Credit: Robert Falcon Scott/ Wikimedia, Public Domain “This is the first great image of one,” said geophysicist Phil Wannamaker at the University of Utah, who participated in the work.Įrebus has long been familiar to polar explorers-this photo was taken by Robert Falcon Scott on his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. “If we can also get an idea of where the magmatic system is, you can better understand the monitoring data when these systems enter periods of unrest,” said lead scientist and geophysicist Graham Hill at the Institute of Geophysics at the Czech Academy of Sciences. This dryness allows magma to travel much closer to the surface than water (H 2O)-rich volcanoes that stall out at about 5 kilometers below the surface.ĬO 2-rich volcanic systems are less well understood than the more common H 2O-rich arc volcanoes. Instead, it’s rich in carbon dioxide (CO 2). Unlike arc volcanoes such as the Cascades in western North America, Erebus has very little water in its magma. Now, research has revealed the plumbing underneath Mount Erebus that keeps the lake full.ĭata taken by measuring natural electromagnetic waves traveling through Earth revealed the volcano’s magmatic system brings lava much closer to the surface than subduction arc volcanoes. The lake occasionally blasts out lava bombs from the summit crater of Mount Erebus, 3,794 meters high. One of Antarctica’s only active volcanoes is home to one of the few long-lasting lava lakes on Earth.