Here ’s a general pattern of thumb : When atabloid newspapertells you that , without a uncertainty , a volcano is about to belch , beskepticalimmediately . Trust us – if there ’s actually a peril , it will be all over the news , and scientists would be waving their arm quite vigorously .
The latest volcanic venue to get all the attention isTenerife , a appendage of the Atlantic Ocean ’s Canary Islands archipelago . It ’s made up of several overlapping volcanoes , both of the shield type ( like Hawaii’sMauna Loa ) or stratovolcanic ( like Washington ’s Mount St. Helens ) .
One of these stratovolcanoes – Teide – is showing some curiousseismic activityas of late . The Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands ( INVOLCAN ) haverevealedthat several swarms of low - vigour earthquakes were detected at the base of the volcano back in October .
Teide is one of the 16 Decade Volcanoes , those that are considered to be the most dangerous to human populations . Its trigger-happy volcanic chronicle , combine with the fact that millions of tourists impose it every year , sure warrant attention .
So are we due for some fireworks , as thetabloidsclaim ? No .
“ The volcanic activity at Tenerife is the typical of a quiescent vent , ” INVOLCAN explicate in aFacebook post .
“ The volcano alert degree is presently in fleeceable positioning , the low one ; therefore multitude can express out their activities commonly . ”
In other words : do n’t panic .
seismal swarms – collections of closely - spaced seism – are in general produced by two thing . Either a fault meshwork has reactivated and is slipping quite oftentimes or magma is impress through the cheekiness .
Both happen underneath an active or sleeping volcano arecompletely unsurprising . It ’s literally what you ’d expect them to be doing . It would be far more strange if no seismic action was observed .
So no , just because there ’s been a seismic drove , itdoesn’t meanthat a vent is about to erupt . Unless the swarm actuate towards the vent ’s venthole and increase in order of magnitude and frequency day - on - day , you should n’t worry .
As it so happens , a similar series of earthquakes at Teide back in 2016 sparked a similar round of panic - inducing newspaper headline , all of which wereslammedby Tenerife officials as “ irresponsible ” . It did n’t recrudesce back then , and it ’s unbelievably improbable to erupt now .
Even if it did erupt soon , though , there ’s no guarantee it ’ll be grave .
Take Yellowstone Caldera , for model . Sure , it ’ll erupt again someday , but the opportunity of it blow up in a cataclysmic supervolcanic eruption areincredibly lowright now ; it ’s erupted lava flows far more often , which although troublesome are far less deadly overall .
For what it ’s deserving , Teide ’s last know outbreak was in 1909 , which registered as a 2 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index ( VEI ) musical scale . Although a repetition of this would be unsafe , it would n’t be withering .
