It’s talking about volcanoes and immediately thinking of the iconic and well-known Etna or Krakatoa. However, few know the immensity of the volcanoes or volcanic mountains that are submerged under the deep sea, as is the case of the Axial seamount, which could erupt in this brand new year 2025.
The Axial Seamounty underwater volcano is located 470 kilometers from the Oregon coast (United States), one kilometer deep under water, and is constantly monitored by a group of expert scientists, who have been able to predict that this volcano will erupt this year.
It is an achievement that scientists make this claim, since predicting volcanic eruptions is very unusual, but it seems to comply all the requirements to foresee an imminent activityas reported by Chadwick and his colleagues at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, reported by the journal ScienceNews.
Predicting a volcanic eruption, something unusual
Specifically, this group of scientists has been monitoring the action of Mount Axial with a set of devices for 10 years. This includes noises, tremors, swelling, tilting… With which they have been able to record data in real time through a cable on the seabed.
Thus, in November 2024, Chadwick was surprised by a new piece of data recorded: Axial’s surface had grown to almost the same height as it was before its last eruption in 2015, fortuitously, just a few months after monitoring began. What does this mean? That magma has accumulated underground and is generating pressure.
In fact, this scientist was already able to predict the eruption that occurred that year in 2015, stating that it was his “biggest prediction success”something that could be repeated this year 2015, a decade later, thanks to the new and recent wave, along with the increase in seismic activity that indicates moving magma.
Furthermore, the prediction does not stop there, since the Axial team of researchers also has a tool to be able to estimate the specific day on which the magma eruption will occurat the same time that artificial intelligence is used to analyze recordings of earthquakes that preceded the 2015 eruption and identified exactly what patterns should be observed hours before the next one, as reported by the aforementioned media.
Why aren’t terrestrial eruptions predicted?
It is true that for humans and life on earth, terrestrial volcanoes are the ones that can pose the greatest danger, much more than underwater volcanoes, although there are exceptions such as the Hunga Tonga volcano, which erupted in 2022 and caused a tsunami that caused damage around 90 million dollars.
Thus, experimental forecasts with terrestrial volcanoes are avoided due to the risk of false alarms, which could cause unnecessary evacuations and mistrust in the future. Instead, with the Axial seamount, the scientist says: “We don’t have to worry about that.”
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