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A video shared by Oregon State University Professor Bill Chadwick shows new lava flows from the 2015 eruption of the Axial Seamount on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
An underwater volcano situated 300 miles off the Oregon coast is getting closer to erupting for the first time in 10 years.
The volcano, known as Axial Seamount, is formed by a hotspot in Earth’s mantle.
Axial Seamount poses no threat to the public, as it sits too deep in the ocean and too far from shore to cause any harm, or for the public to even notice the volcano is erupting.
It was announced in December 2024 that the underwater volcano was creeping toward an eruption, the first since 2015.
While scientists don’t have an exact timeline of when the volcano could erupt, they say it’s likely to happen before the end of the year.
UNDERSEA VOLCANO OFF WEST COAST COULD ERUPT SOON BUT SHOULD YOU PREPARE FOR A DISASTER?
This image shows lava from the 2011 eruption at the Axial Seamount off the U.S. West Coast.
(Bill Chadwick/Oregon State University / FOX Weather)
Scientists with the University of Washington College of the Environment say an eruption can provide valuable insight into the volcano and allow them to better refine methods of predicting an eruption in the future.
“Three quarters of all of the volcanic activity on Earth takes place at mid-ocean spreading centers,” said Deborah Kelley, a professor in the UW School of Oceanography and director of the Regional Cabled Array. “But people have never directly witnessed an eruption along this mountain chain, so we still have a lot of unanswered questions.”
And how do scientists know an eruption is coming? William Wilcock, a professor at the UW School of Oceanography, said inflation of the volcano and an increased number of earthquakes beneath the volcano will give the signal an eruption is happening.
“Over time, the volcano inflates due to the buildup of magma beneath the surface,” said Wilcock. “Some researchers have hypothesized that the amount of inflation can predict when the volcano will erupt, 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.”
A volcanic eruption of Axial Seamount, though not particularly violent, will produce some interesting noises on the seafloor as magma collides with cool ocean water, the UW College of Environment reports.
SCIENTISTS PROVIDE UPDATE ON STATUS OF POSSIBLE ERUPTION AT ALASKA’S MOUNT SPURR VOLCANO
This bathymetric map shows the shape and summit caldera (warm colors are shallow depths while cool colors are deeper) at the Axial Seamount.
(Susan Merle/Oregon State University / FOX Weather)
“When a pocket of seawater gets trapped beneath a lava flow, it heats up and turns to steam,” Wilcock said. “When that steam finally escapes, it forms a bubble which cools very quickly and collapses, causing a loud implosion that we can pick up with our hydrophones.”
For now, scientists will continue monitoring the volcano for seismic activity and inflation until it erupts.
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