Huaynaputina Moquegua Peru

Huaynaputina (Quechua: Young Volcano), a stratovolcano located in a volcanic upland in southern Peru, explodes catastrophically (Volcanic Explosivity Index—or VEI—6) on February 19, 1600.

The largest volcanic explosion in South America in historic times, the eruption begins with a Plinian plume that extends into the stratosphere, and the ashfall and accompanying earthquakes cause substantial damage to the major cities of ...

Huaynaputina’s explosion produces about thirty cubic kilometers of tephra; pyroclastic flows travel thirteen kilometers to the east and southeast, and lahars—volcanic mudflows—destroy several villages and reaches the coast of the Pacific Ocean, a distance of 120 km.

The eruption continues with a series of events into March. (An account of the event is included in Fray Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa's Compendio y Descripción de las Indias, which was translated into English as Compendium and description of the West Indies in 1942.)

Ashfall is reported two hundred and fifty to five hundred kilometers away, throughout southern Peru, and in what is now northern Chile and western Bolivia.

The ash layer now forms a useful stratigraphic marker layer throughout Peru.

Regional agricultural economies will take a century and a half to fully recover.

The explosion is to have effects on climate around the Northern Hemisphere (Southern hemispheric records are less complete), where 1601 will be the coldest year in six centuries, leading to a famine in Russia.

In Estonia, Switzerland, and Latvia there will be bitter cold winters in 1600-1602; in 1601 in France, the wine harvest will come late; additionally, production of wine soon collapses in Germany and colonial Peru.

In Japan, Lake Suwa will have one of its earliest freezing-over in five hundred years.

In China, peach trees will bloom late.

In Greenland, the sulfuric acid spike present in modern ice-core samples is larger than that from Krakatoa (1883).