PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, December 19 (RIA Novosti) – The eruption of the Plosky Tolbachik volcano in Russia's Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula will continue for at least two more weeks, a leading scientist told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.
Gennady Karpov, the deputy head of the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology under the Russian Academy of Sciences, said the volcano currently erupts with the same intensity as in the past few days, though its activity has slightly subsided as compared to the first days of eruption.
The 3,085-meter Plosky Tolbachik, which is part of a volcanic complex located 343 kilometers from the region's capital of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, erupted on November 27 for the first time in 36 years.
The volcano has been spewing lava from two fissures along its southern slope, with upper flow descending 6,000 meters and lower flow – 17,000 meters.
The Plosky Tolbachik erupted 10 times since records began in 1740, with the most notable eruption in 1975, commonly known as The Great Tolbachik Fissure Eruption. Soviet scientists successfully predicted the eruption because it was preceded by a series of earthquakes.
The 1975 eruption dramatically changed the local landscape and became an ecological disaster as the volume of lava and ashes emitted by the Plosky Tolbachik was the largest in recorded history of Kamchatka.
During the Great Tolbachik Fissure Eruption in 1975, the volcano spilled on average 40 cubic meters of magma per second while on December 11th its ‘productivity’ was about 400 cubic meters or 1,200 tons per second.
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