[Rockhounds] A Burp or a Blast? Seismic Signals Reveal the Volcanic Eruption to Come

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

ast December, a gloopy ooze of lava began extruding out of the summit of La
Soufrière, a volcano on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. The effusion
was slow at first; no one was threatened. Then in late March and early
April, the volcano began to emit seismic waves associated with swiftly
rising magma. Noxious fumes vigorously vented from the peak.

Fearing a magmatic bomb was imminent, scientists sounded the alarm, and the
government ordered a full evacuation of the island’s north on April 8. The
next day, the volcano began catastrophically exploding. The evacuation had
come just in time: At the time of writing, no lives have been lost.

Simultaneously, something superficially similar but profoundly different
was happening up on the edge of the Arctic.

Increasingly intense tectonic earthquakes had been rumbling beneath
Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula since late 2019, strongly implying that the
underworld was opening up, making space for magma to ascend. Early in 2021,
as a subterranean serpent of magma migrated around the peninsula, looking
for an escape hatch to the surface, the ground itself began to change
shape. Then in mid-March, the first fissure of several snaked through the
earth roughly where scientists expected it might, spilling lava into an
uninhabited valley
<https://www.quantamagazine.org/icelands-volcanoes-reveal-the-hot-history-of-mars-20210406/>
named
Geldingadalur.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/seismic-data-helps-scientists-forecast-volcanic-explosions-20210601/