“We are preparing for the worst while we expect the best,” The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said during his visit last Friday to the island of Santorini, on the cycled islands, shaken for three weeks by A swarm of more than 12,000 tremorssometimes with a few minutes away from each other. On Monday there was a magnitude 5.3, the major to date, and the intensity does not seem to go down.
The tremors are common in this chain of islands of Greece formed by a complex interaction of tectonic plates, but only In the first days of February there have been more than 160 earthquakes greater than 4, When they were 90 throughout last year.
Experts say that it is impossible to make a reliable prediction of what is about to happen in the picturesque Santorini – a tourists’ surrounding season for being low season, but also from neighbors, having fled 13,000 of its 15,000 inhabitants for fear – and what has been Open now is An international scientific debate On whether all this will remain in a long -term seismic swarm, weeks or months, if these tremors are precursors of a severe earthquake, above a magnitude 6, or if we are facing a volcanic, submarine or surface eruption.
The director of the Volcanic Surveillance Area of the Institute of Canarian Volcanology, Involcán, Luca d´auria, Monitor Tenerife daily what is happening in Greek waters and believes disposable, right now, a stronger earthquake because he defends that we are facing a volcanic eruption. “In my opinion what is happening is a volcanic phenomenon and it cannot be excluded, it is even possible, that An underwater eruption has already started But at depths such that it does not give rise to surface evidence, “he explains to 20 minutes.
This psychology expert says that for a underwater eruption to face with clear surface manifestations, as happened in El Hierro in 2011, there must be magma emission to a depth less than 500 meters. His theory is that This eruption would be happening “to 1,000 meters or more” deep.
D´Auria points out that there is already evidence in preliminary studies of “Changes in turbidity and temperature in the ocean that could indicate this underwater volcanic activity. “However, it asks for caution until there are more detailed studies that confirm it.
There is already evidence in preliminary studies of “changes in turbidity and temperature in the ocean that could indicate this submarine volcanic activity”
The official scientific committees of the Greece Government, refloated before the current emergency (scientific committee for the evaluation of seismic risk and seismic mitigation and risk committee and permanent scientific monitoring of the Hellenic Commission), argued until last week The seismic activity had its origin in underwater failures and discarded all activity in the two large volcanoes of the area: the Kameni and the Kolumbo submarine volcano.
This Monday, just in case, they announced an increase in the deployment of devices of monitoring submarine and terrestrial.
The Greek natural disaster teacher, Konstantinos Sinolakis, has stated that no one can know how to develop this phenomenon, despite which states three possible scenarios. The first is that they continue to register earthquakes of the current magnitudes and that after a few weeks or perhaps the activity stops. The second is that the seismic swarm produces a stronger tremor, potentially disastrous; The third scenario is that the current trigger activity A “small eruption” in the Santorini volcano.
According to Sinolakis, who is a civil engineering professor at the University of Southern California and a member of the Athens Academy, “You have to include in the equation to the Santorini volcano” That since the summer “he is showing certain symptoms”, as the act proven by satellite that in recent months he has moved about three centimeters. “The volcano could be in a phase of awakening, without this meaning that it is certain that an explosion occurs,” he said. Santorini is a mostly submerged boiler formed by volcanic activity, whose Last eruption occurred in the 1950s.
Sinolakis also does not rule out the hypothesis that The birth of a new volcano can be producing. Bajo Santorini there is a fortnight, sunk in the Aegean, including the Kolumbo explosive.
In statements to Greek public television, this teacher explained that these earthquakes may indicate The expansion of the underwater volcanoes complex on which the iconic Greek island of Santorini is based. “If confirmed, we could be witnessing, for the first time in registered history, the formation of a new volcano,” he said. However, he has also said that this does not mean that an imminent eruption will be produced but rather indicates that the region’s volcanic system is evolving and forming new craters with Santorini.
The volcanologist of the Canarian Institute, D´Auria, insists that everything points to “An underwater eruption northeast of Santorini “due to the repetitive magmatic movements detected, although it is not yet possible to determine if the origin is a new or a pre -dxyr volcano. It is known that the chain of tremors is being produced at a depth between 4 and 10 kilometers. “Personally it reminds me a lot of what happened In 2018 near the French island of Mayotte, in the Indian Oceanwhich had a very intense seismic activity, with earthquakes senses almost throughout the planet, without surface manifestation. But then, performing an analysis of the batimetry, they realized that there had been a very important eruption due to the accumulation of lava in the back of the ocean. ”
It reminds me a lot of what happened in 2018 near the French island of Mayotte, which had a very intense seismic activity
This geophysic and vulcanolgo, in addition to prioritizing the underwater eruption on the one on the surface, does not close any door to any future event. Assures that “An eruption in Santorini, although with very low probability, cannot be ruled out”.
What scientists coincide in is that only the eruption of a volcano can be detected hours or days before this occurs. Meanwhile, the seismic activity does not lose bellows in the Greek cycles, as shown by the SISCOMGIESand Greece has maintained THE EMERGENCY in the empty and paralyzed Santorini until March 3.
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