25 February 2013

Rockfalls shaking a volcanic lava dome apart (including a dramatic video)

Posted by Dave Petley

James Reynolds is a video maker based in Hong Kong who specializes in collecting footage of extreme natural hazard events.  In the last few days he has been in Indonesia filming the ongoing volcanic event that is affecting Paluweh Volcano in Indonesia.  This volcano is currently undergoing a phase of lava dome growth, which over the last few weeks has also been accompanied by eruption events that have generated ash plumes,  As is usually the case, this is accompanied by regular seismic events.  During his visit to the volcano James caught this amazing footage of the lava dome being shaken by these seismic events, generating rockfalls across he whole of the mass.

For reference, this is a satellite image of the eruption event that was captured by the NASA EO-1 ALI sensor (the same instrument as captured the Mount Dixon Imagery) earlier this month:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=80422

.

Interestingly, this footage is somewhat reminiscent of the footage of the effects of the April 2010 M=7.2 earthquake in Mexico (the link is to the old home of this blog).