Volcano Watch

Astute watchers of recent earthquake activity at Kīlauea have noticed a marked increase of earthquakes, both within the summit caldera and in a...

A new fact sheet on Mauna Loa titled "Mauna Loa—History, Hazards, and Risk of Living With the World’s Largest Volcano" is now available. This week's...

On trade wind days, which prevail much of the year, visitors to Kīlauea's summit are greeted by the majestic sight of a towering eruption plume that...

Recently, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientists have been asked if Hawai‘i Island's geothermal development causes subsidence of the ground surface...

It seems logical that if underground magma can start an eruption by forcing its way to the surface, one might also start an eruption by opening a...

On September 24, 1971, Kīlauea’s southwest rift zone erupted for the first time in 52 years.

As days get shorter and nights cooler, we look to the summits of majestic Mauna Kea after rainstorms to see whether there might be a cap of pure white...

The relatively small explosive eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano more than two years ago focused attention on the hazards of volcanic ash...

In late August, volcano scientists from around the world gathered in Waikōloa, Hawai‘i, and shared what they have learned about how Hawaiian volcanoes...

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has monitored, studied, and served as an information source about Hawaiian volcanism for the past 100 years.

In 1987, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), over 400 Earth scientists from around the...

Seldom does one find evidence of an eruption where none was known before. We generally assume that Kīlauea erupts only at the summit or along its two...

Tuesday morning, July 31, started as a typical office day at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO). Beginning at 10:25 a.m., a number of text...

At 3:45 a.m., Friday, July 19, 1974, a flurry of earthquakes on Kīlauea triggered the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory's "tremor alarm." In response...

Most of us think of gravity as a constant. Students of physics know that gravitational acceleration is 9.8 m per second-squared (32 ft/s/s), while the...

The use of fingerprints, first considered as a means of identification in the 1880s, is now ubiquitous in murder mysteries, TV crime shows, and...

When William Ellis, the first Western visitor to the summit of Kīlauea, looked out over the broad and deep caldera in 1823, he noted that it "had been...

For decades, the State of Hawaii has been trying to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Energy from Hawai‘i geothermal resources is but one of...

Hawai‘i's eruptions over the past several decades have been relatively benign, being characterized mostly by persistent lava lake activity or lava...

Erupting volcanoes are obviously noisy places, but there are sounds that we do not hear as well. Infrasound is an acoustic wave with a frequency that...