New island forming in the Canary Islands?

[Earl]

It looks like a new island could be forming, adjacent to an existing (but long dormant) volcanic island in Spain's Canary Islands. [LINK]

I think we’re all aware of the new eruption off of El Hierro in the Canary Islands – the first eruption in the Canaries in 40 years and the first at El Hierro in possibly 2500 years. After months of preamble, it now looks like two eruptions occurred, both submarine, in depths of a few hundred meters.

If the eruption continues, one might expect Surtseyan style volcanism as the vent nears the surface and maybe even small, ephemeral islands.

If the mention of Surtsey doesn't ring a bell: it's a tiny island off of southern Iceland that built up from the seawater-cooled byproducts of undersea eruptions between 1963 and 1967 - in other words, an island that wasn't there 50 years ago. How cool is that? It may be time to redraw the maps!

[Earl]

There's now a live webcam pointing in the direction of submarine volcano. It's estimated to be within 50 meters of the ocean surface, and it's erupting almost constantly, resulting in steam explosions directly over the volcano as the magma flashes the water into steam. We could have a new island just any day now.

http://212.170.244.196/

Click on "zona de erupcion La Restinga". Best to watch when there's sunlight; they're six hours ahead of central time, so it won't be long now. Just look for the giant jacuzzi jet out in the middle of the water.

[Earl]

Whoa, wrong part of the world. Apparently satellite imagery corroborated reports of a volcanic eruption in the Red Sea, because... BOOM! New island!



See the before & after pics* at NASA's Earth Observatory site here.

* does this new volcano make me look fat?

[Steve W]

I was wondering if you were going to post about that one.