What happened during the Mount Pinatubo eruption?

The world’s largest volcanic eruption to happen in the past 100 years was the June 15, 1991, eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. Bursts of gas-charged magma exploded into umbrella ash clouds, hot flows of gas and ash descended the volcano’s flanks and lahars swept down valleys.

What did Mount Pinatubo do?

The second-largest volcanic eruption of this century, and by far the largest eruption to affect a densely populated area, occurred at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines on June 15, 1991. The eruption produced high-speed avalanches of hot ash and gas, giant mudflows, and a cloud of volcanic ash hundreds of miles across.

What are the important facts about the Mount Pinatubo eruption?

The Pinatubo eruption on 15 June 1991 was the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. Pinatubo is a complex of lava domes located 100 km NW of Manila city, Luzon Island, Philippines. Prior to the eruption, Pinatubo was a little known volcano and it had been dormant for 400 years.

How did Mount Pinatubo form?

It is a subduction-related volcano, formed by the Eurasian Plate sliding under the Philippine Mobile Belt along the Manila Trench to the west. Molten material related to the complex tectonics associated with the subducting slab, rises through the lithosphere and generates the volcanism typical of subduction.

What type of eruption was Pinatubo?

Pinatubo is a stratovolcano in the Philippines. June 15, 1991, it erupted, resulting in the second-largest eruption of the 20^th century. The ash plume height reaching more than 40 km (28 mi) high and ejecting more than 10 km³ of magma, classifying it as plinian/ultra plinian eruption style and VEI 6 in eruption size.