The Kilauea 2020 eruption

As we speak, an eruption has started within Kilaueau. HVO reported:

“Shortly after approximately 9:30 p.m. HST (7:30 am GMT, 2 hours ago) , the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) detected glow within Halemaʻumaʻu crater at the summit of Kīlauea Volcano. An eruption has commenced within Kīlauea’s summit caldera. The situation is rapidly evolving and HVO will issue another statement when more information is available.”

Shortly after, Honolulu reported
“web cams and radar data indicate a strong eruption has occurred at Halemaumau Crater. Low level trade winds will push any embedded ash toward the southwest, and any fallout will likely occur over the Kau District and Highway 11 southwest of the town of Volcano. This includes the communities of Pahala, Wood Valley, Naalehu and Ocean View.”

It followed an intrusion in Dec 2, and a second one over the past few days. GPS has shown strong inflation since September. It still came as a surprise to everyone. I for one had not expected the eruption to be inside the crater.

The lake, I am sad to report, is gone.

We will update this post as information becomes available. The chances are that this will be short-lived, but who knows.

This is the first image that shows the eruption. It was taken with the thermal camera on the west side. The eruption began just below the camera. This is not the same location as the later eruption, which was on the left side of the pit as seen from this angle. The eruption started no earlier than 1-2 minutes before this was taken

The map below shows the recent layout of the caldera. The 2018 eruption ended the lava lake here and caused a deep collapse. The deepest point was later taken up by the lake (which ended its existence today). Today’s eruption happened near the lake, perhaps on the steep slope, and the lava flowed into the pit. There were no phreatic explosions reported (although there were some minor bangs), and perhaps the lake had already drained before the lava got there.

source: https://www.usgs.gov/center-news/volcano-watch-surface-k-laueas-new-landscape-a-story-told. Click on image for higher resolution

The eruption is coming from a fissure along the wall of the pit, as shown in the HVO map below. Interestingly, this is near the centre of the original Halemauau crater – which of course may be purely a coincidence. Magma always goes for the easiest pathway, and a steep slope can provide this. It was along a pre-existing fault, and the slope provided an access point. The eruption started at the large dot on the left (the camera is just above this), at 21:30 HST. The next spot started two minutes later, and died again at 21:48. At this time the eruption almost stopped. It resumed strongly at 22:12 when the rift opened up. At 22:24 the final spot erupted, and this quickly became a focal point. The lake filled with lava at 23:20, 2 hours after the lava began to flow. Around 1 am the first eruption point began to decline.

eruption sites. source: HVO

The eruption rate is hard to calculate, but based on the fact that it has filled the lake (perhaps aided by some slides and some inflation below), I estimate it around 50 m3/s.

The photo posted to the park’s Twitter page at 10:17 p.m HST. Credit: B.Hayes.

HVO

We provide the text of the HVO announcement this morning verbatim. It is highly informative.

Recent Observations:

For the past several weeks, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) has recorded ground deformation and earthquake rates at Kīlauea Volcano’s summit and upper East Rift Zone that have exceeded background levels observed since the conclusion of the 2018 lower East Rift Zone eruption and summit collapse.

Beginning in September 2020, increased rates of uplift were observed by GPS stations in Kīlauea’s upper East Rift Zone. In the past month, increased uplift has also been measured at GPS stations in Kīlauea’s summit region. While uplift related to post-collapse inflation of the summit reservoir has been occurring since March of 2019, rates have been steadily increasing in recent months and are currently higher than they have been since the end of the 2018 eruption.

In late November 2020, increased earthquake rates began when seismic stations recorded an average of at least 480 shallow, small-magnitude earthquakes (97% of which were less than or equal to magnitude-2) per week occurring at depths of less than 4 km (2.5 miles) beneath Kīlauea’s summit and upper East Rift Zone. This compares to a rate of fewer than 180 per week following the end of Kīlauea’s 2018 eruption and through early November 2020.

On December 2, 2020, GPS stations and tiltmeters recorded a ground deformation event at Kīlauea’s summit. Accompanied by earthquake swarms, the patterns of ground deformation observed were consistent with a small dike intrusion of magma under the southern part of Kīlauea caldera. The injection resulted in about 8 cm (3 inches) of uplift of the caldera floor, and modeling suggests that it represented 0.4–0.7 million cubic meters (yards) of magma accumulated approximately 1.5 km (1 mile) beneath the surface. Though the intrusion did not reach the surface and erupt, it represented a notable excursion from trends observed in Kīlauea summit monitoring data streams following the end of the 2018 eruption.

On December 17, 2020, seismometers detected a notable increase in occurrence and duration of long-period seismic signals beneath Kīlauea’s summit, which are attributed to magmatic activity. Whereas this type of seismicity was observed on average once every few weeks following the 2018 eruption, rates have increased to over a dozen in the past several days.

Other monitoring data streams including volcanic gas and webcam imagery were stable until this eruption.

An earthquake swarm began on the evening of December 20, accompanied by ground deformation detected by tiltmeters. An orange glow was subsequently observed on IR monitoring cameras and visually beginning approximately 21:36 HST.

Background

Since the early 1800s, when written records of Hawaiian volcanoes began, Kīlauea has had infrequent periods during which no lava erupted.

The longest known eruptive pause was in 1935-1952, ending with eruption in the caldera. Neither that 17-year pause, nor any other shorter pause, followed partial collapse of the caldera such as the collapse that occurred in the summer of 2018.

Following partial caldera collapses, the first eruption outside the caldera took place on the East Rift Zone 17 years after the 1823 collapse, on the Southwest Rift Zone 28 years after the 1840 collapse, and on the Southwest Rift Zone 52 years after the 1868 collapse.

After partial caldera collapses in 1840 and 1868, lava returned to the caldera within days to a few weeks. The length of the current pause exceeds those earlier post-collapse pauses.

Kīlauea Volcano has maintained a low level of non-eruptive unrest since the end of the 2018 lower East Rift Zone eruption and summit collapse, which deepened Halemaʻumaʻu crater by over 500 meters (1640 feet). Following the 2018 eruption, ground deformation rates have indicated steady inflation of Kīlauea’s summit and at the end of 2018, the HVO monitoring network detected Deflation-Inflation events (DI-events) indicative that the shallow Halemaʻumaʻu magma reservoir, located approximately 1.6 km (1 mile) under Kīlauea caldera, still contained significant amounts of magma.

In late July 2019, ponded water appeared at the base of the deepest collapsed area of Kīlauea’s summit, within the Halemaʻumaʻu crater. Since then, the body of water has grown into a lake, which continues to rise as it seeks equilibrium with the surrounding groundwater.

Prognosis

All communities on or near Kīlauea’s summit and rift zones should be prepared.

HVO continues to monitor the volcano closely and will report any significant changes. HVO is in close touch with National Park Service and Hawaii County Civil Defense and other agencies responsible for public safety.

Stay informed about Kīlauea by following volcano updates and tracking current monitoring data on the HVO web page (https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/volcano-updates) or by signing up to receive updates by email at this site: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vns2/.

The County of Hawai‘i Civil Defense Agency is in constant communications with HVO. If anything develops that may affect your safety, you will be informed. Please sign up for Civil Defense notifications by visiting the County of Hawai‘i Civil Defense Agency webpage at http://www.hawaiicounty.gov/civil-defense/.

100 thoughts on “The Kilauea 2020 eruption

  1. It looks like a fissure that crosses the old bit of pre-2018 floor, and then goes up the northwest side of the caldera, sort of following the old trend of vents that went from Halemaumau to Kilauea Iki before the collapse, which is interesting.

      • It doesnt look like anything has changed except for lava filling the bottom of the crater now, but the west side is the part that is hidden from view in the webcams.

        I actually meant the northeast side of the pit too not northwest, the vent on the side of the pit is on the side closest to Kilauea Iki, in the same line as the 1982 and 1970s vents.

          • USGS confirms the water lake is gone and was filled in within half an hour, now the lava lake is at least 60 meters deep and apparently has steam explosions blasting through it, whatever that means.

            My guess for vent locations is pretty much the same as theirs it looks like 🙂

            the lake had a volume of at least a million cubic meters, so that is how much lava has erupted in the first half hour. The fountain is 50 meters high from the vent on the side of the crater which is much bigger than what I thought this first eruption would be.

          • Yes, the eruption follows the Kilauea Iki-northern southwest rift line, one of the most frequently erupting fissure swarms of Kilauea, and which last erupted in 1982.

  2. And in other news, Seydisfjordur in Iceland evacuated after a mud slide. 2020 is going out with a bang

  3. Kilauea haves a large magma supply and at current its astonishingly large

    But I dont know if this is opening of another lava lake, infact its probaly more like the 1950 s and 1960 s emphermal halemaumau activity

    There is an Aa flow flowing into the pit

    Edited by admin to remove oversized image and replace with a reduced version. The original can be found at hvo.wr.usgs.gov/cams/KWcam/images/M.jpg

    • Yes this is probably not quite the start of a new big long lived lava lake. But because the dominant vent is high on the wall (the fountain is 50 meters tall and perched pretty high, higher than it is tall above the lake) it is entirely possible to get an eruption similar to 1959, geyser-like activity over a few months with massive fountains.

      I guess we will see if it is still going in the morning but at the moment it looks like this is pretty serious, for being the very first eruption this is much bigger than I thought it would be, the first eruption after 1960 was a tiny leaky vent in a crater at Halemaumau and the first sizable eruption after that was not until 6 months later.

      • The magma supply is gigantic for now… these holocene days
        This also release pressure.. there is big Aa flows… much more viscous than typical KI summit lava flows that flows like water, but its beacuse of cooling in the fountains, tephra feed clastogenic flows. Oooo I see Gollum jumping around in Joy down in the pit… smeagol looking for his ring

        • All the eruptions look like this in all the old videos of similar eruptions, 1979 eruption visually looked very similar though not so intense. Remember the eruption only started a few hours ago the lava is filling very fast.

          The crater is also not as hot as it was in 2018, probably most of the rocks surrounding is at about 70-80 C like the water lake was before, or even just ambient temperature much less than the 500-1000 C wall rock of the overlook lake which was also a lot bigger in volume, give it a few days 🙂

          • Looking at it, it strikes me how similar it also looks to the early beginning of the 1959 Kilauea Iki eruption.

          • 1967 Halemaumau was a lovely bubble pool with a huge dome fountain complex sending out superfluid waves that rolled over fissured zig zag crust rootless lava lake

          • This eruption 2020 is similar to a small galapgos intra caldera eruption

        • The lava is superfluid now and seems gassy totaly boiling with bubbles
          Over 1200 C for soure

      • This pit can be filled with materials in hours if we gets a superhot suplinian 1250 C gas lava geyser… but thats unlikley.. after two years, it woud have started like Grims 2011 this day
        if that was the case…

        Most likely we gets a cinder – spatter cone or cone row.. and it dies out

        • That is something for later down the line, an eruption that big is a bit of a stretch for the first try and probably is even a stretch at all, probably whatever could cause that would erupt as a bunch of dispersed vents instead of just one. But for sure the eruption rate of this eruption is impressive, maybe it isnt so high now it is hard to tell, but at some point it was going at similar rate to fissure 8 to fill the crater so fast, and it could be doing that still, the fountain is 50 meters tall which is what fissure 8 was doing most of the time, impressive stuff.

        • The main fountain now going in Halemaumau coud well be 100 cubic meters a second.. there is an impressive lava fall going down into the caldera pit

          A monsterious basalt plinian is something for other days far in the future

        • Lava have now began to pool on the caldera floor… small rootless lava lakes

        • This reminds me of Piton de la Fournaise back in 2007, when Bory Crater collapsed during a large flank eruption downslope and there have been a couple of small eruptions within Bory Crater afterwards.

          • Yes very similar! identical even if Kilauea is hotter
            This will not form a new open lava lake…I guess the 2020 action will be over soon… but I dont know

    • That’s a surprise!
      Just to compare and say goodbye to the lake, a webcam still taken yesterday morning.

  4. The lava eruption rate is around 30 m3/s, based on how far the pit has filled.

    • USGS said the lava lake was already as deep as the water lake after half an hour, so a cone 50 meters tall and 200 meters wide base. A bit more than half a million m3 in half an hour, which is 270 m3/s. Probably there will be a proper number posted in the morning when an accurate effusion rate is measured by USGS. 1952 and 1968 eruptions began with these sort of high eruption rates though so its not unprecedented.

      • The 30m/s is of course a conservative estimate (I advise to always go for conservative, proven numbers). The eruption has been going on for several hours; the bottom of the lake may have suffered ground inflation; the early eruption may also have caused rubble to slide into the lake. (And the lack of explosions may suggest the water had found an escape route before the lava came, which can happen from ground deformation. This of course is complete speculation.) I updated the post, and there I estimated 50 m3/s. As better numbers get published I will try to update it.

        • I saw the 24 hours webcam for the thermal cam, the water lake was still there when the eruption began, I think the lava just flowed under and displaced it, obviously evaporating it in short order after that.

    • Its superfluid now… so probaly is fresh melts from the depths.. really foamy and gushing out
      One of the very hottest, the hottest lava on the planet for now

    • From that video, it appears that lava is erupting from four or five other locations in the crater wall, aside from the large, main eruption.

  5. Ruapehu just went up to level 2. From Geonet:

    “Crater Lake (Te Wai ā-moe) continues heating and is now 43 °C. The heating has been accompanied by bursts of volcanic tremor and a marked increase in the amount of gas passing through the crater lake. The volcanic alert level has been raised to Level 2 and the Aviation Colour code changed to Yellow.

    The Crater Lake (Te Wai ā-moe) temperature has been rising and is now 43ºC. During a gas flight last week, the lake was observed to be a uniform grey colour which shows it is well-mixed. There is some flow over the outlet. The gas output through the crater lake has also increased markedly in response to this heating cycle. The amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulphur gases (SO2 and H2S) in the plume are the largest measured in the past two decades. The continued flow of gases and hydrothermal fluids though the lake shows that the underlying vent area is open.

    Volcanic tremor is being produced as short-lived pulses that coincide with increased gas passing through the crater lake and its plumbing system. Modelling of energy input into the lake has shown increase during the past month from around 200 MW to around 400 MW. Since 2007 Crater Lake temperature has exceeded 40 °C a number of times, without leading to an eruption. However. the combination of the increased lake temperature, volcanic tremor and gas output have motivated the Alert Level change.”

    • Ruapehu tends to erupt in and around Crater lake these days and is fairly well vented.
      On the other hand it can form lahars and pyroclastic flows from column collapse and the magmatic system underneath is showing a gradual shift to sills and dikes and more complex magmas.
      So not as dangerous as Taupo or Okataina – yet.

  6. The lava erupting is now the superhot and superfluid typical summit magma
    The lava fall is impressive as heck

  7. Looks like the precursor to the eruption (the dike intrusion) was very brief, just over an hour, typical of Halema’uma’u eruptions. The strongest pre-eruption earthquake was a M 2.7. There has also been a M 4.4, but from the south flank when the eruption was already ongoing, probably coincidental, and if not, it’s still unlikely to have any influence on the eruption.

    The was also a small swarm of UERZ (Upper East Rift Zone) earthquakes at 5:46-6:35 UTC which shows there had been a small increase in magmatic pressure for an hour before the dike intrusion started.

    • Looks like it will be a temporary eruption… this reminds me about Halemaumau 1961 and similar.
      This is similar to a small Galapagos intra caldera eruption. Kilauea haves a very large supply at current… so it coud grow and become something established with luck after some time.
      But I think it may stop after a few weeks or days… small intrusion.

      Only the upper shallow magma body acossiated with the lava lake was drained in 2018
      The main deeper resovair bodies remains unaffected..

    • The Uwekahuna tiltmeter is not working right now but the IKI and SDH tiltmeters show the summit of Kilauea deflating right now:

      • I wants Halemaumau to do a 20km3 Ticuantepe fountain madness : ) Kilauea haves the supply and girth for it.. but… I can forget that in my lifetime…

      • That is what you would expect from a fast effusive eruption. It is pressure-driven and the pressure will decrease as the magma (and gas) is pushed out. This phase will probably not last long.

    • Comparing with the thermal cam timelapse posted by USGS,Volcanoes, we can see that the continuous tremor started when the larger upper vent opened.

    • The M4 was in a region that had a small swarm in the days before the eruption. It may have been triggered by the eruption, but would have happened soon without it as well.

    • Looks like HVO webcams haves souch a high traffic flow now that they wont load.

      The lake boiled away very quickly.. thick steam and ligthning and then it was gone..
      Grimsvötn will be similar at start

      The Deccan Traps monster flows must have created amazing steam spectacle, they flowed 100 s of km out to sea.

    • Sorry, I have to correct my false comment.
      It is the picture op rock falling in the lake after a M 3.3 earthquake december 2. 🤐

  8. This are previous Halema’uma’u fissure eruptions (dike fed) and how long they lasted, according to https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/kil-hist.html

    1927 July 7 13 days
    1929 July 25 4 days
    1930 Nov. 19 19 days
    1931 Dec. 23 14 days
    1934 Sept. 6 33 days
    1952 June 27 136 days
    1954 May 31 3 days

    The following 2 are the same eruption actually (fed from the same dike) but they put them separate where I took the data from:

    1961 Feb. 24 1 day
    1961 Mar. 3 22 days

    1961 July 10 7 days
    1967 Nov. 5 251 days
    1971 Sept. 24 5 days
    1974 Sept. 19 <1 day
    1982 Apr. 31 <1 day

    So it's very variable, most likely it will last multiple days. All Halema'uma'u fissure eruptions start very strong but slow down rapidly and create rootless lava pools like the one currently growing inside the crater.

    • Yea seems like it to be like something small and short lived
      This current event coud be a long networks of dyke sheets

      Open lava lakes forms in a whole diffrent way…
      Nyiragongo vitrualy blew a hole in 2003 and Halemaumau similar in 2007, these are feed by magma columns that rise to the surface.. they erupts like a hole ( I haves no idea! how the startup of an open lava lake looks like ) Nyiramuragira in 2014 is intresting

  9. And a 3.9 star right under Bardarbunga.

    Monday 21.12.2020 11:37:49 64.602 -17.471 1.7 km 3.9 99.0 5.0 km SSE of Bárðarbunga
    Sorce IMO

  10. The lake gone in an instant… now huge lava fountain is going from a wall vent

    • This looks rather vigorous.. coud last for weeks.. months

    • Looks like it took around 90 mintes for all the water to clear and the steam to disappear. According to the USGS Volcanoes twitter account the highest fountains are currently around 18 meters down from the 50 meters at the beginning of the eruption.

  11. Kilauea, please. You’re supposed to be resting still. Go back to bed.

    Jokes aside, the sun should be rising there soon, we’ll hopefully have good visible imagery then, rather than relying on the IR

    • Very vigorous caldera wall vent now… the volcano haves a very prolific magma supply
      But it wont likley make a new open lava lake

    • HVO webcams haves souch a high traffic now that they wont load…
      Here is a recent photo… just roaring out superfluid superhot lava boiling mess

  12. USGS says the lake is over 90 meters deep now, and in the picture it has flooded the ledge

  13. R.I.P summit lake (H2O) – as much as I enjoy volcanic eruptions – I somehow preferred the new lake over Kilauea fanboys discussion eruption rates xD

    Sorted by probability for what is going to happen: 1) high fountaining/rigorous eruption 2) new lava lake 3) short-lived effusive eruption á la Reunion

    I am hoping for a new lava lake though – didn´t manage to visit the last one and would love to see that one day.

      • Yes. If it is pressure driven the change may be exponential or linear. The two are hard to distinguish over shorter time periods. I think the effusion rate is something like 30-50 m3/s. That is a rough estimate from the rate at which the lava is rising. I may be far off! HVO will have much better data. The eruption rate has gone down since the early hours but perhaps not by much. HVO now says that the eruption may last between a day and a decade. I’d like to think that my number is more precise than that!

  14. What is the island in the middle?

    It was clearly not there before the eruption. At first I thought it could be a landslide block but looking at the thermal image it is at 200-300 (degrees Celsius? not sure what’s the unit) much hotter that the rock immediately around the lake. Looks like a floating island of something, pumice? Yet the eruption doesn’t seem to have been explosive and didn’t have particularly high fountains either.

    The lava pool seems to have long flowed over the down dropped block of 2018, and starting to submerge the sulphur deposits in the walls, it must be 150-200 meters deep by now!

    • It is holding much stronger than usual Halema’uma’u eruptions, which often have half to a few hours of powerful show but soon die into small spattering. This eruption is keeping very high rates of effusion still.

      • Nature hates holes, the bottom of this hole was nearly as low as the fissures in Leilani, which is too far from the summit to keep an open conduit while such a deep hole exists only 1 km above the magma. I would guess the lake is on the order of 100 meters deep, at least, but probably not 200 yet.

        I think this eruption is going to last a while, it would have stopped by now or at least declined a lot if it was just the tilt from a few weeks ago erupting, this is much more than that. This is the sort of eruption that can turn to high fountaining, we could be in for some grand fireworks 🙂

  15. I had to go out and trench 800 feet on my property for High speed internet and missed this.

    Nuts
    Mac

  16. So the lava lake seems to be filling up again. Just because the fill rate seems to cause some fountaining, I don’t know why they’re calling this an “eruption”. I think what we’re witnessing is lava moving into another sill, this one happens to have an open top. After this fills up, we have the conditions for another 2018 event.

    • Well it is an eruption, because lava is on the surface. I do agree though for a potential of another low altitude eruption. If Halemaumau fills significantly in short order the lava will be a giant molten lava lake even if it is a rootless one like the Kilauea Iki lava lake. Thing is Halemaumau can leak out of the southwest rift at shallow depth, and if there is enough pressure to reach that sort of fill anyway it probably can cause an ERZ eruption too. 1959 was not too different from this, and neither was 1967-1968, and both were followed by significant ERZ activity…

      2018 was rather huge though, 1 km3 of lava. Even Kilauea doesnt have the supply rate to get that back in under 3 years, if there is another LERZ eruption it will be smaller than 2018 but possibly still quite big, like 1960. Of course if the entire caldera fails then none of that matters and a lot of records will have been broken 🙂

  17. A possible explaination for the middle of the lava lake lookign strange. When the eruption began the lava just seemed to flow into the space where the lake was, and not really do anything else. The lake boiled off but probably deeply solidified that first lava which was then floated up by the rest of the eruption since, and maybe that crust is full of bubbles from the bottom of the lake also being wet. There was a 50 meter fountain early on, not gigantic but probably still tall enough to create pumice, I guess it must have showered over that area, the main fountain vent opened after the water had already evaporated it seems.

    • Yes, it does look like a thick pumice raft, it has been moving over the surface of the lake and is also at very hot temperatures.

  18. I dont really know for sure, probably only USGS has any real idea, but I have approximately measured the lava lake to be about 25 million m3 in volume by now and maybe . The eruption over this past day has erupted at a sustained rate of about 280 m3/s if this is true, which is crazy. I would not at all be surprised if that number is rather higher than the real value but even if it is halved this has only been going for a day…

    If it is at that volume though this lake is twice that of the overlook crater, and 3/4 the volume of the one in 1959… The lava lake is probably close to if not over 200 meters deep now, consistent with the 10m/hour rise rate reported.

    • I think around 5 million m3 is more accurate, I was wrong earlier about the depth of the lake, it has just finished overflowing the down dropped block, which is around 125 meters deep or so. This is as deep as the Kilauea Iki rootless lake so it’s still impressive… The rate would be close to the upper estimate of Albert.

  19. From Ryan Finlay in Hawaii Tracker on Facebook:

    Latest update (8 pm) from USGS along with a thermal map of the new eruption area. The new lava lake is already 1900 ft wide!
    “Our team is taking an overnight break from social media, so things may be quiet – we’ll jump right up and post if something dramatic

    • https://imgur.com/a/dzOWyau

      Yes this picture.

      As a side note, the channel from the main vent in the overflight at that time was 100 meters long and 20 meters wide. I timed the lava flow to take only a few seconds to flow down, about 4, the lava in that channel is flowing at about 90 km/hr…

      I also would like to know how to put in the picture directly without also breaking the server 🙂

      Once your image is up on imgur, right click it and “view image”. Copy the address (the one with the image extension, such as .jpg) and drop it into the comment with no additional markup. It should show up like this.

      • How hot is the lava now? and how much deformation have been lost? GPS tilt is dropping like a stone.. it cannot keep up like this forever.. 300 cubic meters a seconf is more than f8 in normal speeds

        • Probably it isnt exceptionally hot or USGS would have said by now. But yes the eruption rate is very high probably 50-100 m3/s. GPS isnt likely to do much though it cant deflate from the summit;, this will probably be the first of many eruptions in the next few years.

          • It is much faster, but the deeper summit storage has been inflating for a few months too, so this eruption could be tapping that in which case who knows how long this will last. The sustained high effusion rate is an indicator this isnt just feeding out of the superficial system but that the pressure is from deeper down. The fact one vent is also now submerged means at least in theory when the main vent is reached it could begin circulating and become a stable feature.

            On my rough calculations I think it can just about hold up its current rate until the new year, it wont necessarily stop then but effusion rate could go down and maybe the lake will drain somewhat.

          • Will likley be a months long event…possible, but the high effusion rates should slow soon… Kialuea haves souch a large supply.. that the only way to throw Kilauea to sleep for decades is an Eldgja sized flank drainout or deep rift eruption.

            Do you know how large open lava lakes form? overlook began as a hole.. that a magma column digged out… what caused the overlook lava lake? woud a similar lava lake overflow constantly today… since there is no Puu Oo thats robbing the summit column

  20. From hot to cold: the location of the South Georgia iceberg as of yesterday

  21. The fissure is on the steep wall. The conduit that feeds is not straight below it, since in that case it would have erupted further down. My guess is that the magma came up through the ring fault a few hundred meters to the north.

    • How long will it last?
      Perhaps months? whats your best estimate .. from previous debate here

      • Most likely: days. But there is a significant chance it will go on for weeks.

  22. The lake continues to fill.. soon the main vent will be flooded by superfluid lava
    Its a real lava geyser thats pouring down foamy lava into the lake. The first vents are already submerged.
    It coud fill all way up…to the rim then thats a huge ammount, the magma body will take a very long time to cool when it stops.

    Link removed. There is no point linking to the same live picture in several different comments -admin

    • Normaly Hawaii should be as black as China is on the sO2 maps there… but now its very little sO2 thats comming out.

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