Volcano Acting Up #5: Pulsing Incandescence

[dakine]

Greg - your suggestion that the current deflation event at the summit of Kilauea, and the associated pause in eruptive activity along the east rift, has the scientist at HVO scratching their heads leaves me curious as to what you are referring to. I can understand that your 'source' at CD may be scratching his/her head because I doubt anyone at CD understands much of the science involved, nor would they be expected to. But when one considers that these deflation/inflation events have been happening for a very long time, and have been studied in detail, and those studies published, I doubt there is much head scratching going on today over the current event. For anyone interested in these events I suggest reading "The Shallow Magmatic System of Kilauea Volcano" By Peter F. Cervelli and Asta Miklius, which can be found at http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/prof-paper/pp...676_09.pdf . That paper really established a base line for the current understanding of the magma storage within the summit area and besides being a pretty good read provides a very good description of the mechanics involved in creating the deflation/inflation events that have been a source of so much speculation here.