On a fine June day about 100 years ago, in a green mountain valley where the Aleutians stick to the rest of Alaska, the world fell apart. Earthquakes swayed the alders and spruce. A mountain shook, groaned, and collapsed in on itself, its former summit swallowing rock and dust until it became a giant, steaming […]
An international team of scientists has found evidence connecting an unexplained period of extreme cold in ancient Rome with an unlikely source: a massive eruption of Alaska’s Okmok volcano, located on the opposite side of the Earth. Around the time of Julius Caesar’s death in 44 BCE, written sources describe a period of unusual […]
Volcanic eruptions are not easy to anticipate. Now, a new paper proposes a way to provide early clues by evaluating magma movement far beneath volcanoes. The Bárdarbunga volcanic system in Iceland began to erupt from a fissure on Aug. 29, 2014. By the time it quit six months later, it had created an almost 33-square-mile lava […]