Volcanoes inspire awe and fear around the world, with millions of people flocking to see these imposing landscapes each year, and teams of scientists monitoring their activity.
Earth is full of active, dormant and extinct volcanoes, which are classified depending on the date of their last eruption.
- It stretches 106 square metres and spans two countries – and it's home to over one hundred thousand scuttling residents
- It’s more than twice the size of Texas and moves 800m a year – and it’s almost 2,000m deep
The Ring of Fire in the Pacific Ocean is perhaps the most well-known volcano group, but these often striking landforms are found in many places around the world where two tectonic plates meet at convergent plate boundaries.
For example, Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, Scotland, is actually an extinct volcano and Yellowstone, in the USA, is one of the most famous examples of a supervolcano.
- Are there any volcanoes in the UK? You may be surprised by the answer
- Something breathtaking has been pulled from the steaming springs of Yellowstone National Park
Volcano vs supervolcano: what’s the difference?
A supervolcano is considered different to a volcano, largely due to it being on a much bigger scale. The criteria for a volcano to be classified as a supervolcano is:
- It can produce a magnitude-eight eruption on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, which means it’s likely to discharge at least 1,000 kilometres3 of material (around 1,000 times more than a large volcano)
- It forms a depression on the surface after eruption (rather than the cooling lava building a cone shape)
- It usually has a ridge of noticeably higher land around it
- It erupts hundreds of thousands of years apart – far less than a regular volcano
One of the most famous supervolcanoes is Yellowstone, in the USA. However, it is not the largest in the world.
What is the largest volcano in the world?
The largest known volcano in the world is actually in the sea. Tamu Massif is located on an elevated part of the seafloor in the Pacific Ocean, around 1,600km east of Japan.
It measures 310,000 square kilometres (119,000 square miles) and its ‘roots’ extend around 30 kilometres (18 miles) into the Earth’s crust. (For comparison, the US state of Washington is 184,661 square kilometres, or 71,298 square miles.)
The scientists who discovered it say that that it is comparable in size to Mars’ Olympus Mons volcano, which is the largest volcano in the solar system.
Tamu Massif formed over 145 million years ago, but has been extinct for millions of years.
The previously largest known volcano was on land: Mauna Loa in Hawaiʻi. Mauna Loa is classified as an active volcano.
Top image: lava erupts from the largets volcano on land, Mauna Loa, on 7th December 2022, in Hilo, Hawaiʻi. Credit: Andrew Richard Hara/Getty Images
