Introduction On average, some 120 strong earthquakes (M ≥ 6) and 60 volcanic eruptions occur somewhere in the world every year. Thus it shouldn’t be hugely surprising when news of a volcanic eruption follows news of a damaging earthquake somewhere else in the world by a week or less. Such newsworthy coincidences inevitably prompt the question from both the media and the public, “is this eruptio...

[1] Aircraft measurements in the Hekla, Iceland volcanic plume in February 2000 revealed large quantities of hydrogen halides within the stratosphere correlated to volcanic SO2. Investigation of the longer-term stratospheric impact of these emissions, using the 3D chemical transport model, SLIMCAT suggests that volcanic enhancements of H2O and HNO3 increased HNO3 3H2O particle availability with...

Earth's largest calderas form as the ground collapses during immense volcanic eruptions, when hundreds to thousands of cubic kilometres of magma are explosively withdrawn from the Earth's crust over a period of days to weeks. Continuing long after such great eruptions, the resulting calderas often exhibit pronounced unrest, with frequent earthquakes, alternating uplift and subsidence of the gro...

Two major types of passive margins are recognized, i.e. volcanic and non-volcanic, without proposing distinctive mechanisms for their formation. Volcanic passive margins are associated with the extrusion and intrusion of large volumes of magma, predominantly mafic, and represent distinctive features of Larges Igneous Provinces, in which regional fissural volcanism predates localized syn-magmati...

[1] Orbital images from the MESSENGER spacecraft show that ~27% of Mercury’s surface is covered by smooth plains, the majority (>65%) of which are interpreted to be volcanic in origin. Most smooth plains share the spectral characteristics of Mercury’s northern smooth plains, suggesting they also share their magnesian alkali-basalt-like composition. A smaller fraction of smooth plains interprete...

The understanding of evacuation processes is important for improving the effectiveness of evacuation plans in the event of volcanic disasters. In terms of social processes, the enactment of evacuations in volcanic crises depends on the variability of individual/household responses. This variability of population response is related to the uncertainty and unpredictability of the hazard character...

Microbes can have profound effects on their hosts, driving natural selection, promoting speciation and determining species distributions. However, soil-dwelling microbes are rarely investigated as drivers of evolutionary change in plants. We used metabarcoding and experimental manipulation of soil microbiomes to investigate the impact of soil and root microbes in a well-known case of sympatric ...

Moon Mineralogy Mapper spectroscopic observations are used to assess the mineralogy of five sites that have recently been proposed to include lunar dark mantle deposits (DMDs). Volcanic glasses have, for the first time, clearly been identified at the location of three of the proposed pyroclastic deposits. This is the first time that volcanic glasses have been identified at such a small scale on...

We report here on the results of a proof-of-concept study aimed at remotely sensing the volcanic CO2 flux using a Differential Adsorption lidar (DIAL-lidar). The observations we report on were conducted in June 2014 on Stromboli volcano, where our lidar (LIght Detection And Ranging) was used to scan the volcanic plume at ∼3 km distance from the summit vents. The obtained results prove that a re...

Major volcanic events with a high loading of stratospheric aerosol have long been known to cause cooling, but their impact on precipitation has only recently been emphasized, especially as an analog for potential geoengineering of climate. Here, the authors use a coupled atmosphere–ocean–land–vegetation model in conjunction with observations to study the effects of volcanic aerosol on the tropi...