An eruption column consists of hot volcanic ash emitted during an explosive volcanic eruption. The ash forms a column rising many kilometres into the air above the peak of the volcano. In the most explosive eruptions, the eruption column may rise over 40 km, penetrating the stratosphere. Stratospheric injection of aerosols by volcanoes is a major cause of short-term climate change.
A common occurrence in explosive eruptions is for column collapse to occur. In this case, the eruption column is too dense to be lifted high into the air by air convection, and instead falls down the flanks of the volcano to form a pyroclastic flow or surge.
Read more about Eruption Column: Formation, Structure, Column Heights
Famous quotes containing the words eruption and/or column:
“I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming. Literally no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it’s good fun.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)