Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano on Earth, erupted for the first time in nearly 40 years. Its eruptions tend to be shorter-lived than those of the other Big Island volcanoes, and its lava is more liquid and flows faster
Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano—the largest active volcano on Earth—erupted on Sunday night for the first time since 1984, flooding the bowl-like caldera at its summit with a pool of glowing lava.
Mauna Loa is a shield volcano, a type that erupts fluid lava to form sloping, dome-shaped mountains. Its summit rises 13,678 feet above sea level. But from there, its base extends down another three miles to the seafloor—which is actually pressed down for an additional five miles by the massive mountain’s weight. From top to bottom, the Mauna Loa measures 10.5 miles high.
Mauna Loa’s slopes are 90 percent blanketed with lava flows from eruptions that occurred within the past 4,000 years, clearly demonstrating the volcano’s active history. It last erupted 38 years ago, says David Clague, a volcanologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, who was part of the response during that eruption. At that time, fissures on the northeastern side of the volcano sent flows rolling ominously toward the island’s biggest city, Hilo —but the lava never reached it.
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