Yesterday I read an article on the BBC website about the Redoubt Volcano in Alaska. The full article is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23317368
but I'll give a brief over-view.
The title of the article was 'volcanic 'scream' precedes explosive eruptions'. The article more or less chews the cud over new research done on the seismicity before the 2009 eruption at Redoubt, focusing on the increase in the frequency of earthquakes leading up the eruption, leading to a crescendo of 'sound' before the event.
Here's a link to said seismic events sped up 60 times to audible hearing:
https://soundcloud.com/uw-today/redoubtscream
(The idea of harmonic tremors indicating magma movement are nothing new but this isn't what is been analysed here. A harmonic tremor, also known as a long-period event, is the sort of wave form that you might get inside a capped organ pipe. Such a tremor indicates that magma is rising up a path within the volcano and so an eruption is imminent!)
The identification of the seismic pattern can be just one more tool in the arsenal of earthquake forecasters and predictors.
And so my quest began to discover a little more about this phenomena by tracking down the article. Luckily the author of the BBC article cites that the material was from the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research which helps in limiting a search.
A quick keyword search on Science Direct* lead me to the top article which wasn't the one I was looking for. Scrolling down the lists I noticed that all these recent articles on the same volcano were published in the same edition of the journal. A further quick Google search confirmed my suspicions that Vol. 259 of the journal was a special edition on the Volcano.
Interesting...
And so for 424 pages of hard-graft scientific research how much of it actually makes it into the public sphere (read, the BBC)? A summary and simplification of just 10 pages of it. Which is pretty good going really, because most journals get overlooked by the press and pass like phantoms in the night never to be seen or read by anyone other than those in the specific field of research. (I might also point out that as a guest on science direct the best someone without a subscription can do is only see the abstract of that original article, it being behind a $31.50 pay wall. Some of the other articles from that edition of the journal are free... for what it's worth...)
Just scrolling through the titles in Vol. 259 of the journal prove that it was a pretty comprehensive analysis of the eruption and it's a bit sad that some of the excellent research and (hopefully) excellent analysis may never be used or referenced.
I am somewhat reminded of a video by PhD comic's Jorge Cham. He argues that the current system of how information about cutting edge science reaches the general public is at best inefficient and there must be better ways of doing it. His suggestion, get the scientists to talk directly to the public. Easier said than done but it does happen such as with projects like The Brain Scoop on YouTube (links to both will be below), it just takes a bit of initiative but unfortunately more work.
Well that's all for now. In other volcano news, Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano has become more active recently since its awakening in 1999 causing 200 people to be evacuated (link below).
References
The original BBC article (again) : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23317368
A list of the journal's articles : http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03770273/259
Jorge Cham's TEDx talk on the 'science gap': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzcMEwAxSP8
The Brain Scoop's YouTube channel page : http://www.youtube.com/user/thebrainscoop
News on the Ecuador volcano : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/ecuador-volcano-tungurahua-records-explosion-021908220.html?vp=1#EWRcXe2
*(God bless full access to scientific journals through university subscription, it really is worth its theoretical weight in gold (and costs about as much too!))
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