Solid Earth sciences
Seismic exercise is unleashed at the world’s southernmost lively volcano by main earthquakes in Chile and the Indian Ocean.
Massive earthquakes can set off a lot smaller ‘icequakes’ at a volcano 1000’s of kilometres away in Antarctica.
The ice-covered slopes of Mount Erebus, the world’s southernmost lively volcano, are peppered with high-tech seismometers. Chenyu Li at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and her colleagues studied information gathered by these sensors, in addition to by one other close by seismometer, between 2000 and 2017.
Seismic exercise at Erebus spiked in the hours after two massive earthquakes: a magnitude-8.Eight one which rattled Chile in February 2010, and a magnitude-8.6 quake that hit the Indian Ocean in April 2012. The scientists conclude that seismic power rippling via Earth from these distant quakes set off faint icequakes — tremors that ripple via ice relatively than stable floor — in the ice overlaying Erebus.
Icequakes may be extra simply triggered in the hotter Antarctic months, when temperature modifications weaken the brittle ice. Although Erebus erupted regularly in 2010 and 2012, these eruptions have been comparatively tame, and don’t appear to have been affected by the quakes.