VOLCANO PLANET

I held out until today to make this blog posting in order to wait for video evidence to emerge, but I've found one now.

Last Monday, fishermen from the Yemeni port of al-Salif reported seeing an eruption near Saba island in the Zubair archipelago in the Red Sea. They reported seeing lava being spewed up about 20-30 meteres high. MODIS imagery had also picked up a plume in it's satellite photos and the OMI map showed evidence of a Sulphur Dioxide plume at the time. The Toulouse VAAC also reported a plume from the area on 20th December.

Some sources suggest that an underwater or surtseyan eruption might've been taking place but on the contrary, a Yemeni news report showed that the eruption was occuring on an island. Could there have been two eruptions taking place at the same time in the same area?

Zubair is the second Yemeni volcano in the Red Sea to have erupted this century following the eruption of Jabal al-Tair (which is located to the north of Zubair) in 2007.

UPDATE ON 7TH FEBRUARY 2012:

It is possible that the video below might not be of the new island and could possibly be the footage of Jabal al-Tair instead.

OMI map image showing the Sulphur Dioxide plume in the area (in blue-green). IMAGE SOURCE: NASA

Satellite imagery showing a white plume in the area (a white blotch in the centre of the photo). IMAGE SOURCE: NASA

News report in Arabic covering the Zubair eruption.