Krakatoa is a volcanic island sitting in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia.
In 1883, the volcano exploded. The combined force of the massive eruptions, which occurred in several blasts on August 26 and 27, was 13,000 times greater than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima in 1945. More than 36,000 people living near the volcano were killed.
Writing in The Independent (May 3, 2006) Sanjida O’Connell reported that “The force of the eruption created the loudest noise ever recorded: it was heard 4,653 km away on Rodriguez Island in the Indian Ocean and some 4,800 km away in Alice Springs, (Australia); shock waves travelled around the world seven times."
Krakatoa Changed the Weather
The Krakatoa eruptions ejected 21 cubic kilometres of ash and rock, which formed a dust cloud around the Earth. Vast quantities of sulphur dioxide were also pumped into the atmosphere and this caused the average world temperature to drop by 1.2 degrees Celsius.
Weather patterns were disrupted around the planet and did not return to normal until five years after the eruptions.
Seismic Activity at Krakatoa Increasing
The explosion of 1883 pretty much destroyed the volcano, but it has since built itself back up to a height of about 365 metres and grows by roughly five metres a year. It is now called Mount Anak Krakatoa, which means “Child of Krakatoa” and it frequently puts on a display of pyrotechnics for visitors.
However, as Marcus Dunk reports in The Daily Mail (July 31, 2009) Anak Krakatoa has been showing more than usual activity of late.
“Bright orange lava spews up into the air,” he writes, “dark smoke mingles with the clouds and the gloomy night takes on an ominous red glow…one of the most terrifying volcanoes the world has ever known has begun to stir once more.”
Professor Jon Davidson, chair of Earth Science at Durham University and a volcanologist has studied Krakatoa first-hand. The Daily Mail quotes him as saying: “Volcanic prediction is getting better. But we are never going to be able to fully predict big and unusual eruptions, precisely because they are unusual.”
Volcano has Erupted many Times
There is thought to have been a major eruption of Krakatoa in 416 and another in 535, and there may have been another in 1680-81.
Marco Fulle, a scientist and volcano expert, recently released some dramatic pictures of the latest activity at Anak Krakatoa.
He is quoted by The Daily Mail as saying “These volcanoes repeat explosions like that of 1883 many times during their life. The common opinion is that Krakatoa will again become really dangerous when it reaches the size it had been in 1883. It was two-times taller than now.”
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