Envirocast® On-Line Feature of the Week -- November 27, 2006

Eruption of Mt Etna

The images in this Envirocast® Bulletin were taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard NASA's Aqua satellite on Friday November 24, 2006. They show the eruption of Mt Etna on Sicily, Italy.

Eruption of Mt Etna on Sicily, Italy

At around 0600Z (1:00am EST) on Friday November 24th, Mt Etna erupted sending ash into the air while covering the entire town of Catania with a fine layer of black ash and closing the local airport. From the satellite image, we can see the the ash plume extended 75 miles southeast into the Mediterranean Sea.

Environmental Impacts:

  • Mount Etna began spewing ash on Friday, November 24 causing the closure of the Fontanarossa airport in Catania, Sicily, Italy.

  • Etna peaks at 10,974 feet making it the largest volcano in Italy, nearly three times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius.

  • Mount Etna has one of the world’s longest documented records of historical volcanism dating back to 1500 B.C.

  • In 1669 Mount Etna had a large eruption which engulfed the town of Catania with lava flows.  No more towns were destroyed until 1928 when the town of Mascali was overrun with lava flows.

  • While Mount Etna is Europe’s most active volcano and has been erupting off and on for most of its history, the last large eruption occurred 14 years ago, in 1992.

Supplementary Material:

NASA's AQUA Satellite:

  • Aqua, Latin for water, is a NASA Earth Science satellite mission collecting about the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. The Aqua spacecraft (formally known as EOS-PM) was successfully launched on May 4, 2002 at the Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) in Lompoc, California. t is flying at an altitude of 705 km (438 miles) observing the Earth, and the life expectancy is 6 years. [Aqua's Orbit], [Animation of MODIS Observing the Earth]

  • Aqua passes south to north over the equator in the afternoon, and thus it passes over us at the same local time every day, approximately 1:30 p.m.

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