For simply over per week, Mt. Etna, certainly one of Europe’s most energetic volcanoes, has been spewing round, largely 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.”) However consultants there say this month Etna “has damaged all earlier information” with the frequency of the rings, in response to Boris Behncke, a volcanologist on the Nationwide Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Catania, who posted concerning the phenomenon on Fb.
The rings, generally 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 good 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 examine on the dynamics of volcanic vortex rings final yr within the journal Scientific Studies.
However, she stated, the exercise doesn’t imply that Mt. Etna goes to erupt in a very spectacular approach. “No, no, no,” she stated.
Throughout a phone interview Tuesday, she stated that the mechanism for the smoke rings was just 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 anyplace from one to 10 minutes, in response to the examine. “If there’s turbulence they disintegrate extra shortly,” she stated.
Interviewed in The New York Occasions final yr, Ms. Scollo stated the examine hoped to raised perceive how volcanoes functioned, “not solely once they create a catastrophe for folks or when they’re very harmful,” however in calmer instances, too.
The brand new vent within the volcano has been spewing tons of of rings, however one other opening on the volcano has additionally been spewing rings, albeit extra spaced out, since final yr.
The phenomenon was first recorded on Etna in 1724, adopted by periodic sightings, most just lately final yr, and fairly spectacularly in 2000.
In line with the outline for its 2013 inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage web site, Mt. Etna is “the best Mediterranean island mountain and probably the most energetic stratovolcano on this planet.”
“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 a lot of volcanoes worldwide, from Momotombo in Nicaragua to ash-spewing aircraft 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 may finish altogether.
“It may possibly 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 gasoline inside the conduit may lower, she added.
