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For simply over per week, Mt. Etna, one in every of Europe’s most energetic volcanoes, has been spewing round, principally white smoke rings into the skies over Sicily.
It’s not the primary time Mt. Etna has enchanted onlookers with its puffing (it’s been dubbed the Gandalf of volcanoes, after the pipe-puffing wizard in “Lord of the Rings.”) But specialists there say this month Etna “has damaged all earlier information” with the frequency of the rings, in line with Boris Behncke, a volcanologist on the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Catania, who posted concerning the phenomenon on Facebook.
The rings, referred to as volcanic vortex rings, appeared earlier this month after a small vent opened on the northwest border of the Southeast crater. The phenomenon happens when sufficient stress builds up in order that magma contained in the crater propels condensed gases, predominantly water vapor, by means of the vent.
In this case, the vent is completely round, making for notably excellent rings. “It is bellissimo,” stated Simona Scollo, one other volcanologist on the INGV Etna Observatory in Catania, utilizing the Italian phrase for stunning. Ms. Scollo copublished a research on the dynamics of volcanic vortex rings final 12 months within the journal Scientific Reports.
But, she stated, the exercise doesn’t imply that Mt. Etna goes to erupt in a very spectacular method. “No, no, no,” she stated.
During a phone interview Tuesday, she stated that the mechanism for the smoke rings was much like how dolphins blow bubble rings. “They compress the water of their mouths, and utilizing their tongue they push it out of their mouths and create such a stress that it kinds a hoop,” she stated.
Depending on climate circumstances, the rings hold within the air wherever from one to 10 minutes, in line with the research. “If there’s turbulence they disintegrate extra shortly,” she stated.
Interviewed in The New York Times final 12 months, Ms. Scollo stated the research hoped to raised perceive how volcanoes functioned, “not solely after they create a catastrophe for folks or when they’re very harmful,” however in calmer instances, too.
The new vent within the volcano has been spewing a whole lot of rings, however one other opening on the volcano has additionally been spewing rings, albeit extra spaced out, since final 12 months.
The phenomenon was first recorded on Etna in 1724, adopted by periodic sightings, most lately final 12 months, and fairly spectacularly in 2000.
According to the outline for its 2013 inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage web site, Mt. Etna is “the very best Mediterranean island mountain and essentially the most energetic stratovolcano on the earth.”
“No volcano on earth produces as many volcanic vortex rings as Etna, we knew this for a while,” famous Mr. Behncke.
Mt. Etna isn’t the one volcano the place the phenomenon has been registered. Volcanic vortex rings have been puffed by various volcanoes worldwide, from Momotombo in Nicaragua to ash-spewing airplane stopper Eyjafjallajökul in Iceland, to Mt. Redoubt in Alaska to a different energetic Italian volcano, Stromboli.
Ms. Scollo stated that the exercise from the brand new vent was slowing down. And it might finish altogether.
“It can cease as a result of the properties of the conduit that allowed for the formation of those volcanic vortex rings can change, possibly with obstructions,” she stated. Or the quantity of fuel throughout the conduit might lower, she added.
