hello everybody as you may have already noticed summer has started I don't know you know like it's all warm and stuff and you don't have to go to school those are some pretty strong clues that it's summertime anyway Lindsay and I are on vacation starting this week and all summer long we're gonna be doing some different things than we usually do so stay tuned for some interesting stuff out on our feed starting on our next release which will be July 11th in the meantime we've got this great older episode of ours that we all really love called the Volcanic Eruption Adventure, which is all about a scientist
who flies into volcanoes, just in case you thought scientists were just boring nerds sitting behind a desk all day.
Anyway, I learned a lot from this episode, and I hope you all will too.
So without any further ado, here is the Volcanic Eruption Adventure.
adventure. Hi, I'm Lindsay.
And I'm Marshall. Welcome to Tumble, the show where we explore stories of science discovery.
Today we're going on an adventure to the top of a volcano that's about to erupt.
Really? That sounds, um, I don't know, dangerous?
Don't worry, it's safe.
We're following a scientist who studied the warning signs of volcanic eruptions on one of Alaska's visit biggest volcanoes.
Well, in that case, buckle up and look out for some lava.
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podcasts. Our guide to volcanic adventure is Helena Berman.
Yeah, my name is Helena Berman and I'm a volcanologist. Helena will be taking us to the top of a volcano, but she's really focused on the action going on deep underneath it.
I was studying the earthquakes that happen at volcanoes.
So she's a volcanologist, which means she's studying volcanoes.
But why is she studying earthquakes?
Often they will tell us if the volcano is about to erupt.
She works in a field of science called volcano seismology, and seismology is the study of earthquakes and the waves that move through the earth.
Ah, so volcano seismology is what you get when you put volcanoes and earthquakes together, like a little natural disaster salad.
Exactly. Just add some olive oil and some vinegar.
So delicious. So to travel to the top of this volcano, we're first going back in time to when Helena was a young volcano seismologist on Eruption Watch in 2008.
I was at the Alaska Volcano Observatory and we watch all the volcanoes real close to see if any of them are waking up.
Wait, so what's a volcano observatory?
Is it like you sit behind a telescope and look at volcanoes from far away?
There are no telescopes there, but it does have lots of other kinds of special equipment.
It measures volcanic activity and gives warnings to people nearby.
There's only five volcano observatories in the U .S. in areas where there's lots of volcanoes around.
So I guess that means there's lots of volcanoes in Alaska?
We have 54 volcanoes that are active, and we have a bunch more that are dormant.
they're asleep and they might be going extinct i love the idea that volcanoes are just like asleep or waking up it's like oh oh man oh time to explode but why are there so many there in alaska well alaska may seem cold but it's actually a real hot spot for volcanoes alaska is part of the ring of fire that goes around the pacific ocean The Ring of Fire.
The Ring of Fire is where 75 % of the world's volcanoes and earthquakes happen.
Would you say it burns, burns, burns?
The Ring of Fire? Yes.
It surrounds most of the Pacific Ocean.
It's where pieces of Earth's crust, called tectonic plates, hit up against each other.
They're colliding and pulling apart in a process of creation and destruction that's been going on since Earth formed.
Meaning it makes volcanoes and earthquakes happen.
And it's responsible for how Alaska looks on the map with its little hook of islands.
All the way along the south coast of Alaska and out along the Aleutian Islands, they're called, those are all volcanoes.
But one of Alaska's most famous volcanoes is on the mainland.
There's a volcano close to Anchorage called Mount Readout.
You can see Mount Redau on the horizon from Alaska's biggest city.
It's about 100 miles away.
Redau is a composite volcano, also known as a stratovolcano. That means it has steep sides and it's built out of a combination of ash, lava, and chunks of stone.
Like all the stuff it throws up and then hardens like that gross shirt you never cleaned.
Exactly. And Redau is known to be active and potentially dangerous to people.
And the last time readout erupted, actually an airplane got caught in the ash cloud and nearly crashed.
Oh my goodness. So somebody flew through a volcanic eruption and actually survived?
Yeah, but you don't want to try that again.
No, I do not. That's why it's so important to have a volcano observatory, to be able to give humans the heads up on eruptions that could affect many lives.
Readout's first warning sign came in summer 2008.
There were some geologists that were working up there.
They make maps of the rocks.
While the geologists were mapping away, they smelled something kind of funky.
Like what kind of gas smell?
Is this another fart joke opportunity?
Oh yeah. They started smelling a funny gas smell.
They smell like rotten eggs.
Okay, so the volcano is actually farting.
The geologists went down to the Alaska Volcano Observatory and told Helena's team what they'd observed.
That rotten egg smell turned out to be a major sign that redoubt might be getting ready to erupt.
And so then we started keeping a closer eye on redoubt with the earthquakes happening there.
Wait, so how do we go from smelling rotten eggs to earthquakes?
That's a good question.
Helena told me that earthquakes are a common warning sign that a volcano is active or awakening.
Each volcano is its own personality.
So there's some volcanoes that make hundreds of earthquakes every day and that's just normal for them.
When gas moves through the crust, it can make earthquakes.
So the gas is pushing its way through the ground and that causes the earthquakes.
Quakes. Exactly. The other thing that can cause earthquakes is magma, the molten rock beneath Earth's crust. Magma has to break the crust to get out, and when the crust breaks, that makes earthquakes.
Molten rock breaking the crust is so hardcore.
I know, right? Magma is always flowing around beneath Earth's crust, but the movement of the tectonic plates pushes it up towards the the surface, cracking the rock around it.
That's why Helena was looking closely for earthquakes beneath readout.
Very gradually, we started to see one or two earthquakes pretty deep below the volcano, which is unusual.
Wait, but how do you see an earthquake?
Don't you just feel them?
Here's the thing. Even if you are standing right above one, you couldn't feel it.
They're too small and deep underground.
That's why scientists use a sensor that can measure earthquakes.
It's called a seismometer.
Seismometers are installed close to the volcano and they send their data back to the volcano observatory.
All of a sudden in January of 2009, I remember it, on the earthquake record, we started to see all this activity, like we call it activity, when the sensors kind of register the ground shaking a lot more.
Helena was on duty when it started happening.
And I remember checking the data and seeing this and thinking, uh -oh, that's not right.
She quickly told the other volcanologists what was happening.
Together, they decided...
This is probably getting real now.
Explosions are coming!
Explosions are coming!
But it still took some time.
For a few more weeks, Helena and her fellow volcanologists just watch the seismometer data very closely.
Quakes were happening.
They get closer and closer together in time.
And that's what we call a swarm.
An earthquake swarm?
That sounds like, I don't know, maybe like a little worse than a Sharknado.
Definitely. And just like the rotten egg smell was the sign to start watching earthquakes, these swarms were the sign that it was time to plan a trip to the top of the volcano. So you see, that's funny, because for me that sounds like it's exactly the time not to take a trip to the top of the volcano. In fact, to try to get a little further away from it if you can.
They needed to place the sensors in the heat of the action.
If you have your sensor too far away, you don't really hear the earthquakes, you have to be right on top of the volcano. The sensors that measure the volcano year -round are far away from the crater itself.
So the plan was to quickly fly out in a helicopter and put a bunch of seismometers around the top of the volcano just before the eruption.
This is like just in case you didn't think scientists were actually action heroes.
Did they hang from the helicopter tread on their way down?
It's hard to land a helicopter on an Alaskan volcano at the end of winter, so it is pretty daring.
The sky is dark and the weather is bad.
The volcanologist had to wait for conditions to improve in order to drop off the sensors.
By the time we were ready to do that, it had started doing its final ramp up.
Finally, a clear day arrived.
arrived Helena's team loaded their equipment into the helicopter and took off.
They flew two hours to the very top of the volcano. So for us up there it was just a beautiful day and we could see lots of steam coming out the top because it was you know there was heat coming up melting the glacier.
Helena enjoyed being on the snowy steamy peak.
She would have loved to spend the whole day up there But back at the volcano observatory, nails were probably being bitten.
Other volcanologists sat in front of screens, monitoring the signals that Helena couldn't feel or see.
Kind of like the control room for a rocket launch. Yeah, a lot like that.
If it looked like the volcano was about to blow, Helena's team would get a call to evacuate immediately.
immediately so they raced around the mountain getting their work done as quickly as possible then they jumped back into the helicopter as they took off helena was almost hoping that readout would blow and i would have loved to see a big old boom come out the volcano but i didn't 24 hours later readout erupted it sent a plume of ash and gas over 50 000 feet into the air we were long gone by the time it exploded but it exploded volcanic ash reached as far as anchorage and volcanic mud flows cascaded down the sides of the mountain a brownish yellow haze came over the region.
That sounds enormous, but did anyone get hurt?
No, the volcano observatory did its job right.
And those sensors did their job too?
We got much better recordings of the stuff that was going on.
It had been 20 years since the volcano's last eruption, and the technology behind the seismometers had improved by a lot.
So it's like they could get a much better picture the earthquakes going on during the eruption.
Totally, because at the time Helena was racing around the mountains, there were a lot of things that they didn't know.
You can think that you know what's about to happen and you can go put your sensors out, but then it's anyone's guess of, like, what you're going to record or if it's going to even erupt.
Oh, so it could have erupted when they were on it or not erupted at all?
I mean, they didn't know.
But with the help of that last minute sensor delivery, volcanologists can now tell the story of Redoubt's eruption.
Volcanoes tend to erupt in the same way every time, so they now have a much better idea of what to expect the next time with Redoubt.
So when they smell that rotten egg smell and see those earthquake swarms, they'll know what to do.
Helicopter volcano, go!
Now that you've learned about Mount Redoubt, why don't you invent your own volcano?
Choose a type of volcano and give it a name.
Then tell the story of its eruption.
What are the warning signs that it's about to erupt?
And what kind of eruption might it have?
Thanks today to Dr. Helena Berman and also to Dr. Erica Rader for connecting us.
You might enjoy our other volcano episode with Erica.
What would Earth be like if volcanoes didn't exist?
We have resources to learn more about volcanoes if you want to invent your own.
Or, if you're curious, on the blog on our website, sciencepodcastforkids .com.
We'll also have a link to Helena's website where you can learn more from her about volcanoes and earthquakes in Alaska.
You can hear more from our interview with Helena when you pledge $1 or more a month to our Patreon at patreon .com slash tumblepodcast. Zara Soar is our new intern.
Welcome, Zara. Sarah Lentz is our head of partnerships.
I'm Lindsay Patterson, and I wrote and produced this show.
And I'm Marshall Escamilla, and I make all of the music.
Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for more stories of science discovery.
Well, here we are at the end of the episode, and we all know that that means it's time to give some birthday shout -outs to our supporters on Patreon.
So thanks, you guys.
But first, let's get to our newest patrons, Andrew, Steve, and Jem.
Thanks so much, y 'all.
And now, some birthdays.
First, a happy birthday on June 20th to William.
Mom and dad love you and and think you are awesome.
To Lucy, a very happy June 20th birthday from mom, dad, Oliver, the goats, the chickens, the dogs, the cats, the horses, the frogs and the turkey.
Just one turkey, huh?
Adle, we hope you stay curious and seek to explore what you don't yet know.
Mama and Jariah love you and happy birthday on June 23rd. A happy birthday on June 25th to Miss Kurena Joy.
You continue to surprise and delight with your talents and your generous heart.
love from mommy daddy mags and julian a happy june 27th birthday to andrew mom and dad love you and want you to keep being creative and inventive a happy birthday to holden also on june 27th and to fletcher a happy birthday on june 29th mama and dado love how kind creative silly and sweet you are your desire to learn and create a better world is so inspiring happy birthday A happy July 1st birthday to Tony D.
Mama Mae and Daddy say love you.
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Adios.
