Weekly Viz 2022-01-17

Volcanic Eruptions by Death Toll

The Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano erupted last week. The eruption was remarkable in that it involved the simultaneous formation of a volcanic ash plume, an atmospheric shock wave and a series of tsunami waves (read more details here). While hoping for the best for the people there and anyone threatened by the tsunami alert, this week I decided to look at the volcanic eruptions in the history. I found this list of volcanic eruptions by death toll on Wikipedia, and plot it on the map.

My Visualization

This week’s viz is pretty simple with eruptions plotting on the world map, sizing indicating the death toll. Hover on the map, you can find more info about the eruptions.

Please notice that all the visualizations are designed for desktop view, so it is recommended to view them on a desktop device.

Dashboard link

Insights

• The worst vocalnoic eruption measuring by human death toll is the Mount Tembora eruption in 1815 – it caused 71k to 250k deaths, and ‘Year without a Summer’ – Volcanic eruption is disastrous not only because of the immediate disaster caused by earthquake, lava, and tsunami, etc, but its potentially lasting impact on the earth’s environment;
• On the map, you can see most volcanos located along the continent coast or on ocean islands (as many islands themselves are built by volcano eruptions), therefore countries like Japan, Indonesia, and Philippines etc. have seen most volcanic eruptions in the history.

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