When will the next super-volcano erupt?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is the world sitting on a ticking time bomb? CrowdScience listener Christel recently watched a documentary about a volcanic eruption in 536 AD that left her native Sweden under a cloud of ash for three years. It got her thinking, do we know when this could happen again?
With more than 300 volcanoes – and 24 of them listed as currently active – the Philippines is a country where trying to predict eruptions has huge real world consequences.
Presenter Anand Jagatia travels to Manila to meet the scientists at PHIVOLCS, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, including the head of their Volcano Monitoring and Eruption Prediction Division, Mariton Antonia Bornas, to find out how they try to predict volcanic activity in the country and help make sure communities are evacuated out of harm’s way.
He travels with the team to Taal volcano, which experienced violent eruptions in 2020 and has been active again this year, to visit the observatory monitoring for signs of future activity and to hike to the main crater of the volcano with resident volcanologist Paolo Reniva.
He also speaks to Dr George Cooper from Cardiff University in the UK about what makes a volcano a supervolcano, and to ask the all important question of if we know when this will happen again.
Presenter: Anand Jagatia
Producer: Dan Welsh
Editor: Ben Motley
(Photo: Smoke Emitting From Volcanic Mountain Against Sky - stock photo -EyeEm Mobile GmbH via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:37.9 | So we had an early start this morning to get up at about 4 a.m. |
| 0:41.9 | And we've driven into a massive crater, which is filled with a lake. |
| 0:48.8 | You can hear the water lapping against the shore here. |
| 0:51.6 | And we're getting on a boat, and we're going to get on this boat and go |
| 0:55.4 | into the middle of the lake. |
| 1:02.9 | Hello and welcome to crowd science from the BBC World Service, the show that goes the |
| 1:07.6 | distance to answer your science questions, even if it means |
| 1:11.1 | travelling to an active volcano, which is exactly what we're doing this week. |
| 1:16.8 | So this huge crater that we're in now, this is actually part of a massive volcano that erupted. |
| 1:24.0 | Thousands of years ago. |
| 1:26.0 | I'm Annan Jagatia, and I'm on my way to the centre of Tal Volcano, the second most active volcano in the whole of the Philippines. |
| 1:35.2 | And it's to help us answer this listener question. |
| 1:39.2 | Hello, I'm Crystal. I'm originally from Sweden, Malme. |
| 1:43.8 | But now I live in Florida in the United States. And my |
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