Hayli Gubbi volcano eruption; Ethiopia's Afar region (Nov 2025)

[Astronuc]

"The Hayli Gubbi volcano, located in Ethiopia's Afar region about 500 miles northeast of Addis Ababa near the Eritrean border, erupted on Sunday for several hours." The "volcano in Ethiopia's northeastern region erupted for the first time in nearly 12,000 years, sending thick plumes of smoke up to nine miles into the sky, the Toulouse Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC) said."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/volcano-erupts-first-time-12-170053984.html

https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=221091

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayli_Gubbi

AP


So what caused the Hayli Gubbi volcano to erupt after nearly 12K years of dormancy? What are the implications for the region?

 

[nsaspook]

 

[Baluncore]

Hayli Gubbi is a minor player on a triple-plate boundary, in the Afar Depression, so activity will be associated with cyclic stress reduction. There are many other occasional players in that field.

It will be interesting to see what effect it has on the complex regional politics, when those in power, are disempowered by something bigger than all of them.

 

[Astronuc]

https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=221091

According to the Smithsonian site,

According to the UK Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes Volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET) response reports, explosive activity at Erta Ale (12 km NW) on 15 July was accompanied by an intrusion of magma along a dike that propagated SE towards Hayli Gubbi. Sentinel satellite imagery on 16 July showed a line of fissure vents that produced lava flows outside the S caldera of Erta Ale (6 km S of the northern pit craters). Another group of four fissure vents opened further along the rift to the SE, with the most distant only 2 km from the Hayli Gubbi crater. No lava lakes were seen in the pit craters after 18 July, but satellite data indicated uplift in the region during 21 July-3 August, and an anomalous white cloud within Hayli Gubbi’s crater was observed on 25 July. Satellite data showed that the white plume covered the crater floor in most of the images (several per month) at least through 18 November.

Some other Youtube videos have shown lava founatins, but I don't know if that is for show, or it is actually one of the fissure vents on Hayli Gubbi.