The Tokyo Volcanic Ash Advisory Center reported an eruption on Mount Chikurachki, a 1816 m high volcano on Paramishir Island in the northern Kuril Archipelago, beginning at about 10.00 am local time on Monday 16 February 2014. Satellite monitoring revealed that this produced a series of plumes rising 7-7.5 km about the volcano and drifting up to 80 km to the west. Activity continued onto Tuesday 17 February, with a series of eruptions producing plumes that rose to 3-3.5 km with ash drifting up to 230 km to the southwest. This is the first recorded eruption on Mount Chikurachki since 2007.
Ash plume issuing from Mount Chikurachki on 17 February 2015, imaged by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8. NASA/Earth Observatory.
The Kuril Archipelago runs from the northwestern tip of Hokkaido to the southern tip of the Kamtchatka Peninsula. It marks the southern margin of the Okhotsk Plate, which underlies the Sea of Okhotsk, the Kamchatka Peninsula, Sakhalin Island and Tōhoku and Hokkaidō in Japan. Along this southern margin the Pacific Plate is being subducted beneath the Okhotsk Plate in the Kuril Trench. As the Pacific Plate sinks under the Okhotsk Plate it is partial melted by the resultant friction and the heat of the Earth's interior. Some of the melted material then rises up through the overlying Okhotsk Plate as magma, fueling the volcanoes of the Kuril Archipelago.
Simple diagram showing the subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the Okhotsk Plate along the Kuril Trench. Auburn University.
See also...
Volcanic activity on Mount Alaid.
Alaid is the northernmost volcano of the Kurile Islands, a volcanic archipelago that stretches from the northeastern tip of Hokkaido in Japan to the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It is a stratovolcano (cone shaped volcano made up of layers of ash and lava...
Eruption on Ivan Grozny.
On 16 August 2012 the Itar-Tass news agency reported an eruption on the Ivan Grozny (Ivan the Terrible) volcano on Iturup Island in the Kuril Archipelago to the northeast of Hokkaido, producing ash-falls up to 25 km from the caldera. Ivan Grozny forms a caldera 3 × 3.5 km, open to the south. Their are several Holocene (less than 10 000 year old) lava domes to the northeast of this caldera, and a single large dome to the south, which is...
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