The surprising eruption of Ethiopia’s long-dormant volcano

This week on Takaro Kids, Kiran and Debbie discuss the unexpected eruption of the Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia, which had been dormant for 12,000 years. The eruption created a massive ash plume that reached up to 45,000 feet and has affected air travel and air quality across different regions, including India. The episode explains the basics of tectonic plates, how volcanoes and earthquakes form, and the impact of volcanic ash. And listen till the end for the Takaro quiz question of the week - one lucky winner will win a Takaro t-shirt and gift voucher!

00:00 Introduction to Takaro Kids

00:33 Eruption in Ethiopia: A Dormant Volcano Awakens

02:28 Impact of the Volcanic Eruption

07:06 Understanding Tectonic Plates and Volcanic Activity

11:37 Quiz Time: Test Your Knowledge

14:41 Last Week's Quiz Results and Conclusion

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Transcript

Kiran Menon 0:02

Mics camera, action. Welcome to Takaro Kids, a weekly podcast that helps kids of all ages understand the events that shape the world around them. And this week, Debbie.

Debkanya 0:26

Yes. Something very explosive. In fact, something that almost went off like a bomb is how it was described by some people. We are going all the way down to Africa, to a country which is in the horn of Africa, actually on the eastern side. Now, if you go and look at the maps, uh, Africa's like a big triangle. This is on the right hand side. There's a little horn type thing that sticks out. is where this country is. It's called Ethiopia.

Kiran Menon 0:57

So Hayli Gubbi, is that how you pronounce it? I have no clue, but let's call it, uh, yeah, let's call it Hayli Hayli Uh, maybe you all can tell us how it's pronounced is a volcano that just erupted. volcano eruptions are always extremely, extremely, uh, I would say fascinating to see, but super scary if you're close to it. And this particular volcano has not erupted for 12, 12,000 years. Yeah. And, and, uh, it's just erupted.

Debkanya 1:37

And that's why they're saying it's such a big deal, right? Because this volcano, this particular volcano, was supposedly dormant. The earth is full of volcanoes, right? Some of them are active, some of them are dormant. This particular one was supposed to be dormant. It's supposed to be sleeping. no action there seen ever in the entire Holocene era. Now, what is the Holocene era? It's, it's basically a time period right after the ice age. It's the entire time that mankind has been around. Okay? That's one way to describe it, right? It's also sometimes called the Age of Man. so during the Holocene era, which is literally the last 11,000, 700 years, this volcano has been sleeping, and it's finally erupted. Nobody expected, nobody saw it coming. yeah, it got everyone by surprise and everyone wondering how did it really happen? Like what happened to wake it up?

Kiran Menon 2:28

Just to kind of, uh, double click on the actual explosion and what the result was, is that the ash that gets, you know, generated when a volcano erupts, lava Flows out, and then there is ae like big, big, big clouds of ash that rise up and this goes up to. Now 45,000 feet. Just to give you an example, the average airline or the aircraft that you go from, you know, Bangalore to Bombay or Bombay, Delhi, or wherever it's, it goes to a maximum of 30, but this ash plume has gone 45000 feet.

Debkanya 3:17

Some private aircraft will go up to 40,000 feet. 40, 42,000 feet as well, by the way. But that's just very few, few types of aircraft, right? Like a helicopter, just to give you an idea. Helicopters at around maximum of 5,000 feet. Okay. So, you know, whenever you've looked up and you've seen a helicopter, it's usually between a thousand to 5,000 feet. So just, can you imagine how high this one was?

Kiran Menon 3:38

Yeah, and, and this eruption lasted hours, several hours,

Debkanya 3:42

Hmm.

Kiran Menon 3:43

and luckily though it was in a very, very remote location. So not too many people, you know, um, obviously with these ash clouds, there's ash that's gonna spread far and wide. It's so far and wide the impact that, uh, they're resuming. It's actually gonna hit. India, the ash clouds are gonna flow through the air, through the atmosphere and come all the way to India. In fact, it's already been in the Arabian peninsula, so countries like Oman and some of the other countries, it's already impacted. And what's interesting is when this plume or the as clouds, when they move, what happens is volcanic ash and it has gases in it as well. Most notably, it's sulfur dioxide, right? So when it reaches those high altitudes, the same altitudes that your airplanes are in sulfur dioxide can be very disastrous for an airplane. It can go into the engine systems, it can burn the engine system. So. Of airlines reroute the entire sort of, uh, path. They don't go past these clouds anymore. So a lot of airlines have actually moved away from the Middle East, have moved away from North India and changed their entire course and direction

Debkanya 4:57

them

Kiran Menon 4:58

because of this. Yeah. Many of them have canceled. Yeah.

Debkanya 5:00

Akasa, Air India. They all canceled flights. In fact, just as a precaution, right, to make sure nothing

Kiran Menon 5:06

Correct.

Debkanya 5:06

go wrong.

Kiran Menon 5:07

Correct, exactly. And also these ash clouds then, you know, spread ash. Even though this volcano was far away from big civilization or big towns or whatever it may be, um, it actually will still spread all that ash into, you know, different regions, far off regions. So even within Ethiopia, you would actually have the ground covered with ash. And so even if you had livestock. And all of them who are.

Debkanya 5:42

Whenever they got their food is all covered with ash. So that's really going to be bad for ..Ethiopia is anywhere a country that struggles with food? Uh, it is a very poor country, unfortunately, so it struggles. It's a very dry added area, so, which means it's, it struggles to grow its own food as well. So there you have it. So animal health, the health of the people in the, you know, in the neighborhood, uh, everything is gonna be affected pretty badly.

Kiran Menon 6:07

And, and the, the weird thing is no one actually knew this was gonna happen. And the reason is, yeah, so usually there are early warning systems, but this is so far away and so remote that this, uh, Hayli Gubbi uh, volcano. It's so far away and so remote that no one really paid too much attention to it and they weren't monitoring it 24 7. You know, like some of the volcanoes in Japan. Hawaii, which are all very, very active. This has been dormant for 12,000 years, 12,000 years since the last ice age, right? And so no one was really kind of, uh, monitoring it. Scientists had seen some activity through satellite images, had seen some volcanic, uh, rivers flowing and lava flows happening through satellite images. But, um, they didn't really assume that there was gonna be such a massive eruption. Right? And, and, um. No one predicted this volcanic eruption.

Debkanya 7:06

So now we are going to go into what actually happened, so for that we have to understand how the earth is made, right? The earth's crust is built up of something called tectonic plates. Now, what are tectonic plates? They're basically multiple, uh, pieces of a puzzle that are all attached to each other, they form the crust of the earth. This is part of the mantle. Now, I'm sure you might have done this in school, the different layers of the earth. So this is part of the outer layer of the earth.

Kiran Menon 7:31

The way I kind of, uh, explain it or think about it is think about a bed you are sleeping between your mother and your father who both have their individual blankets and they're one over the other, and then it gets pushed and pulled. Right? So it's, yeah,

Debkanya 7:45

Yeah.

Kiran Menon 7:46

same thing.

Debkanya 7:47

That's a great way to describe what tectonic plates are. So, yeah, that's the thing, the thing about tectonic plates is they keep moving. Even though it's like a puzzle piece that this, these layers keep moving. They keep grinding against each other. So now usually what happens when these tectonic plates are, uh, moving, if two of them come together very close, they tend to buckle and fold like the blankets would do if you push them together. What would happen? You would have a little mound, right, or you would have a little mountain that would form, and that's exactly what happens. That's how mountains are built when plates push into each other. Earthquakes happen when these plates are grinding past each other. Now remember, these plates are actually floating on this semi-solid layer of really, really hot rock. Really hot boiling rock. That's what they're moving on, right? And when they're grinding past each other, all this energy that is created, if you know, you know, this is almost like friction. If you've learned about friction, if you rub your hands together, happens? You create heat.

Kiran Menon 8:43

It gets, yeah, it gets hot. Yeah.

Debkanya 8:45

Yeah. Yeah. So you're creating lots of friction. So then earthquakes happen. Now the other thing that happens with tectonic plates is when they move apart, that's what happened here in Ethiopia, right?

Kiran Menon 8:56

So generally these tectonic plates are constantly moving closer and further away. You know what's really interesting is, uh, I don't know how many of us, uh, know this, but there weren't continents at one point of time. On Earth was all one big piece. And then these tectonic plates, these, oh, you tell me. Are you researching very, very quickly?

Debkanya 9:22

was called, it was called Pangea. I know this because my, uh, daughter did this in school. I was confirming it, but I do know the answer. It was the Super continent, which was called Pangea.

Kiran Menon 9:31

Correct. Correct. And so as the tectonic plates kind of shifted, they all broke away and became the continents that we have today. You know, Asia and Africa and Europe and so on and so forth. And actually these continents are named because of the tectonic plates that they're on. And, and that's how actually we kind of understand where continents are and, and, uh, that's how Asia is actually connected to Europe, but it's still too different. They're on two different kind of, uh, plates as well, right? So this sits on the East African Rift system,

Debkanya 10:12

Okay. That's the name of the tectonic plate. Is it?

Kiran Menon 10:15

No, it's called the Rift System because there is a rift over there, and this is a zone where the earth's crust is slowly being pulled away from each other. So it's actually tearing, if you think about it, it is actually tearing and it has these kind of, um, you know, think about it, your two blankets, your dad's and your mom's blanket starts moving away. Suddenly in the middle, there's a gaping hole. And you. You are cold.

Debkanya 10:42

is.

Kiran Menon 10:44

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And so you talked about this hot mantle and the lava that's there. Suddenly when these plates move away, this lava comes out. And that's exactly what happened at Hayli Gubbi this this time. So think about it. Yeah. Blankets are very important, very important to. And so in this area of the earth, it's actually being pulled away and that's really, really what caused this erupt..

Debkanya 11:14

Interesting. But the good thing is nobody died in this, but we'll have to see now what the repercussions of the ash is going to be. Now the ash is really bad. Um, I mean, we are already experiencing it in India, right? The air quality that we have is really poor. So imagine for them they have actual ash that they have to breathe in. Everything is covered with this, so we have to see how that's going to affect the people here.

Kiran Menon 11:37

This brings us to the most, talked about the most anticipated. Each episode and what is that? Debbie?

Debkanya 11:48

It is quiz time. That's right. It's time for the Takaro quiz for this episode, this week's episode. The question we are asking is, what is India's only active volcano called? No options for this one. Look it

Kiran Menon 12:04

Ooh.

Debkanya 12:05

you know, a fun fact here. India has around seven to eight volcanoes. Okay.

Kiran Menon 12:10

Wow. That's cool. Yeah. What? Where are they?

Debkanya 12:14

Well, they're all over the place, but I'm not going to give that answer at all because you know, that's then one of them will be the hint to today's episode's

Kiran Menon 12:22

Apart from that.

Debkanya 12:25

Good thing is I have it open right in front of me, and I will tell you. Have something called Narcondam Island which is a dormant volcano. There are, uh, some hills in Gujarat, which are also uh, extinct volcanoes. Extinct volcanoes means they are properly dead. have dormant, you have active, dormant means sleeping. Active means it can erupt any time. And you have extinct volcanoes. Volcanoes that, you know, scientists have said are not going to

Kiran Menon 12:52

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 12:52

left in there. So we have a few extinct ones, which are in Gujarat and Haryana They have something called mud volcanoes as well. Uh, these are also somewhere in the, and demands, and they only give out gas. They don't give out lava. Right. That's super interesting. Right. So anyway,

Kiran Menon 13:06

Yeah.

Debkanya 13:07

types of volcanoes, but tell

Kiran Menon 13:09

Actually I know if you remember, but we did this episode, volcano

Debkanya 13:15

Yes, I do.

Kiran Menon 13:16

Bali. Volcano. Um, but you could still go into the mouth of the volcano and trek in and there would be these holes through which there was this sulfur coming out and heat coming out. It's amazing. And sulfur, you know, this is, uh, actually what we'll explain why it's so dangerous for airplanes in that volcano. You could bring a match stick. Just keep it over the, uh, hole, which, where sulfur is coming out, keep a match stake and it'll just burn

Debkanya 13:56

Wow.

Kiran Menon 13:57

Just magically. Yeah. You could bring anything and it'll actually burn because that sulfur is, you know, so potent

Debkanya 14:04

flammable

Kiran Menon 14:05

which is why it's so tough for airlines to kind of fly through ash clouds and so dangerous actually.

Debkanya 14:12

Super interesting. Yeah. So that's your quiz question.

Kiran Menon 14:15

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 14:16

tell us, look it up. What is India's only active volcano? Uh, the winner, the lucky winner, because it's not just about the correct answer. The correct answer is important, but it's not important whether you send it right away, whether you send it, uh, next Thursday, we will give you time. You have time and we'll pick one lucky winner with the correct answer. Who will win a Takaro kids t-shirt and a gift voucher.

Kiran Menon 14:42

And talking about quiz questions. Last week's quiz question was, where was the highest ever AQI recorded in the world? I mean, we know Dehi is bordering between 3 50, 400, and that was what we were talking about, but where was it? Where was the highest ever recorded?

Debkanya 15:02

Worst air quality index ever recorded. We'd given you options. There was Beijing, which is in China. We had said Delhi in India. We had said Lahore in Pakistan and Aaba in Ethiopia. Funnily enough, I mean, we had no idea this war volcano was going, going to erupt in in, uh, its Ethiopia.

Kiran Menon 15:20

Predicted we predicted it and knew we next.

Debkanya 15:24

knew that their AQI was going to be really bad. That's, I wonder if we can make some money out of this Kiran. But yes. Uh, but the correct answer that we were looking for is Pakistan Lahore And turns out actually there was Multan uh, which actually had the highest but la it was Multan Between and Lahore Both are places in Pakistan that have recorded the highest ever a QI. We are talking about 1900 to 2000 QI. I mean, I don't even know if machines can go and read that much that high.

Kiran Menon 16:03

That's, that's crazy. So who was the lucky winner?

Debkanya 16:08

The lucky winner for last week's episode is Sarah. Sarah is eight years old, and she's from Pune. Congratulations Sarah! You win a Takaro t-shirt a gift voucher, which is going to be on its way to you very, very soon.

Kiran Menon 16:25

Amazing. Congrats Sarah, and we will expect your answers for this week's quiz question. Takarokids.com or you could potentially send it over on Instagram as well. Make sure you send it. No timelines. Doesn't matter how many times you've sent it before. Send us the answer and until next week it, bye.

Debkanya 16:47

Bye.