Local residents and tourist were evacuated from a 10 km danger zone around the volcano because a larger eruption might be imminent. During the past days small explosions were already witnessed and the volcanic crater is filled with lava. In case of a large explosive eruption, most threat is expected from Lahars (volcanic mudslides) and several 100 degrees hot, hundreds of km/h fast clouds of volcanic gas and ashes (pyroclastic flows) that rush down the slopes of the volcano. Already this week a significant amount of ash impacted the island, as all air traffic had to be closed and many thousands of tourists could not leave Bali.

How the eruption will evolve cannot be foreseen accurately at this moment. Volcanologists study the evolution of volcanic eruptions in particular based on continuous real-time recordings of earthquakes inside the volcano. Changes in the earthquake rate may allow to identify upwelling magma inside the plumbing system. However, when and where an eruption will occur and at which size is generally hard to predict, since the inner structure is not known in detail for most volcanoes.

On Monday, Nov 27 2017 a researcher of our department, Dr. Florian Fuchs, was interviewed about the current eruption of Mount Agung in the Austrian news show ZIB24 on TV: for the interview click here.