Plinian eruption

The Plinian eruptions as part of the volcanic events are extremely explosive eruptions that are associated with massive ash cases. They owe their name to the eyewitness and chronicler Pliny the Younger, who described the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD, in two letters to the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus. His uncle Pliny the Elder was killed in this outbreak.

Within a few hours can ascend a few cubic kilometers of magma while the volcanic vents. The tremendous pressure and vehemently escaping gases push old remnants of the clot up, tear glowing lava and rocks from the crater wall. The material stream is racing at a speed up to several hundred meters per second up in the chimney and forms above the crater an eruption column, which reaches into the stratosphere. Oust the dust and ash cloud collapses, it forms the starting point of a pyroclastic flow. To the remaining caldera called Caldera.

There are both the so -called super volcanoes, flat volcanoes over giant magma chambers such as the Yellowstone volcano, as well as the gray volcanoes, also known as composite volcanoes, which belong to this outbreak type and form, among others, the Pacific Ring of Fire.

The Mount St. Helens in America is just as much about this type of outbreak like Vesuvius in Italy and the Laacher See in the volcanic Eifel.