Derived from the
Latin fumus,
smoke, a
fumarole is an opening in
Earth's (or any other
astronomical body's)
crust, often in the neighborhood of
volcanoes, which emit
steam and
gases such as
carbon dioxide,
hydrochloric acid, and
hydrogen sulfide. The name
solfatara, from the
Italian solfo, sulfur (via the
Sicilian dialect), is given to fumaroles that emit
sulfurous gases.
Perhaps the greatest area of fumarole activity on Earth is the famous Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes[?], adjacent to Katmai volcano[?] in Alaska.
All Wikipedia text
is available under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License