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Video: For first time, scientists predict undersea volcanic eruption

For the first time, scientists have successfully predicted an undersea volcanic eruption. Their research could help shed light on the potential behavior of similar volcanoes.

Written by Laura Shin, Contributor Aug. 9, 2011 at 10:17 p.m. PT

For the first time, scientists have successfully predicted an undersea volcanic eruption.

The eruption occurred at Axial Seamount, which is located 250 miles off the Oregon coast and is one of the most active and intensely studied undersea peaks in the world.

In 2006, Bill Chadwick of Oregon State University and Scott Nooner of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory published a paper in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research positing that Axial would erupt before 2014. They predicted that the volcano would erupt when seafloor-surface measurements indicated that the volcano had filled with enough magma to rupture.

In a press release, Chadwick said:

“Volcanoes are notoriously difficult to forecast, and much less is known about undersea volcanoes than those on land, so the ability to monitor Axial Seamount, and determine that it was on a path toward an impending eruption is pretty exciting."

Chadwick, Nooner and colleagues have monitored Axial ever since it last erupted in 1998. Using precise bottom-pressure sensors, which are used to detect tsunamis in the deep ocean, they have been measuring the rise and fall of the floor of the volcano’s crater, or caldera.

Until the eruption, it had been gradually inflating like a balloon at the rate of six inches a year -- indicating that magma was accumulating under the summit. In 1998, when Axial erupted, the caldera floor deflated ten-and-a-half feet as magma flowed out onto the seabed. The scientists predicted that the volcano would erupt again when the caldera floor again inflated back to its 1998 level.

"Forecasting the eruption of most land volcanoes is normally very difficult at best, and the behavior of most is complex and variable,” says Nooner. “We now have evidence that Axial Seamount behaves in a more predictable way than many other volcanoes.”

The volcano is especially predictable because it has a robust magma supply and thin crust, and because it is located on a mid-ocean ridge, where the crust is constantly spreading.

Predicting volcanic eruptions for volcanoes on land such as Washington's Mount Rainier and Italy's Vesuvius has proven trickier. While each volcano is unique, the research at Axial could help shed light on the potential behavior of similar volcanoes.

In the video below, you can see a "snowblower" vent, which are seen only shortly after eruptions, and in which shimmering hot water containing white masses of microbes exits from a seafloor vent.