Hopefully doesn't trigger something bigger
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Things are heating up hundreds of miles off the coast of Oregon, where a large undersea volcano is showing signs of impending eruption, scientists say.
The volcano, known as Axial Seamount, is located nearly 1 mile (1.4 kilometers) underwater on a geological hot spot, where searing gushes of molten rock rise from Earth’s mantle and into the crust. Hotspot volcanoes are common on the seafloor. But Axial Seamount also happens to be located on the Juan de Fuca Ridge — an area where two massive tectonic plates (the Pacific and the Juan de Fuca plates) are constantly spreading apart, causing a steady buildup of pressure beneath the planet’s surface.
The frequency of earthquakes has recently picked up dramatically as the volcano inflates with increasingly more magma, signaling an eruption could be near, according to researchers at the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative Regional Cabled Array, a facility operated by the University of Washington that monitors the activity of Axial Seamount.
“At the moment, there are a couple hundred earthquakes a day, but that’s still a lot less than we saw before the previous eruption,” said William Wilcock, a marine geophysicist and professor at the University of Washington School of Oceanography who studies the volcano.
“I would say it was going to erupt sometime later (this year) or early 2026, but it could be tomorrow, because it’s completely unpredictable,” he said.
What happens during an eruption?
During the volcano’s last eruption in April 2015, the team observed about 10,000 small-scale earthquakes in a 24-hour period, and the same can be expected for the next one, Wilcock said.
www.yahoo.com
View: https://twitter.com/RedpillDrifter/status/1934511102890836316
Things are heating up hundreds of miles off the coast of Oregon, where a large undersea volcano is showing signs of impending eruption, scientists say.
The volcano, known as Axial Seamount, is located nearly 1 mile (1.4 kilometers) underwater on a geological hot spot, where searing gushes of molten rock rise from Earth’s mantle and into the crust. Hotspot volcanoes are common on the seafloor. But Axial Seamount also happens to be located on the Juan de Fuca Ridge — an area where two massive tectonic plates (the Pacific and the Juan de Fuca plates) are constantly spreading apart, causing a steady buildup of pressure beneath the planet’s surface.
The frequency of earthquakes has recently picked up dramatically as the volcano inflates with increasingly more magma, signaling an eruption could be near, according to researchers at the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative Regional Cabled Array, a facility operated by the University of Washington that monitors the activity of Axial Seamount.
“At the moment, there are a couple hundred earthquakes a day, but that’s still a lot less than we saw before the previous eruption,” said William Wilcock, a marine geophysicist and professor at the University of Washington School of Oceanography who studies the volcano.
“I would say it was going to erupt sometime later (this year) or early 2026, but it could be tomorrow, because it’s completely unpredictable,” he said.
What happens during an eruption?
During the volcano’s last eruption in April 2015, the team observed about 10,000 small-scale earthquakes in a 24-hour period, and the same can be expected for the next one, Wilcock said.
Mile-wide underwater volcano ready to erupt off the West Coast
One of the Pacific Ocean’s lesser-known volcanoes will blow its vent in the coming months, causing 10,000 earthquakes in one day. Here’s what scientists are saying.
