A new technique that analyzes seismic signals to predict days in advance when America's most dangerous volcano will erupt. Mount St Helens, located in Washington State, has recently showed signs of recharging and scientists have developed a machine learning tool to find patterns of volcanic activity to provide better emergency plans. The system was able to determine when the volcano experienced unrest, pre-eruptive and eruptive periods. Using the data, the technology predicted at least three days in advance when the volcano would erupt - with 95 percent accuracy. The study comes less than 10 days since the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network revealed it detected with 350 earthquakes in the region since February, which are signs the volcano may be awakening.

One of California's riskiest volcanoes has for decades been undergoing geological changes and seismic activity, which are sometimes a precursor to an eruption, but -- thankfully -- no supervolcanic eruptions are expected. That's according to Caltech researchers who have been studying the Long Valley Caldera, which includes the Mammoth Lakes area in Mono County. The caldera was classified in 2018 by the U.S. Geological Survey as one of three volcanoes in the state -- along with 15 elsewhere in the U.S. -- considered a "very high threat," the highest-risk category defined by the agency. The two other volcanoes in California with that classification are Mt. Shasta in Siskiyou County and the Lassen Volcanic Center, which includes Lassen Peak in Shasta County.

Altitude-controlled balloons hold great promise for performing high-priority scientific investigations of Venus's atmosphere and geological phenomena, including tectonic and volcanic activity, as demonstrated by a number of recent Earth-based experiments. In this paper, we explore a concept of operations where multiple autonomous, altitude-controlled balloons monitor explosive volcanic activity on Venus through infrasound microbarometers, and autonomously navigate the uncertain wind field to perform follow-on observations of detected events of interest. We propose a novel autonomous guidance technique for altitude-controlled balloons in Venus's uncertain wind field, and show the approach can result in an increase of up to 63% in the number of close-up observations of volcanic events compared to passive drifters, and a 16% increase compared to ground-in-the-loop guidance. The results are robust to uncertainty in the wind field, and hold across large changes in the frequency of explosive volcanic events, sensitivity of the microbarometer detectors, and numbers of aerial platforms.

Taipei, Taiwan – At opposite ends of Southeast Asia, researchers Pornampai Narenpitak and Heri Kuswanto are both working on the same problem: Is it possible to mimic the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions to halt global warming? Using computer modelling and analysis, Narenpitak and Kuswanto are separately studying whether shooting large quantities of sulphur dioxide into the earth's stratosphere could have a similar effect on global temperatures as the eruption of Indonesia's Mount Tambora in 1815. The eruption, the most powerful in recorded history, spewed an estimated 150 cubic kilometres (150,000 gigalitres) of exploded rock and ash into the air, causing global temperatures to fall as much as 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in what became known as the "year without a summer". Stratospheric aerosol injection is among a number of nascent – and controversial – technologies in the field of solar geoengineering (SRM) that have been touted as potential solutions to mitigating the effects of climate change. Other proposed strategies include brightening marine clouds to reflect the sun or breaking up cirrus clouds that capture heat.

Before the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, Pompeii was a thriving city with a population of up to 20,000 people. Now, scientists have delved deeper into one of Pompeii's most beautiful homes, the House of Greek Epigrams. While the house has been damaged through centuries of neglect, weathering and volcanic eruptions, researchers from Lund University have been able to rebuild it, using virtual reality and eye-tracking technology. 'Eye-tracking technology and virtual reality do now provide unprecedented opportunities to assess the visual qualities of ancient spaces,' said Dr Giacomo Landeschi, co-author of the study. Moment Miley Cyrus' plane was struck by lightning The House of Greek Epigrams is an impressive home in northeast Pompeii that was once decorated with intricate frescoes.

The enormous underwater volcano off Tonga last month not only caused record plumes of ash into the air, but also led to one of the largest volcanic lightning events ever seen. According to GLD360, the ground-based global lightning detection network owned and operated by Vaisala, the eruption triggered nearly 590,000 lighting strikes that were'unlike anything on record.' The lightning almost engulfed the surrounding islands in the Tonga archipelago, according to Chis Vagasky, a meteorologist at Vaisala. 'I can't imagine what the people on the islands would have been going through, with a huge ash cloud overhead, a tsunami flooding everything they own, and cloud-to-ground lightning coming down around them,' he said. 'It must have felt apocalyptic.' Ash sent spewing into the air from the massive underwater volcanic eruption in Tonga was photographed by International Space Station astronauts.

A drone captures spectacular images as lava spews from Iceland's Fagradalsfjall volcano.

Robock claims that our analysis fails to acknowledge that pan-tropical surface cooling caused by large volcanic eruptions may mask El Niño warming at our central Pacific site, potentially obscuring a volcano–El Niño connection suggested in previous studies. Although observational support for a dynamical response linking volcanic cooling to El Niño remains ambiguous, Robock raises some important questions about our study that we address here. Modeling studies suggest that the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is sensitive to sulfate aerosol forcing associated with explosive volcanism, yet observational support for a dynamical chain of events linking large volcanic cooling to El Niño occurrences remains inconclusive. In Dee et al. (1), we used absolutely dated fossil corals from the central tropical Pacific to test ENSO's response to large volcanic eruptions. Superposed epoch analysis reveals a weak tendency for an El Niño–like response in the year after an eruption, but this response is not statistically significant, nor does it appear after the outsized 1257 Samalas eruption.

As a geologist and professor I speak and write rather cavalierly about eras and eons. One of the courses I routinely teach is "History of Earth and Life," a survey of the 4.5-billion-year saga of the entire planet--in a 10-week trimester. But as a human, and more specifically as a daughter, mother, and widow, I struggle like everyone else to look Time honestly in the face. That is, I admit to some time hypocrisy. The now risible "Y2K" crisis that threatened to cripple global computer systems and the world economy at the turn of the millennium was caused by programmers in the 1960s and '70s who apparently didn't really think the year 2000 would ever arrive.

BALI, INDONESIA - JUNE 29: Mount Agung erupts on June 29 emerging volcanic dust continually leading to its alert level, in Lempuyangan area, Karang Asem, Bali, Indonesia on June 29, 2018. A team of scientists have developed a neural network to diagnose volcanic eruptions -- and it has bigger implications than you might expect. Computer vision is finding its way into everything these days -- from Facebook's implementation of new facial recognition features to Amazon's retail tracking to Google's major announcements at I/O 2018. And for good reason: we increasingly live in a visual world, and with the rise of augmented reality as a computing platform, having algorithms that understand the world around us will be pivotal for making something like AR truly valuable for everyday users. But computer vision can also be used to understand natural disasters.