Yellow alert for volcanic activity at the Villarica volcano

Villarrica, an active volcano located in the southern Andes in Chile, renowned for its symmetrical conical shape and the presence of a persistent lava lake within its crater, is currently on yellow alert. 

This alert status, the second level on a scale of four, was confirmed following the detection of explosive activity at the beginning of November 2023, characterised by luminous incandescence of the crater and low-level Strombolian-type explosive activity at the summit

This image acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on 4 November shows the thermal anomaly (infrared signature) in the summit area of the volcano.

The twin Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites (Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B) play an important role in monitoring volcanic activity worldwide: the high spatial and temporal resolution, as well as the multi-spectral capabilities of its imager, allows monitoring of different volcanic processes and enables hot spot detection.