Scientists warned last week about two Aleutian volcanoes are at increased risk of erupting due to a series of intense earthquakes close to.
Then, the scientists decreased the danger levels for Tanaga as well as Takawangha. However, they’ll continue to look for any indications that suggest the volcanoes may still erupt in the near future.
John Lyons is a research geophysicist for the Alaska Volcano Observatory, which is a research institute that studies volcanoes similar to those on Tanaga Island and is on the lookout for possible hazards. They monitor the volcanoes that are on the island via satellites and six remote monitoring stations.
“We have witnessed seismic instability that began in early 2022’s autumn in Takawangha Volcano,” Lyons stated.
A swarm of earthquakes like the one that occurred at Takawangha, can be precursors to volcanic eruptions.
A few weeks back, Lyons said the unrest began beneath its neighbor, in Tanaga Volcano. Tanaga Volcano.
“At the same as the earthquakes grew, they became deeper and they shifted up towards their surface” the scientist said.
The observatory then increased the danger to a color code of orange, which indicates that the volcano is showing indications of instability and has the potential for eruption. The activity peak was between March 9 and 11.
However, Lyons claimed that following that the intensity, rate and the magnitude of the earthquakes occurring in the area dropped as well as observers were not noticing any other indications of volcanic activity like steaming.
“This was Thursday last week,” he said. “At the time we felt pretty good changing our color codes from yellow to orange.”
This means that the observatory is observing signs of instability in the volcano, but isn’t convinced that these signs will cause what Lyons refers to as “imminent eruptions.”
“Yellow is something like an advisory level” Lyons said. “It’s similar to a warnings it’s not background activity There are earthquakes that are ongoing. In the last week, we’ve experienced maybe 15 or so magnitude 2+ earthquakes, which is pretty huge for volcanoes.”
But, he noted that these are a slight improvement from the magnitude 3+ earthquakes that the observatory was seeing during the first month of the month.
Lyons stated that his office continues to monitor developments in Tanaga as well as Takawanga and will be prepared to raise the alert level should it be necessary. There are daily news updates about Tanaga and Takawanga volcanic eruptions at this link. Lyons noted that there’s not much of a concern regarding human-caused impacts on the volcanoes since Tanaga Island is uninhabited and the closest town close to them is Adak which is about 60 miles to the south.
