Pressure in Mount Fuji is now higher than last eruption, warn experts

If that eruption is anything like the 1707 one then the property we own in Chiba is gonna get a covering of 2 to 4cm of ash. Just great, and we are still worried if the building is radioactive. Of course the biggest worry in all of this though is our remaining family there.

Get your tans on while you still can. Once she blows, everyone will be a boring shade of grey.

Air Traffic would come to a complete stop at Narita, Haneda and other Japanese airports.

All incoming airplanes would have to be rerouted.

I wonder if this has any connection to the quake of 3/11. I know it's been 1 1/2 years, but still...they've been having regular 4's and 5's.

Seems like it. I thought the story said that one of the bigger aftershocks might have had an affect too. Man, I hope this does not happen!

"not a small figure".

I'll say.

Tectonic shifts triggered by last year's huge 9.0 magnitude undersea quake have left the chamber under 16 times the minimum pressure at which an eruption can occur, researchers said. Researchers at the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention studied the tectonic movements caused by the tsunami-triggering quake on March 11, 2011 and a magnitude 6.4 quake that rocked central Japan four days later, Kyodo News reported....
[link to phys.org]

What a little research will do!
Thanks

Yes, thank you OP. :)

possibly

that's katla you're thinking of there fella

Wonder how they knew what the pressure of Mt. fuji was in 1707...

good work as always IWTB!

It's from Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams". One hell of an amazing movie. Recommend watching. As it's in the criterion collection, I believe it's available on Hulu.

Thread: Experts Predict Mt Fuji will erupt "Soon"


sucks for japan

Bump

Have a look at the cams, cloud formation or steam/smoke?

[link to www.goandroam.com]

Last Edited by davejp on 09/06/2012 07:09 PM

As I understand it a Volcano becomes a 'super volcano' if it is capable of producing a volcanic eruption with an ejecta volume greater than 1,000 km3 (240 cu mi)...so that would depend on what is underneath the volcano and the pressure involved in the eruption...obviously the higher the pressure the bigger the eruption...especially if there is a huge magma chamber underneath...

This could be a VEI 6.

Tanks for this IWTB !

This is worrying.

Any updates?

Apparently Japan is not ready for an eruption..they are in the midst of a festival to try and quell the fires beneath the mountain...

and there is concern of losing tourists dollars if they panic people..
"The government should prepare for a logistical nightmare. It's not done anything on that yet. They'll have to know how many millions of people, including tourists, they'll need to evacuate from around Fuji. They keep on saying they'll do something about that, but so far the country's failed to get it's act together." That doesn't stop thousands of tourists from ascending the slopes every day during the summer months. Last year about 40 million visited the Fuji area. But that means the government has a narrow path to walk when it comes to preparation for an eruption. Do too much, and the panic could send this tourist cash elsewhere. Do too little, and the cost could be human.

[link to uk.news.yahoo.com]

But the festival will most likely not have any effect.

Scientists have discovered signs of a possible imminent eruption of Japan's most famous volcano, Mount Fuji on Honshu. At least this is what many headlines in the press read. According to an article of the Japanese news agency Kyodo the pressure in the magma chamber beneath the volcano Mt Fuji has drastically increased after the tsunami in March 2011 and a magnitude 6.4 quake near the volcano four days later, and is currently higher than it was before the last eruption in 1707 some 300 years ago. Scientists at the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention have calculated that the tectonic shifts in the past year caused an increase in pressure to 1.6 megapascals. That is sixteen times as much as the threshold of 0.1 megapascals needed for an eruption, they said. Such statements should be viewed with caution, because the figures are obtained by indirect calculations, which may be subject to very large errors. Secondly, pressure data for magma chambers inside a volcano without an associated depth profile have little significance. Pressure inside a volcano, as everywhere, increases naturally with depth. What matters is the difference between the lithostatic pressure (weight of the volcanic edifice) and the gas pressure of the gases in the magma. If this difference becomes greater than the tensile strength of the rock, it can open cracks and let the magna erupt. The scientists admit that these calculations alone don't necessarily mean that an eruption is imminent and other parameters such as seismicity and deformation currently don't show signs of an impending eruption.

After the earthquake in March 2011, a professor from Ryukyu University warned in May that a larger eruption of Fuji should be expected within 3 years, based on the observations that:
- Steam and gases emissions from the crater have increased.
- Water eruptions were observed in the area.
- Huge pit craters had appeared on the flank of the mountain, from which gases escape.
- Above all, a 34 km long fault was discoverd recently, which extends right under the volcano.

This fault could even cause the collapse of the whole mountain if there is a large-enough movement along the fault. Such a collapse would cause devastating pyroclastic flows, debris avalanches and extensive lahars, and be a disaster of unprecedented scale. The latest measurements show surely that the huge tectonic movements of 2011 have increased pressure on the magma chamber, but additional parameters such as deformation of the volcano and earthquakes are needed to make a reliable forecast for a new eruption. Worrying in this context, however, is that the last eruption in 1707 was most likely influenced, if not triggered by an earthquake earlier."It's possible for Mount Fuji to erupt even several years after the March 2011 earthquake, therefore we need to be careful about the development," a spokesman for the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention said. A report from 2004 estimated the probably damage of a new eruption to around 2 billion USD. Recent studies assume an increased risk of earthquakes in the Tokai, Tonankai and Nankai regions, which lie at the edge of the Nankai Trough, where a larger quake is expected. In the worst case, a series of simultaneous severe quakes could cause up to 323,000 deaths and additionally trigger an eruption of Mount Fuji, the gloomy conclusion of the latest report reads.


hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/site/?pageid=event_desc&edis_id=VA-2012​0909-36499-JPN