Latest news with #AxialSeamount
Sustainability Times
21-05-2025
- Science
- Sustainability Times
'Volcano Awakens Beneath Pacific': Axial Seamount Heats Up Rapidly as Scientists Prepare for High-Risk Underwater Eruption
IN A NUTSHELL 🌋 Axial Seamount , a submarine volcano off Oregon, shows signs of imminent activity with increased seismic events. , a submarine volcano off Oregon, shows signs of imminent activity with increased seismic events. 📊 The volcano's magma chamber is inflating, causing thousands of small earthquakes, a precursor to potential eruptions. is inflating, causing thousands of small earthquakes, a precursor to potential eruptions. 🔍 Scientists from the National Science Foundation are monitoring the volcano, planning to livestream future eruptions for public engagement. are monitoring the volcano, planning to livestream future eruptions for public engagement. 🌊 Despite harsh conditions, life thrives around hydrothermal vents, showcasing the resilience of marine ecosystems in extreme environments. Deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, the restless Axial Seamount volcano is stirring once again, sending ripples of anticipation through the scientific community. Located off the coast of Oregon, this underwater giant is showing signs of imminent activity. While predicting the exact timing of an eruption is a complex task, researchers are closely monitoring the situation, as the volcano could erupt as early as this year or possibly tomorrow. This seismic spectacle unfolds nearly a mile beneath the ocean surface, where the Pacific and Juan de Fuca tectonic plates are slowly separating, creating a dramatic and dynamic seafloor landscape. Magma Rising, Pressure Building In recent times, Axial Seamount has been steadily inflating with magma, a clear indication of its brewing activity. This buildup is accompanied by an increase in small earthquakes, a harbinger of the volcano's potential eruption. In 2015, the region experienced a staggering 10,000 earthquakes in just 24 hours as magma flowed from the volcano, creating a 25-mile-long trail underwater. The magma chamber beneath Axial Seamount has collapsed multiple times, forming a deep basin known as a caldera. Despite the harsh conditions, life thrives around the hydrothermal vents scattered across the caldera floor. These vents release mineral-rich fluids, attracting a vibrant community of microbes and other organisms. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as 'snowblowers.' Even after eruptions wipe out these life forms, they astonishingly regenerate within months, showcasing the resilience of life in extreme environments. 'Manta Ray Drones Are Coming': New Underwater Robots to Glide in Swarms With Unprecedented Military and Scientific Precision Ocean Feels the Shift, Land Remains Unaware While the underwater activity of Axial Seamount may have profound effects on marine life, it is unlikely to be noticed by people on land. According to experts, the eruptions are not explosive events that produce ash clouds visible above water. Instead, they are more akin to underwater fountains. Historical data suggests that these eruptions are most likely to occur between January and April, as seen in past events in 1998, 2011, and 2015. The gravitational influence of the moon, combined with seasonal shifts, may play a role in triggering these eruptions. As Earth moves farther from the sun during the early months of the year, the moon's gravitational pull on ocean tides causes variations in seafloor pressure. When magma is already near the surface, even minor stress changes can lead to an eruption. High tides, in particular, seem to correlate with increased seismic activity, potentially pushing the magma chamber to its limits. UK Unleashes Instant Drug Scanner: New High-Tech Street Weapon Can Detect Narcotics Before They're Even Consumed Scientific Endeavors and Public Engagement Researchers from the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative, operating the Regional Cabled Array at the University of Washington, are at the forefront of monitoring Axial Seamount. Their work is crucial in understanding the intricate dynamics of this underwater volcano. The observatory plans to livestream future eruptions, providing a unique opportunity for public engagement and education about these fascinating geological events. By capturing real-time data and imagery, scientists aim to unravel the mysteries of Axial Seamount and its impact on marine ecosystems. The collaboration between geophysicists, marine biologists, and oceanographers is essential in advancing our knowledge of underwater volcanoes and their role in shaping oceanic environments. This Green Concrete Is Made From Urine: German Scientists Recreate Sandstone Texture Using Waste in Eco-Tech Breakthrough The Resilient Ecosystems of Axial Seamount The resilience of life around Axial Seamount's hydrothermal vents is a testament to nature's ability to adapt and thrive in extreme conditions. These ecosystems, once devastated by volcanic eruptions, quickly bounce back, demonstrating the tenacity of life in the ocean's depths. This phenomenon highlights the potential of underwater volcanoes as major contributors to oceanic biodiversity. As scientists continue to explore and study these resilient ecosystems, they gain valuable insights into the origins of life on Earth and the potential for life on other planets. The unique conditions found at hydrothermal vents provide a window into the past and a glimpse of what might exist beyond our planet. As we stand on the brink of another potential eruption of Axial Seamount, the scientific community remains vigilant, ready to capture every moment of this geological spectacle. The mysteries of the deep ocean continue to intrigue and inspire, reminding us of the powerful forces at play beneath the surface. What new discoveries await in the depths of the Pacific, and how will they shape our understanding of the world? Did you like it? 4.4/5 (23)
Fox News
21-05-2025
- Science
- Fox News
Scientists predict underwater volcano eruption 300 miles off Oregon
An underwater volcano off the Oregon coast could erupt late this year, scientists say. The volcano, known as Axial Seamount, is more than 4,900 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean and 300 miles off the Oregon coast, but it is showing signs it will soon erupt for the first time since 2015. The volcano is formed by a hot spot, an area in the Earth's mantle where hot plumes of molten material rise upward into the crust, the University of Washington's College of the Environment said in an April blog post. As the crust moves over the top of the mantle, the hot spot stays put, which results in long chains of volcanoes over time. "Over two-thirds of the Earth's surface was formed by volcanic eruptions at these mid-ocean ridges," said Maya Tolstoy, a marine geophysicist and dean of the university's College of the Environment. "Axial Seamount is a direct result of these fundamental processes that continue to shape our planet today." The eruption doesn't pose a danger, scientists said. "Axial Seamount is much too deep and far from shore for people on land to even notice when it erupts. An eruption at Axial Seamount also has nothing to do with seismic activity on land, so Pacific Northwesterners don't need to worry about this event triggering a major earthquake or tsunami," the blog post states. The first sign of an eruption at the volcano will be a sharp increase in the number of earthquakes around it, the post states. "The volcano has already surpassed the inflation we observed in 2015, but the earthquake activity is still quite low," said Deborah Kelley, a professor at the UW School of Oceanography and director of the Regional Cabled Array. "We're seeing 200 to 300 earthquakes per day, with some spikes around 1,000 per day due to the tides. If what we learned in 2015 is correct, I would expect to see more than 2,000 per day for a few months before the eruption." The quakes will be caused by magma moving toward the surface, the post states. "That period lasts about an hour, and then the magma reaches the surface," said William Wilcock, a professor at the UW School of Oceanography. "Lava flows spread across the caldera, and lava-filled fissures open up to the north or the south, reaching as far as 40 kilometers (about 25 miles). "The seismic activity dies down pretty quickly over the next few days, but the eruption will continue slowly for about a month."
Daily Mail
18-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Massive volcano in Pacific Northwest is showing signs of re-awakening
A volcano in the Pacific Northwest is showing signs of activity with an eruption imminent. The Axial Seamount is a mile-wide underwater volcano that sits 300 miles off the coast of Oregon and more than 4,900 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Researchers with the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative have been monitoring this inevitable underwater explosion and now say that the volcano is giving off signs of becoming active. 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. Based on the 2015 eruption, Chadwick added that this year's magma explosion could produce a lava flow that's nearly as tall as Seattle's Space Needle. However, if Axial Seamount does blow within the next few days, experts say it won't pose any threat to communities along the West Coast. It's too deep and far from shore for people to even notice when it erupts, and it has no impact on seismic activity on land. Although few people have felt the tremors, the region has seen a sharp rise in the number of earthquakes in just the last month, with a major spike in activity recorded on April 13. Since May 6, the number of daily earthquakes under the seamount has been steadily rising. The number of underwater quakes is expected to skyrocket during this event, rising from several hundred per day right now to 10,000 earthquakes within a 24-hour period as magma flows out of the seafloor volcano, according to Interesting Engineering. Mike Poland, a scientist at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, expressed excitement about the eruption, highlighting Axial Seamount as one of the world's best-monitored submarine volcanoes. 'This particular volcano is probably the best-monitored submarine volcano in the world,' he told Cowboy State Daily. 'It's fascinating and doesn't really pose a hazard.' Despite the growing anticipation among scientists, Axial Seamount's next eruption will likely come as a surprise to everyone tracking it. Wilcock's best guess is that the swelling lava finally erupts later in 2025 or even early 2026, but there's still chance it happens much sooner. Scott Nooner, a professor of geophysics at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, told NBC News: 'It's much harder than forecasting the weather, even though the weather is a very difficult thing to forecast already.' 'There's still so much that we don't understand about what triggers eruptions and how magma moves around underneath the Earth's surface,' he added. Eruptions from Axial Seamount were recorded in 1998, 2011, and 2015, and the volcano has undoubtedly erupted numerous times prior to those events, according to Poland. In November 2024, Chadwick started investigating the volcano when he noticed its surface had swelled to nearly the same height it reached before its last eruption 10 years ago. The swelling that occurred prior to the 2015 eruption allowed Chadwick and his colleagues to predict that event. This time, the researchers' observations told them that Axial Seamount would erupt before the end of 2025. They also found that seismic activity at Axial Seamount had increased, with hundreds of earthquakes generated around the volcano per day and earthquake swarms greater than 500 per day. Wilcock said the first sign that an eruption from this volcano is imminent would be a sharp increase in the number of earthquakes around it - which the area is now experiencing. The team shared their findings at the annual American Geophysical Union conference in December 2024. This impending eruption will be a major research opportunity for Wilcock and other scientists, who plan to use a suite of high-tech instruments to monitor the eruption from start to finish. The University of Washington's College of the Environment hosts one of the largest underwater observatories in the world, comprised of networks of sensors along the seafloor and throughout the ocean waters. When Axial Seamount finally erupts, Wilcock and his colleagues will use this array to gather data and images of the event as it unfolds. Even though Axial is not a dangerous undersea volcano, the forecasting capabilities scientists have gained from studying it could help them predict eruptions from those that are. Nooner pointed out that when forecasters are wrong with their eruption predictions on land, it can cost people bother time and money through unnecessary evacuations. Watching the seamount explode will allow scientists to test out their latest forecasting models without the repercussions of getting it wrong in a populated area.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Underwater Pacific volcano expected to erupt. What would that mean for WA?
If you've never heard of the Axial Seamount, you'd be forgiven. But the underwater volcano has made national news recently after research suggested it is likely nearing its first eruption in 10 years. The mountain is located around 300 miles off the northern Oregon coast, where the Pacific and Juan de Fuca plates meet — 4,600 feet below the surface. 'It's on an ocean spreading center, which is on one side of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, and the other side is the side that's subducting beneath the subduction zone,' William Wilcock, a University of Washington professor researching the volcano, told McClatchy in a phone call. The volcano has erupted three times since 1998, with the most recent one in 2015. Recently, researchers have noticed that magma build-up has caused the volcano to inflate to near the levels seen in previous eruptions. 'The model that Bill Chadwick, who's at Oregon State University, and Scott Nooner at North Carolina, Wilmington, they basically observed… So there have been eruptions in 1998, 2011 and 2015. And they noted that the eruption in 2011 occurred at about the same amount of inflation,' Wilcock said. If the theory is correct, it will provide insight into how researchers can predict other volcanic eruptions, Wilcock said. 'Why this volcano is interesting is the magma chamber beneath the volcano is pretty shallow. It's less than a mile deep… I think this volcano behaves in a more simple way than other volcanoes. So I think other volcanoes, they're not as predictable like this,' Wilcock said. Another key indicator of when the volcano will erupt is seismic activity. At the time of a UW news release in late April, the volcano was seeing around 200 to 300 earthquakes a day on average, with that number reaching 1,000 some days. That's well below the 2,000 earthquake-a-day average that it was seeing in the lead-up to its last eruption, and Wilcock said there's actually been a decrease in seismic activity. 'That's actually gone down a little bit down to more like between 100 to 200 a day at the moment, but it varies from week to week,' Wilcock said. According to Wilcock, he expects the number of earthquakes a day to reach 500 before the volcano erupts. 'Over that six months, the number increased from basically 500 a day to 2,000 a day,' Wilcock said. 'And so we're not at 2000 a day at the moment, but then it was inflating at two feet a year. Now it's inflating more slowly. So we might not expect quite as many, but I think I would expect at least 500 a day.' According to Wilcock, experts expect the volcano to erupt sometime this year or next year, but that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly when 'I think, based on the seismicity, we think it might be a little further away than the other predictions… But I think everybody would say that if it's not going to go this year, it's probably next year,' Wilcock said. While a volcanic eruption and thousands of earthquakes a day off the coast of northern Oregon might sound frightening, Wilcock said the volcano is too far away from land for its effects to be noticeable. 'These earthquakes are really small,' Wilcock said. 'They're magnitude twos and threes. It's a very small effect, and so it's not going to have any impact in the subduction zone 300 miles away.' Additionally, seismic activity around the volcano isn't linked to seismic activity on land, so it isn't expected to trigger any earthquakes in Washington or Oregon. It will have an effect on the marine ecosystem, but Wilcock said that the impacted species will recover quickly. 'When it erupts, you know, many of those are many of those, the bigger organisms we kill, but they will repopulate pretty quickly,' Wilcock said. 'Then the nutrients that come out of the volcano are actually very good for the microbial community.'
Daily Mail
16-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Massive underwater volcano to blow at any moment and release millions of tons of lava
A volcano in the Pacific Northwest is showing signs of re-awakening. The Axial Seamount is a mile-wide underwater volcano that sits 300 miles off the coast of Oregon and more than 4,900 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Researchers with the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative have been monitoring this inevitable underwater explosion and now say that the volcano is swelling up like a balloon full of lava. According to William Chadwick, a volcanologist and research professor at Oregon State University, the Axial Seamount acts a lot like the volcanoes in Hawaii and is set to spew out over a billion cubic feet of 'very fluid lava' weighing millions of tons at any moment. 'They tend to inflate like a balloon in between eruptions. At Axial, the seafloor is actually rising, and that's a big signal,' Chadwick said. In recent weeks, there has been a massive uptick in the number of earthquakes under the seamount, caused by this magma pushing to the surface. The Axial Seamount last erupted in 2015, triggering roughly 8,000 earthquakes , producing 450-foot-thick lava flows and causing the bottom of the ocean to sink nearly eight feet. William Wilcock, a professor and marine geophysicist at the University of Washington, warned that Axial Seamount could erupt as soon as tomorrow. 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. Based on the 2015 eruption, Chadwick added that this year's magma explosion could produce a lava flow that's nearly as tall as Seattle's Space Needle. However, if Axial Seamount does blow within the next few days, experts say it won't pose any threat to communities along the West Coast. It's too deep and far from shore for people to even notice when it erupts, and it has no impact on seismic activity on land. Although few people have felt the tremors, the region has seen a sharp rise in the number of earthquakes in just the last month, with a major spike in activity recorded on April 13. Since May 6, the number of daily earthquakes under the seamount has been steadily rising. The number of underwater quakes is expected to skyrocket during this event, rising from several hundred per day right now to 10,000 earthquakes within a 24-hour period as magma flows out of the seafloor volcano, according to Interesting Engineering. Mike Poland, a scientist at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, expressed excitement about the eruption, highlighting Axial Seamount as one of the world's best-monitored submarine volcanoes. 'This particular volcano is probably the best-monitored submarine volcano in the world,' he told Cowboy State Daily. 'It's fascinating and doesn't really pose a hazard.' Despite the growing anticipation among scientists, Axial Seamount's next eruption will likely come as a surprise to everyone tracking it. Wilcock's best guess is that the swelling lava finally erupts later in 2025 or even early 2026, but there's still chance it happens much sooner. Scott Nooner, a professor of geophysics at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, told NBC News: 'It's much harder than forecasting the weather, even though the weather is a very difficult thing to forecast already.' 'There's still so much that we don't understand about what triggers eruptions and how magma moves around underneath the Earth's surface,' he added. Eruptions from Axial Seamount were recorded in 1998, 2011, and 2015, and the volcano has undoubtedly erupted numerous times prior to those events, according to Poland. In November 2024, Chadwick started investigating the volcano when he noticed its surface had swelled to nearly the same height it reached before its last eruption 10 years ago. The swelling that occurred prior to the 2015 eruption allowed Chadwick and his colleagues to predict that event. This time, the researchers' observations told them that Axial Seamount would erupt before the end of 2025. They also found that seismic activity at Axial Seamount had increased, with hundreds of earthquakes generated around the volcano per day and earthquake swarms greater than 500 per day. Wilcock said the first sign that an eruption from this volcano is imminent would be a sharp increase in the number of earthquakes around it - which the area is now experiencing. The team shared their findings at the annual American Geophysical Union conference in December 2024. This impending eruption will be a major research opportunity for Wilcock and other scientists, who plan to use a suite of high-tech instruments to monitor the eruption from start to finish. The University of Washington's College of the Environment hosts one of the largest underwater observatories in the world, comprised of networks of sensors along the seafloor and throughout the ocean waters. When Axial Seamount finally erupts, Wilcock and his colleagues will use this array to gather data and images of the event as it unfolds. Even though Axial is not a dangerous undersea volcano, the forecasting capabilities scientists have gained from studying it could help them predict eruptions from those that are. Nooner pointed out that when forecasters are wrong with their eruption predictions on land, it can cost people bother time and money through unnecessary evacuations. Watching the seamount explode will allow scientists to test out their latest forecasting models without the repercussions of getting it wrong in a populated area.
