One of the World's Deadliest Volcanoes Just Went Nuts

Hey everyone, geophysicist Stefan Burns here with breaking news. We are right now in the midst of a major volcanic eruption from Krakatau volcano Indonesia in between the islands of Java and Sumatra. This is probably now the biggest volcanic eruption of 2026. I wanted to report on this as soon as possible for you because of just how big this eruption is. This is a scene of the massive lava fountains and volcanic lightning as a result of this eruption which started on the 4th of September. Now it's still ongoing on the 5th of September and this could potentially get much bigger. We hope that this is the main phase of this. It's already a major volcanic eruption but it could get even bigger. We see the ash plume from this rising well into the stratosphere which is how you know that this is a big eruption because a lot of volcanic eruptions the ash goes up three kilometers five kilometers and you get the tropopause the boundary between the troposphere where we live the boundary layer zero to ten kilometers and the stratosphere about 10 kilometers up. Those are some variants. Well this video here taken from an airplane 35,000 feet up already shows you just how much higher up it's going. So this is 15 maybe even 20 kilometers up into the atmosphere and it's a massive ash cloud. Absolutely massive ash cloud. Here we see that eruption starting. This is all universal time and it's nighttime when it started. Here we see the main eruptive phase. You see the ash going out and of course you have gas emissions. Those are going to raise up higher so this is a lot of sulfur dioxide but not enough to shift the balance for the climate yet. You need like a VEI5 VEI6 eruption really like a VEI6 eruption to do that. This is a scale of size of volcanic eruptions and if you have a VEI6 eruption like what happened from Krakatoa back in 1883 which produced the largest sound ever observed historically you know with modern equipment blasted out eardrums from 30 miles away heard thousands of miles away that was approximately VEI6. That can start to alter the climate such that you could have a year without a summer. So there is a potential for this. It's a small percentage chance. We saw an eruption like this back in 2018. That was a VEI3 eruption. Every bump up in that scale is an order of magnitude a 10x jump so you have some ways to scale before you get to VEI6 from a VEI3 but this is still a major volcanic eruption. One of the largest over the past few years probably now the largest of 2026 though it just has started so there's room for that to grow clearly and well we're watching this very closely. If we zoom out here we'll see just how far out this ash plume is spreading and a lot of the debris. There's continuous rumbling that's hitting people's houses in these areas. There's videos online of the windows shaking just continuously as a result of this so this is really quite nuts and here we can see these lava fountains going up. This may be recorded from a fishing boat close by. They I hope are leaving the scene because this is very serious but when you get such big volcanic eruptions the ash creates a lot of electromagnetic forces basically to build up in the area and you get these massive plasma discharges with lightning bolts and more and so this already is an atmospheric effect for the local area and as it gets bigger and releases more sulfur dioxide and more ash it will start to affect a wider region as it relates to weather but we really need this to scale up significantly more for this to be you know something that goes down in the history books which is possible. It's certainly possible but we we hope that's not the case because well it could get really bad. Here we see 2018 and so this is Anak Krakatoa. A lot of people know this volcano as Krakatoa. That was a volcano that exploded erupted in 1883. Now it's called Anak Krakatoa, the child of Krakatoa. Really it's all the same volcano so if you call it Krakatoa I'm not going to come down and hunt you. Others may but I won't. I understand. But we see the caldera left behind. This used to be a tall island volcano rising up and this 1883 eruption exploded at the smithereens. Well this is what happened in September of 2018. So we can see that clearly here. Look at the before and after. August of 2018 we saw that mid-eruption photo again right here. So pretty similar to what's happening right now as we can tell and if we go back here's January 2019. So there was a new island volcano that was growing that got blasted off. This generated tsunami. It was quite destructive in the area back in 2018. So there's already big waves being generated as a result of this eruption and all the locals that are nearby they're pretty much in danger of something happening if it really scales up and gets worse. So they should be evacuating at this point if they are not already. And again we can just really see how ferocious this volcanic eruption is with this imagery here. You'll see flashes of lightning at times. This is a massive lava fountain. The ash plume going up even higher going up 15-20 kilometers in stratosphere and it really does not appear that there is any end in sight for this eruption based on our satellite imagery. Basically just continuously going back in time here. So there's multiple eruptive pulses as we can see. Let's really zoom in here. We'll see these eruptive pulses. Right here we go. I mean there's a big one right there. Huge outburst. So we're going to probably be seeing that as we go forward. Here is really high resolution satellite imagery of this eruption. And we also see a comparison to just earlier this year on the 20th of August. So this gives you a sense of scale. You notice that the scaling for this is identical. So clearly this is a big eruption that is occurring right now. Going back here let us just quickly glimpse at this photo here again of the same ash cloud up in the stratosphere. I wanted to show you the plane for context because you can really with the plane there kind of see how this is even higher in elevation than this plane which is clearly flying at cruising altitude effectively. And here we see our volcanic Morova data. So we can look at the radiated power from this volcano and other volcanoes. And we see that Krakatau every now and then you know has these eruptions and a little burst of energy etc. We see how it started to ramp up there really in August. We see really starting to ramp up in August. Here is where we are now reaching this high and probably actually very high where this data is not fully up to date yet. So I think over the next 24 hours we're going to see some marks here reach that very high level. But clearly a new eruptive phase has begun and what's happening now is much bigger than what was happening during this time frame. So I think that we've gone up even higher now. So this is only accelerating faster and faster. And there's continuous volcanic tremor right now at Krakatoa. So effectively what that means is that there's magma at depth that is moving and the movement of that magma is generating this low frequency relatively low intensity signal as we see here. Now an earthquake is going to be a big spike on the size of graph. And like imagine this but scaled up much bigger right. That's kind of that burst of energy with the earthquake and it tapers off. But you can have earthquake tremor you can have volcanic tremor. Volcanic tremor is going to be continuous and it's really a sign that there is magma on the move. And so long as we keep getting this volcanic tremor we can expect Krakatoa to still be pumping out these giant lava fountains. So we could be at the beginning of a multi-week long multi-month long eruption from Anak Krakatoa again the child of Krakatoa. But really it's all the same big volcano. It's been there for a long time. It's done this many many times and we could be right now witnessing the next huge eruptive cycle from Krakatoa. So that is your brief update on this. I wanted to get on this as soon as I can. It's late here but this is arguably the biggest volcanic eruption yet in 2026. And search the link right up there near the top for the past few years. It's very notable and the volcano has a big history to it. So it's important to jump on this right away. So if you appreciated this update if you like the video please smash that thumbs up button to help this channel grow. I've been your host Stefan Burns geologist geophysicist space weatherman. We have been having increased solar activity just over the past few days as a result of new sunspots rotating in. We have an earthquake swarm off the coast of Alaska the Aleutian Islands. So I've been covering that as well. Big cyclones in the Pacific. If you want to stay up to date on all that and more then please subscribe. I release videos almost daily. Thank you all so much for watching. Prayers for Indonesia. We hope that this is it for this eruption. It starts to cool down. It has the potential to get much worse. It also does have the potential to basically let off some steam and simmer down after this. So that is what we hope happens. You don't need another gigantic eruption from Anak Krakatau. That could be devastating for the local people. So please if you have a spare moment say a prayer for Indonesia and those living there. So thank you all so much. Wishing each and every single one of you well. Please take care of yourselves. I'll see you all in the next video.