Increased unrest and seismic activity reported at Iceland’s massive Askja volcano

Posted by The Extinction Protocol: 2012 and beyond

Iceland’s Askja volcano is the massive lake in the background. The large crater of turquoise water is merely the Víti geothermal lake vent blown from the crater in the dreaded 1875 eruption. Víti is so large, people standing on the crater’s rim look like ants.

August 10, 2012 – ICELAND - In Iceland, Askja volcano has been showing increased signs of unrest including higher than background levels of tremor, as Diana Barnes remarked on VolcanoCafe. –Volcano Discovery

2011 earthquake cuts life expectancy rates in Japan

Posted by The Extinction Protocol: 2012 and beyond

July 28, 2012 – JAPAN – Japanese women have fallen behind Hong Kong in global life expectancy rankings for the first time in 25 years. The death toll from last year’s earthquake and tsunami was high enough to reduce average life expectancy in Japan, officials say. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare reported men on average lived to be 79.44 in 2011, down 0.11 years from 2010, Kyodo News Service reported. The life expectancy for women was 85.9 years, down 0.40 years from 2010. Japanese women, for the first time in 26 years, were not the most long-lived in the world. Women in Hong Kong, with an average life expectancy of 86.7 years, were in first place. Hong Kong also had the longest-lived men at 80.5 years, followed by Switzerland and Iceland. Japan was in eighth place, as it was in 2010. The earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 is believed to have killed 18,000 people. The ministry said suicide also rose among women last year while continuing to decline among men, with the biggest increase among women in their late 20s. –BBC

Increased seismic activity reported at Iceland’s Katla Volcano

Posted by The Extinction Protocol: 2012 and beyond

June 21, 2012 – ICELAND – Increased seismic activity was detected in Mýrdalsjökull glacier in south Iceland, under which the volcano Katla lies, last night. Twenty-six minor earthquakes were picked up by sensors, all of which had their epicenter within the Katla crater. A seismic activity expert on watch at the Icelandic Meteorological Office informed that us the earthquake swarm had started at 1 am and continued through 5 am. However, there is no reason to be concerned about an imminent volcanic eruption or glacial outburst in Katla. The earthquakes were all shallow and originated in seismic activity in the geothermal system. –Iceland Review

Large volcanic eruptions could eat away at ozone layer

Posted by The Extinction Protocol: 2012 and beyond

June 13, 2012 – CENTRAL AMERICA - A large eruption in the volcanically active region of Central America could release enough ozone-depleting gases to significantly thin the ozone layer for several years, researchers announced Tuesday. Such a volcanic eruption could double or triple the current levels of the chemical elements bromine and chlorine in the stratosphere, the upper atmosphere layer where ozone gas protects us from ultraviolet radiation, the researchers calculated, based on the levels of these chemicals released from 14 volcanoes in Nicaragua over the past 70,000 years. The researchers presented their work at a scientific conference in Iceland. Bromine and chlorine need an electron to become stable, and can easily rip it off passing molecules, like ozone. They are gases that “love to react — especially with ozone,” study researcher Kirstin Krüger, a meteorologist with GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany, explained in a statement. “If they reach the upper levels of the atmosphere, they have a high potential of depleting the ozone layer.” To estimate the past release of these chemicals by volcanoes, the researchers measured levels of halogens (the group of highly reactive elements that bromine and chlorine belong to) in rock layers deposited before and after historic eruptions. The average eruption released two to three times the quantity of human-produced bromine and chlorine currently in the stratosphere, they found. “As we have bromine and chlorine together, we believe that this can lead to substantial depletion,” Krüger said. “And this is from one single eruption.” Previous studies have estimated that in large, explosive eruptions — the type that sends mushroom clouds of ash miles high — up to 25 percent of the ejected halogens can reach the stratosphere. Because the effects are in the stratosphere, where the volcanic gases can be carried across the globe, eruptions of tropical volcanoes could lead to ozone depletion over a large area, even having an impact over Antarctica and the Arctic, where seasonal “holes” in the ozone layer already exist. Some volcanic gases can last in the stratosphere up to six years, Krüger said, although the most significant impacts from eruptions like the intense eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 were within the first two years. Pinatubo’s eruption reduced global temperatures by about 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 degrees Celsius) during the following year. -MSNBC

Iceland’s Katla volcano shaken by swarm of 14 tremors

Posted on May 30, 2012

May 30. 2012 – ICELAND - A swarm of 14 small to very small mostly very shallow quakes occurred at Katla volcano yesterday and today. Epicenter depths were reported between 0.1 and 12.2 km. Judging from the depth and magnitude of the quakes, the most likely cause for the seismic swarm are adjustments of the hydrothermal system under the icecap, and probably not magmatic intrusions (which would be possible indicators of a future new eruption). –Volcano Discovery