Volcanologists could hardly contain their excitement after Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the world’s largest active volcano, reawakened this week after lying dormant for nearly four decades, sending lava fountains high into the air and down the mountain.
“It’s fabulous, really fantastic,” said Carmen Solana, an expert on lava flows at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. “We’ve been waiting for a long time for this. All my career I’ve been hearing ‘Mauna Loa is going to erupt — Oh no it isn’t’. Now it really is.”
Diana Roman, a volcanologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, said: “The eruption [is] really important for our understanding of this type of volcanism.”