On November 29, 2020, a powerful eruption at Lewotolo volcano (also called Mount Ile Lewotolok) lofted a plume of ash and gas high into the air over Lembata, an island in Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda Islands.
Ash from the eruption is visible in this image, acquired with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite at about 10 a.m. local time (02:00 Universal Time) on November 29. The plume reached thousands of meters high, leading officials to close the local airport and issue an aviation warning for the region.
The eruption occurred amid renewed activity at Lewotolo that started on November 27. The stratovolcano has been relatively quiet since 2012.
References & Resources
- Aljazeera (2020, November 29) Indonesian volcano erupts, forcing residents to flee. Accessed December 1, 2020.
- Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program (2017) Lewotolo. Accessed December 1, 2020.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview . Caption by Kathryn Hansen .
