The 11 Biggest Volcanic Eruptions in History

by Live Science Staff

Date: 23 February 2016 Time: 02:35 PM ET

• Big Bangs

  

  Intro

  CREDIT: NASA.Volcano Plume Alaska
  Eruption of Cleveland Volcano, Alaska's Aleutian Islands, 2006.

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History has seen some monstrous eruptions of volcanoes, from Mount Pinatubo's weather-cooling burp to the explosion of Mt. Tambora, one of the tallest peaks in the Indonesian archipelago.

The power of such eruptions is measured using the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) a classification system developed in the 1980 that's somewhat akin to the magnitude scale for earthquakes. The scale goes from 1 to 8, and each succeeding VEI is 10 times greater than the last.

There haven't been any VEI-8 volcanoes in the last 10,000 years, but human history has seen some powerful and devastating eruptions. Because it's extremely difficult for scientists to be able to rank the strength of eruptions in the same VEI category, here we present the 10 most powerful volcanoes within the last 4,000 years (within human records) first in order of strength, then within each category, in chronological order. But let's start with a supervolcano eruption, registering a magnitude-8, from our distant past…

On this anniversary, we countdown the largest volcanic eruptions in history as measured by the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) a classification system somewhat akin to the magnitude scale for earthquakes.

The system was developed in the 1980s, and uses factors such as the volume of an eruption, its rate, and other variables to quantify a volcano's power. The scale goes from 1 to 8, and each succeeding VEI is 10 times greater than the last.

There haven't been any VEI-8 volcanoes in the last 10,000 years, but human history has seen some powerful and devastating eruptions. Because it's extremely difficult for scientists to be able to rank the strength of eruptions in the same VEI category, here we present the 10 most powerful volcanoes within the last 4,000 years (within human records) first in order of strength, then within each category, in chronological order.

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