Landsat 9 Satellite picture of Mount Semeru in Indonesia on December 4, 2022.
Intense explosions on the summit despatched avalanches of ash and dust 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 yr after Indonesia’s Mount Semeru unleashed a harmful, 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 Center, rose as excessive as 6,100 meters (20,000 ft) at occasions. Intense exercise continued all through the evening 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 Universal Time). Volcanic plumes usually include ash and a combination of volcanic gases, together with water vapor, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and hydrogen halides. In 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 massive cloud’s shadow (on to its west) and the underlying panorama farther to the west on this wider model of the picture (beneath).
Landsat 9 Satellite picture of Mount Semeru in Indonesia on December 4, 2022.
Below and to the east of the massive convective cloud is what seems to be the sting of a pyroclastic stream transferring 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–Four produced a number of of those flows, together with one which reached a size of 19 kilometers (12 miles), in line with the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management (BNPM).
Since heavy rains preceded the occasion, the pyroclastic flows possible combined with rainwater and morphed into muddy lahars as they rushed down the mountain. The flows destroyed a bridge and buried houses as much as their rooftops, in line with the Associated Press.
The eruption has compelled almost 2,000 people from their houses. On December 4, 2022, the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) raised the standing of the eruption from 3 (“siaga,” or “alert”) to 4 (“awas,” or “caution”), the very best on the 1-Four scale. The PVMBG urged individuals to remain not less than 5 kilometers (Three miles) away from the summit and not less than 500 meters (1,600 ft) from the Besuk Kobokan river channel.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
