“It never ran completely over the winter,” he said. Peters had been studying Erebus’s lava lake since 2009 and wanted to install a thermal camera that could observe the bubbling liquid continuously throughout the year, but his camera was always let down by the power supply. but the fundamental issue is power,” Kyle said. “Installing that instrumentation is incredibly hard, and we work very hard to maintain that instrumentation. Thermal images of an explosion in Erebus’s lava lake. Not to mention that scientists can only get to the summit in summer, making it difficult to maintain or repair equipment. The instruments tend to work during the summer, but not in the winter, so it’s nearly impossible to monitor Erebus continuously year-round.īesides the weather challenges, Erebus belches puffs of corrosive gas and occasionally spews volcanic bombs – chunks of lava that solidify as they fall – that can easily damage or destroy equipment left on its flanks. But in Antarctica, solar panels can’t work during the dark polar night, the extreme cold drains batteries quickly, and violent storms can destroy wind turbines. Typically they’re fueled by solar panels, batteries, and wind turbines. “You want to have year-round 24-hour surveillance to keep your finger on the pulse of what the volcano is up to – how often is it erupting, do we see a change in patterns, and things like that,” Kyle said.īut powering these instruments can be challenging. And volcanologists rely on these instruments to take continuous measurements when they’re not around. Seismic sensors pick up any ground shaking in the vicinity, instruments measure gases rising out of the crater, and thermal cameras pick up heat from flowing magma, to name a few. Scientists deploy a myriad of equipment around a volcano to study what’s going on inside. “What we're seeing is what's really going on inside a volcano.” “It's very unusual to have this long-lived feature,” Kyle said. This suggests the lava lake has been there since at least the early 1900s, said Philip Kyle, professor emeritus at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and co-author of the new study. Scientists discovered the lake in the early 1970s, but early Antarctic expeditioners noticed Erebus had a red glow around its summit. Lava lakes are rare enough, but Erebus’s lava lake is even more intriguing because it’s been around for so long. Peters hoped the prototype generator he installed would help power the camera during the long polar night. Nial Peters behind the thermal camera set up to take infrared images of Erebus’s lava lake. It’s a unique natural laboratory for studying volcanoes because there’s an open lava lake at its summit, one of only a handful on Earth. “It doesn't solve all of your power problems for monitoring volcanoes, but it certainly has potential to be a very useful tool.” A unique laboratoryĮrebus is the most active volcano in Antarctica and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. “It’s quite a cool piece of technology that's fun to use,” said Nial Peters, an engineer at University College London and lead author of a recent study describing the prototype generator. The technology could be used at other Antarctic volcanoes and be applied to other types of scientific instruments that require little power, according to the researchers. An array of generators like this could keep more power-intensive equipment running throughout the winter, allowing scientists to monitor the volcano’s open lava lake year-round – something that has never been possible at Erebus before. The prototype produces a tiny amount of energy – less than a smartphone flashlight – but it’s enough to fuel low-powered volcanic sensors. They’ve developed a prototype generator that pulls heat from the ground at the volcano’s summit and provides just enough energy to keep batteries alive during the long, cold Antarctic winter. Researchers have found a way to harness the heat from the magma underneath Erebus and turn it into electricity that can power scientific instruments. Part of the instrument sits below grade to pull heat from the ground. The prototype thermal generator installed at Mt.
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