• Question: how Tall was the largest eruption in the world ?

    Asked by anon-273592 to Kate on 9 Dec 2020.
    • Photo: Kate Dobson

      Kate Dobson answered on 9 Dec 2020:

      Good question, and one we don’t actually know the exact answer to as the largest eruptions we have records of occurred 100,000’s or millions of years ago.The largest ever erupted over 5000 cubic km of magma.

      The largest eruption we have records of was Tambora, which happened in 1815, and erupted about 50-150 cubic km of magma. This eruption measured 7 (the maximum) on the VEI scale (the way we measure the size of a volcanic eruption) and produced an eruption column which reached more 40-50 km into the atmosphere. The eruption caused global cooling (“the year without a summer”) and amazing sunsets (look at the skies in some of Turner’s paintings).

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