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1. Kīlauea’s 2008–2018 Summit Lava Lake—Chronology and Eruption Insights

   Patrick, M; Orr, T; Swanson, D A; Houghton, B F; Wooten, K; Desmither, L; Parcheta, C; Fee, D. (January 2021, US Geological Survey professional paper)

   null (Ed.)

   The first eruption at Kīlauea’s summit in 25 years began on March 19, 2008, and persisted for 10 years. The onset of the eruption marked the first explosive activity at the summit since 1924, forming the new “Overlook crater” (as the 2008 summit eruption crater has been informally named) within the existing crater of Halemaʻumaʻu. The first year consisted of sporadic lava activity deep within the Overlook crater. Occasional small explosions deposited spatter and small wall-rock lithic pieces around the Halemaʻumaʻu rim. After a month-long pause at the end of 2008, deep sporadic lava lake activity returned in 2009. Continuous lava lake activity began in February 2010. The lake rose significantly in late 2010 and early 2011, before subsequently draining briefly in March 2011. This disruption of the summit eruption was triggered by eruptive activity on the East Rift Zone. Rising lake levels through 2012 established a more stable, larger lake in 2013, with continued enlargement over the subsequent 5 years. Lava reached the Overlook crater rim and overflowed on the Halemaʻumaʻu floor in brief episodes in 2015, 2016, and 2018, but the lake level was more commonly 20–60 meters below the rim during 2014–18. The lake was approximately 280×200 meters (~42,000 square meters) by early 2018 and formed one of the two largest lava lakes on Earth. A new eruption began in the lower East Rift Zone on May 3, 2018, causing magma to drain from the summit reservoir complex. The lava in Halemaʻumaʻu had drained below the crater floor by May 10, followed by collapse of the Overlook and Halemaʻumaʻu craters. The collapse region expanded as much of the broader summit caldera floor subsided incrementally during June and July. By early August 2018, the collapse sequence had ended, and the summit was quiet. The historic changes in May–August 2018 brought a dramatic end to the decade of sustained activity at Kīlauea’s summit. The unique accessibility of the 2008–18 lava lake provided new observations of lava lake behavior and open-vent basaltic outgassing. Data indicated that explosions were triggered by rockfalls from the crater walls, that the lake consisted of a low-density foamy lava, that cycles of gas pistoning were rooted at shallow depths in the lake, and that lake level fluctuations were closely tied to the pressure of the summit magma reservoir. Lava chemistry added further support for an efficient hydraulic connection between the summit and East Rift Zone. Notwithstanding the benefits to scientific understanding, the eruption presented a persistent hazard of volcanic air pollution (vog) that commonly extended far from Kīlauea’s summit. 

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2. Wavelet‐Based Characterization of Very‐Long‐Period Seismicity Reveals Temporal Evolution of Shallow Magma System Over the 2008–2018 Eruption of Kīlauea Volcano

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JB020837  

   Crozier, Josh; Karlstrom, Leif (May 2021, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth)

   Abstract Very‐long‐period (VLP) volcano seismicity often encodes subsurface magma movement, and thus provides insight into subsurface magma transport processes. We develop a fully automated signal processing workflow using wavelet transforms to detect and assess period, decay rate, and ground motions of resonant VLP signals. We then generate a VLP catalog over the 2008–2018 open‐vent summit eruption of Kīlauea Volcano containing thousands of events. Two types of magma resonance dominate our catalog: vertical sloshing of the open magma column in and out of the shallow magma reservoir, and lateral sloshing of magma in the lava lake. These events were triggered mainly from the surface and less commonly from depth. The VLP catalog is then combined with other geophysical datasets to characterize evolution of the shallow magma system. VLP ground motion patterns show both abrupt and gradual changes in shallow magma reservoir geometry. Variation in resonant periods and decay rates of both resonance types occurred on timescales from hours to years, indicating variation in magma density and viscosity that likely reflect unsteady shallow outgassing and convection. A lack of correlation between decay rates of the two dominant resonant modes suggests a decoupling between magma in the conduit and lava lake. Known intrusions and rift zone eruptions often represented change points for resonance characteristics and their relations with other datasets. This data synthesis over a 10‐year eruptive episode at Klauea Volcano demonstrates how VLP seismicity can sharpen insights into magma system evolution for use in monitoring and understanding eruptive processes. 

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3. Greenland Ice Sheet Wide Supraglacial Lake Evolution and Dynamics: Insights From the 2018 and 2019 Melt Seasons

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EA003793  

   Dunmire, Devon; Subramanian, Aneesh_C; Hossain, Emam; Gani, Md_Osman; Banwell, Alison_F; Younas, Hammad; Myers, Brendan (February 2025, Earth and Space Science)

   Abstract Supraglacial lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) can impact both the ice sheet surface mass balance and ice dynamics. Thus, understanding the evolution and dynamics of supraglacial lakes is important to provide improved parameterizations for ice sheet models to enable better projections of future GrIS changes. In this study, we utilize the growing inventory of optical and microwave satellite imagery to automatically determine the fate of Greenland‐wide supraglacial lakes during 2018 and 2019; low and high melt seasons respectively. We develop a novel time series classification method to categorize lakes into four classes: (a) Refreezing, (b) rapidly draining, (c) slowly draining, and (d) buried. Our findings reveal significant interannual variability between the two melt seasons, with a notable increase in the proportion of draining lakes, and a particular dominance of slowly draining lakes, in 2019. We also find that as mean lake depth increases, so does the percentage of lakes that drain, indicating that lake depth may influence hydrofracture potential. We further observe rapidly draining lakes at higher elevations than the previously hypothesized upper‐elevation hydrofracture limit (1,600 m), and that non‐draining lakes are generally deeper during the lower melt 2018 season. Our automatic classification approach and the resulting 2‐year ice‐sheet‐wide data set provide new insights into GrIS supraglacial lake dynamics and evolution, offering a valuable resource for future research. 

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4. Patterns of Bubble Bursting and Weak Explosive Activity in an Active Lava Lake—Halema‘uma‘u, Kīlauea, 2015

   https://doi.org/10.3133/pp1867E  

   Mintz, B; Houghton, B; Llewellin, E; Taddeucci, J; Carey, R; Kueppers, U; Gaudin, D; Patrick, M; Burton, M; Scarlato, P; et al (January 2021, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper)

   The rise of the Halemaʻumaʻu lava lake in 2013–2018 to depths commonly 40 meters or less below the rim of the vent was an excellent opportunity to study outgassing and the link to associated eruptive activity. We use videography to investigate the rise and bursting of bubbles through the free surface of the lake in 2015. We focus on low-energy explosive activity (spattering) in which the ascent and bursting of meter-sized, mechanically decoupled bubbles trigger the ejection of fluidal bombs to tens of meters above the free surface. A decay in initial pyroclast velocity with time follows the same functional form as that observed for ejecta at Stromboli (Italy), suggesting a similar bubble-burst mechanism. 

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5. Greenland Ice Sheet wide supraglacial lake evolution and dynamics: insights from the 2018 and 2019 melt seasons

   https://doi.org/10.31223/X5871P  

   Dunmire, Devon; Subramanian, Aneesh; Hossain, Emam; Gani, Md; Banwell, Alison; Younas, Hammad; Myers, Brendan (July 2024, Eartharxiv)

   Supraglacial lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) can impact both the ice sheet surface mass balance and ice dynamics. Thus, understanding the evolution and dynamics of supraglacial lakes is important to provide improved parameterizations for ice sheet models to enable better projections of future GrIS changes. In this study, we utilize the growing inventory of optical and microwave satellite imagery to automatically determine the fate of Greenland-wide supraglacial lakes during 2018 and 2019; cool and warm melt seasons respectively. We develop a novel time series classification method to categorize lakes into four classes: 1) refreezing, 2) rapidly draining, 3) slowly draining, and 4) buried. Our findings reveal significant interannual variability between the two melt seasons, with a notable increase in the proportion of draining lakes in 2019. We also find that as mean lake depth increases, so does the percentage of lakes that drain, indicating that lake depth may influence hydrofracture potential. However, we also observe that non-draining lakes are deeper during the cooler 2018 melt season, suggesting that additional factors may predispose lakes to drain earlier in a warmer year. Our automatic classification approach and the resulting two-year ice-sheet-wide dataset provide unprecedented insights into GrIS supraglacial lake dynamics and evolution, offering a valuable resource for future research. 

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