A series of explosions rocked Stromboli, an Italian volcano, this Wednesday. Here's what happened, how it tracks with Stromboli's past, and what to expect in the future.
, tourists – who regularly climb the not-quite-mountain to watch lava fire up into the sky, by day or night – were so frightened by the explosion that they quickly evacuated their hotels and headed for the sea to make sure they weren’t hit by any debris. It’s not clear where on the volcano they were situated, or if there have been any injuries yet.
“We got on our boat and had to evacuate immediately,” he said, adding that their entire catamaran was covered in ash.At the time of writing, this appears to be a somewhat isolated event. According to Stefano Branca of the INGV, who spoke to Reuters, this was triggered by a pocket of magma under high-pressure, one that must have been allowed to quickly depressurise and rush to the surface. “These are events of great intensity and quite rare,” he told the outlet.
At other volcanoes not too dissimilar to Stromboli, rockfalls can cause blockages within the volcano's conduit; when this happens, a huge build up of pressure occurs, and when the volcano clears its throat, the pressure difference between the magma and the atmosphere is so great that a huge explosion takes place.
Geochemically speaking, this magma is more ‘primitive’, meaning that it hasn’t been experienced much cooling, transportation, mixing and chemical alteration. Instead, this gas-rich concoction rushed up from depth, spent very little time in the conduit, and was extremely violently propelled out as said gas rapidly depressurised - far more explosive than could ever be created by a slug of gas gradually rising up through the conduit and flinging out the magma sitting atop it.
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