Small sulfur flow ejected last winter JMA personnel visited the summit crater of Shinmoe-dake, one of the SE group of volcanic edifices in the Kirishima complex, on 23 April. The sulfur, molten when it was ejected during the winter, was a dark brown solid in April. Personnel from Kagoshima and Tokyo Universities, Tokyo Industrial College, and the JMA observatory monitored the temperatures and the chemical composition of the vapor. Because of the dense gas, civil police closed a parking area and part of a road. Pieces of sulfur and tar-like material were scattered around the fumarole.
Numbers identify individual fumaroles.
Increased geothermal activity was observed on the inner wall of Shinmoedake in December. Vegetation on the N inner wall had been damaged by the increased activity. Fumarolic activity in the Iodani area, about 5 km WSW of Shinmoedake, had increased from November 1980 through 1981. On 8 January JMA observers found that this activity had declined to its usual level. The last major activity at Shinmoedake was a steam explosion in 1959, when tephra was ejected, mainly from the fissure trending W from the crater.