Cumbre Vieja Tsunami

La Palma is a volcanic ocean island. It is currently the most volcanically active of the Canary Isles.

Cumbre Vieja Volcano

Future threat

  Scienttist hypothesize that during a future unascertained eruption, the western half of the Cumbre Vieja - approximately 500 km3 (5 x 1011 m3) with an estimated mass 1.5 x 1015 kg, will catastrophically fail in a massive gravitational landslide and enter the Atlantic Ocean generating a so called "mega-tsunami." The debris will continue to travel - as a debris flow, along the ocean floor. Computer modelling indicates that the resulting initial wave may attain a local amplitude (height) in excess of 600 metres (1,969 ft) and an initial peak to peak height that approximates to 2 kilometres (1 mi), and travel at about 1,000 kilometres per hour (621 mph) (approximately the speed of a jet aircraft), inundating the African coast in about 1 hour, the southern coast of England in about 3.5 hours, and the eastern seaboard of North America in about 6 hours