Hayli Gubbi, a shield volcano in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, erupted on Sunday 23 November 2025, for what appears to be the first time in recorded history. The volcano erupted for under twelve hours, from about 11.30 am to about 11.00 pm local time (about 8.30 am to about 8.00 pm GMT), producing an ash column about 14 km high, which drifted to the east over the Red Sea, according to the Toulouse Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre. Nobody was directly hurt by the eruption, but local farmers report crops being covered with ash, which may potentially lead to famine in the region.
Hayli Gubbi is a 493 m high scoria cone (cone of ash) sitting on an older shield volcano (dome shaped volcano made up of layers of lava) located at the southernmost end of the Erte Ale Volcanic Chain. The volcano has never been observed to erupt before, and it is thought not to have erupted since the Late Pleistocene, more than 12 000 years ago, although the remote location of the volcano means that it has not been studied well.
The deserts of Northern Ethiopia and Southern Eritrea are extremely volcanicly active, with dozens of volcanoes fed by an emerging divergent margin along the East African Rift; the Erta Ale Chain lies on the Ethiopian Rift, the boundary between the Nubian Plate and the Danakil Microplate. The African Plate is slowly splitting apart along the Ethiopian Rift and the East African Rift to the south (which is splitting the Nubian Plate to the West from the Somali Plate to the East). Arabia was a part of Africa till about thirty million years ago, when it was split away by the opening of the Red Sea Rift (part of the same rift system), and in time the Ethiopian and East African Rifts are likely to split Africa into a number of new landmasses.
See also...
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
