An undersea volcano off the coast of Oregon could blow its top off by mid-to-late 2026, scientists say.
Last December, scientists said the Axis seamount was approaching thresholds seen before its eruption a decade ago and could erupt within a year. They now predict that the eruption will likely occur later than previously expected, by mid-to-late 2026.
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“After successfully predicting the Axial eruption in 2015, we have been trying to predict the next eruption ever since,” Bill Chadwick, a researcher at Oregon State University who co-runs a blog about seamounts, told Live Science in an email.
In a presentation to the American Geophysical Union in December 2024, Chadwick and colleagues said that axis seamount eruptions occur following periods of high seismic activity and stable ground expansion caused by magma rising from beneath the ocean floor. The researchers argued that because the previous three eruptions occurred at similar, albeit slightly elevated, inflation levels, the volcano would likely erupt again if this threshold was reached or exceeded.
After the 2015 eruption, inflation below the seamount began to rise again. But inflation gradually declined until 2023, and “by the summer of 2023, the rate of increase was almost zero,” Chadwick said in a speech abstract written in July 2024.
Then, in the fall of 2023, inflation rates and seismic activity accelerated again, indicating a “fundamental change in the magma supply to the volcano,” Chadwick wrote in the summary. “Based on current trends and the assumption that Axial will begin erupting when the 2015 inflation threshold is reached, the current eruption forecast period is between now (July 2024) and the end of 2025,” he said.
By the end of 2024, Axial reached 95% of its pre-2015 eruption inflation level.
However, by late April 2025, inflation had slowed again, and on October 27, Chadwick updated his Axial blog to say it was time to revisit his December 2024 forecast. “It will take a little longer than expected to reach the same inflation threshold that the volcano reached before its last eruption,” he wrote. “At current inflation rates, higher inflation benchmarks will not be reached until mid-to-late 2026.”
Axial seamounts are thought to behave similarly to Iceland’s Krafla volcano, with the amount of expansion needed to erupt increasing slightly with each eruption, Chadwick told Live Science. The inflation threshold in 2015 was about 12 inches (30 centimeters) higher than in 2011, so scientists speculate that a similar increase in uplift may now be needed before another eruption occurs, he said.
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The ground is currently 4 inches (10 centimeters) higher than it was minutes before the 2015 eruption, and could rise another 8 inches (20 centimeters) before the next eruption. “This is really just an educated guess, but it’s also based on the previous behavior of volcanoes like Krafla,” Chadwick said.
The reason for this rise in inflation after each eruption may be because magma rising to the surface compresses the surrounding crust, making it harder for magma to rise again in the same place years later, Chadwick said. But as the Juan de Fuca Ridge widens, it releases compressive stresses in the Earth’s crust, so the inflation threshold will not rise indefinitely, he added.
Inflation rates and inflation thresholds are unpredictable, making it difficult to estimate the timing of an eruption. “The predictive efforts described in the blog are based on simple pattern recognition in past monitoring and speculation about how it will play out in the future,” Chadwick said.
But a new wave of physically-based models could ease this process. One of the models Chadwick and his colleagues are working on can use previous monitoring data to accurately predict past eruptions, he said.
Starting this week (November 10), researchers will use the model to analyze real-time data from the Axial Seamount to try to predict its next eruption, Chadwick said. He said the results would not be made public until after the next eruption, because only then could the model succeed or fail.
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