Later this year, an enigmatic and extremely active underwater volcano near California may explode.

Scientists warn that before the end of this year, a mysterious and extremely active undersea volcano off the Pacific Coast may explode. The Axial Seamount volcano, located approximately 700 miles northwest of San Francisco and nearly a mile deep, is coming under more and more investigation from scientists who first learnt of its existence in the 1980s.

According to Bill Chadwick, a research associate at Oregon State University and an authority on the undersea volcano, which is situated in a shadowed area of the northeast Pacific Ocean, it has erupted three times since it was discovered: in 1998, 2011, and 2015.

Fortunately for people living in California, Oregon, and Washington, there is little fear of a tsunami because Axial Seamount does not erupt explosively.

"Volcanoes like Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, and Crater Lake have a lot more gas and are generally more explosive. "The viscosity of the magma is higher," Chadwick stated. "Axial resembles the volcanoes in Iceland and Hawaii more because it has less gas and lava that is very fluid, allowing the gas to escape without exploding."

When Mt. Vesuvius blew in 79 AD, it destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii; when Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, it killed 57 people; and when the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano 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. These are just a few examples of the legendary destructive power of explosive eruptions.

On the other hand, Axial Seamount is a volcano that oozes lava during eruptions, much like Kilauea on Hawaii's Big Island. Because of this, individuals on land cannot observe Axial's eruptions.

Underwater, the situation is quite different.

According to William Wilcock, an oceanography professor at the University of Washington, heat plumes from the eruption would rise from the seafloor, possibly a half mile, but they won't reach the surface.

According to Chadwick, the lava flow's inside may stay molten for a while, but the outermost layer will almost instantly cool and form a crust. In certain locations, the lava flows more slowly and accumulates, and the heat that results from this takes a long time to release. Additionally, microbial mats can form atop those dense flows, giving the impression that snow has fallen on the landscape.

If covered 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. Whales and other marine creatures, however, are "too close to the surface" to be disturbed by the eruption; thus, it is unlikely that they would be impacted, Wilcock added.

Additionally, a long-feared magnitude 9.0 earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone is not anticipated to be triggered by eruptions at Axial Seamount. The northernmost coastal counties of California, Oregon, and Washington would most likely see a devastating tsunami as a result of such an earthquake. The reason for this is that Axial Seamount is situated too distant from that significant fault.

Axial Seamount is one in all limitless volcanoes which can be underwater. Scientists estimate that 80% of Earth`s volcanic output — magma and lava — takes place withinside the ocean. Axial Seamount has drawn extreme interest from scientists. It is now the best-monitored underwater volcano in the world.

The volcano is a prolific erupter in part due to its location, Chadwick said. Not simplest is it perched on a ridge in which the Juan de Fuca and Pacific tectonic plates unfold aside from every different — growing new seafloor withinside the process — however the volcano is likewise planted firmly above a geological “warm spot” — a area in which plumes of superheated magma upward push towards the Earth`s surface.

For Chadwick and other researchers, common eruptions provide the tantalizing possibility to expect volcanic eruptions weeks to months in advance — something that`s very hard to do with different volcanoes. (There`s additionally tons much less chance every person gets mad if scientists get it wrong.)

“For quite a few volcanoes across the world, they take a seat down and are dormant for lengthy intervals of time, after which abruptly they get lively. But this one is quite lively all of the time, at least within the term we`ve been reading it,” Chadwick said. “If it`s now no longer erupting, it`s getting geared up for the subsequent one.”

Scientists realize this since they`ve noticed a pattern.

“Between eruptions, the volcano slowly inflates — this means that the seafloor rises. ... And then all through an eruption, it will, while the magma comes out, the volcano deflates and the seafloor drops down,” Wilcock said.

Eruptions, Chadwick said, are “like letting a few air out of the balloon. And what we`ve visible is that it has inflated to a comparable degree whenever an eruption is triggered,” he said.

Chadwick and fellow scientist Scott Nooner anticipated the volcano`s 2015 eruption seven months earlier than it occurred when they found out the seafloor changed into inflating rapidly and linearly. That “made it simpler to extrapolate into the destiny to rise to this threshold that it had reached earlier than” eruption, Chadwick said.

But making predictions because then has been greater challenging. Chadwick commenced making forecast home windows in 2019; however, around that time, the price of inflation commenced slowing down, and through the summer season of 2023, “it had nearly stopped. So then it changed into like, `Who is aware of when it`s going to erupt?`”