The End of an Eruption

It looks like the La Palma eruption has come to an end. There was an explosion at the volcano on December 13, and things have been quiet since.

Explosion on December 13 2021

This is how eruptions end, according to experts. Vents clog up. Pressure builds. Vents pop. They clog up again. They pop again. This goes on for a while until the eruptions comes to a halt.

Comparing the plume of the explosion to the stable plume at the height of the eruption, we see how much bigger the plume of an explosion is than that of a steady eruption.

High plume on November 14 2021

However, the plume itself is no mystery. It's merely updraft from what's going on below. What's difficult to explain is the way volcanic ash remains suspended in the air at a steady height, sometimes for days on end before falling down to earth.

There's no updraft under such a cloud. If anything, there's down draft due to cool air under the cloud. My preferred explanation is that clouds carry charge, and are suspended in the air due to electrostatic repulsion with the ground. The ash cloud is suspended at relatively high altitude because it's relatively more charged than other clouds.

This led me to think that the height of the ash cloud might tell us something useful about the volcano. However, this didn't work. There's no predictive power in the level at which the ash cloud settles.

There's no excess charge in the volcano. The ash cloud is no more charged than the earth surrounding the volcano. This is not to say that electricity has nothing to do with volcanos. There might be currents involved. Magma may be created electrically due to electric currents flowing along fault lines. There are no lack of mysteries surrounding the mechanics that drive volcanos.

La Palma Volcano on November 1 2021