Volcano!

I've always held volcanoes in awe. Coming from a country ringed by active volcanoes on all four corners, you'd think it'd be commonplace for people like me to see these spectacles of nature but no sir, I've only seen 3 volcanoes up close in my 34 years of stay here on earth. The first one is Mount Makiling, followed by Mount Arayat and the minuscule yet majestic Taal Volcano. I'm not sure if I've seen the infamous Mount Pinatubo from a distance on one of my recent visits to zambales but after the cataclysmic 1991 eruption, its sheared off top is not as recognizable as before the eruption.

The video above shows the September 13 eruption of Volcan De Fuego, Guatemala's Volcano of Fire, the most recent geological tanrtum on the face of the earth. The scale of the eruption triggered the evacuation of 30,000 people but was nowhere near the 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo (shown Right) which ejected 10 cubic kilometers of ash or 10 billion tons worth of pulverized rock. Ashfall was recorded as far as Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia and was ranked VEI 6 (Volcano Explosivity Index 6).

  Here's a side-by-side VEI comparison of some of the most recent volcanic eruptions.

Large as it is, the 1991 event might as well be Pinatubo's smallest eruption ever and pales in comparison to some of the strongest volcanic eruptions listed below, all rated VEI 8 (1000 cubic kilometers or more ejected as magma or ash). These are truly cataclysmic events and we should be thankful we were not around when these happened.

 

1. Guarapuava —Tamarana—Sarusas eruption (Parana - Etendeka traps | 132 million years ago) - presumed ejecta volume was about 8,600 cubic kilometers of flood Basalt and igneous deposits. This could either be one of the triggering events, or conversely,  the consequence of the Continental rift between South America and Africa. See, Parana is in Brazil and Etendeka is in Namibia/Angola, with the Atlantic ocean gaping at its widest between them. This is presumed to be the single largest volcanic eruption in the earth's history and certainly had a hand in changing the face of the earth big time.

2. La Garita Caldera Volcanism (La Garita Caldera, Fish Canyon Tuff, Colorado | 27.8 million years ago) One of the most powerful events in earth's history. The single explosion that created the Fish Canyon Tuff in Colorado had the force equivalent to 240 BILLION TONS of TNT. By comparison, the largest man-made explosion generated by Russia's TSAR BOMBA nuclear bomb had the force of "only" 50 million tons of dynamite. Even then, Tsar Bomba's shockwaves travelled 3 times across the face of the earth and can be detected by seismometers on its third passing. This volcanic explosion is the equivalent of about 5,000 Tsar Bombas detonating simultaneously and would have been enough to alter climates for years.

3. Lake Toba Event - (occurred at what is now Lake Toba about 67,500 to 75,500 years ago.)
Described as a Mega-Colossal Eruption. This eruption released approximately 2,800 Cubic kilometers of material and caused a volcanic "winter" by lowering the earth's temperature by 3-5 degrees celsius. This would have probably triggered an EXTINCTION EVENT for plants and animals in south east asia and as some theorists say, reduced the entire human population at that time to just 10,000 lucky individuals, effectively creating a genetic bottleneck in human evolution.  The eruption was large enough to have deposited an ash layer approximately 15 cm (5.9 in) thick over all of South Asia; at one site in central India, the Toba ash layer today is up to 6 m (20 ft) thick and parts of Malaysia were covered with 9 m (30 ft) of ashfall.

Source: Wikipedia