A new study, led by Robert Wright of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, based on data acquired has been looking for the hottest volcano of them all.
The answer depends on how you define ‘hottest,’ but if you ignore the steady, continuous heat produced by volcanoes and look simply at the “extra” heat produced during eruptions, then Iceland’s ongoing Holuhraun eruption has radiated the most heat for an event. At the time that the study was published, Holuhraun had radiated about one-third more thermal energy than the 2012-2013 eruption of Russia’s Tolbachik, which itself radiated about 50 percent more energy than the 2011-2012 eruption of Nyamuragira.
You can read more about the study here.
