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For simply over every week, Mount Etna, one among Europe’s most lively volcanoes, has been spewing round, principally white smoke rings into the skies over Sicily.
It’s not the primary time Mount 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.”) However specialists there say this month Etna “has damaged all earlier information” with the frequency of the rings, in accordance with Boris Behncke, a volcanologist on the Nationwide Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Catania, who posted concerning the phenomenon on Fb.
The rings, often known 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 strain builds up in order that magma contained in the crater propels condensed gases, predominantly water vapor, by the vent.
On this case, the vent is completely round, making for notably excellent rings. “It’s 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 Reviews.
However, she stated, the exercise doesn’t imply that Mount Etna goes to erupt in a very spectacular method. “No, no, no,” she stated.
Throughout 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 strain that it types a hoop,” she stated.
Relying on climate situations, the rings grasp within the air wherever from one to 10 minutes, in accordance with the research. “If there’s turbulence they crumble extra rapidly,” she stated.
Interviewed in The New York Instances final 12 months, Ms. Scollo stated the research hoped to raised perceive how volcanoes functioned, “not solely after they create a catastrophe for individuals or when they’re very harmful,” however in calmer instances, too.
The brand 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 just lately final 12 months, and fairly spectacularly in 2000.
In response to the outline for its 2013 inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage web site, Mount Etna is “the very best Mediterranean island mountain and essentially the most lively stratovolcano on the planet.”
“No volcano on earth produces as many volcanic vortex rings as Etna, we knew this for a while,” famous Mr. Behncke.
Mount Etna isn’t the one volcano the place the phenomenon has been registered. Volcanic vortex rings have been puffed by numerous volcanoes worldwide, from Momotombo in Nicaragua to ash-spewing aircraft stopper Eyjafjallajökul in Iceland, to Mount Redoubt in Alaska to a different lively Italian volcano, Stromboli.
Ms. Scollo stated that the exercise from the brand new vent was slowing down. And it might finish altogether.
“It might cease as a result of the properties of the conduit that allowed for the formation of those volcanic vortex rings can change, perhaps with obstructions,” she stated. Or the quantity of fuel inside the conduit might lower, she added.
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