The Ring of Fire - the geological feature, not the Johnny Cash song - has been pretty active in recent weeks. This feature is a tectonic belt around the Pacific Oceanic crust plate, which stretches around the world's largest ocean for a total distance of 25,000 miles. Where the Pacific plate meets the various crust plates, volcanoes and earthquakes are common, and they seem to be a little more common than usual just now. In the latest, on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, the dormant Krasheninnikov volcano is erupting, which it has not done for 600 years.
Less than a week after a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake sparked tsunami warnings throughout the Pacific Ocean, a volcano in far eastern Russia, on Sunday, spewed hot ash miles into the sky, marking the first time in hundreds of years the geological feature had erupted.
The Krasheninnikov volcano, located on Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, sent ash 6 kilometers, or 3.7 miles, into the sky, staff at the Kronotsky Reserve said.
Images of the volcanic eruption, which occurred on the Kronotsky Reserve, were released by Russian state media and showed dense clouds of ash rising above the volcano.
"The plume is spreading eastward from the volcano toward the Pacific Ocean," Kamchatka’s emergencies ministry wrote on Telegram during the eruption. "There are no populated areas along its path, and no ashfall has been recorded in inhabited localities."
So there's good news, at least; even a modest ashfall can cause a lot of damage. Volcanic ash is mostly silica, which can gum up machinery, engines, and human lungs; examine some of this stuff under a microscope, and it looks a little like tiny shards of broken glass, which isn't all that far from what it really is. And this volcano is spitting out a lot of it. Take a look:
With recent events including a couple of major earthquakes resulting in tsunami warnings, not to mention Alaska's Iliamna and Mount Spurr volcanoes showing signs of activity, it prompts the question: What's going on?
Read More: Alaska's Tsunami Warning Fizzled, and So Do the Left's NPR Claims
BREAKING: Massive Earthquake Hits Russia, Prompts Tsunami Warnings Throughout the Pacific (Updated)
In the case of the Krasheninnikov volcano, though, we should note that 600 years is the merest blink of an eye on the geological timescale. A dormant volcano, like Krasheninnikov was until just now, may remain dormant for 100,000 years, or it may erupt tomorrow. Even mega-volcanoes like the Yellowstone caldera operate on time frames that are hard for us to comprehend; geologists who point out that a given volcano is "overdue" for an eruption may yet not erupt for millennia. Or they may go up tomorrow. We may have some warning signs, and we may not, although geologists and vulcanologists seem to get better at determining those signs all the time; these are the consequences of decades spent gathering data.
The Ring of Fire is the site of around 90 percent of the planet's earthquakes and 75 percent of its volcanoes. The strongest earthquake ever measured, the Valdivia Earthquake of 1960, happened there. Some of the most densely populated areas on the planet are also on the Ring of Fire: Japan, with 127 million people, the Philippines, with 103 million people, Indonesia, with 267 million - not to mention the major American cities of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Anchorage.
It looks a lot like the Ring of Fire is getting frisky. We may well be in for a bit of a show - or nothing much might happen for another 10,000 years. So relax; what will happen, will happen, whether we worry about it or not.
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