Mount Michael
{{Short description|Active stratovolcano in the South Sandwich Islands}}
{{About||the mountain in West Virginia|Michael Mountain|the local-level government area in Papua New Guinea|Mount Michael Rural LLG}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox mountain
| name = Mount Michael
| photo = Saunders Island ASTER.jpg
| photo_caption = Saunders Island
| elevation_m = 843
| elevation_ref =
| prominence_m = 843
| listing =
| location = Saunders Island, South Sandwich Islands
| coordinates = {{coord|57|48|13|S|26|28|52|W|display=inline,title}}
| map =
| type = Stratovolcano
| age =
| last_eruption = 2023
}}
Mount Michael is an active volcano with a height of 843 m. It is located on Saunders Island in the South Sandwich Islands, a British Overseas Territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean. It is one of the few volcanoes in an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. The volcano was discovered by a British expedition under James Cook in 1775, but was presumably first charted in 1820 by a Russian expedition under Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen. It was recharted in 1930 by DI personnel under Commander W.M. Carey of the Royal Navy, who was captain of the Discovery II at the time of the survey.
Persistent lava lake
In 2019, it was discovered that Mount Michael had a persistent lava lake, a rare phenomenon which is known to occur at only eight volcanoes in the world.{{cite news |title=Remote Mount Michael volcano hosts persistent lava lake |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48852670 |website=BBC News |date=3 July 2019 |publisher=BBC News |accessdate=3 July 2019}} In November 2022, an expedition from University College London led by geologist Emma Nicholson reached the summit of the volcano and was able to confirm the existence of the lava lake.{{Cite web |url=https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/mar/feature-ucl-leads-first-expedition-remote-islands-lava-lake |title=UCL leads first expedition to remote island's lava lake |date=2023-03-23 |access-date=2023-12-28 |website=UCL News |publisher=UCL}}
References
{{Reflist|refs=
{{cite news
| url = https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/science/lava-lake-volcano-antarctica.html
| title = A Burning Lava Lake Concealed by a Volcano's Glacial Ice
| work = The New York Times
| author = Robin George Andrews
| date = 2019-07-12
| accessdate = 2019-07-17
| quote = The area is often cloudy, and a seemingly constant volcanic plume conceals the lake most of the time. Fortunately, the team collected enough shots of the lake from 2003 to 2018 that clearly showed a crater floor containing a superheated lake 295 to 705 feet across. The lava is also 1,812 to 2,334 degrees Fahrenheit, with the higher end of that range about as hot as lava on Earth seems to get.
}}
}}
{{USGS gazetteer}}
External links
- {{cite gvp|name=Saunders|vn=390090|access-date=2021-06-25}}
{{South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands}}
{{Authority control}}
Category:Volcanoes of the Atlantic Ocean
Category:Holocene stratovolcanoes
{{SouthGeorgia-geo-stub}}