Expert says Hawaii volcano could erupt for a long time, though it probably won’t explode
More than 40 buildings have been destroyed, and more than 2,000 people have been forced to evacuate because of the continuing eruption of the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. But there will likely not be a massive explosion, experts said.
Paul Davis, a geology professor at the University of California Los Angeles, said that the lava in Hawaii is known to be hotter than in other volcanos, meaning it is more fluid. Hawaiian volcano lava has temperatures of 1,100 degrees Centigrade, while in other volcanos, like those in Indonesia, it can be as low as 800, he said.
Cooler lava is stickier, he said, and because of that, it can “clog up the conduits of the volcano,” causing pressure to build and leading to an eventual violent eruption.
In contrast, he said, sometimes lava in Hawaii can “look like flowing water. It’s so hot, it just flows.”
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Lava reaching the ocean, creating lava haze or “laze”
When it comes to volcanos, he said, people should be cautious about making predictions, but most volcanologists would agree that a massive explosion is unlikely.
“There is no concern about a massive explosion,” Mike Poland, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey, said in an e-mail. He said there have been small steam explosions at the summit of the volcano, “but these are not expected to intensify significantly.”
The bad news is that the current flow of lava could “continue for a long time at the rate it’s going,” Davis said.
He said lava sometimes pushes down the Kilauea rift zone at the volcano and erupts out of smaller volcanoes. One, called Pu’ u ‘O ‘o, has been erupting since 1983, pouring lava over the landscape that eventually spills into the ocean just as the current eruption is doing.
“One would think [this eruption] would be similar to the past,” he said.
Poland, who was formerly stationed in Hawaii and is now scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, said, “The lava eruption will continue” and it’s very hard to tell if it will become more widespread.
“There is always a chance that the eruption could intensify or migrate to a new location, but we are keeping a careful watch on monitoring data (especially seismicity an ground deformation) to assess these possibilities. We also are not sure how long this eruption will last (past experience suggests weeks to months), so obviously the longer it lasts, the more potential there is for the lava to inundate more areas and cause problems,” he said.
Kilauea is on the island of Hawaii, the biggest of the Hawaiian islands in terms of land area. The island, with about 150,000 residents, is a distant second in population to Oahu, which has about 875,000 residents..
The USGS warned Monday afternoon in Hawaii that “moderate-level eruption of lava continues from multiple points along the northeast end of the active fissure system.”
”Fissure 22 is erupting a short line of low lava fountains that feed a channelized flow that reaches the coast just north of MacKenzie State Park. Spattering continues from a reactivated Fissures 6 that intermittently feeds a short lava flow. Fissures 17 and 19 continue weak spattering,” the agency warned.
The arrival of the lava at the island’s coast over the weekend sparked new safety warnings about toxic gas on the island’s southern coast, The Associated Press reported.
The molten rock has been generating plumes of lava haze or ‘‘laze’’ as it interacts with seawater.
It’s just the latest hazard from a weeks-old eruption that has so far generated earthquakes and featured gushing molten rock, giant ash plumes and sulfur dioxide.
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A map showing the lava’s progress toward the ocean. Lava flows recorded in the past are in purple.
US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Another view of the “laze”
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