Just How Hot Is Lava?

Like the bubbling cheese of a pizza consumed too quickly, lava has been anointed as one of the most scorching substances on Earth. But just how hot is lava? How quickly could it consume your flesh and destroy everything in its path?

You may already know that lava is actually molten rock that oozes or spurts out of volcanoes because of the extreme temperatures found miles deep in the Earth. As the rocks melt, they begin to rise toward the surface. (Lava is typically referred to as magma until it reaches the surface.) As you can imagine, the heat that's needed to melt rock is pretty staggering. Cooler lava—relatively speaking—could be around 570°F, about the same as the inside of your typical pizza oven. On the extreme side, volcanoes can produce lava in excess of 2120°F, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Why is there so much variation? Different environments produce different chemical compositions and minerals that can affect temperature. Lava found in Hawaii from basalt rock, for example, tends to be on the hotter side, while minerals like the ones found near the Pacific Northwest's Mt. Saint Helens could be a few hundred degrees cooler.

After lava has erupted and its temperature begins to lower, it will eventually return to solid rock. Hotter lava flows more quickly—perhaps several feet per minute—and then slows as it cools, sometimes traveling only a couple of feet in a day.

Because moving lava takes its sweet time getting anywhere, there's not much danger. But what if you did, in some tremendously unfortunate circumstance, get exposed to lava—say, by being thrown into a lava pit like a villain in a fantasy film? First, you're unlikely to sink rapidly into it. Lava is three times as dense as water and won't simply move out of the way as quickly. You would, however, burn like a S'more at those temperatures, even if you wouldn't quite melt. It's more likely the radiant heat would singe you before you even made contact with the hypothetical lava lake, or that you'd burst into flames on contact.

Because lava is so super-heated, you might also wonder how researchers are even able to measure its temperature and answer the burning question—how hot is lava, exactly—without destroying their instrumentation. Using a meat thermometer isn't the right move, since the mercury inside would boil while the glass would shatter. Instead, volcanologists use thermocouples, or two wires joined to the same electrical source. A user can measure the resistance of the electricity at the tip and convert it to a readable temperature. Thermocouples are made from ceramic and stainless steel, and both have melting points higher than even the hottest lava. We still don't recommend using them on pizza.

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