Top Trumps Volcanoes Card Game

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No two volcanoes are completely alike. They can vary in the size and style of their eruptions. Some eruptions can go on for days, months or even years. Some can be over in a matter of minutes. Even at the same volcano, no two eruptions are completely alike. You can find a useful description of the different kinds of eruption at volcano world. Nonetheless, some volcanoes (like Yasur) erupt in pretty much the same way each time, and some can have a much bigger variation between eruptions (like Vesuvius). In our unpredictability category, we wanted to explore this.

Santorini last erupted in a tiny eruption in 1950, from a small vent on the island of Nea Kameni, or ‘new burnt island’. The two Kameni islands are just the top of a mound of lavas and lava-domes that have extruded from the volcano over the past 3,500 years, and that now form the main centre of the volcano in the middle of the caldera. Santorini is best known for the effects of a huge explosive eruption about 3,600 years ago – known as the Minoan eruption. This devastating eruption, which is certainly one of the largest eruptions in the world from the past 10,000 years; and one of the largest eruptions in Europe of the past 40,000 years, scattered ash and pumice across millions of square kilometres, and probably led to significant economic and political disruption in the Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean.

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There is a lot of accessible information about Santorini which can be easily found on the internet. We have posted a few suggestions for further reading below. Do let us know if you find anything that is more useful or up-to-date. False-coloured image from the Space Satellite Endeavour’s 2000 mission to map the Earth’s topography. This image emphasises the steep-sided valleys created by Cotopaxi’s frequent lahars. Image Credit: NASA

This Top Cards: Endangered Animals Game is a fantastic interactive way to support your teaching on endangered animals. And, just like our volcano top trumps cards, each card comes complete with a picture and key facts.Colima, or more properly Volcán de Colima, or Volcán de Fuego, is the active vent of a large twin-peaked volcanic complex in western Mexico. Colima has been in an elevated state of activity – with pulses of lava dome growth within the summit crater, occasional lava flows spilling out of the summit crater, and frequent explosions, since the late 1990’s. These eruptions (1997-2011, 2013-17 and 2019 are interspersed with periods of relative calm.

Devastation Potential– 44. The volcano is rather less of a threat than its larger neighbour, Katla. Seeing a volcano erupt is a truly awesome sight, but there are some volcanoes you wouldn’t want to be standing too close to when they do. In fact, with some, you wouldn’t want to be standing anywhere near when they explode. So volcanologists have developed a scale that helps them measure just how explosive they are! Deadliness – 2. The May 1980 eruption had a considerable impact across the region, but the death toll (officially, 57) was relatively low, given the scale of the eruption. Unpredictability– 7. The pattern of known activity at Erebus is spectacular, but monotonous – with an occasional, but long-lived, lava lake and spectacular bubble bursts deep within the current crater.The scores on the cards are based on what we know about the past and continuing activity of Erebus. The historical record of activity is only very short: Erebus was first seen in 1841, and first climbed in 1908.

Deadliness – 679. The 1985 eruption was the deadliest in living memory, so Nevado Del Ruiz’s score reflects this tragedy Fuji (or Fujisan) is a classical stratovolcano, but its plate tectonic setting is quite complicated. It lies on the Eurasian tectonic plate, with the Philippines Sea Plate subducting to the south, and the Pacific Plate subducting to the north. One of the questions we get asked a lot is: Why didn’t we include ‘last known eruption’ as a category? That is because this was quite a difficult question to answer correctly on the cards! Some of the volcanoes we have featured are in continuous eruption so we would have had to write ‘continuous’ (and who wins Top Trumps with a ‘continuous’answer!) and if one of our volcanoes had a new eruption that would be wrong too. Some of our very violent volcanoes don’t erupt all that frequently so their last known eruption is a very long time ago, or not that accurately known.Deadliness. 0. There were no recorded deaths after the 1707 eruption, even though it spread volcanic ash across a wide area of what would today be Greater Tokyo. Eyjafjallajökull is an ice-covered volcano in southern Iceland. It was a volcano very few people had heard of before it erupted in April 2010, scattering fine ash across northern Europe and bringing air travel to a grinding halt. The volcano itself is actually called Eyjafjöll, but this is not quite such a tongue-twister for non-native speakers of Icelandic.