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Early Tuesday, lava is shooting 100 feet to 200 feet (30 to 60 metres) into the air as Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano, erupts for the first time in nearly 40 years. ()听

Fiona D鈥橝rcy, PhD candidate, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences聽

鈥淭he eruption at Mauna Loa is the first since 1984, so this is an exciting eruption, though not entirely unexpected. Moana Loa has been quite active historically. In聽the last couple of years there have been a few seismic swarms, that is groups of small earthquakes when the earth cracks apart as magma forces its way through. There had also been some indications of deformation, where the ground was bulging slightly. The lava eruption started at the summit crater and has moved to the North East Rift Zone further down the slopes. The main hazards of these Hawaiian type eruptions are the volcanic gases they release as well as the聽lava flow itself.鈥澛�

fiona.darcy [at] mail.mcgill.ca (English, French)听

Fiona D鈥橝rcy is a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. She has been studying volcanic gases for seven years. Her聽research focuses on the chemistry of the gases and the surrounding environment. She has visited over 34 active volcanoes in seven聽countries.聽