Wednesday Whatzits: Keeping up with Iceland, Etna and Kilauea from space and Central America’s geothermal riches

Good morning from a drizzly Ohio!

Been a rather quiet news for much volcano news so far – well, that is beyond the reawakening of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia. I haven’t found much more information beyond my update yesterday, but I’ll keep my eyes and ears open.

A few quick bits to tide us over:

A new Iceland Blog: If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Jon Frimann’s new blog – the aptly titled Iceland Volcano and Earthquake Blog. He has information on every noise the volcanoes of Iceland make. Talk about packed full of all the details of the inflation/deflation, earthquakes and rumors about any potential volcanism on the North Atlantic island nation. Hopefully Jon will continue to grace us with updates over here on Eruptions as well if big things are brewing in Iceland.

Images of Etna and Kilauea: The NASA Earth Observatory posted a couple new images this week. The first is of Mt. Etna in Italy, showing the steaming plumes on the summit region. Our friend Boris Behncke assisted with the annotating of the image. Not a lot to report on Etna since the explosions earlier this fall, but Boris, as always, has posted great images of the area around the volcano. The second has an image of the ocean entry of lava at Kilauea, which is creating a lava delta. You can see both the satellite and a land-based image of the ocean entry – and be sure to check out the post on the delta by Brian Romans over at Clastic Detritus.

Geothermal energy in Central America: The Freakonomics Blog at the New York Times had a very brief post on geothermal energy in Guatemala – specifically tapping the heat generated at Pacaya.Much of Central America is trying its hand with geothermal energy thanks to the high heat flow under much of the region.

Top left: Pacaya in Guatamala in a 2005 image.