Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Alaska's Active Volcanoes with Dr. Michelle Coombs

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

In this episode, Sharon chats with Dr. Michelle Coombs, the Scientist-in-Charge of the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Volcano Observatory. Michelle shares volcano facts with Sharon, and talks about the active volcanoes in Alaska and how volcano scientists track them to mitigate fly hazards and keep people safe from ash clouds. Together, they discuss the different types of volcanoes and how scientists and geologists work to piece together the mysteries of the earth around us and its fascinatingly diverse geological formation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. So happy you're joining me today. And I have a very fun episode for you. And one of the reasons I love having my own podcast is that anytime a topic is really interesting to me, I can just explore it and take everybody along for a ride. And hopefully we all have some fun and we all learn some new things. And so that's what we're doing today. We are talking with Michelle Coombs, who is the acting director of the U.S. Geological Surveys Volcano Science Center. Okay. I need to know more about volcanoes. I asked her, I'm like, give me volcanoes 101. I need to know all the things about volcanoes. I definitely had some mind blown brain tingle moments in this episode. So let's dive into my conversation with Michelle Koops. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Michelle, thank you so much for joining me today. I am really excited to chat with you.

I'm happy to be here. Will you give us a little introduction into what you do? So I work for the USGS or the US Geological Survey. And my job title is scientist in charge at the Alaska Volcano Observatory. And I've done that for a few years. But before that, I was a research scientist with the USGS studying volcanoes in Alaska and other parts of the US. That is super interesting. I assume most volcanologists, is that a word? Yes, it is. I'm like, I feel like it's a word. And then as it was coming out of my mouth, I'm like, is it a word? It is. We call ourselves volcano scientists or volcanologists.

Either one is fine. Yes. I'm sure most US-based volcanologists, volcano scientists have studied at least portions of Hawaii. Is that a fair assumption? Yeah, I would say for sure. And I was lucky enough, I did my PhD up in Fairbanks at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and studied Alaskan volcanoes. And then I did a postdoc in Menlo Park, California with the USGS. And it was a really interesting project. It was to work on the underwater flanks of Hawaiian volcanoes. So it was a joint US-Japanese research project. It went for a few years and we used mapping and remotely operated vehicles and also a submersible operated by a Japanese research agency to go and study.

We sampled and observed the flanks of the volcanoes. So how did you decide that this is what you wanted to do with your life? What was the point for you where you're like, I just cannot get enough volcanoes? Well, it's funny. You know, I grew up in Maine. And I actually liked school, I loved science classes of all sorts. And I went to college, thinking I was going to be an astronomer. And I went and my freshman year, I took a class called introduction to astrophysics. And I also took a class just sort of on a whim called geology outdoors. And this geology outdoors class was super cool. There were 12 students in it. There

were no classroom lectures. It was all outdoor labs. So we studied rivers and mountains, glacial geology, all different types of geology. I was hooked. I became really in love with geology with that class and just kept through and majored in geology as an undergrad. I wasn't one of those people who fell in love with volcanoes from the beginning, but I loved rocks. And just studying volcanoes was an opportunity that started in grad school. And I came up here to Alaska to go to grad school. And I definitely love volcanoes now. And I love trying to figure out why they erupt, how they work, what's going on underneath the volcanoes

that causes them to erupt. So I collect rocks that erupt from volcanoes and then study their chemistry and the minerals that are in them and try to unravel kind of those processes that lead to eruptions? I would love to know, first of all, I am really fascinated by Mount Erebus in Antarctica. I don't think most people realize that there's like an active volcano in Antarctica because we associate volcanoes with like Hawaii. We associate them, I think, in our minds with like tropical warm places. You know what I mean? And that's obviously not accurate, but I think that's an association that some people have. Sure. You know, volcanoes are all over the planet and where you find volcanoes on planet earth is because of the tectonic setting. So, you know, when I think

of volcanoes, I don't necessarily think of the tropics. In Alaska, we have a ton of volcanoes. We have 54 historically active volcanoes here, and we've got three erupting right now in Alaska. So yeah, did you know that? No, no. Spill the details. Okay. So we have, like I said, we have lots that are active historically and every year we have, you know, on average one to two erupting. This is a busy year for us. You've probably never heard of any of them. Yeah. One of them is called Semi-Sapachnoy Volcano. It's in the far Western Aleutian Islands. So really far, it's about 2000 kilometers from Anchorage. And so it's been erupting almost all year putting up ash clouds. The next closest volcano that we have

that's erupting is called Great Sitkin Volcano. So on the next island over, it's about 25 miles away. And so for those folks who live in Adak, it's really small. Very few people live there. But on a clear day, they've got a beautiful view of this amazingly beautiful volcano with two dark lava flows coming down from the summit. And then Pavlov Volcano, which is on the Alaska Peninsula, is also erupting right now. So we're tracking volcanoes all through the volcanically active part of Alaska right now. Okay. So what do you do when you're like, well, I think this one is going to erupt. It depends a lot on where that volcano is and what, how it tends to erupt. So volcanoes, we like to say they each have a different

personality. So you mentioned Hawaiian volcanoes. People are really familiar with them. They tend to make lava flows. And in Alaska, a lot of our volcanoes tend to put up ash clouds. We call those explosive eruptions. Okay. Like Mount St. Helens in 19. Sure. People are familiar with that concept of a big, big ash cloud. And so volcanoes that put up big ash clouds are going to be hazardous in a different way. So if Mount Rainier were to erupt in Washington state, many, many people would be at risk from that because thousands of people live downstream from the volcano. But it doesn't erupt very often, luckily. In Alaska, our volcanoes erupt a lot, but they're far away from people, Luckily, in Alaska, our volcanoes erupt a lot, but they're far away from people, but they do put up these big ash clouds. So what we do is we want to make sure that we warn people about those explosive eruptions. But we also work with our partners in the federal government, so the FAA and the National Weather Service, to say, hey, this volcano is going to put up an ash cloud or it just has. We want to make sure that no one flies through or near that ash cloud. It's extremely hazardous. So in our state up here, that is kind

of our primary goal is to mitigate hazards to aviation. Sure. Oh, that's such a good point. So Redoubt volcano is a lot closer to Anchorage. It's just in the lower part of Cook Inlet here in South Central Alaska. So the majority of folks in Alaska live in South Central. So back in 1989, Redoubt Volcano erupted and it put up an ash cloud in the middle of the night and a 747 flew through the ash cloud and all four engines stopped. Yeah, it was a huge wake-up call and extremely scary. And for, I think it was a little over a minute, they lost all power to the aircraft. And luckily partial power was restored and the plane was able to land safely. And worldwide, there have been just a handful of incidents like that, but that was really a big wake-up call of, oh my goodness, we don't want this to happen.

Volcanic ash. Some people think it's like fireplace ash, kind of soft. But in fact, it's pulverized, ground-up rock. So it can be extremely abrasive to engines. It's horrible for humans if we breathe it in. So it can be really damaging, especially to those to engines. It's horrible for humans if we breathe it in. So it can be really damaging, especially to those aircraft engines. That's a really interesting point. I have always thought of it like fireplace ashes, but fireplace ashes are just burned wood. Yep. Not the same as pulverized rocks. It's the same word, but really, really different. Volcanic ash is also very heavy. So if you're close to an eruption

and you have enough ash fall, a couple inches of that stuff on your roof or even more, I mean, buildings can collapse. It's basically like having a rock blanket on your house. And a lot of volcanoes are in remote areas. And so a lot of volcanoes can have really devastating impacts, especially for those communities really close, which I'm grateful we don't have here in Alaska. Right. How many volcanoes does the United States have? I want to say around 190. Wow. Yeah, a lot. And so it depends on how you count them. And yes, scientists and geologists, we love to give special names to things and count things and categorize things. So I mentioned before that in Alaska, we have 54 historically active volcanoes. So that's one way to count them.

And in Alaska, records go back to the kind of the mid 1700s, when the Russians first came and did written history. Another thing that geologists like to do is figure out how many volcanoes have been active in post glacial times. So we can have a really good history over about the last 10,000 years or so of how often volcanoes have erupted. And we have on the order of about 92 in Alaska that have been active. And we have on the order of about 92 in Alaska that have been active. So interesting. So are there any volcanoes east of the Mississippi? No.

I mentioned earlier that volcanoes are where they are because of plate tectonics. So most people are familiar with the concept of plate tectonics, probably learned about it in high school. So in Alaska, our volcanoes are called subduction zone volcanoes. Okay. So the Pacific crust that makes up the Pacific ocean, it's subducting underneath the North American plate and beautiful chain or line of volcanoes in Alaska called the Aleutian arc. There are another kind of volcanoes called hotspot volcanoes. And that's where you have a plume of really hot material in the mantle kind of coming straight up and almost like burning a hole in the crust and making a volcano there. So Yellowstone and Hawaii are that kind of volcano.

Okay. And then you also have mid-ocean ridge volcanoes. They're mostly under the ocean. It's actually the most prominent type of volcanism on earth are mid-ocean ridge volcanoes. They're mostly under the ocean. It's actually the most prominent type of volcanism on earth are mid-ocean ridge volcanoes. And the Cascades are also subduction volcanoes as well. That's super interesting. Okay. So underwater volcanoes. I've always known they were a thing. And obviously the way that it acts is different because it's underwater than the way that it acts on dry land. Isn't that how most like islands are formed? A lot of islands. I don't know about most, but yeah, certainly in Alaska, a lot of our islands are volcanic. A lot of the Pacific islands are volcanic in nature. I'm Jenna Fisher And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together

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Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. When you're studying underwater volcanoes, what are you looking for? Geologists or even volcanologists come at things with really different questions. So some scientists study underwater volcanoes to look for life down there. Another thing that we do is just to fundamentally map the seafloor and identify underwater events. Because, you know, some parts of the seafloor are, we're still learning about them, identifying new underwater volcanoes.

What makes a volcano erupt? Well, you know, kind of volcanoes 101. Yes, I need that. Okay. Volcanoes erupt molten rock, which is called magma. We'll start with kind of a, an analogy. So if you have a lake, it's made up of water, it gets cold here in Alaska. We have frozen lakes where there's ice on top of the water. So frozen water is ice. It's actually less dense than the water. So it sits up on top. Well, rocks are the exact opposite. So when you have hot rock

and it turns into magma, liquid rock, it's actually less dense than solid hard rock. And so it becomes buoyant. You can think of it, I mean, very simplistically like a lava lamp. So that magma is less dense. And so it's buoyant. It wants to rise through the crust, can be helped by cracks or faults or other things like that. And so it's buoyant. It wants to rise through the crust, can be helped by cracks or faults or other things like that. And it eventually makes it to the earth's surface. Now, the other thing that's really important is magma has dissolved volatiles. It's another word for gas, basically. So water, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, these are all volatiles that are dissolved into magma.

But as that magma rises up through the earth's crust, it experiences less and less pressure. Some of those volatiles are going to escape or make gas bubbles. The same thing, you've got a bottle of pop. It's just sitting there. You crack the top of it, you decrease the pressure and all of a sudden you get some bubbles. And if you've shaken it up and you crack the cap, you have a little explosion, right? So as those bubbles come out of solution in the magma, that magma is going to kind of do what the pop does, you know, and squirt out the top.

kind of do what the pot does, you know, and squirt out the top. And if that all happens very quickly and you have a very gassy magma, it can erupt explosively like Mount St. Helens. If you have a less gassy magma, like Kilauea, for example, it erupts what we say effusively, or it makes lava flows. It's all about- If you have gassy magma or not, it really is all about the gases. And that's one of the things we do is, you know, the goal, the kind of goal of the work that I do is to try to forecast when's a volcano going to erupt. So as that magma is rising up through the crust, it causes a lot of things to happen. One of those things is the rock above it cracks, makes little earthquakes. And we can sense those with seismometers that we put out on the volcanoes. We're kind of listening for earthquakes. As that magma is rising, if it's gassy, the gases come out

and they'll kind of come out the top of the volcano before the magma does. And so we measure those gases either by satellite or we fly over the volcanoes sometimes and measure the gases. We also look for in Alaska, a lot of our volcanoes are covered in ice. Yeah. That ice might start to melt. The ground gets hot as that hot magma is coming up. So we look for thermal changes. The other thing we do simply here in Alaska, because our volcanoes are so remote is we just put web cameras out on the volcano so that we can see visually, okay, what the heck is going on out there? Is it steaming more than normal? That kind of thing. You're really multidisciplinary. You're kind of throwing everything you can at the problem.

So let's say you think to yourself, like, I think something is happening. We're seeing all of these signs that an eruption is imminent. What would you do then? We like to say that, you know, our, our job is to understand how volcanoes work, to monitor volcanoes, and then to communicate to the public about what the volcanoes are doing and their hazards. A key way that we do that, and many volcano observatories around the world do it, is we use something called an aviation color code. It's just a nice shorthand to let people know for our monitored volcanoes, okay, this volcano is super quiet. It's at background levels of activity. It's at color code green. Do not worry about this volcano. We start to see those little micro earthquakes or some sign of unrest. We would raise the color code to yellow, which is just saying, oh, okay,

we're above background activity. This might lead to something else. It might not. We have a lot of volcanoes that get a little restless and then they go back to sleep. So that happens a lot, but a yellow is just a little bit extra care should be taken. We have three volcanoes in Alaska that are erupting. Those are kind of low level eruptions. They're all at aviation color code orange. Okay. So orange is kind of a minor eruption, or we think that a significant eruption is about to happen. And then you can imagine what red is. It's happening or, you know, so, so that's just a shorthand and, you know, people who live in volcanically active areas kind of,

you know, know how to interpret the shorthand. We always provide a lot more information than that, you know, the words to back up the color code, but it is a, it's a handy tool just to convey kind of our level of concern. What makes a volcano go dormant? I mentioned that you have these hotspot volcanoes. And so the Hawaiian islands are above a mantle plume. And so this is just hot mantle that's coming up. And wherever that plume is at a given time, that's where your active volcanoes are. So in Hawaii right now, the mantle plume is right under the southern part of the big island of Hawaii. So Kilauea is currently active. Maui is further to the north. And it, as you said, is dormant or extinct, although Haleakala could possibly still erupt. And so is there a difference between a dormant and an extinct

volcano? Dormant implies that that volcano could potentially erupt again someday, and then extinct, you're done. Have you ever heard the story of the plane crash that crashed into the side of Mount Erebus? I bet you'll find this interesting. As somebody who studies volcanoes, very briefly in the 1970s, they used to have sightseeing planes that would go for fun from New Zealand to Antarctica and the people would not get off. The pilot would just fly very low over the Antarctic continent and they would have the plane filled very sparsely so that people could go from one side of the plane to the other. And they would have somebody narrating on the left side of the plane, blah, blah, blah. They would serve lobster. It was a big deal. And this was prior to GPS and somebody programmed the coordinates of the route very slightly incorrectly to the plane. They were

flying over Antarctica and without any warning, the plane just slammed into the side of Mount Erebus. And it was because they discovered later that the pilot was experiencing some kind of meteorological phenomenon where it appears as though there is clear sky in front of him, but in reality, it is a, some type of a reflection off of the snow mixed with that atmospheric conditions that were just incredibly misleading. So everybody, all the tourists died crashing into the side of Mount Erebus in Antarctica. And it, you know, the recovery efforts were very significant because it's cold and it's remote. And they discovered that birds were trying to eat all of the remains.

And it was just a very, very big deal to remove people from Antarctica. But then as I was reading more about this, I started reading more about Mount Erebus and what an interesting place it is because it's a very active volcano on a frozen continent. And I'm like, but how does that work? Wouldn't it just melt all of the snow? And then what happens is at least in Mount Erebus, you get these hot gases, et cetera, that are escaping and they do melt some of the ice and snow and create incredible like ice caves. Oh yeah. And I forget what the term is for these certain types of like formations that are made out of ice that are, you know, created by these hot gases and the mixture of ice particles. Do you get those in Alaska?

Well, yeah. I mean, we have lots of volcanoes erupting through snow and ice. I have to say it's really very difficult to get to most of our volcanoes and it's not something we do very often as far as kind of wandering around. But yeah, it is amazing kind of what you were saying about you can have this hot volcanic eruption in the middle of an ice field. It can create amazing steam clouds. And it's really amazing to watch lava flows and how they eat into an ice cap. The other thing that can happen is you can melt that snow and ice and create lahars that

can travel really far down the flanks of the volcano and be hazardous if people live down valley from the volcano. There's a whole sort of sector of volcano science that studies volcano ice interactions, and it's pretty, pretty neat. Can you give us any fun facts about volcanoes? So I'll tell you one thing that I think is pretty neat about what we do here in Alaska. And this might be a surprise to people. I mentioned, you know, that we have all these volcanoes, they're all through what we call the Aleutian Arc. Not a single one of our volcanoes is reachable by a road. we aren't really crawling all over all the time. So in Alaska to visit a volcano, you need to take a helicopter or a boat or an airplane or a boat plus a helicopter, which is how we do a lot of our work in the far Western part of the Aleutian Islands. Do you have a favorite volcano? Oh, that is a tough one. I have a few favorites. So Augustine volcano is in Lower Cook Inlet. Some people probably heard of Homer, Alaska, which is a great little town, a few hours south of Anchorage.

And from Homer, you can look out on a nice day to the west and see this little island volcano called Augustine. And it last erupted in 2006, which was a really fun, interesting eruption that I studied. And I've done a lot of work out there. It's a beautiful place. We've got a camp out there that we can base out of when we do work. One reason I love it is because there are no bears. Another thing that we deal with here in Alaska in a lot of our field work is just practicing bear safety and firearms or other, you know, deterrent and just mentally dealing with bears, you know, kind of trying to do your work, but also trying to be aware of what's going on. So it's kind of rare when we're in a place where you can just camp and

relax and not have to worry about, are there any bears? Another, this kind of combines my, one of my favorite volcanoes, but with a cool fact. So the biggest eruption in the 20th century, and in fact, the 21st century now, do you know where that happened or what it might be? So it was in Alaska. It was of this volcano called Katmai. Some people know it as Katmai Novarupta because it actually involved two separate volcanoes in a single eruption, and it formed the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. In 1912, there was an extremely large eruption. Several cubic miles of magma were erupted from a vent on the Alaska Peninsula called Novarta. And then a few miles from where that magma came out of the ground, the top of a volcano called Katmai collapsed, forming a caldera. So there was this sort of underground plumbing that connected the two. But the really amazing

thing about this eruption is that it filled a nine mile long valley with tens and tens and tens of meters of ash hot ash so there were rivers running through the valley that just got totally blanketed by ash and when the first explorers came to that area a few years later the whole valley was filled with these little steam vents and that's why it's called the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. And at the time, people had no idea what had happened in this really remote wilderness in Alaska. And so it has since become a national park called Katmai National Park. People may have heard of Katmai because it's in addition to the volcano, it's really famous for its bears. So you can fly into Brooks camp and watch the bears eat fish along the Brooks river. I can't imagine what it would

be like to encounter that for the first time as somebody just exploring the region and being like, what in the Sam Hill happened here? That's pretty much what it was. And it's taken scientists, geologists, you know, decades to kind of piece together puzzle and figure out what happened here. At first they thought there was a giant magma chamber all under this valley and that it was just steaming. And then it wasn't until decades later that they realized, no, that was just a whole bunch of hot ash that covered up the river that made all these vents. How do you figure out where the magma chambers are though? Like, how are we, how are we figuring out the like, nope, this goes straight down versus this is the shape of a triangle right under the surface.

How do we know that? At the time, you know, back when this was first being puzzled out about Katmai, it was really doing geology. It was going out and measuring. So say you have an ash layer that came out and you can kind of say, oh, yeah, I understand that ash layer is characteristic. It looks like this. And you go around in many, many dozens of places and you map how thick it is.

in many, many dozens of places and you map how thick it is. And then you make maps that show, okay, it gets thickest towards spot X on the map. That must be where this eruption happened. So now we still do that kind of work, but we also can use geophysical studies. So I mentioned we have seismometers around a lot of volcanoes and you can do what's called seismic tomography, like the same way that a cat scan would try to understand, okay, what's going on inside your body. Yeah. Tomography under the ground surface to try to map out areas of different velocities. So when a seismic wave goes through the earth, it has a particular velocity, but when it hits a magma chamber,

it actually slows down. Cause remember magma has got gas in it and it's liquid rock. And so it's the, the waves slow down. So you can use those waves to then map out three-dimensional maps, basically of where magma is under the volcanoes. That is, that's fascinating. One last thing before I let you go, if somebody is or was interested in pursuing a career like yours, and they're like, man, I would love to do something like that. What advice would you give them? Well, I talked a little bit about kind of my path. And, you know, I think if you're interested in science, you know, there's so many wonderful things that you can pursue. And it's a lot of it is really about education and taking advantage of those opportunities,

not skimping on math and your fundamental sciences, chemistry and physics. I've got two kids and they are not huge fans of math, but I tell them it can open up a lot of doors. The other thing too, that most folks now who do earth science are pretty savvy at computer programming. And so, you know, that's another skill to hone, but just keep that curiosity open about the natural world and take advantage of educational opportunities. It's hard because I do feel like to work in a volcano observatory is, it's not just you open up Craigslist and you find out.

There's not a thousand openings on indeed.com. No, there's not a thousand openings on Monster or whatever. I feel really, really lucky to have this job. Here's my last question. If you could visit any volcano, you could have visited there before, or you've never been to it. What volcano would you love to see in person? I would say that a place I've never been that I've always wanted to go is New Zealand. And not necessarily because of one volcano, but there are many amazing volcanoes there and just the landscape. And yeah, I would love to go and visit Ruapehu and Taupo. And yeah, that would be my answer.

See where Bilbo Baggins lived. Right? The Shire. That is still in New Zealand. Oh, well, Michelle, this was super interesting. Thank you for humoring me and for giving me Volcano 101. Tell everybody where they can get more information. If they are like, I need to learn more about the USGS or about the work that you do, where can they find more? Yeah, I would love to do that. So I would say that you can Google Alaska Volcano Observatory. You'll find our website. If you go to volcanoes.gov, that'll

drop you into our website, but we are really active on Twitter and Facebook and also USGS volcanoes. And so AVO is one of five observatories. But if you just go to USGS Volcanoes, we've got such an amazing team of folks who answer questions and provide updates through any, you know, in between eruptions, during eruptions. I am just blown away at how good they are at answering folks' questions. I think if people go to USGS Volcanoes on Twitter, they'll just, they'll be very impressed by our team. I'm going to do that as soon as we're done. I'm going to go find you on, to find your team on Twitter. Good. Thank you. This is fantastic. I really enjoyed this.

Great. Like I said, always happy to talk volcanoes. Thank you again. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment

with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.