I found this to be quite interesting. Then Kelechi Deca wrote about it on his Facebook .
Let me copy and paste what he wrote here:
Our World is Too Interconnected.
When the Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia’s Afar region erupted on Sunday morning after lying dormant for 12,000 years, people across Ethiopia were worried, and the government scrambled emergency agencies towards the region.
Luckily, there was no casualty as at now. But while Ethiopians seem to have resumed their daily activities as if nothing happened, people in India and other parts of Asia resumed their own challenges from same eruption.
This is because the huge ash plumes from the eruption that crossed through the Red Sea towards Yemen and Oman continued eastwards.
Since Sunday, hundreds of flights have been cancelled, rerouted or delayed as a precaution. Air India, one of the country’s largest airline companies, canceled nearly a dozen flights on Monday and Tuesday passing through the Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai airports.
The ash cloud continued to move farther east on Tuesday, passing over Myanmar and into southern China,leading to rerouting of flights and huge delays across the region.
The Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program has no historic data of any eruptions at Hayli Gubbi in the Holocene, the current geographic epoch that began about 11,700 years ago with the most recent melting of the ice sheets.
The Large Magnitude Explosive Volcanic Eruptions database, an international monitor that records eruptions from before 12,000 years ago, also has no record of an eruption of Hayli Gubbi.
Hayli Gubbi is a shield volcano located in the Afar Region of Ethiopia. It is the southernmost volcano of the Erta Ale Range. As John Ogunlela wrote two days ago, some of the mountains across Nigeria might one day surprise us. Do we have any agency monitoring them?
Until last Sunday, there was no known record of any eruptions of this volcano within the past 12,000 years since the beginning of the Holocene era, although records of eruptions in the area are limited by the remoteness of the region.
I was on a group where someone challenged the dating claims saying that there's no way they could have such records going back to 12000 years. He was so vocal about it to the point of getting abusive.
Some of the more knowledgeable people on the ground with backgrounds in Geology and Geography simply kept quiet until he lost steam. Even in this age of Google and AI, many people are decidedly ignorant.
There are several methods to determine the date of a volcano's last eruption, and these are simple information anyone can access.
The first is radiocarbon dating. This is a primary method for organic materials found in volcanic deposits, such as charred wood, soil, or plant matter that was burned during an eruption. By measuring the decay of carbon-14, scientists can date materials up to around 50,000 years old.
Another one is dendrochronology commonly referred to as Tree Ring Dating. Eruptions can damage or kill trees, or significantly slow their growth.
Scientists analyze tree rings for frost damage, fire scars, or changes in growth patterns caused by ashfall or climate shifts, providing precise dates for more recent eruptions.
There is also the geochronology also known as Potassium-Argon Dating. For older volcanic rock, scientists can measure the decay of potassium-40 into argon-40. This method is suitable for dating materials hundreds of thousands to millions of years old.
Then historical records and oral traditions are not left out. For many volcanoes, especially in populated areas, written records, cave paintings, or local oral histories can provide detailed accounts of past eruptions, sometimes with specific dates and descriptions
Another very interesting one is
Paleomagnetism. When lava cools, the magnetic minerals within it align with the Earth's magnetic field at that time. By measuring the orientation and strength of this magnetic signature and comparing it to known changes in the Earth's magnetic field over time, scientists can estimate the age of the lava flow.
As I write this post, a meeting we are supposed to have here in Freetown has been shifted for four extra days to allow partners from China and Singapore whose flights were disrupted by the Volcano to reschedule their flights.
That is costing some of us, unbudgeted extra hotel bills, upkeep and very expensive tickets changes.
Just an event that happened in Ethiopia is having reverberating impacts in far away India, Oman, Singapore and China amongst other places. Then its effects are hitting my pocket in Sierra Leone.
It reminds me of the Butterfly Effect. As captured in chaos theory) the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.
Everything is connected to everything.
