Qualla: Krakatoa

Krakatoa: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lip Kee from Singapore, Republic of Singapore, CC BY-SA 2.0. The explosion was heard nearly 5,000 kilometers away. On the morning of August 27, 1883, the volcanic island of Krakatoa -- sitting in the narrow strait between Java and Sumatra -- detonated with a force equivalent to 200 megatons of TNT, roughly 13,000 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The shockwave circled the Earth four times. Global temperatures dropped. Sunsets turned blood-red from London to New York. In Norway, the eerie skies may have inspired Edvard Munch's 1893 painting The Scream. And on the coasts of Java and Sumatra, at least 36,417 people died, most of them drowned by tsunamis that followed the blast.

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Image: Lip Kee from Singapore, Republic of Singapore | CC BY-SA 2.0

Krakatoa: The Island Before the Fire

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr. W.G.N. (Wicher Gosen Nicolaas) van der Sleen (Fotograaf/photographer)., CC BY-SA 3.0. For centuries, Krakatoa was a lush volcanic island, nine kilometers long and five wide, rising from the Sunda Strait at the precise point where the Eurasian and Indo-Australian tectonic plates grind against each other. Three volcanic cones crowned the island: Rakata at 820 meters...

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Image: Dr. W.G.N. (Wicher Gosen Nicolaas) van der Sleen (Fotograaf/photographer). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Krakatoa: August 27, 1883

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lithograph: Parker & Coward, Britain;, Public domain. Seismic unrest had been building for years, and smaller eruptions began on May 20, 1883, sending steam and ash into the sky for months. Then came the morning of August 27. Four colossal explosions tore the island apart, ejecting approximately six cubic miles of rock into the atmo...

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Image: Lithograph: Parker & Coward, Britain; | Public domain

Krakatoa: The Child Rises

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit flydime, CC BY 2.0. Geologist Rogier Verbeek, who had surveyed the islands just three years before the eruption, predicted that new volcanic activity would emerge between the sites of the destroyed Perboewatan and Danan cones. He was right. In December 1927, a submarine lava dome broke the surface o...

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Image: flydime | CC BY 2.0

Krakatoa: Life from Ashes

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr. W.G.N. (Wicher Gosen Nicolaas) van der Sleen (Fotograaf/photographer)., CC BY-SA 3.0. When researchers first reached the devastated islands in May 1884, they found exactly one living creature: a spider, tucked into a crevice on the southern face of Rakata. By October of that year, grass shoots were already pushing through the ash. Krakatoa became one of the most s...

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Image: Dr. W.G.N. (Wicher Gosen Nicolaas) van der Sleen (Fotograaf/photographer). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Krakatoa: A Restless Strait

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PameMV, CC BY-SA 3.0. Indonesia straddles more than 130 active volcanoes -- more than any other nation -- strung along the subduction zone where oceanic crust dives beneath the archipelago. Krakatoa sits at a particularly unstable point, where the island arc bends sharply and the crust may be unusuall...

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Image: PameMV | CC BY-SA 3.0