What and Where Erta Ale Is
Erta Ale — the name means “smoking mountain” in the local Afar language — is a low, broad shield volcano rising to about 585 metresin the Danakil Depression of northeastern Ethiopia. The setting is as extreme as the volcano: the Danakil is one of the lowest and hottest places on the planet, a salt-crusted basin that sinks below sea level where daytime temperatures routinely pass 45 °C.
That heat and that volcano come from the same source. Erta Ale sits on the East African Rift, where the Arabian, Nubian and Somali plates are pulling apart and thinning the crust. Rifting lets fluid basaltic magma rise easily — which is why Erta Ale is a classic divergent-boundary volcano, not a steep explosive cone. People search for it under several spellings — Erta'Ale, Ertale, Irta'ale — all the same volcano.
The Lava Lake — and Why It's Gone
Here is the answer most of the internet still gets wrong: Erta Ale no longer has a lava lake. For decades its summit crater held a churning pool of molten basalt — one of only a handful of long-lived lava lakes anywhere on Earth, alongside Mount Erebus in Antarctica and Nyiragongo in the Congo. In January 2017, a fissure opened on the volcano's flank and tapped the shallow reservoir that had fed the lake; the lake level dropped and drained (Moore et al., 2019, AGU Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems).
It never refilled into a stable lake. As of early 2026, VolcanoDiscovery's activity reports describe only low-level intra-caldera activity — small hornitos (spatter cones) building inside the crater, occasional minor lava flows, and steady fumarolic degassing — with no persistent lava lake present. So this is the honest, current status: Erta Ale is active, but it is not the glowing lake of lava that photos from 2016 promise.
“Active” is the right word, though. Satellite radar (Sentinel-1 InSAR) shows the volcanic segment still inflating and deflating as magma moves at shallow depth, and the wider Erta Ale range is clearly alive: in November 2025, a nearby vent called Hayli Gubbi erupted for the first time in roughly 12,000 years (Al Jazeera). Erta Ale belongs on our list of the world's persistent lava lakes with an asterisk: it is the clearest example of how fragile the word “persistent” really is.
Why Erta Ale Erupts the Way It Does
Erta Ale has never had a violent eruption in its recorded history, and the data shows why. Every one of the seven eruptions in our Smithsonian GVP record is VEI 0–2— small, effusive, non-explosive. That is the physical signature of rift-zone basalt: hot, low in silica, low in dissolved gas, so it flows and bubbles rather than detonating. It's the same chemistry that produces runny pāhoehoe and ʻaʻā lava, and the opposite of the gas-rich andesite that builds the explosive stratovolcanoes of the Ring of Fire.
| Eruption | VEI | Style | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1967–2025 CE | 0 | Long effusive episode | The decades-long episode of persistent lava-lake activity and effusion. The summit lava lake drained in January 2017 when a fissure opened on the flank; GVP records the episode as ending in 2025. |
| 1960 CE | 0 | Effusive | Confirmed effusive activity at the summit. |
| 1940 CE | 0 | Effusive | Confirmed effusive activity. |
| 1906 CE | 0 | Effusive | Confirmed effusive activity. |
| 1904 CE | 2 | Uncertain | Uncertain eruption record. |
| 1903 CE | 2 | Uncertain | Uncertain eruption record. |
| 1873 CE | 2 | Uncertain | Earliest eruption in our record. |
Source: VolcanoDB analysis of Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program records for Erta Ale (GVP #221080): 7 recorded eruptions, all VEI 0–2. See the full data page. Explosivity is explained on our VEI guide.
This matters for understanding the lava lake. A persistent lake needs magma that can sit at the surface and stay molten and degassing for years without clogging or blowing itself out. Only fluid basalt does that reliably — which is why the short list of lava-lake volcanoes worldwide (Kilauea, Erebus, Nyiragongo, Erta Ale) is dominated by shields and rift volcanoes, not the explosive giants. The same gentleness that built Erta Ale's lake is why its loss in 2017 was quiet, not catastrophic.
Visiting the Danakil — and What You'd Actually See Now
Through the 2000s and early 2010s, Erta Ale was a bucket-list destination precisely for the lake: multi-day expeditions crossed the Danakil by 4x4 and camel to stand at the crater rim and watch molten rock slosh below. Those photos are everywhere, and they are the reason the volcano is famous. They are also, in 2026, out of date.
What a visitor sees today is a dark crater floor with hornitos, cracks glowing dull red at night, steam and sulfurous gas, and — when the volcano obliges — small lava flows. It is still a genuinely remarkable, otherworldly place; it is simply not a lava lake. The Danakil itself remains extreme and remote, with punishing heat and security advisories that change, so this is not a trip to improvise. If you come across an operator guaranteeing a lava-lake view, treat it as a red flag: no one can promise a feature that drained nine years ago. The nearby acidic springs and salt flats of Dallol, another volcano in the same Afar rift, are often the more reliable spectacle now.