Eruptions, Earthquakes, & Emissions: Visualizing the Planet’s Heartbeat

By Katrin Kleemann

When the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History announced the “Eruptions, Earthquakes, & Emissions” application, they said, “At last, we can see the planet’s heartbeat.” When you look at the application, you can see this heartbeat. If you now also turn on the application’s sound, you can even hear it, with different drum noises for earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

On 6 October, the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program released a new internet application called “Eruptions, Earthquakes, & Emissions,” or simply “E3.” This time-lapse application visualizes the 250,000 events of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that occurred between 1960 and today, it also shows sulfur dioxide emissions (SO₂) since 1978. In that year, satellites were launched that were designed for the ultraviolet spectra and could monitor sulfur dioxide globally. The timeframe chosen was the last half-century as it is the first period that scientists had the equipment and knowledge to be confident to have recorded every volcanic eruption and every earthquake that occurred in the world.

Every month, 40 volcanic eruptions occur on land and many others on the seafloor. Millions of people on Earth live in the proximity of volcanoes. The Deep Carbon Observatory and the Deep Earth Carbon Degassing (DECADE) initiative are also involved in the E3 application and are working on improving volcanic eruption forecasts.

Earthquakes are depicted as blue dots of different sizes. With the application you can see earthquakes of a magnitude of 5 to 9, smaller ones have been excluded. The largest eruption that took place in recorded history occurred on 22 May 1960 in the Bío Bío Region, Chile, with a magnitude of 9.6.

Global Volcanism Program, 2016. Eruptions, Earthquakes, & Emissions, v. 1.0 (internet application). Smithsonian Institution. Accessed 16 October 2016.

Volcanoes are shown as orange triangles, here the volcanic explosivity index (VEI) is used as a scale. The scale goes from 0 to 8, but between 1960 and today eruptions ranged “only” within 0 to 6 on the VEI. The largest eruption during this time was the Indonesian Pinatubo eruption of 1991, reaching a 6 on the volcanic explosivity index. The last eruption that reached a 7 on the VEI was the Indonesian Tambora eruption of 1815.

Global Volcanism Program, 2016. Eruptions, Earthquakes, & Emissions, v. 1.0 (internet application). Smithsonian Institution. Accessed 16 October 2016.

Sulfur dioxide emissions are shown as yellow circles, the bigger the yellow circle is the greater the emissions. If you jump to May 1980 on the timeline you can see the Mount St. Helens eruption in the USA, in April 1982 you can spot the El Chichon eruption in Mexico, and in April 2010 you can witness the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland. If you click on the yellow circle you can even see how the sulfur dioxide cloud developed during the eruption. (Here in “view as globe” mode.)

Global Volcanism Program, 2016. Eruptions, Earthquakes, & Emissions, v. 1.0 (internet application). Smithsonian Institution. Accessed 16 October 2016.

The data about the volcanic eruptions and gas emissions come from the Volcanoes of the World database, which is managed by the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program. The database currently contains 1520 volcanoes that erupted during the Holocene period (the last circa 12,000 years). Additionally they also have a Pleistocene Volcano List, with 1166 volcanoes that are thought to have been active within the last 2.5 million years. The earthquake data is drawn from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Earthquake Catalog. The E3 application also allows its users to download and use the data, which might enable researchers to find correlations that weren’t as visible when looking at a spreadsheet with numbers.

To try the Eruptions, Earthquakes, & Emissions application yourself, see below or follow the link to the full-size application:

Global Volcanism Program, 2016. Eruptions, Earthquakes, & Emissions, v. 1.0 (internet application). Smithsonian Institution. Accessed 16 October 2016.

References

“Exhaling Earth: Scientists Closer to Forecasting Volcanic Eruptions.” Deep Carbon Observatory.

Gill, Victoria. “Volcano insight: Fifty years of eruptions revealed.” The BBC News, 6 October 2016.

Kaplan, Sarah. “Watch Earth pulse with earthquakes and eruptions in this stunning visualization.” The Washington Post, 10 October 2016.

St. Fleur, Nicholas. “What 50 Years of Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions Look Like.” The New York Times, 10 October 2016.

Katrin Kleemann is a Ph.D. candidate at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at LMU Munich and a research associate with the Environment & Society Portal. Follow her on twitter @katrinkleemann.