Kilauea Eruption 12/23/24

[MyManao]

What an adventure that must have been!  Time will tell...

Yes, one of the highlights of my life. And, interestingly, it seems as though our current vent isn't showing signs of its demise.. yet.

In fact, the eruption seems to be maturing.. in that I mean the vent is getting more efficient at delivering magma to the surface. It appears larger in diameter and the eruptions produce more in a shorter period of time.. 

And, it seems, especially in this last inflation cycle, that the ability of the mountain to recharge the shallow chamber from which this is all being staged is more efficient, and able to erupt magma at a faster clip than in earlier cycles. Here are two plots to demonstrate this.

The first is the last three months of the summit tilt showing the shallower inflation preceding an eruption and the rapid deflation of the eruption cycles.. over and over.



I put this here to draw attention to the last, latest, inflation part of the cycle and how, when compared to previous cycles, steep this one is. Steep being more inflation over a shorter period of time.

Also, to further illustrate the same from a different perspective, here is the summit GPS line length across the caldera, with each data point (small circles) representing a day, for the last year. 



And although this is a longer period of time, you can clearly see the eruption cycle's effect on the line’s length as the magma accumulates and is erupted, over and over, on the right side, the most recent part of the data stream. And here the last cycle's rapid inflation is clearly seen as the distance between the circles in this one inflation cycle as compared to all the previous inflations.