Weekend Economists Go Out with a Boom August 24-26, 2012

[Tansy_Gold]

25. Krakatau, West of Java -- coincidence?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa

While seismic activity around the volcano was intense in the years preceding the cataclysmic 1883 eruption, a series of lesser eruptions began on May 10, 1883. The volcano released huge plumes of steam and ash lasting until late August.[13] On August 27 a series of four huge explosions almost entirely destroyed the island. The explosions were so violent that they were heard 3,500 km (2,200 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away.[4] The pressure wave from the final explosion was recorded on barographs around the world, which continued to register it up to 5 days after the explosion. The recordings show that the shock wave from the final explosion reverberated around the globe seven times.[12] Ash was propelled to a height of 80 km (50 mi). The sound of the eruption was so loud it was said that if anyone was within ten miles (16 km), he would go deaf.

The combined effects of pyroclastic flows, volcanic ashes, and tsunamis had disastrous results in the region. The death toll recorded by the Dutch authorities was 36,417, although some sources put the estimate at more than 120,000. There are numerous documented reports of groups of human skeletons floating across the Indian Ocean on rafts of volcanic pumice and washing up on the east coast of Africa up to a year after the eruption





http://discover-indo.tierranet.com/volcano02.htm

The event: Monday, August 27, 1883 at 10:02 am. At that very moment came the culminating and terrifying main eruption of the Krakatoa. Krakatoa's final twenty hours and fity-minutes were marked by a number of phases. It started by a series of explosions on Sunday at about 7 p.m. The explosion was so huge that most of the volcano's mountain (or island) desapeared under the level of the sea. A new smalest volcano island was formed later on, and called Anak Krakatoa.

This eruption of August 1883 was the largest recorded in Java, and is considered as one the world's biggest volcano explosion recorded by human in the last centuries, with the Tambora Volcano in Sumbawa on April 1815, an other Indonesian island. Coming back to the Krakatao eruption, the sound was so loud that it was heard in Thailand and in Australia. Some studies are also pointing out thet the smoke was so important that it propagated in the atmosphere for months, generating climate modification in an extended portion of the globe.






On August 27, 1883 the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history took place on the Krakatoa Islands. Located between Java and Sumatra, the islands themselves owed their existence to a massive eruption early in the 5th century AD. In the wake of the 1883 eruption over 36,000 lay dead and the entire island detonated with a force unknown in the pre-atomic age. Krakatoa, which stood some 6000 feet above sea level on August 26th, had simply ceased to exist twenty-four hours later. Some three-quarters of the island had been blasted away or sank beneath the ocean into the crater where the volcano once stood. The eruption bundled together a catalogue of individual disasters: massive explosions, earthquakes, toxic clouds of superheated ash and gasses, and a tsunami whose 140 foot waves decimated 165 villages in the region. A ship in a nearby bay was lifted by the ensuing tidal wave and deposited two miles inland. A volcanic hail of stones rained from the sky while shrouds of ash turned the daytime sky pitch black.

* * *
Krakatoa's eruption generated a shockwave that traveled the earth seven times. The tons of ash propelled into the sky generated climactic changes as particles blocked sunlight and reduced temperatures. Created by volcanic eruption, the island was destroyed by the same geological forces. For a half-century the ravaged remnant of the island stood as a testament to the volcano's explosive fury. But the cycle does not end here. In 1927 a volcanic peak began to rise from the ocean where part of Rakata Island had once been. It now stands 2600 feet above sea level.

Its name: Anak Krakatoa. The child of Krakatoa.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/discovery/index_krakatoa.html