceably under about 60 feet of rock and soil...Anything alive needs to be very scared!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes this mean that new islands are going to be formed
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm curious, since this is obviously a spectacular above surface eruption, at what depth is the actual seabed or "mountain top" for this eruption? I would think that with this much visible eruption it must be at a fairly shallow depth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"don't earthquakes and volcanic eruptions usually go hand in hand?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe answer is no.
http://scienceblogs.com/greengabbro/2009/03/are_the_tonga_earthquake_and_e.php
I was lucky enough to be living and working in Tonga at the time of this eruption. You could see steam and smoke rising for days after. Concerning the earthquake/ volcano issue, whether they are conected I don't know, but there was a massive earthquake just days later followed by a tsunami warning that reached all the way to Fiji. See my blog @ http://btjtravel.blogspot.com/ for other stories about Tonga.
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