It has been wet in the UK. Nothing unusual there, it may seem, although compared to the tropics, the rain is mostly mild. Temperatures are moderate and therefore the air does not contain as much moisture. Major deluges are rare. But not this winter. Especially the south of England has seen widespread flooding. France too has been hit. Further north, though, it has been a lot drier. The abundant rain has not been universal.
Other countries are also known to have had excessive rain on occasion. An anonymous, exasperated tourist visiting the West Coast of South Island, New Zealand, left a poem dripping with dry humour:
It rained and rained and rained
The average fall was well maintained
And when the tracks were simply bogs
It started raining cats and dogs
After a drought of half an hour
We had a most refreshing shower
And then the most curious thing of all
A gentle rain began to fall
Next day was also fairly dry
Save for a deluge from the sky
Which wetted the party to the skin
And after that the rain set in.
One of the obvious consequences of global warming is that the air contains more moisture. When it rains, the rain is heavier. That is now seen worldwide, but remember that the total amount of rain in a particular location depends on the local climate and this will change as well. For instance, the Middle East is drying out – while the UK is getting wetter.
Volcanoes are blamed for many things. Hector has pointed out that after large eruptions, Spain can see enhanced rainfall. It will take many eruptions before the evidence becomes statistically significant. But is it possible there is a link? Do volcanoes cause rain? Grab yourself a beer and join VC in our quest for water. It is Miller Time!
Frankenstein’s rain
Geneva (Switzerland) in 1816 was cold and rainy. Lord Byron and Mary Shelley spent the summer in the area (“Head for the Mountains” to quote an appropriate beer slogan), with great plans for all the activities they and the rest of their group wanted to do, but the weather was so gloomy that they started writing ghost stories instead. Shelley’s Frankenstein became the master piece of that year. Lord Byron wrote a proem ‘Darkness’ which is remembered mainly for one line:
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day
Indeed, from April to September there was rain on 130 out of the 183 days. The incessant rain was interrupted only by tremendous thunderstorms. Shelley wrote about the travel toward Geneva, during spring:
We slowly ascended, amidst a violent storm of wind and rain, to Champagnolles [..] The spring, as the inhabitants informed us was unusually late, and indeed the cold was excessive; as we ascended the mountains, the same clouds which rained on us in the valley poured forth large flakes of snow thick and fast
In June she wrote
The thunderstorms that visit us are grander and more terrific than I have every seen before. ..] One night we enjoyed a finer storm than I had ever before held. [..] The thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak, which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stum.
(Quotes from Phillips, 20026, Atlantis, 28, pp59-68: Frankenstein and Mary Shelley’s “Wet Ungenial Summer”)
But to quote another beer slogan, Out of the darkness comes light. Now we know that this horrendous weather had been caused by a volcano. Tambora had erupted in April 1815, the largest explosion for almost a millennium. The link between the weather and this distant volcano was made only a century later. (Byron did in fact refer to a volcano in his Darkness poem, but in entirely the wrong context:
‘Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch’)
But while Europe drowned in a chilly rain, the eastern US suffered in a chilly drought. The cold was widespread but the rain was more local.
So what is the relation between volcanoes and rain? Let’s have a sip.
Water injection
Some volcanoes eject not only magma and rock, but also water. Magma may contain up to a few per cent water. The water remains in the magma until the ascending magma becomes quite shallow: we can take the water release by an erupting volcano as a percentage of the magma that reaches the surfaces. Submarine eruptions don’t count, obviously: adding water to the ocean is like carrying coal to Newcastle. (Newcastle Brown Ale. The Other Side of Dark.) Subaerial eruptions currently produce 1-2 km3 of lava per year. However, looking back further in time, this number becomes larger, because of the impact of the very large but rare eruptions. The long-term average has been estimated at 4 km3 per year (Papale et al., 2022, https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2022.922160). If 5% of that is water, the total amount of water added to the atmosphere is 0.2 km3 per year on average.
Volcanoes can also borrow water from the environment. An example is seen in fumaroles, which spout steam into the atmosphere. This is mostly rain water which soaked into the ground, was heated by volcanic gasses and blown back out. There is no net gain for the atmosphere, although the region around the fumaroles may become quite humid. Geysers are a more extreme case, but their water has a similar origin. From experience I can confirm that they are quite wet: people standing downwind from one of them, on a quite windy day, were moving out of the way very quickly – but not fast enough. In extreme cases, Maar eruptions may blow large holes in the soggy ground. But as for fumaroles, the humidifying effects are mainly local.
Yellowstone geyser raining on a few poorly placed tourists
Rain forests are also famous for this. The trees constantly evaporate water through their leaves, making the air humid and oppressive – not helped by the lack of wind below the canopy. During the wettest seasons (which for equatorial forests tends to be twice a year) the rainfall runs off rapidly through the swollen rivers (such as the Amazon), but at other times the evaporation rate fairly well balances the rainfall. When it is wet, the trees source their water from the upper 50 cm of the soil, but at drier times they go deeper, taking in water that came down as rains months earlier. The evaporation becomes the main source of rain. The forest makes the rain, not the rain the forest! Take the trees away and the region becomes drier.
But geysers and fumaroles are small fry compared to a complete rain forest. The rain around them is limited to the surrounding acres (and tourists). There is no impact further afield.
Water budget
How do these amounts compare to normal amounts of rainfall? Let’s take the UK as an example. A typical year may show 70cm of rain on average. The surface area of the UK is 245 thousand square kilometer. That gives an annual volume of rain of 170 km3 – a VEI 7 if it were a volcano. And that is just one small country on a very large globe. It is clear that the Earth’s rain cannot live on volcanoes alone. It comes from evaporation from the seas and oceans, and from the land, whilst any water injection from volcanoes adds little. To paraphrase inappropriately another beer slogan, Everything you always wanted in a volcano…and less.
Let’s put some more numbers on this. Evaporation from the oceans is estimated at 577 000 km3 per year. Most comes from the tropical oceans, driven by a combination of strong sunshine and trade winds: strong winds increase evaporation. The tropical Indian ocean around the tropics has the highest amount of evaporation. Evaporation from land is much less, at 72 000 km3. (These numbers date to the 1980’s, and it will have increased since then because of the warming of the oceans and the air.) Evaporation takes energy: around a quarter of solar energy that falls on Earth is used for this. The evaporated water carries solar warmth around the world.
The water does not remain in the atmosphere for the full year. It takes on average only 8-10 days before evaporated water falls back to Earth as rain. At any one time, the atmosphere will contain roughly 15 000 km3 of water.
The total annual rainfall around the world must be equal to the total annual evaporation, plus of course any volcanic input. But from the numbers above, it is clear that volcanoes have no significant effect on the global water vapour budget, and hence would not be expected to increase average rainfall worldwide.
Hunga Tonga
Apparently, one particular beer can refresh the parts other beers don’t. Some volcanoes can reach the parts other volcanoes don’t. There are two things to consider. First, some eruptions don’t just eject their magmatic water, but tap into surface water. An explosion under water can eject a large column of water into the atmosphere. Second, the ejecta can put water in regions which are normally very dry, such as the stratosphere, and the impact there can be significant.
Both effects showed in the Hunga Tonga eruption of 14 January 2022. it erupted some 500 meters below the water surface, and explosively ejected of order 2-5 km3 of dense rock (double that volume in tephra) in the largest eruption since Pinatubo and the loudest since Krakatau. (We take some pride that the VEI value assigned by VC within days of the eruption (5.9) is still the accepted value, being spot in the middle of the range of estimates.) It is worth mentioned that only around 10% of the ejecta entered the atmosphere: the remainder formed thick deposits and distant flows on the sea floor. This is also the reason that little sulphur was ejected into the atmosphere: over 90% of the SO2 emission dissolved into the sea water.
Source: Wu, J., Cronin, S.J., Brenna, M. et al. Low sulfur emissions from 2022 Hunga eruption due to seawater–magma interactions. Nat. Geosci. 18, 518–524 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01691-7
The depiction shows the various outputs of the eruption and where they ended up. The debris and gases dumped into the ocean are not relevant to us. The rising column which entered the atmosphere contained some SO2 and some water that came from the magma. The magma had around 1-5% water content (by weight), so this amount was not large. The figure above gives 25 Tg (tera-gram) magmatic water entering the atmosphere (and much more which did not) which comes to around 0.025 km3 of water. The amount of seawater captured by the plume (and incidentally providing much of the buoyancy) was much larger: it is given as a minimum of 2900 Tg, or 2.9 km3 of water. (Other authors argue for a lower value of 1500 Tg: Suzuki et al 2025, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00445-025-01919-9). A fraction of this water will have remained liquid rather than vaporising.
In normal explosions, water thrown up into the air immediately falls back. But where the explosion is volcanic, much of the water is heated by the interaction with the magma and is raised up as steam and vapour. The heat from the eruption causes the explosion column to rise, carrying the water vapour with it. The eruption should not be too deep, not only that the eruption can reach the surface, but also because at depth of a few kilometers or more, water can’t turn into vapour. Hunga Tonga met these requirements.
This was rather more water than in normal eruptions. But worldwide, the amount was not significant. On a given day, 1500 km3 of water may evaporate from the oceans, and Hunga Tonga added a measly 0.2% to this. Locally though, it would have more of an impact. Assuming this water rains out within 100 km of the volcano, that would give some 300 mm of rain – 6 inches in the US – which is flooding levels. But there is little more than ocean around Hunga Tonga and we have no weather reports from the region.
Krakatau
We do have such reports from a somewhat similar (though larger) eruption, that of Krakatau in 1883. The ship ‘Gouverneur Generaal Loudon’, located some 70 km northwest of Krakatau, reported a rain of mud, half a meter deep, which came after the initial fall of pumice. Two other ships in the region also reported a fall of dust and water. The ash had turned to mud from the ejected water. In Batavia, 150 km from the explosion, ‘watery particles’ began to fall, followed later by ash which contained about 10% of water.
Captain Watson of the ship ‘Charles Ball’ provided a detailed report of which the relevant part is reproduced here (from The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1884/09/the-volcanic-eruption-of-krakatoa/376174/):
“At 11.15 there was a fearful explosion in the direction of Krakatoa, then over thirty miles distant. We saw a wave rush right on to the Button island, apparently sweeping entirely over the southern part, and rising half-way up the north and east sides, fifty or sixty feet, and then continuing on to the Java shore. This was evidently a wave of translation, and not of progression, for it was not felt at the ship. This we saw repeated twice, but the helmsman said he saw it once before we looked. At the same time the sky rapidly covered in; the wind came out strong from S. W. to S., and by 11.30 A. M. we were inclosed in a darkness that might almost be felt; and then commenced a downpour of mud, sand, and I know not what, the ship going N. E. by N. seven knots per hour under three lower topsails. We set the side lights, placed two men on the lookout forward, the mate and second mate on either quarter, and one man washing the mud from the binnacle glass. We had seen two vessels to the N. and N. W. of us before the sky closed in, which added not a little to the anxiety of our position.
“At noon the darkness was so intense that we had to grope our way about the decks, and although speaking to each other on the poop, yet we could not see each other. This horrible state and downpour of mud and debris continued until 1.30 P.M., the roaring and lightning from the volcano being something fearful. By two P.M. we could see some of the yards aloft, and the fall of mud ceased; by five P.M. the horizon showed out to the northward and eastward, and we saw West Island bearing E. by N., just visible. Up to midnight the sky hung dark and heavy, a little sand falling at times, and the roaring of the volcano very distinct, although we were fully seventy-five miles from Krakatoa. Such darkness and such a time in general, few would conceive, and many, I dare say, would disbelieve. The ship from truck to water-line was as if cemented; spars, sails, blocks, and ropes were in a horrible state; but, thank God, no one was hurt, nor was the ship damaged. But think of Anjer, Merak, and other little villages on the Java coast!”
These reports show that the ash that rained down following the main explosions had been thoroughly wetted. This lasted for some two hours. Had the ejected water been directly absorbed by the ash, or had it caused rain which later wetted the ash? Wet ash is heavy and would have fallen quite fast. Perhaps both happened, with the early mud being wet from the start, and the later ones wetted by rain. The watery particles in Batavia are perhaps best explained as the latter, given the distance from the eruption. The role of water in the ejecta of Krakatau appears to be poorly studied, but it seems that much of the ejected water returned to earth (or sea) quite quickly.
Stratosphere
Hunga Tonga (“probably the best beer in the world”) did more than wetting the ocean. The eruption column, driven by the steam, reached the highest recorded altitude for any Earth-based eruption, at 56 km. It entered the stratosphere and spread out as an umbrella cloud at 30 km. A small part of the plume kept rising, reached through to the top and entered the mesosphere. And the water rose with.
The water input into the stratosphere has been measured by NASA’s AURA satellite, at around 140 Tg. This is only 5-10% of the total amount of ejected water (the remainder staying lower down), but it entered a very dry region. Around 0.1 Tg of the water may have reached the mesosphere. There is significant loss of water during the ascend, because part of it will freeze out in the frigid layers of the atmosphere and the ice will fall down. In case you worried, very little chloride (HCl) reached the stratosphere. The entire stratosphere contains some 1400 Tg of water. Hunga Tonga increased the water content here by 10% worldwide! Pinatubo also blew water into the mesosphere, but this is estimated at less than 40 Tg. (Pinatubo did put much more SO2 here than did Hunga Tonga.) Some extreme weather events can humidify the stratosphere, but these are rare and the strongest ones have been measured at only around 20 Tg.
From February onward, the water spread around the southern tropics at an altitude of around 25 km. By June it has reached Antarctica and from January 2023 it also spread into the northern hemisphere. Four years later, perhaps a quarter of still remains in the stratosphere.
Water in the stratosphere cools the stratosphere. The effect on the surface is less clear. Early modeling predicted a slight cooling of the southern hemisphere, by around -0.03C, which could offsetting a few years of global warming. This has since been updated to -0.05C lasting 1-2 years, but it is still undetectable against normal year-on-year variability. After two yers there is a very small warming effect from stratospheric water, but it is again undetectable.
A long and comprehensive report on the impact was published in December 2025 (https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1049154/files/Hunga_APARC_Report_full.pdf). It finds a significant effect on the circulation in the stratosphere for the southern hemisphere which lasted throughout 2022 and caused changes to the ozone hole. After that, the effect on both hemisphere became smaller than the normal annual variations, making it hard to isolate the impact from the Hunga Tonga eruption. The cooling in the middle and upper stratosphere is clearly visible in the data and remains present in 2025. In contrast, the El Chichon and Pinatubo eruptions warmed the stratosphere. Hunga Tonga also caused a strong cooling in the mesosphere, but here the recovery was faster.
The mesosphere does not affect our weather. The stratosphere does, by affecting the jet stream, but we can’t easily attribute jet stream changes to Hunga Tonga. Our current rainy weather does not have a clear link to a volcano. It is just weather.
Stratospheric temperatures. Source: Hunga Tonga APARC report, 2025, https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1049154/files/Hunga_APARC_Report_full.pdf
Rain and Tambora
Tambora’s major impact was cooling of the climate. The sulphate aerosols were shielding the Sun. People didn’t readily notice the problem: the aerosols were colourless and we tend to avoid looking at the Sun. The cloud cover would not have helped! I only found one mention in a Boston newspaper that the Sun did not have its usual strength. But the climate noticed, and snow could fall even in the summer of that year; the story of Frankenstein is also a story about dealing with the cold: cold weather and cold hearts. Crops grew poorly or not at all. Three years of famine ensued.
But why the excessive rain? As the beer slogan says, If I wanted water, I would have asked for water. In fact, much of Europe was unusually wet and rain was never far away. But rain comes from evaporated water, and that requires sunlight. In colder weather, shouldn’t there have been less rain?
Weather records from the time show that the weather was for from uniform across the globe – not everyone shared in Shelley’s wet summer. It was cold in Western Europe, Eastern North America and Asia. Eastern Europe and parts of Russia were warmer, as probably was the Western US. The southern hemisphere was much less affected, probably because it has much more water which cools very slowly. The rain was also not universal, with Western Europe being soaked, the Eastern US was dry and parts of Eastern Asia were wet, while the monsoon in Asia may have weakened.
Source: Raible et al., Tambora 1815 as a test case for high impact volcanic eruptions: Earth system effects. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Change. 2016 Vol. 7, pp 569-589
Putting the various weather record together for the summer of 1816 gives the picture shown here. The top diagram shows the temperature deviations compared to normal, with Western Europe being particularly chilly. The bottom panel shows the precipitation, with Spain being dry and Western Europe and Scandinavia being much wetter than normal.
Models have difficulty reproducing the details. It appears that the developments may be quite sensitive to the initial conditions, which in this case were already affected by the 1809 eruption – which may also have been a large one. There are also suggestions that an El Nino occurred after the 1815 eruption. Observations from ships indicate that the air pressure was low around Iceland in 1816, while the Azores high was weaker than usual. This causes a strong westerly to northwesterly flow, bringing low-pressure systems to Western Europe. In Geneva, low pressure systems brought cold rain and the high pressure systems hardly ever came – the only week with above average temperature in Geneva was in early April 1816. Hence the cold gloom of Frankenstein.
What could have caused this? A stronger polar vortex may have been involved: this is something which is also suggested by climate models. It set up a stable pattern, with Geneva in the firing line. It was cold in many places, due to the fainter Sun, but Western Europe was also on the receiving end of a long line of low pressure systems which lasted all summer. If the eruption had happened at another time, with different starting weather, the pattern may have been different. A second Tambora would not necessarily give the same weather.
Our rain this winter is the same. There is no volcano at fault. We just became caught in the wrong stable pattern.
Volcanoes and rain
So do volcanoes cause rain? It is a mixed bag. It is plausible that the water they put in the atmosphere will rain out nearby, whilst at larger distances volcanic water is negligible compared to what is already in the atmosphere. Large eruptions cool the climate and this will reduce rainfall worldwide. But locally the effect can be very different, though hard to predict. Western Europe was drowning in rain after Tambora. It may not be the same for the next major eruption: every volcanic eruption is different. Our post-eruption weather may be cold – and dry.
Did you finish that beer yet?
Albert, February 2026
Feels like Hunga Tonga could be adversely affecting western European weather, but it could be the La Nina too – the Jet Stream is lot stronger this winter and has led to several more storms than usual. It is set to return to a more neutral state before reverting to El Nino later in 2026.
As a Geordie I can confirm it’s rained for the past 6 weeks non-stop. Although not too heavy thankfully.
Funnily enough it doesn’t rain over Newcastle all that much generally.
Albert:
Thank you for this article. I prefer to believe Hunga Tonga was a VEI6 event, but what do I know? 😉 I knew it was going to have an eruption cloud extending to astonishing heights, finally everyone agrees.
It is possible. Volume of debris on the ocean floor is very hard to measure. Estimates for the VEI range for 5.5 to above 6, and I am towards the higher end but not the highest. But the cloud height and the sound intensity blow any other eruption since Krakatau out of the water. VEI does not measure everything
Volcanic glass particles may also act as condensation cores, most of these are removed very quickly by rainfall unless they are put high into the stratosphere
Thanks! A very entertaining read!
Deep M7 in Sabah, Borneo. Seems quite unusual
A quick search through the US database says there has been nothing like this for at least a century. There were two M6.6/6.8 earthquakes a bit further south in 1923. There was an M6.0 about 50 km south in 2015, but it was at 30 km depth while the current M7.1 is at 600 km, so does not seem to be related.
Those deep ones usually are the last bit of the subducting plate breaking. Here’s the map for this event – to the east the black dots are the very deep tremors, grey medium depth and white are shallow(er). You can see the shape of the subducting Philippine slab rather nicely.
This one doesn’t look to be associated with the subducting Philippine Sea plate, but there’re a couple of small very deep ones just there on the north coast of Borneo and some shallow ones, so perhaps a really old subducted slab is the cause?
I had been thinking the same. It is a large earthquake for such a large depth. A shallower on at this depth could be associate with the Sabah trench, but this is far too deep for that. None of the known subduction zones come near here. If a fragment of a past plate? Why such a large event? Is the depth correct?
The few shallow and deep tremors along the NE coast of Borneo align well with the SW boundary of the Palawan Microcontinental Block. The wiki seems to say that this microplate broke off the Eurasian Plate in the late Eocene and the Eurasian Plate* itself is now subducting via the
” rel=”nofollow ugc”>Cotabato Trench, which is parallel to the NE coast of Borneo but displaced to the east. So maybe the NE coast of Borneo used to be a subduction zone, but that jumped eastwards when the microplate broke off. All fun hypotheticals!
I haven’t read about all the various bits and pieces in that area – there seem to be more than a few microplates subducting all over the place. Trenches going in all sorts of directions. Lots of nice things for plate tectonics geologists to study.
(* Or the Sunda Plate in both cases.)
Oops the Cotobato Trench link was supposed to be to the map in this wiki: Philippine Mobile Belt.
I am not sure if this blog (not mine) is accepted here, but they do dig a bit into the mechanics of this event.
https://earthquakeinsights.substack.com/p/deep-mw71-earthquake-strikes-sabah
The *only* mechanism which can explain a large EQ at this depth is an olivine -> spinel phase transition; everything else is too ductile.
Yes, it’s complicated. Water vapor can both cause climate cooling (Albedo) and greenhouse effect. During winter clouds often prohibit the loss of warmth from the earth towards the universe.
The weather 1816 in Europe looks like a stationary depression over central Europe throughout the summer. In this case cold, wet air from Iceland floods Europe, and during the final years of the Little Ice Age the polar regions were much colder than now. They likely supplied colder air than the same weather pattern now. Sometimes an anticyclone can be caught as an “Omega cyclone” with the shape of a Greek Ω. If they happen, they cause a dry and warm summer in central Europe. The opposite to this is a caught low-pressure area between anticyclones to the west and east. The hypothesis of a stationary depression over central Europe is supported by relatively warm temperatures in Norway between Trondheim and Lofoten. There was likely a warm southeastern flow of warm air from Black Sea over Baltic Sea to northern Norway with a foehn effect on the NW side of the Scandinavian mountains.
Tenth day of Piton’s eruption: https://la1ere.franceinfo.fr/reunion/dixieme-jour-d-eruption-du-piton-de-la-fournaise-des-fontaines-de-lave-toujours-visibles-du-piton-de-bert-1674225.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawQIOn9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeiaRQFnByonE9iSmO-asFHgqTL-SwWy-EsKXEzv7Etifo6WTxmJ51uD_e9NU_aem_BadVTofveh_2aCCVtQEZjQ
Until now the eruption produced 5 million m³, but there remains more magma that seeks to come out either in this or an eruption in near future.
Sweet
humm it’s me…. Motsfo Daughter redid the computer and it came up. but it’s me…
Welcome back! Glad daughter came to the rescue.
Kilauea does a soft, wave-shaped DI deformation:
Do they show deep DI events of a deep magma chamber that are different to shallow ones f.e. 2008-2018?
https://www.space.com/astronomy/jupiter/nasas-juno-spacecraft-spots-the-largest-volcanic-eruption-ever-seen-on-jupiters-moon-io
https://madhyamamonline.com/science/record-breaking-volcanic-eruption-observed-on-jupiters-moon-io-1490681
Ooooooo : D
Elon lacks the intrest in Io sadley
Will Grindavik next time be the last and the largest eruption in this rifting series? maybe an re – imagination of Kraflas final show in 1984
I’d expect that it will be the last episodical eruption, but that after years single eruptions will occur again like Grimsvötn did 1998-2011.
My new avatar looks like a sea creature or amoeba… yours a rather ripe berry .. why do they change? BUT I likes this one! my past avatar looked like a compressed battery or hockey puck
Yes it maybe the last eruption of the series there unless supply gets faster again afterwards. The shallow crust in the area have through years of intrusion and accumulation been heated up and is perhaps by now rather ductile at depth at least åaround the sill = this means the crust can expand more and hold more lava before an eruption breaks out. The next eruption will likley be HUGE and perhaps even send lava to the ocean, perhaps it kills Grindavik if the fissures manages to erupt there. With more lava stoored it maybe able to last for months if it becomes a slow cone after the main fissure dies down
Now, after the starting sequence the Reykjane Peninsula will likely behave like the big volcanoes. Iceland usually does an eruption every 5 years on average. When you have forgotten the last one, the next one comes. So it’s possible that after some years Bardarbunga, Grimsvötn or Askja do something, then after another few years Svartsengi or Fagradalsfjall again.
Tenerife keeps on rumbling with hundreds of small low frequency events.
Did not think that this series of swarms would last that long, but keeps going since feb. 12.
https://www.ign.es/web/vlc-senales-sismicas/-/senales-sismicas/spectroDinamico?fecha=2026-02-23&tipoFO=2&tipoSP=2&estacion=TE01&nombreFichero=TE01_2026-02-23&hora=16-17
After the Hunga Tonga eruption, places at latitude 30 degrees, like the Canary Islands, have had about three years (until the beginning of 2025) that have been literally horrendous due to the heat and dryness. We literally had a hot Christmas, it felt like summer… only this past year has there been more than appreciable rainfall, but I wouldn’t wish that sweltering heat on anyone.
Meanwhile, it seems that Mount Teide continues to move, and for several days now, the tremors haven’t stopped. Geologic Hub already had a video; it wouldn’t hurt if they had another one, because here, with the Pevolca eruption… the situation is starting to remind people of the events leading up to the eruptions of El Hierro and La Palma… and it’s starting to get worrying.
https://youtu.be/qAn6FCj7KYk?si=uNfDdmzlW1Qla4Rr
https://youtu.be/6nf6_MtDO0M?si=nzMBP357jHqCFS5V
Any inflation? that woud be a strong sign
Very slight, in the range of about 2 cm and spread over a long period of time… They started detecting it last year, I believe.So far, unlike the situation on La Palma, these events are very weak and do not appear to be related to a magmatic intrusion. They might though, represent another step in a long process of incremental activity that has been ongoing since at least 2016.
The thing is that with the low frequency of eruptions in the canaries this might be a good oportunity to observe a volcano like tenerife “waking up” but this time with proper monitring equipment.
The weather of the past three years may not have been caused by Hunga Tonga. Teide is an interesting development. If there is an eruption, would it likely stay near the summit area??
i would think so and likely smaller in size than la palma 2021?
Summit euption is unlikely in my opinion, most of the last eruptions on Tenerife have been either from the rift zones (basaltic) or near the base of the teide peak for more developed magmas (montaña blanca, los gemelos domes etc) It seems that the central volcanic area has difficulties in pushing the more evolved magmas all the way up to the Teide peak, lavas negras being the last summit eruption in the 12th or 13th century.
If there is an eruption it would most likely be a small basaltic fissure eruption along one the rift zones, or on the flank of Pico Viejo. The location of the current swarms are near the 1798 eruption site, but in the end who knows were it would pop up if it decides to?
Likley will be a strombolian eruption of gassy low sio2 tephrite looking alot like the early stages of the la palma 2021 eruption, tall lava fountains, lots of scoriae, lapilli, ash poor visibility and massive viscous Aa lava flows that still moves for miles miles
Great article. Now I gotta rewrite one of mine cause the new study…😑
Seismometer KKO – Kilauea showing continue activity
But the signs aren’t counted as earthquakes. What are they instead?
Currently there is a series of deep (20-40 km) earthquakes. Whiler there is a big cluster below Pahala, there has also occured a smaller cluster of deep earthquakes on the east side of Kilauea’s caldera. What is there 30-40 km below Kilauea’s summit?
That is the depth of the original ocean floor: above that is the pile of lava that build Hawai’i. Magma trickling up from the mantle can collect at that interface
There have occured (and still occur) a number of ~40km deep quakes throughout the whole Big Island seamount:
– one M3 quake southwest of Kailu-Kona
– one M2 quake between Hualalai and Mauna Kea
– one on Mauna Kea’s northern slope
– one below Mauna Loa’s summit
– three M1 between Kilauea and Loihi off-shore
– two M1 in Kilauea’s summit region
– two quakes east of the ocean entry of Pu’u O’o with M1 resp. M2
This indicates that something must happen on the base of Big Island. It’s below the Pahala quakes. Are the quakes linked to the slow, longterm sinking of the whole mass?
This is not unusual. There are earthquakes at this depth scattered below the island, not focussed in one place. They come from settling, as the weight if the island depresses the ocean floor. There are also focussed earthquakes at this depth, such as at Pahala and below the summit of Mauna Loa which are magma sills
HVO has observed the wave-shaped deformation on Kilauea’s tiltmeters:
“The inflationary trend over the past several days has been interrupted by significant periods of no inflation or slight deflation recorded across all four summit tiltmeters that may impact the onset of episode 43 fountaining. Periods of weak deflation or no inflation have not been common in the early stages of repose between fountaining episodes. These changes in tilt rate are not predictable and create uncertainty in modeling the onset of episode 43 fountaining.”
Is this comparable to DI events?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co5dX8leTp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYsTcWOvqBY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFD0TbfNxQ
What a spectacular simulation back when Earth was a searing ball of rock vapor
What a spectacular sight! Im being baked by Earthshine!
Earth became a molten ball sourrounded by a 6000 – 8000 c magma nebula….
Moon condensed from the rock vapor droplets and magma debries in that searing hot cloud, condensing into a molten glob ball. The energy from souch a planetary merger is so massive it took thousands of years for the rock vapor nebula to cool down and rainout. A magnificent sight! the collisions heat is brigther than the suns surface per sqaure meter but its a completely silent silent show in the vaccum of space. Even at a distance of 100 000 s of kilometers you coud sunbathe from the light of this collison
Violent but nothing compared to the young Jupiter that likley ate a few super earths: these collisions with Jupiter makes theia even seen to be small…a 3 earth mass rocky ackreating object hitting Jupiter at 60 km a second is stuff beyond imagination and enough energy to equal months of the whole solar output I think
Roasted by Jupitershine…during souch a large collision maybe the heat in the sky coud even be felt from the young Mars? Jupiter being an enromous radiating hot mass after souch an event its difficult to imagine souch forces. One Jupiter model suggesting Jupiter collided with a 10 earth mass super earth in its youth something thats not… calm
Nice article, Albert…but there there seems to be an overlying theme that water vapor alone from volcanoes directly translates to precip increase/decrease…1st order cause and effect. IMHO, that is not necessarily the case when you consider the aftereffects of minute changes in insolar heating/GHG effects in the entire atmospheric column including the stratosphere. At peak, stratospheric WV showed a spike to about 7ppm over much of the southern hemisphere (3-4ppm higher than normal) and eventually added ~2-3 ppm globally, thus adding somewhere between 5 and 10% more WV vs. ambient throughout the entire stratosphere. This is not a trivial amount, IMHO..especially given how sensitive (high queue) the upper levels are to precise chemical and aerosol concentrations that can alter the temperature profile.
As noted, the overall quantity of WV in the atmosphere dwarfs the blips from even the most powerful eruptions, and given the short lifetimes of WV in the troposphere where precip forms, any local WV increases are quickly washed out/dissipated. But, this metric overlooks the 2nd order (and beyond) effects of WV in the stratosphere where lifetimes are estimated to be 6-8 yrs. As we see with Sudden Stratospheric Warming events, the stratosphere in many ways can affect the weather/climate within the troposphere through wave reflection for extended periods..especially when the stratosphere cooling alters the upper-level jet(s) which pretty much dictate the climate on a hemispheric scale outside of the immediate equatorial belt (where convection dominates vs. cyclonic activity).
Given that shifts in stratospheric winds were documented following HT, it is inevitable that the upper-level (tropospheric) jet streams got tweaked as well. At this point is where the butterfly flap turns into a eagle flap since jet action often dictates when/where and how strong High Pressure and Low Pressure regions develop that can persist/evolve into semi-permanent patterns that can last for years.
Hypothetically, consider this ladder-logic scenario:
The HT eruption causes a temporary cooling of a wide swath of the south Pacific stratosphere and a warming of the upper troposphere where surface heat accumulates due to GHG effects.
This increase in vertical temperature gradient then triggers a response in the sub-tropical jet that in turn alters ENSO and MJO activity that leads to lower-level wind and oceanic current fluctuations and changes in the Brewer-Dobson flow.
Because Earth’s climate is 100% closed loop (all things are connected), once ultra-massive areas of water temps in the middle latitudes spike and relax N-S temperature gradients, long term planetary weather impacts are bound to result…often lasting for years…especially when climate whiplash occurs which just reinforces the atmospheric perturbations.
A good example is what’s happening here in the middle latitudes of western NA. Following HT, the NPac has been seeing a rather steady increase in SST’s (independent of equatorial ENSO SSTs which have switched from El Nino to La Nina and is now heading back to El Nino). This year, the warming in the NPac reached uncharted areal coverage spanning from the ITCZ to Alaska/Aleutians and from east Asia to western NA. As to why the NPac has warmed this much over such a large expanse is still open for investigation… most likely it’s due to atmospheric wind changes that’s keeping colder Arctic air from migrating south over the NPac…though oceanic current changes can’t be ruled out either. Regardless, we’re seeing SST’s warmer on a basin-wide scale that’s unknown in modern records. This vast expanse of warm water in turn has created a near-hemispheric tendency to form inversions from warm air originating from the warm Pacific waters rising aloft then overriding “relatively” cooler air near the surface…hence precipitation (and snow levels) are exhibiting unusually strong and rapid changes such as the Winter-long dearth of snow and precip from the Rockies to the Sierra (independent of the recent oneofer that buried the Sierra with 5-10′ of snow in the middle elevations which has now melted almost as fast as it fell with freezing levels rising to over 10,000′).
What this all means is that once water temps change as a secondary response to what started out as a stratospheric anomaly following a volcanic eruption, longer-term climate impacts can result…often lasting for years on hemispheric or even planetary basis long after the primary trigger has dissipated.
Sst is some sort of storm i presume?
Sea Surface Temperature. The most used metric is SSTA which describes SST temp anomalies as compared to long term averages.
‘Earth’s climate is 100% a closed loop’ umm… Aren’t you forgetting a little something here? Some kind of external forcing mechanism perhaps? 😜
By closed loop, I’m referring to the fact that anything that alters one component of the base state of the atmosphere eventually affects all other components…i.e. a volcanic eruption can trigger responses from the atmosphere in many ways. Weather is driven mostly by natural imbalances in heat and follows the laws of fluid dynamics and will always seek equilibrium…so if you change one component such as insolar heating (i.e. like the Milankovitch cycles or stratospheric aerosols that reflect incoming solar radiation thus cooling the atmosphere or adding water vapor (GHG) which reflects outgoing long-wave IR thus warming the air below and cooling the air above), all components of the atmosphere eventually respond in some way to the varying heat flux.
In the case of Hunga Tonga, there were atmospheric cause and effects observed independent of WV injection…including relatively lower (but still significant) quantities of sulphuric compounds which temporarily dampened the WV GHG effects. These volcanic aerosols are by now almost gone, however the WV being lighter than smoke has a longer lifetime in the stratosphere so the GHG warming effect (though waning) is now dominant.
One of the more fascinating items was the impact the initial pressure wave that circled the Earth had on cloud cover. As I watched (from my computer) the wave propagate across the planet, satellite images were confirming that some clouds first densified then nearly instantaneously evaporated during the wave passage…ostensibly due to adiabatically induced thermal changes (lower pressure=lower temps=more condensation, higher pressure=warmer temps=less condensation). Once the wave passed, the clouds returned with similar characteristics within minutes to hours. As a result, there were likely localized changes in precipitation during the pressure wave passage not directly related to a change in WV.
That’s why I’m saying a volcanic eruption can potentially impact weather and sometimes climate in many ways that we don’t fully understand (mostly due to lack of data…we know a lot about fluid dynamics).
And one final note, it is possible (IMHO) that smoke from the massive spike in global wildfires in the last half decade or so has become a major player in the synoptic-scale composition of the atmosphere. It’s long been thought that smoke has a very short lifetime and quickly washes out,
but fire intensities of today are pushing an unprecedented amount of smoke throughout the air column that at times circles the globe and even past the tropopause where the smoke has a much longer lifetime. Though direct data is scarce, I know first hand what smoke impacts on weather can be since wildfires are part of the price I pay to live in rural northern California.
Thanks Craig. Hunga Tonga acted in unexpected ways. I based my post on the extensive 2025 report of atmospheric effects of the eruption. That states that the aerosol optical depth at 1 micron reached 0.01, the largest since Pinatubo, which caused ~0.03C global cooling. It decayed over 2 years and was no longer significant with the Ruang eruption in 2024. The water vapour anomaly in the stratosphere was longer lasting and after late 2022 rose to the upper levels in the stratosphere and eventually the mesosphere. It is now mainly confined to higher than 50 km. This cooled the higher stratosphere by about 1C while there was very small warming in the lower stratosphere. There was an effect not the circulation patterns in 2022 but in later years it is hard to distinguish a Hunga-Tonga related signal because it is smaller than the annual variability. Same at ground level: ‘the
perturbations from Hunga are too weak to produce a significant global climate response’. They suggested that the developing El Niño at the moment may be in response to a stronger La Niña in 2022/2023, which may have include an effect from Hunga Tonga. But overall, the impact cannot be distinguished from typical annual variability. My bottom line: current climate instability is most likely driven by global warming, not Hunga Tonga.
How strong has a Plinian eruption to be to cause a volcanic night? Both Kraktau (as mentioned in the essay), Pinatubo and St. Helens caused volcanic nights with black thick darkness at noon or afternoon. Did the HTHH also cause a volcanic night? Maybe it was difficult to observe, because it happened far from the next populated places (and far from next cameras).
FWIW, the ex-wife of a good friend of mine lived next to Chaiten when it went off in 2008.
She vividly described the volcanic night as so dark people couldn’t find their way to shelter.
So at minimum, a VEI4 can produce volcanic night under the right circumstances.
But, also note that Chaiten was a rare Plinian Rhyolite eruption, so the volcanic night may have been more of an anomaly than the rule?
As for HTHH, at nearly VEI6, the plume umbrella as seen on satellite and from ground reports from Tonga, volcanic night conditions must have been widespread.
I expect so too. But the plume was more cloud and less dust than usual in such eruptions, and water is more transparent than rock. On the other hand, I know that tropical storms can be pretty dark. So it will certainly have been quite dark – but whether pitch black is perhaps not so sure.
https://watchers.news/2026/02/26/mud-volcano-eruption-san-juan-de-uraba-antioquia-colombia-damage-february-2026/
Pretendy-volcano. Does a 10/10 impression.
Snaefellsnes: Yesterday and today the first earthquakes occured outside the Grjotarvatn area. They escaped towards the SE (Grimsstadamuli) and were slightly more shallow than the Grjotarvatn earthquakes.
Map layers with Holocene lava flows show that eruptions of Ljósufjöll tend to occur in the valleys. Lava follows the path of creeks and rivers there. This resembles the Fagradalsfjall eruption which first occured in the deepest part of the volcanic system: Geldingadalir 2021. The lava fields of Ljósufjöll have usually a comparable size to Fagradalsfjall. I think it’s possible to expect an eruption style like this in this area, but with a stronger phreatic/phreatomagmatic element.