Palm Sunday

 With Gabi Champ:

Nova News, Naples: Lightning strikes a palm tree in the garden of a house and a fire breaks out

Last night in San Sebastiano al Vesuvio the Carabinieri of the local station intervened in via Pompei 2 for a fire. Shortly before, lightning had struck a palm tree in the garden of the house.

The flames, which started from the plant, spread to the rest of the garden. Firefighters and Civil Protection personnel intervened and the fire was put out. There were no injuries.

I guess they've had bigger disasters in the neighborhood.

Linked at The Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links. The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Loungewear garnering clicks at The Other McCain.

An Explosive Post

Two of the world's most dangerous volcanoes are burping and showing signs of life:

NewsMax, Indonesia's Anak Krakatau Volcano Spews Ash, Lava in New Eruption

Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau volcano has erupted, spewing ash as high as 3 kilometers (2 miles) into the air, officials said Saturday.

The volcano island located in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait between the main Java and Sumatra islands has erupted at least seven times since late Friday, Indonesia’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center said.

It was the longest eruption since the explosive collapse of the mountain caused a deadly tsunami in 2018 along the coasts of Java and Sumatra, the center said. There were no casualties reported in the latest eruption and no evacuation order was issued. The nearest settlement is 16 1/2 kilometers (10 1/2 miles) away.

The center’s closed-circuit camera showed lava flares and the volcano continuously erupting until Saturday morning.

The second-highest alert on a scale of four has remained in place since 2018. Authorities in May warned residents and tourists to stay 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the crater. Up till then, people used to trek to the top to observe the nature's spectacle.

Scientists at the center said that since the 2018 eruption and collapse, Anak Krakatau island is now only about a quarter of its original size.

A 2019 study by the center shed light on the power of the tsunami that crashed into more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) of coastline in Sumatra and Java. More than 430 people died in the waves that were 2 meters (6.6 feet) or higher and 40,000 were displaced.

The center said that the peak of the crater was 159 meters (520 feet) high, compared to 338 meters (1,108 feet) before the December 2018 eruption.

Anak Krakatau, which means “child of Kratakau,” is the offspring of the famous Krakatau, whose monumental eruption in 1883 triggered a period of global cooling.

At UPI, Italy's Campi Flegrei volcano is at risk of eruption, researchers say

The Campi Flegrei volcano in southern Italy is at risk of erupting, researchers at Italy's National Research Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology and University College London said in a new study published in the Communications Earth and Environment journal from Nature.

The ground beneath the coastal town of Pozzuoli has been rising about 4 inches a year for the past decade, investigators reported Friday. They also noted a series of persistent small earthquakes, including 600 recorded in April.

About 360,000 people live on the roof of the volcano, which resembles a gentle depression and is not an obvious mountain. It is located about 9 miles west of Naples, Italy, and is partially submerged beneath the Bay of Pozzuoli.

Researchers at University College London created a simulation "to interpret the patterns of earthquakes and ground uplift, and concluded that parts of the volcano had been stretched nearly to a breaking point." "Our new study confirms that Campi Flegrei is moving closer to rupture," study lead author Christopher Kilburn of University College London Earth Sciences said in a news release.

"However, this does not mean an eruption is guaranteed. The rupture may open a crack through the crust, but the magma still needs to be pushing up at the right location for an eruption to occur," Kilburn continued.

Both volcanoes have, in past, demonstrated the ability to produce civilization threatening eruptions.  They probably won't do so soon. But they could.  

Underwater Volcanic Explosion Near Tonga Sets Off Pacific Wide Tsunami

 Dang! CNN Tsunami advisories lifted in US after waves hit Tonga following volcanic eruption

An underwater volcano in the South Pacific erupted violently on Saturday, causing tsunamis to hit Hawaii, Japan, and Tonga's largest island, Tongatapu -- sending waves flooding into the capital.

The Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano, about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) southeast of Tonga's Fonuafo'ou island, first erupted on Friday and a second time on Saturday around 5:26 p.m. local time, according to CNN affiliate Radio New Zealand (RNZ).

The eruptions sent a plume of ash, gas and steam 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) into the air, according to RNZ. Satellite imagery showed a massive ash cloud and shockwaves spreading from the eruption. Ash was falling from the sky in the Tonga capital, Nuku'alofa, Saturday evening and phone connections were down.

The eruption caused a severe tsunami on Tongatapu, where the capital is located, with waves flowing onto coastal roads and flooding properties on Saturday.

There's a satellite video of the explosion at the link which is just stunning. A slightly less awesome, but at least embeddable one:

The explosion sent a tsunami out over the whole Pacific region, including the US Lori Dengler at the Eureka Time Standard: An unprecedented tsunami from the Tonga Islands

In the 74-year history of US tsunami warning centers, there had never been a volcanic-generated tsunami worthy of issuing a bulletin about. The software for sending alerts is predicated on an earthquake source and the warning center folks had to put something in the earthquake magnitude field in order to send it out.
Normally, the earthquake triggers the tsunami alerting process. An audible alert goes off and computer screens flash in the tsunami warning centers whenever an earthquake above a certain magnitude occurs and that initiates the analysis and bulletin dissemination. For US earthquakes, it typically takes five minutes or less to get an initial bulletin out. If the earthquake is further away, that initial bulletin may take 10 minutes.

This morning, the first tsunami bulletin from the National Tsunami Warning Center was issued at 3 a.m. PST. It was a statement — an earthquake of M1 had occurred in the Tonga Islands area at 8:27 p.m PST the day before and “Earthquakes of this size are known to generate tsunamis potentially dangerous to coasts outside the source region.” At 4:53 a.m. bulletin #2 announces that a Tsunami Advisory is in effect for all the US and Canadian West Coast and Alaska. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued similar advisories for Hawaii. This time the volcanic source was included, and Ryan at the NWS deemed it worthy of waking me up.
. . .
By the time the US tsunami centers issued their first bulletin, the tsunami was approaching Hawaii. By the time I got my computer up and running, I could pull up coastal tide gauges and underwater deep pressure data and watch the tsunami progressing across the

Pacific.

After an hour or two, it became clear to me that this tsunami looked very different than typical earthquake caused ones. It was particularly evident on the DART instruments. Beginning in the late 1990s, NOAA began deploying pressure sensors on the ocean floor. These instruments now called DART, are located in deep water far from coastal topography so that they can measure the true tsunami signal unaffected by coastal amplification. They are an important tool in the warning arsenal for forecasting likely tsunami heights.

I have looked at a lot of DART graphs for earthquake tsunamis. They tend to start out with larger amplitudes and then decay and disappear over the next hour. Today’s tsunami is lasting much longer on the deep-sea instruments – four hours now and still counting. We don’t know for sure yet why it is lasting so long – whether it has to do with the eruption itself or complex interaction with the sea floor. But it likely means that today’s tsunami will last even long than usual, and my guess is that I will still be seeing traces in a few days.

On the California coast, Port Luis recorded the highest water level so far – at just over 4 feet with Crescent City a close second at 3.9. 

The vulnerability of Crescent City to tsunamis has been well known since the Good Friday 1964 quake in Alaska led to the flooding, damage and death in Crescent City. Apparently, the hydrography nearby helps to bring out the best in them.

The signal of the tsunami was also easily visible in the Aleutian Islands:

But even more than the tsunamis, which beyond Tonga, seem to have had only minor consequence, I wonder about the effect of this eruption on the climate in the medium term. Large volcanic eruptions have been observed to have strong cooling impacts on the whole earth several times in recorded history, and down through geologic time. In recent events, it was considered to be the result of sulfate aerosols blocking sunlight. 

Well, several cubic kilometers of sulfate laden seawater just had a violent encounter with a whole lot of hot lava. Just sayin.'

2020 Is Turning Out to be Quite an Interesting Year

Stacy McCain, The Apocalypse Will Be Blogged

Let’s see: Deadly pandemic escapes from a Chinese bioweaponry research lab, swarms of locusts cover Africa and, meanwhile, a volcano erupts:

The Indonesian volcano Anak Krakatau erupted Friday, spewing a large plume of ash 9 miles into the air.
At approximately 11 p.m. local time, the volcano’s loud eruption was reportedly heard by people in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, located more than 90 miles away. Images taken from a webcam near the area show lava flowing from the volcano.
The strong eruption is believed to be the most forceful since December 2018, when it produced a deadly tsunami that killed over 400 people on the coasts of southeastern Sumatra and western Java.
Anak Krakatau, which translates to “the child of Krakatoa,” was formed after Krakatoa erupted in 1883 with a massive explosion 10,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The eruption killed approximately 36,000 people, destroyed hundreds of villages, and ash traveled as far as Europe. Later studies show that eruption likely lowered global temperatures for years.

Not saying it’s a sign of the Apocalypse but . . . OF COURSE it’s a sign of the Apocalypse. Repent, sinners. The end is nigh upon us.

La erupción del #Krakatoa es algo que si bien no pasaba desde el siglo XIX, era de esperarse. Sin embargo, hay que resaltar que en las últimas horas, son 4 los volcanes en Indonesia que han estado con actividad: Krakatoa, Semeru, Monte Merapi y Tambora. pic.twitter.com/v1iphZ11QG

— José Parra (@masqueuncoach) April 11, 2020

I'm not saying I believe that the WuFlu escaped from China's germ warfare laboratory, conveniently located within one mile of Wuhan's famous wet markets (the better to buy bats and pangolins, I suppose), but let's just say I don't necessarily disbelieve it either. If a deadly plague were to appear to originate in in Frederick, MD, site of Fort Detrick, the US's bio-warfare "defense" laboratory, I'd be suspicious too.

Linked by EBL in Der Rosenkavalier 🎭, Sierra Boggess and Phantom of the Opera 🎭, Adriana Lecouvreur 🎭, Madama Butterfly 🎭🦋, Le Comte Ory 🎭, La Rondine 🎭 : Angela Gheorghiu, Boris Godunov 🎭, Rusalka: Song to the Moon 🎭🌕🧜🏻‍♀️, Yvonne Elliman: I Don't Know How To Love Him, Così fan tutte 🎭.

Cool Stuff!

I don't really want to do posts on each of these separately, but these came across the bow, and they seemed pretty interesting. Science marches on (even if I'm not playing).

Pliny the Elder

Remains Found by Pompeii Really Are Pliny the Elder, New Tests Indicate

A team of Italian researchers have strengthened the case that at least the cranium found near Pompeii 100 years ago really does belong to Pliny the Elder, a Roman military leader and polymath who perished while leading a rescue mission following the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E. However, a jawbone that had been found with the skull evidently belonged to somebody else.

Over the last couple of years the experts, including anthropologists and geneticists, conducted a host of scientific tests on the skull and lower mandible that had been found a century ago on the shore near Pompeii, which have since been at the center of a scholarly debate as to whether they should be attributed to Pliny.
. . .
In a letter to the Roman historian Tacitus, the younger Pliny recounts that his uncle ordered his fleet to set sail for the Vesuvius area, both to investigate the phenomenon and to help “the many people who lived on that beautiful coast."

According to Pliny the Younger, the fleet and its commander disembarked at Stabiae, a town on the shore near Pompeii. But as he was leading a group of survivors to safety, Pliny the Elder was overtaken by a cloud of poisonous gas, and suffocated to death on the beach at age 56.
. . .
So, to sum up this century-old forensic mystery: we have a skull of a high-ranking Roman official who died at the time, place and circumstances in which ancient sources say this occurred; his DNA and skull are compatible with the age and ancestry of the ‘hero of Pompeii.’  . . . 

Mysterious particles spewing from Antarctica defy physics. I think they covered this one in Star Gate, the series, you know, the one starring Morena Baccarin. Hint, it was aliens!

Our best model of particle physics is bursting at the seams as it struggles to contain all the weirdness in the universe. Now, it seems more likely than ever that it might pop, thanks to a series of strange events in Antarctica.

The death of this reigning physics paradigm, the Standard Model, has been predicted for decades. There are hints of its problems in the physics we already have. Strange results from laboratory experiments suggest flickers of ghostly new species of neutrinos beyond the three described in the Standard Model. And the universe seems full of dark matter that no particle in the Standard Model can explain.

But recent tantalizing evidence might one day tie those vague strands of data together: Three times since 2016, ultra-high-energy particles have blasted up through the ice of Antarctica, setting off detectors in the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, a machine dangling from a NASA balloon far above the frozen surface.
. . .
ANITA picks up only the most extreme high-energy neutrinos, Barbano said, and if the upward-flying particles were cosmic-accelerator-boosted neutrinos from the Standard Model — most likely tau neutrinos — then the beam should have come with a shower of lower-energy particles that would have tripped IceCube's lower-energy detectors.

"We looked for events in seven years of IceCube data," Barbano said — events that matched the angle and length of the ANITA detections, which you'd expect to find if there were a significant battery of cosmic neutrino guns out there firing at Earth to produce these up-going particles. But none turned up.

Their results don't completely eliminate the possibility of an accelerator source out there. But they do "severely constrain" the range of possibilities, eliminating all of the most plausible scenarios involving cosmic accelerators and many less-plausible ones.

"The message we want to convey to the public is that a Standard Model astrophysical explanation does not work no matter how you slice it," Barbano said.

Newly discovered underwater volcanic range is teeming with bizarre, tiny fanged fish

While on a recent mission to map the sea floor in their new ocean explorer, RV Investigator, researchers with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) made a startling discovery just off the coast from Sydney, Australia: An extinct volcanic range teeming with nightmarish fish, reports CSIRO News.

One of the fish found lurking in this undersea range is the creature pictured above, a tiny, jet black, fanged, scaleless creature. Chief scientist for the voyage, UNSW marine biologist professor Iain Suthers, said he was amazed by how many of these little creatures could be found so far out to sea. The discovery could change how researchers study juvenile fish.

"We had thought fish only developed in coastal estuaries, and that once larvae were swept out to sea, that was end of them," explained Suthers. "But in fact, these eddies are nursery grounds for commercial fisheries along the east coast of Australia."

The features of the sea floor, such as with the underwater volcanic range discovered on this voyage, can create eddies that provide ideal places for life to flourish. The scaleless black fish is not the only strange creature discovered. Also lurking were eel-like idiacanthidae and the ever-frightening chauliodontidae . . . 

The science is not settled. And that's a good thing.

History Repeats as Krakatoa Tsunami Kills Hundreds.

More than 220 people have been killed and 843 injured after a tsunami hit coastal towns on Indonesia's Sunda Strait, government officials say.

The tsunami waves struck at night without any warning, destroying hundreds of buildings.

Officials say the tsunami could have been caused by undersea landslides after Anak Krakatau volcano erupted.

The Sunda Strait, between the islands of Java and Sumatra, connects the Java Sea to the Indian Ocean.

The disaster management agency has warned people to stay away from the coastline due to fears of another tsunami.

Saturday's tsunami struck at about 21:30 local time (14:30GMT), during a local holiday.

It hit several popular tourist destinations including the Tanjung Lesung beach resort in the west of Java island.

Footage shared on social media showed a large wave crashing into a tent in the resort, in which a popular Indonesian rock band, Seventeen, was performing. Members of the band were seen being swept away as the wave destroyed the stage.

They suspect an underwater landslide because no large eruption coincided with tthe tsunami. A small, recent eruption recorded posted on YouTube.



Krakatau (or the older, more familiar name, Krakatoa) is capable of much worse. In 1883, a long series of eruptions climaxed in:

On 27 August a series of four huge explosions almost entirely destroyed the island. The explosions were so violent that they were heard 3,110 km (1,930 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia, and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away. The pressure wave from the final explosion was recorded on barographs around the world. Several barographs recorded the wave seven times over the course of five days: four times with the wave travelling away from the volcano to its antipodal point, and three times travelling back to the volcano. Hence, the wave rounded the globe three and a half times. Ash was propelled to a height of 80 km (50 mi). The sound of the eruption was so loud it was reported that if anyone was within ten miles (16 km), they would have gone deaf.

The combined effects of pyroclastic flows, volcanic ashes, and tsunamis had disastrous results in the region and worldwide. The death toll recorded by the Dutch authorities was 36,417, although some sources put the estimate at more than 120,000. There are numerous documented reports of groups of human skeletons floating across the Indian Ocean on rafts of volcanic pumice and washing up on the east coast of Africa up to a year after the eruption. Average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius in the year following the eruption. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.

Why live close to that? Well Indonesia is a heavily populated country with 264,000,000 people, an area of 735,400 square miles (compared to the US's 3,797,000) and  127 active volcanoes. You have to live somewhere.

This Would Be Bad News

Scientists locate potential magma source in Italian supervolcano

Scientists have found the first direct evidence of a so-called 'hot zone' feeding a supervolcano in southern Italy that experts say is nearing eruption conditions.

Campi Flegrei is a volcanic caldera to the west of Naples that last erupted centuries ago.
The area has been relatively quiet since the 1980s when the injection of either magma or fluids in the shallower structure of the volcano caused a series of small earthquakes.

This is a truly giant volcano, much bigger than nearby Vesuvius, with a long history of very large pyroclastic ash eruptions. Satellite views of the area show a large number of what must be fairly recent craters, from the lack of erosion on them.

Using seismological techniques, scientists have now pinpointed the location of the hot zone where hot materials rose to feed the caldera during this period.

The study was led by Dr Luca De Siena at the University of Aberdeen in conjunction with the INGV Osservatorio Vesuviano, the RISSC lab of the University of Naples, and the University of Texas at Austin. The research provides a benchmark that may help predict how and where future eruptions could strike.

"One question that has puzzled scientists is where magma is located beneath the caldera, and our study provides the first evidence of a hot zone under the city of Pozzuoli that extends into the sea at a depth of 4 km," Dr De Siena said.

"While this is the most probable location of a small batch of magma, it could also be the heated fluid-filled top of a wider magma chamber, located even deeper."
. . .
"Whatever produced the activity under Pozzuoli in the 1980s has migrated somewhere else, so the danger doesn't just lie in the same spot, it could now be much nearer to Naples which is more densely populated.

"This means that the risk from the caldera is no longer just in the centre, but has migrated. Indeed, you can now characterise Campi Flegrei as being like a boiling pot of soup beneath the surface.

"What this means in terms of the scale of any future eruption we cannot say, but there is no doubt that the volcano is becoming more dangerous.

"The big question we have to answer now is if it is a big layer of magma that is rising to the surface, or something less worrying which could find its way to the surface out at sea."

There has been suspicion that the eruption of Campi Flegrei 40,000 years ago may have been decisive in the extinction of Neandertal man in Europe.

The First Phlegraean Period. It is thought that the eruption of the Archiflegreo volcano occurred about 39,280 ± 110 years (older estimate ~37,000 years) ago, erupting about 200 km3 (48 cu mi) of magma (500 km3 (120 cu mi) bulk volume) to produce the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption. Its Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) was 7. "The dating of the Campanian Ignimbrite Eruption (CI) to ~37,000 calendar years B.P. draws attention to the coincidence of this volcanic catastrophe and the suite of coeval, Late Pleistocene biocultural changes that occurred within and outside the Mediterranean region. These included the Middle to Upper Paleolithic cultural transition and the replacement of Neanderthal populations by anatomically modern Homo sapiens, a subject of sustained debate. No less than 150 km3 of magma were extruded in this eruption (the CI eruption), whose signal can be detected in Greenland ice cores. As widespread discontinuities in archaeological sequences are observed at or after this eruption, a significant interference with ongoing human processes in Mediterranean Europe is hypothesized." It is possible that these eruptions drove Neanderthals to extinction and cleared the way for modern humans to thrive in Europe and Asia.

This animation of a potential eruption in just mind blowing, when you consider the number of people in the affected area:

It's Not Nice to Fool With Mother Nature

Mystery Shocks at North Korea's Sacred Volcano Trigger Eruption Fears After Nuclear Test

China has limited access to a nature reserve on its border with North Korea after mysterious seismic shakes at the rogue nation's nuclear test site were detected less than 10 minutes after it launched a missile earlier this month.

Beijing reportedly closed the site over fears that underground detonations by the North Koreans at a facility near Punggye-ri could lead to rockslides and even trigger an eruption of the active volcano Mount Paektu, which is sacred to North Korea and located right on the border between the two countries.

The notices from Chinese authorities, restricting access to the Changbaishan National Nature Reserve, were posted on China’s state-regulated analog to Twitter Weibo, South Korea’s Donga Ilbo newspaper reported Thursday. It covers a radius of around 70 miles from the Punggye-ri test site.

"For the safety and convenience of travelers, we have temporarily closed the southern tourist zone of Changbai Mountain," read the message from Chinese authorities, translated by UPI. "Officials are thoroughly investigating the safety of the tourist area." The area will remain closed to the public until "the potential risks disappear," it said.

Mount Paektu

Besides radioactive risks—which could be contained inside the test facility—the shock of a large blast could disturb mountains in the Changbai range, including Paektu, an active volcano that last erupted in 1903.

A new article in scientific journal Nature’s Scientific Reports states that “an underground nuclear explosion test near an active volcano constitutes a direct threat.

It could “disturb the magma chamber of a volcano, thus accelerating the volcanic activity,” scientists argue.

For an individual nuclear detonation to do serious damage to the volcano, previous research shows, the blast would need to be at least 100 kilotons, which the explosion earlier this month was estimated to be.

It would be rather fitting if North Korea's nuclear program triggered a volcanic eruption.

Noto and Beyond

Today the toe loaded us on the bus and drove to Noto an important town in Southern Sicily. But first another shot of Etna from the roof of the hotel.

The arch celebrating the recontruction of Noto in new location after the original was destroyed in an earthquake in1693.

Many tourists

The town council?

The cathedral at Noto, rebuilt after collapse in 1990.

Georgia's salad at a Bistro in Noto. My fried sardine burger was surprisingly good. And Sicily has a tolerable IPA.

John found this in the street