Santorini Volcano :
Scientists are trying to understand and predict volcanic eruptions before they can happen. And in the process, they have discovered the secrets of Greece’s Santorini Volcano.
The archipelago is located in the southern Aegean Sea 200km southeast of the Greek Mainland, its geological position has revealed a lot of secrets.
The researchers stated that the rise and drop in the seas level act as nature’s barricade to the Santorini Volcano.
According to the research report that was published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Greece’s Santorini Volcano erupts when there is a drastic drop in sea level.
The researchers who studied the activity of 360,000 years of this volcano revealed that when the seas level goes down 40 meters below the level it is today, the long-dormant monster will rumble.
And when the seas level rises, with no other way to erupt it settles back to its dormant sleep.
Comparing the data of Santorini Volcano with the Volcanos that are present in the oceans around the world, researchers stated that sea levels most probably influence the volcanoes just like the volcano of Santorini.
Most of the volcanoes are located in or near oceans.
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“It’s hard to see why a coastal or island volcano would not be affected by sea level,” said Iain Stewart, a geoscientist at the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan in Amman. He wasn’t involved in the study.
A massive quantity of water with its tremendous pressure act as a natural barricade to contain these monsters.
In Santorini Volcano’s case, the whole volcanic mountain was above the water but partially caved in after a violent eruption around 1600BC, creating a lagoon.
This eruption doomed one civilization and gave way to the legend of the lost city of Atlantis.
The researchers created a computer simulation of the Santorini Volcano to study how it is influenced by the seas level. Its magma chamber sits some 4 km down the surface.
In the simulated model, when the water level decreased at least 40 meters below today’s level, the outward pressure from the magma chamber created cracks in the crust.
“That gives an opportunity for the magma that’s stored under the volcano to move up through these fractures and make its way to the surface,” said Christopher Satow, a physical geographer at Oxford Brookes University.
According to the study, the cracks would need 13,000 years to get to the surface before unleashing the raging fire. And once the sea level rises back, it would need 11,000 years to subside the eruptions.
Studying the eruption history of Santorini Volcano, 208 eruptions of the total 211 happened when the sea levels were down in the period of the last 360,000 years, these eruptions happened when a substantial proportion of water was locked in the form of glaciers in the ice ages.
Will the Santorini Volcano erupt any time soon?
Well, considering the changes happening to our climate and the rising global temperatures, it’s not gonna happen at this point as we humans are busy melting the polar ice caps and rising sea levels.
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