A Major Eruption is Ongoing; Titan Ridge Volcano Update

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]The largest explosive eruption of 2026 so far  is actively ongoing and is now in its 17th day, just not in a location one would expect. To  view it, all you need to do is head to Papua New Guinea on satellite imagery and look away  from landmasses and regional islands, zooming in to these coordinates in the central Bismarck  Sea. There, the recently named Titan Ridge Volcano is producing a major submarine eruption  from great depths of 550 meters or 1,804 feet below sea level, creating vast patches of water  discoloration visible on the ocean surface and widespread pumice rafts. Despite its depth, the  eruption is energetic enough to not only cause an eruption plume to rise all the way to the surface,  overcoming vast atmospheric pressure, but also then rise up to 28,000 feet or 8,534 meters above  sea level. Speaking of this pumice that has been generated, while this is by no means an official  advisory, from low resolution satellite imagery as of May 24th 2026, I noted quantities of floating  pumice confined to at a minimum this 25,000 square kilometer patch of ocean, where it poses a  potential hazard to all shipping traffic and boats with some form of engine. While these pumice  rafts, which I estimate solidly cover about an area of 195 square kilometers or 75.3 square miles  could be as much as 16.4 feet or 5 meters thick of floating volcanic rocks, they could also be as  little as 3.9 inches or 10 centimeters thick.

[00:01:39]Regardless, a truly immense amount of pumice  has been erupted, which most likely ranges in the 19.5 million to 195 million cubic meter volume  range. While the plume height generated from the two erupting vents spaced about 2500 meters apart  has been variable, any time the resulting eruption plume rises above 20,000 feet altitude, greater  volumes of pumice are seemingly emplaced around the volcano than on days with lower eruption  plumes. The aforementioned vents originate on a southwest to northeast trending submarine ridge  which itself rises 500 meters above the ocean floor, and a dike of underlying magma is almost  certainly involved beneath the ocean floor to have a pair of vents perfectly follow the orientation  of the submarine ridge. This regardless is almost certainly building large masses of lava and pumice  around the two vents, creating cones that have risen closer to the surface. However, despite  what some of speculated, in my opinion there is zero chance for this eruption to create an island  anytime soon. The water here is simply too deep, and no submarine volcano has ever risen more  than a thousand feet during a singular explosive eruption. I mean, there is one example where a  submarine eruption created a nearly 2,700 foot tall mountain that didn't exist beforehand,  but that 13 month long eruption far off the eastern coast of Mayotte was purely effusive and  truly abnormal. So, I do expect the seafloor to suddenly be 50 to 100 meters shallower in some  spots, but that's a far cry from creating a brand new volcanic island. Sorry to disappoint. And now some purely opinion based analysis which will be noted as opinion when this  yellow square is present on screen.

[00:03:30]The good news is that despite many worries from  locals that the Titan Ridge Volcano will cause a carbon copy of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai  eruption in 2022, there's no chance of this.

[00:03:42]Hunga Tonga had a history of very large explosive  eruptions recently spaced 1,000 years apart, alongside a massive caldera that marked where it  had previously subsided. The Titan Ridge Volcano does not contain any calderas, and in fact shares  many features that you might expect to find in a volcanic field on land where many vents are  spaced apart from one another rather than most eruptions originating from a singular peak. The  only reason that the Rabaul Volcano Observatory noted a theoretical chance for small tsunamis  is simply a case of "we don't know what the ocean floor currently looks like, we don't know  how much material has been added down there, and we don't know if that material is highly  unstable but it theoretically could be. Thus, if parts of this slid off the submarine ridge in  an underwater landslide, it could displace enough water to generate a localized tsunami. However,  that is highly unlikely in my opinion, just technically possible. That is the end of my purely  opinion section, so let's move back to some facts.

[00:04:51]It does appear that the intensity of the eruption  has declined since May 21st, and one marker of this are the various volcano-tectonic earthquakes  that have struck leading up to and during the eruption. As, these have notably decreased in  the last week. While normally the section of sea floor the eruption is occurring from  would be undergoing some form extension, meaning you would expect normal fault earthquakes,  the volume of magma which intruded below the ocean floor has seemingly temporarily reversed  this motion, creating compression and compressional reverse fault earthquakes.  But, since less of these are now occurring, it suggests a decreasing magma supply. Stay tuned  for more updates. As a final note, I would like to thank this channel's patrons on Patreon and  channel members on YouTube for supporting my work.