India’s only active volcano located in the remotest Barren Island in Andaman has begun spewing smoke and lava again. A team of scientists led by Dr Abhay V Mudholkar from National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, reported that the volcano is active.
The Barren Island volcano, located 140-km north-east of Port Blair, dormant for more than 150 years, started erupting in 1991 and has since then shown intermittent activity.
Barren Island is an island located in the Andaman Sea. It is the only confirmed active volcano in South Asia. Along with the rest of the Andaman Islands, it is a part of the Indian Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and lies about 138 km (86 mi) northeast of the territory’s capital, Port Blair.
The first recorded eruption of the volcano dates back to 1787. Since then, the volcano has erupted more than ten times, with the most recent one being in February 2017.
After the first recorded eruption in 1787, further eruptions were recorded in 1789, 1795, 1803–04, and 1852. After nearly one and half century of dormancy, the island had another eruption in 1991 that lasted six months and caused considerable damage.
There were eruptions in 1994–95 and 2005–07, the latter considered to be linked to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.[7] Based on Ar-Ar dating of samples from Barren Island it is now established that the oldest subaerial lava flows of the volcano is 1.6 million year old and the volcano is located on an oceanic crust which is ~106 million year old