A mud volcano has roared to life in entrance of a temple in Taiwan, with mesmerizing movies capturing the moments mud shot out of the bottom beneath a crown of fireplace.
The Wandan mud volcano, situated within the Wandan Township of southern Taiwan, spat effervescent mud out of 4 separate vents on Thursday (June 26) as ejected materials reached a top of 6.6 ft (2 meters), Formosa Tv (FTV) Information reported.
Footage from the roughly 10-hour-long eruption exhibits flames igniting above the effervescent mud. Nevertheless, whereas mud volcanoes can ignite naturally, the Wandan flames had been intentionally set by native individuals to burn off ejected methane, a greenhouse fuel that contributes to local weather change, in accordance with Reddit posts by Mark Tingay, an adjunct affiliate professor of geology and geophysics on the College of Adelaide in Australia.
“Native of us ignite these vents by throwing burning rags into them,” Tingay wrote in response to 1 Reddit person asking in regards to the flames. “They do it principally to flare off the gases, however partly as a result of it seems to be superior!”
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Mud volcanoes often do not have something to do with common volcanoes, which eject molten rock and sizzling gases. Some mud volcanoes are linked to sizzling geothermal exercise, like these in Yellowstone Nationwide Park. Nevertheless, Wandan’s mud volcano is the extra widespread sort of this geological function.
“These mud volcanoes in Taiwan are pushed by excessive fluid pressures that may type deep underground, reasonably than by magmatic affect,” Tingay wrote in one other Reddit remark.
The Wandan mud volcano in southern Taiwan erupted once more at this time.The eruption lasted from ~5am to ~3:40pm. That is its tenth eruption within the final 3 years, most just lately the sixth July 2024.Video courtesy of my good friend 張寶惠, the mud volcano temple caretaker.Greatest with sound on! pic.twitter.com/KBb1i206xDJune 26, 2025
Tingay research mud volcanoes and repeatedly shares details about eruptions on social media. In his newest posts, he described the Wandan occasion alongside a video taken by 張寶惠, the mud volcano temple’s caretaker. 張寶惠 additionally shared movies on Fb, exhibiting the mud volcano violently erupting from totally different angles.
The newest eruption started at round 5 a.m. native time and continued till round 3.40 p.m. That is the tenth time the Wandan mud volcano has erupted throughout the final three years, in accordance with Tingay’s posts.
Wandan’s mud volcano is not in a single mounted location, however can erupt over a 0.6-mile-wide (1 kilometer) space, in accordance with Tingay. In earlier years, the volcano has erupted beneath the temple, with mud capturing up the skin wall and flowing inside, masking the ground.
Mud volcanoes fluctuate in measurement and form, and in some instances, type large cone-like constructions very comparable in look to common volcanoes. They’ll naturally produce flames when erupting rocks strike in opposition to one another, making a spark that ignites ejected flammable gases. Researchers imagine that is what produced a towering inferno above a mud volcano within the Caspian Sea in 2021, Reside Science beforehand reported.
