So in my last post on this website, I wrote how the US Geological Survey predicted in 1992 that the Pu’o ‘O’o eruption appeared to be winding down…and how wrong that prediction was, since the eruption continued on for another twenty-five years and didn’t look like it would stop anytime soon.

A few months after I wrote that post, the situation at Kilauea changed completely. Pu’u ‘O’o now appears, for most intents and purposes, to be a dead vent, and the focus of activity has moved several miles downrift.

In any case, I wanted to formally apologize to Pu’u ‘O’o if I somehow jinxed its existence as an active volcanic vent.

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory just published several years’ worth of old “Volcano Watch” articles to its website. I was reading through some old columns, and this paragraph from a column dated February 27, 1992, describing the onset of a new fissure that had opened along the flank of Pu’u ‘O’o in 1992, caught my eye:

Even that will not mark the end of the eruption, as other episodic fissure eruptions will probably occur near Pu`u `O`o as long as the pond remains active inside the cone. After the Pu`u `O`o pond is gone, we anticipate that the eruption will migrate farther uprift. In the long term, the nine-year long eruption is winding down, but the next few years will most likely continue to be marked by episodic activity. [Emphasis added]

Another similar article was published the following month:

Episode 51, like episodes 49 and 50, will probably not be long-lived. We expect the new vent to stop within a few weeks. Activity probably will continue to be episodic and will eventually migrate uprift toward the summit. The long-term prognosis is still that the nine-year eruption is waning, as seen in significantly lower emission of sulfur dioxide gas from the summit than was measured a few years ago.

Again, this was published in 1992, during the eruption’s ninth year. At the time, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory apparently thought the nine-year old eruption was “winding down.” Fast forward twenty-six years and the eruption is still ongoing and the venerable Pu’u ‘O’o still hosts a lava pond.

Given that prior to the Pu’u ‘O’o eruption, the longest recorded historical rift eruption (Mauna Ulu) lasted only four years, it’s not a surprise that geologists thought that after nine years, the eruption was beginning to wane. If we could go back to the point in time when this column was published and tell the writers that the eruption would go on for at least another quarter century, I wonder how they would react?

Hawaii Public Radio had a very interesting story yesterday about a monarchist from Russia who is taking extraordinary steps to reestablish the Romanov Dynasty of the Russian Empire (which was overthrown in 1917). In essence, Anton Bakov, a Russian businessman and former Member of Parliament, is purchasing up islands around the Pacific and promulgating them to be part of a new sovereign state called “Imperial Throne,” or “Romanov Empire,” which purports to be the successor to the Russian Empire. Bakov in turn got a claimant to the Russian throne, Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen, to become the Emperor of the new state (ascending the throne as “Nicholas III”).

Ankov is now purportedly in talks with Kiribati to purchase three uninhabited islands in the tiny Republic, one of which is slated to become the capital of the revived Russian Empire.

The concept of revived monarchy is a very interesting one; however, this particular idea does not seem well thought out. The revival of the great Russian Empire may well be short-lived due to the effects of climate change: these uninhabited atolls are very low-lying islands that will probably be swallowed by the ocean in the not-too-distant future.