Axial Seamount is forecast to erupt sometime in 2025. Has it happened already or not?
William W. Chadwick, Jr.1 , William S. D. Wilcock2, Scott L. Nooner3, Jeff W. Beeson1, Maochuan Zhang2
Affiliations: 1Oregon State University, Newport, OR, USA; 2University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; 3University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, USA
Presentation type: Poster
Presentation time: Thursday 16:30 - 18:30, Room Poster Hall
Poster Board Number: 145
Programme No: 2.2.9
Abstract
Axial Seamount is a submarine basaltic hotspot volcano superimposed on the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the NE Pacific Ocean. For the last 30 years, it has had a repeatable cycle of inter-eruption inflation and co-eruption deflation, measured by bottom pressure recorders. Eruptions in 1998, 2011, and 2015 suggest that Axial erupts at a similar level of inflation each time. We have tried to use this pattern for long-term eruption forecasting, with mixed success. Since 2014, inflation and seismicity at Axial have been monitored in real-time by a network of sensors on the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative Regional Cabled Array (OOI-RCA). From 2015-2023 the rate of inflation was highly variable, and the rate of seismicity remained at relatively low levels (~10/day). Multiple eruption forecast windows issued between 2019-2023, later had to be modified due to the continually decreasing rate of inflation. However, since the beginning of 2024, both inflation and seismicity have increased markedly, suggesting that the volcano may finally be building up to its next eruption. Axial is now near its 2015 inflation threshold, it is inflating at a rate of 20-25 cm/yr, and the rate of seismicity has been elevated since the beginning of 2024, with up to 100s of earthquakes per day. These factors led us to update our eruption forecast in July 2024 to say that Axial is likely to erupt before the end of 2025. At IAVCEI, we will present an update on the monitoring data from Axial. Will it have erupted by July 2025?