Exploding lakes in Vanuatu- “Surtseyan-style ” eruptions witnessed on Ambae Island

After a long silence, Lake Vui on Ambae Island burst into spectacular life on the 28th of November 2005, disrupting the lives of 10 000 inhabitants on this sleepy tropical island in the SW Pacific. “Surtseyan- style ” explosions burst through the Island’s summit lake waters forming a new tuff-cone and threatening to form deadly lahars or volcanic floods. Such eruptions are rarely well observed, and these fleeting opportunities provide a chance to match volcanic processes with rock-sequences found commonly in the geologic record… Fire and water… When magma rises and erupts in dry environments, its explosive fragmentation is driven by the exolution and expansion of gases that were trapped within it under high pressures at depth. However, in wet environments, magma is dominantly fragmented through a conversion of thermal energy to mechanical energy when the>1000 oC magma meets water. This contact leads to a chain-reaction process often referred to as molten-fuel-coolant-interaction (MFCI) (Zimanowski, et al., 1991; Zimanowski, et al., 1997; Zimanowski, 1998). The MFCI process leads no