Fire and ice

Blowing hot and cold

What immediately comes to your mind, when you envision a volcano? Most people I ask, conjure the image of a conical shaped mountain on a rugged brown landscape constantly ejecting fire and brimstone into the sky above. Well, there are volcanoes which aren’t cone shaped above ground level, and did you know that they may exist in very cold and icy places like Antarctica as well?

Mount Erebus engraved into the South Pole in Ross Island is actually an icy inferno. On a clear evening, you may see its main crater puffing out steam. This is the most southerly located active volcanoes on Earth. 1.3 million years old, its peaks 12,448 feet above sea level. Ice, snow, crevasses, and glaciers are pitted on its slopes. Sometimes, there’s lava flow, though steam is generally emitted from its summit. This volcano was discovered in 1841 during an Antarctica expedition helmed by Sir James Clark Ross. It was named after one of his ships, H.M.S. Erebus, which in turn had been inspired by Erebus, the primordial deity from Greek mythology, the god of darkness, born from the primeval void Chaos, and brother of Night. 

Did you expect that there are volcanoes camouflaged under ice? Well, why not? After all, there are people who seem so calm and patient, but may be frothing and fuming inside. Would you like to be a volcanologist, or encourage your child to become one if she/ he/ they has the talent and passion? Do you think that in your geography class Antarctica has been given much less footage than the other continents?

https://pixabay.com/photos/antarctica-south-pole-geography-277406/: Image by Michelle Raponi from Pixabay 

This is a general picture of Antarctica found on Pixabay, I didn’t see any attribution to Mount Erebus.    

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