Valentin Troll:" There are dual magma chambers under La Palma’s volcano"
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After 50 years of dormancy, the Cumbre Vieja (“Old Peak”) volcanic ridge on the Canary Island of La Palma burst into life in September 2021. Lava, ash and volcanic bombs were hurled from multiple cracks in the rock. The eruption has yielded new knowledge about how the Canary Islands’ volcanoes work.
“Volcanic eruptions are dramatic and don’t happen that often in the Canaries. On land, the last time was in 1971, when good equipment and as many instruments as today weren’t available to study it with. The frequency of eruptions there is about once every 50 years. So it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” says Professor Valentin Troll of the Department of Earth Sciences, who studied the eruption in situ.