Active volcanic island in Indonesia's Sunda Strait, formed inside the caldera left by the 1883 Krakatau eruption; its name means 'child of Krakatau'.
Australia's Darwin ash-advisory centre used ESA's EarthCARE lidar to confirm that Anak Krakatau's westward plume sat near 15 km, as forecast. That check brought a satellite built to study clouds and Earth's energy balance into aviation advice in near-real time.
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Passenger estimates for the two-day closure run above 300,000. The 1883 eruption that built this volcano killed about 35,000, almost all by tsunami, and that mechanism needs the edifice to collapse rather than the plume to climb.
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Sentinel-2 images show Sertung Island's vegetation index falling from 0.72 to about zero in the month spanning the September 2026 Anak Krakatau eruption. The researchers say ash over living plants gives the same signal, so survivors must be counted on the ground.
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An eruption and a cross-border haze episode hit Indonesia in the same week. The aviation disruption came with counts. The health figures quoted for Sarawak and Manila arrive as associations.
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A small, routinely active volcano between Java and Sumatra produced a day of explosive eruption whose effects on flying and on air quality took several days to clear, and the flight tally in circulation comes from news reports.
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Anak Krakatau's two short bursts cancelled 1,558 flights and stranded 170,000 passengers; Indonesia's Geological Agency says activity has been intensifying since July and it cannot say whether a bigger eruption follows.
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