Is Mauna Loa exploding like Mount St Helens?

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Mauna Loa is not exploding like Washington state's Mount St. Helens did in 1980, killing 57 people. That eruption sent ash soaring over 80,000 feet and raining down as far as 250 miles away.


The magma in Mount St. Helens tends to be stickier and traps more gas, making it much more likely to explode when it rises. It's of a variety called composite volcanoes, which form concave cones.

Mauna Loa's magma tends to be hotter, drier and more fluid. That allows the magma's gas to escape and lava to flow down the side the volcano the way it is starting to do now. Mauna Loa is a shield volcano, named because the long, broad flanks built by repeated lava flows give it the appearance of a warrior's shield.

In 1989, Alaska's Redoubt Volcano, another composite telegram database volcano, belched an 8-mile cloud of ash that clogged all four engines of a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines jet. The plane fell 13,000 feet before all engines restarted and the plane landed without injury to the 245 people aboard.

Mauna Loa released some ash this time but on a vastly smaller scale than these examples from composite volcanoes.

How significant are Mauna Loa's greenhouse gas emissions?
Mauna Loa released about 15,000 tons of carbon dioxide per day during its 1984 eruption, according to USGS data.

That's equivalent to the annual emissions from 2,400 sport utility vehicles.

Scientists say all of Earth's volcanoes combined emit less than 1% of the carbon dioxide that humans produce each year.

Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano, started erupting Sunday night and lava was flowing from its summit.