Important Takeaways:
- Axial Seamount, a massive underwater volcano located nearly 300 miles off the Oregon coast, is showing signs of an imminent eruption.
- This 3,600-foot-tall volcano, which spans 1.25 miles across and sits 4,626 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean’s surface, is currently experiencing significant swelling and rumbling, indicating a buildup of magma.
- Volcanologists predict an eruption before the end of 2025, but despite its activity, scientists remain unconcerned.
- Situated along the Juan de Fuca Ridge, a chain of undersea volcanoes extending between Oregon and Alaska, Axial Seamount is a young shield volcano – a broader volcano with a low profile.
- Its resemblance to Mauna Loa, Earth’s largest active volcano, and the typical non-explosive nature of shield volcano eruptions, lessens the concern among volcanologists about the imminent eruption.
- ‘When Axial Seamount erupts, it’ll look a lot like a Hawaiian lava flow eruption,’ he said. ‘It’s not an explosive eruption, but calm effusions of lava flowing out of the caldera and across the seafloor.’
- Although shield volcanoes are not typically associated with explosive eruptions, their flowing lava can still cause substantial destruction.
- However, Axial Seamount, residing thousands of feet beneath the Pacific Ocean surface, is underneath an immense amount of pressure by the water column above it.
- ‘Deep submarine eruptions are inhibited by the tremendous water pressure of the ocean,’ Poland told Cowboy State Daily.
- ‘Even explosive eruptions struggle against the ocean.’
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Important Takeaways:
- Scientists have warned that an underwater volcano off the coast of the northwestern US is likely to blow sometime in 2025.
- The volcano, called Axial Seamount, is more than 3,600-feet-tall and sits half a mile underwater just 300 miles off the coast of Oregon.
- Experts made the prediction on December 10 after detecting seafloor swelling around Axial that mimicked a level seen immediately before an eruption in 2015.
- Seismic activity has also increased, with hundreds of earthquakes generated around the volcano per day and earthquake swarms greater than 500 per day.
- ‘Based on the current trends, and the assumption that Axial will be primed to erupt when it reaches the 2015 inflation threshold, our current eruption forecast window is between now (July 2024) and the end of 2025,’ researchers said in the new study.
- The team first noticed the swelling in November using a suite of tools to meticulously monitor this volcano’s activity, collecting real-time data about its rumbling, shaking, swelling and even tilting.
- Located on the Juan de Fuca ridge, Axial is the most active underwater volcano in the northeast Pacific.
- Because Axial erupts with some regularity, it provides a unique opportunity for scientists to study the warning signs leading up to an eruption, and learn how to forecast one.
- Fortunately, eruptions from Axial pose little threat to people and infrastructure on the West Coast.
- That’s largely because it is a shield volcano, which generally do not have very explosive eruptions.
- What’s more, the seismic activity around it is too minimal to cause a tsunami or a major earthquake.
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