Indonesia's Anak Krakatau volcano is now spewing ash a mile high

Indonesia's Anak Krakatau volcano has lost two thirds of its height and volume above the water line since its volcanic activity last Saturday caused a tsunami that killed more than 400 people and displaced about 40,000. The volcano is now spewing ash a mile into the air and ejecting hot magma into the ocean.

The missing rock is thought to have sheared into the water, possibly in a single event that produced the deadly waves. Before the collapse, the volcano stood about 1,000 feet above the ocean; now it is only 360 feet above sea level. The steam and ash have created a "volcano thunderstorm" above the island, and scientists are monitoring the ongoing volcanic activity closely.

Anak Krakatau is the "child of Krakatoa," the far larger volcano in the Sunda Strait whose explosion in 1883 killed an estimated 36,000 people, caused a tsunami as tall as 130 feet, and changed global weather patterns for years. For comparison, last week's tsunami was around 15 feet high.

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"Anak Krakatau is a very young volcano," Robin George Andrews, a volcanologist, told The Wall Street Journal. "That means there's not much data on how it behaves, so forecasting its future is tricky and concrete predictions — like with any volcano, each of them unique — are impossible."