Volcano map tracks Earth's hot spots
The Thermal Alert System offers real-time monitoring of global hot spots. Go to the real-time volcano map. If no yellow, red or green dots appear, click on the "Previous 1 day" button to see yesterday's data. You can also read a detailed explanation of what the volcano map is representing.
JB: This is Earth and Sky. Rob Wright is a researcher at the University of Hawaii.
DB: He uses satellites to measure the heat that’s released when volcanoes erupt.
Rob Wright: So the Earth has about 1500 potentially active volcanoes and monitoring all of them in the way we can, say at Mount Saint Helens, is pretty much impossible. The good thing . . . about satellite sensors is that they always orbit the Earth and are always collecting data. So . . . we’re actually passively monitoring all 1500 of these volcanoes.
JB: The eruptions are displayed on a website within a few hours.
Rob Wright: When you go to the main page, there’s a base map of the world which occupies the main part of the web page. . . . and then when the satellite has detected a hot spot in a particular location, we plot the location of that hot spot on top of this base map.
_DB: The spots indicating volcanoes and fires are marked in red. Each spot on Earth is measured about twice each day. Visitors to the website can choose any day from the past five years and see all the volcanic eruptions from that day. These data may help scientists discover warning signs that can be used to predict future volcanic eruptions. For a link to the volcano map, come to our website at earthsky.org. Special thanks today to NASA explore, discover, understand. I’m Joel Block with Deborah Byrd for Earth and Sky.
See the Thermal Alert System’s volcano map. If no yellow, red or green dots appear, click on the “Previous 1 day” button to see yesterday’s data.
An explanation of what the volcano map is representing.
This information is useful in places such as the Republic of Congo in Africa where local scientists who are poorly funded are trying to monitor two large active volcanoes near human settlements. The set of data may also help scientists find patterns in the past that might help them predict future volcanoes.
Our thanks to:
Robert Wright
Assistant Researcher
University of Hawai’i at Manoa
Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology
Honolulu, HI
Additional Teacher Resources
NASA Earth Observatory: Tracking a Volcano
Remote sensing volcanologists can use MODIS data to measure not only the average temperature of the lava flow, but also to determine the rate at which the magma is coming out of the ground.
