{"id":99302,"date":"2020-05-06T16:27:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T20:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=99302"},"modified":"2020-05-06T17:55:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T21:55:00","slug":"todays-science-and-technology-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=99302","title":{"rendered":"Today’s Science and Technology Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThe eruption of Hawaii\u2019s Kilauea volcano in 2018 was one of the most destructive in this volcano\u2019s recorded history. Why this happened has remained a mystery until a paper published recently in Nature suggests that rainfall could have been the culprit. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey<\/em><\/p>\n

In the interests of providing a more diverse and hopefully interesting product to the TAH crew, we’ve come up with several new venues to post. Science and Technology is one.<\/p>\n

Surprising Trigger Identified for Explosive Eruption of Hawaii\u2019s Kilauea Volcano<\/h3>\n

TOPICS:European Space Agency Geophysics Volcano Weather<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The notion that rain could lead to a volcanic eruption may seem strange, but scientists from the University of Miami in the USA, have used information from satellites, including the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, to discover that a period of heavy rainfall may have triggered the four month-long eruption of Hawaii\u2019s Kilauea volcano in 2018.<\/p>\n

Producing about 320,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools\u2019 worth of lava that reshaped the landscape, destroyed hundreds of homes, and caused the collapse of the summit caldera, the 2018 eruption was one of the most destructive in Kilauea\u2019s recorded history.<\/p>\n

A paper published recently in Nature proposes a new model to explain why this eruption happened. The authors, Jamie Farquharson and Falk Amelung from the University of Miami\u2019s Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science, suggest that heavy rainfall may have been the culprit.<\/p>\n

In the months before the eruption, Hawaii was inundated by an unusually prolonged period of heavy, and at times extreme, rainfall.<\/p>\n

The rainwater would have found its way through the pores of the volcanic rock and increased the pressure within \u2013 decreasing the rigidity of the rock and allowing magma to rise to the surface.<\/p>\n

Falk Amelung said, \u201cWe knew that changes in the water content in the Earth\u2019s subsurface can trigger earthquakes and landslides. Now we know that it can also trigger volcanic eruptions. Under pressure from magma, wet rock breaks easier than dry rock. It is as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using a combination of ground-based and satellite measurements of rainfall, Farquharson and Amelung modeled the fluid pressure within the volcano\u2019s edifice over time \u2013 a factor that can directly influence the tendency for mechanical failure in the ground, ultimately driving volcanic activity.<\/p>\n

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\nPre-eruption ground deformation around Kilauea Volcano (red triangle) in Hawaii. Credit: J. Farquharson\/F. Amelung<\/em><\/p>\n

This is not an entirely new theory, but it was previously thought that this could only happen at shallow depths. Here, the scientists conclude that the rain increased pore pressure deep down \u2013 at depths of up to 3 km. <\/p>\n

The team\u2019s results highlight that fluid pressure was at its highest in almost half a century immediately prior to the eruption, which they propose facilitated magma movement beneath the volcano. Their hypothesis also explains why there was relatively little widespread uplift around the volcano in the months prior.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would normally see the ground inflate, or \u2018uplift\u2019 before an eruption as the magma chamber swells. We used radar information from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission to see that the amount of inflation was low.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis lack of substantial inflation suggests that the intrusion\u2013eruption could not only have been triggered by an influx of fresh magma from depth, but that it was caused by a weakening of the rift zone. The six-day repeat observations from the Sentinel-1 mission were key to our research.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well well. Lava from rainwater. Read the rest of the article here: SciTech Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The eruption of Hawaii\u2019s Kilauea volcano in 2018 was one of the most destructive in this … Today’s Science and Technology Post<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[503],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99305,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99302\/revisions\/99305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}