Indonesian volcano Krakatoa

This video is called Spectacular Explosive Eruptions at Anak Krakatau (Krakatoa) Volcano, Indonesia 1st Nov. 2010.

From British daily The Independent:

The legacy of Krakatoa

This week marks the 125th anniversary of the devastating eruption of the Indonesian volcano, now an unusual tourist attraction, despite being active. Or because of it…

By Roger Maynard in Sydney

Sunday, 24 August 2008

One hundred and twenty-five years ago this Wednesday occurred the biggest bang the inhabited world has ever known. Indonesia’s Krakatoa volcano erupted. It did so with the force of 13,000 Hiroshima atom bombs, propelled a trillion cubic feet of rock, pumice and ash into the air, and made a noise loud enough to be heard 1,930 miles away in Perth. The explosions, fallout and resulting tidal wave (130 feet high in places) killed 36,417 people in Java and Sumatra, destroyed 165 villages and towns, and two-thirds of the island. Wind streams blew the fine ash as far away as New York; sea levels were raised in the English Channel, and over the following year, global temperatures were reduced by 1.2C.

Today, the remains of one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes continue to spit and bubble in the turquoise blue waters of the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. Now part of Ujung Kulon national park, it is known as Anak Krakatoa, or Krakatoa’s child, a post-collapse cone which has emerged from within the caldera of the original volcano over the past half-century and now stands about 600ft above sea level.

This Wednesday, the anniversary of the 1883 eruption, locals and tourists will remember the catastrophe when they visit Anak during the annual Krakatoa Festival – not exactly a celebration, more of a cultural memorial dedicated to one of history’s most momentous natural disasters. …

The national park it is part of, roughly the size of Bedfordshire, is home to Java’s largest remaining area of lowland rainforest, and became a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1992. It is known for its Javan one-horned rhino, the rarest large animal on Earth with only 50 left, 250 species of birds, and, possibly, the Javan tiger, although this has not been sighted since 1950. …

Myth or not, it is part of the folklore of Krakatoa, which sits astride the same faultline responsible for [the] 2004 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. Surprisingly, the volcanic eruption of l883 was not as severe as more recent seismic movements. Professor Arculus said the total amount of water displaced by the Krakatoa volcano was much less. “The problem around Krakatoa was that there was a big population living around the Sumatran and Javan shores, and because they were only a few kilometres away they copped a lot of it, but the tsunami was relatively trivial in size.”

Clouds of volcanic ash from Anak Krakatau, or child of Krakatau, have become so prominent in recent days that Indonesian authorities have issued a warning for local residents and tourists: here.