Currently — September 12, 2023: Kīlauea volcano erupts on the island of Hawai'i

The weather, currently.

The Kīlauea volcano on the big island of Hawai’i began erupting on Sunday afternoon — its fifth eruption in the past four years.

Kīlauea is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, so this really isn’t a surprise, but it’s still a literally awesome reminder that we all live on a planet that is continually in motion at all space and time scales.

The Hawaiian islands were formed over the past 50 million years by the same plume of upwelling undersea magma in the middle of the Pacific. The island of Hawai’i is the largest and youngest island of the chain — Kīlauea emerged from under the ocean just 100,000 years ago. In 2018, the volcano’s summit collapsed and released a lava flow up to 500m (1600ft) thick that destroyed hundreds of homes and marked a shift into its current eruptive phase. In contrast, this week’s eruption is extremely minor — but still impressive.

The US Geological Survey has set up a live view of the eruption in Kīlauea’s Halemaʻumaʻu crater:

— Eric Holthaus

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