This is now the world's largest volcano, geologists say

In 2013, a team of scientists rocked geology fans when they reported that Mauna Loa, a 2,000-square-mile shield volcano in Hawaii, was probably not in fact the largest volcano in the world. That accolade, the team suggested, belonged to Tamu Massif, an extinct volcanic mountain on the seafloor east of Japan that appeared to be a single shield volcano covering a whopping 100,000 square miles, roughly the same size as the state of Arizona.

But now, a study in Nature Geoscience has re-examined Tamu Massif and come to a very different conclusion: It’s not a shield volcano at all, which means Mauna Loa wins back the crown. And in a twist, the lead author on both studies is the same person: William Sager, a marine geophysicist at the University of Houston.

read more here