Mount Michael

Mount Michael
Mount Michael
	Saunders Island
Highest point
Elevation	843 m (2,766 ft)
Prominence	843 m (2,766 ft)
Coordinates	57°48′13″S 26°28′52″W / 57.80361°S 26.48111°W
Geography
Location	Saunders Island, South Sandwich Islands
Geology
Mountain type	Stratovolcano
Last eruption	2023

Mount Michael is an active volcano with a height of 843 m. It is located on Saunders Island in the South Sandwich Islands, a British Overseas Territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean. It is one of the few volcanoes in an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. The volcano was discovered by a British expedition under James Cook in 1775, but was presumably first charted in 1820 by a Russian expedition under Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen. It was recharted in 1930 by DI personnel under Commander W.M. Carey of the Royal Navy, who was captain of the Discovery II at the time of the survey.

Persistent lava lake

In 2019, it was discovered that Mount Michael had a persistent lava lake, a rare phenomenon which is known to occur at only eight volcanoes in the world.^[1]^[2] In November 2022, an expedition from University College London led by geologist Emma Nicholson reached the summit of the volcano and was able to confirm the existence of the lava lake.^[3]

References

^ Robin George Andrews (12 July 2019). "A Burning Lava Lake Concealed by a Volcano's Glacial Ice". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 July 2019. The area is often cloudy, and a seemingly constant volcanic plume conceals the lake most of the time. Fortunately, the team collected enough shots of the lake from 2003 to 2018 that clearly showed a crater floor containing a superheated lake 295 to 705 feet across. The lava is also 1,812 to 2,334 degrees Fahrenheit, with the higher end of that range about as hot as lava on Earth seems to get.
^ "Remote Mount Michael volcano hosts persistent lava lake". BBC News. BBC News. 3 July 2019. Retrieved 3 July 2019.
^ "UCL leads first expedition to remote island's lava lake". UCL News. UCL. 23 March 2023. Retrieved 28 December 2023.