Puyehue Ash: Patagonia Declared a Disaster Area

Patagonia mountain in SW Argentina has been declared a disaster area due to Puyehue ash

Argentine government has declared the Patagonia mountain range in SW Argentina an environmental disaster area because of the millions of tons of volcanic ash from Puyehue eruption that have blanketed the entire region.

The country’s air travel and tourism industries have been severely affected by the ongoing eruption that began on June 4.

The skiing resort city of Bariloche and Villa La Angostura in the Andean mountains have been among the hardest hit areas, with the airports in both cities remaining shut since the eruption began.

The two provinces of Rio Negro and Neuquen, located at the northern edge of Patagonia, have also been declared as disaster areas due to loss of livestock, crops and severe damage.

Some 4,300 Chileans who were forced to evacuate after the eruption were allowed to return to their homes on Sunday, reports said.

“In a speech broadcast on national television, Kirchner said $2.41 billion [pesos, or about 600million dollars] would also be awarded to 1,400 farmers and businesses in the affect area on the condition that they don’t fire their workers.” AFP reported.

However, the border crossing between Chile and Argentina at Cardenal Samore remains closed because large sections of the road on both sides of the crossing are buried under a thick layer of volcanic debris.

Movement of volcanic ash clouds from Puyehue-Cordon Caulle Eruption between 5 and 12 June, 2011. Credit: NOAA and EUMETSAT

Puyehue eruption has forced thousands of flight cancellations in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Paraguay and Uruguay and, causing major disruptions in air travel throughout the Southern Hemisphere.

Related Links

• Puyehue-Cordón Caulle: ONGOING ERUPTIONS, ASH MOVING EAST
• Puyehue-Cordon Caulle Eruption Forces More Flight Cancellations
• Chile’s Puyehue volcano explodes

UV exposure has increased over the last 30 years

UV exposure has increased over the last 30 years, but stabilized since the mid-1990s

For Public Consumption: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA scientists analyzing 30 years of satellite data have found that the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching Earth’s surface has increased markedly over the last three decades. Most of the increase has occurred in the mid-and-high latitudes, and there’s been little or no increase in tropical regions.

Ultraviolet radiation can damage [destroys] DNA by distorting [tearing apart] its structure. Source: NASA

The new analysis shows, for example, that at one line of latitude — 32.5 degrees — a line that runs through central Texas in the northern hemisphere and the country of Uruguay in the southern hemisphere, 305 nanometer UV levels have gone up by some 6 percent on average since 1979.

The primary culprit: decreasing levels of stratospheric ozone, a colorless gas that acts as Earth’s natural sunscreen by shielding the surface from damaging UV radiation.

The finding reinforces previous observations that show UV levels are stabilizing after countries began signing an international treaty that limited the emissions of ozone-depleting gases in 1987. The study also shows that increased cloudiness in the southern hemisphere over the 30-year period has impacted UV.

Jay Herman, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., stitched together data from several earth observing satellites — including NASA’s Aura satellite, NOAA weather satellites, and commercial satellites — to draw his conclusions. The results were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in February.

“Overall, we’re still not where we’d like to be with ozone, but we’re on the right track,” said Jay Herman. “We do still see an increase in UV on a 30-year timescale, but it’s moderate, it could have been worse, and it appears to have leveled off.”

In the tropics, the increase has been minimal, but in the mid-latitudes it has been more obvious. During the summer, for example, UV has increased by more than 20 percent in Patagonia and the southern portions of South America. It has risen by nearly 10 percent in Buenos Aires, a city that’s about the same distance from the equator as Little Rock, Ark. At Washington, D.C.’s latitude — about 35 degrees north — UV has increased by about 9 percent since 1979.

The southern hemisphere tends to have more UV exposure because of the ozone hole, a seasonal depletion of the ozone layer centered on the South Pole. There are also fewer particles of air pollution — which help block UV — due to the comparatively small numbers of people who live in the southern hemisphere.

Despite the overall increases, there are clear signs that ultraviolet radiation levels are on the verge of falling. Herman’s analysis, which is in agreement with a World Meteorological Report [surprise, surprise!]  published in recent years, shows that decreases in ozone and corresponding increases in UV irradiance leveled off in the mid-nineties.

The Many Sides of Radiation

Shorter ultraviolet wavelengths of light contain more energy than the infrared or visible portions of sunlight that reach Earth’s surface. Because of this, UV photons can break atmospheric chemical bonds and cause complex health effects.

Longer wavelengths (from 320 to 400 nanometers) — called UV-A — cause sunburn and cataracts. Yet, UV-A can also improve health by spurring the production of Vitamin D, a substance that’s critical for calcium absorption in bones and that helps stave off a variety of chronic diseases.

UV-B, which has slightly shorter wavelengths (from 320 to 290 nanometers), damages DNA by tangling and distorting its ladder-like structure, causing a range of health problems such as skin cancer and diseases affecting the immune system.

As part of his study, Herman developed a mathematical technique to quantify the biological impacts of UV exposure. He examined and calculated how changing levels of ozone and ultraviolet irradiance affect life. For Greenbelt, Md., for example, he calculated that a 7 percent increase in UV yielded a 4.4 percent increase in the damage to skin, a 4.8 percent increase in damage to DNA, a 5 percent increase in Vitamin D production, and less than a percent of increase in plant growth.

“If you go to the beach these days, you’re at slightly higher risk of getting skin cancer (without protection),” Herman said, though he noted the risk would have been even greater in the absence of regulations on ozone-depleting substances.

Last year, one of Herman’s Goddard colleagues, Paul Newman, published a study showing that the ozone hole likely would have become a year-round fixture and UV radiation would increase 650 percent by 2065 in mid-latitude cities if not for the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty signed in 1987 that limited the amount of ozone-depleting gases countries could emit.

Clouds and Hemispheric Dimming

In addition to analyzing ozone and ultraviolet trends, Herman also used satellite data to study whether changes in cloudiness have affected UV trends. To his surprise, he found that increased cloudiness in the southern hemisphere produced a dimming effect that increased the shielding from UV compared to previous years.

In the higher latitudes especially, he detected a slight reduction — typically of 2 to 4 percent — in the amount of UV passing through the atmosphere and reaching the surface due to clouds. “It’s not a large amount, but it’s intriguing,” Herman said. “We aren’t sure what’s behind it yet.”

Vitali Fioletov, a Canadian scientist and member of the World Meteorological Organization’s advisory group on ultraviolet radiation, agreed that Herman’s findings about cloudiness warrant additional investigation. “I found the cloud effects on the global scale to be the most interesting aspect of the study,” he said. “This isn’t something you could see without satellites.”

Herman synthesized measurements from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) aboard Nimbus 7 and Earth Probe, the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite, NASA’s Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-view sensor (SeaWiFS) on the commercial SeaStar satellite, and the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument (SBUV) on several polar orbiting NOAA weather satellites.

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Related Links:

Global increase in UV irradiance during the past 30 years (1979�) estimated from satellite data
www.agu.org/pubs/…

New Simulation Shows Consequences of a World Without Earth’s Natural Sunscreen
www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/world_avoided

Ozone Hole Watch
ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov

Ultraviolet Radiation: How it Affects Life on Earth
earthobservatory.nasa.gov

Related Links:

• Space Exploration Not an Exact Science!
• Ozone Holes!

• Antarctic Ozone Depth Down to 100 DU
• The Largest Antarctic Ozone Hole
• Now Another Shameful Action
• Why NASA Doctors Ozone Hole Data?
• NASA: The Conjuring Continues
• NASA: Not Another Shameful Admission
• NASA Practices Extreme Voodoo
• Google Blocks Damaging Info on NASA
• Business As Usual
• Marsification of Earth
• NASA’s Re-Doctored Data: More “Acceptable!”
• NASA’s Ozone Hole Data Doctored?

Chile Earthquake Broke Earth’s Crust

Chile Earthquake: ‘A Complicated Fracture’

‘A jumping rupture process’

The Chilean M8.8 megaquake that struck offshore Maule region on 27 February,  was a “complicated rupture process” scientists at the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences say.

Quakes of this  magnitude break the entire Earth’s crust, they said. “After closer analysis of the seismic waves radiated by this earthquake during the first 134 seconds after start of the rupture, the researchers came to the conclusion that only the region around the actual epicenter was active during the first minutes. In the second minute the active zone moved north towards Santiago. After that the region south of Concepción became active for a short time. This rupturing trend agrees well with the distribution of the aftershocks during the following three days, as observed by the GEOFON-measuring network of the GFZ up to 03.03.2010.”

Rupture Propagation After Southern Chile’s Maule Earthquake. © GFZ. Click Image to Enlarge.

In 1960, the largest ever instrumentally-recorded earthquake, which  measured magnitude 9.5, originated at Valdivia, south of the Maule region. “The quake of 27 February connects directly to the rupture process of Valdivia,” said Professor Jochen Zschau, Director of Earthquake Risk and Early Warning Section at the GFZ. “With this, one of the last two seismic gaps along the west coast of South America might now be closed. With the exception of one last section, found in North Chile, the entire earth crust before the west coast of South America has been ruptured within the last 150 years.”

The Nazca plate which forms a part of the Pacific Ocean Floor moves eastwards at about 70mm per year, subducting the South American plate.  Thus producing very powerful earthquakes in the region. “In the course of about one century, the Earth’s ruptures completely in a number of strong quakes from Patagonia in the South to Panama in the North. Even Darwin reported, in his diary, of the strong earthquake in Concepción on 20 February 1835 and the resulting Tsunami.”

Chile Earthquake History. © GFZ. Click Image to Enlarge.

GFZ researchers have reportedly studied the collision of the Nazca plate and the South American Plate since 1994. “As a result of numerous expeditions and measuring campaigns in this area this Potsdam Helmholtz Centre avails of the probably the most dense data record on such a subduction zone. “Within the framework of the DFG Priority Programme “Deformation processes in the Andes”, and with the Geotechnology Project TIPTEQ we have just been able to collect a unique data record for the southern part of the Andes” says Professor Onno Oncken, Director of the Department Geodynamics and Geomaterials at the GFZ, and leader of these studies. The current quake puts us in the position to precisely compare the tectonics before and afterwards, a unique situation both internationally and in Earth science.”

GFZ is operating the Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO) in northern Chile, which they’ll hand over to Chilean researchers on 15 March 15, 2010.

Related Links:

• Chile Quake Moved Cities by 3m
• Another Strong Aftershock Srikes Chile
• Chile Earthquake Links Page
• FEWW Earthquake Links
• Volcanoes
• FEWW Volcano Links

Chaitén: Volcano that Doesn’t Sleep

Chaitén volcano: Entering 8th months of activity

Acquired December 5, 2008                                                                   NASA Earth Observatory

Chile’s Chaitén Volcano erupted violently on May 2, 2008, after an estimated 9,000 years of dormancy. The volcano has since spewed ash across Patagonia, ejecting  pumice as far as the nearby gulf, and sending lahars into the town of Chaitén.

The town of Chaitén, located about 10 kilometers from the volcano, is seen covered with volcanic ash in this  satellite image captured by Formosat on December 5, 2008.  West of town, ash forms fan-shaped deposits in what used to be Chaitén’s harbor.  Río Blanco is clogged with ash and appears completely white in the image.

Formosat image © 2008 Dr. Cheng-Chien Liu, National Cheng-Kung University, and Dr. An-Ming Wu, National Space Organization, Taiwan. Caption by Michon Scott.
Instrument: FORMOSAT-2 – RSI
Date Acquired: December 5, 2008

Chaitén Volcano Still Active

*** Breaking News: May 19, 2008 Philippines Taal Volcano Could Erupt Anytime!

Update #2 Chaitén Volcano –

Chile President: Ash-Covered Towns Could Be Permanent Ghost Towns

A segment of the pyroclastic tower ejected from the Chaitén volcano has fallen on the surroundings areas amid the eruptive activities that began 8 days ago.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet warned that towns surrounding Chaitén Volcano could become permanently uninhabitable. Bachelet’s remarks follows a report by National Geologic and Mining Service (SERNAGEOMIN) which forecast probability the volcano’s collapse at more than 50 percent.

The increased build-up of pyroclastic material in the magma dome made it prone to collapse, SERNAGEOMIN said. An implosion could result in the “complete destruction of everything within a 15 kilometer radius around the peak, an area which encompasses Chaitén, Santa Barbara, and several rural farming villages.”

According to vulcanologist Luis Lara Chaitén volcano could implode releasing a streams of red-hot pyroclastic material which would destroy everything in its path. (Source)

What goes up must come down! Ash from eruption settles on the surrounding area
Photo by Victor Gonzalez, Partido Humanista. Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice.

“Right now, everything is grey,” said Futaleufu Mayor. “We’ve got a huge layer of ash that a passing rain has turned into cement-hard” (Photo: AP) Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice.

Chaiten and other towns in the area are covered in ash (Photo courtesy of Victor González, Partido Humanista) Source: Patagonia Times. Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice.

Pyroclastic ash spewed two miles into the air (Source Dailymail UK). Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice.

A dead cow lies covered by ashes from the Chaiten volcano at a road leading to Argentina near Chaiten, Chile. (Photo and caption FoxNews!) Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice.

Related Links:

• Parts of pyroplastic chamber fall around Chaitén volcano
• RESIDENTS IN CHILE VOLCANO ZONE WITHOUT DRINKING WATER
• CHILE VOLCANO ZONE MAY BE PERMANENTLY UNLIVABLE

• Volcano gets active, region is evacuated
• Thousands evacuated as Chile volcano spews ash
• Will one or both of New Zealand islands break up and sink in the south-western Pacific Ocean?

• Chile: Volcano activity prompts mass evacuation
• A Shrinking World: Salmon and livestock removed from Chaiten volcano range

• Volcano gets active, region is evacuated
• Thousands evacuated as Chile volcano spews ash
• Will one or both of New Zealand islands break up and sink in the south-western Pacific Ocean?

• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• Ghost towns

::

Chaitén Volcano: No End Seen to Second Massive Eruption

A Shrinking World Series:

Update #1 – Millions of tons of volcanic ash continue to rain down on Patagonia

Ten days after the Chilean volcano erupted for the first time in thousands of years, volcanic ash continues to rain down in Patagonia.

An eruption on the morning of May 2, 2008 forced the evacuation of more than 4,000 people from the town of Chaitén nearby (10 kilometers distant from the volcano) and caused the death of an elderly woman. The eruption continued through to May 4. Towns such as Futaleufú were affected and water supplies were contaminated. The town of Chaitén and Futaleufú were completely evacuated on the morning of May 6, 2008, due to a massive new eruption, with pyroclastic flows and possible emerging of lava. (Source)

The scientists have expressed grave concerns about the potential long-term environmental damage and the harm to the health of people and animals in the area.

“It has spoiled lakes, rivers and lagoons, coated plants in a dense layer of gray, and altered the sensitive habitat of animals now struggling to survive. Satellite images show a white stripe smeared across the southern part of South America.” Reuters said.

A bicycle covered in volcanic ash in Futaleufu town, about 1450 km south of Santiago May 11, 2008. Chaiten volcano began erupting May 2, 2008. (Photo: REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado) Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice.

“I am tremendously worried because this is an environmental, social and ecological disaster,” said Alejandro Beletzky, an environmental scientist in Argentina.

“The presence of volcanic ash in the region, which falls constantly, is very risky for humans, plants and animals,” he said near Esquel, about 2,000km southwest of Buenos Aires. (Source)

Related links:

• Chile: Volcano activity prompts mass evacuation
• A Shrinking world: Salmon and livestock removed from Chaiten volcano range

• Volcano gets active, region is evacuated
• Thousands evacuated as Chile volcano spews ash
• Will one or both of New Zealand islands break up and sink in the south-western Pacific Ocean?
• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

::

Chile: Volcano activity prompts mass evacuation

Volcanic Activity prompts Mass Evacuation

Thousands of people in the Patagonian community of Chaiten have been evacuated a day after a volcano spewed smoke and ash, its first eruption in about 10,000 years.

A large column of smoke and ash belches from the “dormant” Chaiten volcano after it erupted south of Santiago. (Credit: Shanghai Daily)

The Patagonian township of Chaiten covered in thick-ash, resembled a ghost town on Saturday after thousands of its inhabitants fled the region.

Chaiten volcano, about 1,220 km (760 miles) south of Santiago, Chile, spewed a vast cloud of smoke and ash May 2, 2008, triggering earth tremors which prompted the evacuation of people in the area. (Photo: REUTERS/ONEMI/Handout )

The snow covered 1,200-meter Chaiten volcano spewed a combination of smoke, ash and fire Thursday night, causing small tremors in the Los Lagos region, about 1,200 kilometers south of Santiago.

Chilean government declared a state of emergency, evacuating the residents from nearby villages and the township of Chaiten,which is situated about 10 kilometers from the volcano.

The falling ash is polluting the water supplies and making breathing difficult prompting the authoruities to hand out about 10,000 protective masks.

The Chaiten volcano has “probably been dormant for about 9,000 or 10,000 years but that’s not unusual,” according to a professor of volcanology at the University of Colorado who specializes in the Andes volcanoes.

“I would really worry about the village of Chaiten. I think they would want to get everybody out of there really soon,” he said.

“In southern Peru, the Ubinas volcano shot out gases and ash twice on Friday, covering local homes and crops. There were no immediate reports of injuries.” (Source: Shanghai Daily )

Related links:

• Volcano gets active, region is evacuated
• Thousands evacuated as Chile volcano spews ash
• Will one or both of New Zealand islands break up and sink in the south-western Pacific Ocean?

.-.