A mysterious and highly active undersea volcano off the Pacific Coast could erupt by the end of this year, scientists say.
Fortunately for residents of California, Oregon and Washington, Axial Seamount doesn’t erupt explosively, so it poses zero risk of any tsunami.
Also, eruptions at Axial Seamount aren’t expected to trigger a long-feared magnitude 9.0 earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone.
That’s because Axial Seamount is located too far away from that major fault.
That “made it easier to extrapolate into the future to get up to this threshold that it had reached before” eruption, Chadwick said.
According to scientists, an enigmatic and extremely active underwater volcano off the Pacific Coast may erupt by the end of this year.
The Axial Seamount volcano, located approximately 700 miles northwest of San Francisco and nearly a mile deep, is coming under more and more scrutiny from scientists who only learned of its existence in the 1980s.
Bill Chadwick, a research associate at Oregon State University and an authority on the submarine volcano, said it has erupted three times since it was discovered, in 1998, 2011, and 2015. The submarine volcano is situated in a darkened area of the northeast Pacific Ocean.
Because Axial Seamount doesn’t erupt explosively, there is no risk of a tsunami for people living in California, Oregon, and Washington.
“Mt. In St. Helens Mountain. Mount Rainier. . Volcanoes such as Hood and Crater Lake are more explosive overall and contain a lot more gas. “The viscosity of the magma is higher,” Chadwick stated. “Axial resembles the . volcanoes in Iceland and Hawaii more than anything else.”. Because the lava is so fluid, there is less gas and the gas can escape without blowing up. “.”.
Explosive eruptions have a legendary destructive power: when Mt. The ancient Roman city of Pompeii was destroyed when Vesuvius blew in 79 AD; when Mt. In St. When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano in Tonga’s archipelago exploded in 2022, a once-in-a-century event, the resulting tsunami, which reached a maximum height of 72 feet, caused damage across the Pacific Ocean and killed at least six people. Helens last erupted in 1980, killing 57 people.
In contrast, Axial Seamount is a volcano that oozes lava during eruptions, much like Kilauea on Hawaii’s Big Island. People on land cannot thus see Axial’s eruptions.
Underwater, it’s a completely different story.
William Wilcock, an oceanography professor at the University of Washington, predicted that heat plumes from the eruption would rise from the seafloor for about half a mile but not reach the surface.
While the lava flow’s interior may stay molten for a while, the outermost layer will almost instantly cool and form a crust, according to Chadwick. “Dot in some locations. After the lava flows more slowly and accumulates, there is a lot of heat that takes a while to release. Additionally, microbial mats can form on those thick flows, giving the impression that everything is covered in snow. “”.
If buried by the lava, sea life may perish. Additionally, there is a chance that scientific instruments placed around the volcano to monitor earthquakes and eruptions may be destroyed or damaged. However, Wilcock stated that sea life like whales, which are “too close to the surface” to be bothered by the eruption, are unlikely to be impacted.
Axial Seamount eruptions are also not anticipated to cause the Cascadia subduction zone’s long-feared magnitude 9.0 earthquake. The northernmost coastal counties of California, Oregon, and Washington would most likely experience a devastating tsunami as a result of such an earthquake. The reason for this is that Axial Seamount is situated too far from that important fault.
Numerous volcanoes are submerged, including Axial Seamount. According to scientists, the ocean is where 80% of Earth’s volcanic output, including lava and magma, takes place.
Researchers have shown a great deal of interest in Axial Seamount. It is currently the world’s best-monitored underwater volcano.
According to Chadwick, the volcano’s location contributes to its frequent eruptions. The volcano is situated prominently above a geological “hot spot,” which is an area where plumes of extremely hot magma rise toward the Earth’s surface, in addition to being situated on a ridge where the Juan de Fuca and Pacific tectonic plates split apart, forming a new seafloor in the process.
Frequent eruptions present Chadwick and other researchers with the exciting chance to forecast volcanic eruptions weeks to months in advance, something that is extremely challenging to accomplish with other volcanoes. If scientists make a mistake, there’s also a far lower chance that anyone will be upset. ).
Much of the world’s volcanoes sit dormant for extended periods of time before erupting into activity. However, during the time that we have been researching it, this one has been fairly active all the time,” Chadwick stated. “It is preparing for the next eruption if it is not erupting. “.”.
Scientists have identified a pattern, which is how they know this.
The seafloor rises because the volcano gradually swells between eruptions. The dot. When the magma emerges during an eruption, the volcano deflates and the seafloor descends, according to Wilcock.
According to Chadwick, eruptions are “like letting some air out of the balloon.”. And every time an eruption is triggered, we’ve observed that it has inflated to a comparable level,” he said.
When Chadwick and fellow scientist Scott Nooner noticed that the seafloor was inflating rapidly and linearly, they made a prediction seven months before the 2015 eruption of the volcano. According to Chadwick, that “made it easier to extrapolate into the future to get up to this threshold that it had reached before” eruption.
Since then, however, forecasting has proven more difficult. Around the time Chadwick began creating forecast windows in 2019, the rate of inflation began to decline, and by the summer of 2023, “it had nearly stopped.”. The thought was, “Who knows when it’s going to erupt?”.
The seafloor, however, gradually started to inflate once more in late 2023. According to him, “it’s been kind of cranking along at a pretty steady rate” since the beginning of 2024. In July 2024, he and Nooner from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington forecasted the most recent eruption and shared it on their blog. They still have the same prediction.
“I expect it to erupt by the end of the year at the rate of inflation it’s going,” Chadwick stated.
However, the volcano is unlikely to erupt anytime soon, according to seismic data. With hints like an increased frequency of earthquakes, scientists can predict volcanic eruptions minutes, hours, or days in advance, though they are not yet proficient at doing so weeks or months in advance.
According to Chadwick, “we’re not at the high rate of seismicity that we saw before 2015” at this time. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it erupted tomorrow, but overall, I don’t think it will happen anytime soon. “”.
Although his prediction has gained a lot of public attention, he warned that it is still essentially an experiment. Chadwick stated in a November presentation, “I think it’s more honest that way, instead of doing it in retrospect.”. After he spoke at the December meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the forecast began to gain traction.
He pointed out that since the forecasts won’t have an impact on people on land, “there’s no problem of having a false alarm or being wrong.”.
“Perhaps there are lessons that can be applied to other more hazardous volcanoes around the world,” Chadwick said, if the predictions come to pass. However, at the moment, many land-based volcanoes lack a “repeatable pattern like we’re seeing at this one offshore,” making eruption predictions “just more complicated.”. “”.
In other places, researchers have examined alternative methods for predicting underwater eruptions. The rising temperature of hydrothermal vents at an East Pacific volcano and the timing of three eruptions in the same location over the previous thirty years started to show a consistent pattern to scientists. “It kind of worked,” Chadwick remarked.
The eruption of the volcanic site known as “9 degrees 50 minutes North on the East Pacific Rise” was photographed by scientists thanks to a lot of luck. This was only the third time that scientists had ever taken pictures of active underwater volcanism.
Chadwick, however, is skeptical that scientists will be lucky enough to capture the eruption of the Axial Seamount on camera.
Getting there in time will be difficult, but the Ocean Observatories Initiative Regional Cabled Array, a sensor system run by the University of Washington and funded by the National Science Foundation, will warn scientists about it.
“Eruptions don’t last long, so you have to be in the right place at the right time to see them happen. According to Chadwick, the ones at Axial typically last a week or a month.
Then there is the challenge of obtaining a ship and a submarine or remotely operated vehicle to take the pictures. These ships are typically planned well in advance, maybe a year or a year and a half out, and projects are closely timed.
Chadwick is scheduled to return to the volcano in the summer of 2026 after last visiting in 2024. The eruption of Axial Seamount will have already occurred if his predictions are accurate.
