An underwater volcano off the coast of the United States could be ready to erupt. The vast submarine volcano, located around 300 miles from the coast of Oregon, has recently showed signs of activity meaning it could be ready to blow.
Scientists, who have been monitoring the volcano known as Axial Seamount for decades, have reported recent activity include earthquakes. Bill Chadwick, a volcanologist and research professor at Oregon State University, said it could erupt between now and the end of 2025.
As reported by NBC, researchers from the university recorded over 1,000 earthquakes a day in late March and early April. The volcano, lcoated on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, has also been swelling which indicates it’s filling with molten rock.
Chadwick said: “This volcano is similar to the ones in Hawaii that erupt very fluid lavas. They tend to inflate like a balloon in between eruptions. At Axial, the seafloor is actually rising, and that’s a big signal.”
The peak of the volcano is submerged around a mile underwater which means there’s no danger to humans if it does erupt. It is also hundreds of miles from the US which means an eruption would be unoticeable on land.
Chadwick continued: “There’s no explosion or anything, so it would really have no impact on people. Even if you were out on a boat right over the seamount when it’s erupting, you probably would never know it.”
Axial Seamount has erupted three times before – in 1998, 2011 and 2015. The most recent explosion saw a huge amount of lava pour from the volcano, with one flow reported at 450ft thick.
“For reference, that’s about two-thirds the height of the Space Needle in Seattle,” Chadwick said. “That’s a lot of lava.”
The researchers are now trying to forecast when the volcano is likely to erupt next. However, they can be extremely unpredictable and show varying warning signs.
Scott Nooner, a professor of geophysics at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, said: “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.”