On April 11, 2018, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image of a volcanic plume from Aoba volcano streaming across the South Pacific Ocean.

After a lull in eruptive activity since summer 2011, activity resumed at Aoba starting in autumn 2017 followed by a brief period of quiet. By mid-March 2018, activity resumed and eruptions dropped ash across Ambae Island in Vanuatu—an island nation in the South Pacific. On April 6, the volcano emitted the largest plume of sulfur dioxide since that of Calbuco volcano in April 2015, according to reports compiled by the Global Volcanism Program.

• References and Related Reading

• Discover (2018, April 9) Ambae in Vanuatu Releases Biggest Sulfur Pulse on Earth in 3 Years. Accessed April 12, 2018.
• Global Volcanism Program at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History (2018, April) Aoba. Accessed April 12, 2018.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Jeff Schmaltz, using MODIS data from LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Caption by Kathryn Hansen.

Instrument(s): 

Aqua - MODIS