In 2018, the side of the Anak Krakatau volcano collapsed in a powerful eruption and produced a tsunami that killed hundreds and injured thousands on nearby Java and Sumatra in Indonesia.
In 2018, the side of the Anak Krakatau volcano collapsed in a powerful eruption and produced a tsunami that killed hundreds and injured thousands on nearby Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. A new analysis of satellite data showed the mountainside was slipping for years and accelerated before the eruption — information that could have potentially offered a warning of the collapse.
The team, led by researchers at Penn State, recently published their findings in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“Ocean volcanoes, when they are unstable, can collapse catastrophically and generate a tsunami,” said Christelle Wauthier, associate professor of geosciences at Penn State and co-author of the study. “And when that happened in 2018, more than 400 people died because nobody had instruments on the ground to know potentially if there was acceleration or change in the deformation behavior. Nobody knew the collapse was imminent. This study shows, unfortunately retrospectively, that we could forecast it if we had this remote sensing data set to get the surface deformation.”
Read more at Penn State
Photo Credit: Lord Mountbatten via Wikimedia Commons
