Axial Seamount Erupts

Posted by matt on 2015-05-01
Posted in: America N, Eruptions-present. Tagged: , , , . 50 Comments
axial_med

Cabled array at Axial seamount

On April 30, 2015, Axial seamount erupted.  The good news is that this volcano is little threat to anyone.  The pressure of the deep ocean above this volcano prevents any explosion from being observed on the surface.  So why is this significant?  The NOAA successfully predicted this eruption. This is the site of the New Millennium Observatory(NeMO), the first underwater volcano observatory, which is linked to land via a cabled array of sensors.  These sensors detected significant inflation at this volcano prior to the eruption, followed by rapid deflation and a significant increase in water temperatures at the time of the eruption.

Axial_geodetic_time_series_2015-Apr-sm

Inflation at Axial seamount… and rapid deflation!

Axial Seamount is geologically interesting, because it is caused by a hotspot beneath a ridge.  This hotspot is responsible for the Cobb–Eickelberg Seamount chain, and it lies directly beneath the Juan de Fuca ridge.  It is also one of the few places where a seamount or a midocean ridge is close enough to land to perform a detailed geological study with modern seismic instruments.  After the last eruption in 2011, we got some interesting pictures, such as one of their instruments being buried by a lava flow.  Hopefully, we will be getting more shortly!

OBH_buried

Hydrophone buried under lava flow after 2011 eruption

Matt

 

Advertisement

50 comments on “Axial Seamount Erupts”

  4. That swarm at Bardabunga looks quite impressive on 3dBulge – they’re all in one spot, and in a short time-frame. Still fairly deep though.

    Like

    Reply

  8. Matt, I was meaning the pile of yellow spots East of Bardabunga crater and in line with the dyke. Those red spots at Askja have appeared more recently! Check out 3dBulge but alter the time frame slider back to 24 hours…these happened last night – 24 ‘quakes in 20 mins.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  9. There has been a felt earthquake in Michigan reports on EMSC by residents say its the strongest one ever felt and houses were shaking .

    ..After growing up in California, being in earthquakes, I knew it was an earthquake immediately. It was not surface movement as made by a truck going by, or even how thunder will shake. This was a deep bedding constant shake. I was so taken back, that after experiencing it for what seemed like 15 seconds, I jumped off the sofa. The entire house shook, not the full sways I felt in California, but intense constant movement..

    Magnitude mb 4.0
    Region MICHIGAN
    Date time 2015-05-02 16:23:07.0 UTC
    Location 42.21 N ; 85.43 W
    Depth 6 km

    http://www.emsc-csem.org/#2w

    Like

    Reply

    • Thanks for this too! Very interesting also the ground deformation map after the EQ and the damage map in the articles further down that page.

      The area around Kathmandu has moved about 1 m up, while further south the ground has sunken the same amound lower.

      Like

      Reply

  11. Interesting two quakes in Mississippi now both at shallow depths and one person reported his whole house was shaking.

    Magnitude mb 3.0
    Region MISSISSIPPI
    Date time 2015-05-03 01:08:35.0 UTC
    Location 32.57 N ; 90.11 W
    Depth 5 km

    Magnitude mb 3.2
    Region MISSISSIPPI
    Date time 2015-05-03 00:39:23.5 UTC
    Location 32.57 N ; 90.08 W
    Depth 5 km

    http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=439841

    Like

    Reply

          • Yes, this area quakes all the time. I take it you’re new to watching quakes in the US? There are dozens of small quakes across the US every day, and that’s not counting the frequent small quakes that occur along the west coast every day. The continent is not a monolithic piece of rock. It has fractures, faults, and failed rifts all over it. These include the Reelfoot rift, the New Madrid Fault zone, the Woodstock fault near Charleston, the Saint Lawrence rift system, and the Midcontinent rift system… and that’s just in the east! Additionally, you have earthquakes from isostatic rebound after the melting of the glaciers from the ice age.
            Anything under 4.0 is insignificant, unless a whole bunch are occurring in the same spot. Even then, in some more seismically active areas of the US, it’s not a big deal.

            Like

            Reply

      • That Nevada quake is pretty close to the Aurora-Bodie volcanic field. There was a pretty active swarm there a year or so ago, I suspect this is a continuation of that episode. At the time USGS stated it was purely tectonic in origin, no reason to suspect it’s anything other than that no.

        Like

        Reply

    • This one was probably caused by fracking, or injection wells for disposal of waste drilling fluid.

      Like

      Reply

        • Volcanic fields all have magma doing things… Sometimes flowing into the crust, sometimes cooling and shrinking, etc. There are lots of earthquakes in volcanic systems, particularly around 4-5km in depth. Exactly why so many occur at this depth is uncertain. Water reaches something called the critical point at around 4-5km depth, which may have something to do with it.

          Like

          Reply

        • Hi Janet

          there are also some “standard depths” for a lot of quakes typically 5 or 10 km depth. The quakes are not deemed interesting enough (because as Matt said before there are quakes all the time) so these are just processed automatically. If some scientists find a particular event interesting or relevant, then you’ll see much precise and diverse depths. There are also a lot of smallish or not so smallish quakes induced by fracking, gas injection (here was a large swarm last year in Spain or gas exploitation like in the Nederlands, you can have a look at

          http://www.aardbeving-radar.nl/

          you’ll see there are plenty of very small quakes. Of course some will say there was once a volcano there (around the carboniferous era I think), but it’s long extinct….

          Like

          Reply

  14. Sakurajima is on a roll today, an explosion about every hour or so. The total number is over 480 this year now. And, I wonder what this could be – a permanent hot spot on the (outside?) of the crater rim? I have watched it for half an hour now, the brightness is fluctuating somewhat but otherwise it stays there unchanged:

    I just wanted to doublecheck before posting but a new explosion shrouded everything over.
    http://volcams.malinpebbles.com/pubweb/Japan2.htm Live cam No. 9

    Like

    Reply

Your thoughts?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s