PNG Volcano Could Be Facing Massive Blow

TECTONICS

Location and Age Map of volcanoes in the New Britain island area at North Dakota University

London (AFP) Oct 10, 2002
A volcano in Papua New Guinea is showing signs of a catastrophic eruption that could threaten tens of thousands of lives and temporarily affect the Earth's climate with its dust plume, New Scientist says.

Part of the volcano's system has been pumping out lava and disgorging rocks and ash for more than two months, and 15,000 people have been evacuated, the British science weekly says.

But experts are worried that these rumblings are merely signs of much worse to come, it says.

Pago, the volcano that has been making the noises, has erupted at least eight times in the past 500 years, most recently in 1933, which forced many people from their homes and sparked a famine.

What makes Pago special is that it is the active vent, or safety valve, for a caldera, one of the most dangerous types of volcano.

That volcano, Witori, has erupted more than 10 times in the past 5,600 years, sometimes spewing up to four times as much debris as the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.

"Witori's last big show was just under 500 years ago, and scientists are worried that the caldera could be due for another big event," the report, carried in next Saturday's issue of New Scientist, says.

"A large explosion could send flows of hot ash and debris up to 30 m away, endangering up to 30,000 people and would temporarily change the Earth's climate."

The US Geological Survey's Disaster Assistance Program flew a three-member emergency team to the area last month at the request of the Papuan government.

The experts are setting up a network of seismic and global positioning system (GPS) sensors to monitor ground movement at Pago.

Caldera volcanoes are types of volcano which have a large crater that sits on the magma chamber below, like a sealed lid on a kettle.

When pressure builds up beyond a certain point, they can erupt with an earth-shaking power equal to many nuclear bombs.

One such volcano was Krakatoa. When it erupted in 1883, it unleashed a tidal wave that reached as far as Aden in the Middle East. Its airborne dust caused spectacular sunsets as far away as New York and lowered the global atmospheric temperature by as much as 1.2 degrees celsius over the following five years.

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TECTONICS

Four New Active Volcanoes In Andes Discovered In Satellite Radar Survey

Pasadena - Jul 16, 2002
Four volcanoes in the central Andes mountains of South America, all previously thought to be dormant, must now be considered active due to ground motions detected from space, geophysicists say.

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