Insights from more than a year of ongoing episodic lava fountaining at Kīlauea.

Episodic lava fountaining at Kīlauea has produced 54 episodes since December 2024, with each lasting hours and separated by days to weeks, revealing systematic correlations with summit inflation.

• Why it matters: Understanding the controls on fountaining onset is crucial for volcanic hazard assessment and advancing knowledge of eruption dynamics, addressing gaps in how magma pressure, conduit permeability, and volatile exsolution interact.
• What they did: Researchers used a multiparameter record combining geochemical, geophysical, and geologic monitoring to analyze the ongoing eruption, enabling unprecedented quantitative forecasts of fountaining activity.
• The result: The findings offer new constraints on the timing, evolution, and mechanisms of episodic fountaining, positioning Kīlauea as a key natural laboratory for studying volcanic processes worldwide.