BBC admits doctoring volcano footage in documentary

The Calbuco volcano in Chile was included in a BBC2 programme called Patagonia: Earth's Secret Paradise. Picture: Wiki Commons

A VOLCANO eruption shown on a BBC Two programme actually used footage from two different volcanoes taken four years apart, the corporation has revealed.

The eruption of the Calbuco volcano in Chile in April was shown in the first episode of Patagonia: Earth’s Secret Paradise last month.

But a lightning storm seen above the volcano was actually shot at a different location in 2011. The BBC said viewers should have been told a “composite image” was used.

The programme showed a “dirty thunderstorm”, in which lightning strikes are seen within the ash clouds from an erupting volcano.

Show producer Tuppence Stone said that such events could be difficult to capture on film and so “it requires special techniques to reveal and portray their true extraordinary nature”.

The programme combined time-lapse footage from Calbuco’s eruption earlier this year with long-exposure footage of lightning at the Cordon Caulle volcano in 2011.