Silicic

Lava

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Viscosity

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Basalt

Geochemistry

Magma

Crust

Petrology

Thermodynamics

Nature Communications

The viscosity of magma exerts control on all aspects of its migration through the crust to eruption. This was particularly true for the 2021 eruption of Cumbre Vieja (La Palma), which produced exceptionally fast and fluid lava at high discharge rates. We have performed concentric cylinder experiments to determine the effective viscosities of the Cumbre Vieja magma, while accounting for its chemistry, crystallinity, and temperature. Here we show that this event produced a nepheline-normative basanite with the lowest viscosity of historical basaltic eruptions, exhibiting values of less than 10 to about 160 Pa s within eruption temperatures of ~1200 to ~1150 °C. The magma’s low viscosity was responsible for many eruptive phenomena that lead to particularly impactful events, including high-Reynolds number turbulent flow and supercritical states. Increases in viscosity due to crystallization-induced melt differentiation were subdued in this eruption, due in part to subtle degrees of silica enrichment in alkaline magma. The rheological properties of the 2021 Cumbre Vieja magma on La Palma, Canary Islands is investigated. The study indicates that this eruption was fueled by magma having among the lowest viscosities observed for mafic systems, and consequently produced lavas that were flowing in the supercritical and possibly turbulent regime.

Eruption of ultralow-viscosity basanite magma at Cumbre Vieja, La Palma, Canary Islands