The West Mata undersea volcano, located 200 kilometers from Samoa, erupted in May. Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent the remotely operated underwater vehicle Jason to record the explosive action. In addition to tossing up lava and chunks of rock, West Mata also released a significant amount of sulfuric acid into the water, rendering its acidity somewhere between battery acid and stomach acid. The research team collected various samples and is analyzing them and the footage to better understand these deep sea eruptions and the life that exists around these deep underwater volcanoes. Meanwhile, we get a spectacular view of the eruption itself.

Cameras catch underwater volcano in the act [Science News]

The authorities have already evacuated everyone living within an eight-kilometer radius, as small earthquakes, glowing lava at the peak, and falling ash created fears that the volcano was going to erupt once again. According to NASA:

On the evening of December 14, the local volcano observatory raised the alert level to Level 3, which means "magma is close to the crater and hazardous explosive eruption is imminent."

This natural-color image of Mayon was captured on December 15, 2009, by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. A small plume of ash and/or steam is blowing west from the summit. Dark-colored lava or debris flows from previous eruptions streak the flanks of the mountain. A ravine on the southeast slope is occupied by a particularly prominent lava or debris flow.

According to local news reports from December 16, fragments of lava were continuously detaching from the lava filing the crater and cascading down slope up to 3 kilometers. Lava flows reached several hundred meters from the summit, but they were still confined to ravines.

[NASA Earth Observatory]

By the time Jimina hit Mexico, it was no longer technically a hurricane, though it still did huge amounts of damage. Image 1 shows Jimena at full category 4 hurricane strength in late August, and the other two satellite photos show the diminished tropical storm as it lashed out at Mexico in early September. The picture of the storm on the ground is in Baja California.

Hurricane Jimena News at Huffington Post

Satellite photos by NOAA/Getty Images. Photo of the storm in Baja California by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images.

Report the study authors:

Methane clouds, lakes and most fluvial features on Saturn's moon Titan have been observed in the moist high latitudes, while the tropics have been nearly devoid of convective clouds and have shown an abundance of wind-carved surface features like dunes. The presence of small-scale channels and dry riverbeds near the equator observed by the Huygens probe at latitudes thought incapable of supporting convection (and thus strong rain) has been suggested to be due to geological seepage or other mechanisms not related to precipitation. Here we report the presence of bright, transient, tropospheric clouds in tropical latitudes. We find that the initial pulse of cloud activity generated planetary waves that instigated cloud activity at other latitudes across Titan that had been cloud-free for at least several years. These observations show that convective pulses at one latitude can trigger short-term convection at other latitudes, even those not generally considered capable of supporting convection, and may also explain the presence of methane-carved rivers and channels near the Huygens landing site.

I don't know about you, but I'd love to be caught in a brief methane storm - really gets the air smelling fresh afterwards. Or it would seem like that if you were a Titanian, anyway.

via Nature

It's true, the storms look menacing, but by the time they hit land in Hawaii, Enrique will be all but broken up, and Felicia will be a tropical depression, bringing lots of rain, but not the damaging winds of a hurricane. In this image, Felicia is a category 3 hurricane, and Enrique is a weakening tropical storm.

Granted, these two images are of storms that aren't likely to cause too much damage, but it feels strange getting excited about pictures of disasters and dangerous storms. XKCD also commented on this "disaster voyeurism" phenomenon. I don't know, though... I still love these stunning storm images.

Hurricane Felicia and Tropical Storm Enrique [NASA Earth Observatory]

National Geographic explains:

Yellowstone is a volcano, and not just any volcano. The oldest, most famous national park in the United States sits squarely atop one of the biggest volcanoes on Earth . . . The last three super-eruptions have been in Yellowstone itself. The most recent, 640,000 years ago, was a thousand times the size of the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980, which killed 57 people in Washington. But numbers do not capture the full scope of the mayhem. Scientists calculate that the pillar of ash from the Yellowstone explosion rose some 100,000 feet, leaving a layer of debris across the West all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Pyroclastic flows-dense, lethal fogs of ash, rocks, and gas, superheated to 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit-rolled across the landscape in towering gray clouds. The clouds filled entire valleys with hundreds of feet of material so hot and heavy that it welded itself like asphalt across the once verdant landscape. And this wasn't even Yellowstone's most violent moment. An eruption 2.1 million years ago was more than twice as strong, leaving a hole in the ground the size of Rhode Island.

It's worth reading the rest of this article - it beautifully captures the pyrotechnic scientific mystery that is Yellowstone Park. Photographer Mark Thiessen captured the blowholes where Yellowstone lets off scalding, mineral-rich water.

via National Geographic (Thanks Marilyn Terrell!)

Created by civil engineering professors Ross Boulanger of UC Davis and James Michael Duncan of University of Maryland, the Geo Photo Album is full of mega-disasters coupled with precise explanations of why buildings have topped or dams have burst. Essentially, you can read the album as a compendium of engineering disasters.

But it is also a compendium of engineering fixes - at least half the site is devoted to images of properly-conceived dams, gas storage tanks, and foundations, that are likely to remain standing in the event of disaster. Check out a few of the images here, along with Boulanger and Duncan's engineering insights. If you need more (and of course you will), you can go to the Geo Photo Album.

Say Boulanger and Duncan about this 1999 earthquake damage in Turkey:

The mat foundation for this building was exposed when it overturned. This building has a relatively large height-to-width ratio, making it more susceptible to overturning failure.

Here's another shot of the 1999 Turkey quake damage. Boulanger writes:

While these buildings are now partly submerged, the collapse of the one building and the near collapse of the other building are illustrative of structural performance throughout Golcuk, and are mainly attributed to the effects of shaking.

The researchers write:

This building hangs over the head scarp of a landslide in decomposed bedrock that was triggered by the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Several homes were buried and over 30 people killed by the landslide.

Here is a picture of a port damaged by the same Kobe earthquake. Says Boulanger:

This car ramp at a ferry terminal collapsed when the fill materials liquefied and the quay wall displaced outwards. The graben behind the quay walls is filled with water.

This is a massive sinkhole that was created when a gypsum stack collapsed in Florida. Gypsum stacks are byproducts of phosphate mining processes. Say the researchers:

This massive sinkhole formed on top of a gypsum stack in Florida, and contributed to contamination of the aquifer below. Grouting work by Hayward Baker to seal the aquifer from the gypsum stack was recognized with a national award.

And here's one possible solution to bad engineering. Here you can see a picture from a project to make the Port of Oakland less likely to fall apart in an earthquake. Boulanger explains:

The grid of soil-cement columns is exposed at this location. The piles within the grid will support a wharf that is being constructed. The grid of soil-cement walls extends down through soft soils into harder, competent soils, and acts to increase the stability of the channel slope.

In this detail from the image, you can see where Baghdad is supposed to be. But the city is entirely obscured by dust. So are most of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Dust storms are not uncommon for the hotter months in Iraq. A recent drought has made the land drier than usual, giving the seasonal summer winds more fuel for violent and dramatic storms like these.

NASA has also provided a short animation showing how the storm developed over a huge area. Now all the middle east needs to fully resemble Dune are giant sand-worms and complex politics. Or maybe just the worms.

Dust Storm over Iraq [NASA Earth Observatory]

In this image, you can see the volcanic plume extending into the sky. But you can also see the atmospheric shock wave from the eruption, which pushed the clouds back into a ring in the sky. Also visible is a smooth, fluffy white cloud on top of the rapidly rising ash column. This is likely a result of rapidly rising water vapor condensing on top of the plume.

A detail of the image also reveals what is known as the pyroclastic flow. This is a mixture of super hot gas and ash that can travel at up to 130 miles per hour. It's similar to the kind of rapidly moving pyroclastic surge that supposedly wiped out Pompeii so quickly, killing everyone in its path. It's a beautiful image, dense with interesting quirks that demonstrate just how powerful, dangerous and complex volcanoes are.

via NASA Earth Observatory

The U.S. geological survey was on the scene earlier this year when watered-swollen rivers pouring into the Suwannee flooded rural parts of the state. They took measurements in flooded state parks, and from the tops of bridges that were being lapped by the floodwaters.

According to a release from the USGS:

The Withlacoochee River at Pinetta reached a new record height on midnight of April 7. USGS measured the peak height at 41.34 feet, the highest the river had been measured in 77 years of records. The previous record for the river's height was set in the 1948 flood, when the river reached a height of 38.64 feet.

"The discharge measurement at the Withlacoochee River near Pinetta was a major priority for the National Weather Service, because they needed data to forecast the downstream flooding on the Suwannee River at Ellaville," said USGS hydrologist Richard Verdi.

The magnitude of the flow in the Withlacoochee for April 7 indicates an approximate 2% chance of occurrence any year. Preliminary data indicate the peak discharge was 56,100 cubic feet per second, which indicates that the volume of water flowing through the river was at the second highest in the period of record. In the 1948 flood, the discharge was higher, at 79,400 cubic feet per second.

You can watch Florida's flood season progress in real time via this map.

Images via Rachel Pawlitz, U.S. Geological Survey, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

The Alps-like landscape revealed with cutting-edge imaging technology is a reminder that the Antarctic was once a thriving biosphere. That's why HP Lovecraft set his famous short story "At the Mountains of Madness" in an Antarctic mountain range hidden by snow, which had once held a thriving civilization. There's nothing like digging up 14,000,000 year old mountains if you want to find some weird alien life. According to a news report on the findings:

The imaging comes from a gruelling effort by Chinese glaciologists to probe the mysterious realm beneath the East Antarctic heights, one of the most forbidding places in the world.

In 2004-5 and again in 2007-8, the team hauled deep-penetrating ground radar around a box-shaped sector, measuring 30 kilometers (18 miles) by 30 kilometres, at a point called Dome Argus, or Dome A.

Dome A lies at 4,093 metres (13,302 feet) above sea level and has an average annual temperature of -58.4 degrees Celsius (-73 degrees Fahrenheit).

Beneath it is an ice sheet between 1,649 and 3,135 metres thick that smothers the Gamburtsev mountains, a range named after a Soviet geophysicist, Grigoriy Gamburtsev, who detected the peaks in 1958.

The radar reflections revealed "classic Alpine topography" similar to Europe's Alps, showing that once there were river valleys that cut their way through the mountains.

Later, these valleys were gouged and deepened by glaciers.

"The landscape has probably been preserved beneath the ice sheet for around 14 million years," says the paper.

Guillermo Del Toro was at one point going to direct a version of "At the Mountains of Madness," though the project seems to have fallen by the wayside. Maybe this discovery will reawaken his interest.

Via AFP

That's what's cool - nobody knows for sure. Is it a buried UFO? An underwater volcano? All we know is that the International Space Station shot pictures of the circle forming and then breaking as the ice melted during the month of April. Researchers say the ice on this lake often forms overnight and melts during the day, so possibly a spurt of hot water from below the lake is causing the already-thin ice to create this pattern. But what would emit hot water in a perfectly circular pattern?

If you've seen the show Surface, I think you already know the answer. Below, you can see both circles.

via Xenophilia

The explosion took place 6 miles off shore, and nobody on the island was hurt.

Photos by Photo by Dana Stephenson/Getty Images.

The image above was snapped by GeoEye-1, a commercial satellite. Located about 100 miles southwest of the city of Anchorage, the over 10-thousand-foot-tall Mt. Redoubt has been spewing steam and ash high into the atmosphere, but now NASA reports that its emissions are closer to Earth. This plume is extremely dark, which suggests the mountain is mostly erupting with ash instead of steam this week. And that's not very good news. According to NASA:

Volcanic ash consists of tiny shards of rocks and volcanic glass. Extremely abrasive and mildly corrosive, this kind of ash can even conduct electricity when wet, sometimes leading to electrical outages. Winds can easily carry volcanic ash hundreds or even thousands of kilometers from the eruption site.

So the ash we're seeing here is potentially quite dangerous. Below is another satellite image of the Redoubt eruption, taken last week.

via NASA Earth Observatory