Sinabung Volcano: Magma volume Increasing at 3.5 Cubic Meters PER SECOND

A new lava dome on Sinabung Volcano, Indonesia has been confirmed. The new dome is on the northern crater and has an estimated lava volume of one million cubic meters.

Experts have said that the magma volume is growing by 3.5 cubic meters a second.

More than 17,000 people from 20 villages have been evacuated, and a five mile exclusion zone is in place.

Should the dome collapse, which it may well do once it is higher than the crater rim, large pyroclastic flows are likely to occur. these superheated flows of rock ash and gases regularly reach more than 900*C, and they incinerate everything in their path. It was a pyroclastic flow that covered Pompeii and Herculaneum when Vesuvius blew its top in 79 AD.

When there is any instability in a volcanic dome a collapse is almost inevitable. These collapses trap gases causing a build up of pressure, and it’s that pressure that blows the top off the volcano. The size of an explosion is linked not only to the volume of gas produced but to the level of degassing via fissures and vents around the crater. (source)

It’s easy to dismiss something like a volcano in Indonesia as having no repercussions for us here in the United States. When Mount Pinatubo in the Philipines erupted in 1992, enough ejecta was thrown into the atmosphere that temperatures across the planet were down, on average by O.5*C for several years.

With the amount of volcanic activity occurring at the moment a major eruption is something that none of us needs, regardless of where we live.