Author: College of Engineering

On July 10, 2023, lava began to spill from the Fagradalsfjall volcanic system in southwestern Iceland, marking the third consecutive summer of activity at the volcano.

Simon Carn (GMES) was quoted by NASA’s Earth Observatory and eGreenews in stories about the continuing eruption of Fagradalsfjall.

“Based on satellite and ground-based data, emissions of sulfur dioxide from Fagradalsfjall are in the range of several thousands of tons per day—similar to the 2021 and 2022 eruption,” said Carn, a volcanologist at Michigan Tech and member of a NASA team that monitors sulfur dioxide emissions.

Read more at NASA Earth Observatory, by Adam Voiland.

Professor Emeritus Bill Rose (GMES) was quoted by Medium in a story connecting Mount Pinatubo’s eruption in 1991 to recent geoengineering proposals seeking to replicate the cooling effect that large volcanic eruptions have on global temperatures. Rose has extensively studied the climactic effects of Mount Pinatubo and other volcanic eruptions. The cooling effect is likely due to liquid sulfate aerosol, which could potentially be introduced artificially.

According to Bill Rose, this would put scientists and politicians into a dangerous system of global environmental management where essentially another form of pollution is pumped into the atmosphere to offset the impact of the current pollution.

Read more at Medium, by Floyd Whaley.

Simon Carn was quoted by the Washington Post in a story about the eruption of Russia’s Shiveluch volcano, located on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s far east. The story was picked up by MSN and the Benzie County Record Patriot.

The incident “looks like the largest Shiveluch eruption of the satellite era,” Michigan Technological University volcanologist Simon Carn said on Twitter.

Carn is a professor in the Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences with a PhD in Volcanology from Cambridge University. His current research focus is the application of remote sensing data to studies of volcanic degassing, volcanic eruption clouds, and anthropogenic pollution.

Thomas Oommen (GMES) was quoted by SFGATE and the Seattle Times. Both outlets picked up a March 6, 2023, Los Angeles Times story about the slow-moving Portuguese Bend landslide affecting the city of Rancho Palos Verde in southern California.

Palos Verdes Peninsula has long been prone to landslides, and the most dramatic one is affecting Portuguese Bend, an area named after a Portuguese whaling operation. The geological phenomenon has hit a 240-acre area hard over the last seven decades, causing fissures to open in the earth and homes to strain, buckle and drift, sometimes outright wandering onto adjacent properties.

The land moves sometimes horizontally, sometimes vertically. Sometimes inches, sometimes feet.

Thomas Oommen, professor of geological sciences at Michigan Technological University, said it’s an interesting case study because there are only a few landslides with such significant movement every year. What distinguishes Portuguese Bend is that the slope has not failed catastrophically — yet — and the humans atop are largely staying put, riding the slow-moving land for as long as they can.

Oommen’s research efforts focus on developing improved susceptibility characterization and documentation of geo-hazards, such as earthquakes and landslides.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times, by Jack Flemming.