Fig. 9

Elevation of lava lakes and the water lake at the summit of Kīlauea, 2018–2023. With the draining of the lava lake in 2018, the floor of Halemaʻumaʻu dropped to an elevation of roughly 517 m asl. In 2019, a water lake appeared and filled to a depth of approximately 50 m. In December 2020, an eruption filled the crater with lava, boiling off the lake. Four subsequent eruptions further filled Halemaʻumaʻu with lava, reaching an elevation of approximately 928 m asl in September 2023. The most recent eruption (onset in December 2024) is not shown here. Most of the data in this plot were collected with continuous laser rangefinders (Patrick et al. 2022a; Younger et al. 2024). Handheld laser rangefinders were used to measure data (a) prior to April 2018, (b) during the water lake era, and (c) during the first few weeks of the eruption that began in December 2020