Seismic Wave Activity & Spotting Future Earthquakes

[Webster]

SciMex: Seismic waves, like the one before Tonga eruption, could give warning for future blasts

Fifteen minutes before the massive January 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, a seismic wave was recorded by two distant seismic stations. Now, researchers argue that similar early signals could be used to warn of other impending eruptions in remote oceanic volcanoes.

The researchers propose that the seismic wave was caused by a fracture in a weak area of oceanic crust beneath the volcano’s caldera wall. That fracture allowed seawater and magma to pour into and mix together in the space above the volcano’s subsurface magma chamber, explosively kickstarting the eruption.

The research was published in Geophysical Research Letters, an open-access AGU journal that publishes high-impact, short-format reports with immediate implications spanning all Earth and space sciences. The results build on the researchers’ previous work monitoring remote volcanoes. In this case, the Rayleigh wave, a type of seismic wave that moves through the Earth’s surface, was detected 750 kilometers (approximately 466 miles) from the volcano.

“Early warnings are very important for disaster mitigation,” said Mie Ichihara, a volcanologist at the University of Tokyo and one of the study’s coauthors. “Island volcanoes can generate tsunamis, which are a significant hazard.”

Seismic waves, like the one before Tonga eruption, could give warning for future blasts

Seismic waves, like the one before Tonga eruption, could give warning for future blasts A seismic wave was recorded fifteen minutes before the massive January 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano. A new study proposes the seismic wave was caused by a fracture in the Earth'

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