Volcanic Summer 2019 - a review (VolcanoDiscovery Newsletter Nr 25, Sep 2019)

Dear friends and guests,

a volcanically very active summer has ended:
It started with several large explosive eruptions a bit out of nowhere: on 22 June, a powerful explosion occurred on the almost unknown Raikoke volcano, a tiny uninhabited island in the central-northern Kuriles. When we visited the place 3 weeks later during our first Kuriles expedition, a once green island had been transformed into a hell of ash with no living thing left, truly an image of apocalypse.
A week later, Ulawun volcano in New Britain (Papua New Guinea) produced a large paroxysm and a second one on 3 Aug, sending ash plumes to almost 20 km into the atmosphere. These eruptions certainly rank among the biggest in recent decades. They even ejected enough aerosols into the high stratosphere to cause unusual sunsets in the northern hemisphere, often visible even now.
And as if that wasn't enough volcanic excitement, one of the most famous volcanoes in the world also stepped up dramatically: on 3 July and 28 Aug, Stromboli volcano in Italy had its largest eruptions in almost 100 years! The first came as total surprise and would have spelled disaster if it had occurred in the evening when dozens or sometimes hundreds of people usually are in the summit region.
Access to Stromboli's summit area has been closed for now, even though activity at the volcano has been slowly decreasing again since. It is still unclear when the very popular excursions to Stromboli's craters can be done again. However, the volcanic show from lower (and safer) viewpoints has been spectacular since, as elevated activity continues. In any case, we will let you know!
Neighbor Etna has also been very active recently, with a fascinating varied show of summit craters in eruption, including lava flows both inside and outside the summit craters, continuous and strong strombolian activity. Right now, a new cone is growing in the central crater.
A good news for fans of lava lakes is that Erta Ale's summit lava lake has continued to recover and is getting bigger and higher again. For those interested, we still have a few spots available on our next expedition to the Danakil from 17-30 Nov 2019 where you have the unique opportunity to spend 3 full days and nights at the volcano for best observations:
Ethiopia: 17-30 Nov 2019 Desert, salt and volcanoes (Danakil desert)
Two of our teams spent 3 weeks each in Kamchatka during our still relatively new expeditions to this fascinating peninsula in August and September. Both groups were blessed with sometimes exceptionally good weather conditions as well as spectacular activity at Karymsky and Shiveluch volcanoes.
While we're still busy with it, you can see some recent pictures at:
Kamchatka 2019 photos

Now, it's time to look ahead and finalize plannings for 2020! We'll include Peru, Armenia and an expedition to the southern Kuriles in our program, but more about this in our nexct newsletter!

New facebook group
If you are interested in everyday news from us or share or discuss travel experiences, we invite you to join in our new Facebook group "VolcanoDiscovery": https://www.facebook.com/groups/VolcanoDiscovery/