Chile volcano blasts ash 20 miles high, forcing evacuations

[Dover]

Source: AP

SANTIAGO, Chile - The long-dormant Chaiten volcano blasted ash some 20 miles (30 kilometers) into the Andean sky on Tuesday, forcing thousands to evacuate and fouling a huge stretch of the South American continent.

The thick column of ash climbed into the stratosphere and blew eastward for hundreds of miles (kilometers) over Patagonia to the Atlantic Ocean, forcing schools and a regional airport to close. Citizens of both countries were advised to wear masks to avoid breathing the dangerous fallout.

The five-day-old eruption is the first in at least 9,000 years for the volcano in southern Chile, according to volcanologists at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Chilean officials ordered the total evacuation of Chaiten, a small provincial capital in an area of lakes and glacier-carved fjords just six miles (10 kilometers) from the roiling cloud....cont'd



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/chile_volcano

[jgraz]

1. Just to show you where my head is, I read this as "Clinton volcano blasts ash 20 miles high..."

[neverforget]

2. LOL

:rofl:

In all seriousness, I hope no one is hurt in this eruption but volcanoes fascinate me and I think this is cool.

[PDJane]

3. Ash has been coming down in Argentina............

[Gman]

4. This will likely cause a Southern Hemisphere cooling

for the next couple of years. I remember when a volcano in Mexico erupted similarly in about 1982 or so. We had volcanic ash on our cars here in Texas. The following winter was the coldest I remember. San Antonio got down to close to zero in December 1983. January 1984 was the coldest I remember. Then in January 1985 San Antonio had 13" of snow. There was heavy snow throughout South Texas. Meteorologists explained later that the cooling was likely caused by the volcano in Mexico. Mount Pinatubo in the Phillipines caused similar cooling several years ago.

[Dover]

5. While they are saying the ash could cover a nearby town like Pompeii, a cooling effect on climate is

according to some scientist, unlikely.

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...The five-day-old eruption is the first in 9,370 years, said Charles Stern, a volcanologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder who has studied Chaiten.

He said the nearby town could end up buried, much like the Roman city of Pompeii following Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D. Volcanic material from Chaiten's last eruption measured up to 5 feet in places.

"What happens after today is anybody's guess," Stern said.

..snip..


But the possibility of the Chaiten volcano affecting Earth's climate is probably fairly low, experts said.

So far, Chaiten has emitted only a few thousand tons of sulfur dioxide, "which is very small," said Simon Carn, a University of Maryland-Baltimore volcanologist who uses satellites to measure volcanic gases.

In general, a volcano must spew at least 1 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to have a global effect on climate, said Alan Robock, a Rutgers University professor who co-authored a book on the subject.

After eruptions of unusual size, sulfur dioxide, converted into sulfuric acid, can form a thin white cloud in the atmosphere that reflects sunlight away from Earth.

The Philippines' Mount Pinatubo produced a brief cooling of the climate after spewing 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide in 1991.

But Robock said this volcano is so close to the South Pole that any cooling would likely be limited to the Southern Hemisphere.

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