Late in the night on Sunday evening, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa - the largest subaerial volcano measured by both mass and volume - began erupting after nearly four decades of silence.
Mauna Loa, which is dwarfed only by Tamu Massif, a massive a seamount perched in the northwest Pacific Ocean just 1,600km east of Japan, had magma lying just beneath the surface since its last eruption in 1984.
