Alert: Volcano eruption in La Palma could result in mega-tsunami

Lava still spewing out. Looks like there are two vents: the main one and a smaller vent to the right.

Have I got it right that the rock splitting off would be caused by an earthquake rather than the volcano? If so, the earthquakes seem to be less frequent and getting deeper which is a good sign (I hope). https://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/europe/

 

Thank you both for the explanation. Now, I don't know whether to be more or less concerned.

 

I’m pretty sure that the amount of energy needed to displace that much water (I.e. to cause a tidal wave on the other side of the ocean) would far exceed what could possibly come from a landslide. The Indonesian tsunamis were all close to the actual eruption and suffered from the water being funneled into a bay. I’m pretty sure Ireland and North America don’t have to worry about flooding from this.

If the eruption screwed up the climate and caused a famine, however, it could have global repercussions, and would be a great divine reply to man made climate change, lol.

On the other hand, I grew up on the coast of North Carolina and used to have dreams about my town being under like 60 feet of water, sooooooo idk.

 

Good video Liza! Thank you.

 

Yeah, we kinda do.

The Japanese/Indonesian tsunamis resulted from a slip-strike fault -- one side of the fault sprang up suddenly, which forced all the water above it to flow away from it. The mass of water equaling the mass of the ground that moved, and moving at the speed the ground moved.

With the volcano, think of lowering yourself into a bathtub. If you just drop your body into the tub, a large wave is formed. If, on the other hand, you lower your body slowly into the water, smaller waves are formed.

The question is will the landslide be one that slowly slips beneath the waves (i.e., no tsunami), or will it be like those blocks of ice breaking off from a glacier and crashing into the ocean (i.e., big tsunami)?

 

Yesterday, when the volcano popped was Rosary Sunday.

Pachama was the Goddess of Earth, the Mother of EarthQuakes. I have a dread feeling about all this. I think a lot of Catholics all over the world have.

Deuteronomy 5:6

The Ten Commandments
5At that time I was standing between the LORD and you to declare to you the word of the LORD, because you were afraid of the fire and would not go up the mountain. And He said: 6“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 7You shall have no other gods before Me.…

 

It’s more like doing a cannonball at the Jersey shore and expecting a wee wave to hit county cork.

If the hypothetical tidal wave is spurred by a landslide the energy that is put into it comes from the potential energy of the mass that fell into the water, so mgh (mass times gravity times the height of the body). Unless this thing is like 100 kilometers high it will only have local effects.

 

Prayers for these poor people.

 

Well, if you're doing a cannonball with a block of rock that's 50 km long containing several million metric tons of material, then yeah, it is kinda like having that cannonball making waves in Cork. (50km is the length of the rift that formed after the 1980 earthquake; and any landslide is expected to break away along this rift.)

When the material hits the water, it will displace an mass of water equal to the mass of the material. The water will rush away from the point of impact, then will rush back in to fill the void from that impact, causing another wave to form. This sets up a circular motion of water "rolling" (as it were) across the ocean, each wave containing the same mass of water (minus the small amount that is lost as the wave front moves across the ocean). When it's in the deep ocean, the size of the wave is only a couple of meters. Ships in the Indian ocean during the Indonesian earthquakes barely felt the wave front as they passed through it. As the wave front approaches a shore and the depth of the water decreases, though, the wave must pull up more and more water to equal that initial mass. That's what caused the sea to recede from the shoreline during the Indonesian earthquake, which is often the first warning that a tsunami is coming. As the mass of water drawn to itself matches the mass of displaced water and the shoreline gets more and more shallow, the speed of the wave as well as its height increases until it reaches the point where it breaks over into a "tidal wave".

 

A comforting explanation

 

Keep in mind what I said earlier: if the landslide is SLOW, then the waves generated will not have the energy and will not be as tall or as powerful. It's only an issue if the landslide drops quickly into the ocean.

 

When I get into the bath it certainly causes a Tidal Wave. So.…

 

It does depend how quickly you get in the bath. If you fell in the bath the neighbours would complain...so would the soaked dogs.

 

This is the most famous print of a Tsunami ever made.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66591/15-things-you-might-not-know-about-great-wave-kanagawa

 

I've got my surf board in the shed must take it out one of these days