Pacific Coast on watch as underwater volcano shows signs of major eruption
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A breaking wave at Shore Acres State Park, Oregon Coast. Photo: Marli Miller/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Volcanologists are closely monitoring an underwater volcano off the Oregon coast that seems poised to erupt this year.
Why it matters: The eruption poses no risks to human life, scientists said, but it will help researchers better understand how volcanos work on land.
Driving the news: Researchers have been monitoring the recent activity of the Axial Seamount, a volcano located about 4,900 feet underwater in the northeastern Pacific Ocean, because there are indications that it may erupt in 2025.
- In June, there were more than 2,000 earthquakes near the volcano on one day, the researchers said, which is a sign that an eruption may occur. However, that number dipped closer to 100 soon after, they said.
- And in July, the tsunami waves from the 8.8-magnitude earthquake near Kamchatka "triggered the automated alerts we have in place to notify us when an eruption might be starting" — even though it wasn't.
Threat level: The potential eruption is not expected to cause any risk to human life or property, not create tsunami waves.
- "For the size of eruptions we've seen in the last 20 years … if you were on top of it on a boat, you would never know it," Chadwick said to local media.
Flashback: The Axial Seamount, deemed the "most active submarine volcano" in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean by researchers, has erupted before in 1998, 2011, and 2015.
- In January, Chadwick said the volcano had reached the 2015 inflation levels, a sign an eruption might come this year.
What they're saying: "Some researchers have hypothesized that the amount of inflation can predict when the volcano will erupt," said William Wilcock, a professor in the University of Washington in April, "and if they're correct it's very exciting for us, because it has already inflated to the level that it reached before the last three eruptions."
- "That means it could really erupt any day now, if the hypothesis is correct."
Yes, but: "We don't really know what it will take to trigger the next eruption and exactly when that will happen," Chadwick and fellow researcher Scott Nooner, geophysics professor at University of North Carolina Wilmington, wrote in their blog.
The big picture: Still, researchers are keeping their eyes on the volcano because it offers them a chance to study eruptions.
- The Axial Seamount is located about 300 miles offshore of the Oregon coast, far away from property and people that it won't cause any damage, which is one reason why it was tapped as the first underwater volcano observatory in the world.
- Scientists use the location to provide realtime data to help them study volcanos.
The bottom line: "If we're successful at forecasting eruptions at Axial," Chadwick told The Oregonian earlier this year, "then we can apply what we learn to other volcanoes around the world that are more dangerous to people and are in more complex settings,"
