Three centuries after the great eruption that formed the Timanfaya lava fields on Lanzarote (1730–1736), the cooled lava continues to shrink by about 0.6 centimeters each year. This slow contraction suggests that the lava layer may ultimately be much thicker than previously thought, potentially tripling in thickness as it cools deeper below the surface.
Any visitor to Timanfaya National Park or viewers of the park’s promotional footage knows the familiar displays at the visitor center. A handful of straw buried just beneath the surface can burn, and pouring water into a pipe that descends about ten meters can trigger a steam geyser as the earth responds with heat. These phenomena illustrate how the landscape remains alive with volcanic activity long after the eruption ended.
All of these remarkable events concentrate at Islote de Hilario, the site where the park’s most intense thermal anomalies have been measured. Here, temperatures reach up to 380 degrees Celsius six meters underground, and at thirteen meters they approach twice that level, around 605 degrees. These extreme conditions reveal the persistent heat stored in the subsurface and the complex pathways by which it escapes to the surface.
In a collaborative effort published this month, seven researchers from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, the Tenerife Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology (IPNA-CSIC), and the Japan Research Center for Geography and Shell Dynamics, under the leadership of Victoria Purcell and Eoin Reddin, present new findings. The study appears in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems and focuses on the broader Timanfaya area, spanning roughly 20 square kilometers within the park. The work sheds light on how the larger crater system continues to evolve and influence the surface features seen today.
Volcanic lava in Timanfaya Park
Timanfaya’s eruption ranks among the most dramatic in recorded history. It persisted for almost six years, a saga spanning 2,055 days—from September 1, 1730, to April 16, 1736. During that time, lava covered about 200 square kilometers, roughly a quarter of the island, and the eruption expelled between two and five cubic kilometers of material through a crack roughly 15 kilometers long. The landscape surrounding the eruption now stands as a remarkable testament to volcanic activity, marked by about 30 individual volcanoes that contribute to a unique geological heritage.
When compared with the more recent La Palma eruption of 2021, which lasted 85 days, covered 11.8 square kilometers of lava, and produced a smaller volume of material, Timanfaya’s scale becomes even more striking. The Canary Islands’ historical record includes just a handful of eruptions that rival Timanfaya in magnitude, underscoring its exceptional place in volcanic history. The researchers reference historical eruptions like Laki in the 18th century and Eldgjá in the 10th century in Iceland as benchmarks for understanding this magnitude, situating Timanfaya within a global context of large fissure eruptions.
This team undertook a comprehensive review of three decades of satellite measurements tracking how the Timanfaya lavas have sat relative to sea level. The data show a gradual decline in height, a process that is essentially cooling and compaction, yielding a measurable shrinkage of about six millimeters per year. This slow subsidence has meaningful implications for interpreting the long-term behavior of lava fields and their thermal evolution, both locally and in comparable volcanic settings elsewhere.
The most visible takeaway is that lava remains incompletely cooled even after centuries. The study suggests that the maximum thickness of the Timanfaya lava layer could be between 100 and 150 meters, effectively doubling or tripling previous estimates that capped at around 60 meters. Such revisions alter how scientists model heat retention, structural stability, and the potential for future surface and subsurface responses in volcanic terrains.
lava tongue in Timanfaya park
Another important context comes from comparing Timanfaya with the Canary Islands’ other volcanic events. The recent Canary Islands eruption left lava fields with significant thickness, but even the most intense recent activity did not reach the scale observed in Timanfaya. The scientists note that this reassessment does not place Timanfaya in a league with Iceland’s most extreme events, yet it does highlight that the Canary Islands have hosted extraordinarily large eruptions that reshaped their landscapes in enduring ways.
A third implication arises from material discharge. The Timanfaya eruption likely expelled far more volcanic material than what might have been estimated previously, though it does not surpass Iceland’s historic records in sheer volume. The revised understanding of the eruption’s magnitude emphasizes the need to reevaluate how volcanic deposits are quantified in similar fissure eruptions and how those deposits influence long-term volcanic and geothermal processes in island arcs.
These insights collectively enrich the historical narrative of Timanfaya and contribute to a more nuanced picture of how large fissure eruptions influence surface topography, heat distribution, and long-term evolution of volcanic fields. In sum, the Timanfaya event remains a pivotal example for scientists studying the persistence of heat, the variability of lava thickness over centuries, and the dynamic relationship between eruptive activity and the landscape that survives it.