Two of the world's most dangerous volcanoes are burping and showing signs of life:
Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau volcano has erupted, spewing ash as high as 3 kilometers (2 miles) into the air, officials said Saturday.
The volcano island located in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait between the main Java and Sumatra islands has erupted at least seven times since late Friday, Indonesia’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center said.
It was the longest eruption since the explosive collapse of the mountain caused a deadly tsunami in 2018 along the coasts of Java and Sumatra, the center said. There were no casualties reported in the latest eruption and no evacuation order was issued. The nearest settlement is 16 1/2 kilometers (10 1/2 miles) away.
The center’s closed-circuit camera showed lava flares and the volcano continuously erupting until Saturday morning.
The second-highest alert on a scale of four has remained in place since 2018. Authorities in May warned residents and tourists to stay 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the crater. Up till then, people used to trek to the top to observe the nature's spectacle.
Scientists at the center said that since the 2018 eruption and collapse, Anak Krakatau island is now only about a quarter of its original size.
A 2019 study by the center shed light on the power of the tsunami that crashed into more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) of coastline in Sumatra and Java. More than 430 people died in the waves that were 2 meters (6.6 feet) or higher and 40,000 were displaced.
The center said that the peak of the crater was 159 meters (520 feet) high, compared to 338 meters (1,108 feet) before the December 2018 eruption.
Anak Krakatau, which means “child of Kratakau,” is the offspring of the famous Krakatau, whose monumental eruption in 1883 triggered a period of global cooling.
At UPI, Italy's Campi Flegrei volcano is at risk of eruption, researchers say
The Campi Flegrei volcano in southern Italy is at risk of erupting, researchers at Italy's National Research Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology and University College London said in a new study published in the Communications Earth and Environment journal from Nature.
The ground beneath the coastal town of Pozzuoli has been rising about 4 inches a year for the past decade, investigators reported Friday. They also noted a series of persistent small earthquakes, including 600 recorded in April.
About 360,000 people live on the roof of the volcano, which resembles a gentle depression and is not an obvious mountain. It is located about 9 miles west of Naples, Italy, and is partially submerged beneath the Bay of Pozzuoli.
Researchers at University College London created a simulation "to interpret the patterns of earthquakes and ground uplift, and concluded that parts of the volcano had been stretched nearly to a breaking point." "Our new study confirms that Campi Flegrei is moving closer to rupture," study lead author Christopher Kilburn of University College London Earth Sciences said in a news release.
"However, this does not mean an eruption is guaranteed. The rupture may open a crack through the crust, but the magma still needs to be pushing up at the right location for an eruption to occur," Kilburn continued.
Both volcanoes have, in past, demonstrated the ability to produce civilization threatening eruptions. They probably won't do so soon. But they could.
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