Eruption Spotted at Mt. Curry in the South Sandwich Islands
This is pretty interesting news - the NASA Aqua satellite spotted an eruption going on at Mt. Curry* in the South Sandwich Islands. The South Sandwich Islands are located to the southeast of South America in an odd subduction zone where the Sandwich microplate is subducting under South America. Not much is known about Mt. Curry on Zavodovski Island - it is a basaltic stratovolcano (typical in island arcs) and it is thought to have last erupted in 1819, although the Global Volcanism Program lists a number of unconfirmed small eruptions as recently as 1930. This eruption has some shades of Nabro - remote, not well known and spotted by satellite first. I’ll be sure to pass on any more information as I find it - although not many people live in the South Sandwich Islands and Zavodovski island is uninhabited, so we’ll likely be relying on remote sensing to track this eruption.
Plume from a potential eruption from Mt. Curry in the South Sandwich Islands, seen on May 2, 2012. Image courtesy of NASA.