April 15, 2022
Since Could 2018, when Kīlauea’s lava lake final drained, the summit crater has full of water, erupted once more, boiled off the water, and refilled with lava.
4 years in the past this month, Hawaiī’s youngest and most lively volcano unleashed its greatest eruption in not less than 200 years. The Decrease East Rift Zone (LERZ) eruption at Kīlauea, which started on Could 3, 2018, destroyed 700 buildings and compelled 1000's of residents to evacuate. Scientists are nonetheless finding out the eruption and its results.
The 2018 eruption was vital on a world scale, not only for Hawaiī. Kīlauea emitted as much as 1.4 cubic kilometers (about 0.34 cubic miles) of lava in simply 4 months. By comparability, the eruption from the Puʻuʻōʻō vent on the Center East Rift Zone—which began in 1983 and continued for 35 years—emitted a complete of 4.4 cubic kilometers (1.1 cubic miles) of lava and destroyed 215 buildings.
The 2018 LERZ eruption additionally drastically modified the volcano’s magma plumbing system. It ended the eruption from the Puʻuʻōʻō vent, the longest-running eruption on the earth. And it collapsed the ground of the Halema‘uma‘u summit crater, reducing it by greater than 500 meters (1,600 toes) and draining the lava lake that had pooled within the summit crater since 2008.
The lava lake was changed by a water lake in July 2019, an occasion unprecedented within the historic document. Over the subsequent 12 months and a half, water slowly stuffed the crater to a depth of about 50 meters (160 toes).
The water lake was of particular curiosity to scientists as a result of Kīlauea has an uncommon historical past of each effusive and explosive eruptions. The latter are normally extra violent and damaging, and they're usually pushed by the interplay of magma with water—a undeniable fact that saved volcano observers further attentive to exercise. Nonetheless, in December 2020, a brand new part of eruptive exercise started with an inflow of lava into the crater that boiled off the water lake in a couple of hours. That eruption began a brand new lava lake and continued till Could 2021. The most recent eruption began in September 2021 and continues right this moment.
The picture above was acquired on April 15, 2022, by the Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2) on Landsat 9. The picture features a mixture of seen and infrared mild (bands 6-5-3), which helps distinguish the warmth signature of the lava.
NASA Earth Observatory picture by Lauren Dauphin, utilizing Landsat knowledge from the U.S. Geological Survey.
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