For simply over every week, Mt. Etna, considered one of Europe’s most energetic volcanoes, has been spewing round, largely white smoke rings into the skies over Sicily.
It’s not the primary time Mt. Etna has enchanted onlookers with its puffing (it’s been dubbed the Gandalf of volcanoes, after the pipe-puffing wizard in “Lord of the Rings.”) However consultants there say this month Etna “has damaged all earlier data” with the frequency of the rings, in line with Boris Behncke, a volcanologist on the Nationwide Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Catania, who posted about the phenomenon on Facebook.
The rings, often called volcanic vortex rings, appeared earlier this month after a small vent opened on the northwest border of the Southeast crater. The phenomenon happens when sufficient stress builds up in order that magma contained in the crater propels condensed gases, predominantly water vapor, by the vent.
On this case, the vent is completely round, making for notably excellent rings. “It’s bellissimo,” mentioned Simona Scollo, one other volcanologist on the INGV Etna Observatory in Catania, utilizing the Italian phrase for stunning. Ms. Scollo copublished a research on the dynamics of volcanic vortex rings final yr within the journal Scientific Reports.
However, she mentioned, the exercise doesn’t imply that Mt. Etna goes to erupt in a very spectacular method. “No, no, no,” she mentioned.
Throughout a phone interview Tuesday, she mentioned that the mechanism for the smoke rings was just like how dolphins blow bubble rings. “They compress the water of their mouths, and utilizing their tongue they push it out of their mouths and create such a stress that it varieties a hoop,” she mentioned.
Relying on climate situations, the rings hold within the air anyplace from one to 10 minutes, in line with the research. “If there may be turbulence they disintegrate extra shortly,” she mentioned.
Interviewed in The New York Times final yr, Ms. Scollo mentioned the research hoped to higher perceive how volcanoes functioned, “not solely after they create a catastrophe for individuals or when they’re very harmful,” however in calmer instances, too.
The brand new vent within the volcano has been spewing lots of of rings, however one other opening on the volcano has additionally been spewing rings, albeit extra spaced out, since final yr.
The phenomenon was first recorded on Etna in 1724, adopted by periodic sightings, most lately last year, and fairly spectacularly in 2000.
In keeping with the outline for its 2013 inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage site, Mt. Etna is “the best Mediterranean island mountain and essentially the most energetic stratovolcano on the planet.”
“No volcano on earth produces as many volcanic vortex rings as Etna, we knew this for a while,” famous Mr. Behncke.
Mt. Etna isn’t the one volcano the place the phenomenon has been registered. Volcanic vortex rings have been puffed by a number of volcanoes worldwide, from Momotombo in Nicaragua to ash-spewing aircraft stopper Eyjafjallajökul in Iceland, to Mt. Redoubt in Alaska to a different energetic Italian volcano, Stromboli.
Ms. Scollo mentioned that the exercise from the brand new vent was slowing down. And it may finish altogether.
“It may well cease as a result of the properties of the conduit that allowed for the formation of those volcanic vortex rings can change, possibly with obstructions,” she mentioned. Or the quantity of gasoline throughout the conduit may lower, she added.
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