Abstract
The first volcanic eruption known to occur in the southern Red Sea in over a century started on Jebel at Tair Island in September 2007. The early phase of the eruption was energetic, with lava reaching the shore of the small island within hours, destroying a Yemeni military outpost and causing a few casualties. The eruption lasted several months, producing a new summit cone and lava covering an area of 5.9 km2, which is about half the area of the island. The Jebel at Tair activity was followed by two more eruptions within the Zubair archipelago, about 50 km to the southeast, in 2011–2012 and 2013, both of which started on the seafloor and resulted in the formation of new islands. The first of these eruptions started in December 2011 in the northern part of the archipelago and lasted for about one month, generating a small (0.25 km2) oval-shaped island. Coastal erosion during the first two years following the end of the eruption has reduced the size of the island to 0.19 km2. The second event occurred in the central part of the Zubair Islands and lasted roughly two months (September–November, 2013), forming a larger (0.68 km2) island. The recent volcanic eruptions in the southern Red Sea are a part of increased activity seen in the entire southern Red Sea region following the onset of a rifting episode in Afar (Ethiopia) in 2005.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Jamal M. Sholan (Seismological and Volcanological Observation Center, Dhamar, Yemen) for providing field photos and information about the Jebel at Tair and Zubair activity. We have named the two new islands in the Zubair archipelago Jadid (“new” in Arabic) and Sholan, as Jamal Sholan was the first Yemeni scientist to visit that island. The Envisat and ERS satellite data were provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) and ALOS data by the Japan Exploration Agency (JAXA) through Category-1 Project #6703. The German Space Agency provided the TanDEM-X data through project XTI-GEOL3441. The Landsat-7 and 8 images were distributed by the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), located at USGS/EROS, Sioux Falls, SD (http://lpdaac.usgs.gov). The research reported in this publication was supported by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
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Jónsson, S., Xu, W. (2015). Volcanic Eruptions in the Southern Red Sea During 2007–2013. In: Rasul, N., Stewart, I. (eds) The Red Sea. Springer Earth System Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45201-1_10
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