Landsat 9 Satellite tv for pc picture of Mount Semeru in Indonesia on December 4, 2022.
Intense explosions on the summit despatched avalanches of ash and dirt racing down the southeastern flank of the Indonesian volcano.
In early December 2022, the tallest and most energetic volcano on Java erupted once more, only one 12 months after Indonesia’s Mount Semeru unleashed a damaging, lethal eruption. Late on December 3, a sequence of explosions from the summit crater expelled fuel and ash that, in line with the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Heart, rose as excessive as 6,100 meters (20,000 toes) at instances. Intense exercise continued all through the night time into the following day.
On December 4, 2022, the Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2) on Landsat 9 captured this natural-color satellite tv for pc picture of a volcanic plume streaming from Semeru at about 9:30 a.m. native time (02:30 Common Time). Volcanic plumes sometimes encompass ash and a combination of volcanic gases, together with water vapor, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and hydrogen halides. On this case, a towering convective cloud, maybe drawing power from the warmth of the eruption, has obscured components of the plume. Diffuse ash barely darkens the big cloud’s shadow (on to its west) and the underlying panorama farther to the west on this wider model of the picture (under).
Landsat 9 Satellite tv for pc picture of Mount Semeru in Indonesia on December 4, 2022.
Beneath and to the east of the big convective cloud is what seems to be the sting of a pyroclastic move shifting down a river channel on the mountain’s southeastern flank. These billowing avalanches of superheated ash, tephra, soil, and different particles race at excessive speeds and might destroy most issues of their path. The eruption on December 3–4 produced a number of of those flows, together with one which reached a size of 19 kilometers (12 miles), in line with the Indonesian Nationwide Board for Catastrophe Administration (BNPM).
Since heavy rains preceded the occasion, the pyroclastic flows seemingly blended with rainwater and morphed into muddy lahars as they rushed down the mountain. The flows destroyed a bridge and buried properties as much as their rooftops, in line with the Related Press.
The eruption has pressured almost 2,000 folks from their properties. On December 4, 2022, the Heart for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) raised the standing of the eruption from 3 (“siaga,” or “alert”) to 4 (“awas,” or “warning”), the very best on the 1-4 scale. The PVMBG urged folks to remain a minimum of 5 kilometers (3 miles) away from the summit and a minimum of 500 meters (1,600 toes) from the Besuk Kobokan river channel.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
