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What is VEI?

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1sticky What is VEI? August 30th 2014, 9:11 am

Grim

Grim
Founder
Founder

Some have heard of this other have not but put simply the VEI is a scale that measures the explosive power of a volcano which is determined by the amount of material that a volcano can eject when erupting.  

The scale itself ranges from 0 to 8 and is logarithmic above 2. What logarithmic means is that each number above 2 is 10 times greater than the one before.  So a VEI of 2.0 will eject 1,000,000 m³ but a VEI of 3.0 will eject  10,000,000 m³  However, a VEI of 0 is less than 10,000 and a VEI of 1 is 10,000. Sounds a little confusing at first but this allows for a scale of 0 to 8 with 8 being so massive that it would be considered an extinction level event.

VEI Chart

VEIVolume EjectedDescription
0< 10,000 m³Effusive
1> 10,000 m³Gentle
2>1,000,000 m³Explosive
3> 10,000,000 m³Catastrophic
4> 0.1 km³Cataclysmic
5> 1 km³Paroxysmic
6> 10 km³Colossal
7> 100 km³Mega-colossal
8> 1000 km³Apocalyptic

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