Volcanic Eruption Cloud
Volcano Terms and Definition

Volcano Book
Volcano & Earthquake DK Eyewitness Books
Eyewitness Books provide an in-depth, comprehensive look at their subjects with a unique integration of words and pictures.




NOVA - In the Path of a Killer Volcano
The scientists who remain behind- and see some astonishing footage of the world's largest volcanic eruption in 80 years. Local tribes people were the first to see the signs. "There was a flash of light from the sky"




Photographs provided by NASA, STS064-116-064
September 20, 1994

Photographs taken by Space Shuttle astronauts about 24 hours after the start of the eruption of Rabaul Caldera. The eruption column rose to at least 18 km above sea level where the volcanic ash and gas were blown west to form a fan-shaped eruption cloud. A smaller eruption cloud (bottom photograph, lower right) was blown northward by lower-level winds.

Eruption cloud


A cloud of tephra and gases that forms downwind of an erupting volcano is called an eruption cloud. The vertical pillar of tephra and gases rising directly above a vent is an eruption column.

Eruption clouds are often dark colored--brown to gray--but they can also be white, very similar to weather clouds. Eruption clouds may drift for thousands of kilometers downwind and often become increasingly spread out over a larger area with increasing distance from an erupting vent (note fan-shaped eruption cloud in photographs at left). Large eruption clouds can encircle the Earth within days.

Eruption cloud is often used interchangeably with plume or ash cloud.

volcanism
Volcanism
Volcanic eruptions are the clear and dramatic expression of dynamic processes going on in planet Earth. The author, one of the most profound specialists in the field of volcanology, explains in a concise and easy to understand manner the basics and most recent findings in the field of volcanology.


Digtal Microscope

Volcano Glossary


Lava Flows and Lava Tubes
40-minute video uses spectacular and unusual footage of erupting volcanoes from Hawaii and around the world to explain the features found in many of our volcanic national parks and monuments, and to show how they form. It presents up-to-date scientific ideas about lava flows: how they move, how they change, and how they create lava tubes
Fire Mountain: The Eruption and Rebirth of Mount St. Helens
Two hundred and thirty square miles leveled in moments Five hundred and forty million tons of ash and volcanic rock exploded twelve miles high One cubic mile of earth blasted from the crest of one of the world's most beautiful snowcapped domes Captured in rare and spectacular aerial photography and survivor's own words and pictures, witness the terrifying fury of the worst volcanic disaster in American history
Ring of Fire - IMAX
The Closest You'll Ever Get to a Volcano Originally filmed in IMAX Ring of Fire takes you heart stopping close to the great circle of volcanoes and seismic activity that rings the Pacific Ocean. This film has been seen by millions of people. The story of these immense volcanic forces and the half a billion people that coexist with them every day around the fiery boundary of the Pacific Rim
Savage Earth
Waves of Destruction
Out of the Inferno
Restless Planet
Hell's Crust
From the legendary fury of Mt. Vesuvius to the devastating convulsions of Kobe, Japan, Savage Earth tells the stories of these great natural disasters, the scientists who struggle to understand and predict them, and the people whose lives are forever changed by their merciless force

Source:
U.S. Department of the Interior